The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae (9 page)

BOOK: The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae
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He stopped and glared, round eyes bulging.

“– Those bastards on Aegina were building ships to use against us. So ask yourselves this: what’s going to happen this time round now that the odds are worse?”

A friend near the front told me that as Themistocles was shouting this out he’d been watching the face of Hipparchus and seen its expression change from anger to an incredulous and dawning horror. But it was already too late: Themistocles had arrived at the climax of his peroration.

“But ask yourselves these questions first. Who has been trying to push this city into building a fortified harbour like our enemies have? Who has been trying to persuade the men who lead this city to build a new war fleet so that we won’t be at the mercy of those fucking pirates?”

There was an outbreak of shouting from the massed crowd, starting with the sailors but spreading.

“Themistocles, Themistocles.”

It built into a chant and seemed as if it would never stop.
But he hadn’t quite finished and lifted his hands into the air, palms facing the crowd, and gradually the chanting died away.

“So when you watch their fleet descend onto our few triremes lying unprotected on the shore. When you see the smoke rising from burning ships and buildings. When you hear the cries of your wives and daughters being raped and carried off into slavery. When you are burying your sons killed in a desperate but failed defence. Ask yourselves this. Ask why didn’t we build the safe harbour Themistocles wanted? Ask where is the new fleet of triremes he begged our leaders to build, the fleet that would have saved us?”

He paused, leaving us on the edge. I’d seen him do this before, milk every last drop like a good goatherd will. Only then, in a softer but still audible voice, did he deliver the killer blow.

“And to respond to those questions I’ll give way to the man most qualified to give you the answers because he more than anyone is responsible for them: Hipparchus, son of Charmos.”

He turned his back, stepped down from the dais and walked away from the Agora. Behind him there was an outbreak of shouting as the fighting began.

Three days later, just before dawn, Aeschylus walked into our room waking us. He was travel-stained and weary but something else as well. I tried to work out what it was as he talking to Cimon. I’d avoided his gaze: I still felt too much shame. I think he was embarrassed too; these things can hang between men like an invisible curtain. Didn’t stop him speaking though.

“If you’re capable of feeling shame, Mandrocles, you should feel it now. That poor girl didn’t deserve your spite. Treat the ones who love you like that and soon you’ll stand alone. Now get out of that bed, I need to sleep.”

I got up and headed for the stairs where Cimon was waiting. Aeschylus called after me.

“Wake me in three hours, I’ve information Themistocles needs. You can come with me if you can manage to forget your own problems for a moment.”

Cimon shouted,

“And me, do I come?”

“You make your own decisions, son of Miltiades.”

He turned his face to the wall and was asleep in seconds. Cimon and I wandered down to the bar; there were already drinkers in there, no one slept well last night, there’d
been skirmishes throughout the hours of darkness as the unstable city prepared for another revolution of the wheel. Then Cimon loped off towards where the Athene Nike was beached and I wandered, with a large honey cake warm from the baker’s oven, to a bar near the construction site that Piraeus was turning into. I sat outside with a cup of hot spiced wine letting the rising sun warm my aching bones.

I couldn’t shift the blackness from my soul, the Gods had buried it too deep; but I felt the first imperceptible flicker of direction. Above me the sun caught some of the gleaming new marble on the Acropolis. I stared at it, looking for some message that maybe I could be forgiven, but instead tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I rubbed at my eyes with honey smeared fingers. The crying made me feel better; I didn’t understand why.

Now, all these years later, I’ve seen too many brave men break down and weep or sit in silence for years not to understand that it’s just the price of courage. You hang on and hang on and later, when there’s no need to hang on, you break. So I sat and stared out over the waters watching boats dragged off the beach into the sea until it was time to wake Aeschylus.

Cimon was there before me, they went silent as I entered.

“You’ve suffered more than I thought, Mandrocles: go to Lyra, talk to her, she will understand.”

I didn’t answer, however it appeared we’d begun to rebuild our friendship. But we couldn’t get anything out of him concerning his whereabouts over the last few days even though we pestered him all the way to the Ceramicus. Themistocles was in great high spirits when we arrived. His brother was there and a number of hangers on who seemed to have attached their fortune to the rise of the Demos.

“Welcome, Athena’s greatest poet; tell me, were you successful?”

Aeschylus smiled and gave a typically elliptical answer.

“If you chose to hang about the Piraeus, in a couple of days you’d find out.”

Themistocles laughed and clapped him on the shoulders several times before saying,

“You missed a great piece of theatre in your absence: you know, I think you could improve your chances of winning the goat at next year’s Dionysia by watching me at work. For instance, no chorus could present surprise and fear better than Hipparchus at my prompting. He’s had to go to ground now. Slow as he is he’s beginning to learn that there’s nothing to be gained by trying violence after defeat in a public meeting. That’s where the Demos reigns supreme.”

