Owls to Athens

by Harry Turtledove

  “I see,” Menedemos said. “But isn’t Demetrios son of Antigonos a Macedonian, too?”

  “Well, what if he is?” the slave woman asked in return. “He said we’re going to be free, so of course I’d rather see him than Demetrios of Phaleron.”

  She herself was unlikely to be free no matter which Demetrios called the shots in Athens. Would the polis be free? She certainly seemed to think so. By the excited chattering all around, so did a lot of the Athenians. To Menedemos, their optimism only proved they hadn’t been free for a long time, and weren’t very good at gauging what promises were worth. Demetrios son of Antigonos would promise anything to win the Athenians over, just as Menedemos might to coax a girl into bed. Delivering afterwards? That was liable to be a different story.

  Menedemos shrugged. The only thing he could do now was try to stay out of the way of Macedonian soldiers, no matter which marshal they claimed as their master. He went back to haggling with the slave woman. At last, they reached a price that satisfied both of them. She went off to get the silver from her mistress.

  She came back with it herself, instead of bringing along an enormous Keltic body servant. Menedemos thought that wise. Before long, soldiers loyal to Demetrios son of Antigonos would be coming into the agora. They were liable to react to an enormous Kelt the way hounds reacted to a boar.

  Sure enough, Demetrios’ soldiers did enter the agora later that afternoon. They seemed more travelers than warriors, though. Some of them gaped at the buildings lining the south and west sides of the market square. Others craned their necks to peer up at the even more magnificent buildings of the akropolis. A whiff of panic swept through the agora when they first appeared. As soon as the merchants found out they weren’t intent on rapine and murder, the panic blew away. The Athenians started trying to sell them things instead.

  So did Menedemos. He held up one of his little jars. “Perfume! Fine perfume from Rhodes, island of roses! Make some Athenian girl glad to see you when you give her perfume!”

  A soldier came over to him, “How much?” he asked. Menedemos told him. He scowled, then tossed his head. “You’ve got to be joking, pal. I can pay a platoon of Athenian girls to be glad to see me for that kind of money.”

  “Ah, but the ones you get with this are worth a platoon of the ordinary sort,” Menedemos said.

  “Some are better in bed than others, sure,” the soldier said, “but none of ‘em’s that much better,” Menedemos did not make a sale.

  When he got back to Protomakhos’ house as the sun was going down, he found Sostratos had news: “They’ve dug a trench around the fortress in Mounykhia. None of Kassandros’ men gets out,”

  “You think the fortress will fall?” Menedemos asked.

  “I don’t see how it can do anything else,” his cousin answered. “No sign of Demetrios son of Antigonos in Athens yet, either. Maybe he does keep promises. Wouldn’t that be strange?”

  “I wish he would come,” Menedemos said. “We’ve still got some wine and truffles and perfume left. He’s Antigonos’ son. He can’t be poor. Maybe he’ll buy things now that the other Demetrios has fled.”

  “Maybe he will, or maybe his officers will,” Sostratos said. “I certainly hope so. Right at the moment, they’re besieging some of our best

  customers.”

  “Rude of them, isn’t it?” Menedemos remarked.

  Sostratos raised an eyebrow. “That’s one way to put it, yes.”

  The Rhodians kept trying to do business in Athens, but nobody seemed eager to spend much silver—or perhaps to show much silver— till people saw what sort of master Demetrios son of Antigonos would make. The siege of the fortress at Mounykhia went on. Every so often, a few men came in or went out during brief truces. People said Dionysios, the commander, was dickering with Demetrios over surrender terms. Menedemos had no idea how the people who said that knew it, but say it they did.

  Demetrios didn’t need all the soldiers he’d brought along to maintain the siege. He sent others west to Megara, to take that polis away from Kassandros. In the earlier days of Hellas, Megara was a prominent polis, but the rise of Athens eclipsed it. Its walls didn’t hold Demetrios’ men out for long. Only pleas from Athens to spare a former rival kept the city from being plundered.

