Adventure in Athens

by Caroline Lawrence

  ‘Dinu!’ I called. ‘Did you get that?’

  ‘Get what?’

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, ‘Meet me at the house of Simon the Cobbler at noon! It’s just across from the Tholos – that round-roofed building we passed on the way here.’

  ‘All right, Wimpy!’ Dinu called over his shoulder. ‘See you then.’

  I watched long enough to see him catch up with Alcibiades. Then I clambered down from the fountain and helped the boy down too.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘My name is Aristocles. And that’s my brother Glaucon.’

  ‘Where’s your cart?’ I asked, looking around.

  ‘No cart.’ The boy thoughtfully picked his nose. ‘We came on foot.’

  ‘I thought you offered me a lift back?’ I said.

  The boy examined the tip of his finger, then wiped it on his chiton. ‘No. I just said we’d take you to Socrates. I like listening to him too.’

  I was beginning to regret not going with Dinu and wondered if I could catch him up when the boy’s brother called out to him.

  ‘Come on, Plato! We’d best be getting back.’

  I stared at him. ‘What did he just call you?’

  The boy’s finger was up the other nostril. ‘It’s his nickname for me: Plato.’

  My jaw dropped.

  I quickly did the maths. Socrates died in the year 399 BC aged seventy, when Plato was around twenty-five. This was sixteen years earlier, which would make Socrates’ most famous disciple about nine or ten.

  It all added up, and my jaw dropped some more.

  Most historians rank the philosopher Plato on a par with Shakespeare, Einstein and Beethoven: one of the top-ten great minds ever to have lived.

  Could it be that the boy who stood before me picking his nose would grow up to be one of the world’s greatest geniuses?

  If so, how could I possibly turn down the chance to spend a little time with him?

  25

  Flat Forehead

  The boy’s big brother had actually called him ‘Plah Tone’ but I was pretty sure from Greek class that meant Plato.

  ‘Your name is Plato?’ I repeated, just to be sure. We were walking back towards Athens several paces behind his brother, a dark-haired man of about thirty in a cloak made of the same sky-blue cloth as Plato’s chiton.

  As we passed beneath the arched gate, the boy sighed. ‘The name “Plato” is rather brutish, isn’t it? The other boys at the palaestra call me that on account of my forehead.’

  I nodded, remembering that the word platys literally means ‘flat’ or ‘broad’. Like in platypus, which means ‘flat foot’.

  ‘I’m going to insist my brother stops calling me that.’

  ‘No! Don’t!’ I cried. ‘Plato is a good name. It’s so much easier to remember than … what did you say your real name was?’

  ‘Aristocles.’ He sidestepped to avoid a steaming pile of mule droppings in the road. ‘Do you really prefer my nickname?’

  ‘Yes!’ I said, conscious that renaming the greatest philosopher in the world might alter the future. ‘Claim it with pride.’

  Kid Plato nodded solemnly then gave me a sideways glance. ‘Tell me about the country you come from?’

  For a mad moment I considered telling him about men flying in giant metal birds called aeroplanes and trains that travel underground and buildings taller than the Acropolis. I could also tell him how everybody walks around looking at little metal tablets that fit in the palm of your hand and which allow you to communicate with people all over the world in a nanosecond.

  Instead of describing twenty-first-century London, or even third-century Londinium, which wouldn’t exist for another eight hundred years, I decided to tell him about a typical Iron Age village like the one we had visited in Year Four.

  ‘Um. We have round houses made of mud-covered woven branches and topped with straw roofs. Nothing like that.’ I gestured at a massive stone wall running parallel to the road some distance from it.

  ‘That’s one of the Long Walls,’ said Kid Plato. ‘See the other one way over there?’ He pointed. ‘They were built as an addition to the city walls to protect the road to and from the port so we can always supply the city. Without them our enemies could besiege us and we would soon starve. Don’t you have town walls in your land?’

  ‘Not really.’ I tried to remember what they did at Butser Ancient Farm. ‘My village has a wooden stake fence which is mainly to keep our animals in and wild animals out.’

