Aeschylus just stood there, drinking it all in.
‘How is Aristides?’ I asked, when chance threw us together.
‘You mean, the real one?’ he asked, raising an annoyed eyebrow at Phrynicus’ graceless nephew.
I smiled.
‘He’s a great man, now. He and Themistocles are rivals — enemies, really. I’m not sure if they don’t hate each other worse than either one hates the Persians. Aristides has inherited the Eupatridae — he leads the oligarchs.’ Aeschylus shrugged.
‘What? Aristides the Just?’ I shook my head.
‘Politics in Athens is different, my friend. Themistocles has raised up the thetis, and he’ll end up giving them the right to serve on juries — mark my words — and that will be the end of us.’ Aeschylus was an old-fashioned man, despite his relative youth.
Of course, looking at them, I realized that my friends were ageing as fast as I was myself.
That was a shock.
Aeschylus had grey in his beard. Harpagos had a white mark — the scar of a Persian arrow from Lade — in his beard, but his hair was getting grey, too. And to see Dionysus talk to Cimon — Dionysus had been our trierarch at Lade; Cimon and I had been mere ship’s commanders. Now we commanded squadrons, and Dionysus, I could see, was quite old. Perhaps fifty. A decade younger than I am right now.
I’d watched him put a Carthaginian marine down, just recently. He wasn’t that old.
But we weren’t any younger, and I couldn’t help but notice that the annoying Aristides the Younger was the age I’d been at Sardis.
Seventeen.
Zeus. I’m lucky I was allowed to live. So cocky. So sure.
For the first time that night, I watched older men — proven men, men of unquestioned worth. I wondered, when the young men competed on the beach — on Chios, or again at Lade — I wondered how many older men watched me, and thought I was an arrogant pup and too young to know any better?
Age. Your turn will come, my young friends.
But enough. It was a great night — so many friends. Such laughter, such wine; and we were not so very old, either.
Finally, the sun peeped over the horizon. We were lying on straw, above the high-water mark, and we’d seen the night through, and slaves were picking up the amphorae and the broken cups. Dano lay by Cimon on a kline of straw — lucky Cimon — flirting with Paramanos, who appeared to know more of Pythagorean philosophy than any of the rest of us — but he’d been raised at Cyrene.
They were talking about mathematics, and Cimon laughed, and then raised himself on his elbows to speak over his companions. ‘So, Ari, why have you called us all here?’
Some men laughed, and others hooted.
But they all fell silent.
‘I was hoping we could all spend the summer raiding Carthage,’ I said, to the rising sun. ‘But the summer has slipped away like youth. I have a friend here who is a prince of Illyria. We were slaves together. I thought that if I could raise my friends, we’d have enough of a fleet to sail north of Corcyra and restore him to his hill fort, kill all his enemies and perhaps pick up a few bars of silver into the bargain.’
Paramanos grinned. ‘There’s not a one of us who couldn’t use a few bars of silver.’
‘I heard there was a tin fleet,’ Cimon said.
Dionysus was drunk. ‘Too damned late, Athenian!’ he shouted. ‘We took it all!’
I shook my head. ‘We took a third of it. That’s a story for another night, friends. We have ten ships. With ten ships, we could probably conquer any island in the Aegean. With these men? But if you will follow my lead, we will restore Neoptolymos, and perhaps take a few Carthaginians on the way.’
Cimon nodded. ‘I’m not likely to turn back now: there’s nothing else going on this summer, although you had best pay well, you old rascal — I’ve rowed from Athens to Massalia and back to Croton to find you.’
I laughed. ‘I have a few coins,’ I admitted.
‘I don’t want to linger,’ he said. ‘The Phoenicians are everywhere in the east — there’s no getting a cargo into Aegypt. Men say that the King of Kings and his Phoenicians have made a pact with Carthage. And there is war in Aegypt.’
I shook my head. ‘I keep hearing that,’ I said. ‘But I see no proof. The Phoenicians are no real friends of the Great King’s.’
‘Supposedly there are embassies going both ways, even now,’ said Paramanos. ‘In Cyrene, I heard that your — how should I say it, your friend? Hipponax’s son Archilogos? — is taking a squadron to Carthage. Or perhaps took one, last season.’
Cimon shook his head. ‘That, at least, is not true. He was in Mytilene a month ago.’ Cimon smiled in the rising sun. ‘I spoke to him. We’re not at war. I’d just heard the message that Ari was alive. I told Archilogos. That was a pleasure.’
I coughed. ‘But you’ll all come north against Illyria?’
Paramanos looked around at the Greeks. ‘Why do you think we came here? For a rest?’ He laughed.
Cimon scrambled to his feet, apologizing to Pythagoras’s daughter. My pais refilled his cup. He poured a long libation of priceless Sybarite wine to the immortal gods, and then raised his cup to the rising sun.
‘Phobos, Lord of the Chariot of Fire, and Poseidon, Lord of Horses and swift ships and the Sea, with a thousand beautiful daughters; Athena, matchless in guile, who loves men best when they are most daring; Aphrodite of the high-arched feet, and all the other immortals! Hear us! We thank you for this night of mirth and friendship. And we ask your blessing!’
We all cheered.
Great days. And after that night, I had a hangover of Homeric proportions.
Worth it.
We spent another day provisioning our round ships and making our plans. By then, local rulers were sending embassies to the ‘men of Marathon’. A rumour went out that Dano had hired us to avenge her father on the Sybarites.
We sharpened our weapons, and drilled.
We had a farewell feast with the Pythagoreans. Vegetables, it turns out, are perfectly palatable.
I saw Lydia, at a distance. It is odd how you know a person by their shape and movement, when you couldn’t possibly see their face. I knew her, and I knew the man with his arm around her.
There is no happiness of mortal men that cannot be marred in an instant.
Part IV
Having passed by the Island of Thrinacia, where are the kine of the Sun, they came to Corcyra, the island of the Phaeacians, of which Alcinous was king. But when the Colchians could not find the ship, some of them settled at the Ceraunian mountains, and some journeyed to Illyria and colonized the Apsyrtides Islands. But some came to the Phaeacians, and finding the Argo there, they demanded of Alcinous that he should give up Medea. He answered, that if she already knew Jason, he would give her to him, but that if she were still a maid he would send her away to her father. However, Arete, wife of Alcinous, anticipated matters by marrying Medea to Jason; hence the Colchians settled down among the Phaeacians and the Argonauts put to sea with Medea.
