He pushed away the brush that hid it. It was a very large stone; he felt like a idiot for not having seen it. In his anger, he bent down to push the stone over. “Wait!” Polydoros said. “It has letters on it.” He read them and began to laugh.
“What, if I may ask, strikes you funny?” Glacial dignity, Mithredath thought, was preferable to hopping up and down on one foot.
“It says, ‘I am the boundary stone of the agora,’ ‘‘ Polydoros told him.
“Oh,” the eunuch said, feeling foolish all over again.
The most prominent wrecked building was a couple of minutes’ walk north of them; its wrecked facade had eight columns, two of them still standing at their full height and supporting fragments of an architrave. “Shall we examine that first?” Polydoros asked, pointing.
Mithredath’s throbbing toes made him contrary. “No, let’s save it for last and wander about for a while. After all, it isn’t going anywhere.”
“As you wish,” Polydoros said politely. Behind them, Mithredath’s servants sighed. The eunuch pretended he had not heard.
“What’s that?” Mithredath asked a minute or so later, seeing another piece of stone poking up from out of the weeds-seeing it, thankfully, before he had a closer encounter with it.
“By the shape, it’s the base a statue once stood on,” Polydoros said. He walked over to it. “Two statues,” he amended. “I see insets carved for four feet. Ah, there’s writing on it here.” He pulled weeds aside and read, “ ‘Harmodios and Aristogeiton, those who slew the tyrant Hipparkhos.’ “
“What’s a tyrant?” Mithredath frowned at the unfamiliar word. “Some sort of legendary monster?”
“No, merely a man who ruled a city but was not of any kingly line. Many towns among the Hellenes used to have them.”
“Ah. Thank you.” Mithredath thought about that for a moment, then said incredulously, “There was in the marketplace of Athens a statue celebrating men who killed the city’s ruler?”
“So it would seem, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “Put that way, it is surprising, is it not?”
“It’s madness,” the eunuch said, shuddering at the idea. “As well for all that Persia conquered you Yauna. Who knows what lunacy you might otherwise have loosed on the world?”
“Hmm,” was all Polydoros said to that. The Hellene jerked his chin toward the ruined building, which was now quite close. “Shall we go over to it now?”
But Mithredath reacted to the Hellenic perversity exemplified by the ruined statue base with perversity of his own: “No, we’ll go around it, see what else is here.” He knew he was being difficult, and reveled in it. What could Polydoros do about it?
Nothing, obviously. “As you wish,” the Hellene repeated. He then proceeded to skirt the ruins by an even larger margin than Mithredath would have chosen. Take that, the eunuch thought. Smiling behind Polydoros’ back, he followed him north and west.
Still, enough was enough. “I’m certain this isn’t the marketplace anymore,” Mithredath said when the Hellene had led him almost all the way to Athens’ overthrown gates.
“No, I suppose not,” Polydoros admitted. “Are you ready to head back now?”
“More than ready.” Mithredath caught Polydoros’ eye. They grinned at each other, both of them a little sheepish. Mithredath glanced at his servants. They did not seem amused, and knew better than to seem annoyed.
Something crunched under the eunuch’s foot. Curious, he bent down. Then, more curious, he showed Polydoros what he had found. “What’s this?”
“An ostrakon-a potsherd,” Polydoros amended, remembering to put the Yauna word into Aramaic.
“I knew that,” Mithredath said impatiently. “I’ve stepped on enough of them these past few days. But what’s this written on it?”
‘‘Hmm?” Polydoros took a closer look. “A name- Themistokles, son of Neokles.” “Why write on a potsherd?”
“Cheaper than papyrus.” Polydoros shrugged. “People are always breaking pots and always have sherds around.”
“Why just a name, then? Why not some message to go with it?”
“Excellent saris, I have no idea.”
“Hrmp,” Mithredath said. He took another step and heard another crunch. He was not especially surprised to find another potsherd under his foot; as Polydoros had said, people were always breaking pots. He was surprised, though, to find he had stepped on two sherds in a row with writing on them. He handed the second piece of broken pottery to Polydoros and pointed at the letters.
“Themistokles, Neokles’ son, again,” the Hellene said.
“That’s all?” Mithredath asked. Polydoros dipped his head to show it was. The eunuch gave him a quizzical look. “Good Polydoros, why write just a man’s name-just his name, mind you, nothing else-on two different pieces of broken pottery? If one makes no sense, does twice somehow?”
“Not to me, excellent saris.” Polydoros shifted his feet like a schoolboy caught in some mischief by his master. This time his sandal crunched on something. Mithredath felt a certain sense of inevitability as Polydoros looked at the sherd, found writing on it, and read, “Themistokles, son of Neokles.”
The eunuch put hands on hips. “Just how many of these things are there?” He turned to his servants. “Tear out some brush here. My curiosity has the better of me. Let’s see how many sherds we can turn up.”
The look Raga and Tishtrya exchanged was eloquent. Like any master with good sense, Mithredath pretended not to see it. The servants bent and began uprooting shrubs and weeds. They moved at first with the resigned slowness servants always used on unwelcome tasks, but then even they began to show some interest as sherd followed sherd in quick succession.
“Themistokles, Neokles’ son,” Polydoros read again and again, and then once, to vary the monotony, “Themistokles of the district Phrearrios.” He turned to Mithredath and raised an eyebrow. “I think we may assume this to be the same man referred to by the rest of the sherds.”
“Er, yes.” Mithredath watched the pile of potsherds grow by Polydoros’ feet. He began to feel like a sorcerer whose spell had proved stronger than he had expected.
His servants had speculations of their own. “Who d’you suppose this Themis-whatever was?” Tishtrya asked Raga as they worked together to uproot a particularly stubborn plant.
“Probably a he-whore putting his name about so he’d have plenty of trade,” Raga panted. Mithredath, listening, did not dismiss the idea out of hand. It made more sense than anything he’d been able to think of.
“Themistokles, son of Neokles,” Polydoros said almost an hour later. He put down another sherd. “That makes, ah, ninety-two.”
“Enough.” Mithredath threw his hands in the air. “At this rate we could go on all summer. I think there are more important things to do.”
“Like the ruin, for example?” Polydoros asked slyly.
“Well, now that you mention it, yes,” Mithredath said with such grace as he could muster. He kicked a foot toward the pile of potsherds. “We’ll leave this rubbish here. I see no use for it but to prove how strange the men of Athens were, and it would glorify neither Khsrish the Conqueror nor through him our Khsrish IV, may Ahura Mazda make long his reign, to say he overcame a race of madmen.”
The eunuch’s servants laughed at that: they were Persians, too. Polydoros managed a lopsided smile. He was on the quiet side as the four men made their way back to the ruined building in the marketplace.
Once they were there, the Hellene quickly regained his good spirits, for he found he had a chance to gloat. “This building is called the Stoa Basileios,” he said, pointing to letters carved on an overthrown piece of frieze. “The Royal Portico. If we wanted to learn of kings, we should have come here first.”
Chagrin and excitement warred in Mithredath. Excitement won. “Good Polydoros, you were right. Find me here, if you can, a list of the kings of Athens. The last one, surely, will be the man Khsrish overcame.” Which will mean, he added to himself, that I can get out of these ruins and this whole backward satrapy.
Seized perhaps by some of that same hope, Raga and Tishtrya searched the ruins with three times the energy they had shown hunting for potsherds. Stones untouched since the Persian sack save by wind, rain, and scurrying mice went crashing over as the servants scoured the area for more bits of writing.
Mithredath found the first new inscription himself, but already had learned not to be overwhelmed by an idle
