Of Merchants & Heros (46 page)

He made a balancing gesture with his hand. ‘I have the measure of most of them. There are two I don’t like the look of – though no one else seems to have realized.’

I asked him what he meant.

One, he said, was called Thorax, an Aitolian. ‘He’s a great boaster, like all Aitolians. But behind all the bluster he’s fast as well.’

‘Will he win?’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But I have been watching him. If he has a weakness it is this: he was born with speed, and has never had to trouble to make himself better. He’s probably come first in every race he has ever run. It has come too easy to him. He has never had to pause, and look inside himself.’

‘And the other?’ I said.

He gave a quick laugh. ‘His name is Damindas. He’s a spoiled rich man’s son from Aigina, and if you saw him clothed in a crowd, you would scarcely believe he was an athlete at all. No one has ever taught him manners, or posture. But someone has taught him how to run.’

That evening I saw them for myself.

We had been up to the sanctuary, and at the little round shrine of Palaimon had offered a pinch of incense at the fire. It was a warm, clear evening. The stars shone in a great arc over the Isthmos and the sea. Returning through the town, Menexenos touched my arm as we passed one of the crowded streetside taverns and said, ‘There they are.’

A row of youths were seated at a long table of scrubbed pinewood, surrounded by wine-pitchers, dishes of half-eaten food, and the wide, flat cups that tavern-keepers use because they are hard to break.

‘See the thin-faced one with the girl,’ said Menexenos. ‘That’s Damindas.’

I looked through the crowd. He was a sandy-haired youth, surprisingly pale, with round shoulders and protruding eyes. He might have been a merchant’s clerk. He had one hand on the table, holding his cup. But the other, I saw, was wedged between the girl’s legs, and it was clear she did not like it.

‘Who’s his friend?’ I said.

‘Oh, some flute-girl he’s hired for the night. He treats them all like that, as if he hated them and wanted to shame them. I don’t know what he does to them later, but you never see the same one twice.’

I looked again. Just then there was a great laugh from the far end of the long table, from a group crowded around a flat-faced, grinning, black-haired youth. He was nodding and smiling, and judging from the reaction of the others had just told a joke.

‘That one,’ said Menexenos, ‘is Thorax. He makes jokes about everyone. But Damindas thinks he only jokes about him, and hates him for it.’

‘Then why doesn’t he go somewhere else?’

He shrugged. ‘He doesn’t want to miss anything.’

Just then Thorax turned and noticed us, and began calling for Menexenos to join the table and drink a cup of wine with him.

‘Well you may as well meet them,’ said Menexenos grimly. We stepped forward, and threaded towards them among the busy tables.

Thorax shoved his neighbours along and Menexenos sat beside him. I took the only other place, which was at the far end of the long bench, beside the flute-girl.

She turned as I sat, and flashed me a quick smile. I smiled back and said hello. It was no more than a kindly greeting, but beside her Damindas seemed to object. He gave her a sharp tug, and made her turn away.

Being at the end of the table, I was somewhat outside the ambit of the various conversations that were going on, and for a while I sat in silence, listening to the others and sipping at my cup of wine. For all the noisy merriment, I had picked up an undertone of hostility, like a bad note at a concert. Damindas seemed tense, and was sitting with a long face. I could not suppose it was merely because I had spoken to the girl.

As I was turning this in my mind, Thorax shouted down from the top of the table. ‘Hey, so you fought at Dogs’ Heads, did you?’

I looked up. Like all Aitolians, he said everything at the top of his voice, like a goatherd bawling across a field.

‘Yes I did,’ I answered warily. I looked away. I had not come here to get into an argument about the war.

I heard him shout out across the tavern for the boy to bring a fresh pitcher of wine. When it came he refilled his cup and drank it.

Then he seized the pitcher, stood, and came striding down towards me.

I kept half an eye on him. When he reached where I was sitting he halted, and banged down the pitcher on the tabletop beside me. It was an old bronze one. It sang like a bell, and dark wine slopped out.

