Death Comes by Amphora: A Mystery Novel of Ancient Athens

by Roger Hudson

  Then Stephanos was edging towards him through the throng, looking very serious. "It’s bad, " he whispered. "They did it. They killed him. Those aristos we overheard, can you find out who they are? We need names. "

  Lysanias was horrified. The plotters included his cousin Hierokles and General Ariston.

  "But they were plotting that attempt to seize power not …"

  "They’re the most likely people. And the ones you heard in the barber’s."

  Lysanias searched his memory. "I remember only a hairstyle, a way of speaking, no faces. All these people …" He gestured at the assembled citizens thinking Stephanos was asking him to look for them here.

  "Not now. We have to keep it quiet for now."

  "You and Lampon saw them too."

  "We’re looking too but you talk to these people. You can go where we can’t." He indicated Lysanias’ cloak and his own worker’s tunic.

  "But my uncle’s murderer. I have to find him …"

  "Could be the same." The idea surprised him. Yes, it could.

  "How did they do it?"

  "No-one knows. The brothers were outside all night. They saw no-one enter or leave. No sounds. No traces except Ephialtes dead with a sacrificial golden trident through the big vein in his neck. Must be from one of the temples but, if it’s meant as a sign, lots of people use a trident as a symbol, including Kimon."

  The words sounded familiar. ‘Golden trident.’ Then Lysanias remembered. The dining club. That was its name. Ariston again, and it was meeting tonight.

  He didn’t mention it. Too far-fetched. No-one would be so stupid as to implicate themselves in a murder that clearly. Must be a false clue to point away from the real culprit.

  Suddenly the herald was uttering his piercing cry and calling the Assembly to order. Stephanos had to get back to his place, so Lysanias indicated he would do his best. He had to. As if investigating his uncle’s death wasn’t complicated enough!

  Stephanos looked back. "Oh, I found the rigger you were looking for but he won’t tell you anything. Drowned in the harbour, during the takeover attempt. The only death on our side. Watch yourself."

  What had he agreed to? Lysanias couldn’t take on everyone’s problems. He found a place where he recognised no-one to try to think. Maybe the speeches would give some clues.

  The chief magistrate was seated on his throne on the wooden platform that had been erected to one side of the square. To either side of him were the eight other principal magistrates. At one end were two chairs. Kimon was already seated on one of them. The other was presumably for Ephialtes, the other citizen named for ostracism in today's debate. One of the tribe officials had given Lysanias a small piece of broken pottery, a potsherd, on which he would write the name of the person he wished to be ostracised at the end of the debate.

  Now Perikles had stepped forward to whisper to the herald who whispered to the chief magistrate. Murmurs arose amongst the waiting crowd. The herald called for silence again, and it descended surprisingly quickly on the vast gathering. A quorum was 6,000 for an ostracism vote, and this looked much more. The chief magistrate stood.

  "It appears that one of the targets of accusation has died during the night."

  There was a sudden mass intake of breath.

  "The cause of death has not yet been established. While there is doubt the meeting will proceed."

  The magistrates must have decided to cover up the cause for the sake of a peaceful meeting, but there were cries of disbelief, and a whispered word from many lips that could only be "assassinated". There was anger and fear in the reactions, surprise and horror, though some didn’t seem too unhappy that Ephialtes was out of the way.

  "The Assembly will proceed with the motion of ostracism against General Kimon."

  Lysanias became aware that rumours were spreading, whispered, contradictory, as to the cause of death, some violent, some natural. It confirmed what Stephanos had told him, but was he right? Was it the group who had planned the attempted seizure of power? They had made a mess of that. Or the boasters in the barber’s shop? As he recalled, they seemed all talk and no action. It had to be someone much more efficient and determined.

  The herald once again called for silence. Pigs were sacrificed on the altar to Zeus of the Market Place and, while the purifiers marked the boundaries of the sacred assembly area with the pigs' blood, formal hymns were sung to the king of the gods to ensure that the people in Assembly would debate wisely and reach just decisions. Then the herald ordered everyone to be seated. Somehow everyone managed to sit or squat, though legs had to be tucked up rather than stretched out.

