by Gary Corby
The great majority spoke the Ionian dialect of the Aegean Islands. It was the same dialect that was spoken in Athens. There are a hundred of these islands. Common among them was the distinctive Ionian as it was spoken on the mainland and on the other side of the sea, in the region that is called Anatolia.
Listening to their conversation, I realized many of the men who waited with me had come to apply for permission to live in Athens.
So many men. Was it like this every day?
“Is there a Nicolaos, the son of Sophroniscus?” A voice called from the Polemarch’s door. Not the Polemarch, but his assistant. He held a wax tablet and frowned.
“That’s me,” I said.
The Polemarch sat at a writing desk, on a chair of curved timber and a comfortable rounded back. The table and chair were both expensive pieces whose legs were shaped to resemble the legs and feet of a lion. I guessed they were both from the same carpenter, and that they were the personal property of the Polemarch, the more so because the wood was polished elm, which is very heavy and hard and far beyond the budget of the state. The Polemarch was a rich man to own such things.
“You’re the man I received a note about,” the Polemarch said as soon as I entered. His voice was a deep bass. “From Pericles. Something about a total disaster at the theater? He seems to blame you.”
“A murder, sir.”
“That sounds bad. Why did you do it?”
“I think you might misunderstand, sir. I’m the detective.”
“Ah, I see. And there’s a meeting this afternoon?”
“Yes, sir. At the home of Pericles.”
“Well I have a lot of work to get through before then. What can I do for you?” he asked.
I said, “I hoped, sir, that before the meeting you could tell me something about metics. They must come to you, mustn’t they, to live in Athens?”
“Yes. That’s what that long line is outside. Any man from another city who wants to live in Athens must register with my office. As long as he pays his registration fee and names his patron, he’s in.”
“Are there any restrictions on the metics?”
“They may not own land. That is reserved for citizens. Metics pay slightly higher taxes, though the difference is nominal. I assume you know that a trial for the murder of a metic is heard in a lesser court than that for a citizen.”
“No sir, I didn’t.”
“Well you do now. If one metic kills another, we’re as likely to exile the murderer as execute him. It’s so much less messy that way.”
“What if a citizen murders a metic?” I asked.
“That’s why these cases are always heard in a lower court. The citizen would be exiled for a period of years, or face a massive fine. If metic murders were heard in the highest court, it would mean a citizen could face death for killing a non-citizen. That wouldn’t do at all.”
“I see.”
The Polemarch said, “I must warn you that it’s very hard to obtain justice for a metic. Juries are not generally sympathetic.”
I said, “Do you know who was the patron of a man named Romanos?”
The Polemarch asked, “Why do you care about this Romanos?”
“Because he’s the dead man.”
“That sounds like a good reason. Everything you want to know will be in the records.” To my blank look he added, “We record the patron of every metic. If the metic does anything wrong, it will reflect on the patron.”
“I see.”
The Polemarch banged on his desk, which wobbled under the pounding despite its sturdiness. The Polemarch was a strong man. The door behind me opened. An assistant poked his head in.
“Yes sir?”
“A metic named Romanos,” the Polemarch said. “Who’s his patron?”
“It’ll be in the records,” the assistant said promptly.
“Yes, that’s why I’m asking you,” said the Polemarch. “Is there anything else?” the Polemarch asked me.
“No sir. Thank you for your time.”
“Then go with Andros here. He’ll give you everything we have on this Romanos.”
Andros was a short, wiry man who liked to talk. He led me out of the building, out of the agora, and down the road. He talked every step of the way, about his job (tiring), about the price of poultry (too high), about the weather (too hot), about his children (unruly). It was a relief when we finally came to a nondescript building, a small warehouse on the main road in the unfashionable southern deme of Coele.
“This is where we keep the records,” Andros said.
A slave stood guard outside, but otherwise there was nothing to indicate this was a government building.
“I’ve lived all my life in Athens,” I said. “But I never knew this place was here.”
“No reason why you should,” Andros replied. “It’s just a storehouse. The only people who come here are assistants to the Polemarch.”
“Do the other archons have a store like this?”
“I suppose,” Andros shrugged.
The slave opened the door for us.
The building was dark within. As my eyes adjusted I saw the reason why. Every wall had been covered in shelves of thin pinewood. The shelves covered every window. Upon them were heaped scrolls, some in cases, some lying loose, but most in pottery jars that lay sideways to offer the scrolls within. The horizontal shelving visibly strained under the weight.
I took one step inside, and almost fell over. My foot had kicked something.
There were more jars on the dirt floor. These were upright, but for the ones that had been knocked over. Like the scroll jars on the shelves, there poked out of them more papyrus than I’d ever seen in my life. To get from one end of the room to the other would be like climbing over a field of rocks.
There was a distinct musky odor. One that I knew all too well. A cowardly part of my anatomy shrank inward at the memory.
Something scuttled out of the jar I’d knocked over. More than one something. In the dark of the floor I couldn’t see what it was.
