Of Merchants & Heros

by Paul Waters

  As usual he was full of his own concerns: the Theban Tyrtaios had disappeared, taking with him a large sum of Caecilius’s money. I was not surprised, and told him so, adding that I had never liked the man.

  ‘No?’ said Caecilius. ‘Then why didn’t you think to tell me? You might have saved me a great loss. Really, Marcus, I wonder what you spend your time thinking about, when you forget matters of such importance. A quiet word might have saved me a case of gold.’

  This was a path I did not wish to go down, so I answered, ‘I don’t think you ever told me, sir, quite what business it was you had with Tyrtaios.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not important now,’ he said, suddenly developing an interest in the papers on his desk. ‘Ah, see here.’

  He pulled out a half-open scroll that lay under his wine-cup, and flourishing it said, ‘Your mother writes. She is well. The farm prospers. She says I must not hurry back to Italy for her sake, if there is business to do in Greece . . . It is admirable in a woman, don’t you think, to show such a grasp of the priorities?’

  I agreed, imagining my mother and Mouse at peace in Praeneste without him; and in case he saw the light of irony in my eyes I quickly asked what his plans were now. ‘For surely, sir, there is nothing more that keeps you in Athens.’

  ‘You are wrong. While you have been off fighting I have been busy.’ He paused, and gave one of his significant looks. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut. ‘No doubt you would like to know all about it, but, Marcus, in my experience, the fewer who know the better, and so I shall keep the details to myself . . . for now. But I can tell you I plan a trip to Asia.’

  ‘Asia?’ I said, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Not King Antiochos, sir, I hope; no good will come from him.’

  ‘Don’t pry. I shall tell you when I’m ready. Besides, I know what I’m doing . . . I suppose you heard about old Attalos, by the way?’

  ‘He was taken ill at Thebes.’

  ‘Oh, more than that. News came from Pergamon this morning, brought by a Chian trader. He is dead. It seems he never recovered from his illness, and now he is gone.’

  He stretched back in his chair and laid his hands on his protruding belly, like a glutton who has enjoyed a good meal. ‘Still,’

  he went on, ‘he died a rich man; one can hope for no more than that.’

  I remembered Attalos’s various kindnesses to me, and his decency, and how he had used the last of his strength fighting for the freedom of Greece.

  ‘He was a good man,’ I said.

  ‘Was he? I daresay he was. His son Eumenes succeeds him. We should keep our ears open. There are always opportunities at such a time.’

  I looked at him, and he looked back at me with his small sandstone eyes. His face had fattened since last I had seen him; the weight sat ill on him, for he was not a big-framed man.

  There was a scratching on the door.

  ‘Come!’ boomed Caecilius.

  Florus stepped timidly in, like an ill-used mongrel, unsure of its welcome.

  ‘Ah, there you are; I was just about to summon you . . . Marcus, you remember Florus, don’t you? I have decided to engage him once more. He was in Kerkyra, you know.’

  Florus gave me a quick, weak smile, and avoided my eyes. No doubt he did not wish to recall our last meeting.

  ‘Now is there anything else?’ said Caecilius, already shuffling impatiently at his papers as if I were delaying him. ‘If not, Florus and I have business to attend to.’

  Shortly after, Menexenos and I went to the farm.

  We hired help, and gathered the little of the olive and grape harvest the Macedonians had left us. We cleared the hillside terraces, retrained the vines, and set to work on repairing the house and animal-enclosures.

  To begin with, it was sombre work – shifting charred beams; clearing burnt-out rooms; being reminded of how the farm had once been, and what was lost. But soon we had built something new out of the ruin, and, stone by stone, we set the past behind us.

  Each morning we went out running, side by side, in the cool of the dawn, following the track out past Paneion and along the coast- path. Sometimes we saw a farmer, or a traveller on foot or muleback, but mostly we were alone, our footfalls matched, breathing in unison, a curiosity for the goats and sheep.

