The Athenian Women

by Alessandro Barbero

  “What are you doing to her?” Glycera asked immediately.

  “The same thing we’re going to do to you,” Cimon answered curtly.

  Now Charis had fallen silent. Instead, they heard Cratippus shout, a choking shout that ended in a sort of sob. Then they heard Charis weeping.

  “Lie down on the floor,” ordered Cimon. “Lie down on the floor!” he said again, because the young woman hadn’t moved. Glycera got on her knees, then lay down on her belly. The floor was ice cold.

  Cimon looked around in search of the cane that he’d used earlier. He found it and stepped closer to the young woman on the floor.

  “Hold her wrists,” he told Argyrus.

  Just then, Charis emerged from the room. Her teeth were chattering and she kept looking around as if she had no idea where she was. There was blood on her thighs.

  “Can I wash myself? Will you give me some water?” she whispered. Her voice didn’t sound like her at all.

  Glycera got up on her knees.

  “What have you done to her!”

  “Stay down, you!” Cimon shouted. Glycera ignored him, got to her feet, and went over to Charis.

  “What did they do to you! You bastards, her father is going to kill you!” she said furiously, looking Cimon in the eye.

  For an instant they stared at each other in silence, their eyes filled with hatred. Charis still kept crying and muttering something, but no one paid her any mind. Argyrus, his head spinning, had sat down again. In the next room, Cratippus could be heard humming a tune.

  “Her father won’t even let her in the house, now that we’ve thrown her this little party,” Cimon said with a twist of malice. “And yours will do the same. You’ll die in the streets, you’ll come back to us begging us to keep you from starving to death.”

  Glycera, her face aflame, shook her head.

  “You’re wrong. Our fathers will find you and they’ll kill you, and they’ll give your flesh to your father to eat, and then they’ll kill him and everyone like you, and they’ll burn this house down, with everything in it, all the goods piled up in that storeroom, and they’ll kill your horses, too, and your Zeus Karios won’t be able to protect you, because you violated the obligation of hospitality to those you took in under his roof.”

  In spite of himself, Cimon felt a shiver run down his back. He turned toward the hearth: the statue of Zeus Karios was still there, it hadn’t moved.

  “You’re going to die,” said Glycera, ferociously. The hairs stood up on Cimon’s head. The naked young woman threatening him in the darkness, illuminated only by the flames in the hearth, seemed to have come from another world. Cimon still had the cane in his hand, and he lunged at her with it. The young woman eluded his grasp, and he was forced to chase her around the hearth.

  “You’re going to die,” Glycera said again.

  “You’re going to die first,” said Cimon. “You asked for it. Argyrus, help me catch her!”

  Argyrus lifted himself up on one elbow. He didn’t feel at all well, but he understood that he couldn’t shirk his duty.

  “I’m coming!”

  They chased her from one end of the house to the other. Glycera didn’t know her way, and she finally let herself be trapped in a corner.

  “You’re all going to die!” she said again, defiantly, until a fist shut her mouth. Cimon shoved her to the floor and went on hitting her furiously; then he stopped, panting, and pulled her up by her hair. Her face was covered with blood, her eyes were swollen. Cimon spat in her face, then dropped her roughly to the floor again.

  “Go get some rope.”

  “Where am I supposed to find it?” Argyrus retorted, rebelliously.

  Cimon snorted in annoyance, went back to the room with the hearth, and searched until he found the rope they’d used to tie up Glycera when they’d beaten her.

  “Come on, let’s tie her hands together.”

  It was dark and they couldn’t see a thing. Glycera, in spite of the beating she’d taken, continued to struggle.

  “Let’s drag her in there!”

  They seized her by the feet and dragged her screaming over to the hearth.

  “And hold her still!”

  Argyrus sat down on the young woman’s belly, held her face still because Glycera kept trying to bite, while Cimon started binding her wrists.

  “Now you’ll see who’s going to die,” he hissed, ferociously.

