The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae (20 page)

“There, it’s done, it’s over, that is my childhood and youth gone, gone with the stillborn. Hardly formed, unrecognisable, just a slight thing in a bloody puddle when it was lost.”

There was something so chilling in the image that the thought stopped her in mid flow. She took several deep breaths and then finished her message.

“Now it’s gone and the girl you knew has gone with it, tracking it on its wailing course to Hades. I’m no longer that girl, Mandrocles, I’m something else.”

She looked at me, an intense stare, but something else:
pleading? Longing? I didn’t know, didn’t know then anyway. Now looking back I think I should have known; I think I did know. I know something was expected, something I … such grief.

In the end it was all decided by our crazy system like Themistocles had predicted. Not in the Agora, either, but up on the ridge of the Pnyx hill, about a fifteen minute uphill walk to the South West. The assembly used to meet there in the days of Cleisthenes but ever since I’d been in Athens it was closed for repairs. Now it was to host the most important meeting the city had held since the decision to fight at Marathon.

Let me describe what it was like back then for you, reader, used as you are to the new Athens. It was a large, vaguely semicircular area with a slight downward slope towards the Agora, ending in a retaining wall with a space for the five hundred members of the Boule. It was dominated by a small speaker’s platform so whoever was speaking could do so from an elevated position.

There was some rough stone building: accommodation for officials thrown up in a higgledy-piggledy manner. This was where Cleisthenes had envisaged that the Demos could gather to give assent to the legislation that their betters in the Boule deemed right for the city of the Goddess.

As a place to meet and take decisions it had some advantages: being elevated there was often a breeze up there, and from the upper levels there was a view down across the Agora and out to sea. It was possible to watch our ships
heading out for Sounion, Salamis or to where the carbuncle of Aegina lurked beneath the heat haze. This was particularly useful during dull meetings of the assembly.

The disadvantage was more significant though. It was far too small for the big life and death meetings when the Demos was mobilised to oppose the Boule or agitate for an alternative strategy. It could hold about eight thousand in some semblance of comfort: ten thousand at a pinch. Hardly the full mass of the Demos. Maybe that’s why Cleisthenes chose it and radicals from Themistocles onwards preferred the Agora. There were more than ten thousand of us squeezed in and sweating that day.

The whisperers had done their work well. I know you don’t need whisperers today, reader, now that there are laws that regulate everything, but back then if you needed your people to turn out, whisperers were essential. Themistocles had set them whispering before the news of the silver lode was made public. A clever ploy because from the first there was a sense that the wealth discovered at Laurium was in some way down to Themistocles.

Like in the tragedies, the whispering had two voices: one whispered the danger of Aegina and the size of its fleet. Every Athenian knew someone who had seen the Aeginian pirates swarming ashore on our Attic coast to steal our wealth, rape our women and kill our men. So this fear-spreading whisper was particularly contagious.

The second voice spoke of the wealth in trade and the demand for highly paid seamen there would be if we could build a fleet large enough to finish Aegina once and for all. With a fleet we’d have their wealth, kill men and take their women. There was no whispering about the threat of Persia because fear breeds conservatism.

They’d whispered well, because when I arrived early that
morning with Ariston and some of the lads the place was already heaving. Packed, rank and sweaty.

We pushed our way as close to the front as we could, treading on toes, using our elbows, exchanging jokes, blows and insults. We collected wine, olives, onions, cheese pies and honey cakes from the vendors we passed and eventually found a spot near where the entertainer Hermaphroditus had established his pitch. I think the name was just part of his act. His trick was to fart popular songs, allegedly from two orifices. I’ve always found that brand of act overrated but my companions loved it. He did good business that day.

The press of the crowd got thicker and tempers began to rise with the temperature. Scuffles broke out, Hermaphroditus judge the mood, collected his props and takings and scuttled off with his two orifices still intact.

Maybe it would be a good idea to forbid drink from the assembly but, of course, no one would obey the ban. At last the trumpets sounded and the named Archon, Nicodemus, led the representatives of the Boule onto the podium and after fulfilling his sacred duties to the Gods and the Polis he invited Themistocles to climb onto the speaker’s platform and outline his proposition.

Thus it begins.

