At the shrine of the hero, Idomeneus halted his men – those
who had survived – and we embraced.
‘Good fight,’ he said, with his mad grin.
We poured libations for the hero. Probably hundreds. It is
odd, but one of my memories of that autumn day is the wine lying
in pools before the hero’s tomb. I had never seen so many
libations poured there, and the image of wine filing the wagon
ruts is, to me, one of the strongest I associate with Marathon.
We did not commit hubris. We gave thanks.
Then we went down into the lengthening shadows of the
valey, and we halted under our own wals and formed the
phalanx one more time. Thousands of citizens came out to see us
– indeed, they’d known we were coming when the first glint of
bronze was seen on the passes, and runners had long since
brought them the tale of the battle and the number and names of
the dead.
We formed one last time, and Myron came out of the
phalanx.
I took off my helmet and handed him my spear. ‘We are no
longer at war,’ I said. ‘I was the archon of war, and I return my
spear.’
He took it. ‘Plataeans,’ he said. ‘I return you to your city, at
peace.’
And they cheered – the hoplites, and the new citizens, and
the women and children and even the slaves.
It would be good if I could leave it there.
Pour me a little more wine.
I looked around for Euphoria – I hadn’t realy expected her,
as she would have been in her ninth month – but I saw neither
Hermogenes’ wife nor my sister. I remember that Antigonus and
I stood together, and I had a joke at the edge of my tongue,
about how, for the first time, we were timely and our wives were
late.
Before I could make that cruel jibe, one of my Thracians –
the men I’d freed – came on to the Field of Ares. He told us his
news, tears running down his cheeks. To be honest, I don’t
remember anything after that, until I stood by her bedside. I had
missed her by perhaps three hours.
There was blood – enough blood that she might have died at
Marathon. She had fought her own fight – a long one – and she
had not surrendered or given way. She stood her ground until the
very end, and pushed our child out, and died for it.
‘I told her you were coming,’ Pen told me. She held me
tightly against her, and I felt nothing but the fatigue and the
crushing lack of emotion that had dogged me since we stormed
the olive grove. ‘I told her, and she held my hand – oh!’
Pen wept. Antigonus wept.
I felt as if I had been wrapped in thick wool.
I felt as if I had been wrapped in thick wool.
I drank some wine, and later I lay on some blankets, my eyes
open. Then, my choices made, I got to my feet. I lifted her – she
weighed nothing – and carried her outside to the stable. I took a
horse – no great crime with a brother-in-law – and I carried her
body across my lap, as I had carried her over the mountains
when first she was my bride.
I carried her home.
Of course, there was nothing left of my home but the forge.
Cleitus and Simon had burned my house.
I laid her on the work table in my forge, and I put everything
on her – every jewel Mater had saved from the house, every
piece of loot I had taken from Marathon or been given by
thankful Athenians, until she glittered like a goddess.
Then I lit my forge.
I prayed to Hephaestus, and I lit my torch from my forge fire.
Then I set my forge ablaze, and I left it to burn as her pyre.
It burned behind me, bright as a new sun. I rode down the
hil, away from the farm and the fire. I rode steadily until I heard
the crash as the roof-tree gave, and the whoosh as the rest of the
building leaped into new flame – and then I pressed my horse to
a galop and rode away.
I never promised you a happy story.
If I tel you more . . .
If I tel you more, thugater, it wil be another night. And then
I’l tel you how I broke the mould of my life and cast it away –
how I went with Miltiades and then to Sicily, and left Greece
behind me.
behind me.
For now, though, leave an old man to weep old tears. So
many dead – and only me to sing of them now. I am the last.
But remember, when you pray to the gods, that men stood
like the heroes of old at Marathon, and were better. And that
they are stil no better than the women who bear them.
Wine!
Historical Afterword
As closely as possible, this novel folows the road of history. But
history – especialy Archaic Greek history – can be more like a
track in the forest than a road with a kerb. I have attempted to
make sense of Herodotus and his curiously modern tale of nation
states, betrayal, terrorism and heroism. I have read most of the
secondary sources, and I have found most of them wanting.
The Persians were not ‘bad’. The Greeks were not ‘good’.
And since both cultures grew from the same roots, ‘Western’
civilization would probably have been much the same had the
Persians remained the world empire. Or so I believe.
And yet, and yet . . . the complex web of decisions, betrayals
and conspiracies in Herodotus somehow gave birth to the first
real attempt at democracy – at least, the first of which we know.
