by Tom Holt
CHAPTER NINE
When I was a boy I had something wrong with my eyes — nothing serious; my sight is perfect even now — and my father, who had a horror of illness, used to take me to the house of a horrible old woman who lived in the next village. She professed to cure all illnesses by a combination of prayers to some of the less reputable Goddesses and fierce herbal poultices; though I believe to this day that such cures as she achieved were effected by fear of the remedy. Each time we came away, my father poorer by a four-drachma piece and me with my eyes so red and painful that I could scarcely see the sun, he would slap me cheerfully on the shoulder and say, ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ And I would reply, ‘No, it wasn’t,’ and say a prayer under my breath that I would go blind and so be saved another course of treatment.
But my first taste of soldiering wasn’t so bad after all, and I was almost sorry that it was over. I had my arms and armour intact, and a rather tatty crown of laurel leaves presented to me by the taxiarch for saving the life of a fellow citizen, which in spite of certain reservations I wore prominently as I strolled through the Market Square back to my house; and of course nine or ten bosom friends with whom I had sworn oaths of undying friendship, as one does in the army, and most of whom I never managed to get around to seeing ever again. The only one I kept up with at all was Artemidorus, the veteran. Since he was a neighbour I saw rather more of him than I would have wished. He had guessed (correctly) that his wealthy young comrade-in-arms was a good touch for the use of a plough or a jar or two of seedcorn, and it came as something of a blow to him to find out that I was already married, for he had a spare daughter. It came as something of a blow to me, as well, for I had not given Phaedra much thought while I was in Samos.
I had just arrived outside Philodemus’ door and was about to go in when a Libyan slave-boy whom I had never seen before dashed up and tugged at my cloak.
‘Get off,’ I said, for people were watching. ‘What do you want?’
‘My mistress says you’re to come home with me,’ he said urgently. I stared at him.
‘Get lost,’ I whispered, ‘I’m a respectable married man.’
‘Are you Eupolis of Pallene?’ asked the boy. I said yes, I was, if it was any of his business. He started to tug at my cloak again, and I was afraid he would break the brooch.
‘Then you’re to come home with me now,’ the boy said loudly. ‘My mistress says so.’
‘Look,’ I snapped, ‘who in God’s name are you and what do you want? I’m just back from Samos and I want—’
‘I’m your slave Doron,’ said the boy. ‘You’d better come.’
I shouldered my shield and followed right across the City until we came to the rather grand houses near the old Fish Market; that was where Aristophanes lived, and many other rich, fashionable young men. We stopped outside the door of a large, imposing house, which I remembered as the home of one Execestiades, who had been executed for treason just before my wedding.
‘What are we doing here?’ I asked.
‘You live here,’ the boy replied. ‘Hurry up.’
I couldn’t make head or tail of that, so I spat into my cloak for luck (since I was going into an unlucky house) and followed him.
It was a big, bleak place with a high ceiling, and somebody had been doing a lot of very expensive decorating. There was a silver mixing-bowl on the table, with embossed silver and gold cups all round it; there were Persian tapestries all over the place, and Bactrian rugs on the floor. The couches had bronze legs, and beside the hearth there was a tall, gilded statue of Agamemnon being killed by Clytemnestra on his return from Troy which, I calculated, must have cost the owner as much money as I got from my estate in Phylae in a whole year. In front of the fire two expensive Spartan hounds were sleeping, and there were two bird cages and a baby monkey hanging from the rafters. It looked like the house of an extremely wealthy widow.
The door of the inner room opened, and there was Phaedra, dressed in a saffron gown. ‘So you’re back, are you?’ she said.
‘What in God’s name is going on?’ I demanded.
‘Don’t stand on that carpet in your muddy sandals,’ Phaedra said. ‘It cost you twelve drachmas, and you were lucky to get it for that.’
I stepped off the carpet on to the floor. ‘Whose house is this, Phaedra?’ I asked. ‘And what the hell are you doing here? You should be at my uncle’s.’
‘It’s your house, you ungrateful oaf,’ she said irritably, ‘or it will be after you’ve got yourself down to the Archon’s office and paid for it. Your infernal uncle wouldn’t release any of the money in your strongbox.’
‘You bought this from the Public Confiscator?’ I gasped.
‘No,’ she said, ‘you did. I’m not allowed to buy real property, remember.’
If I hadn’t been so astonished, I don’t know what I’d have done. As it was, I stood there, with my laurel crown (for saving the life of a fellow citizen) hanging lopsidedly from the side of my head, and tried to find a few appropriate words. While I was searching, Phaedra continued.
‘Well, I couldn’t go on living in your uncle’s house — I mean, the man is unbearable, he keeps ordering me about as if I were a servant or something. And I don’t like that goody-goody cousin of yours, Callicrates. I don’t think we’ll see any more of them from now on. And it’s a good house — expensive, of course, but you can just about afford it, if you’re careful for a year or so. Of course you’ll be short of ready money for a while; you might have to mortgage some of your vineyards in Pallene, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure my father will take them on, if no one else will.’