  ‘What about your enemies?’

  ‘I live on an island. So that helps.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded wisely.

  Before he could ask me any more about my home I said quickly, ‘Tell me more about Athens. You say the war with the Spartans is over?’

  ‘Yes. For the last six years. My brother actually fought in one of the battles. And so did Socrates.’

  ‘Your brother fought beside Socrates?’ I said. ‘May I ask him about it?’

  ‘Day-lone hotee,’ he said. Of course.

  ‘Excuse me, sir!’ I called out to his brother, who was still several paces in front of us. ‘Did you really fight beside Socrates?’

  Kid Plato’s older brother turned and waited for us to catch up. He had a sturdy body, a broad forehead and keen black eyes, like his brother’s. I noticed he held a walking stick in his right hand, as many men did.

  ‘Glaucon, this is …’ Kid Plato looked at me.

  ‘Alexis,’ I said. ‘From the Tin Islands. I’m hoping to meet Socrates. Your brother says you fought with him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Glaucon fell into step with us. ‘Socrates was with us at the Battle of Delium nearly ten years ago. We Athenians had to retreat, but he set the example. He never panicked but kept turning and glaring back fiercely at the enemy behind us.’

  He spent the next hour telling me stories of Socrates’ bravery and endurance.

  He told me how Socrates could walk on ice or frozen ground barefoot. Socrates could stay awake all night without becoming tired and no matter how much wine he drank he never even got tipsy. Once Socrates even risked death to save Alcibiades, who had foolishly charged the enemy in hopes of glory.

  ‘He risked his life to save Alcibiades?’ I echoed.

  ‘Yes. He and the general are very close. Socrates used to teach Alcibiades and still longs for him to seek the Good. People call him the wisest man in all Athens but sometimes he could be wiser about his choice of friends. And enemies,’ he added.

  ‘Socrates doesn’t care about fame or fortune, like Alcibiades,’ said Kid Plato. ‘He only cares about the soul.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Glaucon with a grim expression, ‘and one day that could get him killed.’

  To my surprise we had already reached the arched gate to the city with its trinket stalls and pleading beggars.

  Glaucon reached into his mouth and gave each of the beggars a small coin. Once through the gate I could hear the clinking from the Street of the Marble Workers and I caught the sickly-sweet smell of the Great Drain. I recognised the State Prison and offered up a silent prayer of thanks: if not for Alcibiades we would be there now, awaiting trial.

  We turned left and almost bumped into some girls emerging from between the columns of a red-roofed building. They had full water pots on their heads and looked just like some of the girls on Greek vases my gran had taken me to see at the British Museum.

  They giggled when they saw us and hurried past.

  A few moments later two men overtook us at a run and then skidded to a stop.

  ‘Glaucon!’ called the one with curly hair. ‘Socrates has gone to hear Hippias give a lecture in the Painted Stoa.’

  ‘You know what Socrates thinks of sophists,’ said the one with straight hair. ‘This should be fine entertainment. Come on!’

  Glaucon turned to his younger brother. ‘The shoemaker’s shop is just up ahead on the right. You’ve been once before with me, I think? Wait for me there.’ He glanced up at the sky.
‘I’ll see you in about an hour, at noon.’

  He hurried after his friends towards the marketplace.

  ‘Wait!’ I said to Kid Plato. ‘Did he just say Socrates is in the Agora?’

  ‘Hoo toce!’ That is so.

  ‘Then let’s go!’

  ‘We can’t. Children aren’t allowed in the Agora.’

  ‘But I was there earlier.’

  ‘Not when the market is on.’

  ‘I don’t believe it! That’s why I’ve come all this way.’ I recited my talismantra again: ‘To seek Socrates, the lover of wisdom, the wisest man in Athens!’

  Kid Plato’s dark eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘Can you run away fast, if necessary?’

  ‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘I’m excellent at running away.’

  26

  Smelly Agora

  Kid Plato grinned when I said I could run away fast. ‘Look – Simon the Shoemaker’s house.’ He pointed at a two-storey building on our right. I saw a wooden shoe hanging over the open double doors and a shady courtyard within. ‘If we get separated, then meet me back here.’

