Hellenic Immortal (19 page)

I don’t know what other people think of when they look at the Acropolis, if they think of anything at all. I look at it and I’m reminded of war.

The time of Socrates and Plato—the era most people associate with Greece—lasted less than two hundred years. And the seeds of philosophical thought, theater, democracy, and all the rest were planted well beforehand in the minds of obscure persons largely lost to history. But the elemental explosion of creativity that made up the Classical Period took place in a bubble of peace amidst a nearly constant state of war.

The Athenians defeated the Trojans, the Persians defeated the Athenians, the Persians defeated Spartans, the Athenians and the Spartans defeated the Persians, the Spartans defeated the Athenians, the Thebans defeated the Spartans, and the Macedonians defeated everybody. So you can understand why I didn’t go out of my way to establish a firm residence anywhere in the Greek sphere; sometimes I was afraid to even sit down.

For most of the early history of Athens as a human settlement, the Acropolis was where the city’s people went to hide. It was nearly siege-proof in those days due to its nearly flat hilltop surrounded by a steep climb, augmented by a wall. Before we started building castles, you couldn’t do much better than that. (There was a period in there when a Delphic oracle—clearly not one of the better ones—declared that the entire Acropolis was off-limits to everyone but the gods. Shortly thereafter, the Persians destroyed the city, which I’m sure wasn’t a coincidence.) It was Perikles who saw the hilltop for what it could be and commissioned the Parthenon—the temple of Athena Parthenos—and dammit if that wasn’t one of the prettiest buildings I’ve ever seen.

One thing the Acropolis—and the Parthenon specifically—reminded me of, was the gods.

*
 
*
 
*

The first ruler I ever met who actually had his act together was a fellow named Solon, one of the
archons eponymos
of Athens in the sixth century.
Archons
were elected into their positions somewhat like today’s senators are—from members of the elite ruling class. Every year one of them was elected to fulfill the role of
eponymos.
Quite a few of the
eponymos
turned out to be complete bastards, which was bad, but since they only held the position for a year, they couldn’t do too much permanent damage. And sometimes they could do some good.

Solon was one of the good ones. He established a system that could be considered the first version of democracy in history. It wasn’t really a democracy in the sense that the word is now understood, but it was a big step up from anything anyone had going on before that. Basically, different classes of people were granted certain rights, and almost all of them had some say in government. He once told me that a man will fight much harder to save his own home when it is under attack than he will to save his neighbor’s home.
 

Solon’s democracy worked extremely well for an extremely short period of time. The problem was that Athens—or rather, the people of Athens—just wasn’t ready for it yet.

All of Attic (Athens and the surrounding region) was routinely plunged into intertribal warfare between the men of the hills, the men of the plains, and the men of the coast. These little mini wars were always unpleasant, very bloody, and typically instigated by events that an outside observer such as myself would laugh at. For example, the coast men and the plainsmen warred with one another for ten years after the leader of the coast men accused the leader of the plainsmen of spitting on him—during a rainstorm and twenty paces apart from one another. This crowd wouldn’t have bothered to wait for Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination to jump into war; they would have made something up long before it had gotten to that point.

I’m not entirely positive when or how things got as bad as they did. I only know that I left right near the end of Solon’s rule and returned a few years later to find the three tribes squabbling so fiercely they’d stopped electing
archons
altogether. (Anarchy =
anarchia
= a city without
archons
.) But there was still an assembly, and there were still persons of power in those assemblies. One such person was Pisistratus of the hill men, Solon’s cousin and an exceedingly crafty son of a bitch. He staged a fake assassination attempt on himself and then used that to convince the assembly he needed a private guard to protect him. Then he used the guard to seize the Acropolis and from there declared himself tyrant.

There’s only one thing coast men and plainsmen hate more than each other, and that was a hill man who wants to be king. So they got together and stormed the Acropolis and drove Pisistratus away.

And then, a year or so later, a most remarkable thing happened.

