I didn't do that, of course. Instead, I got up, marched down the hall and stood next to the king. At that moment there was a really quite respectable fight going on in the middle, so everybody was watching that. I told King Leon I had an idea.
'Another one,' he grunted, but that was just show. Really I could've told him anything at that moment so long as it sounded like good news. 'Go on, then,' he said. 'What's in your heart today?' He paused and scowled. 'If it's a punitive action against the Triphylians, you can forget about it right now. My heart tells me we're not going to get mixed up in any more of your brilliant schemes. Promise.'
'How'd it be,' I said, 'if I told you I'd thought of a way to boost the prince's standing so much that Oeleus won't stand a chance, and help make good after the war into the bargain. And it's doing something the boy really is good at.'
'He's good at something? News to me.'
'Ah.' I smiled. 'That's because you don't watch him close like I do, you've got other things on your mind. I reckon I probably know him rather better than you do. His heart's quite easy to learn, you know, if you set your mind to it. And basically he's a good man. He needs the one big thing we've been talking about. Well, maybe I've found it.'
'Carry on,' King Leon said.
'Games,' I said. 'Specifically, the foot-race.'
He scowled. 'That's not enough,' he said.
'It will be,' I said, 'if we cook up the best set of games anybody's ever seen. Games so good people will be talking about them for years to come. All the best athletes in the world - except for footracers, of course,' I added. 'The boy's good but not that good.'
Leon thought for a moment. 'Right,' he said. 'And I suppose somebody really important and famous is going to drop handily dead just so you can hold these extra-special games of yours. Like me, for instance. Dream on, Cleander. I'm a good father, but there's limits.'
I shook my head. 'No,' I said, 'that's the clever thing. Not funeral games. Just games.'
'Just games? With nobody dead?'
'That's right.'
He looked at me. 'What a bloody stupid idea,' he said.
CHAPTER THREE
'Just a moment,' the Phoenician interrupted. 'When you say games-'
'Yes?' Palamedes replied.
'I'm sorry,' the Phoenician said. 'I don't understand.'
Palamedes looked blank, as if his face had just fallen off. 'You mean you don't know about games?' he said. 'That's strange.'
If he'd been trying his hardest to make his guest feel uncomfortable, he couldn't have done a better job. 'We don't have anything like that where I come from,' he said. 'I get the impression from what the blind - what Cleander was saying that it's some kind of contest or trial, to see who's the best at running and fighting sort of things.'
Palamedes took a deep breath and let it go again. 'You could say that,' he said. 'But it's still misleading, the way you put it. The games - now then, let's see. Don't you even have chariot races where you live?'
'Chariot races?'
'Obviously not. This is going to be really hard to explain. All right. We have a tradition that when a great, important man dies, we honour his memory with competitions - games - of various kinds, all basically to do with strength or agility.'
'Ah,' said the Phoenician. 'Training for war. We do that.'
'Not exactly,' Palamedes replied. 'I mean, they aren't supposed to be useful or anything. But it's a way of finding out who's the better man without actually having to have a fight to the death. It's a competition - like war - but nobody gets killed. At least, only very occasionally.'
'I see,' the Phoenician said, clearly not telling the truth. 'These games, then, they're the same sort of skill you need to be good at fighting, but they're not actually fighting exercises.'
Palamedes nodded eagerly. 'That's it,' he said.
'Except for the running, of course.'
'What?'
'Running,' the Phoenician said. 'I think you mentioned something about running competitions. Well, surely that's not a martial art you'd want to encourage, is it?'
Palamedes frowned. 'Don't think of it as running as in running away,' he said. 'There's more than one kind of running, you know. For instance, there's running after. Chasing the fleeing enemy. That's a martial skill for you.'
The Phoenician thought about it for a moment. 'I don't know spit about wars and fighting,' he said. 'For which, let me add, I'm truly thankful. But I remember being told a few years back that when the enemy are running away and you're chasing after them, it's a bad idea to have your best runners at the front of your formation; anybody who runs faster than the man next to him is a traitor, as well as an idiot. Go figure. He opens up a gap m the line, which puts everyone else in danger; then he gets killed himself. Anything apart from a short, orderly pursuit is just giving the enemy a chance to turn a defeat into a victory.' He paused. 'Why are you all looking at me like that?'
It was Cleander who broke the silence. 'We don't do things the same way you people do. Obviously.'
The Phoenician shrugged. 'All right,' he said. 'But these games of yours, I'm still not clear about what they're for. I mean, these running competitions. What happens?'
Palamedes frowned. 'You scratch a line in the dirt,' he said, 'and then you pace out a certain distance, and you scratch another line.
Or you can pile up stones, that's just as effective. The first man to get from one line or one pile to the other wins. Simple.'
'I suppose,' the Phoenician replied. 'But what do they get out of it? Apart from travelling a short way in an uncomfortable fashion?'
'Prizes,' someone said. 'There's always prizes for the winners of the games.'
The Phoenician nodded. 'That makes sense. Only didn't Cleander say just now that the prizes are nearly always junk? Things people are only too glad to get rid of?'