Aeschylus said nothing, just listened wearing a sardonic grin.

“So much so that the lads of the fleet were disappointed: after they’d cracked a few heads Hipparchus’s faction disappeared off the streets quicker than snow in spring.”

“That’s a nice image, remind me to write it down.”

“Before you do, tell me about your visit to our friends in Corinth. Are you still held in such high regard in that great city these days?”

“Less since they found out that I’d become your Ambassador.”

They both laughed at this, but I hadn’t understood a word of this exchange; how could I miss so much and understand so little? Aeschylus changed his posture and suddenly he was the chorus leader imparting the will of the Gods. If he didn’t write plays he could have made a decent living as first actor.

“The city fathers of Corinth of the high citadel send their greetings to Themistocles, the Athenian selfless father of the Demos. Out of friendship and respect for our sacrifice at Marathon they are prepared for twenty of their fighting ships to sail out from beneath the high citadel and serve with the Athenians against the Medisers of Aegina.”

He dropped the pose and added,

“At terms that can be confirmed later, providing the fighting is quickly concluded.”

Themistocles looked relieved; he even let out an exhalation as if he’d been holding his breath while Aeschylus spoke. So his earlier bombast had been an act; well, at least a partial act. With Themistocles it was difficult to know.

“Thank the Gods. That gives us a chance to put up enough resistance to agree peace terms. The real settlement that we’ll impose on those bastards will have to wait. But the war will have served its purpose.”

He offered us wine.

“Take care how fast you drink, son of Miltiades, too much deprives a man of his judgement and sets other men talking.”

It’s a measure of the extent that Cimon looked to Themistocles for guidance back then and also a measure of the value of his advice that he drank his cup slowly. There’s no acknowledgement of that today: you’ll find nothing of it in the scribbles of young Herodotus, only a shadow of it in Aeschylus’s great conclusion to his trilogy: Prometheus Fire Bringer. The greatest of all his plays, the finest flowering of all our poetry: something that surpasses anything by the trickster Sophocles or the Euripides boy. But understand this, reader: more than Callias and his money, it was Themistocles who set Cimon on his way.

I never understood why: maybe a promise to Miltiades or guilt over his split with him. Perhaps he saw Cimon as a hedge against the Alkmaionids or had some other use for him. His association with the boy certainly served him well.

But for all that there was a genuine closeness between them back then. Cimon was a wild elemental in his early teens, strong willed and destructive: the fall of his father left him disturbed. Themistocles kept him between the traces and not through fear. Cimon feared no one. No, it was
respect – maybe cut with affection, but above all they were both, in their differing ways, consummate politicians. Themistocles saw the path to the future and Cimon wanted to travel it.

Themistocles had one more surprise for us.

“Tomorrow we go to a small symposium where certain matters of great importance concerning the principal of Isonomy will be discussed; somewhere you will find familiar, Mandrocles. Please be here one hour before the lamps are lit.”

As we were leaving Themistocles took my arm and whispered.

“The symposium will be a major test for Cimon: you make sure he keeps a clear head, remains sober and passes it.”

Next evening’s walk to the house of Phrasicles was, for me, impregnated with memories: bitter and sweet. It was here that Miltiades and Themistocles had tested whether they could be allies and almost came to blows as a consequence. It was also where I first met Aeschylus and Lyra; it all seems so long ago.

Cimon, freshly washed with his long hair properly dressed and oiled, wearing one of his father’s robes, bubbled with excitement. This was his first real step along the road his father had trod. We walked with Aeschylus behind Themistocles and his brother Agesilaus. In Aeschylus’s words it was almost the same cast as last time, before Marathon.

It was dusk when we were admitted into the beautiful courtyard where, years before, the even more beautiful flute girl had cleaned up my tunic after I had disgraced myself in drink. I can still almost taste her sweet breath. Oh, Lyra; if only the Gods would let us back to try again. Forgive me, reader, I ramble.

But any nostalgia was quickly replaced by surprise. There were but ten of us in the andron that night. The
other five were Phrasicles, Ajax, a distant Philiad relation of Cimon’s two men I didn’t know and, on the couch of honour, Xanthippus.

While slaves removed our sandals to wash our feet the tension in the room tightened like an anchor rope. I think that although neither Themistocles nor Xanthippus was surprised to see each other, they realised the stakes. Remember, back then the rules of governing the Demos were being made up from day to day. We picked at the choice dishes of fish and eel on the low tables but without appetite; conversation was desultory. At last the jugs and cups were set up and Phrasicles stood to perform the duties of symposiarch. But this was no ordinary symposium.

