Tyrant (36 page)
Authors: Christian Cameron
‘Gentlemen of Olbia,’ he began formally. But that wasn’t the tone he wanted at all, especially with the quaver in his voice and he smiled, shrugged, rubbed his beard. ‘Friends and sponsors.’ Better. ‘It has been said - indeed, it’s being said right now, somewhere not far from here - that having been sponsored as a citizen and then raised to hipparch, I have repaid your kindness by plunging you into desperate war.’
They looked interested, but no more. The younger men - Eumenes, for instance - had no idea what a war would mean. They were excited by it. The older men had the means to board their ships and vanish around the coast, to Heraclea or Tomis or even to Athens.
Kineas took a deep breath. ‘The war is none of our making. Alexander - the boy king who I served - is now a man. More than a man, he has declared himself a god. He marches to conquer, not just the Medes, but the whole world.’ Kineas spread his arms like an actor. Funny how these things came back to you. Kineas hadn’t practised rhetoric in ten years, at least.
‘But,’ he continued, ‘one of the ways we can tell that Alexander is not so much of a god as he would like to be, is that his wars still require men, and money. The gods, I think, could conquer the world with their own power. Alexander does it with the treasury of Persopolis and the manpower of the whole Greek world. And this hunger for treasure to fight his wars has cost Macedon dearly. None of the gold of Persopolis went home. None of the spoil of Babylon waits in chests of cedar in Phillip’s treasury. Olympia does not bathe in the pearls of the Nile. Alexander burns gold as other men burn wood.’ He took watered wine from a servant and sipped. ‘Antipater needs money. He needs to put his boot on the necks of the cities of Attica and the Peloponnese. He needs our grain and our gold, and he needs a war to toughen his levies before he sends them to his master, the god.’
He paused a moment to let that sink in. Then he began to pace around the circle of couches, speaking directly to them, first one and then another. ‘This will not be a simple war between cities, where hoplites clash and the winner dictates the terms to the loser or burns his fields. If Antipater takes this city, he will keep it. He will appoint a satrap to rule - one of his own men from Macedon.’ Kineas said the last directly to Nicomedes. It was done as if by chance, and Nicomedes’ smooth face didn’t betray whether the shot went home or not.
‘There will be a garrison of Macedonians and heavy taxes. No assembly, and no men of property. You might ask me how I know all this, and I will say that I know because I watched it done from Granicus to the Nile. You think the archon is a tyrant?’ Kineas looked around at the little starts - that had them awake. ‘The archon is the purest democrat next to a garrison of Macedon. You think that Antipater might benefit the city? Or perhaps that you can slip away and return in a few years when the business opportunities are better?’ Kineas stopped again and pointed at Lykeles. ‘Lykeles was a gentleman of Thebes. Ask him what the occupation of Macedon meant.’
They were restless, fidgeting on their couches, the older ones refusing to meet his eye. Like most rich men, they heard him, but they doubted that his words would apply - they’d find a way to bribe their way free, they were sure. But again, his argument hit home - every man present knew that Thebes had been utterly destroyed, the walls cast down, most of the citizens sold into slavery for attacking their Macedonian garrison. And that was Thebes, a pillar of the Greek world, the city of Oedipus and Epaminondas.
Kineas sipped more wine. ‘I will not tell you that we can defeat the might of Macedon. If Alexander came here, with seven taxeis of his veterans and four regiments of companions, with all this Thessalian horse and all his psiloi and his peltasts and the guard - then I would say that, despite our alliances and our own strength, we would be broken in an hour.
‘But it is
not
Alexander who marches. It will probably not even be Antipater - no mean general, let me tell you. It will be one of the junior generals who stayed home from the Persian wars, and are now eager for fame - eager to make a name on a march to the sea. That general will have two taxeis of Macedonians, and one of those will be raw. He will have one regiment of companions - every troublemaker that Antipater wants out of the country. He will have Thracians, Getae and Bastarnae. And that army, gentlemen, we can defeat. Or, even if we fail to defeat it, we can keep it on the plains so long that it will have no time to lay siege to this city.’
not
Alexander who marches. It will probably not even be Antipater - no mean general, let me tell you. It will be one of the junior generals who stayed home from the Persian wars, and are now eager for fame - eager to make a name on a march to the sea. That general will have two taxeis of Macedonians, and one of those will be raw. He will have one regiment of companions - every troublemaker that Antipater wants out of the country. He will have Thracians, Getae and Bastarnae. And that army, gentlemen, we can defeat. Or, even if we fail to defeat it, we can keep it on the plains so long that it will have no time to lay siege to this city.’
