Of Merchants & Heros (23 page)

‘There, that should do it. Be careful not to knock it; it’s your sword-arm, after all.’

He looked up towards the window. From outside, rising up from the agora and the street, came the angry buzz of many men’s voices.

The Council had called the people to assembly. They were waiting for the signal trumpet to sound, summoning them to the Pnyx. In the courtyard I could hear Kleinias talking to a group of his friends.

Everywhere there was outrage.

‘I’d better go,’ said Menexenos. ‘Lie down. Get some sleep.’

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes, and listened to the passing crowd. I wished I could go myself, to hear what the people said; but the assembly was only for citizens.

I must have drifted into sleep. I was woken by the sound of someone beating on the main outer-courtyard door. I heard the slave go hurrying. Then came the voice of Pomponius, demanding in his heavily accented Greek to see me.

‘What did I tell you?’ he cried, as soon as the slave brought him in. ‘Not only have you not kept out of trouble, you have got yourself involved single-handedly in a war with Macedon. I should not have thought such a thing possible. The last thing I want, with matters as they are, is a diplomatic incident with King Philip.’

I began to explain how I had been in Piraeus by chance, how I had been caught by circumstance.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, interrupting. ‘Every fool blames Fate when it suits him. And I suppose it was Fate that prevented you running off, was it? The Athenians managed to flee successfully enough. But not you. What happened to your arm?’

I told him about my arm, and then asked if he had heard any more news.

‘Well I was not there,’ he said, giving me a pointed look, ‘but I did hear that the pirate commander – what was his name . . .?’

‘Dikaiarchos.’

‘Ah yes; Dikaiarchos. I heard he tried to attack the military harbour first. He must have intended to set fire to the ship-sheds and burn the fleet while it was on the stocks. But the harbour entrance was chained and blocked. So he sailed round to the north side instead.’

In the end, he said, the Athenians had lost only four warships. ‘Of course, they don’t like it; but it would have been much worse if he had got at the main fleet. It is the effrontery of it that angers them most. They still like to think of themselves as the chief city in Greece, and to have some brigand come sailing into their great harbour as if it were the anchorage of some island pleasure resort and help himself to their warships is more than they can bear.’

I said, ‘But where is Philip? He cannot be far away.’

Pomponius had crossed to the wall and was peering at the tapestry – a fine woven image of a crouching youth, fishing beside a stream. He dabbed at the threadbare material and frowned at it, wondering, I suppose, why something so old and dull should be in the house of a man like Kleinias.

‘No one knows where he is,’ he said, turning. ‘Some say he is in Boiotia; others say he is in Euboia; others again that he has sailed round to Korinth, where he has a garrison.’

‘Then could it not be, sir,’ I asked, propping myself on my elbow and looking at him, ‘that he might be preparing to attack? Or what was this morning’s raid about?’

‘Oh no,’ he said, smiling tolerantly. ‘You forget, Marcus, I am here. He would not dare attack while a Roman legation is in Athens.

It would cause a scandal. Not even Philip would be so reckless.’

He chuckled, the expert diplomat amused at the fool. ‘Oh no,’ he said again. ‘It will all blow over in a few days. For all their bluster and talk of war, even the Athenian Demos knows there is nothing they can do. Taking on Akarnania was one thing, an easy little war without pain – or so they thought. But now Philip has given them a warning, and they will heed it. They will not dare rouse the lion from his den.’

‘So what will they do?’

‘Talk. That is what they are good at. They will bark for a while, and then slink off back to their kennel.’ He crossed to the window and looked out. ‘Ah, at last. It sounds as if they’re finished. Then I must go; I have arranged to meet the magistrates straight after the assembly.’

He wished me a brief good day, then said, ‘Next time, use your legs and run, as everyone else did. You are not here to get involved in someone else’s war.’

And then he left me.

The wound on my arm healed. When the bandage was off there was a long diagonal scar across my forearm: a memento, just as Dikaiarchos had intended.

Menexenos was training every day for the games, which were drawing near. As soon as I was up, I ran with him, out beyond the Akademy, along the banks of the Kephissos.

