by Tom Holt
‘And what about witnesses?’ I asked.
‘Witnesses?’
‘Witnesses.’
He seemed offended. ‘I will, of course, undertake to provide all the necessary witnesses.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘You mean professional witnesses.’
‘Of course.’ He frowned. ‘Tell me now,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘if your plough broke, would you hire a potter to mend it?’
‘No.’
‘Or a farrier?’
‘No.’
‘Or an armourer, or a basket-weaver, or a wreath-maker?
‘No.’
‘You would hire a carpenter, would you not?’
‘Very probably, yes.’
‘And if your roof leaked you would consult a builder, and if your sandals wore out you would visit the shoemaker’s shop.’
‘I would indeed.’
‘So you would seek the services of a professional, not an amateur?’
‘I think we’ve established that, yes.’
‘Yet whereas you would not entrust your roof to an amateur builder, or your foot to an amateur cobbler, you would entrust your life to an amateur witness?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. It was not the answer he expected. ‘Do you know why?’ I went on.
‘Why?’
‘Because the juries know all the professional witnesses by sight,’ I said, ‘and it plays merry hell with their credibility.’
He scowled at me. ‘All my witnesses are credible,’ he said angrily.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘you’re a tremendously eloquent man, really you are, but I think I can manage to get killed on my own.’
‘Oh.’ He looked terribly disappointed. ‘You’re making a great mistake, you realise.’
‘Python,’ I said, ‘it was very kind of you to offer to help, but your stuff is strictly for civil trials — debts and minor assaults and that sort of thing. You stick to that and you’ll go a long way.’
I had offended him, but that couldn’t be helped. ‘Well, in that case,’ he said, ‘I must regretfully withdraw my offer. That will be five drachmas, please.’
‘Five drachmas?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘you don’t expect me to work for nothing. You have enjoyed a lengthy conference with me, even though you have rejected my services. You don’t deny that, do you?’
‘I’ve certainly enjoyed it,’ I replied, ‘but not five drachmas’ worth.’
‘So you refuse to pay?’
‘Yes.’
‘You will hear more of this,’ he hissed, and he stormed out of the house. Phaedra, who had been listening to all of this through the door of the inner room, came in and went on with what she had been doing.
‘You weren’t impressed, I take it,’ she said.
‘What, with that?’ I laughed. ‘The man’s a clown.’
‘Well,’ said Phaedra, ‘that clown has got people off worse charges than this one before now.’
‘Not criminal charges he hasn’t.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘criminal charges. Treason. Illegal legislation. And they were guilty, too. Even the juries thought they were guilty.’
‘Name one.’
She named about five; important cases, too. ‘And do you know how he managed that?’
‘Well it can’t have been his damned professional witnesses.’
‘Oh, of course not,’ said Phaedra irritably. ‘What gets him his results is his oratory.’
‘You call that oratory?’ I replied. ‘That load of bathhouse gibberish? I wouldn’t dare put that lot in a parody; people would say I was going way over the top.’
‘That’s what they want these days, you fool,’ said Phaedra. ‘Or how come he makes a living?’
‘That’s a circular argument,’ I pointed out cleverly.
‘About the only thing that could save your life right now is a really good circular argument,’ Phaedra replied. ‘Look, the juries now are like the people who watch the chariot-races; they have their favourites, and that Python is one of them. They like him. They want him to win.
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked. ‘When did you last go to a trial?’
‘Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m deaf,’ she replied. ‘I have friends of my own, you know, and they tell me things. Look, it’s beside the point how I know these things. The point is, you should get yourself a good defence speech. What have you got to lose, for God’s sake?’
I took my sandals off, and lay back on the couch. ‘My self-respect, for one thing,’ I said. ‘If you think I’m going to put my name to a lot of Socrates-talk like that, you’re wrong. I’m a poet, aren’t I?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘I could write a better speech than that, in that style, and make it scan too,’ I said. ‘I could do it in my sleep.’
