‘They have seen me many times in this place. They know my name.’
‘Do they hate your name, then? They surely must to throw stones at it.’
‘They see me as a traitor,’ Xenophon muttered, flushing.
‘So not your name, then, but what you have done?’
‘I have done nothing wrong. Nothing!’
‘Why, then, would they believe you are a traitor?’
Xenophon threw up his hands.
‘I came to you as a friend, not a student. I am not in the mood for this tonight. Why not pour the last of the wine, or let me buy more. We can talk of anything else. Let me leave this out on the street, in the gutters.’
Socrates piled the chopped vegetables and fish into the bowl with a slab of white cheese. He poured olive oil until everything shone, then crumbled thick pinches of salt between his fingers.
‘Better to do this when my love is out of the house. She says I use too much salt and it is true, but what is life without it? And my friend, you have not come to me for a month, though all the city is in a ferment. You came today for answers, perhaps for advice. So, like the snail-sellers with their little bone picks, let us seek the meat within.’
The door came open again and the philosopher’s wife returned. She glared at the huge bowl and the two men as she placed two clay amphorae of wine on the tabletop between them.
‘Delios says he must be paid or there will be no more, that he is not a moneylender. He said you would drink him into poverty if he let you.’
‘He is a dear friend, a hero amongst men,’ Socrates said with satisfaction. He pulled out both stoppers of clay and leather, sniffing at them with pleasure.
‘These are new and raw and young, my love. They are the first weeks of a marriage, new friends, new loves, new triumphs!’
His wife sniffed, though she did not resist when he gathered her into his arms. Xenophon had never liked her manner with Socrates. Xanthippe seemed to find her husband exasperating and embarrassing, but then they had raised three sons together. Though there was a thread of real bitterness in her manner, it was almost smothered by her love for the burly man who kissed her so soundly in that kitchen.
‘Call the boys, my dearest,’ Socrates said. ‘The councillor was explaining his anger to me.’
‘The council was disbanded,’ Xenophon said warily. ‘I have no position now.’ He was familiar with the darting questions and still unwilling to explore further, though Socrates seemed to have forgotten his objection.
‘Does a city not need a council, then? Are there no good men left in Athens to take on public works?’
Socrates passed him a cup of the new wine and Xenophon took a draught of it, seating himself at the table as Xanthippe roared for her sons and laid bowls, spoons and knives for them all. She lit an oil lamp and the room brightened to gold.
‘Why must I say what you already know?’ Xenophon said.
‘Why must you resist? Do you see that you are?’
Xenophon set his jaw, his mood darkening as the room lightened.
‘Very well. The council was disbanded when the Spartans were overthrown. Is that what you wanted to hear? The Thirty were captured and most of them were murdered in the street by the mob. Your own Spartan pupil, Critias, was hanged. That is why there is no council.’
‘And you, my friend?’ Socrates said softly. As he spoke, his three sons came clattering down the stairs from above, scuffed and laughing, though they took seats in silence when they saw their father and his guest.
‘What about me?’
‘How is it that you live? How did you survive the rebellion that tore down Spartan banners?’
‘I was pardoned, with three thousand more.’
Xenophon clenched his fist as he spoke and Socrates reached out and patted the shaking hand resting on his table. The food was served and Xanthippe thanked the goddess Demeter and the nymphs of the sea for providing their food. Two of the boys were tall and slim as wands, while the last could have been a younger version of their father, with a thick mass of black hair. All three boys fell to eating like ravenous dogs, wiping every drop of oil with crusts of dry bread.
‘If you were pardoned, why then do they cry out against you in the street?’ Socrates asked. ‘Why do they throw stones and fruit?’
Xenophon dipped his head.
‘Some of them had fathers who died by order of the Thirty. They blame those of us who aided them in their work, though we wanted only order and the best way to live. What did democracy ever bring us, except destruction? How many men of Athens did we lose at Syracuse? How many more rotted in their cave prisons? Three times, Sparta came to us and said, “We are all Greek. Let us put an end to war between us.” Three times, the democratic vote of Athens scorned that noble gesture. Even when we were losing, they came and offered us peace – and we rejected it.’
