Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  tendency of the many to prey on the few unless restrained from doing so, the

  dangers of apathy and so on. Again, we had to face up to the facts and agree

  that a pure democracy — with all due respect to present company — would be a

  very uncomfortable place to live in, rather like building a house on the rim of

  an active volcano.

  ‘Someone put forward oligarchy, a proposal that got support from the usual

  vociferous minority. Well, we weren’t having that; but we had to agree whether

  we liked it or not that oligarchy does have a few things going for it, such as

  continuity and consistency again, the fact that the ruling group are, as it

  were, professional rulers rather than amateurs and so can be expected to do the

  right thing as opposed to the thing that’ll be popular — most of the benefits of

  monarchy, but without the risk of placing all your lives and property in the

  hands of just one man.

  ‘The obvious flaws in each of these that hadn’t yet been aired were then

  discussed — quite fervently, at times — and once again some points were raised

  that we just couldn’t ignore, even though we didn’t like many of them on an

  intuitive level. They were all quite basic —kings have nothing at all to keep

  them in line; oligarchies have peer pressure but are much more likely to

  encourage corruption and the growth of monopolies; democracies tend to eat their

  children, like absent-minded sows. One man put up the idea of an elected

  oligarchy, combining the two more favourable systems — once every three years or

  so Assembly elects a Council of two or three hundred, who rule the city like

  oligarchs until it’s time for the next election. The man who’d suggested it

  couldn’t seem to understand why we were all laughing, though several people

  tried to explain that yes, he’d developed a very neat fusion of the two

  concepts, but he’d also unerringly picked out the worst parts of both, and the

  result would be a perpetual shambles, with gangs of council members fighting

  each other tooth and nail for the good opinion of the voters, which would

  obviously be far more significant to them than the welfare of city or people. It

  would be an even worse version of the rule of the great demagogues, Cleon and

  Hyperbolus and Theramenes and their kind, who’d effectively destroyed the City

  not once but many times. Eventually the man got the message; he apologised for

  wasting our time and sat down again.

  ‘And then someone came up with a really good idea, or rather a series of ideas

  linked by a common theme: absolute power tempered by fear of death.

  ‘First, at the top of the heap, would be the kings. Not king singular; there’d

  be two of them, like in Sparta , one Big King who’d lead the army in war and one

  Little King who’d mind the store during his absence. Each king would be able to

  veto anything the other one proposed; five vetos against him and the offender

  would be dragged up to the top of Citadel Rock and chucked off, without mercy or

  appeal. Every ten years the Council would have the right to execute or exile

  either or both of them, but only in respect of things they’d done off their own

  hook, without the Council’s endorsement.

  ‘Now, for the Council, which was to be made up of the five hundred richest

  citizens, we borrowed another Athenian idea, the Lawsuit of Illegality —’

  (Ah, yes, the graphe paranomon; if someone proposes an enactment that, if

  passed, would change the constitution, he can be prosecuted and, if found

  guilty, put to death. On the other hand, if he’s acquitted and the prosecutor

  got less than a certain percentage of the votes of the jury, then the prosecutor

  is put to death instead. The Athenian constitution hasn’t been fiddled with much

  over the centuries, for some reason.)

  ‘— which we adapted slightly so that any councillor could challenge any other

  councillor’s proposals, with the hemlock or the long drop awaiting the loser;

  the counterbalance being that every five years Assembly could impeach and

  execute any councillors who’d been guilty of fudging up secret deals to avoid

  open confrontations that could get one or both parties killed. In addition, the

  kings and the councillors could raise any taxes they liked, but each year they

  had to present accounts to Assembly to show that all the money was accounted for

  and explain what it had been spent on, and if the accounts weren’t accepted,

  either king and the treasurer of the Council would die.

  ‘Finally, public office was to be compulsory, on pain of death; so, if you were

  next in line to inherit the throne or a seat on the Council you had no choice

  but to accept. This has the tremendous advantage that at any given time, at

  least nine-tenths of the Government are only there under protest, and the

  chances of power ever falling into the hands of somebody who wants it are kept

  to an acceptable minimum.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘And it actually works, does it?’ someone eventually asked. ‘I mean, you really

  do run your city like that?’

  ‘For the last hundred and twenty years,’ Coriscus replied.

  ‘I see,’ Aristotle murmured, rubbing his chin with his left hand and writing

  furiously with his right. ‘And may I ask, how many kings and councillors, in

  round numbers, have been put to death during that time?’

  Coriscus smiled and picked up his cup. ‘None,’ he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  K ing Philip of Macedon started off his reign with a series of hard, difficult

  wars against the seemingly inexhaustible supply of savage and barbarous races

  who filled up the mountainous wastes to the north and west of his kingdom —

  Illyrians, Thracians, Thessalians, Triballians, Paeonians and Getae. Much to

  everyone’s surprise he beat them all and, more surprising still, instead of

  burning their villages, killing the men and selling the women and children as

  slaves, he turned as many of these apparently sub-human creatures as he possibly

  could into good Macedonians, or at least the nearest imitation he could get.