Phaedra shook her head vigorously. ‘No you couldn’t,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t take it seriously.’
I lifted my head. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You’d ham it up,’ said Phaedra. ‘It’s your instinct. You’d put in jokes, you’d make a parody of it. Which would be fine for the Theatre but no earthly use in the Odeon.’
She had a point there. ‘But wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You’re forgetting that I haven’t the faintest intention of making a Python speech anyway.’
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘Because it wouldn’t work,’ I replied. ‘Those trials you mentioned just now. Think a minute. Weren’t they all before the Sicilian thing?’
Phaedra considered this. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘what if they were?’
‘The point is,’ I said, ‘things aren’t the same any more, not since Sicily. If they were, do you think Python would have to go hawking this stuff door to door, like a perfume merchant?’
‘He’d heard about your case and wanted the job,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that’s particularly significant.’
‘Don’t you? Well, I still maintain that this statues business is quite unlike anything we’ve had before; it’s gone on longer and there’s more than just money and politics in it.’
‘Such as what?’ Phaedra asked.
‘Such as for the first time since any of us can remember, we’re a defeated city,’ I said. Up till now, I’d been making it up as I went along, Athenian-style, for the sake of a good discussion. But now I was thinking aloud. ‘That’s what’s different now, Phaedra; they’re scared. They’ve been beaten, they can’t understand why, and there’s no one left to blame, so they’re turning on each other now. For God’s sake, I’m not a politician, am I? Or a general? I haven’t really got that many enemies. Since when did people like me get prosecuted on political charges? And God knows I’m not the only one. Demeas is prosecuting me because I’ve got money, sure, but the jury’s going to convict me because they want blood. And this time the initiative isn’t coming from Cleon or Hyperbolus or Pericles or anyone like that, someone with an enemy he wants to get rid of; it’s the juries and the voters who started this blood-bath, all by themselves, and they won’t be satisfied until there’s a revolution or a civil war.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Phaedra. ‘And have you got any evidence for all this? Or have you been chatting to the prophetic Apollo again?’
‘Evidence,’ I said. ‘Well, for a start, there’s me being prosecuted, as I’ve just explained.’
‘That’s a circular argument,’ said Phaedra, happily.
‘Told you I could do it,’ I replied. ‘Ask yourself this; who’s the Leader right now?’
‘Leader?’
‘Leader,’ I said. ‘You know, in Assembly. There’s an unbroken line of them, from before Themistocles’ time down to Cleon and Alcibiades. So who is it now?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘offhand …’
‘There isn’t one, is there? And why? Because nobody’s safe any longer. Oh, sure, Themistocles and Pericles and the like wer
e prosecuted from time to time, but only by idiots like my grandfather; they were never in any danger, except from their own kind. But now the voters and the jurors are so worked up they’d convict anybody; and since there aren’t any big men for them to eat any more, they’re feeling hungry, and so they’ll eat whatever the informers give them. Like me, for instance. And the sort of clever speeches that used to make them happy in the old days, when they were well fed and knew who their master was and where their next general was coming from; that doesn’t amuse them at all any more.’
‘But isn’t that the point of being on a jury?’ said Phaedra. ‘I thought the whole attraction of it was being paid for listening to clever speeches, and then voting for the one you liked best. The bloodletting was just an additional thrill.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, ‘not any more. These people aren’t hounds hunting for someone else’s sport any more, they’re wolves hunting for food. I honestly don’t believe a clever speech would do any good.’
Phaedra was silent for a while. ‘At least you could try,’ she said at last. ‘There’s nothing else we can do. How would it be if you tried a really good old-fashioned speech? Put in some of the stuff you’ve just given me, if you can remember any of it. There’s nothing an Athenian audience loves more than being insulted.’
As she said that, something seemed to fit into place inside my mind. I couldn’t quite identify it, but I saw a remote possibility. I don’t think Phaedra noticed, and she went on, ‘Just so long as you make some sort of effort. That’s what really upsets me, the way you’re just accepting it all.’