  Literally six steps past the door of the shoemaker’s shop we came to a line of black-and-white pebbles running across the road, and on our right, a smiling herm. Kid Plato touched the herm’s marble chin beneath the painted beard.

  As I turned to do the same I saw a boundary stone.

  ‘I AM THE BOUNDARY OF THE AGORA!’ it declared in red painted letters on sparkling white marble. It might as well have shouted: ‘NO CHILDREN ALLOWED!’

  But Kid Plato boldly stepped over the line of pebbles, right foot first. And so did I.

  Maybe it was because the blazing sun magnified all the odours, but the moment we entered the Agora I encountered a symphony of smells.

  The sickly-sweet whiff of sewage from the drain behind us formed a base note.

  Next came the rhythmic pong of sausage-sellers roasting their ancient hot dogs on portable clay barbeques.

  Then the churchy melody of incense drifting from shrines under their sacred trees.

  Rising above it all was a chorus of smells coming from the men around us: rank sweat, stale urine, bad breath and perfumed beard oil.

  ‘They said Hippias in the Painted Stoa,’ Kid Plato called over his shoulder. ‘It’s this way.’

  ‘Who’s Hippias?’

  ‘Only the richest and most famous sophist in Greece.’

  ‘What’s a sophist again?’

  Kid Plato waited for me to catch up. ‘We Athenians love to discuss things. But even more, we love to argue. And most of all, we love to take people to court to prove we’re right and they’re wrong.’

  ‘Wrong about what?’

  ‘Boundary stones, ownership of a slave, the nature of the universe … it doesn’t matter. The point is, we Athenians love to argue in public. Look!’

  Without stopping, he pointed at a building beyond the parasol-roofed Tholos. ‘That’s the Bouleterium. The council house. The seat of our famous democracy and site of even more debates.’

  This kid was amazing.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Nine. But I was telling you what a sophist is.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A sophist is a man who claims to be able to teach you to speak so persuasively that you will win any argument, whether it’s right or wrong. Socrates hates them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re only concerned with money, prestige and power. They don’t give two figs about the truth. It’s all about their own skill. The sophist Protagoras claims he can win an argument with a worse argument, just by using his skills of persuasion.’

  ‘That sounds like most politicians I know,’ I said.

  ‘Yes! Socrates says his divine voice warned him not to go into politics. He says if you want to improve the world, you should do it as an individual.’

  But now I wasn’t really listening. I was too busy looking.

  We were in the heart of the Athenian Agora and it was bonkers.

  There were no other kids and only a few women. Everywhere were men, men, men.

  Tooth-pullers and fortune tellers squatted on rush mats. Money-changers and scribes sat at folding tables. Fruit and veg sellers stood in the shade cast by reed awnings over their portable stalls.

  Wealthy men, those with slaves, wore the tablecloth thing called a himation and most carried a walking stick.

  Farmers, salesmen and craftsmen wore the exomis, the tunic fastened over the left shoulder that left the right arm free and most of the chest exposed.

  The rest of them – beggars, snack sellers, snake charmers, tumblers, jugglers, basket-weavers, storytellers, talisman-makers, curse-breakers and so on – were either totally naked or wearing only a loincloth.

  In contrast to the brightly painted temples, people’s clothes were pretty dull: mainly brown, beige or cream with the occasional garment of dusty blue or rusty red. And lots of skin: tanned, bronzed, sunburned, olive and nut-brown.

  That’s why the bright turquoise dress caught my eye.

  A girl up ahead was wearing a drab brown headscarf but her dress was unmistakable. There was no other colour like it in the whole of the Agora.

  Of course Dinu’s annoying little sister hadn’t waited patiently in the Parthenon.

  She had come to look for us.

  A twenty-first-century girl who spoke only a few phrases of Greek, in the male-dominated Agora of Athens?

  Pure madness.

  27

  The Girl in Turquoise

  ‘Crina!’ I shouted. ‘CRINA!’