'That's not the point,' said somebody else at the other end of the table. 'It's not the prize that matters, it's the fact that you've won it. Shows that you won, therefore you beat a lot of other people, therefore you're better than they are.'
'At running,' the Phoenician interrupted.
'Sorry?'
'You're better than they are at running,' the Phoenician said. 'Not necessarily at anything else.'
The man who'd been trying to explain frowned. 'Well, all right. I suppose that's true, up to a point.'
'Where I come from,' said the Phoenician, 'we tend to pride ourselves on not running, if you see what I mean. We don't run away in battle, we don't run after the enemy when we've won. And offhand, I can't think of any other times when running is useful; so, if it's not useful, why is it a good thing to be better at it than anybody else?'
There was a moment of troubled silence. 'It's not just running,' someone said. 'There's jumping. Jumping's good if you need to cross a river, say.'
The Phoenician smiled. 'Where I come from,' he said, 'we build bridges.'
'Chariot races,' said someone else.
'Same goes for chariots as men on foot: you don't want them charging ahead, or it's asking for trouble. That battle Cratus told us about proves that, surely.'
Palamedes was scowling. 'All right,' he said, 'wrestling. And boxing. They're both useful skills. They teach you how to fight.'
The Phoenician sucked his teeth thoughtfully. 'I suppose so,' he said. 'But there's fighting and fighting. Fighting for your country in a battle, with weapons - yes, I can see why you'd want to practise that, because it's useful. But fighting not in a battle, without weapons? Seems to me the only time you'd do that is if you picked a fight with someone, a neighbour, say, or a stranger in the market you decided you didn't like. Fighting like that isn't useful to a city. Quite the reverse, really. I'd say it wasn't something you'd really want to encourage.'
Palamedes sighed. 'You're missing the point,' he said. 'We never said games were practice for useful skills. In fact, we agreed that a while back.'
'Yes,' replied the Phoenician smugly, 'but you did say that games were to fi
nd out who was the better man. And I said, better at what? Being better at something that's no use for anything -antisocial, even - doesn't really count for much. It's like me putting on airs because I'm so much better at picking my nose than you are.'
'I can see we haven't been explaining this right,' Palamedes said. 'In fact, my heart's telling me that maybe this is one of those things you can't really explain to foreigners.'
'What he means is,' Cratus interrupted, 'games, or winning at games, is a reason for remembering someone after he's dead and gone. At least, that's why people take part in them. They hope that by winning, they'll make themselves famous and glorious enough that people will remember their names.'
'I see,' the Phoenician said. 'So it's all about -' Here he said a word in his own language that nobody recognised. 'It means remembering the past,' he explained. 'Making a record of the past, in fact, so that the deeds of great and glorious men may never be forgotten, and so that people can learn from the mistakes made by their forefathers and not repeat them.'
'Exactly,' said Palamedes, relieved. 'That's exactly what the games are for. So that great runners and jumpers and wrestlers will be remembered.'
'And great nose-pickers too?'
'If you live in a place where nose-picking is considered a great skill, yes. Why not?'
The Phoenician nodded. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'I was just asking. Only, I don't think it's ever going to catch on where I live. Whereas our way of going about this same thing, I think that's going to spread, and one day everybody'll be doing it.'
'You mean writing,' Cleander broke in, 'what we were talking about earlier. The little marks and squiggles.'
'That's it.'
'Well,' Palamedes said, 'each to his own. You look for immortality by making little marks on waxed boards.'
'And you do it by running between piles of stones.' The Phoenician shrugged again. 'Like you said, each to his own. But one other thing. These games of yours - why do you only have them when somebody dies?'
The next moment, the Phoenician was wondering what it was he'd said that everybody found so funny. 'Please excuse us,' Palamedes said. 'Private joke. But that's a very good question you just asked. Why indeed?'
'Which is where I'd just got to,' Cleander added plaintively, 'before I was interrupted.'
'What a bloody stupid idea,' King Leon said (the blind man went on). 'Holding games when nobody's died.'
'I don't think so,' I replied.
'I do,' Leon said. 'Think about it, will you? You're out in the fields ploughing or running your sheep through the raddle, and a herald comes up to you and says, Drop everything, we're holding games. And you ask why, and the herald says, Because everybody's still alive. I know what I'd tell him to do, in those circumstances.'
I sat down next to him. 'Leon,' I said, 'you're looking at this the wrong way. Games are for celebrating, right?'
Leon nodded. 'To celebrate the glory of the dead man, and make glory for the living.'
'All right,' I said. 'And people like games, yes?'
'Of course,' he replied. 'Both watching and taking part.'
I smiled. 'Now we're getting somewhere,' I said. 'Of course, the trouble with most games is, only the people within a day's journey get to take part.'
'Well, of course. You can't leave dead bodies hanging about while you wait for people to arrive from all over.'
'Absolutely,' I said. 'But if you had games when nobody's died, you could send out heralds beforehand, well in advance; make sure that all the best games-players got to hear about it. If they knew all the other first-rank runners and jumpers and charioteers were going to be there, they'd want to be there too.'
Leon scratched his ear. 'I suppose they would,' he said. 'But you still haven't told me what the games would be for. I know, they're to celebrate. Celebrate what?'
