The Ionia Sanction (37 page)

“I’ll assume you mean that as a compliment.”

“I do.” Cleophantus paused, then said, “Nico, speaking of lying…”

“Yes?”

“I … all his children … would rather people remembered Father for the good he did. When you return to Athens, could you perhaps not mention that he plotted to invade Hellas?”

“Hide what happened here?”

“Yes. If people knew…” He flinched.

That was an easy decision. “I honor his memory too, Cleophantus. I must tell Pericles, but no one else will ever know.”

“Thank you.”

“Er … in return, it would be nice if you didn’t mention to anyone that I killed him.”

Cleophantus nodded. “That seems fair. As long as you don’t reveal we children asked you to do it.”

“Agreed. As long as you don’t tell anyone I screamed when I was about to die on the pole.”

“Consider it forgotten. And if you could forget about Asia’s illegitimate parentage—”

“Done. If you don’t tell anyone I almost went over to the Persians.”

“Agreed. And if you could keep the secret of Mnesiptolema and Archeptolis and their … er … unusual habits—”

“Oh no!” I protested. “That one I’ll be retelling at symposia for years to come.”

Cleophantus laughed. “I don’t like them either. All right Nico, it’s a deal.”

So many secrets to be kept, and one more. I would never reveal, not even to Diotima, that Asia had
insisted
she be the one to poison Themistocles. She had avenged her true father against the man who killed him. It would remain our secret, for the sake of her relationship with her brothers and sisters, and to enable her to find a husband in the future, and even for her own safety.

I said, “I’m sorry about Asia, but it was the only way. “

Cleophantus nodded. “We’ll do our best to help her. I’m sorry too, Nico, about the letter. If we’d never sent it, you wouldn’t have been drawn here and endangered, and Thorion would still be alive.”

“And Hellas might have fallen to the Persians. Don’t be sorry. Thorion died defending Athens as surely as any man in the front rank of the army. When I return I’ll be sure to tell his son so.” It would make all the difference for him and his family.

Cleophantus said, “May the Gods favor you.” We hugged.

Diotima walked out of the front entrance of the palace. She smiled at me and said, “Are we ready to go, Nico?”

I took her hand. “We’re ready, my wife.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Warning! This author note discusses the real history behind the story. It’s chockablock full of spoilers. If you haven’t read the book yet, I suggest you turn to the front. I hope you enjoy the book, and I’ll see you back here in a while.

To the people who lived at the start of the Golden Age of Greece, Themistocles was the smartest guy in the room.

Themistocles was a man who showed an unmistakable natural genius; in this respect he was quite exceptional, and beyond all others deserves our admiration.… He was particularly remarkable at looking into the future and seeing there the hidden possibilities for good or evil. To sum him up in a few words, it may be said that through force of genius and by rapidity of action this man was supreme at doing precisely the right thing at precisely the right moment.

That quote was written by the great historian Thucydides. He personally knew both Pericles and Socrates, but he doesn’t hesitate to rank Themistocles first for intelligence.

The only modern man to compare with Themistocles is Sir Winston Churchill. Indeed, Themistocles and Churchill had much in common. They were both renowned for their ready wit, they both had foresight beyond their fellow mortals, they both had the courage to act in the face of fierce opposition, and they both had egos the size of a mountain. I’m pretty sure if the two men had lived at the same time, the universe would have exploded.

Just as Churchill foresaw the coming of World War II, so Themistocles foresaw the Persian Wars. He persuaded the Athenians to build the most powerful fleet the world had yet seen—of two hundred triremes—which was ready in time when the Persians invaded. The Greek fleet destroyed the otherwise overwhelming Persian force, and changed the course of history. It was all the doing of Themistocles.

Themistocles made no secret that he considered himself a genius. The fact that he was correct did nothing to endear him to his fellow citizens. So when the Spartans, who feared and hated Themistocles, produced dodgy evidence that Themistocles had colluded with the enemy, the Athenians were only too ready to believe it.

