Asimov's SF, Oct/Nov 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  No, I could not regret the changes as Aeschylos did. The theater now was stone and the stage framed with marble columns instead of wood. The temples of the gods were marble, too, adorned with sculptures carved by the most skilled artisans in all Hellas. Everywhere stood monuments to the greatness, to the glory of Athens.

  I had prospered with the city. With plenty of Carthaginian slaves available, my father had soon been able to start up his bronze works again, and with all the demand for armor for Athens’ wars, his business grew rapidly. Our allotment of fertile Sicilian farmland also yielded a rich return, crops of wheat heavier than anyone had ever been able to grow in rocky Attica, and fruitful vines. Added to all this wealth was the bounty we won in the wars, the spoils of battle and conquest.

  Not only citizens had prospered. Athens drew foreigners from all the Hellene lands to Sicily with its promise of wealth and opportunity, and they enriched the city with their taxes and fees. I stood every day in the agora and saw abundance all around me, inhaled it in the scent of fresh fish, the smoke from the altars, an enticing waft of a courtesan's perfume. The harbor was crowded with ships, the shops were full of goods. In the market merchants cried out their wares, and customers crowded around them with purses full of good Athenian silver owls. Men and boys exercised in the gymnasia, and citizens debated public issues, raising their voices to be heard over the din of commerce, the shrill songs of schoolboys at their lessons, and the clink of chisels on marble as the artisans labored to adorn the temples of the gods, who were surely looking down upon the city and approving all they saw.

  But amid it, the great voice of Aeschylos was silenced. I had a copy made of his works, and while I was on my travels I read them all over again, recalling his words: “Tragedy was meant to honor the gods."

  I had never intended to travel, and it was all the doing of Pericles. Soon after my Carthaginian tragedy was acclaimed, I was summoned to the Council of generals. Pericles took me by surprise with his announcement: “Sophocles son of Sophilos, we've chosen you as a member of the peace delegation to Carthage.” Of course, such were the duties any citizen could be expected to perform. But I suspected I had been chosen for a more specific purpose.

  "You surely don't think they're going to welcome me in Carthage after my latest drama? It looks like you want to sink the peace talks before they even start!"

  He laughed, for we knew each other's minds. Pericles was more interested in taking over Carthage's rich territories in Hispania than peace. But the Carthaginians were desperate for it, and we ended up signing a treaty that gave Athens all the territory north of Sicily, including the Hispanian colonies west to the Gates of Heracles, while we left Africa to Carthage. The war was ended, and it could only be called an Athenian victory, so that Pericles had no grounds to complain, despite his thwarted invasion plans.

  If I had returned to Athens at that time with the rest of the delegation, I think my life would have gone on much as before—producing tragedies and helping my father in the bronzeworks. But while I was in Carthage, one of their suffetes, a member of their ruling council, made a point of criticizing my dramas, saying, “It's clear you know nothing of Carthage and only listen to the evil rumors spread by our enemies."

  Now this was not quite so. I had been in the Carthaginian colonies on Sicily and seen the tophets where they used to bury their human sacrifices. Yet who has not heard the tale about the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas, roasting men alive in a bronze bull—indeed, I had written a tragedy about it, which did not win a prize. But this does not mean I supposed such a story was true.

  So I was willing to believe I might have distorted the truth about Carthage. Thus it was that when the rest of the delegation went back to Athens with our treaty, I remained there as a guest of Barca, the suffete. It was ten years before I reached home again, for from each place I was drawn to the next nearest, and the world is a larger place than I had realized. From Carthage I traveled to Tyre, and from Tyre to the court of the Great King of Persia, and finally to the conquered lands of Hellas and the ruins of the Athens in Attica, which the Persians had never allowed to be rebuilt. But all this is in my Historia, which any man can read for himself, and there is no need to repeat myself now.

