The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae (21 page)

Strangely Aristides didn’t choose to take advantage of this; so maybe his self-serving and self-circulated title for himself of ‘The Just’ had some merit to it after all. Instead he worked as hard as he could to delay and obfuscate the ship building project.

For me, though, the new ships opened a great future. There was a shortage of seamen and rowers but an even greater shortage of men who knew how to fight from the deck of a trireme. There were less who’d actually done so, but I had twice. So I slipped from Mandrocles the youth blessed by luck to Mandrocles the experienced sea fighter. As such, over the next months I had my work cut out training others.

One more thing as I straighten out my personal life for you, reader. Some weeks after the vote, Lyra left the city to visit family in the Megarid. She didn’t tell me, just left a note with Demetrius. We’d been getting on well as lovers and friends, so why did she go? I couldn’t understand why the owner of the flute girl stable let her go, despite her duties now being restricted to playing and looking pretty; she was still the greatest asset.

I was bitter and unhappy and when I asked Aeschylus  
why she’d gone, he said nothing; just looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I’d asked the question and didn’t know.

But all of this was about to be eclipsed by a rumour that cast all our private lives into the deepest shadow.

A secret messenger from the exiled Spartan king Demaratus, now established in the court of the Great King, slipped out of the city of Suza at night and sped towards Sparta.

Scents, it’s the scents I remember most clearly from that last spring before the war: piles of fresh cut timber everywhere and caulking to waterproof the hulls, sweat from men learning the back breaking art of working an oar all day. The spume of sea spray thrown up as the new triremes rolled and tossed through the swell. But above everything else, hanging over Athens like a pall of storm cloud: the smell of fear.

We were late with the triremes, of course: no one can accuse the Demos of being straightforward or efficient. Every procedural trick to slow down the shipbuilding programme was pulled out of the Alkmaionid bag. Successfully too, much to the frustration of Themistocles, whose black mood kept him from the councils of the city.

So when it arrived, the news everyone dreaded supplied him with the shock of energy he required. The news, which the Spartans had damagingly kept quiet, finally reached Athens by way of a direct and secret message from the kings to Themistocles. Once he read it he had no choice but to rise from his sick bed.

The first I heard of it was a message waiting for me at the dockside when the Athene Nike pulled in to her mooring. I’d been drilling some men in the skill needed to fight from a trireme deck; it was like teaching mules to dance: when they
weren’t rolling and swaying they were throwing up. The new rowers interspersed amongst the veterans weren’t any better and Alexis, the replacement for Theodorus, did his best but without his predecessor’s skill and authority.

By the time we reached the dock side we’d exhausted every oath in our vocabularies to little effect and gained an inkling of how difficult it was going to be training up landsmen to crew a war fleet. Building the ships was the easy bit and we were way behind schedule with that. One of Themistocles’s runners was waiting with a command to go directly to his house.

I arrived late: the house was crowded and the session nearing its end. It wasn’t difficult to catch up on the news; the room was alive with it. The Persians were coming, their mobilisation well underway and their campaign strategy formulated. There was a further problem though: the motive of the warning.

The Spartan Ephors had received two blank wax writing tablets from the exiled king Demaratus, now resident at the Great King’s court of Suza. It made no sense until Queen Gorgo suggested they scrape away the wax. This they did and found the message scratched into the wood. Being Spartan, they decided to keep the information to themselves. The information that meant life and death to free-living Greeks.

I suppose they had some fair reason for this. Could they trust it? Was it genuine or an attempt to scare them? Whatever the motive, even they couldn’t sit on something of this magnitude and after a period of subterfuge and in-fighting the kings, remembering Themistocles’s promise of a fleet, decided to inform him.

I’d managed to pick up on this when Themistocles came to the point of the gathering.

“We have, if we’re lucky, about eighteen months, maybe two years before they’re here burning our city. We need the
rest of the ships or at least another hundred.”

He paused and looked at us, packed, sweating in his courtyard and corridors. He looked tired, drawn and old. He let us digest his message. It was simple: we’d never be ready in time; there were delays and excuses at every turn. One faction in the city was striving to build and train a fleet, the other half was trying to prevent it, while across the sea beyond my home on Samos, the most powerful army the world had ever seen was preparing to cross the seas and crush us.

“We can’t afford the luxury of opposition any longer. Aristides must be ostracised along with anyone else who gets in the way. They need to understand that it is life or death with us now.”