“Athenian friends, behind me befouling our pure wine dark sea lies the pirate island of Aegina. Recently we had an opportunity to change it, guide it. We failed.”

He folded his arms and stared out at us as if it contemplating whether he should continue. This was one of his better tricks and I knew then the act would be worth watching. There was isolated heckling; he ignored it, shrugged his shoulders and started again.

“We failed because we lacked the ships. They didn’t lack ships so they raided our shores. Some nights ago the Goddess
of Athens and wisdom came to me in a dream. She came as a ship, a trireme sailing towards Laurium. When I woke I knew what I must do. No man can stand against the wish of the Gods.”

He paused again and for some moments gave a silent impression of a man communing with the Gods.

“When I woke, I followed the Goddess to Laurium where I found the silver that Mother Athene had placed there for us. Placed there for one purpose, and not to be doled out to each Athenian and pissed away on wine or boys or roof tiles or goats.”

He smiled patronisingly at the obscene suggestions hurled at him from the landed factions in the crowd, replying only to one jibe with,

“Well as a farmer, Timachus, you’ll be well acquainted with the versatile hindquarters of goats.”

This drew applause and whistles from us. Then, at last, he got down to business.

“Whose head do we see on our silver Athenian coins? Yes, the Goddess Athene, and now she wants these coins used for their true purpose. Shipbuilding. We will use that silver to build the fastest, deadliest fleet of triremes in the world. Those ships will bring down Aegina and free us from fear. With those ships we will control the seas. I won’t try to win you over, friends, by pointing out the demand for rowers and Athenian craftsmen that building these ships will bring. I won’t detail the high wages or the chance of gaining increased status through becoming a Thranitai on an Athenian trireme. I know that you honest Athenians are not standing here through self-interest. So I appeal to your love of your city. Your desire to see Athens become great.”

He gave us space to let this sink in; then,

“I offer you the chance to make Athens great and to become great yourselves. I speak to you the same words
that noble Miltiades spoke to the hero Callimachus that day at Marathon. He said: right here, right now you have the choice to settle this matter, Callimachus. Only you, only you right now.”

He raised his hands to the heavens, another favourite ploy, waiting for the crowd to settle and when they did,

“So today, Athenians, each of you has the chance to become Callimachus, become a hero. Refuse the dole that is your right: make the city great, build a fleet. Right here, right now, you can do this, you can do this.”

Without waiting for a response he jumped down from the platform and settled next to his political allies on the front bench. There was no real applause; we were too busy thinking. So preoccupied, in fact, that when Nicodemus rose to announce the next speaker, Aristides of the deme of Alopeke, hardly anybody bothered to shout out the traditional jibe, “Foxy bastard,” stemming from the similarity of the pronunciation of the deme name to fox.

So Aristides got a less raucous reception than he might have expected. It was obvious to us that he hadn’t expected Themistocles to speak the way he had, and equally obvious he was confident that his proposition would be accepted.

“Athenians, the son of Neocles was right to invoke the Goddess Athena: the Goddess of wisdom and tradition. Tradition that dictates that the city’s share of the silver be distributed amongst us. Distributed in the form of the city’s silver coins stamped with the sacred head of the Goddess. He may scorn these amounts, but remember: roof tiles build a roof, goats make a farm. Citizens, today you can leave here richer men and that wealth flowing through your honest hands will enrich the city and please the Goddess.”

It was a good speech, simple and to the point and Aristides might have left it there. But he felt Themistocles had laid some sort of trap, which the sight of Themistocles sitting
with a broad smirk on his face encouraged. So he laid down his own challenge.

“And Athenians, I wonder how the son of Neocles would attempt to make his crazy idea work. How would you magic up a hundred ships, Themistocles?”

“Would you like me to elucidate, son of Lysimachus?”

Themistocles smiled as he spoke and I saw indecision cross Aristides’s face but it was too late: he’d offered the challenge.

“I think we’d all be fascinated to hear what you came up with, son of Neocles.”

“Then I’ll fascinate you.”

Aristides stood down and Themistocles mounted the platform looking like a man whose dogs pissed honey.

“A hundred triremes would need seventeen thousand men to row them. Those men are you, my friends, most of you men with the low status of thetes. Men with few rights and privileges in this city of tradition. Once you claim your place on the rowing bench of your new trireme, your status changes and the city changes with you. The son of Lysimachus and his friends, the men of tradition, don’t want that but I have a challenge for them.”