I smiled. ‘What else can I do?’
Phaedra frowned, then called for Thrax. ‘Here’s eight obols,’ she said, handing him a drachma and borrowing a two-obol piece from me. ‘Go down to the market and get a quart of anchovies for me, will you?’ Thrax nodded and set off. ‘We haven’t had anchovies for a week,’ she said, ‘and I just feel like some.’
‘Why have you changed the subject?’ I asked. ‘Or are you agreeing with me for once?’
‘I wouldn’t agree with you if you were the last man on earth,’ said Phaedra, smiling. ‘Let’s talk about something else till Thrax gets back.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Sing me a Chorus or something.’
I looked at her. ‘You’re acting very strangely,’ I said. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’m not up to anything,’ she replied. ‘Why do husbands always assume their wives are up to something when they ask them to sing?’
‘But you hate my singing,’ I answered. ‘You always say it goes right through your head, like a nail or something.’
‘All right, then,’ said Phaedra, ‘don’t sing, if you don’t want to. Tell me a story.’
‘What’s all this in aid of, Phaedra?’
She scowled at me. ‘Just tell me a story, will you?’
‘What sort of story?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, do I?’ she replied. ‘You’re pathetic, you are.’
So I started to tell her the story of Jason and the Argonauts; but to make it more interesting, I told it the way Alcibiades would tell it, when drunk. This made her giggle, and she stopped being cross; which was understandable, since a major part of a Comic poet’s trade in those days was making fun of Alcibiades and his lisp. I was just getting nicely into the flow of it when Thrax came back from the market. Phaedra interrupted me in mid-lisp and called him over.
‘Did you get the anchovies?’ she said.
‘Here they are,’ he said, pointing to the jar he was holding. ‘Oh, and you gave me too much money,’ he said, and picked three obols out of his mouth and handed them to her.
‘That’s the price now, is it?’ she said. ‘Five obols a quart?’
‘It’s the shortage,’ Thrax replied. ‘They’ve gone up again?
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘We’ll have them this evening, with the rest of the beans and some soup.’
I had to laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’ she said innocently.
‘I knew you were up to something,’ I said. ‘Fancy you remembering what I told you.’
‘What, forget my own husband’s personal prophecy from the God?’ she said. ‘What sort of a slut do you take me for?’
‘But you said I was making it all up.’
‘And so you were,’ she said indulgently. ‘But the fact remains that you aren’t allowed to die until anchovies are three drachmas a quart. It’s your sacred duty.’
‘He didn’t say I wasn’t going to die till then,’ I answered. ‘Only that that’s when I’d see him next.’
Phaedra got up, kissed me, and went over to the fire. ‘Well argued,’ she said. ‘We’ll make a lawyer of you yet.’
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Now you will say that was soup followed by anchovies, but honestly, that wasn’t all. Phaedra’s little trick had impressed me, for I had forgotten that inconsistent prophecy. So perhaps it was just my imagination after all, said my soul, and it tried to go to sleep. But, I replied, you’d need to have a pretty twisted imagination to think anchovies could ever be three drachmas a quart.
My soul, which has no sense of humour, made no reply and left me to my own devices. But as I lay there, half asleep and half awake, I suddenly realised what my clever idea had been; the one that was my only hope. I prodded Phaedra in the back and said, ‘Wake up.’
‘Not tonight,’ Phaedra replied sleepily. ‘I’ve got indigestion.’
‘It was your idea to have anchovies.’
‘You know perfectly well why we had anchovies. Go to sleep.’