  Protomakhos, who brought word of that to Menedemos and Sostratos, went on, “Demetrios has some sense of what looks good in the eyes of Hellenes. That’s probably why he spared the place,”

  “That’s more than his father does,” Sostratos said. “Antigonos is like a shark. He’ll bite off your leg first and worry about what you think of it later.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Protomakhos agreed. “But Demetrios is smoother than that. He asked Stilpon the Megaran philosopher if any of his men had robbed him, and Stilpon answered, ‘No, I haven’t seen anybody carrying away any knowledge,’”

  Menedemos and Sostratos laughed. Menedemos said, “Demetrios didn’t stop all the plundering, from what I’ve heard. His men might have left the Megarans their immovable property, but they did steal most of the slaves in the town, maybe for themselves, maybe to resell to dealers.”

  “I heard the same thing,” the Rhodian proxenos said. “As Demetrios was heading out of Megara, he told Stilpon, ‘I leave this a city of free men.’ And StOpon answered, ‘I should say you do, for you’ve taken all our slaves.’”

  “Talking back to the man who’s just captured your city takes nerve,” Menedemos said. Protomakhos dipped his head.

  Sostratos asked, “If Demetrios has left Megara, where’s he going?”

  “That I don’t know,” Protomakhos answered, “Wherever he can give his foes—and his father’s—the most trouble, is my guess.”

  But that guess proved wide of the target. Sostratos was the one who found out what Antigonos’ son had been up to after leaving Megara. A few days after Protomakhos brought the news of Demetrios’ departure, Sostratos said, “He’s gone to Patrai, or rather, just outside of Patrai.”

  “To Patrai!” Protomakhos exclaimed. “That’s well west of Corinth, isn’t it?—on the north coast of the Peloponnesos. What made him go there?”

  “Not ‘what,’ O best one—’who,’” Sostratos answered. Something in his voice made Menedemos look up sharply. His cousin wasn’t looking his way, but out of the andron and across the courtyard. Still, Menedemos sensed that Sostraios was really talking to him as he continued, “It seems Kratesipolis invited him to pay her a call.”

  Menedemos knew the name. Still, he thought it best to let Protomakhos be the one who responded. Respond the Rhodian proxenos did; “The woman who was ruling Sikyon, not far from Patrai, not long ago?”

  “That’s the one.” Sostratos dipped his head. “She’s the widow of Alexandras son of Polyperkhon, and she’s still supposed to be a famous beauty.”

  “Polyperkhon didn’t amount to much, did he?” Menedemos remarked. No one could possibly have argued with him; the Macedonian officer, a man of the generation of Antigonos and, indeed, of Philip of Macedon, had ruled varying chunks of Hellas since not long after the death of Alexander the Great, but he’d never managed to make himself a major player in the wars of the Macedonian marshals.

  “No, my dear, but the story’s about his daughter-in-law—and about Demetrios,” Sostratos said. “He went after her like a hound after a hare. He dashed off to Patrai with just a few officers, and when he got there he set up his tent well apart from theirs. He wanted to have a ... private visit with Kratesipolis.”

  “He’s a young man, isn’t he? The age of you two Rhodians, more or less?” Protomakhos chuckled reminiscently. “When you’re that age, a lot of the time, your spear stands and you just have to flesh it in piggy—or you think you do, anyhow.”

  Now Menedemos was the one who gazed out at the courtyard as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. If Protomakhos suspected . . . But he didn’t seem to. Sostratos’ voice still held that sharp edge as he went on, “Demetrios almost paid for his folly wit
h his neck, too. Some of Kassandros’ men got word he was there, and he barely escaped them when they came to call.”

  The story wasn’t about adultery. How could it be, with Kratesipolis a widow? But it was about a man doing something stupid on account of a woman and almost dying on account of it. Just for a heartbeat, Menedemos’ gaze flicked toward Sostratos. His cousin looked almost indecently smug. Yes, he’d enjoyed telling it, sure enough.

  Blind—fortunately—to the byplay, Protomakhos said, “Maybe Demetrios has learned his lesson. Maybe he’ll come back here and finish off the siege down at Mounykhia. By Zeus, I hope so. Business won’t get back to normal till he does.”

  “I hope he does, too,” Sostratos said. “But somebody who’s mad for women like that, he’s liable to keep right on doing crazy things as long as he lives.” No, he wasn’t looking at Menedemos. But he was talking to him.

  “Well, I won’t say you’re wrong,” Protomakhos replied. “Whether he’s mad for women or not, though, the way he got into our harbors shows he’s a pretty good general.”