  We talked of the games. Nowadays I expect every Roman with an education knows it, for we have become familiar with Greece. But then Greek things were less well known, and when I asked, Menexenos explained that the games at the Isthmos were held every two years, in honour of Poseidon, who had a temple there. The foot- race, he told me, was a race particular to the Isthmian games: it was neither a short sprint nor a long-race, but something in between.

  I asked him what he thought his chances were; but he only shrugged and said he could not tell.

  All winter we trained together, and worked on the land, and lay together beside the fire in the old house. When the solstice had passed, and it was time to leave, we could look back on a job done well: the vines had been trimmed, the withy enclosures remade, and the house stood once more with its roof and doors.

  We returned to Athens shortly before the running trials were due.

  Then, for the first time, I saw the other youths who were being sent from Athens for the games.

  Most of the runners had bodies lean to the point of ugliness or sickness, except for their legs, which were a knot of muscles and sinews, as if they had done nothing in their lives but spend each day from dawn to dusk on the sand-track. As they practised, their trainers watched from the terraces, biting their lips; and as soon as each race was done they came rushing forward, clucking and fussing, swaddling their charges in cloaks and warmed towels, and hurrying them off to the bath-house to be rubbed down with aromatic oil.

  I looked to see if anyone I knew was there. I had expected to see some of Menexenos’s friends, who had competed in the Athenian games. But there was no one I recognized.

  As I was considering this, I saw Pandion amble in under the entrance-arch. He paused, glanced at the runners, then seeing me, came to where I was sitting on the terraces. ‘Hello, Marcus. Isn’t Menexenos with you? I thought he’d be here.’

  I told him Menexenos had just gone off to the bath-house. Just then an umpire’s voice sounded as a new race started – a short sprint. We paused to watch. When it was finished Pandion nodded at the scrawny runners and said flatly, ‘And Menexenos is up against such creatures as these.’

  I nodded. ‘I know, Pandion. He stands out like a lion among goats.’

  We both paused. And then, saying what had been on my mind, I asked him why none of his friends were competing, for they had done well enough in the Panathenaic games. ‘And indeed, Pandion, as I recall, you won the prize for the pankration.’

  He frowned. ‘Yes, Marcus,’ he said, ‘but that was just a local affair.’

  ‘Yet surely one contest is as good as another? But now you only watch from the sides, like the old men.’

  After this he paused for so long that I began to wonder whether I had offended him. I was about to tell him that it was of no great importance when he said, ‘Surely you’ve seen for yourself, Marcus? There’s no proportion in it any longer. The games should exist for man; not man for the games. At home we compete with one another out of tradition, and love of physicality, and to try ourselves against our peers. But nowadays, at the great games of Isthmia, or Olympia, or Delphi, there is no place any longer for a gentleman. It is a thing of shame to devote oneself to one thing only, like a slave. A free man should strive for balance and proportion, in the body as well as the soul. The games were about the whole man once: just look at the old statues of Pheidias, or Lysippos, where the soul and the body are in harmony; and now,’ he said, with a nod at the track, ‘look at them.’

  He sat down on the stone terrace, and crossly waved a dismissing hand, as if he had said more than he intended.

  He must have guessed what I would ask next, for when I said, ‘But Menexenos is competing,’ he answered straig
ht away. ‘Yes, yes, I know he is. And Menexenos sees it more than any of us. Who do you think I got all this from? Sometimes I think that, but for him, I should not love excellence at all.’

  He paused, and glanced at me, as if considering whether to tell me a private confidence. ‘You know, I only became a pankratiast because of Menexenos. At school they thought I was no good; but he saw something in me, and made me feel it, and gave me a goal to strive for.’

  He sat forward frowning, his chin in the ball of his hand, gazing out across the track. I believe he was even blushing a little.

  ‘Then why does he compete at all?’ I said. ‘Why did he not tell the gymnasiarch no? He has reason enough.’

  He shrugged. ‘Because of his father? His brother? He does not talk of these things. Or maybe,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘because, even now, there is still some honour in it, if you can win without sacrificing those things which make one a man.’