  19

  When they were done singing, the chorus flashed their asses at the spectators, then trotted off into a corner. The music hovered in the air for a few more instants, and then died away. There followed a moment of silence. Only then did most of the audience realize that the slaves who had accompanied the two ambassadors were sprawled out against the wall of the Acropolis, snoring loudly and blocking the passageway.

  From inside came a drunken voice.

  “Open the door!”

  The door opened partway and the Athenian ambassador appeared, framed in the doorway, with the garland askew on his head and a burning torch in his hand; but in order to get out, he would have to step over the sleeping men. He tried, cautiously, but started staggering and was forced to brace himself against the doorjamb.

  “Do you want to get out of the way?” he shouted. “And what are you doing clustered around here? Look out or I’ll burn you all with my torch!”

  He waved the flaming brand in the air; with shrieks of terror, the slaves scampered away on all fours. The ambassador turned to speak to the audience.

  “I know that this is a common bawdy scene! I didn’t want to do it. But if we’re going to have to stoop this l-l-low to am-m-muse you, then s-s-so be it!” he stammered, falling into the confusion of those who’ve had too much to drink.

  A few in the audience laughed, uneasily. So the author’s even mocking us! And we who paid good money to come here and be mocked—okay, let’s face it, for most of those here it’s a free coupon, and the city foots the bill, but what’s the difference, it’s still the people’s money! No, let’s admit it, this Aristophanes is a hardened aristocrat!

  “That’s f-f-f-fine with us, t-t-too!” one of the slaves replied, mocking him.

  The ambassador staggered again, visibly drunk, and came dangerously close to setting himself on fire.

  “D-d-do you w-want to get out of here? You’ll miss your hair when it’s gone!” he threatened, holding the flame close to the heads of the actors within reach. Panic and headlong flight.

  “G-go on, let the Spartans out, now that we’ve fed them to bursting!”

  Once he’d cleared the doorway, the ambassador turned to speak to the audience again, little by little losing his drunken tones.

  “I’ve n-n-never seen such a ba-banquet in all m-m-my days. The Spartans are so likable! And we, with our wine, become perfect hosts. It makes perfect sense: when we don’t drink, we don’t function all that well. If I can talk the others into it, we’ll always and only send drunken ambassadors to the other countries. Now, whenever we go to Sparta without drinking, we start arguments right away: we don’t even listen to what they have to say, and what they don’t say we imagine just as we please, and when we get back home we twist it all into a completely different picture. Instead, this time we liked everything: if someone sang the song wrong, we applauded just the same!”

  While the ambassador was speaking, the slaves had come back, clustering around him in silence. When he noticed them, he flew into a rage.

  “But j-just look at these slaves, they’re back! It’s going to end badly with you, you jailbirds!”

  The Old Man, from below, warned him.

  “By the gods, look sharp, they’re coming out!”

  The Spartan ambassador came teetering out of the Acropolis. He looked around in search of the flautist, and after a good long while finally spotted him sitting in his corner, benea
th the statue of the god.

  “K-kome on, my dear friend, start playing the flute, bekause I vish to dance and zing, in honor of the Athenians and of us all!”

  “Yes, by the gods, get busy with the flute, because I love to watch you dance,” the Athenian agreed.

  As far as they could tell, the Spartan too had drunk quite heavily; but as soon as the flautist began playing his piece, the Spartan began to dance as light on his feet as a young girl. While the audience followed him in rapt silence, he began to sing in his native dialect. He invoked the goddess of Memory, Mnamouna, begged her to help him to sing the great days of the war against the Persians, when the Athenians defeated the barbarians at the Battle of Artemisium and the Spartans—but the singer said “we”—fought at the Battle of Thermopylae under the command of Leonidas, “gnashing our teess like zo many varthogs,” against enemies more numerous than the grains of sand in the sea. Then he addressed the virgin huntress, Artemis, and implored her to protect the new peace, to ensure it would endure for many years, restoring friendship and abundance. Not a sound could be heard throughout the theater. Many listeners had tears welling up in their eyes, and no one remembered that until just an hour before that same accent had sent shivers down their spines. No one took offense at the fact that the singer said Asana instead of Athens, and Artemitium instead of Artemisium. When he finished imploring the goddess to come amongst them—“oh, kome, here in our midst, kome, virgin”—the theater burst into a roar of approval. The people shouted, clapped their hands, and stamped their feet, and in their enthusiasm many of them rose to their feet. Everywhere, shouts of protest erupted: Sit down! Sit down! We can’t see a thing!

