God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (26 page)

Graccus was a masterful host, with a good staff who loved him and worked to make us love him too.

I noted that Niceas, who was friends with my Polystratus and whom I treated as a sort of upper servant, shared Graccus’s couch. Later – after four or five bowls of wine – Niceas came and sat by me. He was a courteous man – he sat, but didn’t recline, until I indicated that he was welcome.

‘I’m not a servant, here,’ he said. He met my eye – we were only about a hand’s breadth apart. ‘I think you handle us well, Macedonian.’

‘Are you and Graccus lovers?’ I asked.

Niceas narrowed his eyes. ‘Not really your business, is it?’

I offer this by way of the thousands of things that showed me how free Athenians were – that this lower-class man could tell me to sod off, and then grin, slap my shoulder and go off to dance.

Dancing, it turned out, was the order of the evening. Graccus had musicians – famous ones, not that I knew who they were, but they were incredible, to me. I was used to a kithara and a couple of flutes. This was a group of seven players, and they played songs I knew – and songs of their own – with a sort of mad, elegant violence, fast, harsh and yet precise. As if I’d never heard the notes before. Later, Kineas explained to me that this was the fashion, created by this very group, and that a lyre player had to be extremely skilled just to get the staccato notes out so precisely.

They had a couple of dancers, who proved to be more like instructors – the whole thing was hopelessly complex, because it turned out that these musicians weren’t slaves, but freemen – famous freemen, who could demand high prices for their music and were playing for Graccus for free – because he had helped ‘discover’ them.

And the political discussion – that all government depends on the trust of one group in another, even in a tyranny – continued all around me. Men I’d never met – one of the kithara players, named Stephanos – sat on my couch, handed me the wine bowl and said, ‘Good topic.’

Another man – with curly blond hair like Alexander’s – sat down opposite me, on Kineas’s couch. ‘Are you really an oligarch?’ he asked. ‘I mean – you really believe in that horseshit, or are Macedonians so pig ignorant you’ve never thought about the rights of men?’

‘Well,’ I said, trying to not be offended while getting my point across. He was angry – so I smiled. That always helps throw oil on a fire, I find. ‘I studied with Aristotle.’

‘Pompous fuck!’ my debater said. ‘He thinks he’s better than other men.’

‘As do I,’ I said. ‘I think I’m better than other men. Debate me.’

There was a little hush – some men were still talking, but Kineas fell silent, as did Diodorus.

‘In what way?’ Blondy asked. ‘I mean, how exactly are you better?’

‘In every way. I am well born. Athletic. Intelligent. Rich. Educated.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m not handsome – which you are. So you are the better man in that respect, eh?’

‘You are certainly no prize for looks,’ he said, but he said it with a smile.

‘So you concede that some men may be better at one thing, and some at another,’ I said.

‘Look, I’ve been to the lyceum, I know where this goes.’ He shrugged. ‘But do my superior looks entitle me to superior political rights?’

I nodded. ‘If you combine them with superior oratory skills and a war record based on superior bravery and war skills, then they do – don’t they? Athenian?’ I asked.

Diodorus laughed. ‘Good shot, Macedonian. He’s got you there, Charmides.’

‘You democrats want to make everyone equal,’ I said. ‘And in time, you will, if we allow you. You will make war on excellence to raise up mediocrity. Cut the tall trees down and call the trees that remain tall.’ I looked around. Even the dancers had stopped. ‘What if all this equality costs us heroism? Ambition?’

‘Why?’ Diodorus asked. ‘I see a false assertion.’

‘Where?’ I asked. I was doing well, I thought.

‘Why can’t we all be equally great? Why not let every man be Achilles?’ Diodorus glowed when he spoke. He was a true believer.

I shook my head. ‘I’ve watched the circle around the king. The great men push other great men – but the petty men push only other petty men. Mediocrity breeds only mediocrity.’

I shut up then, realised I had spoken ill of my own among foreigners. Bad behaviour by any standard.

Diodorus snorted, dismissing my comment with a wave of his hand. ‘Just because a passel of Macedonians—’

But Kineas shook his head. ‘It is the same in the assembly,’ he said. ‘And you have said as much yourself, Diodorus.’