Andros said, “Don’t mind them. That’s just the mice.”
“Terrific.”
“They seem to eat the old paper.”
But for the scrolls, the jars, the shelves, and the mice, the room was empty. No one worked here. In the close, dusty air that made me want to sneeze, the lack of light, and the mice, I wouldn’t want to work in here either. I’d be happy to get my scroll and get out.
“Thanks, Andros,” I said. “Which jar has the Romanos scroll?”
“How should I know?” he said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I have no idea,” he said cheerily. “We just dump all the paper in here.”
“There must be some sort of order to all this, mustn’t there?”
“No.”
“Then how does anybody ever find what they’re looking for?
“You weren’t listening, Nicolaos. Nobody ever reads these records. We just keep them.”
“The Polemarch said the records were consulted, whenever a metic committed a crime.”
Andros laughed. “That’s what every new Polemarch thinks. The elected officials only hold the office for a year. Either they don’t stay long enough to learn the truth, or they get disillusioned. The ones who learn the truth don’t admit in public that the system’s broken. If they did, they’d have to do something about it.”
“Then why keep the records?”
“In case someone needs to read one.”
“But you just said no one ever reads them.”
“Well, there’s you,” he said, reasonably enough.
I looked at the row upon row of scroll jars and the teeming piles of paper. I would have to read everything until I found the one page I wanted.
“This is going to take some time,” I said. I mentally added days to the time it would take me to solve this case. Many days, unless I was lucky.
“I’ll leave you to it then. Careful you don’t drop th
at torch. We don’t want a fire in here.” Andros turned to go, then stopped and said, “I’ll tell the slave out front to let you in whenever you want.”
Andros left.
I stood there a long time, wondering how I was going to trawl through this disaster area and at the same time conduct an investigation. Then, in a flash of inspiration, the solution came to me. It was a brilliant solution.
I FOUND HIM still at the theater. He must have remained there the whole time. He seemed to be playing with sticks that he’d balanced over a stone. He looked up as I approached.
“Look at this, Nico. I think I’ve worked out how the machine lifts a man. It’s all to do with how long the lever is on each side. You see here? When one side’s longer than the other—”
“Socrates, I’ve got a job for you,” I interrupted.
“What job?” he asked suspiciously.
“You like to read, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Then you’re going to love this.”
I LEFT SOCRATES inside the records warehouse, volubly protesting, but with firm instructions not to come out until he had everything he could find on Romanos. I promised to send a slave with food and spare torches.
When I emerged from the records room for the second time, I blinked and stared at the sun. It was past time to see Pericles. Where I expected to have the skin torn off me.
SCENE 18
CONFERENCE OF WAR
I LOST TRACK OF time while Pericles flailed me with his words. He could be cutting even on a good day, but now he was at his brutal worst. I had no choice but to stand there and take it.
Pericles paced back and forth in angry strides across the ground of his private courtyard in his private home. His anger was such that even his own slaves quailed in the shadows. He waved his arms as he described my numerous defects.
He ended with, “You idiot, Nico. I send you to quell one simple ghost, a job anyone could do, and we end up with a crippled actor and a dead one.” He stopped his pacing to glare at me. “Are you the most incompetent private agent in Athens?”
“I’m the only private agent in Athens,” I pointed out.
“Yes, well. Point made.” Pericles resumed pacing.
I said, “I’ll add, Pericles, that you commissioned me because you said I was the best man for the job.”
“Apparently I was wrong,” Pericles said, still pacing. But that statement brought him up short. He considered his own words, then said, in a tone of surprise, “But wait, I’m almost never wrong.”
I stood silent while Pericles considered this paradox he had suddenly discovered.
A large group arrived while Pericles stood in agitated thought. The new arrivals were the senior men involved in the Great Dionysia that was due to start next day: the archons who ran the city, plus all the producers and the writers and the protagonists of each of the plays.
Pericles had called a council of war, and the highest citizens had obeyed. It spoke volumes about the influence that Pericles wielded in the city that he thought nothing of summoning fellow citizens, that even the archons who were senior to Pericles in rank came at his call. It was nothing to do with his official position, which was an elected strategos, a General of the Army. Strategos was a position of great power, but there were nine other men with exactly the same title and no one treated the other nine with such deference. The power of Pericles lay in his voice, which was an instrument of the Gods, and in the charisma he exuded as easily as he breathed. I often forgot how easily others fell under his spell. I seemed to be the only man in Athens who wasn’t impressed.
There were more than twenty men in the courtyard and not enough places to sit. Though he was a wealthy man, Pericles hated spending money on anything, even on his own comfort. Especially on his own comfort. Pericles liked the best of everything, but not much of it. His courtyard was barely larger than that of a normal man. As the least important man present I stood. So did the lead actors and several of the others. Pericles ensured that Aeschylus sat in a seat of honor, and beside him the archons. These were the three executives responsible for the running of the city: the Eponymous Archon, the Basileus, and the Polemarch. I’d had cause to deal with all three offices in the past, but there’d been a recent election and these men were all new to their jobs. The final man arrived at that moment: the High Priest of Dionysos, the man with whom Diotima had first expelled the ghost. He looked slightly out of breath.
