Marathon

by Christian Cameron

  me. ‘I do clay, mostly,’ he said, ‘but I know how to grave

  metal.’

  I held up one of my borders. ‘As do I,’ I said.

  He frowned. ‘You are scratching,’ he said. ‘You need to cut

  the metal.’ He picked up my heaviest graver and began to push it

  across the surface of my bowl. ‘Like this. Careful strokes.

  Deeper where you want a heavier line.’

  At first his hands were tentative and slow, and he left tiny

  errors on the lines – stil deeper and better cut than mine, but

  wavering. But then he drank some warm milk, and his hand

  steadied, and before the afternoon was over, Tiraeus had

  slapped him on the back and the three of us polished the finished

  bowl together and set it in the glow of the fire to admire our

  shared work.

  shared work.

  ‘Can you stay sober?’ I asked him.

  He looked at me. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘How much engraving

  do you have for me?’

  Tiraeus laughed. But I knew he was teling the truth.

  I remember the ride over the mountains. We’d already started

  the first ploughing, and as Hesiod says, ‘The boneless one is

  gnawing on his foot’.

  It was the ugly time when the days grow longer, but only so

  that more rain can fal, and stil nothing comes from the earth, and

  men think winter may never break. There was snow everywhere

  on the mountain, and yet our horses made short work of the ride,

  and we came down into the plains of Attica without losing a toe

  from frostbite.

  Aristides was there first, with Jocasta, an unexpected aly in

  this marriage business, and she and Pen were immediate friends.

  Miltiades came with his wife, a vapid Thracian princess I’d met

  often enough before. Even the Alcmaeonids were represented in

  the person of Kineas, an elder, a member of the Areopagitica

  and a powerful man. He was pleasant and dignified. It was a

  very public wedding, and the little Temple of Aphrodite where

  we were bound together was filed to the outer row of pilars

  with guests.

  I remember little of the ceremony except my own sense of

  importance, which makes me laugh now. I was delighted that so

  many famous men had come, and yet I was decent enough to be

  equaly delighted to see Paramanos and Agios and Harpagos,

  equaly delighted to see Paramanos and Agios and Harpagos,

  whose ship was in Piraeus and who had kept his cargo waiting to

  come up and kiss my bride. With them were a dozen oarsmen

  and marines who had the wherewithal to travel into the hils

  above Marathon to see me wed.

  Euphoria was so beautiful on her wedding day that I couldn’t

  think of much else, to tel the truth. I remember the look in her

  eyes when I lifted the veil, and I remember how she rested her

  hip against mine in the chariot as we rode from her father’s house

  to the house we had borrowed to be ‘mine’. Her women bathed

  her – winter is an unkind time for weddings, I have to tel you –

  and men sang songs about the size of my member and the depth

  of her cunny – oh, you blush, my dear. You’ve never heard

  wedding songs?

  And when I undressed her, she devoured me. Who knew

  that under her humour and her nimble fingers and equaly nimble

  head lurked a woman of flesh and blood? We coupled – wel, al

  night. Her body was like a feast, and al I could do was eat.

  But I’l keep the rest of those memories for myself. I wil only

  brag, like other bridegrooms I have known, that I kept her

  warm, and she craved my warmth often enough to make my

  sister blush. Like you, blushing girl – but not so often nor so red.

  Look, friends – she’s gone off again! You could heat a room

  with her warmth!

  We rode back over the passes into Boeotia and started our

  new lives.

  And for the rest, I remember little enough. Except that we

  And for the rest, I remember little enough. Except that we

  were happy, and healthy, and in love.

  It didn’t last. Nothing worth having ever does. But it was the

  happiest time of my young life.

  15

  Spring in Boeotia. The feast of Persephone, the dancing

  maidens, the birth of ewes and kids, the rain, the mud, the first

  green, and then the burst of flowers from the ground as if the

  earth is impatient for new life – which she is. And soon enough,

  the barley harvest, which was as rich and fecund as the autumn

  wheat harvest had been.

  Euphoria was pregnant. She filed our old house with herself,

  and as soon as the jasmine blossomed we had sprigs of it in

  every room. There were flower-wreaths on every door, and a

  dozen new women, her women, and her father’s gift to me, with

  as many boarhounds – and they wove and chattered and cooked

  and laughed and barked.

  Mater bloomed as wel. I heard her singing with Euphoria on

  the second day she was in my house, and I shook my head,

  waiting for my new wife to discover what a horror my mother

  waiting for my new wife to discover what a horror my mother

  realy was. But Mater did not fail.

  Was it Cleon? Was Cleon a mirror to her? Or was it having a

  daughter-in-law of her own class that brought her downstairs

  and into our lives?

  I grumbled. I won’t lie. I had little love for Mater, and when

  she was sitting at my table, night after night, she was like a blight

  on my crops.

