Persian Fire (27 page)

A point rammed home by the installation, right in its centre, of a hefty bronze of the two tyrannicides. Their swords drawn, their faces stern, their bodies heroically if improbably nude, Harmodius and Aristogiton were portrayed as the joint saviours of Athens and the founders of her freedom. Considering that there were no other public portraits to be seen in the whole of Athens, the dominant position of these statues in the Agora was startling enough. What made it even more jaw-dropping, of course, was the fact that Harmodius and Aristogiton, far from having sacrificed themselves for liberty, had in reality cut down Hipparchus in a squalid lovers' tiff. Indeed, if anyone deserved to be hailed as the city's liberator, it was probably the King of Sparta — but the Athenians did not care to dwell on that. Hence the value to them of the tyrannicides. Like every other revolutionary state in history, Cleisthenes' regime had an urgent need of heroes. Harmodius and Aristogiton, gratifyingly sanguinary, even more grat-ifyingly dead, were duly spun as democracy's first martyrs.

The hype also served a more profound purpose. Cleisthenes understood his countrymen well; he knew that the Athenian people, revolutionaries though they had rather startlingly proved themselves to be, remained, in their souls, traditionalists still. Far from glorying in the novel character of the democracy, they craved reassurance that it was rooted in their past. Cleisthenes, ever subtle, had therefore been sure to adorn even his most daring experiments in the fustian of tradition. The tribes, for instance, had all been given the names of antique heroes, as though, like the Athenians themselves, they had sprung not from Cleisthenes' fertile brain but directly from the soil. Even the democracy itself, so its founders implied, far from being something new, was in fact the primordial birthright of all the people of Attica, having originally been bequeathed to them back in the days of legend by the celebrated hero Theseus, slayer of the minotaur. Seen in such a light, what were the two tyrannicides themselves but monster-killers, selfless patriots who had died in order that Athenian democracy might be restored? Smoke and mirrors all, of course — and hardly paying to Cleisthenes and his associates anything remotely like their due. Yet it is perhaps the clinching proof of their greatness that even Cleisthenes himself, scion of a family rarely noted for its modesty, should have recognised how essential it was to veil the full scale of his achievement behind such fantastical shadows. In founding democracy, he had invented his city's future; but he had also, just as crucially, fabricated its past.

No statue of Cleisthenes in the Agora, then. Nor any place for him in his countrymen's affections as their democracy's founding father. Indeed, no sooner was he dead than the Athenians, indulging themselves in an extraordinary bout of amnesia, started to forget that they had passed through a revolution at all.* So natural did their new form of government already appear to them, so deeply rooted in the Attic soil, that a true understanding of its origins, just as Cleisthenes had calculated it would, began to fade. It was a bitter-sweet paradox: in the false-memory syndrome that buried Cleisthenes in obscurity was the ultimate proof of his stunning success. Not merely to have redeemed his country from civil war, but to have set it upon enduring foundations — only Darius, of Cleisthenes' contemporaries, could compare. To be sure, between the Persian, monarch of all the world, and the Athenian, friend of the people, there might have appeared few correspondences; and yet in truth, in the scale of their achievements, and in what they betokened for the future, the two men were indeed well matched. Both had come to power amid bloodshed and given their countries peace; both had tamed the ambitions of a turbulent aristocracy; both, in doing so, had crafted a radical new future for their people and yet opted to disguise their originality behind the lumber of the past. Both, most portentously of all, had created something restless, and dangerous, and new.

Nor, for all that Athens, set upon the remote margins of the world as she was, stood shrouded in a natural obscurity, was Darius quite as oblivious to her now as he had previously been.

*It is a mark, perhaps, of the oblivion that descended upon Cleisthenes' memory that we are not even sure of the precise date of his death. Some time around 500
bc
seems likeliest
.

Reports of her revolution had arrived in Persepolis. In 507
bc
, while the Athenians were nervously awaiting the Spartan onslaught, and noting, with alarm, that Hippias had taken refuge on the southern side of the Hellespont, in territory held by Persia, they had sent an embassy to Sardis. There sat Artaphernes, brother of the King of Kings, ruthless and shrewd. When the Athenian ambassadors had arrived at his court and begged him for an alliance against the Spartans, Artaphernes had graciously granted their request. Naturally, however, he had set a condition of his own: the usual gift of earth and water. The Athenian ambassadors, shrugging their shoulders, had accepted his terms. On their return to Athens, when they reported the news of the submission they had made to Artaphernes, 'they were severely censured'
⁵⁴
— which no doubt enabled the democracy to feel good about itself. The Athenians, however, did not repudiate the alliance with Persia — or their own submission. Better safe than sorry. Even after the great victories of 506
bc
, who knew when Cleomenes might be back? An insurance policy against the Spartans was no bad thing — even if it had cost a symbolic humiliation. And what was a gift of earth and water? A gesture — nothing more.

Or so, at any rate, it pleased the Athenians to assume.

Artaphernes had been well rewarded by his royal brother for the blow that struck down Bardiya. Sardis was by any reckoning a great and fitting prize. The capital of the west, it ranked, in the opinion of the Persians, as one of the four corners of their dominion, a city so fabulously wealthy that even its rivers ran with gold. Croesus, when not bribing the Delphic oracle or being stung by the Alcmaeonids, had used the proceeds to mint the world's first golden coinage, an innovation that had helped him become, if anything, even more obscenely rich than he had been before. Forty years on, and with Croesus long since dead, his Persian conquerors could still enjoy the fruits of his lavish spending.

