by Corby, Gary
Me, a land owner. What would my father say when he learned that I’d brought a farm into the family? He thought I was doomed to poverty because no one could make investigation pay! I smiled to myself.
“Does this suit you?” Pericles asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“What? Oh, yes Pericles. It suits very well indeed. I agree.” I couldn’t wait to tell Diotima. She’d be proud when she heard how her husband was going up in the world.
“Good. I know you need to see the Basileus in the morning. Meet me tomorrow afternoon at my family estate. I’ll take you to your new property.”
THE BASILEUS HAS his being in the Stoa Basileus—the Royal Stoa, for Basileus means “king” in our language—in the top northwest corner of the agora, on the busiest intersection in Athens, where the Panathenaic Way meets the road to Piraeus. Displayed before the Stoa Basileus are the laws of Athens, chiseled into stone, that any man might see them. The Royal Stoa lies directly opposite the Crossroads Shrine, where dotted all around are busts of the god Hermes to bring good luck to travelers.
Clutched in my hand was the letter I’d begged from Pericles, which got me past the long, long queue of men who waited to do business with one of the busiest administrators in Athens. I ignored the dirty looks of those waiting and breezed right through the door to the outer office.
In the outer office, standing right in front of me, was Glaucon, who had been first to confess to killing Hippias.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted, before my thoughts could catch up with my mouth.
Glaucon looked sheepish. “I’m assistant to the Basileus,” he said.
So that was how he’d known to come see me so quickly. When I’d asked him, Glaucon had said that assistants talk. What he hadn’t said was that he was the assistant doing the talking. He probably knew I was to be given the assignment even before Pericles had spoken to me. In the race to be declared the killer of the tyrant, Glaucon had cheated. No wonder he’d cringed when I walked in.
“I’ve business with the Basileus,” I told him, and handed over the letter from Pericles. Glaucon barely glanced at it—he probably knew my business better than I did. He set aside the parchment and said, “The Basileus has someone with him now.” He made a mark on a wax tablet. “I’ll squeeze you in.”
“Thanks.”
While we waited, I said, “Glaucon, when the skull and the case arrived from Brauron, did you open the case?”
He blinked. “Of course. I always check anything sent to the Basileus. Otherwise, how would I know to prioritize his business?”
“How many scrolls were in the case when you opened it?”
“Four.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m fairly sure I can count to four.”
“Did you read them?”
“Only the first. When I saw who’d written it … well, you know.”
He’d had the same reaction as me.
“I took it in to the Basileus at once,” Glaucon continued. “I even interrupted a meeting to do it.”
“Oh? Who else was at the meeting?”
“Is this important?”
“It might be.” Whoever had been there would also know about the scrolls and the skeleton.
“I’ll have to check. If you’re lucky I’ll still have the appointments tablet for that day. Wait a moment.”
Glaucon opened a cupboard, in which were stacked piles and piles of wax tablets.
“We keep appointment tablets going back two months, then reuse them,” he explained. “You’re lucky this happened recently.” He mumbled to himself as he ran his finger down the stack, calling off the days of the month. “Noumenia, Second Waxing, Third Waxing … no, no, no, it was later than that … Tenth Waxing, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth … Ninth Waning, Eighth Waning, Seventh Waning. Here it is!” He pulled a tablet from close to the bottom. The whole stack fell out and smashed on the floor.
“Curse it!”
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Not your fault,” he said absently. “That always happens when I try to pull one from the bottom. I’ll get the slaves to clean it up.”
He opened the front door and yelled for a slave. One came running. Glaucon gestured at the tumbled pile without a word, and the slave knelt and got to work, shouting as he did for another slave to bring a basket.
I asked Glaucon, “Can the broken tablets be repaired?”
“Not a chance. We’ll have to buy new ones. It hardly matters.” Glaucon shrugged. “They’re paid for out of public money. There’s plenty more where that comes from.”
“What job did you say you were running for?”
“State treasurer.”
“Terrific.”
Glaucon ran his finger down the list in his hand. “Ah, here’s the answer to your question. The meeting when I walked in with the skull and case was to do with the next big public festival—that’s the Great Dionysia, where they put on all the plays. There was only one other man in the room. One of those writer types, a fellow named Aeschylus.”
At that moment the door to the inner office opened. A busy-looking man marched out. He passed right between Glaucon and me without acknowledging either of us, opened the outer door, and slammed it behind him.
Glaucon and I looked at each other. “The Basileus will see you now,” he said.
The Basileus is one of the three senior government officials whose job it is to run Athens day to day, the other two being the Eponymous Archon, who sees to citizen matters, and the Polemarch, who manages matters involving resident aliens in Athens. The Basileus sees to religious matters and public festivals. Basileus means king, but the man who holds the post is no royal. Like any other archon, he serves his year and then is done.
This year’s Basileus was a stern man who, like most archons, had rapidly thinning hair. Hair loss seemed to go with the job description.
He didn’t stand as I walked in. He remained seated on a wooden stool behind a small desk, his back ramrod straight. He frowned at the sight of me.
“Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus, of the deme Alopece, sir,” I said by way of introduction.
“I recognize you,” he said. “You’re Pericles’s little attack dog, aren’t you? The one he hired over the arrival of that bizarre skull.”
The Basileus gestured to one of the three camp stools on my side of the room. The legs of all three stools had been carved identically to resemble the legs of horses, and all ended in horses’ hooves. It was basic stuff, and it looked as if the Basileus had picked them up at an army-disposal sale.
I eased myself into the one he indicated, by no means certain it wouldn’t collapse under me, and realized at once why one of the most important administrators in Athens used such furniture. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable. The Basileus was a man who encouraged short interviews.
“I have a few questions,” I said, wriggling my bottom in search of comfort.
“Be quick.”
“There was a scroll case that came with the skull, sir.”
“Yes.”
“When you opened the case, how many scrolls were within?”
“Four. I recall thinking it was odd; that there seemed to be one missing. But then I thought perhaps Hippias never wrote a fifth scroll.”
“The space for the fifth scroll is marked like the others.”
“I can’t help you there.” The Basileus leaned forward and pointedly looked to the door. I pointedly ignored the hint. It occurred to me the Basileus could give me some background about what had happened to Hippias.
I settled back into the camp stool and asked, “What was your reaction, sir, when you saw the notes had been written by the old tyrant?”
“Indifference. That was all in the past. My job’s to deal with the present.”
“So you’re not concerned about tyrannies, sir? I would have thought anyone your age would be overwhelmingly concerned—”
The Basileus suddenly stood up, and though he wasn’t a tall
man, he seemed to tower over me. “I’m old enough to remember those days, young man,” he said. “I was there. I may have been only a small child, but even I knew enough to be afraid. Do you know what it means to go to bed not knowing whether you’ll wake to find your father has been taken away by soldiers in the night?”
“Er … no,” I said.
“I knew if it happened, I’d never see my sire again. My father’s fear was palpable, even when he sat in his own courtyard.”
“I wonder that anyone supported the tyrant.”
The Basileus snorted. “It’s very simple. In that situation, if you want to survive, then you do what you’re told. Especially if you’re not overwhelmingly interested in concepts such as freedom. Enough men acted to save themselves, and it swept along the rest, until only those bent on suicide dared resist.”
“Did your father resist, sir?”
“My father was one of those who valued his life. He saved himself by giving the tyrant mild support. Father held a few minor administrative posts under Hippias, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here today. I’m not proud of it, but it’s what happened. He was never actively involved in the killings, mind you! I want to emphasize that.”
The Basileus stood there and waited for me to comment. I considered my words.
“I see,” I said, slowly. “I suppose you might argue that the city has to be administered, even when the government’s bad.”
“Precisely. If you want the ones who freed us, then you need to speak to the Alcmaeonid clan.”
“The Alcmaeonids?”
“You know them well. They’re the family of Pericles on his mother’s side. It was they who fomented the second plot against Hippias, the one that finally succeeded. You young men admire Pericles for his voice, but we older men tolerate him because he has the finest pedigree of any man alive.”
I said, “Pericles’s parents and grandparents are all dead.”
“So they are. If you want to know about those times, the only man alive that you could ask is Callias.”
“Callias!” I repeated, shocked. I knew him.
“Yes. The family of Pericles instigated the rebellion, but it was Callias who funded it. He was in thick with the whole plot.”
THAT AFTERNOON, I took the road out of the Dipylon Gates, turned right, and walked to the family estate of Pericles. It was only a short distance, because the property had been there since time immemorial; the oldest families had the estates closest to Athens, and the family of Pericles was of the oldest, stretching back to the time of King Theseus and beyond.
Come to that, my own family was ancient too. Father claimed descent from Daedalus, the genius inventor who created the Labyrinth in far-off Crete, and who after the fall of King Minos had fled to Athens to begin a new life. The difference was, genius inventors don’t make money.
The road I walked followed Pericles’s land before reaching his farmhouse. I looked at the olive trees with interest, the sheep and the corn planted in the fertile soil, and I felt a glow of satisfaction that something like this would soon be mine. There was a shepherd boy trailing the sheep (of course, otherwise they would have wandered off), and I waved at him happily; he stared back as if no one ever waved at shepherd boys.
The farmhouse, when I came to it, lay off the road behind a stone fence and a wooden gate. The house surprised me in its small size, but then I reflected that Pericles spent all his time in the city, as indeed had his father before him, and the farmhouse probably hadn’t been updated for two generations. But the house and the barn beside it were well kept and spoke of proper care.
Pericles stood out the front, in conversation with an older man who was dressed in farm clothes, which is to say a loincloth and a broad-brimmed hat of straw. His skin was as burnt as my cooking.
As I walked up to them, Pericles said, without preamble, “Ah, good day to you, Nicolaos. This is Simaristos. He runs the estate for me. He’ll be coming with us.”
The older man nodded and said, “Call me Sim. Everyone does.”