They lay quietly on their couches, listening and drinking wine. He made it clear that he was finished by sitting on his couch. He felt empty. He felt like a schoolboy who had given a speech and forgotten some part of it. He shrugged - oh, the birching that gesture would have gotten him from his rhetoric tutor. ‘That is the way I see it,’ he said, and felt the poverty of his summation.
Cleomenes rose in turn. He lay by himself - he had brought his son, but Eumenes had gone off to share the couch of Kyros. Most of the other men present either ignored him or fawned on him. Unlike Nicomedes and Cleitus, who were bitter rivals in trade and politics but appeared to enjoy each other’s company, Cleomenes was aloof, as if he didn’t want to be caught associating with his rivals.
‘The hipparch speaks well - for a mercenary.’ He looked around the room with patrician disdain. ‘Just as well might I visit another man’s city and tell him how he can, with enormous risk, win through to a little gain. But despite the fact that you, Cleitus, and you, Nicomedes, conspired to give this man the vote, I say he is a foreigner, a man with little stake in our city - surely not the same stake as I have. Why would a man of my accomplishments wish to provoke a war with Macedon? Our mercenary thinks so highly of his profession that he desires for us all to take part in it. I say that it is the business of his sort to make war. I have neither skill nor appetite for it. Men of property have no need to do such things. When I need them done, I can hire - a mercenary.’ He looked around. ‘You are a pack of fools if you think that your little squadron of horse will last a minute against the force of Macedon. Men like you have no business fighting - your business is business. Achilles was a fool, and Odysseus not much better. Grow up. Accept the coming changes. Let this city grow and prosper as it is meant to, regardless of who claims to rule it. And leave fighting to mercenaries.’
He gave Kineas half a smile. ‘Although when I hire one, I’ll try to find one with less arrogance, less pretension, and superior skill at fighting - not a wine-sack blow-hard who was dismissed by Alexander.’
He sat down, and the room erupted. Men were watching Kineas. He was acutely aware of how deeply Cleomenes’ speech had cut him - both in his own pride and in the eyes of some of his most prominent supporters.
But despite the instant rise of rage in his heart, and the double grip of fear and anger in his gut, Kineas was a veteran of many years of Athenian politics - in his father’s house, and in the hippeis. He refilled his cup, spilled a libation with a prayer to Athena, and rose again, outwardly calm - inwardly both enraged, and hurt, even saddened. His stomach seemed to rise to fill his throat. In some ways, it was worse than a fight - in a fight, the daemon came to hold you up, to stiffen your sinews, but in debate, a man who was a friend, or at least sometimes an ally, suddenly turned on you and spoke insults.
Face to face. Like battle.
Kineas took a breath to steady himself. ‘I’m sure Cleomenes speaks with the best of intentions,’ he said. His mild sarcasm, so at odds with what the room expected from him, silenced the babble. ‘Cleomenes, am I the wine-sack blow-hard to whom you refer?’
Cleomenes glared at him like Medusa, but Kineas pinned him with his own gaze.
‘Come, we’re all friends here - you must have had someone in mind.’ Kineas’s raillery was still light.
Cleomenes wasn’t fooled. He wriggled on his couch like a bug on a pin.
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘So, you don’t mean me?’ He took a step forward, and Cleomenes wriggled again. ‘Perhaps you mean Memnon? Or perhaps Licurgus? Perhaps my friend Diodorus? Or perhaps young Ajax, Isokles son of Tomis - is that who you mean?’