  I did not mention this conversation to Menexenos. Some god signalled against it. Or perhaps it was that I knew, with a knowledge that is beyond mere words, that whatever drew him to compete was something buried deep in his being, something from the same well of goodness that caused him to fight for the city, and to honour the gods, and to love me.

  There are, after all is said, certain doors one does not seek to open, and certain things that love does not question.

  That winter, Titus’s friend Villius called at Athens on his way south.

  Titus, he said, was having difficulties with the commissioners from Rome; and with the Aitolians.

  The commissioners were opposing the withdrawal of Roman forces from Greece, arguing that, with the question of Antiochos in Asia not settled, and the disturbing news that Hannibal was at large, neither the security of Greece nor the safety of Rome would be achieved by such a move, irrespective of what had been promised before.

  ‘And what does Titus say?’ I asked him.

  ‘He says he has given his word, and must keep it. The Greeks will not settle for less. But in the end, Marcus, the decision is with the commissioners, and the Senate, not with Titus . . . And then,’ he added, with an exasperated gesture, ‘there are the Aitolians.’

  Each time, he said, we thought a question was settled, the Aitolians came forward and reopened it, making unexpected claims to territory to which they had no right. ‘Everyone is tired of them.

  Their only aim is to snatch as much as they can.’

  He was on his way to Korinth, he said, where the final negotiations would be completed. It was Titus’s hope that he could announce a final agreement at the Isthmian games. ‘Provided that rogue Phaineas doesn’t poison the water first. He is putting it about that we intended all along to keep the Fetters for ourselves.’

  Spring came. In the courtyard pink buds showed on the climbing jasmine, and in the temple precincts the almonds and narcissus bloomed.

  On a blowy April morning, I went down with Menexenos to Piraeus, and from the waterfront I cheered with the rest as the state galley, decorated with garlands and bunting, pulled out beyond the sea-wall, and raised its owl-painted sail, bearing him and the other athletes to Isthmia.

  Then, when the ship was lost in the morning haze, and the crowds began to disperse, I turned my mind to my own journey.

  Villius had said a Roman quinquereme would be sailing there in time for the games. But in the end I decided to make my own way, by the land route, past Eleusis and Megara.

  It seemed all Greece was travelling to the games that year: a steady stream of men and women, mules and horses, carts and traps and litters.

  To begin with I walked alone, enjoying the solitude; but near Megara I fell in with a rugged-faced, middle-aged farmer from Phokis, leading a pack-mule loaded with empty baskets, which, he said, he intended to fill with the kind of well-priced luxuries that could be got in the markets at Korinth.

  By now my Greek was polished enough that, if I wished, I could pass for a Greek anywhere, and so when he assumed I was from Athens, I did not tell him otherwise.

  He told me as we walked that he farmed a few acres of land not far from Elateia, and, since there was peace at last, he was going to the games to watch the boxing, which he liked best of all. He raised his fist and contorted his face, parodying the stance of a boxer. He was that sort of man. Later he confided, with a knowing leer, that after the games he planned to spend some time visiting the backstreets of Korinth, enjoying its particular pleasures.

  He was a man who liked to talk about himself, and as we made our way along the road I heard about his farm, his livestock, the condition of his fields, and his wife – who was an unfortunate put- upon drab, judging from how he described her.

  At one point, when he fell momentarily silent, I commented that it must be a relief to him that his city was free at last, after having been under the rule of the Macedonians for so long.

  At this he snorted derisively. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘all we have done is swap one slave-master for another.’

  I looked at him surprised. ‘Oh, sir? Yet Titus promised. Soon you will have your freedom once again, to do with as you please.’

  He laughed at me. ‘Mark my words. What the Romans have taken, they will keep. That is how men are. Rome has unshackled the feet of Greece, only to bind her at the neck.’

  I said no more. It was clear he had already made his mind up.

  For a while after this we walked without speaking, and I thought to myself that the Aitolians had done their work well, if men who had so recently been freed from tyranny thought as this man did.

  But presently, as if the silence irked him, he said to me, ‘So what do you suppose the Romans will do?’