  But of all the strange sights I saw, I had the greatest surprise when I finally took ship from Persian Hellas to return home to Sicily, to Athens. My ship was approaching Brentasion in southern Italy when it was met by an Athenian trireme that escorted it into the harbor. There was also a representative of Athens in the customs office, checking the cargo as the slaves offloaded it. “You have to pay duty to Athens on cargo shipped to Brentasion?” I asked the captain in disbelief. Of course it was no different in the Persian empire, where everyone paid tribute to the Great King, but this was supposed to be free Hellas!

  "Athens takes a cut of everything now,” he complained, spitting on the wall of the harbor. “But you ought to know that.” I, an Athenian.

  Indeed, as I continued my homeward journey, the scene was repeated in almost every port the ship touched—Athenian war ships, Athenian taxes. And there were horrified rumors in every port: how Athens had recently punished the city of Heraclea for refusing to pay the annual fee for the protection of their trade at sea. “They burned Heraclea and sold everyone into slavery."

  "But isn't the fee what everyone agreed to? Doesn't the fleet protect your ships from pirates?” I asked.

  "What pirates? The only pirates in these waters are the Athenians!"

  "The Etruscans? The Latins?"

  "The Etruscans have no more navy, their sea-empire is dead. It all belongs to the Athenians now. And the Latins all live in the hills, they have no ships to bother anyone."

  At first I resisted blaming my city. These waters had been made safe for everyone by the Athenian fleet. There was peace—no more enemies, no more pirates infesting the trade routes. Should these cities not all be grateful to Athens?

  At first I thought: Pericles was right, the Hellenes need a single leader to keep them from quarreling with each other.

  But when at last I returned to Athens, I did not find myself in the city I thought I had left. Or perhaps I was only seeing it with new eyes after my travels through so many different lands.

  My family and friends, of course, all welcomed me home, and I found my son, who could barely speak when I left him, reciting the verses from my tragedies. But there were other changes I liked less. My father now employed both an overseer to run his farm and a foreman at his factory, while he spent his days in the agora and his nights in the banquet-rooms of his friends. Of course he was an old man, deserving his retirement, and I felt sharp pangs of guilt that I had left him so long at his time of life. But when I announced that I was now available to take over supervision of his affairs, he told me I did not have to concern myself with such matters, as everything was in the hands of his slaves.

  Wherever I went, it seemed that the citizens of Athens were engaged only in what they called “public affairs,” leaving all their business in the hands of others, either slaves or hired foreigners. Worst, when I went to the harbor, I could find no citizens on the rowing benches of our fleet, only foreigners serving for pay.

  "Well, why should I blister my backside pulling an oar, when I can pay a foreigner to do it?” one sailor told me over a jar of wine at a harborside tavern. “Citizens get first chance at a berth, you know, so I sign up for a place and the city pays me three obols a day, then I pay him half to row and keep the other half for myself."

  That was not the worst of it. I discovered also that some men were buying slaves and hiring them out to row for the city. One of them was Cimon son of Miltiades, who had gone with me on the embassy to Carthage, and he willingly explained to me how the business worked. “You buy a fit rower for, say, a hundred drachmas. At three obols a day, he earns you that much back in a year. Of course you have to take his rations out of that. The captains make sure you do. Rowing's hard work, and a man can't keep it up forever on a handful of barl
ey a day."

  "A hundred drachmas?” Had the price of slaves fallen so low?

  "That's all you need, so you can pick up a sound crew and bring in a good income with a reasonable investment."

  "You mean you hire out more than one rower in your own place? Is that legal?"

  "Well, not exactly, but if you know the captain, things can be arranged. Sometimes you have to give back a little on the rate, if you know what I mean?"

  Unfortunately, I knew all too well what it meant—mercenary corruption at the heart of the city's strength. To confirm what Cimon told me, I went to the city's slave market. Surely there hadn't been so many slaves for sale when I'd left Athens! No wonder the price was so low. Where did they all come from?

  I told the broker, a foreigner of course, that I was looking for a scribe, someone to copy out my manuscripts for me.