Kineas took another step towards the man. He had the feeling that Cleomenes would make a bad enemy - but that enmity was already there. He was not going to win the man to his side - so he had to be defeated. ‘Except none of them served Alexander. Only I.’ He stepped closer. ‘Or were you speaking generally, of wine-sacks and blow-hards you’ve known in your wide experience of the world?’
Cleomenes stood up. ‘You know who I meant!’ he said, his face red.
Kineas shrugged. ‘I’m a poor mercenary, slow of intellect. Tell me.’
Cleomenes spat, ‘Figure it out.’
Kineas spread his hands. ‘I am a simple soldier. I admire those men to whom you referred - Achilles and Odysseus. They may not have been good men of business - but they were not afraid to speak their minds.’
Cleomenes rolled off his couch, his face purple. ‘Damn you, you insolent—’
Cleitus rushed to intervene - both men had their hands balled into fists. ‘Gentlemen - I think we have left reasoned debate and good feeling at the bottom of the last wine bowl. This is mere argument - there is bad feeling. Cleomenes did not mean the insult he implied, I’m sure - and neither would Kineas mean to call Cleomenes a coward, would you, Kineas?’
Kineas nodded - and let his next words drawl out with all the Athenian arrogance he could muster - which was considerable. ‘I didn’t say that Cleomenes was a coward,’ he said with a mocking smile. ‘Indeed, I spoke generally, about the long-haired Argives who fought for Helen on the windy plains of Illios.’
Several guests applauded. Kineas’s rhetorical tricks had the elegance of an Athenian gentleman’s education. Cleomenes looked rude by comparison, and he’d lost his temper entirely. Without another word, he picked up a scroll bag he had brought and walked to the door. ‘You will all rue the day you brought this man into our city,’ he said, and left.
Despite the lazy smile pasted to his face, Kineas felt weak at the knees, as if he had fought a combat. He felt as if he needed more wine. When he reached the couch he shared with Philokles, the Spartan smiled at him. Other men asked a few questions, but most chose to change the subject. He drank a great deal, Cleomenes’ insults still rankling, and went to bed drunk.
The tree was bigger than the world, and its trunk was like a city wall rising from a rocky plain. The lowest branches hung to the ground. It was a cedar - no, it was a black pine from the mountains of Attica.
Closer, it seemed that it was not one tree, but all trees. And the fallen leaves and needles littered the ground, so that every step he took, he sank to his ankles, and when he looked down to watch his footing, he saw that the leaves were mixed with bones. And under the leaves and bones were corpses - strange that the bones lay over the corpses, he thought, with the clarity of dream thought.
He felt strangely in control of his dream, and he made his body turn and look away from the tree, but there was nothing to see except the branches hanging to the ground, and the near dark beyond the tree, and the leaves and bones, and all the dead.
He turned back and set his hand against the trunk, and it was warm and smooth like the back of Srayanka’s hands, and he . . .
Awoke. Troubled because of the dream’s clarity and because it was alien. While he dreamed the tree, he was another man. A man who didn’t think like a Hellene. And that was terrifying.
He covered his terror in work, training the hippeis, which he did despite the first serious winter storm. The sailing season closed. The threat of Antipater became known throughout the city. No one could flee, so rich and poor alike settled in for months of cold, telling each other that there would be time to flee in the spring if Antipater really did come.
In the next week, Memnon called a muster of the city’s hoplites. It was the first muster held in four years. The archon had restricted such musters because he feared the power of the hoplites all together and under arms as much as he feared everything else, but Memnon insisted and he had his way.
The city hoplites looked better than the cavalry. They wore more armour than their compatriots in Athens or Sparta. The thirty years war in Attica and the Peloponnese had taught Greeks to wear less armour and move faster, but the hoplite class of the Euxine had missed those bloody wars and they came to muster in the bronze cuirass, greaves, and heavy helmets of their fathers.
They mustered in the open fields north of the suburbs and trampled the snow and the grain stubble for three hours. Despite the four-year hiatus and the presence of a new generation who had never been trained, they looked competent. They had three hundred mercenaries to provide file-closers, and they had seasoned men in their ranks who had served in the war with Heraclea.
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