  Mildly interesting to an Athenian observer; we relish strange tales from the

  hills, and of course at that time we made it our business to stay au fait with

  the latest reports from the region because we had valuable colonies up there,

  inhabited by real Athenians who’d left Athens for reason of business or health.

  We started to take a little more notice when Philip, having run out of hairy

  tribesmen to slaughter and tame, turned south. It’s a long story and rather a

  sad one if you’re an Athenian. The short version is that he began by appointing

  himself the guardian of Apollo — we’d always assumed that Apollo, being a god,

  was big enough and ugly enough to look after himself, but apparently not; it

  came to Philip’s attention that some impious wretches from the city of Phocis

  had annexed the sacred shrine and oracle of Delphi, helped themselves to the

  huge reserves of money deposited there (Apollo is honorary banker to the cities

  of Greece, something I’ve always found most odd. After all, he’s a god; not the

  sort of person you’d trust to look after your cloak in the baths, let alone your

  life�
�s savings) and were behaving in a generally disrespectful manner. By the

  time he managed to wangle an excuse for intervening, the man who’d masterminded

  the coup was dead and his henchmen scattered, but nevertheless Philip ploughed

  steadfastly on, beat the Phocians to a pulp, scooped up a couple of valuable

  cities that had been carelessly left lying about, and somehow wandered sixty or

  so miles further south until he came up against the Athenian army at the

  celebrated narrow pass of Thermopylae. We’d rushed our forces up there to

  protect our colonies, mines and other valuables, just in case Philip

  absent-mindedly slipped them up his sleeve, as guests sometimes palm spoons at

  dinner-parties; on this occasion he took the hint and proceeded no further.

  Nevertheless, anybody who hadn’t heard of Philip before was well aware of him

  now, and we were in the uncomfortable position of people who’ve acquired an

  antisocial and boisterous new neighbour, whose children steal apples from the

  home orchard and whose dog chases the sheep.

  No matter, we thought; all except a man by the name of Demosthenes, a

  professional lawyer with a speech impediment who started saying worrying things

  in Assembly not long after Philip’s picnic in Thessaly . Demosthenes had a fine

  turn of phrase and it was a treat to listen to him on a warm, lazy morning when

  there wasn’t much else to do. There was always a splendid turnout when we knew

  he was planning to speak; but we didn’t really take any notice. After all, the

  idea of the wild and woolly Philip being a serious threat to Athens was a

  fantasy, as imaginative and amusing as that old comedy by Aristophanes where

  women take over the government of Athens and start voting in Assembly. We

  Athenians love comic fantasy.

  Not long ago I met a man who told me a story he’d heard about young Alexander,

  Philip’s son; according to this man, the incident referred to must have taken

  place about this time. I’m convinced it’s either wholly or partly false — you’ll

  see why in due course — but there may be a grain of truth in it, so I’ll pass it

  on, and you can make up your own mind.

  Background, Phryzeutzis: you probably know by now that we Greeks tell stories

  about a mighty hero called Hercules, the son of Zeus Himself. In the stories,

  the first sign that Hercules was going to be a mighty hero was when a couple of

  snakes crawled into his cot a few days after he was born and tried to sting him,

  whereupon he strangled them with his bare hands. Now, according to what this man

  told me, Philip’s wife Olympias felt that her son deserved a proper start in

  life just as much as Hercules, and arranged for a couple of fangless, elderly

  snakes to be turned loose in the bed where Alexander was sleeping; the idea was

  that the young prince (who was old enough to throttle snakes, and undoubtedly

  knew the story) would take the point, recognise a good public-relations

  opportunity when he saw one, scrag the unfortunate snakes and let the goddess

  Rumour do the rest. The plan worked just fine, up to a point. The snakes did

  their part, following a carefully laid trail of live ants trapped in runny honey

  up the side of the bed and on to the prince’s pillow; Alexander noticed them

  and, quick as lighming, snatched a dagger from under his pillow (which nobody

  knew was there) and slashed the heads off the snakes before you could say

  ‘garlic’. So far, so good.

  Unfortunately, Alexander’s next step was to storm into the great hall of the

  palace, fling the headless remains down at his mother’s feet, and in a very loud

  voice demand to know why she’d seen fit to try to murder him. This put Olympias

  in a rather awkward position —she couldn’t tell the truth for fear of looking

  extremely silly, but the evidence of the dead snakes and the trail of ants and

  honey did seem to point towards an assassination attempt. Accordingly, Olympias

  was forced to frame a minor Macedonian nobleman and his wife and have them put

  to death on the spot, which annoyed Philip when he heard about it and caused a

  coolness between them that lasted for some time.