By now half the tavern had paused in their conversations and were watching curiously. A silence fell.

Then, with a great clap, he slapped his hand on my shoulder, and with the other took the pitcher by its handle and slopped wine into my cup, till it overflowed and began dribbling off the edge of the table onto my thigh. He filled another cup, then raised it. ‘To you, then!’ he cried, ‘I honour you.’

He drank, then tossed the empty cup at the startled onlookers.

I was so surprised that for a moment I just looked at him. Then I took my own cup and drank down the rough wine, and even threw it off into the dark behind me afterwards.

Thorax laughed. ‘We showed those Macedonians,’ he cried. And then, realizing with a frown that his cup was gone, he took a great swig from the pitcher, and thrust it in front of me for me to do the same.

Around us people began to laugh and bang the tables with their fists. Thorax turned and gave them a mock bow. ‘To the defeated Macedonians!’ he cried. ‘Death to our enemies!’

There were cheers all around. But beside me Damindas hissed, ‘You disgust me, Thorax. You’re drunk as a muleteer. Why don’t you shut up?’

He had spoken quietly, but I knew Thorax had heard. I do not think he was much bothered by the words, but he had sensed the intent. He turned to Damindas with an amused look, and before he spoke he winked at the girl. Then he said, ‘Yes, I am drunk, Damindas. What of it? Come the day of the race, I shall still beat you, and what will your rich daddy have to say about that?’

The flute-girl – who, though pretty, was clearly not bright – giggled, failing to see that this was deadly.

‘Curse you, Thorax,’ hissed Damindas. ‘Shut your stupid mouth.’

‘A loser,’ nodded Thorax at me. ‘Take no notice of him. No one else does.’ And then, slapping the flat of his hand on my back, he pointed at Menexenos and asked at the top of his voice, ‘Is it true that he’s your lover?’

I saw Menexenos bristle. He did not care to have our private love cheapened, passed around by vulgar hands and inspected like some curiosity. But, of course, by now everyone was looking, and to appear cowardly or ashamed was worse. So I replied with equal force, ‘Yes, it is true.’

For some reason Damindas, who had been sitting silent with a face the colour of oxblood, found this funny, and let out a sudden guffaw. At this Thorax swung round and looked at him.

‘Do you laugh at love, Damindas? Then beware, for one day love will laugh at you. And, whatever you think of my friend here, at least he does not have to pay for it.’

And then, turning his back on Damindas’s appalled face, he sat down beside me. ‘Let us drink, Roman. Any friend of Menexenos is a friend of mine, even though he’s going to lose the foot-race.’

At this the tense silence broke once more into laughter and talk.

All except Damindas, who stood abruptly, dragging the flute-girl to her feet. ‘Get up,’ he said to her. ‘We’re leaving. I don’t like the stench around here.’

FIFTEEN

AFTER THAT NIGHT THE
athletes were confined to their barracks until after the games, as the custom was. It was still two days before the first contests began, but I did not have to kick my heels, for next day early, shortly after I had risen, and was washing my body at the fountain, Villius arrived.

He tossed a towel at me. I caught it. ‘What news?’ I asked. ‘Will Titus still attend the games?’

He glanced around the stark walled courtyard of the little guest house I was staying at before he answered. Curiosity about the course of the negotiations had reached fever-pitch. Any rumour would be seized upon, and any listener would carry it.

But I was alone. Seeing this he turned back and said, ‘Get dressed, and you can ask him yourself. He’s down at the port, locked in talks with the commissioners.’

‘Still?’ I said, pausing from rubbing my hair and looking at him.

He lowered his voice. ‘The commissioners will not agree.’

He stood by while I pulled on my clothes. And then we set out together.

We arrived to find Titus slumped in his chair, his head propped on his hand, peering at a great open scroll weighed down with stones. ‘Villius; Marcus,’ he said, greeting us in a flat, tired voice.

