by J M Alvey
I hurried to the theatre’s western entrance where I’d arranged to meet Zosime and Kadous. They were already waiting for me. Distant brass pipes and cymbals heralded the approach of the torch-lit procession as Kadous forced a path for us through the jostling crowd. We managed to cram ourselves onto the end of a bench, high up on the hillside.
The procession soon arrived. The well-born youths escorting the god’s statue answered cheers from the packed seats with raucous shouts. Their ribaldry was enough to make the bawdiest poet blush. Alongside those honoured to carry baskets holding more decorous offerings for the rituals, young men brandished oversized stuffed-cloth phalluses, to remind us how Dionysos’s displeasure could strike men down with sores and boils on our tenderest parts.
That was a warning of the risks of straying from the sanctified marital bed, so my mother told me and my brothers when we were still young enough for such mysteries to lie well ahead of us. Father was more inclined to joke quietly about being reminded not to drink too much wine. Either way, the god always has the last laugh at some over-cocky lad’s expense.
As the procession reached the theatre, some of the devotees’ gestures were comical, others merely obscene as they spilled across the dancing floor where the festival choruses would soon be performing. These young men had just been released from their teachers’ and trainers’ supervision at the gymnasium, or they were returning from garrison duty as newly minted soldiers. No wonder they were feeling a rush of blood at the prospect of a few days’ freedom amid the city’s entertainments and temptations.
While I clapped and cheered along with the crowd, all my attention was fixed on the battered wooden effigy on its slowly rolling carriage. It is so shapeless that it barely resembles a man except for the mask it wears, but that revered and ancient icon has epitomised Dionysos since the days when gods and heroes mingled with mortals. As a focus for my prayers to implore his divine favour, it was second to none.
The effigy was approaching the central plinth. The rites unfolded with pious prayers and generous libations as the sacred image was reverently manhandled into place. I didn’t take my eyes off it, silently beseeching Dionysos’s favour in return for all our dedication to the play. I was so lost in my thoughts that Zosime had to shake me to let me know that the crowd was starting to leave.
‘Sorry, yes.’ I shivered. The night was growing cold as the stars twinkled overhead. Recollection abruptly hollowed my stomach. ‘I’m supposed to meet Aristarchos. He said we’d pour a libation together.’
‘He’s down by the statue.’ Zosime pointed at a group silhouetted against the festival torches.
I stifled a sigh of relief as we made our way down to the dancing floor. I was less thrilled to recognise the two young men standing with Aristarchos, now released from their processional duties.
‘Who is this lovely lady?’ Hipparchos smiled lopsidedly and nearly dropped the festival phallus he held carelessly sloped over one shoulder like a spear. As he laughed uproariously I smelled the wine on his breath.
‘This is my companion, Zosime. My devoted companion,’ I said meaningfully. I didn’t want to insult Aristarchos by slapping down his son, but I didn’t want these young pricks thinking Zosime was fair game just because she wasn’t a citizen’s Athenian-born wife.
Nikandros laughed a little too loudly, holding up his hands in mock surrender and nearly dropping his own festival phallus. ‘Oops!’
Hipparchos giggled so convulsively that I thought he was going to throw up. Now I could guess what prompted my patron’s distaste for drunken young men carousing through the city.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ Aristarchos bowed courteously to Zosime before turning to the two youths. ‘If you’ll excuse us, we would like to make our own offering for our play’s success.’
Hipparchos might be stupidly drunk, but he understood that this was a command not a request. He managed to offer his father an unbalanced bow. ‘Then we’ll bid you good night.’
‘Good night.’ Nikandros ignored the rest of us as he bowed to Aristarchos with perfunctory respect. ‘I’ll see you – whenever.’
Hipparchos sketched a wave in the air and the pair of them headed unsteadily towards a knot of laughing youths loitering by the entrance. The gaggle greeted their friends, all gilded by the torchlight.
Aristarchos turned his back on them. ‘Lydis?’