  Among the lesser magistrates and officials grouped round the platform he could make out Amynias and Inaros, and his bile rose. Those were the madmen he had to talk to, but there was no chance in this gathering. To either side of the platform stood a small force of Scythian guards to keep order, but clearly totally inadequate if real trouble arose in this vast crowd, though presumably there were others elsewhere around the square.

  As everyone sat, Lysanias could now see that the front area seemed to be almost totally occupied by the very poor and the unemployed, who looked somehow out of place in their rags and dirt. His neighbours had noticed them too.

  "Not often that ragged lot bother to turn up."

  "At least, if they're here, they're not robbing our shops and homes."

  The thought crossed Lysanias’ mind that there were far bigger villains among the rich.

  ***

  Sindron found a place just outside the ropes that he felt would enable him to see and hear the Assembly meeting. Around him was a motley assortment of foreign merchants and businessmen, and a smattering of slaves of a senior grade like himself. Among them he noticed a man in a dark blue cloak with a hood that went forward in front of his face and concealed it completely. He must be very warm in there, thought Sindron, as his eyes moved on. He saw no-one he knew.

  While he waited, Sindron puzzled over what he had learnt in the short period before all the offices and workshops closed. The heir who had first been named was, as he would have expected, Hierokles, but that didn't mean anything, if everyone really thought Lysanias' side of the family had been killed off in that last big raid on Eion. He remembered it had been chaotic with the Scythians managing to breach the walls at one point and establish fires before they were ejected, buildings destroyed, people killed. Lysanias missing for a time trying to find his father and only getting back shortly before the main raid, and the younger children trapped by a fallen wall. It was quite possible that an official report had not included their names among the survivors.

  The family seemed to have accepted Lysanias. No-one had so far challenged his right to inherit, and Hierokles had kept his promise to vouch for Lysanias with the appropriate authorities, though only Boiotos had referred to the inheritance. Could that mean Hierokles might be planning to challenge Lysanias’ claim or merely seeking to avoid ill-feeling?

  The tomb carving had led nowhere definite. Sindron had spent some time locating the workshop of the stonemason involved, who had explained that it was a standard design modified so that the face bore some resemblance to the deceased. It could be and was done rapidly. He thought it had been ordered on the day Kimon returned from Sparta by a rather drunken youngish man. That could only be Boiotos, Sindron decided.

  In an attempt to confirm this, he chatted with the slave who ran the workshop. The rudeness he described did fit Boiotos but the man thought it had been ordered very early in the morning and volunteered that customer had made an initial enquiry a few days before. That sounded incriminating but would hardly stand as proof of prior knowledge.

  Sindron had talked also to two carters and then to some countrymen from rural Attika about the distance from the Dekelia area to Athens and how long the journey would take. It seemed likely that Hierokles and Boiotos would have travelled by horse, being cavalrymen, and in a direct line it couldn’t be far. However, the time depended on how slow they migh
t have to go on rough country lanes between their country house and the main route from the town of Dekelia to Athens. Sindron didn’t know that nor did the carters.

  It seemed likely that Hierokles had started out before the news of Klereides' death reached there from the messenger despatched by Otanes. He had implied that the messenger calling them to the Special Assembly meeting had met them on the road to Athens. So what had made them start out so early?

  ***

  The chief magistrate opened the meeting and it was Arkhestratos who answered the herald’s call, “Who wants to speak?”, to make the first speech, in place of Ephialtes. Behind the officials the row of ten statues of ten heroes of ten tribes looked on in stony silence.

