I laughed back. ‘And you’ll do it – because you respect the institution of voting.’
He shrugged. ‘I’d be a piss-poor democrat if I didn’t obey the will of the people. Even when it is wrong.’
Athens had other pleasures. I think I mentioned earlier that Aristotle tried to teach us to hold a symposium. Well, suddenly I was living in aristocratic Athens, and I was invited to a symposium virtually every night. For the first few weeks I passed. My heart was ashes, and somehow I couldn’t face the Athenians – as friends. So I sat at home with Eumenes.
But after my third visit to the theatre – the festival of Dionysus, the real thing, in Athens – Diodorus was going down to Piraeus to be with friends. It was like something from Socrates come to life. Too good to miss.
We walked down inside the long walls, and Diodorus pointed out how the walls were built in layers.
‘Athenians only spend money on defence when they are in a state of panic,’ he said with a nasty laugh. ‘Look at the base layer – see the column bases turned on their sides? Pure Parian marble – try to crack one of those with your catapults. That was from the year Plataea was fought, when Themistokles came back from Sparta and led us in building as fast as could be done. And atop it – mud brick, unbaked. That’s how it was finished.’ We walked along for a while. ‘Look here. Another course of marble laid down – and heavy stone atop it – the Thirty Years’ War. Niceas, or even Alcibiades. Look at the towers!’ He shrugged. ‘We do good work when we’re at our best. We’re at our best when we’re threatened, scared, angry.’
‘Like men,’ I said.
Diodorus glanced at me.
‘You aren’t what you seem at all, you know that?’ he said. ‘Kineas said you were . . . a thinker.’
‘Doesn’t exactly show on my face,’ I said. ‘It’s OK – I thought you were just an angry young man, all talk and no depth.’
And stuff like that. Making friends is the best way to pass time that there is – I had months in Athens, and I made friends that lasted me the rest of my life. Kineas, Diodorus, Demetrios of Phaleron . . .
But I get ahead of myself. We walked down the hill, talking about ethics and whether it was possible to have trust in a ruling class (my point) or acceptance of the stupid crap that the mob sometimes votes (his point) on faith. We agreed that either way, a lot of people were forced into acting on faith in other people’s choices.
We arrived at a beautiful house in Piraeus – Graccus’s house. He wasn’t as wealthy as Kineas’s father, and not as aristocratic – his father had built a fleet of merchantmen to trade with the Black Sea, and despite losses, they remained prosperous. But the house was a delight – pale stone and red tiles, a little above the street, and with a high central courtyard that had steps to a platform in the corner – so that on the platform, you could see the sea. We lay on couches watching the sun set. I had dined outside – what soldier has not? But I had seldom enjoyed it so much, a dinner of fresh-caught tuna and red snapper in parchment; deer meat in strips cooked on a brazier; bowls of spiced almonds in honey and little barley rolls. My mouth waters to recall it. And the wines – Nemeans and Chians, raisinated and clear and red, mixed with sparkling, bubbly water from some local shrine.
Graccus was a masterful host, with a good staff who loved him and worked to make us love him too.
I noted that Niceas, who was friends with my Polystratus and whom I treated as a sort of upper servant, shared Graccus’s couch. Later – after four or five bowls of wine – Niceas came and sat by me. He was a courteous man – he sat, but didn’t recline, until I indicated that he was welcome.
‘I’m not a servant, here,’ he said. He met my eye – we were only about a hand’s breadth apart. ‘I think you handle us well, Macedonian.’
‘Are you and Graccus lovers?’ I asked.
Niceas narrowed his eyes. ‘Not really your business, is it?’
I offer this by way of the thousands of things that showed me how free Athenians were – that this lower- class man could tell me to sod off, and then grin, slap my shoulder and go off to dance.