For the first time listening to him speak in public, I could discern no rhetoric or dissembling manipulation. These were words driven by desperation; a stark truth forced out by crushing reality. I found this very frightening.

You know what happened next: the Ostracism of Aristides was the last engagement in the internal war of the polis before the arrival of the Persians. It was hard fought and bitter but left surprisingly few scars. When the sherds were counted and Aristides left to join his friends in exile there was no celebration or triumph. Particularly from Themistocles.

Afterwards, when the noise had died away, he gathered his chief supporters together. I was there with Cimon and his manner surprised both of us. He didn’t speak for long and ended with these words, which I’m sure will surprise you too, reader.

“And that’s an end to it. Soon we’ll need them back from exile, need them standing with us keeping their supporters loyal to the city. Without them, how will we recapture the spirit of Marathon?”

The next day the council granted money from the silver
at Laurium sufficient for the building of another hundred triremes. Representatives of the Athenian Demos carried this silver to any part of Greece where good seasoned timber could be acquired and skilled shipwrights employed. The speed of shipbuilding increased. For men like me and the crew of the Athene Nike, every day became the same: we trained and bullied landsmen into sailors.

For their part the exiled Alkmaionids made no attempt to stir up trouble or impede progress: for all their faults it appeared the grace of their stand at Marathon outweighed their hatred of the Demos. At least until after we either beat or succumbed to the Persians. Strange also that in many ways, his Ostracism was the making of Aristides. I know, reader, that you will be familiar with the legend of his probity during the actual Ostracism.

You know, the story put about that some illiterate half-wit from the countryside with a blank sherd of pot was wandering around trying to find someone to write a name on it for him. He stumbled into Aristides and, not knowing him, asked for help. Aristides asked him who he wanted ostracised and the countryman said:

“Aristides.”

So Aristides scratches his own name on the sherd and throws it into the pithoi for counting. Then as an afterthought he asks,

“Tell me, friend, why do you want to ostracise Aristides? What has Aristides ever done to hurt you?”

The man replies,

“Nothing, I don’t even know him.”

So Aristides asks,

“So why condemn him to leave his homeland?”

To which the man responds,

“Cos it pisses me off always hearing him calling himself
‘The Just’. If he thinks he’s that much better than the rest of us he can fuck off out.”

Unlike the other invented stories about themselves that the Alkmaionids like to circulate, I’m half inclined to believe this one. Mainly because it was later used by Themistocles’s supporters as an example of political stupidity rather than moral rectitude like the Alkmaionids asserted.

Strangely, once he’d gone and with him the opposition to building the fleet, the city seemed a much lonelier place. Lonelier and more frightening. Whoever it was who said as soon as you conquer one problem you hit the next was right.

Except it wasn’t one problem it was a whole pithoi full of them. This became apparent a couple of days after Aristides left and was started by a rumour: an advance squadron of the Persian fleet had been sighted off the coast of Delos heading for Athens.

Anyone with any sense knew this was wrong; problem is you don’t need sense or information to state an opinion, and within hours the Agora and the bars were packed with men working themselves up into a lather of panic. It was like the tense months before Marathon lived all over again.

My first taste of it came a couple of days later. The Athene Nike was in dry dock for modification so I had some spare time on my hands. Spare time and nothing to do: Cimon was still playing the role of country squire at Brauron and Lyra hiding away somewhere in the Megarid. So having no other plans, I strolled through Athens.

It was the first warm day after several of skirmishing rain, I remember. The same skirmishing rain that had fallen throughout the period of spring at Dionysia, soaking both the actors and crowd. I wandered the back streets, where in those days patches of dense poor dwellings would suddenly open out onto cultivated fields and goats replace people. The
city wasn’t so crowded back then: the waves of immigration that followed the wealth created by our empire hadn’t really started rolling in.

I was passing a bar near where Phrynichus used to rehearse his players when I heard shouting and laughter from within. I was bored, I was thirsty I, went in.

Through the door I joined strange company: a type of society of the theatre. They were well gone in wine and roaring. Strange that presiding at the centre of several plank tables pushed together were the most bitter rivals of the day: Phrynichus himself and Aeschylus.

Maybe not so strange though: the Dionysia was ended for a year and rivalry could be temporarily set aside, ideas and alliances for the next year talked through and the failings of the choregii who sponsored the plays bitched about. A smooth faced ambiguous looking man sitting across from Aeschylus was in full spate.