Pericles brought the archons up to date with what had happened. The three nodded grimly.
Throughout this Pericles couldn’t hide his irritation with the situation.
These powerful visitors stared at Pericles with some astonishment. Pericles had a reputation for being the calmest, most dignified, and certainly the most decorous man in Athens. They had never before seen him so upset. I, on the other hand, was used to it. I usually saw Pericles in his private office, when a crisis was at hand and events had turned against us. At those times he could be the most demanding man in the world. He had no tolerance for anyone whose service to the city was less than perfect.
Pericles continued the meeting with a question.
“Who is the victim?” he asked.
“Romanos of Phrygia,” Sophocles said. “I’m the author of this tragedy. May the Gods forgive me. Romanos was deuteragonist of my play.”
“The dead man’s not a citizen then?”
“No, he’s a metic.”
“What do we know about him?”
“Very little,” I said. “The only man who knew him at all was Lakon.”
Lakon gestured in an elegant movement that reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t say whom.
“Hardly that,” Lakon said. “I knew Romanos. Of course I did. But there isn’t much I can tell you. One doesn’t like to move in such circles.” Lakon pronounced every word perfectly and yet oddly rounded. His voice was rich and flowed like honey, as full of pleasant timbre and as precisely controlled as Pericles’s own. I thought it quite remarkable.
“What circles?” someone at the back of the courtyard asked.
“Metics,” Lakon said. He gave the word just enough stress to show what he thought of metics. “Romanos was merely a professional colleague. Even then, I’m not quite sure what he was doing in a Dionysia play.” Lakon cast a sidelong glance at Sophocles, as if to say the playwright had been slumming when he invited Romanos onto the cast.
Sophocles turned a dangerous red.
“I don’t think I know you?” Pericles said to Lakon. I knew what Pericles was thinking. I could imagine the effect if that voice spoke before the People’s Assembly. If Pericles had a competitor for best orator in Athens, he wanted to know about it before they faced each other in debate.
“You don’t recognize me, yet you have seen me many times,” Lakon replied with a superior air. “I am the protagonist, the lead actor of this play.”
“Oh, I see. Nice to meet you,” said Pericles dismissively, and with an audible trace of relief. He had once said to me that no one in their right mind would ever vote for an actor. That Lakon had trod the stage automatically meant he had no future in politics.
Pericles said to the assembly at large, “Is there anyone in Athens to avenge the murdered man?”
“His family,” I said. “He has a sister and brother-in-law here. But they of course are also metics.”
Several grunts of dismissal sounded around the room. Everyone knew a metic had little chance of avenging a murder in Athens.
Pericles said, “Are there any other questions?”
The Eponymous Archon had only one. He said, “How quickly can you get the play restarted?”
Everyone present stared at the Eponymous Archon in astonishment.
“We can’t,” Sophocles said.
“What? Don’t you have a replacement actor? Surely you do.”
Sophocles said, “The problem is it would be impious to continue.”
“Even so I must insist the festival carries on,” sa
id the Eponymous Archon. He sounded angry. “It’s a question of national pride.”
“Didn’t you hear what Sophocles said?” asked the Basileus. He was the archon in charge of religious affairs. “Did you not hear that the God’s statue was placed on the stage, facing the crime? Gentlemen, this is a murder committed in the presence of the God. On his most sacred ground—the theater—right before his most sacred festival, the Great Dionysia.”
Everyone glumly contemplated his words.
“The god Dionysos must be furious at what’s happened. Can you imagine the bad luck that would descend on the city if we continued as if nothing had happened? I’m sure the High Priest of Dionysos agrees with me.”
All eyes turned to the High Priest Theokritos. He nodded unhappily. “It’s true.”
“What would it take to appease the God?” the Eponymous Archon asked.
“Perhaps a major sacrifice?” the High Priest suggested. “Like the Eponymous Archon, I too am most reluctant to abandon the Dionysia, or even delay it for an instant.”
“Your reluctance is understandable, my friend,” said the Basileus. “But we all know impiety is a major crime, the biggest there is.”
Theokritos sighed. “Yes. I know what you’re about to say.”
“The Great Dionysia must be suspended,” said the Basileus.
In the shocked silence that followed, the Eponymous Archon asked, “What would it take, then, to restart the festival?”
“Punishment of the killer, of course,” the Basileus said.
“What’s the penalty for impiety?” someone asked.
“Death by stoning,” Theokritos said. That meant the murderer would be taken to a nearby quarry, where he would be tied to a stake, and the people of Athens would take turns throwing rocks at him until he was dead.
“All right then,” said the Eponymous Archon. “Let’s execute the murderer and get on with the festival.”
“There’s only one little detail,” Aeschylus pointed out. “We don’t know who did it.”