  The noise of the Agora must have drowned me out because she kept going.

  ‘CRINA!’

  Totally forgetting about Kid Plato, I charged after her.

  I ran past the fragrant stalls of the garland-makers and pungent tables of garlic and onion.

  I wove between pancake sellers standing over sizzling tripods.

  I pelted past tables of radishes and peas and bunches of green herbs. I leaped over bowls of olives and cones of ground spices and baskets of little red cherries.

  ‘CRINA!’

  For a few moments my nose was flooded with the heady scent of wine as I raced between bulging wineskins and black-glazed amphoras.

  Then my ears were filled with twittering as I jogged down a corridor of birds in wicker cages. Birdsong gave way to the buzzing of flies and the smell of blood as I ran through the meat market. Now I was hurrying through the sound of men reading out loud to themselves at the scroll sellers’ stalls.

  I dodged a beggar with no legs and a dog biting his ticks.

  I gave a wide berth to several groups of arguing men and to a snake charmer with an actual cobra.

  I leaped over smouldering piles of dog poo, mule dung and cow pats.

  I finally stopped, gasping, beside the bronze statue of a naked hero wearing a real himation. But nowhere could I see that distinctive twenty-first-century colour of turquoise.

  Just to my left, a man in a loincloth was pulling the tooth of a man kneeling on a mat. A small crowd cheered as he finally succeeded and held the bloody molar aloft. At the same moment I spotted a flash of turquoise out of the corner of my eye.

  Crina was going up some broad, flat steps towards a painted temple on a low, tree-studded hill.

  I knew that temple. It was the Temple of Hephaestus, the blacksmith god.

  I sprinted past an ancient black poplar tree and hurried up the broad steps after her and into a world of ringing metal. There were trees and shrubs up here, planted around the temple. Their glittering leaves seemed to reflect back the bright sound of metalworkers. In the shade of these trees, half-naked men in leather aprons were working bronze and iron: tapping and banging and making the hot metal sizzle in buckets of water.

  Then I spotted her. She was standing before one of the blacksmiths. Her head was covered with a brown shawl even though the noonday sun was blazing down.

  ‘Crina!’ I came up behind her and grasped
her shoulder with my sweaty hand. ‘Why didn’t you answer me?’

  She squealed and whirled to face me.

  Then I saw why she had not answered me.

  It was not Crina.

  It was a girl with frizzy black hair. Eighteen, maybe nineteen years old.

  The blacksmith behind her rose to his feet and brandished red-hot tongs.

  ‘What are you doing to my wife?’ he growled.

  ‘Nothing!’ I stammered, letting go. ‘It’s just that my friend has a dress exactly like that.’

  Then a terrible thought struck me.

  What if Crina had not stayed hidden in the depths of the Parthenon?

  What if she had ventured out?

  And what if the blacksmith’s wife had robbed Crina of her dress?

  28

  Fair Trade

  The girl in Crina’s dress must have seen the expression on my face because she said, ‘Don’t worry. Your friend is safe. I found her crying on the stairs leading down from the Acropolis. She kept saying, You speak the truth, O Socrates, over and over. So I asked her if she wanted me to take her to the house of Socrates. When she heard his name she said yes. So I did.’

  ‘You took her to Socrates’ house?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. She wanted to thank me, but she had no coins. So I said I would trade dresses with her.’ She fingered the turquoise dress. ‘I’ve never seen cloth this colour. And the weave is so fine.’

  ‘Can you take me to his house too?’ I said. ‘Or tell me where it is?’

  ‘No need,’ panted a young voice behind me. It was Kid Plato, out of breath from running after me. I’d totally forgotten about him. ‘Socrates is only a stone’s throw from here.’

  ‘Thank the gods!’ I was turning to follow him when the blacksmith caught my wrist in a grip like bronze.

  ‘What is this?’ he growled. ‘It was attached to the peplos your friend gave my wife.’ He held out a twenty-first-century label, machine-stitched in English. It read ‘Paris Mode Fashions’.