“Phrasicles, you are the most honourable of men and an example to all other hosts but I fear even your skills are unequal to stimulating a worthy debate on the principles of Isonomy. We are here for another purpose and one that will not wait.”

Xanthippus had spoken well but Phrasicles looked unsure of how to proceed. He mumbled an offer to withdraw but was interrupted by Themistocles.

“No, as host your place is here: all shall remain to listen to what, in the next minutes, could decide the future of the city of the Goddess Athena. There is no place for secrecy or subterfuge in the principle of Isonomy or the rule of the Demos.”

I don’t know how he managed to say this with a straight face, perhaps at the moment he believed it. Xanthippus couldn’t; he tried to look stern and impassive beneath his bulging forehead but then he cracked, trying to stifle a giggle that became an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

“By all the Gods, Son of Neocles, how do you manage it?”

He had to stop and wipe his eyes before gasping out,

“You should let your scribbler take notes; the length of one Chou of wine with you in this form would give him
enough material for ten of his satyr plays. How can you get so far up your own arse?”

Then Themistocles laughed; whether it was genuine or not I don’t know but it achieved its purpose. We could begin. Only the delicate matter of who would speak first, who would control the agenda needed to be settled. It was then that Cimon, who had been whispering with Aeschylus, took his first step in what we now call politics.

“Was this not the very room in which you, Strategos Themistocles, and my late father began the process that led to Marathon? The battle in which you both fought in the front line.”

On the surface it was the question of a callow youth. But the mixture of courtesy and admiration coupled with a memory of the dead hero whose partnership with Themistocles led to the battle settled with great subtlety who would speak first. Themistocles.

“Now shall we speak plainly in front of honourable men who will hold us to account, son of Ariphron?”

Xanthippus looked him in the eye then nodded his massive head. Themistocles began.

“We both know the Persians will be back. We both know they won’t make the same mistakes again. There will be no more Marathons.”

Xanthippus nodded again.

“The Spartans will never defend our city. Our only chance is the sea. The sea can make us great.”

Xanthippus nodded.

“But we don’t have a secure harbour and we don’t have any …”

Xanthippus finished the sentence for him.

“Fucking ships. I know, I’ve heard this speech before. Where does it get us? We can’t even fight Aegina at sea and win.”

“Yes, and you’d know more about Aegina than most, wouldn’t you?”

One of Themistocles’s few faults: he couldn’t resist a jibe. Xanthippus flushed red.

“Not as well as you know the Great King, son of Neocles.”

A deadly insult but Themistocles reply took all of our breath away.

“And not as well as I know his son, young Xerxes. A much better bet for the future, don’t you think? Always a good thing to plan ahead because it will be Xerxes we have to deal with.”

Xanthippus, adroit as he was, found himself nonplussed so listened as Themistocles spelled out with brutal honesty the reality we faced.

“So we need ships but many of our leading men, particularly your Alkmaionid cousins, don’t accept this. One of the reasons they don’t accept it is because more ships mean more sailors and more radical trierarchs, which means the Demos grows in strength. And they want to stifle the Demos even though that particular horse left the stable a long time ago and is miles down the road. But you, you, son of Ariphron, are wiser than that. You know the Demos is here to stay which is why you’ve begun to work with it. No need to look so surprised, you must know that nothing in this Polis escapes me.”

He smiled round at all of us like a genial host: he was enjoying himself.

“So, son of Ariphron, here’s where we are. I understand the need for a fleet and a harbour and so do you. I understand the Demos is the only way forwards and so do you. Does it make sense for us: the only two men who really grasp this, to fight each other? If we do what happens? You accuse me of secretly dealing with the Great King and I accuse you of leading an expedition to Aegina in order to betray us to our enemies.”

Xanthippus blurted out,

“But you wanted me to go, we agreed …”

This time it was Themistocles’s turn to interrupt.

“But sadly for you, son of Ariphron, it was you who was stupid enough to go. Everyone in the city’s heard me denounce Aegina as a nest of pirates. Just as everyone knows you went there to talk to them and that I tried to have you arraigned for it. No one would believe you. However they would, and with justifiable cause, believe your accusations about me and the Great King.”

Xanthippus had regarded him with a look of something like respect as he’d said this. Cimon used the pause to reach for his wine cup. I pushed his hand away: Themistocles hadn’t finished.

“And how would that all end? Athens would lose the only two men who can save her.”

“And how precisely are we going to save Athens from the Persians without enough ships to even defend ourselves against Aegina?”

BOOK: The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae
2.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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