Marathon Read online

  Aristagoras led Miletus while Histiaeus was a virtual prisoner

  of the Great King Darius at Susa. Aristagoras seems to have

  initiated the Ionian Revolt – and later to have regretted it.

  Aristides – Son of Lysimachus, lived roughly 525–468 BC,

  known later in life as ‘The Just’. Perhaps best known as one

  of the commanders at Marathon. Usualy sided with the

  Aristocratic party.

  Artaphernes – Brother of Darius, Great King of Persia, and

  Satrap of Sardis. A senior Persian with powerful connections.

  Bion – A slave name, meaning ‘life’. The most loyal family

  retainer of the Corvaxae.

  Briseis – Daughter of Hipponax, sister of Archilogos.

  Calchas – A former warrior, now the keeper of the shrine of the

  Plataean Hero of Troy, Leitos.

  Chalkeotechnes – The Smith of Plataea; head of the family

  Corvaxae, who claim descent from Heracles.

  Chalkidis – Brother of Arimnestos, son of Chalkeotechnes.

  Darius – King of Kings, the lord of the Persian Empire, brother

  to Artaphernes.

  to Artaphernes.

  Draco – Wheelwright and wagon builder of Plataea, a leading

  man of the town.

  Empedocles – A priest of Hephaestus, the Smith God.

  Epaphroditos – A warrior, an aristocrat of Lesbos.

  Eualcidas – A Hero. Eualcidas is typical of a class of

  aristocratic men – professional warriors, adventurers,

  occasionaly pirates or merchants by turns. From Euboea.

  Heraclitus – c.535–475 BC. One of the ancient world’s most

  famous philosophers. Born to an aristocratic family, he chose

  philosophy over political power. Perhaps most famous for his

  statement about time: ‘You cannot step twice into the same

  river’. His belief that ‘strife is justice’ and other similar sayings

  which you’l find scattered through these pages made him a

  favourite with Nietzsche. His works, mostly now lost,

  probably established the later philosophy of Stoicism.

  Herakleides – An Aeolian, a Greek of Asia Minor. With his

  brothers Nestor and Orestes, he becomes a retainer – a

  warrior – in service to Arimnestos. It is easy, when looking at

  the birth of Greek democracy, to see the whole form of

  modern government firmly established – but at the time of this

  book, democracy was less than skin deep and most armies

  were formed of semi-feudal war bands folowing an

  aristocrat.

  Heraklides – Aristides’ helmsman, a lower-class Athenian who

  has made a name for himself in war.

  Hermogenes – Son of Bion, Arimnestos’s slave.

  Hesiod – A great poet (or a great tradition of poetry) from

  Hesiod – A great poet (or a great tradition of poetry) from

  Boeotia in Greece, Hesiod’s ‘Works and Days’ and

  ‘Theogony’ were widely read in the sixth century and remain

  fresh today – they are the chief source we have on Greek

  farming, and this book owes an enormous debt to them.

  Hippias – Last tyrant of Athens, overthrown around 510 BC

  (that is, just around the beginning of this series), Hippias

  escaped into exile and became a pensioner of Darius of

  Persia.

  Hipponax – 540–c. 4 9 8 BC. A Greek poet and satirist,

  considered the inventor of parody. He is supposed to have

  said ‘There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the

  day one marries her and the day one buries her’.

  Histiaeus – Tyrant of Miletus and aly of Darius of Persia,

  possible originator of the plan for the Ionian Revolt.

  Homer – Another great poet, roughly Hesiod’s contemporary

  (give or take fifty years) and again, possibly more a poetic

  tradition than an individual man. Homer is reputed as the

  author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two great epic poems

  which, between them, largely defined what heroism and

  aristocratic good behaviour should be in Greek society – and,

  you might say, to this very day.

  Kylix – A boy, slave of Hipponax.

  Miltiades – Tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese. His son, Cimon

  or Kimon, rose to be a great man in Athenian politics.

  Probably the author of the Athenian victory of Marathon,

  Miltiades was a complex man, a pirate, a warlord and a

  supporter of Athenian democracy.

  Penelope – Daughter of Chalkeotechnes, sister of Arimnestos.

  Sappho – A Greek poetess from the island of Lesbos, born

  sometime around 630 BC and died between 570 and 550 BC.

  Her father was probably Lord of Eresus. Widely considered

  the greatest lyric poet of Ancient Greece.

  Simonalkes – Head of the colateral branch of the Plataean

  Corvaxae, cousin to Arimnestos.

  Simonides – Another great lyric poet, he lived c.556–468 BC,

  and his nephew, Bacchylides, was as famous as he. Perhaps

  best known for his epigrams, one of which is:

  Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,

  That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

  Thales – c.624–c.546 BC The first philosopher of the Greek

  tradition, whose writings were stil current in Arimnestos’s

  time. Thales used geometry to solve problems such as

  calculating the height of the pyramids in Aegypt and the

  distance of ships from the shore. He made at least one trip to

  Aegypt. He is widely accepted as the founder of western

  mathematics.