I was watching Aristides as Themistocles said this. His face shone with the realisation he’d walked into a trap. Themistocles moved to spring that trap.

“Listen: this is how we’ll get the ships. You aristos, you pampered elite, you men of wealth. You, yes you will build them.”

Where was this going? We didn’t know and it was clear that they didn’t either. Themistocles beamed.

“Again, friends, we are in debt to the Goddess who planted this seed in my mind as I lay in a slumber induced by the Gods. Now I will plant it in yours. From our share of the silver we will take one hundred talents. To the hundred richest men we will give one talent each.”

For a moment there was uproar. Themistocles stood there smiling until Nicodemus managed to restore order.

“You, the richest men who employ craftsmen, own land and slaves, will take that talent and turn it into a trireme. Just one each, easy. Oh, just one thing: if you don’t do it properly we’ll take the talent back and fine you another one.”

There were roars of protest but now Themistocles was shouting above them.

“Not possible, you say: well I’ll tell you this. Your aristo friend Cleinias managed it twice. Not once, twice, understand? One of your own; but a real patriot and servant of the city blessed by the Goddess. I think we can assume that what he did twice you can manage once?”

Shouting and scuffling chaos disorder, but a chant starting.

“We demand a vote, we demand a vote.”

Nicodemus mounted the platform and gradually we calmed down but before he could speak Aristides used the calm to shout,

“A vote yes, but the traditional vote. I demand that the proposition put before us be my proposal: do we accept the Boule’s proposal of a ten drachma dole to each citizen.”

Themistocles nodded assent and Nicodemus called for a show of hands. His tellers looked out at us, then conferred with Nicodemus who announced,

“There is no need for a head count; the decision is clear. The proposition is defeated.”

Screaming, fighting, chaos: pure Athens. But we could see Themistocles shouting so we shut up and shut our friends up and so at last could hear him.

“The Goddess requires a decision; we must move to the alternative proposition. I demand in the name of the Goddess who speaks through me a vote on the ships.”

It took them about an hour to agree on a proposal which
requested that a hundred men be given a talent of silver to undertake a project that would benefit the city of the Goddess by supplying her with a trireme. By the time the vote was taken, many of the proposition’s opponents had drifted away. Didn’t matter really; it was passed by a huge majority.

That evening in the tavern of the Bald Man we celebrated. Aeschylus, who didn’t normally pay much attention to the business of the Polis, said a couple of things that made me see what we’d done. I remembered enough to scratch it down the next day.

“He’s made the men who fear the fleet, and fear equally the sweepings of the Demos like you lads who crew them, build a monster to destroy themselves. But don’t think any of this is about Aegina. This is about the Great King and what you’ve voted for today will change this city more than any of you idiots can imagine.”

He was right about that as well. It was a time of change in my life too. Elpinice disappeared: it was rumoured that her wits had been dislocated by the Gods and she’d been spirited away to one of the many country estates owned by Callias. What a tragic waste of one of the greatest spirits in Athens. But as Aeschylus has written,

“The Gods throw things at us in order to see who becomes stronger and who crumbles into dust.”

I think Cimon was more affected by the plight of his sister than he cared to show; the guilt of her sacrifice for his future burdened him and he departed for the Brauron estate. Of course, the scurrilous rumour and gossip of the city claimed that consumed by unnatural lust for his sister, he’d followed her. Rumours also, as you would expect, reader, attributed fatherhood of the stillborn child to him.

Athens seethed with change and rumour: the rumour I’ll come to later but the change! Once the vote had been taken it became clear that the city precincts of Athens were not
extensive enough to accommodate both Themistocles and Aristides. But for reasons none of us could have foreseen the clash was delayed. Themistocles was stricken.

I think his success in persuading the assembly to act in the common good rather than in self-interest surprised him. He certainly didn’t celebrate, he took to his bed, didn’t speak to anyone for days. His brother said a black cloud had settled over him after the vote and turned away all visitors. It was this that told us how serious a malady it must be that affected him. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t settle to anything, and stopped eating. He’d tried almost single-handedly to change the city and I think the burden was too great.