*
 
*
 
*

I was dining at the estate of my friend, Linnaeus, on this particular day. Linnaeus was by birth an Athenian citizen (as were all men born in the city and fathered by a resident) and by family a coast man. He was old enough to remember what peace was like and wise enough to understand that the way things were currently going in the assembly, nobody was going to be stumbling across peace anytime soon.

“You should listen to them, Epaphios,” he said, using the name by which he best knew me while munching on the leg of a piglet. “These are not men of reason. There is no middle ground, no politicking, no concessions . . . hatred and distrust, and that is all.”

“How do they get anything done?” I’d had my fill of roast pig and was sipping my wine appreciatively. I had been away from Athens for just long enough to miss the taste of Athenian wine, which was better than any of the wine I’d tried anywhere else. And half of those places learned how to make wine based on my instructions; one would think they’d be better at it. The Spartans, for example, couldn’t make a decent vat if their lives hung in the balance.

“They don’t!” Linnaeus spat. “We’ve no archons, no jurisprudence . . . the tribes are making up their own rules and enforcing their own laws as they each see fit. In yesterday’s assembly, the vote was passed to nullify everything we’d agreed upon in the
last
assembly. Next week I expect we’ll vote to nullify the nullification. I tell you, Epaphios, you have to
do
something.”

I shook my head. “No, old friend, I’m sorry; you know I don’t get involved.”

“By your own rule,” he said. “You can break your own rule.”

“You cannot believe anything I say or do will make a difference.”

“Pah! Of course it will.
You
are the only one who believes otherwise.” He leaned forward and put his greasy hand on my elbow. “There are many . . . many,” he insisted, “who know well the full extent of your true nature. These are people of influence, Epaphios. More influence than I can lay claim to. They will listen.”

“And what would I say?” I asked. “Stop fighting because I said so?”

“Why not?”

“Linnaeus, you cannot impose reason by fiat. Is that not what Solon attempted?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And it worked.”

“Temporarily.”

“That is all I ask. A little peace before I encounter Charon.” He tossed aside the meat he’d been picking at and drank deeply of his own wine.

“The thing that I fear most,” he continued, once he’d drained his bowl, “is war. Real war. As we stand now, we are weak. I am afraid our differences will become too great to set aside for the sake of mutual defense.”

“Such fear is misplaced. If it’s peace you want between the tribes, then you should welcome an interloper. Nothing unifies a people better than war. I’ve known some kings who started wars specifically for that reason.”

We were interrupted by a commotion from the road below us, a distraction I welcomed. Linnaeus wasn’t the first person to ask me to step in and resolve a political dispute and he would hardly be the last. But I had learned from prior experience that the worst results could come from the best intentions, which was doubly true when it came to local politics. The best way to stay out of trouble was to recognize it beforehand.

This might come off as selfish, but consider it from my perspective. Either I risk my neck—and my good standing with the Athenians—to try and put to rest disputes that had been going on for centuries, or I let it run its course and hope Athens is still standing when all’s done. As I seriously doubted my ability to alter the natural course of history by acting, not acting was the most prudent route.

“What in Hades is going on down there?” Linnaeus’s attention was drawn to the crowd that had gathered on the road. His estate was on a small hill that overlooked the main path through the city. As it was springtime, we were seated outdoors on the terrace—on the ground, as Athenians rarely ate on tables—that circled his modest home, so viewing the road was simply a matter of standing up and looking down.
 
And so I stood up and looked down.

Dozens of common folk had gathered on the road and were pointing excitedly in the direction of the city gates. Up the road a ways, was a chariot being drawn by a magnificent white horse. In the bright sunlight, it looked as if the chariot was gilded, which is a downright foolish thing to do. Imagine building a Chevy with solid gold trim and then imagine how long it would last parked on the streets of New York. It was that kind of dumb. Especially since we didn’t have chariot alarms.

As the chariot drew closer, I noticed a larger crowd was following behind. It looked like nearly the whole city. Who in the world was riding in it?

“Can you see who it is?” Linnaeus asked, as my eyesight was better.