I asked him how the talks were going, though his face told me all I needed to know. He sat back and made a contemptuous swipe at the great scroll. ‘May the gods save me from bureaucrats: small men who have never had one vision of greatness in all their lives.

Everything is ‘but this’ and ‘but that’ as if a man could provide for every shift of chance and fortune.’ He let out a long sigh, and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. ‘I did not come here to be remembered as the man who betrayed the Greeks.’

His hair had grown again since Kynoskephalai, and was as it had been when first I had met him, all boyishly unkempt and curling at his brow. I thought of the youth he had once been, whom I had met in Tarentum, sitting in the library gardens there, with fire in his blue eyes, full of hope and ambition, who had dreamed the dream of Greece.

I said, ‘The games have not yet begun. There is still time.’

‘Yes, Marcus. There is still time . . . Forgive me, how is Menexenos?’

I made some quick answer, as one does when a question is asked only from politeness, for I could see his mind was elsewhere, and as soon as I had spoken he said, his eyes straying back to the scroll, ‘Now, if ever, while the whole world is watching, is the time for a grand gesture, something that will ring through the ages. But the commissioners see only detail and difficulty. I tell you, nothing great was ever done by a committee.’

There was a tap at the door and a tribune put his head in. ‘Sorry, sir, but the commissioners have returned.’

‘I am coming,’ said Titus wearily.

He stood, and gathered up the scroll. But at the door he paused and looked back. ‘I know what people are saying. They say I am not a man of honour; they say I am a Roman barbarian who cannot keep his word. But I will show them a Roman’s word counts for something; and, by the gods, I will prove the Aitolians wrong.’

The games began. By now every spare piece of ground from the temple to the stadium and beyond was taken up with tents and pavilions. Everyone who wished to see or be seen was there: politicians with their entourages; rich merchants with wives or courtesans or boys; off-duty soldiers up from Korinth; sailors from the port; painters and sculptors touting for a commission; rhapsodes and public entertainers, and among them all the itinerant traders who are present at any such gathering, selling wine and fruit and honey-cakes.

On the first morning, all the athletes were called together in the sanctuary. They stood in line, dressed in their white tunics, while the priests intoned the prayers, performed the sacrifices, and filled the air with blue curling incense. On the temple steps a boy-choir sang a hymn to horse-loving Poseidon, and then the games were declared open.

It seemed to me that the whole world had come to the Isthmos.

There were Achaians and Arkadians from the south; Phokians and Thessalians and Aitolians from the north; Ionians from the eastern islands; and, among them all, non-Greeks as well: Lydians and bearded Persians; Egyptians with painted eyes dressed in white muslin; shining Nubians; gaudy Phoenicians; tall, broad-shouldered Galatians with their fair plaited hair and strange language; dark Sikels from Sicily; rich Etruscans; and wealthy merchants from Roman Italy, speaking loudly in Latin as if no one else could understand it, while their wives stood beside them, frumpy and self- important and overdressed.

I watched the boys’ running events and the pentathlon, and went with Villius to see the chariot- and horseback-races out on the plain.

Titus had wanted to be there, but he was still busy with the commissioners.

On the third day I went to the Odeion, to listen to the music contests and watch the dancing. And then came the day of the foot- race.

I was awake before the first cock crew, and, rising in the half- light, I went alone to a little ruined shrine of Demeter I had discovered up among the pine groves. There, as the sun rose over the sea in a great spread of light, I spoke my own prayer to the mother goddess.

It was early still when I arrived at the stadium. With the dawn an inshore breeze had picked up. The air smelled fresh, of pine and sea; and high on their poles above the terraces the great coloured banners flapped and billowed in the wind.

I took a place I had already spied out. It was on the stone terrace at the far end, opposite the judges’ seats, by the turning-post with its bronze sculpture of a leaping dolphin. I sat and waited, watching as the first spectators began to drift in. Down on the track a lone boy was making a final check for stones or windfall. From somewhere, carried on the breeze, came the faint tang of athlete’s oil.