I have done my best to make this element of the story as
essential as the fighting – to try and show how the smal men
gained political power, despite the overwhelming power of
landowners and an ancient aristocracy.
It is nothing but facile error to see Athenian democracy as
bearing any resemblance to the United States, Great Britain or
any other modern democracy except in the most general way.
any other modern democracy except in the most general way.
There were no ‘middle-class hoplites’ in the front ranks.
Aristocrats led the demos in every walk of life, and at war they
served in front, in their superior armour, with their superior
training, and the evidence for this is on every page of the
literature, and only the most pig-headed myth-making can ignore
it. In the period of which I write, the ‘phalanx’ as we now
imagine it was just being born. Indeed, one possible reading of
Herodotus would suggest that the ‘phalanx’ was born at
Marathon. Archers and light-armed men stil served in the front
lines, and heroic aristocrats stil fought duels – or so the art and
literature suggest, however the idea is disliked by current
historians, especialy ‘military’ historians.
In fact, there were few middle-class hoplites because our
modern notions of class didn’t exist. A poor man, like Socrates,
might stil be an aristocrat to his finger ends. A rich man, like the
former slave who gave a thousand aspides to support the
rearming of Athens in the fourth century, remained a former
slave. Unless the term ‘middle class’
has no other meaning than
to stand as a group between the poor and the rich, it can’t be
made to apply.
And finaly, or perhaps first, it may be that only the veterans
among my readers wil know the truth that military historians
often cannot stomach – that al races and breeds are equaly
brave or cowardly, regardless of government, loyalty, race,
creed or sexual preference. That al men lose combat
effectiveness with fatigue and confusion.
That only a few men are kilers, and they are supremely
dangerous.
Realy, friends, it is al in the Iliad. And when my inspiration
failed, I always went back to the Iliad, like a man returning to
the source of pure water. I have enormous respect for the
modern works of many historians, classical and modern. But
they weren’t there.
I have seen war – never the war of the spear and shield, but
war. And when I read the Iliad, it comes to me as being true.
Not, perhaps, true about Troy. But true about war. Homer did
not love war. Achiles is not the best man in the Iliad. War is
ugly.
Arimnestos of Plataea was a real man. I hope that I’ve done
him justice.
Acknowledgements
On 1 April 1990, I was in the back right seat of an S-3B Viking,
flying a routine anti-submarine warfare flight off the USS Dwight
D. Eisenhower. But we were not just anywhere. We were off
the coast of Turkey, and in one flight we passed Troy, or rather,
Hisarlik, Anatolia. Later that afternoon, we passed down the
coast of Lesbos and al along the coast of what Herodotus
thought of as Asia. Back in my stateroom, on the top bunk (my
bunk, as the most junior officer), was an open copy of the Iliad.
I wil never forget that day, because there’s a picture on my
wal of the Sovremenny-class destroyer Okrylennyy broadside
on to the mock harpoon missile I fired on her from wel over the
horizon using our superb ISAR radar. Of course, there was no
Homeric deed of arms – the Cold War was dying, or even dead
– but there was professional triumph in that hour, and the photo
of the ship, framed against the distant haze of the same coastline
that saw battles at Mycale and Troy, wil decorate my wals until
my shade goes down to the underworld.
I think that the Killer of Men series was born there. I love
the Greek and Turkish Aegean, and the history of it. Before
Saddam Hussein wrecked it in August, my carrier battle group
Saddam Hussein wrecked it in August, my carrier battle group
had a near perfect summer, cruising the wine-dark sea where the
Greeks and Persians fought.
But it may have been born when talking to various Vietnam
veterans, returning from that war – a war that may not have been
worse than any other war, but loomed large in my young
consciousness of conflict. My grandfather and my father and my
uncle – al veterans – said things, when they thought I wasn’t
around, that led me to suspect that while many men can be
brave, some men are far more dangerous in combat than others.
Stil later, I was privileged to serve with various men from the
Special Operations world, and I came to know that even among
them – the snake-eaters – there were only a few who were the
kilers. I listened to them talk, and I wondered what kind of a
man Achiles realy was. Or Hector. And I began to wonder
what made them, and what kept them at it, and the thought
stayed with me while I flew and served in Africa and saw various
conflicts and the effects that those conflicts have on al the
participants, from the first Gulf War to Rwanda and Zaire.
The Killer of Men series is my attempt to understand the
inside of such men.