“Not yet, no.”
 

There was a figure riding tall at the front of the chariot in full battle gear and wearing a white-and-gold plumed helmet. And long blonde hair.

“It’s a woman.”
 

“What sort of woman?”

“I don’t think you’d believe me.”

Linnaeus looked down at one of the men who had gathered just beneath us. “Ho, slave!” he shouted. “Who rides forth?”

“Athena herself, wise master!” the slave shouted back.

“Hah!” Linnaeus answered, saying to me, “I have been chastened. Never trust a Persian.”

“He speaks truth,” I said. “Such as it is.”

“What?”

“She will be upon us presently.”

Linnaeus squinted until the chariot reached a point within his vision radius. “What sort of mad theater is this?” he exclaimed.

“Do you see the man standing beside her?”

“I cannot make him out.”

“Pisistratus, my friend. The tyrant of Athens has returned.”

*
 
*
 
*

And so he had. The crafty bastard had fashioned a solution to his popularity problem. He’d brought the god of Athens to personally vouch for him. This did nothing to fool educated men such as Linnaeus, but it didn’t have to. There was such a hue and cry from the masses that to not elect Pisistratus tyrant would have caused a massive riot.

I had other concerns. Which was why a few nights later—and before the formal vote in the assembly to swear in Pisistratus—I found my way to the gates of his private palace.

“I wish an audience with the goddess,” I told the guard.

“She speaks to none except the lord of this house,” the guard proclaimed tiredly. I gathered he’d repeated this declaration a number of times already.

“I am no Athenian; I am Epaphios. And you know who I am.”

He leaned forward to examine my features in the torchlight. “So you are. I am still bound by my lord to turn away all callers. Even you, sojourner.”

I said quietly, “Phiklopanus of the hill clan, do you really wish to enjoy my wrath?”

He seemed mildly awed that I knew his name, which was little more than a lucky guess (I’d known his father, and he was a good likeness.) That, combined with what was a legitimate threat, did the trick. He stepped aside.

“My thanks. Now please tell me which chamber I am seeking.”

He inclined his head. “A left, and two rights. The goddess keeps her own counsel.”
 

“As she should. And your lord?”

“He will be away until very late,” Phiklopanus said.

“Pisistratus left you alone as guard and took his entire retinue?” I asked, fairly surprised.

He nodded. “I am here to ward off the inquisitive. Not as a guard. When does a god need protection?”

“True enough,” I agreed. I made my way inside, wondering privately whether Pisistratus was really that foolish.

After a left and two rights, I came upon the closed doors of a private bedchamber. Not standing on ceremony, I pushed the doors open.

She was lying atop the bed in a simple white robe. The breastplate, leggings, and helmet she’d ridden into town in lay upon a chair beside the bed, with her sword on the floor.

At the sound of the room being breached she sat up quickly, one hand holding the robe closed. “Who dares!” she bellowed.

“Oh, be quiet,” I said, closing the doors behind me.

She leapt to her feet and reached for her sword. “You will pay for this affront!” she muttered, sounding far less impressive than I think she was hoping to.

The goddess Athena was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen up to that point, and possibly for several centuries thereafter. Taller than me, she was round in all the right places and slim everywhere else. She had a long face and high cheekbones, a thin nose, and flowing locks of blonde hair that reached her navel. Through the thin white cotton of her evening robe, I could just make out the shape of her breasts, which had not yet been discovered by gravity.

“Calm down, you’ll just embarrass yourself.”

Too late. She popped up with her sword drawn and pointed in my general direction.

“Leave!” she commanded.

“No.” I was trying to figure out where she was from. Greek women tended to have rounder faces and darker hair. I vaguely recalled a few far northern tribes where fair features such as hers were commonplace.

She swung the sword at me, a rather ineffectual gesture given she was also trying to hold her robe closed. A real warrior would show little concern about the view afforded the person she was about to kill. I slapped the blade aside with my staff. It clattered to the floor a few steps away.