pious fool, or a hypocrite.’
‘Neither, my lord.’ We were alone in the dark.
‘You need to be gone – before your wagon arrives with the
corpse and the goods, and they find an excuse to take you again.
corpse and the goods, and they find an excuse to take you again.
I wil try to find your girl. But this murder is a stain, and you must
be clean before you come back here. It may be that some god
led you to it – because you do need to be gone, and tonight is
better than tomorrow.’ He shrugged. ‘They wil kil you if they
cannot convict you.’
‘I don’t fear them,’ I said, but I wasn’t teling the truth.
‘In a year, the balance wil change. Right now, you cannot be
here. Even Plataea might prove dangerous for you. Go to Delos,
and do as the god bids you.’ He held out his hand. ‘I do not fear
polution so much that I would not clasp your hand.’
And then I was walking in the dark, down the rocky road to
Sounion.
3
I managed to find a ship at Sounion, practicaly on the steps of
the Temple of Poseidon. He was a Phoenician bound for Delos
with a cargo of slaves from Italy and Iberia. I didn’t think very
highly of slavers and I dislike Phoenicians on principle, even
though they are great sailors, but I took it as a test from the gods
and I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut.
Al the slaves were Iberians, big men with heavy moustaches,
tattoos and the deep anger of the recently enslaved. They eyed
my weapons and I kept my distance. They al looked like fighting
men.
The navarch, a man with a beard trimmed the Aegyptian way,
curling like a talon from his chin, made them row in shifts
between his professional rowers. He was training them so that
he’d get a better price. He planned to sel the best of them at
Delos and the rest at Tyre or Ephesus.
Delos and the rest at Tyre or Ephesus.
‘Ephesus?’ I asked. Ephesus always interested me.
‘The satrap of Phrygia has an army laying siege to Miletus,’
he said. ‘His fleet is based at Ephesus.’
That was news to me. ‘Already?’ I asked. The fal of Miletus
– the most powerful city in the Greek world, or so we thought –
would be the end of the Ionian Revolt.
Once again, I have to leave my tale to explain. In those days,
most of the cities of Ionia – and there were dozens, from
beautiful Heraklea on the Euxine, down along the coast of Asia
to mighty Miletus, then to Ephesus, the city of my youth, richer
than Athens by a factor of five times – across the Cyprian Sea to
Cyprus and Crete – more Greeks lived in Ionia than lived in
Greece. Except that most of those Greeks lived under the rule of
the King of Kings – the Great King of the Persians.
While I was growing to manhood in the house of Hipponax, I
lived under Persian rule. The Persians ruled wel, thugater. Never
believe the crap men say today about how they were a nation of
slaves. They were warriors, and men of honour – in most cases,
more honour than we Greeks. Artaphernes – the satrap of
Phrygia – was the friend and foe of my youth. He was a great
man.
In those days – in my youth – the Greeks of Ionia rose up to
throw off the shackles of Persian slavery. Hah! Now, there’s a
load of cow shit. Selfish men seeking power for themselves
cozened the citizens of many Ionian cities to trade the safety and
stability of the world’s greatest empire for ‘freedom’. To most
stability of the world’s greatest empire for ‘freedom’. To most
Ionians, that freedom was the freedom to be kiled by a Persian.
None of the Ionians trusted each other, and every one of them
wanted power over the others. The Persians had a unified
command, briliant generals and excelent supplies. And money.
The Ionian Revolt had lasted for ten years, but it was never
much of a success. And when this story starts, as I was sailing as
a passenger on a slave ship, it was entering its final phase,
although we didn’t know it. The Persians had seemed at the
edge of triumph before, and each time, the revolt had been
rescued – usualy by Athens, or by Athenians acting as
surrogates for their mother city, like Miltiades.
But Athens had its own problems – the near civil war I
described. Persian gold was pouring into the city, inflating the
power of the aristocratic party and the Alcmaeonids, and the
Pisistratids were backed by Persia to restore the tyranny – not
that I knew that then. Persian gold was paralysing Athens, and
the Persian axe was poised over Miletus.
To the navarch of this slave ship, al this meant that he could
make a handsome profit seling half-trained rowers to the Persian
fleet anchored on the beaches around Ephesus, supporting the
siege of Miletus.
I listened and managed not to speak.
We were fifteen days making a three-day voyage, and I
hated that ship by the time we landed. His long, black hul was
swift and clean, and for a light trireme he was the very acme of
perfection – yet this Phoenician cur sailed him like a pig. The
Phoenician was afraid of every cup of wind, and he stayed on a
Phoenician was afraid of every cup of wind, and he stayed on a
coast to the very end of a headland and crossed open water with
visible reluctance. I’ve never loved the Phoenicians, but most of
them were briliant sailors. Every pack has a cur.
