The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae

by Nick Brown

  Miltiades, angry as he was becoming, realised he was being bated and there was nothing he could gain from the exchange. He turned away from Themistocles with a glance intended to convey lofty disdain, saying to me,

  “Mandrocles, there’s no time to waste so unless you intend to drink away your life in the company of agitators and scribblers, get yourself moving.”

  He swept out of the tavern and I stumbled to my feet and began to say my goodbyes, but Themistocles cut across me, speaking cold and controlled.

  “That man who marches under the shadow of nemesis better be warned: it’s time to make your choice, Luck Bringer. Last chance, so you’d better think clearly.”

  I remember shuffling from one foot to the other in indecision for what seemed an age. Then, with a brief nod towards Aeschylus I turned and followed the General out of the door.

  Back then the Piraeus was nothing like the great port and hub of empire that you know today. Then it was little more than a ragged bay, patches of sand interspersed with rock pools and headlands. A few scattered fishermen’s shacks, grazing goats and that was it.

  The building had only just started: a few cubits of wall but you could see the future. Some bars and dwellings were springing up and those with the aptitude for it understood there was money to be made. I caught a glimpse of the future that day looking down at the fleet preparing to set sail. Small compared with our modern fleet, reader, but exciting all the same.

  So I was caught up in the noise and bustle of embarkation and any worries about Themistocles’s words dispersed. It was a great adventure; but then that’s both the advantage and the drawback of youth, isn’t it? You go from one thing to another and embrace change like a lover.

  Cimon and Elpinice were on the harbour wall by the Athene Nike. He was wheedling Ariston into letting him stow away onboard and she was somewhere between woman and girl. A woman in appearance and dignity but still a girl in that her reaction to her father’s departure was so transparent. The sailors made a great fuss over Cimon, who had always been their favourite, but stayed well clear of Elpinice out of respect.

  So we grabbed a shared moment. Even back then she was wise way beyond her years and if she’d been born with the rights of a man, she’d have given Themistocles a run for his money like she did Pericles all those years later. Now looking back on the conversation, what obviously escaped me then seems clear: her analysis of the expedition was as clinical as Themistocles had been.

  “Do you find anything strange about this expedition, Mandrocles?”

  I was about to reply but there was another similarity between her and Themistocles: she didn’t want an answer either, merely a listener.

  “Because the men who he had to fight with to persuade them to fight the Persians are falling over themselves to see him off; look.”

  I followed where she pointed and saw them in a group clustered round the General: Megacles, Aristides, even Kallixenos, friend of the Persians who was lucky not to have been exiled after Marathon.

  She turned her gaze back towards me and muttered,

  “And yet his own brother Stesagoras who counselled against this has chosen not to be here I see.”

  She was right; there was no sign of him, which struck me as odd. But how could a girl like her, excluded from the affairs of men, know what was counselled when I didn’t?

  Miltiades broke away from the group of well-wishers come to see him off and, ignoring the helping hands, leapt with the grace of a young warrior onto the deck. The crew erupted into a loud cheer. He turned and acknowledged it as his right as leader and I saw on his face that same expression of command and confidence that he wore at Marathon when he ordered the charge. Theodorus shouted to me from the deck.

  “Better jump too, Mandrocles, if you don’t want to be left behind.”

  I was about to but I felt a cool hand grip my arm and Elpinice said,

  “Keep your eyes on him, Mandrocles; I think he will need your luck. Now go well.”

  I turned and jumped down to the deck just in time to see the General lead the singing of the Paean and pour the libation. Then the Athene Nike was moving, pulling smoothly away from the harbour wall. Moving to the heartbeat of the stroke that Theodorus called. And I was truly alive in a way that only those of you who have served with the fleet can understand.

  But later, as I stood by the trierarch’s chair and watched the Piraeus recede into the distance, the melancholy that follows pulling out to start a new adventure set in. But this time it was more than just that. Something was troubling me, something that must have gnawed away deep inside since Themistocles had said,

  “It’s something the whole city will know once you’ve sailed.”

  Now out on the open sea with twilight approaching it came to me that this was no empty threat; Miltiades had no real friends in the city and certainly none he could trust. He’d been given the money and the fleet for this expedition because after his leadership at Marathon no one could refuse him. However, as with most things in this city, there was a big but. Some days before Aeschylus had filled me in as a warning when I told him I was sailing with the fleet, but I hadn’t really been listening.

  “Don’t be fooled by the apparent closeness of your master with Aristides, Megacles, Xanthippus and all the rest of that high born clique. For the moment they have similar interest in restoring the old principle of Eunomia and ending the stirrings of the Demos. Now the danger’s gone they want Themistocles and his new ways shut back up in their box. His talk of a new port and sea power leads to change and that’s the last thing they want.”

  I hadn’t understood the real significance of what he said and had replied.

  “But the Persian danger hasn’t gone away, it’s …”

  He cut me off.

  “You’re missing the point, Mandrocles. I’m talking city politics, not the real world. Of course Themistocles is right about the Persians and the fleet: but that’s not the priority right now. The priority is to marginalise Themistocles. That’s not easy so they link themselves to the great popular hero Miltiades. But the great thing about the Paros expedition for them is that it gets Miltiades out of the city.”