  "You're lucky, with all the Heracleans still on the market."

  "Sorry, I've been away on a long journey. Was there a war with Heraclea?"

  "They tried to get out of paying their tribute. We had to teach them a lesson. The example will teach all of them."

  "Well, I'm told I should be able to get a sound slave for less than a hundred drachmas."

  He protested, of course, that a trained scribe would cost a great deal more, but this was only the opening of negotiations. I got my scribe for one hundred and ten drachmas.

  His name was Timotheus, and he was not a Heraclean but a Samian, enslaved by the Persians, then sold to Rhegion by a Carthaginian trader and taken as part of the spoils when we took Rhegion from Carthage. He served me well for years copying out my Historia and other manuscripts until a fellow Samian asked me to let him buy his freedom back, which I allowed for his good service. He's remained in Athens and opened up a copying shop, doing a good business, with five or six men of his own by now. Everyone prospers in Athens.

  Once, I know, we liked to tell ourselves that Hellenes would never enslave other Hellenes, that only barbarians would slaughter a city's entire population or sell them wholesale on the slave market as the Persians had done to Miletos. We like to tell ourselves that men in the lands ruled by the Great King live in slavery while we are free. But I have been in the empire of the Great King now and seen the Hellene mercenaries in his army—Argives and Thebans. I could see very little difference between them and us. Athens had grown arrogant, and the slave trade was so lucrative. Why not teach the Heracleans a lesson and make a profit from it, too? That was what we had come to.

  Pericles had become the first general on the Council, his father having died soon after I'd left for Carthage.

  "Surely you must know about this,” I confronted him, because there was nothing in Athens that Pericles did not know. “Citizens selling their places on the rowing bench to foreigners, men hiring out slaves to serve in the fleet, for profit? I doubt there's a single Athenian pulling an oar on an Athenian trireme these days."

  "That's hardly true,” he said defensively. “All the commanders and the marines are Athenians."

  "It may start with the rowers, but it won't end there. You're putting the defense of our city into the hands of foreigners if you allow this to go on. Do you want us to end up depending on mercenaries? Remember Syracuse, the civil war after Gelon died, when the mercenaries almost took over the city, and we had to send soldiers to put the democratic party into power!"

  "You can't keep five hundred warships crewed as easily as you seem to think,” he argued. “Men have other affairs to concern them. Who would attend the Assembly and the law courts if every citizen was away at sea pulling an oar?"

  "Five hundred? So many ships? Heracles—the cost! That's at least ... two thousand talents a year!"

  "At least, yes,” he said with a wry grin, which meant my estimate was low.

  "Where in the name of all the gods does the money come from?"

  "From fees and taxes. Foreigners come here to get rich, why shouldn't they pay for the privilege? And of course tribute."

  "The tribute from the cities in the League of Free Hellas, you mean?"

  "From the cities we protect with our fleet. They pay the expenses of our rowers and ships that keep them safe. It's only fair."

  "Was it fair to Heraclea?"

  "The Heracleans were happy enough to have the pirates cleared out of their waters, but they didn't want to pay for it. We had to teach them a lesson. If the cities don't pay, we can't support the fleet, and the pirates will come back."

  "Maybe we don't really need so many ships,” I suggested. “Maybe the pirates won't all come back. Then the tribute wouldn't have to be so high."

  "If we didn't have so many ships, our enemies would be on us like hounds on a wounded hare."

  "Then all the more need to have them manned by our own citizens,” I insisted, returning to my original point. The Athenians were getting rich off foreign tribute, but under Pericles they didn't have to lift a hand to earn it, or pay for it with their own sweat and blood, the lives of their fathers and sons.

  I felt so strongly about this issue that at the next Assembly I stood up and proposed a law requiring that only Athenian citizens could make contracts to man and supply the war fleet. I speak well, as you know, from my years on the stage, and the Assembly approved my law with overwhelming enthusiasm. I also proposed another law that no citizen could collect fees from the city for more than a single rower in the fleet, but this measure was not so successful. The citizens did not wish to deprive themselves of such a large part of their income.