  “That’s true,” Sostratos said. “The way he relieved Ptolemaios’ siege of Halikarnassos a couple of years ago, too.”

  He got in another jab there, though again not one Protomakhos would notice. Menedemos couldn’t think of Halikarnassos without thinking of the trouble he’d wound up in there on account of that merchant’s wife. He glanced over to Sostratos once more. His cousin had had things all his own way lately when it came to giving. Menedemos knew that was his own fault; his affair with Xenokleia had given Sostratos plenty of openings. But that didn’t mean Menedemos wouldn’t enjoy revenge. Oh, no, it didn’t mean that at all.

  Demetrios’ men pummeled the fortress at Mounykhia with dart- and stone-throwing engines. Trapped inside the fort, Dionysios and the garrison fought back as well as they could. But they were badly outnumbered, and the catapults made going up on the battlements worth a man’s life. A few days after Megara fell, Demetrios’ men stormed the stronghold. The Macedonians inside threw down their weapons when they saw they couldn’t hold off their foes; Demetrios’ soldiers took Dionysios alive.

  And then, instead of garrisoning the fortress at Mounykhia themselves, Demetrios’ men started tearing it down. That impressed Sostratos more than anything else they’d done. “Maybe Demetrios really means it when he says he wants Athens to be free and independent,” he remarked at supper the day after the fortress fell. “Who would have believed that?”

  “Not me,” Protomakhos said, nibbling at an eel. “I just thought we’d go from one foreign overlord to the next. How about you, Menedemos?”

  “Me? I just hope we’ll be able to get some business done now,” Menedemos said. “I let Sostratos worry about the political side of things. He’s the one who enjoys fretting over things he can’t change.”

  That held more venom than Menedemos usually used to charge his words. Sostratos wondered what he’d done to irritate his cousin. He couldn’t think of anything. He’d just been himself... hadn’t he?

  Before he could fix on anything he might have done, Protomakhos said, “They say Demetrios will finally enter the city day after tomorrow to address the Assembly and make everything official.’’

  This time, Sostratos didn’t quibble about what they, whoever they were, might say. What the proxenos reported sounded too likely for him to quarrel with it. Sostratos did ask, “Is there any way a foreigner could join the Assembly when Demetrios speaks to it? I’d love to hear that with my own ears.”

  “I doubt they’ll be taking roll, not for a meeting like this,” Protomakhos replied.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Sostratos said eagerly. “Want to come, Menedemos?” He tried to sound as friendly as he could.

  His cousin started to toss his head, but then shrugged instead. “Well, why not?” he said. “A lot of the people I’d want to see would be at the meeting anyhow.”

  The Assembly met in the theater, not far from Protomakhos’ house. The proxenos and the two Rhodians left his home early, as they’d done to see the tragedies and comedies. Even so, the theater was already more than half full by the time they got there. For one thing, admission to the Assembly was free. For another, after so long obeying Demetrios of Phaleron and, through him, Kassandros, the Athenians seemed eager to reclaim their freedom. That struck Sostratos as a good omen.

  As the dawn brightened and the sun finally rose, a man strode importantly across the stage. People pointed at him and exclaimed to one another. Sostratos nudged Protomakhos. “Who is that? I don’t recognize him.”

  “That’s Stratokles, by Zeus,” Protomakhos answered. “Demetrios could have started better.”

  “Why?” Sostratos pricked up his ears at the hint of scandal. “Who is he? What has he done?”

  “He’s a debauched, arrogant buffoon,” Protomakhos said. “He played at politics before Demetrios of Phaleron’s day, and none too well. He used to keep a hetaira named Phylakion. One day she brought back some neck bones and brains from the agora for a supper, and Stratokles said, ‘Here are the things we political men play ball with.’”

  Sostratos made a disgusted noise. Menedemos said, “Lovely fellow!”

  “Isn’t he?” Protomakhos dipped his head. “And then there was the time the year after Alexander died, when the Macedonians beat our fleet off Amorgos. Stratokles got word of the sea fight first somehow, and told everyone it was a victory. He put on a garland and proposed a sacrifice to the gods and a distribution of the meat. Then a couple of days later the truth reached the polis. Everyone started cursing him, and he said, ‘Why blame me when I made you happy for two days?’”