  Euphoria was not afraid of me. She never was – a rarity in

  those days, when men feared my wrath. Ah – you stil fear it, do

  you, young man? Very wise. My hand is not yet a wilow branch.

  But in those days . . .

  Nonetheless, when I was rude to my mother, Euphoria would

  look at me across the room. ‘May I have a word with you in

  private, my dear?’ she would ask. And when we had a door

  between us and the rest of the world, she would say, ‘I am

  mistress in this house, and I insist that my husband have the

  manners of a gentleman. Rude to your mother? How boorish is

  that?’

  I remember it wel, my honey. Her tongue was as sharp as

  my sword, and she was seldom wrong. And I was so besotted

  with her that I seldom troubled her with a reply. Indeed, I felt

  that I was the luckiest man in the world that such a creature had

  agreed to be my wife. I sometimes wondered if I was one of

  those monsters in our myths who keeps the maiden until slain by

  a hero – was I the hero or the Minotaur?

  And we did fight. It wil sound odd, when you consider her

  And we did fight. It wil sound odd, when you consider her

  birth and mine, but I found her stinginess offensive. She disliked

  spending our winter stores on guests, on Cleon, on Idomeneus.

  She would keep yesterday’s barley in a pan by the hearth to

  feed to local men who appeared through the spring mud to talk

  about politics, and she tasted al the wine in my celar, then

  divided the amphorae into those for guests and those for the

  house.

  ‘We are not poor!’ I remember shouting at her.


  ‘And I wil keep us that way!’ she shouted back.

  On another evening, when Idomeneus made a remark about

  the age of the lamb he was eating, I winced – there was some

  screaming. I remember asking, ‘Are you the daughter of some

  shepherd? No – Attic shepherds are generous. A slave,

  perhaps?’

  ‘Slave?’ she roared, turning on me. ‘This from a man with his

  arms black to the elbows?’

  Now this hurt, as I washed and washed each night before I

  went into the house, because I didn’t want to seem like the

  blackened smith to my glorious, aristocratic wife.

  I cocked back my hand to hit her. Most men hit their wives,

  and with various amounts of reason – some because they are

  weak fools who have to be stronger than someone, and others

  because their women hit them first. But let us be honest – men

  are, by and large, bigger than women, and far stronger, and my

  pater taught me that any man who uses force on a woman, to get

  her into bed or merely win her agreement in argument, is

  contemptible.

  contemptible.

  You heard me. If you think otherwise, let’s hear it.

  Despite which, married for a month, I found myself with a

  hand in the air. And I wasn’t going to give her a swat – I was

  going to knock her teeth out. Trust me – I know what I intended.

  Rage consumed me. Black hands, indeed.

  You have to love someone to be that angry, I think.

  She didn’t flinch.

  I stormed out of the house rather than hit her. I got a horse

  and rode over to see Peneleos, and had a cup of wine with him

  and his sister and his wife. They told me, in short, that I was a

  fool and I needed to go back and apologize – excelent advice –

  and I rode back to find Euphoria’s door shut and barred, and I

  had to listen to the sound of her weeping. I caled, and she

  shouted something.

  Peneleos had told me not to worry if we weren’t reconciled

  before bed. But I couldn’t sleep, and it was a long, long night. I

  lacked the courage to go to her door again, and when I went to

  the pantry to get a cup of beer in the night, the two kitchen slaves

  – both hers – flattened themselves against the wal in terror of

  me.

  When the sun rose, I went out into the courtyard and sang a

  hymn to Helios, hoping that she would come down, and then I

  went and lit the forge. Tiraeus came in, munching a crust of stale

  bread. He had no idea that there had been a quarrel.

  ‘You look like goat crap,’ he said, after we had worked for

  an hour.

  ‘Bad night,’ I said.

  ‘Bad night,’ I said.

  ‘Bah – newly-weds!’ he said. ‘She’s pregnant. You can stop

  fucking now.’ His grin took the sting from the words.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We had a fight.’

  He shrugged. ‘Never been married,’ he said. ‘But it does

  seem to me that most people fight. You and me, for instance.’

  That was true enough, and Tiraeus and I were, in some ways,

  closer than any other two men I knew, except maybe me and

  Hermogenes. When we shared a project, we were inseparable.

  Craft made us closer than brothers. And stil we could disagree

  on everything and anything, and when a helmet or a cup was in

  that dangerous stage just short of completion, it would al boil

  over into anger and disappointment and outrage. We were so

  used to it that we’d get the edges on a helmet trimmed and shake

  hands and say, ‘Tomorrow, we fight.’ And we’d laugh – but the

  next day, as we raised the last lines on the skul, the fight would

  start.

  Al of which is by way of saying that, as usual, Tiraeus had a

  point.

  ‘So, what did she do?’ he asked.

  ‘Served Idomeneus some three-day-old stew.’ Put that way,

  it just didn’t sound as bad.

  ‘I see. Death sentence for that, I agree. And what did you

  say?’ Tiraeus punctuated his remarks with taps on the bowl he

  was planishing.