‘And you were angry with them? You felt the Spartans were more noble?’
‘I did, because they were. That is not an opinion. Athens gave a voice to the mob – and what does the mob ever want but to live without work, to lie in the sun, to be given what they will not earn! Of course I joined the Thirty in their labours. And I was right.’
‘And now? The people of Athens have forgiven you?’
‘No. They torment me. After all I did for them, they see me as an enemy! We held power for a single year in the long history of Athens, Socrates. And in that time, there was bread and the great plays were performed. There were no riots for months in the city. No criminal was allowed to choose the manner of his death! Those who threatened peace were killed – and there was peace as a result.’
‘The violence stopped, then?’ Socrates said, almost in a whisper. ‘As these criminals were executed?’
Xenophon breathed out, his head sinking to his chest. Even the boys had stopped eating to hear.
‘It grew worse. Day by day, month by month. We thought if we killed the leaders, the rest would settle and heed the law, but they kept springing up. First it was the sons and the uncles of the firebrands, then they seemed to grow like heads of the Hydra. On every street, men we did not know stood up to speak to the crowds. We told them to disperse – and we were not gentle. We enforced a curfew of the whole city at night and we hanged more and more of them.’
‘But there was peace in the end?’ Socrates said.
‘No. They rose up, with torches and iron. In all the streets, killing the Thirty in their beds, murdering and looting and …’ He shook himself, dragging clear of his memories.
‘But they have forgiven you since then? It has been, what, almost another year? They must have put those dark days behind them? Surely they have rebuilt the walls torn down by the Spartans, to lay bare our submission for all Greece to see?’
Xenophon looked around him, at the stern-faced woman, the three sons watching him in fascination as they wiped a finger around the empty bowls, missing no morsel. He shook his head.
‘The walls have been left as rubble, the stone taken for new houses. And no, they have not forgiven me. There are orators now who call for new punishments for those who aided the Thirty, for all the pardons to be set aside. They say they were too lenient before.’
No one interrupted the silence that followed until Xenophon spoke again.
‘I don’t know what to do. I cannot run, but if I stay, I think it will not end well.’
‘You have no wife or children, Xenophon. Your life is your own. What are you, thirty?’
‘Twenty-six!’ he replied. Socrates chuckled.
‘One day, we should talk about vanity, my friend. Until then, see your life now, as it is. What will you do? Go on as you have been? What change can you make?’
Xenophon straightened his back, accepting another cup of wine, though it made his senses swim. He tried to step outside himself and see his days as if he observed a stranger. The power of the wine was just what Socrates tried to do, so that great revelations came to those who had the nerve to answer honestly.
‘I mu
st leave Athens,’ he said. ‘Though it is my home, I must leave.’
He said the words almost in a daze. Socrates smiled at him and gripped his forearm across the table.
‘Not for ever. Even Athenians forget and forgive in the end. You are a young man, Xenophon, marching in place with worry and fear on your shoulders. Throw such things aside! See the world. In time, you will return. They will have forgotten all these upheavals, I promise you. It is the way of men. Go far and thrive. Bring stories home to entertain my beloved wife.’
Xenophon stood and embraced the older man.
‘All I have ever asked is to learn how best to live,’ he said. ‘You have always known what I can only glimpse. They should be led by you, Socrates. Athens would be great then.’
‘Ah, lad, it is great now! I wish you could see it. If you trust my judgement so far, you might value the voice of the people just a little more. Critias was the same. I am teaching a young man tomorrow who tells me that man must have his guardians, as sheep must have shepherds. How is it that all my best students see no worth in our Athenian arguments, our questioning? The rest of the world is thick with tyrants and guardians of the people. Kings are like bees, they swarm in such numbers! Only in Athens do we give a voice to the young, the poor, the clever. To an ugly man like me, without wealth or patrons. My boy, what we have here is a flower under the midday sun, more fragile than glass.’