  It was a stumbling address to start with, the Peiraeos worker’s accent and clumsy grammar of Arkhestratos drawing laughs from the educated and cheers from the workers and poor. He accused Kimon indiscriminately of having too much wealth, being a warmonger, causing the death and the maiming in battle of too many Athenians and wanting to cause more, of being too friendly with Sparta, of giving his sons Spartan names, of causing Athens to be humiliated by Sparta, and of hubris in having his likeness in public paintings alongside gods and heroes.

  Then he hit his stride. Looking straight at Kimon, he said: "Your heavy-armed hoplites are on their way back from a shameful and shaming episode in Sparta. Who among them has no home when he returns? Who among them has to wear rags when he returns? Who among them has to scavenge for food when he returns?

  "Stand up, my boys the rowers!" he called out to the crowd, in his deep coarse voice. Dotted through the crowd among the workers and, to a surprisingly large extent, among the poor and unemployed, more and more men rose to their feet, some of them displaying noticeable wounds and lost limbs.

  "Who among you will say that these men have not fought and bled for Athens and the Greeks? Who will say they have no right to a share in the city’s victory, in its prosperity?"

  The chief magistrate protested to him about the standing men. Did he think it was a threat, a show of strength by one side in the conflict that seemed still to simmer just below the surface formalities? Arkhestratos gestured for them to be seated again.

  "This man says that! This man, if he is not ostracised, will work to deny you these rights, my brothers. We cannot allow that! The great god Hephaistos will not allow it!"

  He left the stand, visibly shaking with his own high emotion. A mighty roar went up from the workers and shouts of "Power to Hephaistos" could be clearly heard. Lysanias was impressed with the powerful impact and filled with sympathy for the men.

  It occurred to Lysanias that, if he was to follow the lines he and Sindron had taken concerning Klereides’ death, then everyone should be suspect of killing Ephialtes, even the demagogue’s friends. But the other radical leaders seemed to have so much respect for the man. It wasn’t plausible. Arkhestratos, for instance, was totally transparent.

  Perikles took the podium, standing tall and erect. His speech and grammar were those of an educated man, but he seemed to take care to use phrases ordinary citizens might understand. He wore a plain, homespun cloak and he reached a hand inside to withdraw a flat, square object.

  "Fellow citizens," the voice rang clear, but he seemed not very experienced at public speaking. "Fellow citizens, I hold in my hand the wax tablets that bear the notes of my dear colleague Ephialtes, the notes for the speech he would have made to you today. I will make a humble attempt to create for you the essence of that speech, as he would have wished."

  A hush had fallen on the Assembly, and Perikles looked down at the tablets as though he were reading Ephialtes’ own words from them. Basically, the speech attacked Kimon as a warmonger, a faction leader, an extremist, and it seemed clear that Ephialtes did not regard himself as an extremist. "There is no need for conflict either within the city or between cities. We radicals are willing to co-operate with all, and that co-operation should include the poor and the rich, the worker and the businessman, the farmer and the farmhand, the ship's captain and the sailor.”

  That drew a few jeers of disbelief from among Kimon's supporters. From his distant vantage point, Sindron could see the naivety of much of this. The love of war was too much part of the Greek soul for cities to ever co-operate for long. But he could also see the appeal of such a claim at the present time.

  "I know of one prominent and wealthy citizen, active in the business community, who saw the logic of co-operation with Ephialtes' policies," Perikles interjected his own comment. "Unfortunately, like Ephialtes, he is no longer with us." It could only be Lysanias’ uncle, Klereides. Was Perikles implying that the two deaths were linked?

  "Kimon, however, refuses to accept the will of the people, and, in view of recent events, I, Perikles, would say, 'will stop at nothing' ... " He was clearly accusing Kimon of causing the death of Ephialtes and of the attempted takeover, though without putting it into words. Could he have evidence of either? More likely this was a political insinuation.

  “… so the people must ostracise him for its own protection," he concluded ringingly with the intonation Ephialtes would have given it.

  Perikles paused and looked up and round the assembled sea of faces.

  "That, my friends, is the last wish of Ephialtes. I bid you all to respect it."