  I must have looked baffled because he interrupted his flow to ask a question.

  “Do you understand the objectives of the Paros expedition?”

  “No, but …”

  “Does anyone? Does anyone understand how it will work?”

  “The General knows. It’s his plan, it’s a secret.”

  “Exactly, and how will that look in the city when it fails?”

  “And that’s what Themistocles thinks?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why hasn’t he warned the General?”

  “Why indeed?”

  He must have seen the bewilderment, then gradual understanding, cross my face because with a smile he answered.

  “Exactly, Mandrocles. Exactly now you begin to understand what goes on beneath the surface of our scheming city.”

  Chapter Two

  We could see he was a dead man as soon as they let us into the court chamber. What I remember most is the smell of the wound: anyone who’s been in battle recognises that stench. He’d never taken the time to get the bone reset, splinted and cleaned on Paros. By the time he was back in Athens it was too late for the doctors to do anything and the gangrene was taking its slow and agonising course. Consequently when he tried to defend himself against the spite of his political enemies he was a dying man, barely conscious on a stretcher. He could scarcely draw breath, never mind speak for himself. So it was a death sentence for the General, whatever the court decided.

  Who would believe that something as ridiculous as jumping over a field wall could cause the death of such a hero? But it just about summed up that ill-conceived and badly executed expedition. Things had gone wrong from the start. We’d delayed too long securing bases and plundering smaller islands and by the time we reached Paros they were ready. After a siege of several weeks, we ran o
ut of money and provisions and had to slink off home, having achieved nothing.

  When we got back to Athens they were on him like a pack of jackals: they’d stitched it up while we were away. Themistocles and the democrats accused him of wanting to establish a tyranny and the conservatives charged him with defrauding the people. They’d even done a deal on who would be the chief prosecutor: Xanthippus.

  A small group of us, those who loved him and were brave enough, walked to the court in the armour we’d worn at Marathon. His brother Stesagoras led us hoping it would shame the jurors into remembering what they and the city owed to Miltiades. But they were beyond shame.

  Thus within a year of being hailed victor of Marathon and saviour of Greece, the great man was brought down. The charges were politically motivated and if they hadn’t have got him for this they’d have found something else. Democracy of vipers: the bile still rises in my throat all these years later.

  I don’t suppose he helped himself though; his raid on the island of Paros would have been foolish even if it had proved successful: it gave his enemies their opportunity to pull him down. But even they shouldn’t have brought his family down or tried him in the public way they did. It was like trying a walking corpse. Dragging him to court, incapable of speaking in his own defence, on that filthy stinking stretcher was deliberate. They intended to rub his nose in the dirt of public shame.

  Not that a defence would have done him any good: the trial was rigged. Rigged by the same men who fought beside him at Marathon. Once the Persians had gone, they left off being heroes and reverted to type, fighting each other for power in the sewers of the new democracy. We should have thanked the Persians for attacking us; they were the threat that made Athenians stick together. The only great thing this city of the Goddess had ever done was to stand together at Marathon and it was Miltiades who gave hope and leadership.

  The trial took no time; I suppose they didn’t want him to die in that chamber and embarrass them. He was outlawed and his family’s rights and property forfeited. Then they celebrated: all together men that hated each other but hated the General more. Even Themistocles. But the real cruelty, which by the way was the earliest indicator of what a monster democracy would become, was the fine they levied: fifty talents.

  By imposing that fine the court ensured Cimon not only lost his father but he lost his future too. Those bastards, that was the real cruelty; fifty talents levied on a penniless nine year old boy condemning him to a life of poverty and debt.

  Not only Cimon but Elpinice, because for her there would be no dowry and so no marriage thus depriving her of the only future fit for a respectable Athenian woman. As for Stesagoras, there was no official punishment: nothing you’ll find in any of our papyrus or stone records, just a warning.

  “Be on the first ship out of Phaleron.”

  You will understand the consequences, reader, whoever you are. I know as you read this you too will choke with anger. Miltiades saved Athens, saved the Demos and all free Greece and was rewarded by a painful death in a stinking gaol and the ruin of his son. The fools: they should have known the Persians would be back with the greatest army the world had ever seen

  After, when it was over, I walked back towards the house in my father’s armour, now too small and chafing my shoulders and neck. Where would I go? What would I do? As I turned the corner to Miltiades’s house I saw the answer to at least one of those questions. Athenian justice had been expedited quickly. The slaves and valuables were being taken away and there was smoke rising from the roof. I was homeless and alone in a vengeful city.

  The children were gone. But even there, watching the pillage of the once great home of the Philiads with the smoke stinging my eyes, I didn’t have the clarity of vision to foresee the full tragedy. The effect on the boy: his homeless state and the reputation for wildness that followed him because of the way he was forced to live as a pariah outside society.

  And worse the foul slanders about the unnatural sexual relationship with his sister. You know the stories, reader, you probably enjoyed hearing them. Well, none of it was true. None of it. I was there, I know!