‘The gods advise and rule us,’ Xenophon said seriously. ‘As a father instructs his sons. Kings and leaders are no more than the nature of man repeating that order. Or would you see authority in those who shout loudest? Would you let those with the most voices howl down the wise and the holy?’
‘I have challenged the gods to strike me down before,’ Socrates said. ‘They …’
His wife reached across him to collect the bowls, so that she hid her husband from Xenophon’s view. He heard the hissed words that passed between them, though he pretended not to. Some things were not for the ears of children, or the arbiters of public morality. Not everyone in Athens could appreciate Socrates’ desire to argue and question everything, even to his own destruction. The thought was a strange one and Xenophon picked at it as the wine was poured once more, with a slat of cheeses laid down with bread and grapes. The boys asked permission to leave and rushed off as soon as it was given.
‘You know, Socrates – you taught the Spartan Critias, who joined the Thirty and ruled in Athens before the mob came for him. How is it that I am chased through the streets and threatened for the part I played, while no one bothers you at all?’
‘I am too well loved,’ Socrates said. His wife snorted as she rubbed the bowls clean and he grinned at her. ‘In truth, they know I love them. They do not see me hold myself higher than the common men. What madness it would be to do so! I am a man of Athens. I am a Greek. I am a mason and a soldier and a questioner. I walk barefoot among them and they see the young lads gather to listen to me. I am no threat to them.’
‘They call you the wisest man in Athens,’ Xenophon said drily.
‘What have I done that is worth as much as a cup of good red wine? When I cut stone, there it was, a new thing in the world. When I stood with my friends in a line and I knew pain and saw blood, I was feared. All I do now is ask questions in the marketplace.’
‘Alcibiades said you made him understand his whole life was that of a slave,’ Xenophon said softly. ‘There are some who do not appreciate insights of that sort.’
‘He is a great man. I am pleased I saved his life, even if he would not go to war again, after. As for the rest, I am almost seventy years old. When I walk through the markets, I wear a patched robe and carry a shepherd’s staff. No one is afraid of me. But you, Xenophon. When you raise your eyebrow at them, when you assume the manner of your father, of those who think they know best, perhaps you do yourself no favours.’
Xenophon said nothing for a time, though they emptied the first amphora and began the second. In the end, the younger man nodded.
‘I will think on what you have said. I will go to the marketplace, to the recruiters there. While your wine is in my veins. And I will let the gods choose my path.’
‘You are a fine man, son of Athens,’ Socrates said. ‘If I had my youth to spend again, I would come with you.’ He looked behind him to where his wife was waiting. ‘As my youth has gone and I am married, however, my time is not always my own. I wish you luck.’
They embraced once more and Xenophon slipped out of the door, a little unsteady, but with his gaze fixed far away. When Socrates returned to his table, he found the pouch of silver coins Xenophon had left under an upturned bowl. He toyed with them for a time, deep in thought, then shrugged and sent for more wine to celebrate his unexpected good fortune.
6
The city of Sardis lay on the western edge of the empire, south of Byzantium. In Sardis, men believed distant Susa was the Persian capital. The city of Persepolis, where a mountain had been carved to a plateau, was not even a place of myth.
Wealthy Greeks walked with their guards in the markets in Sardis, selecting goods and spices for markets back home or their own pleasure. Blond slaves from Gaul or silk from China could be bought for vast sums in the city, though the true wealth was not for the vulgar gaze. High walls hid the estates of princes and kings, so that no one passing by knew that gardens as vast as any in the west could be found on the other side.
At the heart of the city, the imperial palace and grounds were kept in perfect readiness, though no member of the family had set foot there in a dozen years. An army of servants and slaves swept and painted and clipped hedges even so. They kept a good distance from the royal prince, so that he and his three companions appeared to walk through empty gardens. Like so much else, the privacy was merely illusion.