I sat alone in the bow, sang the hymn to Apolo as we sing it
in Plataea – I have Apolo’s raven on my shield – and prepared
myself to meet the god of the lyre and the plague. I tried not to
think of how easily I could take this ship. Those days were gone.
Or so I thought.
The last night at sea, I had a dream – such a dream that I can
remember wisps of it even today. Ravens came to me and
carried my good knife away, and one of them set a lyre in my
hand as a replacement. I didn’t need a priest to tel me what that
meant.
The most dangerous of the Iberians – you could see it in his
eyes – had a raven tattooed on his hand and another on his
sword arm. When the slaver’s stern was set in the deep sand of
a Delian beach and his people were moving cargo, I dropped my
heavy knife into the blackness under the Iberian’s bench, while
he lay watching me, exhausted from rowing.
Our eyes met. I nodded. His face was completely blank. I
wasn’t even sure he’d seen the knife, and I went ashore, poorer
by a good blade.
Priests are priests the world around – I’ve noted a certain
similarity from Olympia to Memphis in Aegypt. Many of them
are good men and women; a few are remarkable, genuinely
blessed. The rest are a sorry lot – people who probably, in my
blessed. The rest are a sorry lot – people who probably, in my
opinion, couldn’t make a living any other way, except as beggars
or farm labour.
The man who met me as I kissed the rock by the stern of t
he
slave ship was one of the latter. His hands were soft and his
hand-clasp was limp and unpleasant, and his soft voice wished
me a speedy encounter with the god in a voice that seemed al
too ready to wheedle and plead.
‘You are Arimnestos of Plataea,’ he said.
Wel, that took me aback. I was naive then, and didn’t know
the effort to which the great priesthoods went to be informed.
Nor did I suspect how carefuly engineered this might be.
‘Yes,’ I alowed.
‘Brought here by the god to hear your penance for murder,’
he said in the same voice that a man might tease a girl into his
blanket rol. I didn’t like him. But he had me, I can tel you.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘The god has spoken to us of you,’ he said. He leaned his
chin on the head of his staff. ‘What have you brought as
offering?’
Just like that. My feet were stil in the sand of the beach and
the priests of Apolo wanted their fees.
I sighed. ‘I have served Apolo and Hephaestus al my life,’ I
said. ‘I revere al the gods, and I serve at the shrine of the hero
Leitos of Plataea.’ This by way of my religious credentials, so to
speak.
He said nothing. His eyes flickered to the purse in my hand.
‘I have twenty drachmas, less the one I owe as passage to
‘I have twenty drachmas, less the one I owe as passage to
that slave trader.’ Need I mention that the priests of Apolo
played an active role in the trade?
‘Nineteen silver owls? That is al the duty you pay to the god,
you who are caled the Spear of the Greeks?’ He shook his
head. ‘I think not. Go back and return when you intend to give
the god his due.’
Now, lest you young people miss the accounting, nineteen
silver owls was the value of a farm’s produce for a year. But of
course, it was as nothing next to the profits a man might make
trading – or as a pirate.
I didn’t know what to say. I had more respect for priests in
those days – even venal creatures like this one. ‘These nineteen
drachmas are al I have,’ I protested.
He laughed. ‘Then Lord Apolo wil give you nineteen
drachmas’ worth of prophecy – I can feel his words in my heart.
Go – and come back when you have learned enough wisdom to
pay your tithe.’
Perhaps at eighteen, I’d have obeyed.
But I was older. ‘Out of my way,’ I said. ‘I need to find a
priest.’
He oozed insult. ‘I am the priest the god has assigned.’
I shrugged and pushed past him. ‘I suspect the god can do
better.’
He folowed me up the rock and his voice became
increasingly shril as he demanded that I speak to him, but I
continued up the steps to the temple complex. At the gate, he
continued up the steps to the temple complex. At the gate, he
was stil shouting at me as I asked the porter to find me a priest.
The porter grunted and I gave him a drachma, and he sent a
boy.
‘Arimnestos of Plataea!’ the priest from the beach persisted.
‘This is not the way a gentleman behaves!’
‘Only eighteen drachmas left,’ I said. ‘And by the time I get a
new guide to the altar, there wil be none.’
‘Your arrogance wil be your death,’ he said. ‘You seek to
cheat the god!’
‘I do not,’ I said. ‘I am a farmer in Boeotia, not a pirate in the
Chersonese. These coins are a fair share of my fortune in the last
year.’
I said so – but I began to be afraid. Those coins were, as you
know, taken from the corpses of men who tried to kil me.
Perhaps the coins were poluted. But essentialy my words were
true ones. The eighteen coins in my purse were more than a tenth
of al the coins I had in the world.