Themistocles clearly was not someone you would wish to have plotting against you, but that is precisely the position the Athenians found themselves in after they ostracized the genius they feared was evil. To put a cherry on top, they condemned him to death for treason, based on the (probably faked) Spartan evidence. When he went over to the enemy, the Greeks, and the Athenians in particular, had everything to fear.

The Athenian fleet in 460 BC, when
The Ionia Sanction
takes place, was grossly overcommitted in Cyprus and Egypt. The Athenian army was scattered to deal with multiple ongoing wars. When fighting suddenly flared up against Corinth in the west, Athens had nothing left to send but old men and boys. The old men and boys vanquished the army of Corinth(!), but it meant Athens was totally exposed to the east.

At that one delicate moment in history, if Themistocles had made his move, it seems certain Athens would have fallen, and with it, the future of Western civilization.

But Themistocles didn’t make his move. Instead, he dropped dead.

His death came as a result of an illness; though there are some people who say that he committed suicide by taking poison, when he found that it was impossible to keep the promises that he had made to the King [to invade Greece]. In any case, there is a monument to him in the market-place of Magnesia in Asia. This was the district over which he ruled; for the King gave him Magnesia for his bread (and it brought in fifty talents a year), Lampsacus for his wine (which was considered at the time to be the best wine district of all), and Myos for his meat. It is said that his bones were, at his desire, brought home by his relations and buried secretly in Attica. The secrecy was necessary since it is against the law to bury in Attica the bones of one who has been exiled for treason.

This from Thucydides, book I, section 138, of the
Peloponnesian War
from the excellent Penguin edition. You can see in this one quote where much of my story comes from. An exile who wants his bones buried back in native soil is homesick. A strategic genius with an empire to back him, and a king demanding an attack plan, is in a position to get himself home. A man with three cities dedicated to feeding him probably has high cholesterol.

You see then that the death of Themistocles was unbelievable good luck for Athens. Either that, or, someone helped him along.

*   *   *

The blind poet, Homer, is the source of the quotes at the top of each chapter in
The Ionia Sanction
. Most major cultures in history have had their own great religious text: the Bible, the
Tao Te Ching, The Book of the Dead
. The Greeks had no book of religion at all. Instead they revered two great literary works: the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
.

The city of Troy, of which Homer wrote, lay in the land named Ionia: the coastal region that is now western Turkey. The Greeks had colonized Ionia hundreds of years before; the colonies subsequently came under Persian rule. The Greeks, and the Athenians in particular, supported an Ionian uprising, which the Persians ruthlessly repressed. Athenian support for Ionian freedom was one of the reasons the Persians decided to deal with Athens, and which led to the Persian Wars.

*   *   *

Thorion the proxenos had one of the most interesting official jobs a man could have in Classical Greece. Thorion himself is my invention, but the job of proxenos was very real indeed.

The proxenoi acted rather like the modern system of consulates, but in reverse. Imagine if all foreign consulates were staffed and run not by citizens of the foreign nation, but by local citizens well disposed to the foreign nation for whom they acted. The
pro
means
for,
the
xenos
means
foreigner
. Hence
proxenos
means someone who acted on behalf of foreigners.

The proxenoi appear to have been at least as effective as the consulates of modern times. With the hundreds of Greek city-states, and their intricate political and trade alliances, the proxenoi must have formed a complex and fascinating network of men.

There is no record that the proxenoi ran an intercity mail service, but I think that they must have. With the amount of correspondence each proxenos sent to his client city, what more natural thing than to use a single courier to carry it all? And what more natural thing than for his fellow citizens to give the proxenos any letters they want sent in the same direction?

*   *   *

Today, Piraeus is the largest port in Greece, thanks to Themistocles, who in about 480 BC, twenty years before this story, decided that Piraeus was the perfect base for his shiny new fleet.