  ‘I . . . caled her a slave. Pretty much.’ I cringed at the

  thought.

  ‘Ahh.’ Tiraeus picked up his bowl, stared at the area he was

  planishing and shook his head. ‘Wel, that doesn’t sound so

  bad.’ He looked at me. ‘You cal me the son of a whore al the

  time.’ His smile told me differently, and I understood – both that

  he felt I had behaved badly, and that he resented my epithets

  when I was angry.

  And while I took this in, the door opened and there was

  Euphoria with a cup in her hands – warm wine and spices.

  ‘Husband?’ she asked from the door. She had never been in the

  forge before.

  ‘Wife?’ I asked in reply, and I caught the handle of the cup

  and puled her gently in. ‘Welcome to the forge.’

  ‘Empedocles would have a fit,’ Tiraeus said. He got up from

  his stool and came over. ‘I’l just step outside for a piss, eh?’

  I put a hand to stop him. ‘Wife, I have behaved badly, and I

  used a phrase which no free person should ever use to another. I

  wish to apologize in front of my felow master smith. And I

  understand that I am guilty of doing the same to him – when in

  anger.’

  ‘You do have a temper,’ Tiraeus said.

  Euphoria looked at me for a moment. There were questions

  in her eyes, and those questions were, in some ways, more

  painful than shouted arguments and closed doors. ‘Apology

  accepted,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought you wine, and there’s

  breakfast for both of you in the andron.’

  The breakfast was an apology of its own – eggs and good

  bread and spiced wine for me and Tiraeus and for Hermogenes

  bread and spiced wine for me and Tiraeus and for Hermogenes

  when he came in from the vines. And that day I learned what

  was best about Euphoria – the thing that made me the luckiest of

  men. When she accepted my apology – why, then, the argument

  was over. I have known women – Briseis, I must confess – who

  hold a grudge for ever. But Euphoria, however angry she might

  have been, dismissed her anger as the sun burns through a

  morning fog, so that once the anger had passed, it never needed

  to be recaled.

  Beautiful breasts and a lovely waist and a face like a statue

  are al very wel – but an even temper and a sense of fairness wil

  last longer. Ask any married man. Or woman, for that matter.

  That was the spring of contentment. We argued – twice, I

  think, and I’l tel the story of the second time in a moment – but

  we also ate and danced and made love and went into Plataea for

  market days – together. And because Euphoria was such a

  lovely, pleasant girl, everyone wanted to meet her, and suddenly

  I was a man with friends, acquaintances, invitations.

  Penelope visited twice – it was only thirty stades from her

  home to mine, and once the roads were dry she could come on a

  whim. As the days grew longer and hotter, and the season

  prepared to turn again, she was pregnant, too, and delighted to

  be so, and s
he told me with a giggle that she thought that the

  bonfire of Pan had had a salutary effect, and her husband roled

  his eyes.

  They were served our best food and drink, I noticed. And

  then dismissed, because there are fights not worth having.

  We hosted Myron to dinner before midsummer’s eve – he

  We hosted Myron to dinner before midsummer’s eve – he

  hadn’t eaten in my house since my father was alive. His wife had

  arranged it with Euphoria, although neither was present for the

  dinner. Instead, most of the men who came were older men.

  Peneleos was there, and he was my age, as was his older

  brother Epictetus; and Bion was there because he was my right

  hand and welcome any time. But the other men were older –

  Draco seemed older than the hils, and Diocles was only a little

  younger than Mater, and Hilarion, once the life of the party and a

  poor farmer, was now a cheerful and wealthy man.

  They were my neighbours. We also invited Idomeneus down

  from Cithaeron, and Alcaeus of Miletus, who had status in

  Plataea by virtue of being the lord, in effect if not in fact, of fifty

  good spearmen who were now citizens.

  We had a good sacrifice up the hil. I remember that I

  watched the skies for a day, praying for good weather, and I

  remember that we stil had to squelch our way across the best

  barley field because we’d had rain, but our little altar was high

  and dry on the hiltop. Myron made the sacrifice, and he

  mentioned my father in his prayer. And then we gave the fat and

  the bones to the god, and squelched our way back down to the

  house with the slaves carrying the skin and al the meat, and we

  had quite a dinner – a whole sheep. The slaves shared in it. I had

  quite a few slaves by then – with my wife’s I had twenty. Too

  many, and they were starting to breed more.

  We had a proper symposium, too, with good talk about civic

  duty and the difference between men’s laws and god’s laws. It

  was al very pleasant, and then we began to talk of Persia.

  was al very pleasant, and then we began to talk of Persia.

  Myron held up his hand and we al stopped talking. ‘I want to

  discuss a matter of business,’ he said. He had quite a presence

  by then. I could remember him as a young farmer, but by that

  time he was an orator and a man of immense dignity.

  ‘Arimnestos, I intend to put it to the vote after the first feast