“Would you believe the mess Themistocles has got himself into, dears? Doesn’t know whether he should be in Sparta, trolling round Greece trying to form an alliance or back here in Athens supervising his little ships. Poor dear, so confused: sees an amphora and doesn’t know whether to piss or drink.”

This was going down well; had the players in fits of laughter as they spluttered over their wine.

“And dears, he’s not helped by his little friends of the Demos, is he? Some of them want to leave the city, some want to make peace with the Medes while some want to fortify the Acropolis. I rather fancy he’s beginning to miss Aristides and all the others away enjoying an extended holiday.”

I bet you think, reader, that this affected manner of speech was invented by the current generation of aristocratic youths to enrage their fathers. Well, let me tell you, they always minced about like this in theatrical circles. Wouldn’t have been a good idea to mock men like Kalamis, whose name
I’d just remembered: he was very handy with a dagger and enjoyed using it.

Aeschylus had seen me and waved me across to join them. Kalamis paused, rolled his eyes and made an obscene gesture before lisping,

“Ooo look, Aeschylus, your special friend has come to, shall we say, join you; welcome, Mandrocles the beautiful.”

I smiled at him and squeezed into the space on the bench Aeschylus had made for me.

“I give you thanks, Kalamis: I’m not often called the beautiful these days.”

I was passed a cup of wine and the conversation moved on. But even here, beneath the surface of mockery and laughter, fear was the undercurrent. They were discussing the recent drama festival knowing that, depending on the speed of the Persian mobilisation, it may have been the last. Aeschylus enquired,

“Will you write about our current dangers for next year?”

Phrynichus shook his head: he’d won the prize this year with a trilogy based on the labours of Hercules. It had been a good, if safe, choice. He wasn’t aging well but was still the most respected poet in the city.

“I don’t think so: the scars of my last literary flirtation with modernity are yet to heal. Anyway, I wouldn’t tell you if I were. What about you?”

“Next year; no I don’t think so, maybe someday. I was thinking of the fall of the house of Atreus following the Trojan War, but in the current circumstances I’m not sure that would be appropriate and anyway –”

He came to a halt, undecided whether to continue. Then said,

“Anyway, who knows if there’ll be a Dionysia next year? Who knows if there’ll even be an Athens?”

“This has all become too gloomy for me, my dears.”

Kalamis got up from the table, made a mock bow to Phrynichus and left. Several of the others drifted off after him. Those of us remaining moved closer together and the atmosphere became increasingly morose. When the last jar of wine was empty, no one ordered another and we dispersed. As we were pissing against the back wall of the bar Aeschylus said,

“Walk with me up to the Acropolis, Mandrocles.”

We picked our way uphill, avoiding the pools of stagnant water scattered along the track. The city was unusually quiet and empty; people were either skulking indoors or out practising with the growing fleet. We didn’t speak on the way.

We paused at the top of the ramp to leave an offering at the shrine of Athena and I remembered being taken here by Theodorus and Ariston on my first day in Athens. The day I first glimpsed Lyra. Dusk was falling over the city, a pall of fire smoke hung above the houses. We wandered through the forest of steles, plinths and statues of the Gods. Apart from the keepers of shrines it was deserted.

Away through the gloom we could see the fleet bobbing on the water at Piraeus, where the harbour was dwarfed by the army of newly thrown up boat sheds. The preparations looked to be years off being completed. Was this what we’d torn the city apart to achieve? It looked frighteningly fragile. I think Aeschylus was thinking the same; instead he said,

“Yesterday we received information from the court of the Great King.”

I knew what was coming wasn’t going to be good. I was right.

“He’s so sure of victory that he doesn’t feel the need to conceal his plans from us.”

I waited; I’ve learnt from experience that poets tell you things in their own time.

“In fact, so confident that he wants us to know and understand them.”

This seemed against all sense. I asked,

“How can you know that?”

“Because he sent a messenger with them directly to Themistocles.”

An owl hooted from somewhere in a small grove surrounding a shrine. Despite it being the servant of the Goddess, it made me shiver.

“His army is ready to move and this time he’s not leaving anything to chance: the whole empire’s mobilised.”

“But he can only ship so many troops at a time, we beat them last time, remember Marathon?”

Aeschylus looked at me, smiled, and for a moment I thought he was going to ruffle my hair like I was still a boy.