‘You bought confiscated property in my name? Have you any idea what people are going to say about me?’
‘Yes,’ said Phaedra, and she smiled.
I wonder now why it took me so long to work it out. Phaedra knew as well as I did that buying up the confiscated property of a man who had been executed was not only ill-omened in the extreme but regarded by all decent men as little better than grave-robbing, and that was why she had done it — to make me look as bad as possible. She also knew that there was now no way that I could get out of it, for she must have used my personal seal to make the contract with the Public Confiscator. If I repudiated a document under my seal, I would for ever after have difficulty buying anything in Athens bigger than a single whitebait.
‘It’s lucky you came back today,’ said Phaedra. ‘It’s the last date for payment, and the interest rate is quite high, I believe.’
I knew that I was beaten. ‘All right, you bitch,’ I said, ‘how much has this cost me?’
‘One talent,’ she said, and she giggled.
I sat down on a couch and put my head in my hands. Then another thought struck me.
‘And what,’ I asked, ‘is all this junk?’ I waved my arm at all the couches and silverware. ‘Where did all this come from?’
‘If we’re going to entertain my family and my father’s friends,’ she said sweetly, ‘we can’t have the place looking like a barn, now can we? But you needn’t worry,’ she continued, ‘they wouldn’t give me credit, so all the furniture and so forth is already paid for. I sold my ten acres.’
‘You what?’
‘My dowry, my ten acres.’ She giggled again; she was enjoying herself. ‘It hadn’t been made over to you formally when you left, if you remember, so my father was able to give a receipt. Of course, we couldn’t get anything like the full value for it — who’s buying vineyards these days? — but there was just about enough, together with the loose cash you hadn’t sealed up before you left. Hadn’t you better get across to your uncle’s for that talent?’
‘Who told you I had a talent?’ I yelled at her, but she simply turned and walked out into the inner room. I dared not follow her there, for fear of seeing what wonders of the silversmith’s trade she had furnished it with. So I kicked the Libyan boy, took off my armour, and set off for my uncle’s house.
Just for fun, I
tried fighting the Public Confiscator; the contract was not quite perfectly drawn — I think one of the Gods had been left out of the Invocation Clause — but the lawyers I consulted told me to forget it; no jury would have any sympathy with a man who bought confiscated property and then tried to cheat the State by backing out of a sealed contract.
My uncle solved my immediate financial difficulties by taking a ten-year lease of some of my land in Phylae, which was contributing nothing at the moment and was unlikely to be anything but a burden for the foreseeable future. But he paid me a premium assessed on pre-war yields, which was much the same as giving me the money; in fact, for a long time afterwards he referred to it as my wedding-present. He was able to be so generous because my grandfather’s stake in the silver mines, which he had kept back when he transferred the rest of my property, was paying handsomely, thanks to the war. He also lent me enough to buy a share in an oar-blade workshop owned by some friends of his, which turned out to be one of the best investments I ever made.
Now that my new house was paid for, I tried to make the best I could of living there; but I hated the place. For a start, I couldn’t help feeling that the previous owner’s bad luck was everywhere, and although I sacrificed several times to his ghost, and sprinkled everything in sight with chickens’ blood (which did not please Phaedra), the thought of being alone in the house was never agreeable.
Then, of course, many of the people who had known Execestiades refused to set foot in the house, for he had been a popular man and, by all accounts, a good and honest politician. As if to compensate me for the loss of so much good society, Phaedra took to filling the house with her relations and her brothers’ friends, none of whom I could stand. On the other hand, I would have preferred to eat and drink with a household of Thessalians rather than spend an evening alone with Phaedra.
You can imagine what my life at home was like when I tell you that I never managed to get around to shouting at Phaedra properly for buying the house in the first place; she always pre-empted me. As soon as I set my foot over the threshold she would be at me with some new catalogue of complaints, so that I was forever on the defensive over some minor domestic trivia. I have always detested arguments and bad temper — I get a headache, and I can’t seem to get my words out properly — so I soon took to making tactical withdrawals (like the Athenian generals at Marathon), usually into the storeroom or even the stables, where it was warm and quiet except for the breathing of the horses. I got very little sleep — I think Phaedra slept a lot during the day so as to be able to sit up complaining at night — and of course I had no hope at all of composing any Comedy in my own house. The only course open to me was to be at home as little as possible, which was of course what Phaedra wanted.
So I spent most of my time in the Market Square or at my uncle’s, or visiting friends, and the joy of being out of the house added an extra glow to all my occupations. I was making useful friends at this time, and knew most of the leading citizens. It is a strange thing, but people who are gossiped about tend to seek the company of other notorious men, and since the story of my domestic arrangements had long since become a source of lasting delight all over Athens, I never lacked for company or confidences. Once you have got used to being a laughingstock it is quite a useful attribute, if your skin is reasonably thick. People are not afraid of you, and that tends to break down barriers.