It was my first day out of the house since the raid on Piraeus, and I felt the mood of the city straight away. In the Street of the Tripods, on the way to the Dipylon Gate, people had left off their business and were gathered in small groups, grave-faced, nodding and talking.

‘Are they afraid?’ I said.

Menexenos tossed his head. ‘Probably; but that is not what they are gossiping about. They are unhappy, because they have not yet found someone to blame. Eventually they’ll settle on one of the port officials, or someone in the Council too weak to fight his corner. He will be punished, and then they will feel better.’

We passed out of the Gate, and took the track past the orchards and smallholdings, increasing our pace.

Menexenos, who was faster, could always beat me in a contest; but today he was going slowly, keeping beside me, breathing easily.

We passed the Akademy gardens, then joined the path beside the Kephissos. It was a fine morning. Red poppies and clumps of white hemlock grew on the bank. Little brown fishes, startled by our shadows, darted in the clear water among the reeds.

Presently we left the suburbs behind and ran on beside green meadows.

‘See there,’ said Menexenos presently. ‘It is just what I was talking of. Every day the people walk past it, yet they do nothing.’

In the distance, across the flower-studded fields, was the line of the Long Walls, which once had run all the way from Athens to Piraeus, linking the city with its harbour in an impregnable defence.

Now sheep grazed among the neglected masonry. The grassy stones looked pretty in the morning light; pretty, but useless.

I said, ‘Yet once they had the foresight to build such a thing. Why leave it now to crumble? Does no one tell them?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But when it comes to deciding how the treasury funds are spent, they vote not for defence of the city, but for festivals and the public dole. They are like the man who banquets every night, but neglects to fix the roof. The truth is, they have grown complacent, and soft with pleasure.’

‘Well they can’t have it both ways.’

‘They think they can, because when the elections come, they choose the man who tells them so. In the end, good men stay silent, and tend their own gardens, and the walls crumble.’

I shook my head, and was about to draw my breath to say more, when, up ahead, coming from the direction of Piraeus and the sea, I heard a din.

We looked at each other with the same thought, and turning off the path made for the Piraeus Gate. We were still perhaps two furlongs distant. But as we drew closer the noise resolved. It was not cries of battle, as I had supposed. It was the sound of men cheering.

As soon as we were inside the gateway Menexenos called to a stallholder who was hurriedly packing away his wares and asked what the fuss was. The man shook his head and carried on what he was doing. But then another, rushing up from the harbour, cried, ‘Rejoice! They have brought back our ships!’

‘What are you talking about, man? Who has brought them?’

He was already hurrying away, to be first at the city with the news. ‘The Rhodians!’ he cried over his shoulder. ‘The Rhodians and King Attalos.’

We pushed through the crowd and emerged onto the waterfront.

At the quayside, making fast, were the four Athenian triremes that Dikaiarchos had stolen; and all about them an escort of other warships, flying on their masts the standards of Rhodes and Pergamon. From the decks the sailors, dressed in their liveried uniforms, were waving and grinning and calling out to the crowd on the quay; and the crowd, wild with joy, were waving and cheering back at them.

Close by, a captain from the Pergamene fleet was telling those around him what had happened. We pushed up to listen.

They had been trying to engage the Macedonians, he was saying, ever since Philip had raided the territory of Pergamon the previous year. As soon as they heard rumours that he was in the area, King Attalos had ordered them to put to sea. And so it was they were nearby, out in the gulf off Aigina, when Dikaiarchos launched his raid. They saw the Macedonians making off with the stolen Athenian triremes and gave chase, and, since the triremes were undermanned, they proved no match for the Rhodian and Pergamene ships with a full complement of rowers. Before long the Macedonians, seeing they could not escape, had abandoned their prizes and fled on their own ships.

‘And Dikaiarchos?’ I asked.

One of the Athenians in the crowd turned and said crossly to me, ‘What does he matter, Roman? We have our warships back. Our honour is restored.’

The others loudly agreed, and I said no more. Dikaiarchos was my concern, not theirs.