I shrugged. 'Whatever you like,' I said. 'Elis. Prosperity.'
'What prosperity? It's been a bloody awful year for onions.'
'Tell people they're celebrating prosperity,' I suggested, 'and they'll assume they're prosperous. Or, if they aren't, everybody else is. It'll make people feel good about themselves, and in turn they'll feel good about you. And the kid.'
'All right,' said Leon slowly. 'But my heart can see what they'll be thinking: this is Leon, they'll think, trying to make us all feel good so he can palm his useless son off on us. And they'll be right, too.
'Fair enough,' I replied. 'All right, let's have games to celebrate the gods. Or just one god. Make it a festival.'
Leon sighed. 'Not another damned festival,' he said. 'There's too many as it is, if you ask me.'
'But none of them have games,' I replied artfully.
'That's a whatsitsname. Circular argument.'
'All right. But how about it?' I said. 'You send out heralds saying, Zeus has spoken to King Leon of Elis, promising prosperity and glory to him and his noble son. To celebrate, King Leon's marking the occasion with special games. Everybody's going to be there. If you heard that, what'd you do? Would you go?'
Leon nodded. 'Oh, of course I'd go. If only out of curiosity.'
'Well then.' I clapped my hands together triumphantly. 'There you are. I'll bet you, people will talk about nothing else for months beforehand, and years afterwards. And that's glory.'
Leon frowned. 'I suppose it is,' he replied. 'All right, I'll think about it in my heart. Though really, some god must have taken away my wits to let you talk me into anything after this damned war.'
'You think about it,' I said, standing up. 'That's all I ask.'
Well, he thought about it (Cleander continued), and I suppose some god must have put it in his heart to approve of the idea. Whether it was a good god or a mischievous one - well, you'll be able to judge for yourselves when I've done with this story.
First I heard of his decision was when the heralds came round the town-side fields calling everybody to Meeting. That was enough to cause a stir on its own; Meeting wasn't exactly a thing of the past back then, but there hadn't been one for years. Really, it's a throwback to the old Sons-of-the-Achaeans days, back when our grandfathers' grandfathers came down out of the north and pushed the Ionians out; in those days, so they say, they didn't have kings in the same way as we do now; the king was just one of the better sort chosen by the rest to be the leader in war and stuff, and if he wanted to do anything he had to call his peers together and ask them first. Doesn't sound a very efficient way of doing things, I know; but that's how we won the Peloponnese, apparently, so it must have worked for them.
Anyway. We all shuffled off to Meeting - years ago there was a special place set aside; by that time we remembered where it used to be, but a man called Coccys had built a house on it - and why not? Criminal to waste good land just for old times' sake. So we all hung around outside Coccys' house, wondering what to do next, until he came out and said why didn't we go through into his back orchard, it was big enough and we could sit under the trees in the shade. That sounded plenty good, so that's what we did.
Along came King Leon - it was a while before he showed up. Apparently he'd gone to the palace yard, expecting people to show up there, and stood around on his own for a while wondering why nobody else was there, till someone came and found him and told him what was going on. He had a short cloak on, and a spear and two dogs, like he was out for a day in the fields. Someone had told him that was the right way to show up for Meeting, but whether it's true that's how they used to do it, or whether someone was pulling Leon's leg, I don't know.
As soon as everybody had settled down - didn't take long, it was pleasantly warm and most people were feeling drowsy and content - he stood up on the back of Coccys' old apple-cart and started to talk.
'Friends,' he said (it should have been Sons of the Achaeans, but who cares?). 'I have something I want to share with you. Last night, some god came to me in a dream and told me that he was angry with us here in Elis.' That didn't go down well; people sat up and started to mutter, and Leon had to bang
on the cart-bed with his spear to get their attention. 'This god told me, "You Eleans don't seem to care much about us gods, which is why we punished you in the battle, giving victory to lesser men. We punished you, but you're slow, you haven't understood. So they sent me to tell you what you ought to be doing; and if you do as you're told, we'll be pleased and things will go well for you. If you don't - well, your hearts will tell you about it soon enough, believe me."'
Well, he'd certainly got their attention. I wouldn't have gone about it quite like that, of course, but Leon wasn't stupid, he knew about people.
"'What you've got to do," the god told me,' said Leon, "'is hold a festival." "Excuse me," I said, "but we hold plenty of festivals already; aren't they good enough?" "No," said the god. "Think about it for a moment. You think gods are so different from mortals that what bores you doesn't bore us? What makes you think we take pleasure from listening to a bunch of wool-stuffed old priests mumbling old poems? You've heard them all before a couple of dozen times; well, what about us? We've heard them thousands of times, and they weren't anything special to begin with. You wouldn't burn down a temple, would you? Of course not. But you want to talk about impiety; which is worse? Burning down a temple - well, you burn it down, you build it again, no skin off our noses, really. But wasting the time and patience of the gods - there's times we 're tempted to smash the lot of you with thunderbolts, just to make you shut up. That's the trouble with you mortals: you don't think."'
Olympiad Tom Holt Page 6