  He bowed his head and even the Kimon supporters, the haters of Ephialtes, felt obliged to do the same along with the many who had previously voted for Ephialtes' reforms.

  After a few moments of silence, a lone voice uttered the slogan "Power to Hephaistos". Others took it up and it grew louder, till it became a chant. None of them, mused Sindron, seem to realise that it negates all that Ephialtes said about co-operation, which must imply the end of factions.

  However, Perikles did not leave the stand. He waited for the chants to lessen, then gave his own dream – that this was the time "to rebuild our homes and streets and trading facilities to make this a city worthy to be the centre of a great Confederacy. This will give full employment and prosperity to all citizens."

  If that was the offer of a bribe to the workers and the unemployed, they were certainly eager to accept, for the cheers and shouts were long and loud. Perikles stood there blinking, apparently taken by surprise by the response but emerging clearly as the new leader.

  Now there’s a thought, speculated Lysanias. Here was a man who had a lot to gain from Ephialtes’ death: leadership of the radicals. So he had motive. He was close enough to Ephialtes to administer poison, say, without being noticed but not close enough to kill him while the man was asleep and certainly not with a sacrificial knife. No logic in that, except to mislead. But Perikles also had too much to lose. The killer had to be an aristocrat but how could an aristocrat have got that close without being seen?

  ***

  "Now he knows what it's like, the handsome bastard." The man next to Sindron was muttering to himself and shaking with elation at every attack on Kimon. Yet, with his foreign-looking cloak and its big hood that covered his head, the man looked like a stranger, not someone involved in Athenian politics.

  Then Sindron recalled that Lysanias had said he had met Themistokles in Peiraeos. Could this be the great man beside him, in disguise? Sindron couldn’t see the man's face for the hood but then it turned briefly in Sindron’s direction and he would have known those eyes anywhere, even after all these years and despite the wrinkles round them. Themistokles clearly realised he had been recognised and put a finger to his lips and winked. Then he calmly turned back to watch the debate. What a risk for someone under sentence of death to take! To mingle with this crowd where any of his enemies might identify him. Sindron was stunned.

  ***

  After the dramas that Arkhestratos and Perikles had presented, what could Kimon say that would stem the tide of opinion flowing against him? Lysanias had heard that Kimon had always prided himself on his down-to-earth speaking style, but would that be enough?

  Kimon was very dignified. Still a gen
eral, he was allowed to address the Assembly in full panoply, though without sword or dagger. He looked impressive but Lysanias realised this may have been a mistake. It separated him out.

  First, Kimon said that no-one regretted the death of Ephialtes more than he did; an able opponent was always to be respected and political assassination was unthinkable in modern Athens. But the doubt was now in everyone's mind.

  Could he have been involved? wondered Lysanias. Not personally but at a distance by asking someone else to organise it, leaving his own hands clean. Lysanias had seen the hatred in his eyes. Kimon clearly viewed Ephialtes as responsible for his current troubles, but would the death produce the desired result for him? The radicals had other capable leaders. It would have been an act of desperation and Kimon had always given the impression of being an honourable man, though, as Lysanias well knew, appearances could be very deceptive in Athens.

  Kimon appealed to their patriotism. He presented Persia as still a mighty enemy, one that he had humbled on behalf of Athens and the Greeks. With his long line of battles won, Kimon was Athens’ best security.

  How must he be feeling now, thought Lysanias. The man had never lost a battle. An elected general, even general-in-chief for as long as Lysanias could remember, yet he would be painfully aware that the citizens were capable of turning on their heroes. They had done it to his father, the cause of much of the difficulties of his own early years. They had done it to Themistokles. He had probably had a hand in that himself. He knew how much depended on what he said now.

  However, every word he uttered led further and further into the yawning abyss of awareness by the ordinary citizens that this man considered himself and his colleagues better than them and that they were inferior, lacking in intelligent judgement. He must have felt it himself, for he stumbled to a halt. A strange silence followed, as though everyone knew that this great man was great no more.