  My new law proved to be a popular one. The citizens quickly bought up all the contracts for the fleet once held by foreigners, then let the actual business back to them for a fee.

  "Now you see how these things work,” Pericles told me later, when I complained to him. “This is Athens. Here, the people rule."

  So I made no more attempts to pass laws. Instead, I published my Historia, which has brought me a good, steady income over the years. People are always interested in strange tales from distant lands.

  Then I wrote a new tragedy.

  My popularity on the stage had not been diminished by my long absence from Athens. On the contrary, whenever I went out to the market or the gymnasium, people would stop me to ask, “Sophocles, when will we get to hear your next drama?"

  "Soon,” I told them. “At the next Festival."

  I called it The Ransom of Chryseis, and it takes place during the Trojan War, when the Hellenes have laid siege to Troy. The drama begins with Apollo descending onto the stage in all his glory and wrath:

  Far-shooting Apollo, lord of the silver bow,

  I come with plague-filled arrows to the shores of Troy,

  Where Argive Agamemnon, destroyer of cities,

  Has beached his fleet of hollow ships.

  It was an homage to Aeschylos, a return to the old style of tragedy. But I doubted there was an Athenian alive who would not know whom I meant by Agamemnon, the arrogant lord of ships who sent other men out to do the fighting while he took the best part of the loot for himself, including the daughter of Apollo's priest Chryses.

  I turned in the manuscript to the archon in charge of the Festival entries, but the next day he brought it back to me, nervously embarrassed by his errand. “Sophocles, I don't know what to say ... but you can't enter this in the Festival! We can't produce it. It defames the city! It's sacrilege!"

  "It defames Agamemnon, perhaps. But he wasn't an Athenian. There isn't a word about Athens in my drama. How does it defame the city? How does it offend the gods?"

  He stammered through another few excuses, but of course I knew the only reason my tragedy had been rejected—Pericles did not want the Athenians to hear it.

  So the next time someone in the agora asked me about my next tragedy, I replied, “I entered it for the Festival, but the archons rejected it."

  "They won't let me produce it."

  "They don't want to let it be performed."

  Of course these few remarks created more interest i
n my tragedy than if I had hired criers to go through the marketplace. In days, there was an uproar in the Assembly, demanding that the archons allow it into the Festival. And in Athens, the people rule.

  Pericles was furious, which meant that he went in public with a face like stone and plotted secretly to have his way. The day before the performance, the actor playing the role of Agamemnon disappeared—abducted and put aboard a ship for Syracuse, I later learned. But I was prepared. I had attended the rehearsals, and of course I knew all the verses. In my younger days, before I went to Carthage, I had often performed a role onstage in my dramas.

  So Pericles was forced to attend the performance, to sit in the seat reserved for the city's first general, and to listen as I declaimed the harsh words of Agamemnon:

  A thousand ships at my command gave me the right

  To seize the slender-waisted girl, to make her mine.

  How many ships does Chryses have, to take her back?

  Why should I yield my rightful spoils of war

  To any man or god?

  I know the Athenians are capable of feeling shame. It is self-interest, not shame, that generally directs their votes in the Assembly, but still in their hearts they fear the gods and know when they have done wrong.

  The messenger who tells them this is not always welcomed, however. I did not win the olive crown. Watching Pericles’ face as I delivered my lines, I wondered how he might take his revenge, but I believe he finally decided it was best to make as little of the matter as possible, once the damage was done.

  It was months before he would speak to me again, and when he did, his tone was cold. “I hope you've learned to keep to matters that concern you."

  "Indeed I have. From now on, I plan to stay away from making laws in the Assembly and keep to writing tragedies."

  This was not quite the answer he wanted to hear. “I hope you don't expect to win more prizes, then, if your new tragedies are like the last one."

  "Tragedy is meant to honor the gods, not just to please the people and their leaders. I will be satisfied to do the first."