No one had to tell me that Simaristos was a slave. No free man would willingly work for another, and Simaristos—Sim—had that air of hard-won competence that comes with a man who knows his business.
Pericles excused himself to see to other matters before we set off. Sim and I waited outside.
“Do you know anything about farming?” he asked, in a voice that implied he already knew the answer.
“I’m eager to learn,” I told him. After all, how hard could it be? Put seeds in the ground, watch them grow. If an uneducated farmer could do it, so could I.
Sim frowned. “Well, I hope you have more sense than my master.”
I blinked. “Pericles doesn’t have sense?”
“The man’s insane,” Sim said, and threw his arms up in disgust. “We lose money hand over fist. You want to know why? Because Pericles couldn’t be bothered with his own estate. This place is the source of his wealth, and he couldn’t give a rat’s ass. If it weren’t for me, he’d be broke.”
This was interesting stuff. I’d never before heard Pericles criticized, and certainly not by a slave. But this was no ordinary slave; Sim was entrusted with the good running of one of the most important estates in Athens.
“What does he do that’s so wrong?” I said. “I ask so I won’t make the same mistakes with my own land.”
“He insists we sell all our produce, at wholesale rates, mind you, and then buy what we need in the agora at retail prices. Can you believe it? May Zeus strike me dead if I lie. Dear Gods, I know of at least three occasions when my master has bought produce that he grew himself.”
Pericles walked up beside us as Sim finished his tirade. I wondered if he’d explode at hearing himself criticized by his own slave, but Pericles merely shrugged and said, “Running an estate this size is a full-time job. I have more important things to worry about.”
Sim said, “Master, I’ve told you before. You lose money every time you sell a basket of corn at wholesale rates and then buy another basket at retail. At least let me sort out what your family and the farm needs and set that aside.”
“No,” said Pericles. “Then I’d have to approve your choices, and I don’t have the time.”
This was a side to Pericles I’d never seen before: a man so engrossed in the running of Athens that he neglected his own business.
Pericles walked toward the fields. Sim and I followed.
I asked, “Where are we going?”
Pericles said, “I haven’t explained how I intend to do this, have I? Naturally I don’t have a spare farm in my purse, but this is a large estate, as you’ve seen. My plan is to apportion a part to you.”
Which meant I would become neighbor to Pericles.
We walked across the fields, through lush fields of barley. Presently I noticed a change in the land. It became harder, a trifle stonier, the vegetation more sparse.
We stopped at the foot of a large, barren hill.
“Here we are!” Pericles said in a jovial tone.
“This is it?”
We stood on stony, dry ground, with few bushes, but with straggly olive trees dotted about, so gnarled they looked ancient and ready to die. Among the trees was a small hut, so ill kept you could see through it where the wooden planks had rotted and fallen off.
This had to be the worst farmland in Attica. Pericles had tricked me.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” said Sim. He knew what I was thinking. “There are only the olive trees, no other plants, because we put lime here.”
“Lime?”
“Like from building sites. We get it cheaply and cart it in. Lime’s good for olives. Other plants don’t like it, though, so they don’t grow much.”
“You said you carted in lime,” I said to Sim.
“Yes.”
“How did you get it here?”
“How about … on a cart?” he suggested.
I didn’t own a cart. I’d have to get one. That would cost money. Of
course, for the moment we had Blossom and the cart he came with, but Blossom was only a rental; we’d have to give him back.
“That stony hill’s no problem, either.”
I looked at him blankly.
“All these stones on the ground around us rolled down from the hill,” Sim explained patiently. “It don’t mean nothing about what the soil’s like, though I’ll grant you”—he gave Pericles a hard look—“I’ll grant you it would stand a little hoeing. Also, the hill’s to the north.”
“That’s good?”
“That’s the direction the strong winds come from. That hill protects the land.”
“The trees are old,” I said.
“That’s a good thing too. Do you know how long it takes before an olive tree even begins to fruit? Thirty years. These old trees have been making olives for a hundred years or more, and they’ll still be doing it when your grandkids are climbing the branches.”
Until this moment I’d given no thought to what sort of farm Pericles might be offering. I knew nothing about olives.
“I’m not sure about this, Pericles,” I said, and rubbed my chin.
“You’re not pleased?” Pericles said in a hurt tone, as if he were somehow shocked that I might be unhappy with the worst farm in Attica.
“What am I supposed to do with a bunch of old olive trees?” I said.
“Sell the olives, of course.”
“How?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Nicolaos,” Pericles said. “Athenians buy olives by the bushel every day.”
I thought of all the olives my own mother bought, which we ate every day. “I suppose that’s true,” I conceded.
“There’s always a market for olives,” Pericles said.
“The master’s right,” Sim said. “Of course, olives are a low-margin crop.”
“Now, Sim, we don’t need to go into that,” Pericles chastised his head slave.
“Lots of supply, you see,” said Sim, ignoring his master. Or more accurately, not even hearing him. Sim was a complete expert on farm economics, and like any expert, once he got going on his favorite subject he couldn’t be stopped. He said, “It keeps the price down when there’re lots of sellers.”