Cyrus wore light robes in the heat, with a curved blade at his hip, the handle set with rubies. A single gold ring adorned his left hand, the only other sign of wealth and power. The Spartan, Clearchus, padded along at his side, bare-legged and with a red cloak drifting back in the breeze as he listened.
‘I thought I knew that part of Anatolia, my lord,’ one of the men said.
General Proxenus would not call the royal prince a liar in that place, but doubt was written on his heavy features. All the Greek officers were fit and tanned, as their profession had made them. Somehow, Proxenus the Boeotian looked to be fashioned of bone. His forehead shaded his eyes and a great nose cut the air before him like a ship’s prow. Clearchus liked him, but the Spartan understood he was witness to the game of kings, where honesty could get a man killed before he had ever become a threat.
‘You cannot know every hill tribe, Proxenus, surely?’ Cyrus said, clapping him on the back. ‘All Anatolia is part of my brother’s empire, even the rebellious south – and I command his armies. Perhaps I should march a few thousand eastern Persians into those hills, eh? Men who have never walked those lands before? No, I think I do need Greek soldiers for this work. Clearchus recommended you – and I have heard your name as a fine leader of men.’
‘You flatter me, my lord,’ Proxenus said, dipping to one knee before rising up.
‘No more than is deserved. So are you willing, Proxenus? Can you find me two thousand hoplites of good quality? Trained and experienced men who will not run from savage tribes?’
‘I believe I can, yes. I know a dozen captains and they will have kept records of the men they have trained. Some will be on campaign, of course, or retired. Two thousand is not too many.’
The Greek general looked at the prince and then across to Clearchus. There was something off, though Proxenus could not have said what it was. Greek soldiers were valued all over the world for their skill. They hired themselves as mercenaries and commanded the highest prices. Still, Proxenus sensed something was not quite right. His instinct was to refuse the commission, but on the other hand, the prince had offered him a fortune.
‘You want my men for just one year? To go into the hills and clear
out the tribes there?’
‘As if they had never existed,’ Cyrus said.
His eyes were large, Clearchus noted. The prince seemed to be willing the man to accept his word. They watched as Proxenus rubbed the bristles on his spade of a chin.
‘I’ll need to pay them part in advance to show good faith, of course.’
‘As you wish,’ Cyrus said with a shrug. ‘I will introduce you to my aide, Parviz. He will arrange the first payment and anything else you need. Hone your men, general. Bring them to such an edge as to shave the hairs off my forearm and I will thank you for it.’
‘And then we will march against these Pisidians? In the south?’ Proxenus said.
‘And then report to me that you are ready! I might wish to see your men parade before I send them marching away for a thousand miles.’
‘I see. I am honoured, Highness, for your trust in me. And that Clearchus spoke for me, though he has not seen me in ten years. I will not let you down, either of you. From this moment on, I serve the throne of Persia.’
‘You serve Prince Cyrus,’ Clearchus said.
The Greek general paused in the moment of dropping to one knee.
‘Are they not the same?’ he asked.
Cyrus laughed, though he could have strangled the Spartan at that moment.
‘My brother is the emperor!’ he said. ‘For eight years, I have commanded the service and loyalty of every man under arms, from Sardis to India. Of course they are the same.’
He watched as the man dipped down, rising before Cyrus had given him permission. Cyrus frowned. The Greeks never made proper obeisance, stretched out on their bellies before him. He understood it was just their way, but for one raised in the palaces of Persia, it brought a prickle of discomfort in him.
When Proxenus had left, Cyrus turned to the other man, who had not said a word and merely watched while they walked through the gardens.
‘I find I am weary,’ Cyrus announced to the air.
Before he had finished speaking, a column of servants appeared, carrying table and chairs and setting it with fine blue glasses. Small dishes of food were added to ease the pangs of hunger, so that Cyrus reached for olives and roasted garlic as he sat, never noticing the servant who placed the chair under him.
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