Blondy hopped off Kineas’s kline and slapped my shoulder. ‘All I care is that you believe in
something
,’ he said. ‘I’m Demetrios.’

Demetrios of Phaleron. The eventual Tyrant of Athens, and another of my lifelong friends. He was a rabid democrat in his youth.

So I count that argument as one for me and nought for the democrats, eh, lad?

The sixth bowl, and the seventh, and the eighth. I was dancing. Need I say more? The notes all made sense, and dancing a complex pattern with twenty near strangers was the most important thing in the world.

We danced the wine out of us – danced through moonrise. Lay back and drank water.

Graccus rose to his feet. ‘Now, friends,’ he said, and he mixed a fresh wine bowl – one to one, wine to water. Exciting. ‘Some of my friends have decried the absence of women at my parties.’

Much laughter. Some finger-pointing, some rude gestures.

‘And I thought perhaps to remedy this shortcoming’ – he made the words
short
and
come
sound obscene – ‘by inviting the most celebrated young woman in Athens to share our evening. Instead of a host of flute girls, I thought to bring one courtesan.’

‘Does that mean we take turns?’ Demetrios called out.

‘Shush – one does not hire a hetaera for such rude stuff.’ Graccus smiled.

‘How would you know?’ called Diodorus. ‘You’d hire her as a cleaning lady. You don’t even know what a porne is for!’

They were best friends, I gathered, because in Macedon, blood would have been shed.

Graccus made a face. ‘I’ve heard – from friends.’

Everyone laughed.

‘I think you are all too drunk to enjoy her wit,’ he said. ‘I promised her we weren’t a bunch of drunken barbarians.’ He looked around. ‘I am serious, gentlemen. She’s here as a guest, and not for wages. Treat her as such, or I send her home.’

Kineas glanced around the room. He was their leader – I don’t think I really needed to say that, but in that moment I saw how powerfully he was their leader. He caught almost every eye – looking around. His message was as obvious as if he’d spoken aloud. ‘Do not be bad guests, you louts!’ he shouted with those eyes.

Kineas had a measure of what Alexander had in bushels. In fact, they had a great deal in common, I think. Kineas was Alexander muted; he was not as brilliant, but I think more to the point, he had a loving mother and father, sisters, a home. He had never been betrayed, never brutalised, never taught that such things were normal. I saw it all in that glance of his eyes – when he commanded his friends to behave themselves, where Alexander would have enjoyed watching
his
friends make arses of themselves.

On the other hand – Kineas drew lines, and he never crossed them. Alexander never knew what a line was. I don’t think Kineas would have conquered the world. Or wanted to.

As an Indian philosopher once told me, there is not just one truth.

As usual, I digress. Graccus brought a woman in, modestly dressed and heavily veiled – wool veils that showed us nothing. She sat, picked up the kithara that one of the players had put by – the players were all guests now – and began to play.

She didn’t play the fast, harsh style of the men. Nor was her style particularly feminine. In fact, it had many of the same precise displays of notes – but it was slower, and she had phrases of music that seemed to have a rhythm of their own, like lines of song repeated.

But men are men, and most of the guests, fascinated at first to hear a woman play so well, drifted back to their conversations. I did. I wondered idly what kind of childhood a woman had to be so good at playing. I was thinking about Kineas and Alexander – at another level, I was thinking that in Athens, Nike and I might have married.

Demetrios was back, hectoring me to talk about oligarchy.

‘Let him be,’ Kineas said. ‘He is a guest, not a performer.’

I had to smile at the notion of me, the Macedonian monster, as a performer.

We were swiftly drunk again. Graccus and Niceas kissed – something that would never, ever happen in Macedon. Men may move each other, but never in public! And Demetrios picked a fight with Diodorus, and they rolled on the floor – and they were fighting – fighting hard, grappling with intent to do real injury. Diodorus had the better of it, and they rose, embraced, and Diodorus rubbed the back of his head where, apparently, he’d struck it against the base of a kline early in the struggle. Demetrios fell backwards theatrically on to my couch. ‘He’s just better than I am,’ he said, and giggled.

I had to laugh.

‘We’re going to go and get laid,’ Demetrios said. ‘Me and Diodorus. When he’s done chatting up the hetaera. He loves them all – swears that if he’s ever rich, he’s going to buy one.’