  As I said a moment ago, you’ll soon see why I don’t accept this story as the

  whole truth. But that picture of the young Alexander, stalking past the

  astonished nobles with a pair of dead snakes dragging behind him where most kids

  his age would be trailing a wooden horse on a string or some other favourite toy

  — that I can believe in; and if it isn’t true, it should be. So, by including it

  in this book of mine, I’ve given it a certain degree of truth and thereby, I

  guess, improved history.

  Athenians of my generation play a memory-game, a sort of reminiscence

  competition. ‘Where were you and what were you doing when you first heard about

  Olynthus ?’ they ask each other. ‘Pruning my vines,’ says one. ‘In the market

  square.’ ‘In Assembly, of course.’ ‘You remember that brothel in Tripod Street ?

  Well, I was just coming out of there when I met my cousin, and he told me.. .‘

  But it’s true enough; everybody remembers hearing the news. It was one of those

  moments — rare enough, thank the gods — when you feel the outside world bursting

  through the walls we all build to keep it out of our personal lives, like a

  flood battering down a sea-wall; a moment when you realise you’re suddenly

  ankle-deep in history, and the level is all set to rise faster than you can run.

  I was in Pallene, of all places, helping my brother Euthyphron. Gods alone know

  what I was doing there; but Euthyphron had sounded so pathetic when I bumped

  into him in the street, moaning about how impossible it was for a man on his own

  to cope with all the work that had to be done in the height of summer on a

  miserably rocky, strung-out holding like his. I offered to change places with

  him there and then; he pretended he hadn’t heard me.

  ‘You remember the mountain terraces,’ he sighed, leaning on his walking-stock

  like an old man of seventy (he’s a year younger than me). ‘Three ploughings in

  summer, minimum; really, three’s the absolute minimum, you need to go four if

  you expect to do any good. Fewer than three and come autumn you’re just wasting

  good seed-corn.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I replied. ‘Which begs the question, why are you here

  in the City rather than back home working?’

  Now, I didn’t remember Euthyphron as being particularly hard of hearing, but

  something must have happened to him since I left home, because he had great

  difficulty hearing a lot of what I said to him.

  ‘As if that’s not bad enough,’ he went on, ‘the damn plough’s virtually clapped

  out — the share-iron’s thin as a leaf at the point and you remember where Father

  mended the break in the drawbar by wrapping it round with rawhide? Well, that’s

  starting to peel off, but where am I going to get rawhide from this time of

  year? Just my luck, of course, to get the old knackered spare and not the—’

  ‘My heart bleeds,’ I interrupted. ‘Of course, it simply hasn’t occurred to you

  to get a new one made.’

  He must have heard that all right, because he turned his head like a crow

  looking up
from a carcass and gave me that special look of scorn that’s reserved

  for a working farmer talking to a landless townsman.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ he said. ‘Oh, yes, you’ve done very nicely for

  yourself, you’ve forgotten what it’s like actually working for a living. Well,

  I’m here to tell you, I just haven’t got that much coined money, that’s all; not

  with a wife and four daughters to provide for, and the roof on the old barn

  needing fixing — but I just didn’t have the time to do it, so I had to hire a

  carpenter; do you have any idea..

  I’d been about to offer to buy him a new plough anyway, as a peace offering; but

  the way he put it, I realised that it wouldn’t be a gift so much as blood-money

  to appease the wrath of twenty generations of sturdy Attic yeomen whom I’d

  foully betrayed by turning my back on the land in favour of a life of Persian

  luxury. Bless him, though, he didn’t hold it against me. As a reward (though

  really I was just doing my belated duty) he allowed me to help with the

  ploughing and so re-establish contact with the better part of myself that I’d

  walled up in some dark recess of my mind; while Euthyphron played with the new

  plough down on the home enclosures, he let me take the old, rickety heirloom up

  onto the high terraces, where the stones are the size of a man’s head and have

  always seemed to me to grow faster than the grapes.

  ‘Please be careful with it,’ he said, almost pleadingly, as I yoked in the oxen.

  ‘If that split in the sole opens out any further, the whole thing’ll only be fit

  for firewood.’

  So there I was, right up high like an eagle, nursing that decrepit heap of a

  plough through the dust-thin topsoil of a terrace no wider than the width of my

  own shoulders, when our neighbour came running past down the hill.

  I’d known Chaereas all my life — twenty-six years, in case you’re interested —

  and in all that time I’d never seen him run. It’d never have occurred to me that

  he was capable of it. As far as I was concerned, Chaereas slouched — quick

  slouch in the mornings, agonisingly slow slouch come evening, when he dragged

  his weary bones home again (and politeness demanded that if I met him on the

  track I had to walk the rest of the way with him, at his pace; and you know how