beautifully kitted-out mercenaries.
‘Anyone here from Plataea?’ I asked cheerfully.
None of them was, but there were men of Thebes and Megara and even little Thebai.
‘Are you from Plataea, then?’ asked the escort officer, a phylarch from Hermione in the Peloponnese.
‘I’m Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I said. He stopped dead. ‘You’re not.’
‘I am,’ I said.
He shook his head, and then gave his spear to another man, took my hand and shook it. ‘A pleasure to meet you. Why didn’t you say? The Tyrant would have sent a better escort.’
I laughed. It is good to be famous.
The other mercenaries pressed around me and shook my hand over and over.
One of them, a short man with short hair and an Attic drawl, laughed. ‘I was there too,’ he said. ‘At Marathon. With Miltiades.’ He shook his head. ‘Great days.’
‘I understand Miltiades is dead,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘He’s been dead nearly five years.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s a long story.’
Gaius stood by and rolled his eyes. Well — no one is very famous to his friends, which is probably just as well.
The Palace of Syracusa is, to me, an exercise in hubris. It is built like a temple to the gods, and yet its only purpose is to house men. It towers over the town, on top of the acropolis, where there ought to be a temple and instead there is a citadel. As far as I’m concerned, that citadel is the reason that Syracusa succumbs so easily to tyrants — always has and always will. The man who holds the acropolis holds the city. By placing the gods on the acropolis, Athens makes it much harder for a mere man to take their houses — and any man who does such a thing is an obvious blasphemer. The Peisistratids had houses on the Acropolis, but no one but priests dwell there now.
I digress, again.
High above the town, we emerged on a path with a marble railing, lined by statues of women who were holding the railing. The view was breathtaking, and the storm off towards Africa was a pronounced darkness, like a bruise in the sky. My escort halted at the end of the path, where the statues gave way to a garden, open on one side to the city, and closed on the other three by deep colonnades.
All this for the pleasure of one man.
Gelon was standing among his roses; he had a small, sharp sickle in one hand and he was pruning, cutting dead flowers, slicing away buds past their promise.
Hah! It all appeared a trifle contrived, to me. Gelon, the great aristocrat, tamer of the commons, pruner of the high and the low. Something like that.
Nonetheless, I bowed.
My escort commander said, ‘Lord Arimnestos of Plataea,’ and saluted with his spear. To me, he said, ‘Lord Gelon of Syracusa.’ He caught my eye as he turned, and his escort marched away smartly.
Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracusa, was a tall, deep-chested man with deep, dark blue eyes, the kind of eyes usually painted on by amateur statue-painters who have access to too much lapis. His eyes were arresting.
His gold hair, almost metallic in its vitality, was arresting, too. He had a touch of silver-grey at the temples, well muscled arms and legs — he looked, in fact, like a big, handsome man in the very prime of life and condition. And I have always thought that his looks were part of his success. He looked like a statue of a god, like the best statues of Heracles or Zeus. He dressed simply, as had become the fashion since the teachings of Pythagoras began to sweep over the Greek world, and he wore no jewellery unless he wore a cloak.
At any rate, at the mention of my name, his eyes widened ever so slightly.
‘Are you really Arimnestos of Plataea?’ he asked.
I bowed. What do you say to such a foolish question?
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Syracusa. I gather that your ships bring a cargo. And I gather that you have quite a story to tell.’
‘You have the better of me, then, my lord,’ I said. ‘I have a cargo of tin, which my factor is even now selling.’
‘Of course I have the better of you,’ Gelon said, a trifle petulantly. ‘It is my business to know such things. I gather that you had an encounter with ships of Carthage.’
‘We encountered them,’ I admitted.
‘Such encounters are my business. Tell me, please.’ He snapped his fingers and a pair of slaves appeared. One reached for my cloak. The other handed me wine.
I removed my cloak in a fine swirl of Tyrian red, and both slaves fell back a pace. Gelon paled — or rather, as I was to learn with him, his lips grew redder.
‘You are armed,’ he said.
‘At all times,’ I said cheerfully, and tossed my cloak to the nearer slave. ‘See to it the pin’s still there when I get it back,’ I said.
‘My slaves do not steal,’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I found three ships of Carthage pursuing a Greek ship north of here — practically off your harbour mouth. I sank two and took the third.’
‘Under whose protection?’ the Tyrant asked. ‘Do you act for Athens? Is that why you feel you can take ships on the high seas with impunity?’
I laughed. ‘I doubt that anyone in Athens even knows that I am alive,’ I said. ‘I need no man’s permission to take ships on the seas but my own.’
‘Dano says that you told her you are a pirate,’ he said.
‘Dano?’ I asked.
‘The woman you might recall rescuing,’ he said with a slight smile.
I shrugged. ‘I served Miltiades too many years to call myself anything else,’ I said. ‘And I was bold enough to assume that I would be welcome here, for making war on Carthage.’
The Tyrant pulled his beard and nodded. ‘You are correct. And yet, it might have been better had you asked me, first. Carthage has a mighty armament off my coast, and I am not yet ready to contend with them.’ He shrugged. ‘Where did you acquire so much tin? Preying on Carthage?’
I shook my head. ‘No. And then, perhaps they would tell this story differently. We sailed into the Outer Sea and they hounded us unfairly. After a while, I attacked their shipping and their trade, yes.’
Gelon nodded. ‘There have been rumours of a Greek pirate in the Outer Sea,’ he said. ‘Well done. Now that I know you are the famous Arimnestos, it makes more sense to me, as the earliest rumours said you were some bronze-smith with a taste for war.’
I was feeling perverse. ‘I am a bronze-smith with a taste for war,’ I said. ‘I cast the rams on my ship’s prows, I can make a better helmet than any smith in this city and I have fought in a dozen pitched battles on land and sea, and in fifty skirmishes. Heracles is my ancestor. I led the Plataeans at Marathon.’ I smiled. ‘My ships carry more than forty full ingots of Alban tin, which Sicily needs.’
He nodded. His godlike face split in a smile. ‘You need to put me in my place because you have heard that I hate the tekne,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Men — lesser men who cannot understand me — say such things. Indeed, I love fine things, and I honour the artisans who make them. Yet I know that they lack the skills and education to serve as citizens and voters. Their dedication is their craft, as women’s dedication is their children. They are too busy to direct the affairs of the city.’
‘You should meet my friend Aristides,’ I said. ‘You two would have much to discuss.’
Gelon shook his head again. ‘Debate with me, if you disagree.’
‘If cities were directed by craftsmen, perhaps there would be less war and more art. The exercise of craft — the excellence of making things well — is, I maintain, as sure a guide to arete as excellence in rhetoric or athletics. What excellence does a man have merely by birth?’ I nodded out to the south, towards Carthage. ‘I have seen more courage from Keltoi slaves, sometimes.’
Gelon was not angered, nor was he stung. He was no straw tyrant. ‘Well said, if full of possible holes. What if a man makes things all day and has no idea of what has gone on in the assembly?’
‘When did your assembly last meet?’ I asked.