  Truth be told, you couldn’t see much anyway, because in the meantime the sun had set, and only the ambassador’s torch had made it possible to illuminate the Spartan’s nocturnal dance. But the thrills weren’t over; and more than one of those in the audience later remembered that evening with a mixture of envy and resentment, as the time that the rich man who had chosen to fund the play really decided to outdo himself. Because as soon as the clamor of the audience died down, the Athenian declared: “All right then, seeing that it’s all been done as it ought, take away your women, o Spartans! And you lot, the other women. Every man next to his woman, and every woman next to her man; and for a happy ending, let us dance for the gods, and let us all promise never to make the same mistake again.”

  The Athenian fell silent, and his torch suddenly went out. Oh! murmured the audience in surprise. But a torch was lit in the hands of each chorus member, and the astonished audience saw that the chorus had once again changed costumes. The chorus was again split in two, again composed of twelve men and twelve women, but this time in couples, husbands and wives. On one side, Spartans with red uniforms and unkempt mops of hair, their women on their arms, and on the other side, Athenians, also with their women on their arms. As soon as the exclamations of surprise died down, the Athenian chorus began to sing. They repeated the Spartan invitation, invoking Artemis, and Zeus and his wife Hera, and especially Bacchus, the god who was being celebrated at that festival, the patron of the Wine Press. Dancing faster and faster, as if possessed by the god, the members of the chorus finally called upon Aphrodite, so that she, more than any other deity, the goddess of love and sex, might protect the peace. And they ended by emitting long rhythmic screams that always accompanied Bacchic dances. The crazed audience sang along with them; but Aristophanes still wasn’t done. The dancing and singing ended suddenly. The bewildered audience went on ululating for a short while, then fell into a puzzled silence; whereupon the Athenian ambassador shouted from the stage: “And now, Spartan, a new song!”

  And now it was the Spartan chorus that sang. They invoked the Spartan Muse, begging her to leave the beloved mountains of Sparta and come there, to celebrate in a single song both the goddess Athena, Queen of the Acropolis, and the Dioscuri, protectors of Sparta, who splash about in the waters of the river Eurotas. Stamping their feet rhythmically in a Spartan dance, to the repeated cry of eia!, the chorus members ensured the astonished Athenian audience that they yearned to sing to Sparta, friend of the gods, evoking the young Spartan women who danced like sprightly fillies on the banks of the Eurotas, kicking up dust and shaking their long hair. They then ended with the Spartan song that addresses the girl directly, inviting her to knot her gleaming hair, to leap on her heels like a deer, all in a thick Spartan accent, to tap her feet to the rhythm in honor of the goddess; but while the Spartan song was addressed to Artemis, the chorus ended their song, in the thickest Spartan accent imaginable, in honor of the goddess of the Akropolis: your goddess Asana.

  The Asanasi, that is, the Athenians, lost their minds once and for all. Aristophanes had run a serious risk: if he’d ended with the Athenian chorus, his triumph would have been assured. But the poet liked running risks. When the Spartan chorus started the last song, at first the audience was baffled, wondering whether that wasn’t a bit much; but the rhythm of the song was such—and truth be told, they know how to dance and sing, those blessed Spartans, nobody can deny it!—that it eventually swept everyone up; and when the Spartans concluded by invoking Athena, it brought the house down. More than one in the crowd that night came home hoarse from shouting too loud and too long, and the next morning the theater attendants saw that many wooden bleachers were no longer solidly fixed in place. Aristophanes, in the house, shut his eyes and heaved a sigh; his heart was racing wildly. The actors and the chorus came rushing in, still in the frenzy of the dance, laughing and talking all at once. The two competitors who were going to stage their comedies tomorrow and the next day, sitting in the front row next to the priest of Dionysus, exchanged a glance and gritted their teeth. Everybody knows that an audience’s tastes are fickle, tomorrow they might no longer think what they thought today, but still . . .