Later that day the people met on the Pnyx, and passed a resolution inviting King Attalos to come from Aigina, which at that time he was visiting, and address the assembly. When he arrived, soon after, it seemed the whole body of citizens came out into the streets to cheer him, lining the route that led from the Dipylon Gate to the agora. At the head of the procession, basking in the adulation, was the chief Archon, and clustered around him the other magistrates of the city. People threw flowers. Everyone cheered and waved. It was like a festival.

I watched with Menexenos from the steps of the temple of Demeter. The potters’ workshops and masons’ yards and all the shops of the Kerameikos had closed for the day. The long colonnade was lined with people. Fires were kindled in bronze tripods on the altars, and not far from us, on the temple steps, a choir of boys, clad in white and garlanded with oak-crowns, sang a paean.

King Attalos was mounted on a fine chestnut mare with a scarlet saddlecloth fringed with bullion. The gold flashed and glittered in the sunlight as he moved. At the Dipylon Gate he dismounted; and the archons and leading men escorted him into the city among the exultant crowds.

From my vantage point on the temple steps I saw him pass. He was crowned with a gilded olive-spray, and wore a long mantle of brilliant white bordered with purple. I had never seen a king before.

This man, measured and stately, wearing authority like an old familiar garment, seemed bred to it, and I said so to Menexenos.

‘Oh no,’ he replied. ‘He is the first king of Pergamon, and before that he was no more than a general.’ Whatever he seemed now, he said, was what he had made himself.

I looked again. He was closer now, and to my surprise I saw he was not some man of middle age, as I had first supposed. Even though he held himself well, with a soldier’s straight-backed poise, he must have been well over sixty. His hair was as white as his mantle.

‘How old is he?’ I said to Menexenos.

‘More than seventy,’ he said, and laughed when he saw my face.

He was at an age when most men, if they were alive at all, would be at home, sipping at a warm posset, fussed over by granddaughters and great-granddaughters. Instead he was waging war against the mightiest power in Greece, and roaming the ocean in pursuit of Philip. I gazed at him with respect and awe.

Later the citizens were called to assembly and a letter from Attalos was read out, for he had told the archons he had rather not address the assembly himself. He reminded the Athenians of their friendship with Pergamon, and urged them now to join him in the struggle against Philip. Then the Rhodians spoke, urging the same, and when the vote came, it was for war.

It was Kleinias who recounted to me what had happened up on the Pnyx. I do not know what prompted me – perhaps something in his tone – but when he had finished I asked, ‘Did anyone speak against?’

We were back at the house, in the enclosure behind the street, seated on the stone benches beneath the fig tree. By now evening was coming on, and the shadows were deepening around us. But I saw Kleinias stiffen, and knew then what had made me ask, and what his answer would be. In his brisk, formal voice he said, ‘I spoke against.’

‘But why, sir?’ I asked, taken aback. For I too had been caught up in the general mood of joy, and it seemed right for the city to repay King Attalos and the Rhodians for what they had done.

He turned his head and looked me in the face. ‘I reminded the assembly that Attalos’s army is far away in Asia; and that the Rhodians are a sea power. If Philip moves against us he will come not by sea but by land, and neither of them will be able to help us.

We shall be alone.’

He gave a weary gesture. ‘The chief Archon responded that the Roman ambassador had told him Rome would come to our aid if Philip attacked. I asked him then if he had received a formal assurance, for I had not heard of it. To this he did not answer . . . I hope you will forgive me for saying this Marcus, when you are our guest, but if my own conversations with your ambassador Pomponius are anything to go by, the Roman Senate is in no mood for war, and even if that were not so, there is no Roman army anywhere in Greece.’

I nodded slowly, thinking how sure Pomponius had been that the Athenians would not dare rouse the lion from his den.

I asked what had happened next.

‘My words were greeted with all the sullen displeasure against the sober man at the party, who, when the krater is still half full and the dancing-girls are coming on, reminds his guests of the sore heads they will have in the morning.’ He gave a wan smile at his little joke.

‘It is said the Persians have a wise custom. When a momentous decision is to be made, they consider it twice, once drunk, and once sober. That is a piece of good sense our citizens would benefit by.