Dancing, it turned out, was the order of the evening. Graccus had musicians – famous ones, not that I knew who they were, but they were incredible, to me. I was used to a kithara and a couple of flutes. This was a group of seven players, and they played songs I knew – and songs of their own – with a sort of mad, elegant violence, fast, harsh and yet precise. As if I’d never heard the notes before. Later, Kineas explained to me that this was the fashion, created by this very group, and that a lyre player had to be extremely skilled just to get the staccato notes out so precisely.
They had a couple of dancers, who proved to be more like instructors – the whole thing was hopelessly complex, because it turned out that these musicians weren’t slaves, but freemen – famous freemen, who could demand high prices for their music and were playing for Graccus for free – because he had helped ‘discover’ them.
And the political discussion – that all government depends on the trust of one group in another, even in a tyranny – continued all around me. Men I’d never met – one of the kithara players, named Stephanos – sat on my couch, handed me the wine bowl and said, ‘Good topic.’
Another man – with curly blond hair like Alexander’s – sat down opposite me, on Kineas’s couch. ‘Are you really an oligarch?’ he asked. ‘I mean – you really believe in that horseshit, or are Macedonians so pig ignorant you’ve never thought about the rights of men?’
‘Well,’ I said, trying to not be offended while getting my point across. He was angry – so I smiled. That always helps throw oil on a fire, I find. ‘I studied with Aristotle.’
‘Pompous fuck!’ my debater said. ‘He thinks he’s better than other men.’
‘As do I,’ I said. ‘I think I’m better than other men. Debate me.’
There was a little hush – some men were still talking, but Kineas fell silent, as did Diodorus.
‘In what way?’ Blondy asked. ‘I mean, how exactly are you better?’
‘In every way. I am well born. Athletic. Intelligent. Rich. Educated.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m not handsome – which you are. So you are the better man in that respect, eh?’
‘You are certainly no prize for looks,’ he said, but he said it with a smile.
‘So you concede that some men may be better at one thing, and some at another,’ I said.
‘Look, I’ve been to the lyceum, I know where this goes.’ He shrugged. ‘But do my superior looks entitle me to superior political rights?’
I nodded. ‘If you combine them with superior oratory skills and a war record based on superior bravery and war skills, then they do – don’t they? Athenian?’ I asked.
Diodorus laughed. ‘Good shot, Macedonian. He’s got you there, Charmides.’
‘You democrats want to make everyone equal,’ I said. ‘And in time, you will, if we allow you. You will make war on excellence to raise up mediocrity. Cut the tall trees down and call the trees that remain tall.’ I looked around. Even the dancers had stopped. ‘What if all this equality costs us heroism? Ambition?’
‘Why?’ Diodorus asked. ‘I see a false assertion.’
‘Where?’ I asked. I was doing well, I thought.
‘Why can’t we all be equally great? Why not let every man be Achilles?’ Diodorus glowed when he spoke. He was a true believer.
I shook my head. ‘I’ve watched the circle around the king. The great men push other great men – but the petty men push only other petty men. Mediocrity breeds only mediocrity.’
I shut up then, realised I had spoken ill of my own among foreigners. Bad behaviour by any standard.
Diodorus snorted, dismissing my comment with a wave of his hand. ‘Just because a passel of Macedonians —’
But Kineas shook his head. ‘It is the same in the assembly,’ he said. ‘And you have said as much yourself, Diodorus.’
Blondy hopped off Kineas’s kline and slapped my shoulder. ‘All I care is that you believe in
Demetrios of Phaleron. The eventual Tyrant of Athens, and another of my lifelong friends. He was a rabid democrat in his youth.
So I count that argument as one for me and nought for the democrats, eh, lad?
The sixth bowl, and the seventh, and the eighth. I was dancing. Need I say more? The notes all made sense, and dancing a complex pattern with twenty near strangers was the most important thing in the world.
We danced the wine out of us – danced through moonrise. Lay back and drank water.
Graccus rose to his feet. ‘Now, friends,’ he said, and he mixed a fresh wine bowl – one to one, wine to water. Exciting. ‘Some of my friends have decried the absence of women at my parties.’