‘Phaedra,’ I said, ‘I’ve had an idea. Listen to this.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
They aren’t terribly fashionable right now; but I have always had a weakness for Theban jokes. Possibly my favourite example of the genre is the one about the Theban who was riding to market on his donkey one day when he passed under a pear tree and saw a particularly ripe and luscious pear dangling only inches from his nose. He loosed the reins and reached up for it with both hands, at precisely the moment when his donkey was stung by a gadfly. The donkey started violently, sending the Theban sailing up in the air and into the branches of the tree, where his head and shoulders became so entangled in the general growth that he was left dangling there helplessly while his donkey recovered its composure and went on its way. There the Theban remained for the best part of the morning, until a traveller came along the road and saw him, inexplicably suspended like an enormous pear.
‘For God’s sake,’ said the traveller, ‘how did you manage to get up there?’
‘How do you think?’ replied the Theban. ‘I fell off my donkey.’
And that, so to speak, was how I found myself in grave danger of losing my life on a charge of blasphemous treason. My position, like the Theban’s, was decidedly uncomfortable, and there was no way I could comprehensibly explain how I had got there, even to Phaedra, who had heard my account of it all, You can understand, therefore, that all my other friends and acquaintances found it completely inexplicable; and, since they could not understand and I could not explain how I had got up there in the first place, they made no great effort to get me down. The eminent men I had cultivated for use in just such an emergency were either dead or Out of town when I called to canvass support, and when I happened to meet them in the street on my way home from calling at their houses they disappeared like dreams at daybreak. As for witnesses, I couldn’t think of a single person whose testimony might be useful to me, so I made no effort to find any.
For those of you with a morbid fascination with details, I suppose I must now set down what happened in all the stages in my trial. I’ve already told you about my summons; well, because of the pressure of business before the Courts, there was an unusually long interval between the summons and the appearance before the magistrate. Since this was a religious matter, the relevant official was the King Archon. For those of you who don’t remember the d
emocracy, there were three Archons —the King Archon, the Archon of the Year and the Polemarch — and they each had clearly defined legal jurisdictions, the precise natures of which I have either forgotten or never knew in the first place. Because the King Archon dealt with treason and political offences, he was one of the busiest men in Athens; but eventually the day arrived, and I duly presented myself, suitably awed, at his office. As I had expected, there was no loophole to be found in the indictment; Demeas was far too experienced at this sort of thing. He had applied to the proper magistrate at the right time of year in the proper form, and the action was properly based. So we each paid our drachma fee, and the indictment was neatly inscribed on a white tablet and hung up outside the Archon’s office. We were then told when the second interlocutory would be held, and went home again, having wasted a whole day and nothing in particular to show for it. If you ask me, all these procedural steps make a farce of our legal system.
At the second hearing, as you know perfectly well, the plaintiff and the defendant have to set out the grounds on which they will prosecute and defend the case. Now I didn’t want to show my hand, mainly because I had only a vague notion of what I was going to do, and I felt rather nervous about this hearing. I was tempted to try pleading No Case To Answer, just so as to avoid giving a proper defence, but cleverness of this sort, which we Athenians love, can often end in disaster, so I decided not to try it. The last thing I wanted to happen was for my defence to be struck out and judgement in default of defence to be entered against me.
There are five classes of evidence for this hearing —Laws, Witnesses, Witness Statements, Oaths and Tortures — and Demeas had them all. He turned up on the appointed day with three slaves laden down with documents, and a small army of witnesses. I had a rather battered old copy of the Laws of Solon which I had borrowed from a friend, and that was it; no witnesses, no statements, nothing. When it was my turn to present my evidence, I said that I had none; my defence would be one of mistaken identity, and since my wife was not competent to testify (being female) I had no one to swear an oath that I had been in bed all that night. The Archon, who was clearly bemused at this lack of preparation, gave the warning about penalties for withdrawal of prosecution and fixed a date for the trial itself. Demeas’ evidence was sealed up in a huge casket, and the hearing ended. I remember the expression on Demeas’ face; he was obviously puzzled too. Had I given up all hope, he wondered, or was I up to something? The answer, of course, was both, and therefore all I had to do to keep him mystified was to look inscrutable and only speak when somebody asked me a question.