  Ironic, isn’t it? Eight years after I sat there watching my home burn, every single home in Athens was destroyed by the Persians. Thank the Gods we can’t see the future. I remember that I slumped down onto a low wall and put my head in my hands. Round about me men were carrying off what they’d looted from the house, shouting to each other and laughing. After a while it grew quiet, the only sound being flame scorching timber and the cracking of plaster and stone. To most people the sound of a fire reminds them of hearth and home but to me it’s the sound of ruin.

  Amongst the knot of idlers watching the flames there was a face I recognised, a free man of Miltiades who bossed the stable hands. There were tear tracks smearing the grime on his smoke-blackened face. I caught his eye and he shuffled across.

  “Master Mandrocles, are you mad sitting there in armour? The Archon’s guards will have a warrant for you. They’ve already taken Master Cimon and Mistress Elpinice. Once these bastards are tired of watching the flames they’ll turn on you. Get going quick; get lost.”

  That’s what he did: he must have thought talking to me endangered him. But where was I to go? I’d kept myself together pretty well until then but when I tried to think where I could put my father’s armour the tears began to flow. It’s always the little things that get you: the big blows you see coming you can ride out, but the small details that sneak up unexpected, they’re what sink you.

  I think I would have sat there weeping in my father’s armour until the guards came for me if it hadn’t been for a strange intervention.

  I felt a hand shaking my shoulder and looked up expecting it to be one of the Archon’s men. But it wasn’t. It was someone I’d seen before: I recognised him from a brawl in a bar some years back. One of Megacles men called Eubulus if I remember right. Theodorus had re-arranged his face but he’d fought with us at Marathon. Even so there was still no love lost.

  “You are to come with me.”

  The words were softly spoken, cajoling rather than threatening but I was too far gone to want to listen. He put his arms under mine and dragged me to my feet.

  “Come on, get moving; we need to be away from here.”

  I noticed he was carrying a sack like itinerant potters cart their wares around in.

  “Come on. In this armour, you stick out like the prick on the satyr at the Dionysia.”

  I still didn’t move.

  “Come on help me for fuck’s sake or the guard’ll have both of us.”

  He started to unbuckle the straps on my shoulder guards. I just followed his lead and shrugged off the armour as quick as possible and he stowed it in the sack. Then he put it over his shoulder and set off towards the Ceramicus. Life had lost most of its meaning and I had nowhere else to go so I followed.

  The streets were crowded and noisy, the bars full and working girls were plying their trade on the roadside. It seemed like the striking down of Miltiades had covered the city in a cloak of madness. But, as you know reader, in Athens that’s often the first cloak out of the cupboard. We were in a city living on borrowed time which had defied the Great King and then struck down its own leader. Notice any similarities with today?

  Eubulus didn’t speak and stayed a few steps ahead; maybe he thought that made him safe. Suddenly he dodged down a foul narrow street at the far end of the Ceramicus, weaved his way through a warren of rough sheds and kennels before coming to a stop outside one of the city’s most notorious taverns: “The Bald Man’s”.

  I followed him in, noticing he was looking over his shoulder to check no one was tailing us. He pointed to a three legged table and bench hidden away in a shadowy corner. The bar tender brought over some greasy country sausage stuffed with gristle and a flask of thin wine. There was only one cup.

  “Stay here until someone comes to fetch you. Don’t talk to anyone and don’t move.”

  He dumped the sa
ck with my father’s armour by my feet and disappeared. I sat there as the sausage gradually cooled and congealed into a pool of grease, and I drank the wine. It stung my throat and burnt my stomach but I drank it all, it took the edge off my anxiety. Then I ate the mess of sausage and realised how hungry I was.

  I drifted into a daze; the table had become my only refuge and I didn’t know what else there was. Does this surprise you, reader? If you’ve stuck with me through my memoirs up to now you’ll know that I can fuck and kill with the best of them. But that’s what life does to you while you’re making plans. It plays with you then reduces you to nothing.

  I must have been aware of my surroundings at one level because suddenly the room went quiet. A hooded man had entered, not tall but with a bruiser’s body. He paused to give his eyes time to adjust to the gloom. Then he saw what he was after: he began to cross the filthy floor towards my corner watched by everyone in the bar. His hood was pulled low so he couldn’t be identified but as he drew closer there was something in his walk I recognised.

  He didn’t say anything, just picked up the sack and headed for the door. I got up and staggered after him; no payment was demanded for the food so all this had been pre planned. The hooded man didn’t hang about; he lingered just long enough to see I’d followed him then set off at a loping trot towards the Hangman’s Gate.

  The only person I knew who lived near there was Themistocles but we didn’t pass his house. Instead my guide left the road and followed a weaving path through the tombs that ended in a gap in the city walls. We called them walls back then but they weren’t, they wouldn’t have stopped anyone. Not like the monsters we’ve got now.

  I had no idea where we were going; was I being taken to the border and sent into exile or had I been lured out into the fields to be murdered beyond the range of prying eyes? I began to consider making a run for it. It was nearly dark and despite the food and drink I was pretty quick on my feet back then.