The Long Walls, down which Nico and Araxes fight atop a slippery cart, sound like something from an epic fantasy, but they were quite real. Athens was a walled city. Piraeus was an armed and fortified base for the fleet. It was Themistocles’ idea to enclose the entire road from Athens to Piraeus within the Long Walls, so that Athens, Piraeus, and the road between became one vast fortification. It meant Athens could never be cut off from her fleet.

*   *   *

Nico’s favorite food is eel in garos sauce. Eel was considered a delicacy and was expensive to buy in the agora. Garos sauce was the ketchup of the ancient world, hugely popular in both Greece and Rome (the Romans called it garum).

The original Greek version of garos was made from leftover fish entrails. When fishwives gutted the morning catch, they discarded the entrails into large vats where seawater was added, and the whole goopy mess allowed to ferment in the sun over weeks or months into yummy garos. The garos would have been transported up to Athens in amphorae loaded on to carts, exactly like the one Nico finds himself fighting upon.

It seems to be a common belief that British Worcestershire sauce is descended from garos or garum. It’s not so. Worcestershire sauce is an accident derived from an Indian sauce. There is no chance that Worcestershire sauce tastes like garos, because the Greeks are known to have disliked anchovies. Also Worcestershire includes molasses, chilies, and sugar, none of which the Greeks had.

It’s sometimes said that the closest modern equivalent to garos is an Asian fish sauce called
nuoc mam
. For all I know, it might even be true.

Modern readers expect to find fenugreek on their pizzas and in their curries. The Greeks put it in their wine. Fenugreek means, literally, “Greek hay.” The Greeks put 1 percent to 2 percent seawater in their wine for a very practical reason: in a world without sulphur, salt makes the next best preservative.

Greeks
always
watered down their wine. To drink wine neat was the mark of the worst sort of barbarian. The ratios Nico gives during the symposium are correct; normal everyday drinking called for three parts water to one of wine.

*   *   *

Anaxagoras was the world’s first professional philosopher, in the sense that Pericles paid for his upkeep in return for the wisdom of his thoughts. Historians of philosophy have long wondered whether Anaxagoras might have taught the young Socrates, but generally discount the idea because of the big difference in their ages. I’m glad that with this book we can finally reveal the truth of the matter.

Speaking of matter, the theory of matter that Anaxagoras espouses at the symposium is the beginning of atomic theory, and it happened in Athens, 2,500 years ago. The Greeks were much exercised by the question: if things were made of tiny particles, then what moved the particles? The answer of Anaxagoras was something he called Mind. The Greek word for mind is
nous,
which remains a word in English. The Mind proposed by Anaxagoras was a cosmic intelligence that decided what was to happen. In other words, a God. In these days when science and religion are so often at loggerheads, it’s ironic that the world’s first atomic theory was used to prove that a God existed.

The greatest philosopher of the age was Heraclitus of Ephesus. You might never have heard of him before, but you’ve certainly heard his most famous thought: “You cannot step twice into the same river.” By which he meant that nothing ever stays the same; everything flows and changes.

Heraclitus was descended from the ancient kings of Ephesus, and himself was offered the crown. He turned it down, because to be a philosopher walking the hills of Ephesus stark naked and eating nothing but grass was so much more cool. Heraclitus caught dropsy, probably from eating the grass, which he then tried to cure by coating himself in cow poo and lying in the sun. You can guess how well this turned out. He was buried in the middle of the agora of Ephesus, where Nico trips over his funeral stone.

Heraclitus donated the one and only copy of the book he wrote to the Artemision, where people came from far and wide to read it and make copies. The small side temple that contains the Book of Heraclitus is my invention, but there must have been a keeper of the book.

*   *   *

Salaminia
was the Air Force One of the ancient world. She really did exist, a special trireme fitted with only the best equipment, crewed only by citizens, and reserved for only the most delicate missions.

Most people these days know of Ephesus from the Bible. Think Paul’s Epistles to the Ephesians. Those with a classical bent will know of Ephesus as home to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the Temple of Artemis. The commercial agora at Ephesus, which Nico visits, is considered by some to be the world’s first stock market.