‘Why have you requested a second guide?’ a hard voice
asked. This priest was older, dressed in a simple wool garment
that had seen better days. ‘Thrasybulus? Why have I been
summoned?’
‘You may go back to your cel,’ the oily man behind me
answered. ‘This arrogant Boeotian is attempting to bargain with
god.’
‘I wish to be washed by the god for a murder committed in
Athens,’ I said. ‘If the god has words for me to hear, I would
laugh with delight to hear them. But this man asks me for money
laugh with delight to hear them. But this man asks me for money
I do not have.’ I pointed at the younger priest.
The older man rubbed his beard. ‘What price have you
offered?’ he asked.
‘He is—’
‘Silence, Thrasybulus.’ The older priest seemed a different
kind of man.
‘I have offered eighteen drachmas,’ I said. ‘It is al I have.’
‘The cost of three new buls?’ He looked at me.
‘He can do better. Much better.’ Thrasybulus pointed at the
metalwork on my empty scabbard.
The older man sighed. ‘This is unseemly. The priesthood of
Apolo does not bargain like fishwives on the beach.’
The porter’s laugh suggested that this statement was not
entirely true.
‘I am Dion of Delos,’ the older man said. ‘I am principaly a
scholar, and I seldom lead men to the gates – but Thrasybulus
has, I fear, earned your displeasure.’ The older man glared at the
younger. ‘You wil need silver for food – and passage home, as
wel. Wil you not?’
I nodded.
‘Give me twelve drachmas for your sacrifices, and I wil lead
you to the god,’ he said.
Thrasybulus spat. ‘You are a liar before the god,’ he said,
pointing at me.
Not an auspicious start to my time on the island of Apolo.
That evening, I made the first of my three sacrifices – this one on
That evening, I made the first of my three sacrifices – this one on
the so-caled altar of ash. I sacrificed a black lamb, a symbol of
my crime, and I told the god and al the other men waiting to
sacrifice how I had come to kil the thug in Athens and what my
sin was – the sin of hubris, in feeling that I was as fit to decide his
fate as the gods.
Other men sacrificed for other crimes. One, from Crete, had
kiled his son with a javelin – an error, a grievous miscast while
hunting. Another had slept with a foreign woman during her
courses and felt unclean. I almost laughed, but everyone else
seemed to feel this was a serious thing. Several men were
soldiers – mercenaries – who had come to atone for kiling other
Greeks – over dice, or in battle. Two men were guilty of gross
impiety.
My sacrifice was refused. I took the animal to the altar and
kiled it, but the fire would not accept the beast. I saw it myself.
The same happened to one of the men guilty of impiety, and
the man who had kiled his son.
My priest – Dion – led the three of us from the altar. He took
us to a hut made of brush on the cliff high above the beach. ‘You
wil remain here for a week, eating clean food and drinking only
water. Consider how you became unclean. Consider your life. I
wil return for you.’
That was a long week.
The Cretan was caled Heracles. He was tal and strong,
noble in his carriage, and so broken by grief that it was hard to
speak to him. He felt the guilt that I did not feel. He felt that he
had kiled his son and deserved the wrath of the god, while I felt
had kiled his son and deserved the wrath of the god, while I felt
that I had acted hastily – selfishly – but that I had now learned
my lesson and did not deserve the wrath of Apolo. Yet I had
enough sense to see that I had far more culpability than this
Cretan lord.
In fact, he was mistaking sorrow for guilt. I sat with him, night
after night, held his hand and spoke to him of hunting, and of
Crete, a place I knew wel. I could get him to listen, and I could
make him smile, and then some chance of speech would cast him
back into the pit.
‘I am cursed,’ he said. ‘I have kiled my son, and now my
wife is barren.’
‘Take a concubine,’ I said, with al the arrogance of youth.
‘I cannot replace eighteen years of my life and his, just by
making another squawking babe,’ he shot back – with more
spirit than I’d seen so far.
‘Lord, you can. And then you must toil for as many years
again, until he comes to manhood, so that your patronage is
secure.’ I spoke carefuly, for I felt I might be speaking wisdom.
He sighed. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘You are young. When you
have seen fifty winters, tel me how you feel about lasting through
another fifteen seasons of war and the hunt. My joints hurt just
lying here.’
The other man was a blasphemer. I could tel this because he
swore by various gods every hour on the hour, and cursed the
gods for setting him on Delos. He was a little man – in mind, not
stature – and a lesson to anyone who would listen about the
stature – and a lesson to anyone who would listen about the
vices men can get into through idleness and superstition. I might
have been a foolish young man, but I was the very king of piety
next to Philocrates.
‘If you care so little for the gods, why did you come here and
confess?’ I asked him.
He shrugged. ‘I swore an oath – nothing big – just part of a
business deal. I never meant to pay the bastard – he was
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