The slave stepped out of the shadows. He held a jug of wine and a pouring cup. Dionysos only knows where he’d got them from.
The young men headed off for some fresh revelry. We were left surrounded by darkness only relieved by the pine-resin torch held by Aristarchos’s burly bodyguard. I felt a curious sense of isolation. Sounds of festivities down in the city seemed no more than the noise of the sea. It was as though we stood on the shore of a steep and rocky island, with the cliffs of the Acropolis rising behind us. The night air was fragrant with woodland scents rolling down from the thickets high on its slope.
Aristarchos stood silent, contemplative. Then he shook off his preoccupation. ‘You should do the honours, Philocles.’
I took the cup from Lydis and fought to still my trembling hands as the slave poured the wine. I dared not make a mess of this, overlooked by the city’s most sacred shrines. But what should I say? There are times when making my living from words is absolutely no help at all. I could only summon a heartfelt plea.
‘Master of comedy, look favourably on our efforts tomorrow. Everything we do is in tribute to you.’
As I spoke, I fervently hoped that everybody else, from Apollonides to Hyanthidas, was offering Dionysos the first taste of their wine this evening. I tipped the cupful over the statue’s plinth.
Aristarchos took the cup and made his own libation. ‘We can ask no more and we will do no less than our best. We swear it by all the gods and goddesses above and below.’
I looked up as I heard an owl’s faint call. The bird floated overhead on silent wings as it returned to its roost in the shadowy crags. An omen of good luck, but was it meant for us?
Aristarchos had heard it too. He gazed up at the star-strewn night sky. Then he looked at me and smiled. ‘We have a busy few days ahead of us. I think an early night would be wise.’
‘Indeed,’ I agreed.
We left the theatre and walked together in amiable silence along the path skirting the southern flank of the Acropolis, through the haphazard rebuilding by Athenians who’d reclaimed their looted homes as soon as the Persians retreated after we defeated their navy at Salamis.
Reaching the junction of the roads that led up towards the agora on the one hand and southwards out of the city on the other, we all halted.
‘Until tomorrow. Have a good evening.’ Aristarchos bade us both a courteous farewell before heading for home, flanked by his watchful slaves.
Chapter Seven
The first day of the Dionysia started very nicely for me. The bed frame creaked as Zosime rolled over and slipped her arms around my neck. Lithe and naked, she drew me close to kiss me long and hard. That wasn’t the only thing growing long and hard as I stroked her burnished copper skin, her firm buttock, her soft breast. She pressed herself against me as I teased her nipple with my thumb. As her hand slid down between us to encourage my arousal, I murmured my appreciation.
She pulled away and sat up. Opening the small chest beside the bed, she anointed a scrap of sponge and tucked it deep inside herself. Olive oil. Blessed Athena’s gift to our ancestors, which secures our eternal devotion. It’s the foundation of every meal, it heals and cleans our bodies and lights our homes after sunset. It’s the highest prize at the games held in our goddess’s honour and a man can be put to death for felling an olive tree. Finally, when the dregs of an amphora sour, Athena offers women one last boon. That oil can stop a man’s seed taking root in a fertile womb.
Neither of us wants a baby. We discovered we had that in
common when I came back to the pottery to buy a white flask for funeral rites. Her first and longed-for pregnancy had been the death of my younger sister. While Zosime sketched a likeness of Ianthine with her brush, she told me her mother had died in childbirth, labouring after a string of miscarriages in her determination to give Menkaure a son. I’ll leave raising the next generation of Athenian citizens to my brothers. Besides, any sons or daughters Zosime gave me would be bastards by Athenian law, with precious few rights or privileges. I won’t burden a child with that, any more than I’ll give up the woman I love.
Zosime straddled me. A few strokes of her oil-slick hand and she guided me inside her. As she leaned forward, I cupped and kissed her breasts and we lost ourselves in that bliss which the finest poets can’t hope to describe. A comedy scribbler like me shouldn’t even try.