  “Lovely fellow indeed,” Sostratos said.

  He would have said more than that, but Stratokles spoke then; “Men of Athens, it is my great privilege to present to you our liberator from years of loathsome tyranny, Demetrios son of Antigonos!” He might have been a rogue, but he owned a ringing baritone voice that filled the theater without effort.

  Demetrios came out to stand beside him. They made an odd pair, for the Athenian was short and squat, while Demetrios, who had a godlike physique, towered head and shoulders above him. “Hail, people of Athens!” he said, and his voice also outdid Stratokles’. “Antigonos, my father, is concerned for the freedom and autonomy of all poleis of Hellas, and especially for those of Athens, the greatest and most famous polis of them all.”

  That won him a warm round of applause. The Athenians were no more immune than anyone else to hearing themselves praised. Demetrios went on, “This being so, my father has ordered me to restore to you your ancient democratic constitution, which tyrants have trampled on for far too long.”

  More applause, a great roar of it. Sostratos clapped his hands along with the rest. He lived in a democratic city, and thought well of democracy. But he couldn’t help wonder what sort of strings Antigonos and Demetrios would attach to the restoration.

  “My father has also told me to tell you he is pleased to send you 150,000 medimnoi of wheat from Anatolia for your storehouses and your bakeries,” Demetrios said. “And he will also send you timber enough to build a hundred triremes and restore your fleet to the glory it once enjoyed.”

  Amid the rapturous cheers from the Athenians all around, Menedemos muttered, “Ha!” Sostratos dipped his head. Rebuilding a navy took more than timber. It took skilled rowers by the thousands. Where would Athens find them? How would she pay for them? Demetrios said nothing about that. And triremes were the small change of fleets these days, anyhow. Fours, fives, and sixes—all full not only of rowers but also of equally expensive marines—did the bulk of the work. Some of Demetrios’ promises were less extravagant than they seemed.

  That might have occurred to the two Rhodians. It didn’t seem to have crossed a single Athenian’s mind. Well, that’s their worry, not mine, Sostratos thought. He hoped it wouldn’t be the Athenians’ worry, but feared and expected it would.

  As the applause faded, Demetrios bowed to the as
sembled people of Athens and stepped back, leaving the stage to Stratokles again. The orator said, “With our first decrees as men free once more, let us praise the great Antigonos and Demetrios for liberating us from the hateful yoke of Demetrios of Phaleron and Kassandros, his puppetmaster!”

  More cheers rang out. Demetrios son of Antigonos looked artfully astonished, as if he hadn’t imagined Stratokles would propose such a thing. “See how modest he is!” someone behind Sostratos exclaimed.

  Sostratos had other ideas. He glanced over at Menedemos, who was also looking his way. “Put-up job,” Sostratos mouthed. His cousin dipped his head.

  “May it be propitious,” Stratokles continued: the opening formula for a decree. “Let us set up gilded statues of Antigonos and Demetrios in a chariot, the said statues to stand near those of Harmodios and Aristogeiton in the agora so that one pair of liberators may regard the other. Do I hear an opposing voice?”

  No one spoke in opposition. The decree passed without a single mutter. Sostratos thought it extravagant, but shrugged mental shoulders. Harmodios and Aristogeiton were credited with helping to overthrow the tyranny of Hippias and usher in democracy at Athens two hundred years earlier. Anyone who’d read Thoukydides, as Sostratos had, knew things weren’t nearly so simple. But, by now, what the Athenians believed was at least as important as what had really happened.

  And—statues! Whoever was making those gilded statues would need beeswax to coat his mold and take the fine detail he would sculpt. “Beeswax,” Sostratos muttered. “Beeswax.” He didn’t want to forget.

  Stratokles hadn’t withdrawn. “May it be propitious,” he said again.

  “Let us reward our liberators with honorary crowns valued at two hundred talents of silver, to show the world that the Athenians’ gratitude is not to be despised or taken lightly. Do I hear an opposing voice?”

  Again, Demetrios looked modest and surprised. Again, no one dissented. Again, the decree passed by acclamation. Sostratos slowly dipped his head. Athens would pay, and pay plenty, for the privilege of liberation. Even for a polis as rich as this one, two hundred talents was a lot of money.