Diodorus came and sat with us. ‘Why not? Why have a twelve-year-old virgin just starting her courses when I could have a woman who can discuss Socrates and suck my dick with skill?’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll buy her contract for life and have sex whenever I want!’

We were all eighteen, remember.

Diodorus leaned over. ‘That’s Thaïs. She’s new – but a free woman, not a slave. People say she has a scar – never seems to take the veil off.’ He shook his shoulders. ‘Ooh, I want her.’

‘Excellent figure,’ I admitted. It is hard to hide a woman’s figure under a chiton. This one had strong shoulders, a long back and long legs. And beautiful feet, the only part of her that showed, but a most excellent part.

Diodorus laughed. ‘A man of taste, hidden under the barbarian! Come, let’ s get our spears wet.’

I must have looked at Kineas. He shrugged. ‘I’m a prig. I’m for home. Some people need to remember that tomorrow is a feast day – the cavalry must be on parade. Yes?’

So they left – Diodorus and Demetrios together, later inveterate enemies. Lykeles, who had not been there for dinner, came in, played a song, embraced me and left. People were coming and going now, and I was pretty drunk. I remember having a pleasant conversation with a very aristocratic man with beautiful manners who proved to be a former slave and professional musician. Athens.

There were other women circulating, now – four dancers who were, somehow, obviously
not
available (at a Macedonian dinner, any woman you could catch was available) and a trio of flute girls who played very well indeed. They were comediennes, and very funny – they’d play a song, and then play a sort of slur on the same song – the largest girl would start to run her flute in and out of her mouth in a lewd way, and another would . . . well, you are too young. Let’s just say they
were
available after the eleventh or twelfth bowl.

I went out to piss, came back and found the veiled woman on my couch.

Before I could flinch, she laughed. ‘I had nowhere else,’ she said with a chuckle.

I liked the chuckle. She was referring to the fact that the larger of the flute girls was entertaining two guests at the same time, and she, the hetaera, was as far across the room as she could manage. But the chuckle let me know that while she was no prude, she was neither afraid nor really interested. Quite a lot to convey in a chuckle.

‘Are you from Macedon?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. I suddenly felt drunk. ‘Are you really a hetaera?’

It is hard speaking to the blankness of a wool veil. I noticed that it was very fine, and moved slightly with her breath.

She nodded. ‘I am.’

I lay back – a sign of intimacy, Aristotle told us. ‘How do you choose such a road?’ I asked.

‘Women can have ambitions, just as men do,’ she said.

‘To open your legs for strangers? That’s an ambition?’ I said. Nasty words – I remember thinking as soon as they left the fence of my teeth that I should be ashamed.

She turned her head – a hand’s breath away, just as Demetrios had been. But covered by a veil. ‘Any way a woman turns,
man
, she is forced to open her legs for a stranger.’ She said it without the least heat. But with the utmost conviction. ‘I choose who they are, and see that they reward me.’

‘A husband—’

‘Is a tyrant chosen by others; an owner who pays no price, a client without a fee.’ She turned her head.

‘But marriage?’ I asked. I’d never heard
marriage
indicted before.

‘Sex from duty is like killing from duty, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t know myself, but I assume that when your prince orders you to kill, you kill, whatever you may feel about it. And when a girl’s husband says “lie down”, why then, she puts on perfume and lies down, or he beats her and does her anyway. Yes? So you would understand better than most.’

I sat up.

‘When I want a man, I can have him, or not. And when I don’t like him, I never have to have him.’ She also sat up.

‘I’m not sure the two are the same,’ I said.

She let down a corner of her veil so that I could see one side of her face. She smiled. ‘You are not the barbarian they made you out to be. I’m not sure the two are the same, either. But philosophy is the land of assertion, is it not? And I will insist that while most men proclaim that killing is bad, few seem to think that sex is bad. A man should be more careful who he kills, and for whom, than a girl who she beds, and for what.’

I had to think that through – her Greek was so pure, so
Attic
, and she’d just said . . .

I got it, and I rocked the couch laughing. ‘You are a philosopher,’ I said.

‘I like a good time, too. Red wine. A fart joke.’ She laughed. ‘But a girl who can’t talk to philosophers won’t get far in this town.’