No wonder I dozed off again. I only stirred when Zosime got out of bed and poured water into a wash-basin.
‘So what did Aristarchos have to say about the dead man, Xandyberis, last night?’
I recognised that tone. This wasn’t just some passing remark. I opened my eyes. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Did you tell him what the boy in the agora said? Surely you want to know why these Carians are so convinced that the Delian League’s levy will be reassessed?’ she challenged me.
I gazed at the ceiling. I did. I also wanted to know who’d killed Xandyberis, because I’d been thinking some more about why his corpse had been dumped at my gate. If his killers thought we’d already met, and that I’d accepted his commission, it would have been an emphatic warning for me to mind my own business.
I hoped that satisfied whoever was lurking in the shadows. Unless someone decided the benefits of shutting my mouth outweighed the risks of killing an Athenian citizen. I had better take care not to walk back from the city on my own after dark.
That wasn’t the only thing darkening my mood. ‘Our allies offer a tribute to Athena,’ I said curtly. ‘They’re not paying a levy.’
‘It might have been a tribute to Apollo when the League’s treasury was still in Delos,’ Zosime retorted as she washed herself briskly, ‘but that’s not how people outside Athens see it these days.’
I rolled onto my side, raised myself up on one elbow, and stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
She emptied the basin into the slop pail. ‘Ten years ago Pericles moved the League treasury to Athens. Then the city started building all these new temples even though that money’s supposed to be for ships.’
‘The people debated all the new building plans and voted to approve them,’ I protested.
‘The Athenian Assembly voted for Pericles’s plans,’ she countered, opening her clothes chest. ‘What about anyone in Naxos, or Thasos? When did the Samians agree?’
‘It was agreed when Callias made peace with Emperor Artaxerxes,’ I insisted.
‘Not according to everyone.’ Zosime shook out a length of pale blue wool. ‘Besides, how is that free and clear agreement? A man in the Miletus market place would have agreed to anything to end the war with Persia.’
‘It’s in everyone’s interests to honour Athena,’ I asserted. ‘Without her aid, the Persians would have conquered us all.’
‘Who can doubt it? But isn’t it still better to ask than just to take?’ Zosime changed her mind about the blue and pulled out a vivid red that my sisters would envy. With only herself and her father to spin and weave for, she can buy the costly dyed wools that my mother calls unnecessary extravagance.
‘Besides, it’s not only these new temples and the theatre and the Council Chamber, and whatever else Pericles has planned.’ She shook out the cloth. ‘People come here for the festivals and hear how ordinary Athenians are paid to serve in the Assembly and to sit on a jury. Where does all that money come from?’
‘From Attica’s silver mines in Laurium. Everybody knows that.’
‘Are you sure everyone believes it?’ Zosime cocked her head. ‘You don’t think that man in the Miletus market place wonders if the Archons are helping themselves to the Delian League’s money?’
You know that expression ‘lying like a Cretan’? Ever since meeting Zosime I’ve wondered who coined it and why, because she never spares me the most brutal truths.
‘All sorts of unfounded nonsense must slosh up and down the Ionian coast,’ I said crossly. ‘Who knows what garbled rumours get passed from ship to ship and from island to island?’
‘What’s that got to do with the price of fish?’ She folded over the top quarter of the red rectangle with a deft twist of her wrists. ‘This Xandyberis risked coming all the way here at the very start of the sailing season. He was ready to pay you to write him a speech, most likely out of his own pocket. Someone must have convinced him that the journey would be worth it.’
‘He had to come to the Dionysia regardless, to bring his town’s tribute and the armour they owe to Athena.’ I was still brooding over the notion that Ionians might suspect Athens of double-dealing. Surely everyone knows that anyone holding public office here faces a merciless audit at the end of their year’s service. No magistrate would dare to misappropriate funds, still less risk divine wrath by embezzling coin from Athena’s own temple.