Even those familiar with Babylon would have found it hard to sniff at Sardis. Showcase of the city was a magnificent temple to Cybele, a mother-goddess as ancient as the hills, and capable of inspiring such extremes of devotion in her worshippers that they might end up dancing on a mountainside, writhing in orgies, or even, should the rituals be going with a particular swing, hacking off their testicles. Beyond the temple, rising in rings like those of Ecbatana, loomed the celebrated walls of Sardis. The innermost one, circling the acropolis, was so immense that Croesus had been led into the fatal error of assuming it impregnable. The acropolis itself, a red shard of mountain jagging up from the river-plain, was even more intimidating, topped as it was along one of its spurs by what had once been the royal palace, and was now the brooding stronghold of Persian power. From there, gazing down at the sprawl of the lower town, or far westwards over vast expanses of wheat and barley, and the road that led onwards for three days to 'the bitter sea', Artaphernes might well have felt himself the equal of any king.

With one exception, of course. Master of the west he might be, but Artaphernes — 'faithful Artaphernes' — knew better than to forget for even a moment that he was merely his brother's vassal, his servant, his
'bandaka'.
Although, to instill in the locals a due sense of Persian majesty, he had modelled his court on Darius' own, he ruled it not as a king himself but rather as the 'Guardian of the King's Power' — as a satrap.* Darius, having won his throne amid an inferno of rebellions, had no intention of permitting over-mighty subjects ever again to endanger either his or Persia's greatness. The merest command from his secretariat, then, and a satrap would be obliged to jump. For a provincial capital, the arrival of a royal letter was a major and often alarming event. Certain satraps, presented with a missive from the Great King, might go so far as to prostrate themselves before it and humbly kiss the floor.

Excess of zeal — or simple common sense? No one could ever tell who might be in the shadows, keeping watch, taking notes. Some claimed that the king appointed spies specifically to tour his empire, all-seeing officials known simply as his 'eyes'. Others

*The Greek word
'satrapes'
was a transliteration of the original Persian
'xsachapava'.

suspected an even more unsettling truth:

The king's subjects, after all, would be put on their guard by any inspector whom they knew to be his 'eye'. What really happens is quite the opposite - for the King will listen to anyone who claims to have seen or heard anything untoward. Hence the saying that he has a thousand eyes and a thousand ears.'

Here was paranoia on an almost global scale. No matter where within the inconceivable vastness of the empire his subjects might be, Darius could be imagined as always watching them, as overhearing all they said.

It was not enough for a servant, however, even one as favoured as Artaphernes, to owe his duty simply to the king. Master-accountant and insatiable for tribute though Darius was, yet he demanded from his satraps something more than revenue alone. 'By the favour of Ahura Mazda,' he reminded those who served him, 'I am the kind of man who is a friend to the right, who frowns upon the wrong, who has no wish to see the weak oppressed by the strong.'
²
Darius spoke, as was his privilege, as the fount of law for all the world, but he was also closely reflecting how the Persians saw themselves. No people had a greater faith in their own virtue. So stern were the demands of justice, the Persians liked to believe, that they might outface even those of class and breeding. A peasant, his upright nature spotted by the unblinking eye of the Great King, might be promoted to the judicial bench; once installed there, he might find himself seated upon strips of drying skin, the hide of his corrupt predecessor, justly flayed alive. This was the kind of anecdote, both edifying and gruesome, that never failed to delight the Persians. Naturally — for it helped to confirm all their dearest preconceptions. There was no other people, they could reflect contentedly, with a sense of justice, an aptitude for rule that could remotely match their own. What good fortune for lesser nations, then, that they should all have ended up the slaves of the Persian king!

A justification for world conquest, of course, that the Persian King himself had already made his own. Upon Darius' satraps, however, out on the empire's fringes, far from the royal presence, it imposed particular demands. The obligation to provide justice for the same provincials whom they were simultaneously fleecing was not straightforward. Where it might easily lead could be discovered by a visit to the royal mint at Sardis, where coinage, just as it had been in Croesus' day, continued to be struck, stamped now with the image of Darius as an archer, bending back the royal bow of power, the warrior champion of truth, of justice, of Arta. Then, chinking, glinting brightly, the gold would be crated and carted off to Susa.

Perhaps a certain brutal hypocrisy was merely the mark of any successful satrap. Nor did it necessarily make the trumpeting of the
'pax Persica'
a total sham. Even though he was sure to keep a regular supply of tribute wagons rumbling out of Sardis, Artaphernes did not look to bleed his province dry. That would have been to risk the goose that was laying the Great King his splendid golden eggs. As under Croesus, so under Artaphernes, Lydia continued to boast a class of native super-rich. One of these, a mine-owner by the name of Pythius, was so successful in husbanding his assets that it was said only Darius lay ahead of him on the empire's rich-list. Lydians like Pythius, to whom Persian rule had opened up global horizons, had not the remotest interest in agitating for independence. Artaphernes, quite as subtle as his brother, encouraged such collaboration wherever and however he could — and not merely among the rich. Lydian functionaries still dutifully ran the province for their masters, just as they had done under Croesus. Their language, their customs, their gods, all were scrupulously tolerated. Only in temples particularly associated with Croesus and his dynasty might symbols of the old regime be pulled down or adapted into fire altars — and even then no attempt was made to force the worship of Ahura Mazda down unwilling Lydian throats. Indeed, if anything, it was the conquerors who adopted the natives' customs. Perhaps the most startling evidence of this could be seen eight miles to the north of Sardis, a wonder visible from Artaphernes' palace: eerie mounds of stone and turf looming over the cornfields like waves whipped up from a golden swell. Three of these were the tumuli of famous Lydian kings; but around them, filling the necropolis, rose newer, smaller tombs, the resting-places of both wealthy natives and their Persian masters.
³
Even in the dust and silence of a cemetery, then, Artaphernes' Sardis was an unabashedly multicultural place.