This book was both very easy and very hard to write. I have
thought about the Killer of Men series since 1990 in some way
or other; when I sat down to put my thoughts into the computer,
the book seemed to write itself, and even now, when I type
these final words, I am amazed at how much of it seemed to be
waiting, prewritten, inside my head. But the devil is stil in the
waiting, prewritten, inside my head. But the devil is stil in the
details, and my acknowledgements are al about the investigation
and research of those details.
The broad sweep of the history of the Ionian Revolt is realy
known to us only from Herodotus and, to a vastly lesser extent,
from Thucydides. I have folowed Herodotus in almost every
respect, except for the details of how the tiny city-state of
Plataea came to involve herself with Athens. That, to be frank, I
made up – although it is based on a theory evolved over a
hundred conversations with amateur and professional historians.
First and foremost, I have to acknowledge the contribution of
Nicolas Cioran, who cheerfuly discussed Plataea’s odd status
every day as we worked out in a gymnasium, and sometimes
fought sword to sword. My trainer and constant sparring partner
John Beck deserves my thanks – both for a vastly improved
physique, and for helping give me a sense of what real training
for a life of violence might have been like in the ancient world.
And my partner in the reinvention of ancient Greek xiphos
fighting, Aurora Simmons, deserves at least equal thanks.
Among professional historians, I was assisted by Paul
McDonnel-staff and Paul Bardunias, by the entire brother- and
sisterhood of RomanArmyTalk.com and the web community
there, and by the staff of the Royal Ontario Museum (who
possess and cheerfuly shared the only surviving helmet
attributable to the Battle of Marathon), as wel as the staff of the
Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig, who possess the
best-preserved ancient aspis and provided me with superb
best-preserved ancient aspis and provided me with superb
photos to use in recreating it. I also received help from the library
staff of the University of Toronto, where, when I’m rich enough,
I’m a student, and from Toronto’s superb Metro Reference
Library. Every novelist needs to live in a city where universal
access to JSTOR is free and on his library card. The staff of the
Walters Art Galery in Baltimore, Maryland – just across the
street from my mother’s apartment, conveniently – were cheerful
and helpful, even when I came back to look at the same helmet
for the sixth time. And James Davidson, whose superb book,
Greeks and Greek Love helped me think about the thorny
issues of ancient Greek sexuality, was also useful to a novelist
with too many questions.
Excelent as professional historians are – and my version of
the Persian Wars owes a great deal to many of them, not least
Hans Van Wees and Victor Davis Hanson – my greatest praise
and thanks have to go to the amateur historians we cal
reenactors. Giannis Kadoglou of Thessaloniki volunteered to
spend two ful days driving around the Greek countryside, from
Athens to Plataea and back, charming my five-year-old daughter
and my wife while translating everything in sight and being as
delighted with the ancient town of Plataea as I was myself. I met
him on RomanArmyTalk, and this would be a very different
book without his passion for the subject and relentless desire to
correct my errors.
But Giannis is hardly alone, and there is – literaly – a phalanx
of Greek reenactors who helped me. Here in my part of North
America, we have a group caled the Plataeans – this is, trust me,
America, we have a group caled the Plataeans – this is, trust me,
not a coincidence – and we work hard on recreating the very
time period and city-state so prominent in these books, from
weapons, armour and combat to cooking, crafts and dance. If
the reader feels that these books put flesh and blood on the bare
bones of history – in so far as I’ve succeeded in doing that – it is
because of the efforts of the men and women who reenact with
me and show me, every time we’re together, al the things I
haven’t thought of, who do their own research, their own kit-
building and their own training. Thanks to al of you, Plataeans.
And to al the other Ancient Greek reenactors who helped me
find things, make things or build things.
Thanks are also due to the people of Lesbos and Athens and
Plataea – I can’t name al of you, but I was entertained, informed
and supported constantly in three trips to Greece, and the person
who I can name is Aliki Hamosfakidou of Dolphin Helas Travel
for her care, interest and support through many hundreds of
emails and some meetings.
In a professional line, I would like to acknowledge the debt I
owe to Mr Tim Waler, my copy-editor, whose knowledge of
language – both this one and Ancient Greek – always makes me
feel humble. He’s pretty good at east and west, too. Thanks to
him, this book is better than it would ever have been without him.
Bil Massey, my editor at Orion, found the two biggest errors
in this story and made me fix them, and again, it is a better book
for his work. A much better book. Oh, and he found a lot of
other errors, too, but let’s not mention them. I have had a few
editors. Working with Bil is wonderful. Come on, authors – how
editors. Working with Bil is wonderful. Come on, authors – how
many of you get to say that?
My agent, Sheley Power, contributed more directly to this
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