  While the people excitedly exited the theater, a flash of lightning lit up the horizon.

  “It’s not going to rain, is it?” said Thrasyllus.

  “We’d better hurry up and get on the road,” said Polemon.

  Thrasyllus gave him a quizzical glance.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “What if we went to get something to drink? Tonight the wine shops are open until late.”

  Polemon hesitated.

  “But it’s about to start raining.”

  “Exactly! We can wait until it stops.”

  “But it might rain all night long!”

  “Listen,” said Thrasyllus. “Tonight I don’t feel like going back to the countryside. All right? I’m a country boy, living in the country is my very existence, I’m not at my ease when I’m far away from the vineyard, all those times that the war forced us to evacuate, I’ve always been consumed with yearning and nostalgia, but tonight we’re here in the city and I want to go and drink and hear what people have to say about this junk that we just watched.”

  “What do you mean, this junk?” Polemon immediately took offense. “You’re not going to tell me you didn’t like it!”

  “I don’t know if I liked it,” Thrasyllus provoked him.

  “You must be joking! I’ve never seen anything as good as that, never. Even just the story of the women and how they . . . ” Thrasyllus interrupted him, mischievously.

  “Listen, old man, what do you say we continue this conversation at the wine shop? What if I tell you that I’ve got an urge to pretend that we’re young again!”

  Polemon gave up.

  “All right! But the girls will be worried.”

  Thrasyllus shrugged his shoulders.

  “This evening they explained to us that we have to obey our wives, but they didn’t say anything about our daughters, thanks be to the gods.”

  The first drops were starting to fall, and the exit from the theater turned into a general rout.

  20

  Cratippus walked whistling out of the room and saw Glycera kickin
g and struggling on the floor and his friends tying her wrists, and Charis, dazed, sobbing next to the hearth.

  “Hey, you! I’m not done with you yet,” he said. “Come here!”

  Charis drew closer, drying her tears.

  “Turn around!”

  The young man grabbed her and forced her to bend over.

  “It hurts me, don’t do it to me again,” Charis implored.

  “No, no, I’m not going to do it to you again, this time we’re going to try something else, you’ll see,” said Cratippus. His eyes were gleaming.

  “Cimon! Do you have a cane, or anything?”

  “A cane?” Cimon was confused. He’d allowed himself to be distracted for an instant, but that was enough: hands tied, Glycera wriggled away, leapt to her feet, ran straight at Cratippus, and clawed at him. Cratippus was still naked; he leapt backward shouting in surprise, fended her off with a kick, then stared down at the bloody scratch marks on his chest.

  “By the gods, can’t you hold her still? And tie her legs!” he ordered.

  Cimon grabbed Glycera, shoved her onto the floor, sat on her, and punched her in the mouth, twice, three times, until she lay still.

  “Give me a strap!”

  Easy to say, but there was no strap in sight. Finally one was found. Cimon bound her ankles.

  “You’re all going to die!” Glycera said again, mad with rage and pain.

  “We’ll see about that!” chuckled Cratippus. “Come on, then, a cane, a ladle, a spoon!”

  He went into the kitchen, they could hear him rummaging around in the utensils.

  A plate hit the floor and broke into a dozen pieces.

  “Hey! Don’t wreck the house, or I’ll catch hell from my father,” Cimon grumbled.

  “Found it!”

  Cratippus reappeared with a wooden pestle in one hand.

  “This is what we need. Come here, you!”

  Charis, terrified, shook her head, and flattened herself against the wall.