  I shrugged. ‘I have heard it said that Titus is determined to leave Greece free. Everything he has promised, he has done. Why doubt him now?’

  ‘Because,’ said the farmer, ‘I have seen what men are.’

  ‘I too,’ I said. ‘And I have seen good as well as bad.’

  He cast me an amused look, as if someone my age could not have seen anything in life. Then he cleared his throat and spat in the grass. ‘Let me tell you, youth, there is nothing in the world but cruelty and baseness and self-seeking; and if a man is wise, he will snatch what he can, like a jackal at a carcass, before some other man takes it.’

  He smiled to himself, seemingly satisfied with his words. But after a moment he cursed for no reason, and gave the mule a vicious yank on its tether. The mule gave a resentful grunt, but otherwise took no notice.

  He turned, muttering; then looked ahead, narrowing his eyes irritably against the light, and said, ‘Ha! See there!’

  I followed his gaze. Half a mile ahead, a bright-painted carriage stood pulled up at the side of the road. Two mules stood by, chewing at the grass, and beside them a man was staring blankly at the wheel.

  The farmer laughed. ‘Some rich aristocrat broken down,’ he said.

  ‘Serves him right; that will teach him to travel in style; let him go on foot like the rest of us.’

  As we drew nearer the man noticed us and began casting forlorn entreating looks.

  ‘Fool,’ muttered the farmer, chuckling to himself. But I said, ‘I’m going to help.’

  ‘Are you? Do as you please; but you’ll be stuck here half the day, and I want to reach Isthmia before dark.’

  I told him he must go on ahead then. And bidding him goodbye I turned off into the short grass.

  I saw, as I drew close, that the man beside the carriage was a slave. He watched me approach with a sullen face. I wondered where his master was.

  I was about to ask, when from the far side a woman’s voice called out, ‘Well come along, don’t just stand there. It won’t fix itself. Here, take this strap and bind it round the axle as I told you; or must I do it all myself?’

  I crouched down on my haunches and peered under the carriage.

  Then, seeing who was there, I laughed.

  ‘Pasithea! What are you doing?’

  Her elaborate che
stnut hair darted from behind the wheel.

  ‘Marcus? Here, take this.’ She passed me a broad leather binding- strap.

  I crawled under the vehicle and took the strap, and called the slave to help me.

  When, presently, the repairs were done I stood dusting off my hands and looked at her.

  ‘Never in my life,’ I said, ‘have I met a woman like you.’

  She sat down on a towel on the grass, and eased her feet into a pair of dainty calfskin slippers. ‘In that case,’ she said, giving me a wink, ‘you should meet more women. Besides, I have learnt that if something matters to you, then teach yourself; otherwise a time will come when you’ll wish you had.’

  She told the slave to re-hitch the mules. Then she noticed the farmer, who had paused in the road to stare.

  ‘Who is he?’ she said, returning his look, upon which he quickly turned away. ‘Has he never seen a women mend an axle before?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said, grinning. ‘Where are you going? The games?’

  ‘Where else? I would not miss them for anything.’

  ‘Well, everyone wants to find out what Titus is going to say.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not going for that,’ she said, in a tone that told me she too had heard enough of the rumours and gossip. ‘No, it’s time I reopened my house in Korinth . . . and what better time than now, so that I shall have somewhere to entertain the beautiful Menexenos, when he takes the victor’s crown in the foot-race?’

  I laughed, then made a sign in the air against ill-luck.

  ‘First,’ I said, ‘he must win it . . . and everyone seems to think he has a hard task on his hands, not having been bred to it from birth.’

  ‘Then I shall say no more.’ She fluttered her heavy lashes at me, then glanced over my shoulder towards the road. ‘Is your friend not waiting?’

  The farmer was finally moving off.

  I told her he was no more than a road-acquaintance. In truth I was glad to have left him.

  ‘Then good,’ she said. ‘In that case, we shall travel together.’

  We set off, with the slave sitting in the back. On the way she told me she had spent the winter with friends in Megara. ‘A dull, dull place, full of merchants. Have you been? You wouldn’t like it . . .