Whenever possible, of course, I went out to the country, especially to Pallene, where Phaedra would not go. There was always something to do on the land, and the work kept me healthy. Because it was pointless trying to replant vines and olives with the threat of Spartan invasions, we concentrated on growing what we could manage to grow in the available time. Many of the crops we tried were rarely grown in Attica (flax and hemp, for example, and some rare varieties of beans and pulses), and I was proud of some of our successes and not too distressed by our failures. In particular I found that beans and lupins were a vastly underrated crop. Because Attica is so dry, and manure of all kinds is worth its weight in gold, most Attic farmers grow beans as green fertiliser; that is to say, they grow them on fallow land and plough them back unharvested before they come to maturity. But I found that you can harvest beans off the fallow without noticeably damaging the soil; the mere act of growing them seems to do the ground a great deal of good. Also, where the Spartans had burnt standing corn, the earth was much lighter and more productive, and I remembered something in one of the old poems —Hesiod, I think it was, or someone like him — that led me to believe that our forefathers deliberately burned off the stalks and helm of some crops to enrich the land. As for water, I managed to organise my neighbours into diverting some of the mountain streams, which never fail even in summer, so that they flowed down through our terraces and so could be used to irrigate. Most people thought we were mad, until we began carting in the produce; then they started lawsuits for illegal conversion of water. I also insisted that all over my estates we ploughed at least five times throughout the year, to work in the frost and the dew. It was hard work and expensive, too — hardly a day seemed to go by when I wasn’t down at the smithy ordering a new ploughshare — but the results were little short of spectacular, and I could hardly wait for the return of peace, and the chance to start growing barley again.
And there was hunting, too — the Spartan invasions meant that Attica was alive with hares and deer, and wild boar and even bears were starting to come back — and fowling, and fishing, of course, which had become a very important part of many people’s lives since the start of the war. My dislike of the sea meant that I took little direct part in that, but I spent money on fishing-boats and even a small coaster, so that I could take surplus produce round the coast to sell in other parts of Attica instead of having to drag it by land all the way to the City and out again. In short, as you may already have guessed, I enjoyed myself tremendously in the country, and did no harm to anyone.
And, above all, I got back to my play. I found manual labour extremely conducive to composition, and since I carried the entire text of The General about with me in my head, I could work on it wherever I happened to be. I’m sure that several of my seasonal workers, if they are still alive, could even now recite you the big speeches from that play, for they heard them often enough, and, being sensible men, were always careful to laugh in all the right places. Sometimes we performed a few scenes for my neighbours, when it was too hot to work and we drifted together under the shade of the nearest trees. Naturally I took the lead, and Little Zeus was my one-man Chorus; the rest of the parts were shared out among the slaves and free hands. I don’t suppose I shall ever have a more appreciative audience than those farmers of Pallene and Phrearrhos, who were pleased enough for an excuse to lie still after a hard morning’s work, and who hadn’t had to sit through three Tragedies before the Comedy. Nevertheless, it was worth watching to see exactly what did make them laugh and what slipped by unnoticed, how far a joke could be drawn before it became boring, and just how long a scene should be.
I suppose I was putting off for as long as possible the horrible day when there was nothing more I could do to it without spoiling it entirely, and I would have to take it to the Archon, like a tenant farmer taking his year’s produce to be measured and divided. I dreaded the thought of not getting a Chorus. After all, there were already more Comic poets than Choruses, and new ones coming forward almost every day, as far as I could see. I was starting to bristle with hatred whenever I heard an established poet’s name, and often found myself praying that one or other of them would be killed in the war or struck down by the plague. But when I fell to contemplating my General, which was something I did far too often for a modest man, I could honestly see no flaw or imperfection in it, from the first joke to the exit of the Chorus. But at other times, after a long struggle with an unwieldy scene, I doubted if anyone, however sick his mind might be, could ever be made to laugh by such dreary nonsense; there was nothing which had not been done a hundred times better a hundred ti
mes before. To be brief; there were days when I loved it and days when I hated it, but my play was never far from my mind. It was the one thing I really had to look forward to, yet it was a terrible shadow hanging over me. If it succeeded — would that I could die in that moment! — and if it failed, then I might as well throw myself off the tower in the Potters Quarter and be done with it all.
To make matters worse, Philonides the Chorus-trainer had not forgotten about me. You may remember that he expressed an interest, that night at Aristophanes’ party. Well, I had expected to hear no more from him, but that was not the case at all. In fact, it became quite embarrassing, for I seemed to meet him everywhere —not just in the City, but even in the country, for he had land at Phrearrhos not far from mine, and I always seemed to be running into him on the road home at night — and each time we met he would ask, ‘Have you anything for me yet?’ and each time I would say, ‘Well, nearly; but there’s still a few things I must iron out ..
But instead of putting him off, this seemed to make him all the more eager, and in the end he took to calling at my house in the City, where Phaedra made him as welcome as a beggar with the plague.
I can understand Phaedra’s reluctance to have any acquaintance of mine in the house, for she was filling in the long hours of our marriage quite as effectively as I was, if half the rumours I heard were true. Of course, a husband always believes rumours about his wife, and they’re very seldom true; but there were so many of them and they all sounded so probable that even the most sceptical juror would have found it difficult not to be convinced.