‘Someone had to bring their tribute, but I’ll wager good money it didn’t have to be Xandyberis. A man of influence who could afford Persian shoes could have sent somebody else.’ Zosime wrapped the cloth around herself, trapping the fold loosely under her arms. ‘He came because he was certain he could ease the burden of the levy for his people. He risked his life on that voyage, Philocles. You’ve never been further than Boeotia. I still remember sailing here from Crete. The ship nearly foundered twice, and the captain said we only met summer squalls.’
I sat up, hugging my knees. ‘But who would tell such a lie and why?’
I could only think of reasons that might make a comedy plot. To get a stern father away from home so a feckless son could do something stupid. So everyone might believe the head of a household had drowned, until he returned to cause endless confusion. An old man might go on a journey to fake his own death before returning in disguise, to see if he was truly mourned. Instead, he’d find everyone celebrating. I should write those ideas down.
Zosime tugged up the fold of cloth to pin it on each shoulder with matching silver brooches. Now the loose fabric hung down to cloak her gorgeous breasts with a decorous double layer. ‘Maybe that boy you met in the agora has some answers.’
I doubted it. He looked the type to fight first and not bother with any questions later. Let’s hope he had some companions with cooler heads.
‘I wonder how many people are here from Pargasa. If Aristarchos can find out where the delegation is lodging, I’ll go and see them and ask a few questions. After the festival, though.’ I threw back the blankets.
Zosime made sure the unsewn cloth overlapped at her side and secured her dress with one of Epikrates’s best belts. It never ceases to impress me how quickly a woman can transform a simple length of cloth into an elegantly draped garment.
‘You know, there’s more to the Delian League than just fighting the Persians,’ I reminded her as I got up. ‘Settlers from Attica founded every town in Ionia, back in the days of the heroes. They all acknowledge Athens as their mother city. That’s why they begged us to lead the struggle against the Persian Emperor. Those new temples on the Acropolis honour that ancestral relationship. That’s why the first portion of their tribute goes to Athena and that’s acknowledged in the public record for all to see.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ She cocked her head, sardonic, as she donned the gold filigree earrings I’d bought her from a Carthaginian trader to celebrate my success at the Lenaia.
‘But don’t you see how many people are drawn here now we have peace?’ I refilled the wash-basin. ‘From all over Hellas. Not just masons and architects to build the new te
mples but all manner of craftsmen; sculptors, bronze-casters, goldsmiths—’
‘Potters and painters?’ Zosime raised her eyebrows. ‘What does my father’s decision to come here mean to some poor Carian struggling to feed his children on the other side of the Aegean?’
‘The harbours at Piraeus sees more ships come and go every year,’ I said with irritation as I washed. ‘That trade sends at least as much silver east as we see coming westwards. That’s not all Ionia gets from us. This Carian boy mentioned his town council? They make their own laws and manage their own affairs and they can thank Athens for that. Otherwise that young fool and his family would be crushed by some local tyrant ruling by whim and decree. Either that or an Imperial satrap would screw them for every last grain of their harvests, sending bushel baskets to feed Persia’s armies while their children starve.’
I warmed to my argument as I went to my own clothes chest to find the sage-green tunic my mother had woven and sewn, to be sure I looked respectable in front of the whole city today. ‘Do you suppose they’d have any right of appeal? Anyone who raises a hand under Persian oppression gets it chopped off. If he’s lucky. Otherwise it’s his head on the block. Those satraps keep order through fear, brutality and blood. But Athens is every Ionian’s mother city. They can all appeal to our courts if they feel local judgement is lacking. The humblest can stand before the Assembly and speak without fear or favour, to make their case when their tribute’s reviewed.’
‘Only if they can afford to travel to Athens!’
Zosime seemed determined to argue. I hate it when that happens. It’s not like quarrelling with my sisters or anyone else born and raised in Athens. I can read them like a freshly written scroll. Zosime though, she can be as impossible to understand as Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Thanks be to Athena, Kadous called us for breakfast. He’d already been out to buy honeycakes. As we sat and ate, I heard passers-by in the lane.