  Theognis – Theognis of Megara was almost certainly not one

  man but a whole canon of aristocratic poetry under that

  name, much of it practical. There are maxims, many very

  wise, laments on the decline of man and the age, and the

  wise, laments on the decline of man and the age, and the

  woes of old age and poverty, songs for symposia, etc. In

  later sections there are songs and poems about homosexual

  love and laments for failed romances. Despite widespread

  attributions, there was, at some point, a real Theognis who

  may have lived in the mid-6th century BC, or just before the

  events of this series. His poetry would have been central to

  the world of Arimnestos’s mother.

  Contents

  Maps

  Prologue

  Part I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Part II

  9

  10

  11

  12

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Epilogue

  Historical Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Christian Cameron

  I’m not any younger, and that’s a fact. But I gather my story’s a

  good one. Or you young people wouldn’t cluster around so

  eagerly to hear my tale.

  Honey, you’ve brought your scribbler back to me. He’s

  promised to write it al out in the new way, although if I was

  alowed, I’d rather hear a rhapsode sing it the old way. But the

  old ways died with the Medes, didn’t they? It’s al different now.

  The world I’m teling you about is as dead as old H
omer’s

  heroes at Troy. Even my thugater here thinks I’m the relic of a

  time when the gods stil walked abroad. Eh?

  You young people make me laugh. You’re soft. But you’re

  soft because we kiled al the monsters. And whose fault is that?

  And the blushing girl’s come back – ah, it makes me younger

  just to see you, child. I’d take you myself, but al my other wives

  would object. Hah! Look at that colour on her face, my young

  friends. There’s fire under that skin. Marry her quick, before the

  friends. There’s fire under that skin. Marry her quick, before the

  fire catches somewhere it oughtn’t.

  It looks to me as if my daughter has brought every young

  sprig in the town, and some foreigners from up the coast as wel,

  just to hear her old man speak of his fate. Flattering in a way –

  but you know that I’l tel you of Marathon. And you know that

  there is no nobler moment in al the history of men – of Helenes.

  We stood against them, man to man, and we were better.

  But it didn’t start that way, not by as long a ride as a man

  could make in a year on a good horse.

  For those of you who missed the first nights of my rambling

  story, I’m Arimnestos of Plataea. I told the story of how my

  father was the bronze-smith of our city, and how we marched to

  fight the Spartans at Oinoe, and fought three battles in a week.

  How he was murdered by his cousin Simon. How Simon sold

  me as a slave, far to the east among the men of Ionia, and how I

  grew to manhood as a slave in the house of a fine poet in

  Ephesus, one of the greatest cities in the world, right under the

  shadow of the Temple of Artemis. I was slave to Hipponax the

  poet and his son Archilogos. In time they freed me. I became a

  warrior, and then a great warrior, but when the Long War began

  – the war between the Medes and the Greeks – I served with

  the Athenians at Sardis.

  Why, you might ask. My thugater wil groan to hear me tel

  this again, but I loved Briseis. Indeed, to say I loved her –

  Hipponax’s dark-haired daughter, Artemis’s avatar and perhaps

  Aphrodite’s as wel, Helen returned to earth – wel, to say I

  loved her is to say nothing. As you wil hear, if you stay to listen.

  loved her is to say nothing. As you wil hear, if you stay to listen.

  Briseis wasn’t the only person I loved in Ephesus. I loved

  Archilogos – the true friend of my youth. We were wel matched

  in everything. I was his companion, first as a slave, and then free

  – and we competed. At everything. And I also loved Heraclitus,

  the greatest philosopher of his day. To me, the greatest ever,

  almost like a god in his wisdom. He, and he alone, kept me from

  growing to manhood as a pure kiler. He gave me advice which I

  ignored – but which stayed in my head. To this day, in fact. He

  taught me that the river of our lives flows on and on and can

  never be reclaimed. Later, I knew that he’d tried to keep me

  from Briseis.

  When her father caught us together, it was the end of my

  youth. I was cast out of the household, and that’s why I was with

  the Athenians at Sardis, and not in the phalanx of the men of

  Ephesus to save Hipponax when the Medes gave him his mortal

  wound.

  I found him screaming on the battlefield, and I sent him on the

  last journey because I loved him, even though he had been my

  owner. It was done with love, but his son, Archilogos, did not

  see it that way, and we became foes.

  I spent the next years of the Ionian Revolt – the first years of

  the Long War – gaining word-fame with every blow I struck. I

  should blush to tel it – but why? When I served at Sardis, I was

  a man that other men would trust at their side in the phalanx. By

  the time I led my ship into the Persians at the big fight at Cyprus,

  I was a warrior that other men feared in the storm of bronze.

  I was a warrior that other men feared in the storm of bronze.

  The Greeks won the sea-fight but lost on land, that day at

  Cyprus. And the back of the revolt should have been broken,

  but it was not. We retreated to Chios and Lesbos, and I joined

  Miltiades of Athens – a great aristocrat, and a great pirate – and

  we got new alies, and the fighting switched to the Chersonese –

  the land of the Trojan War. We fought the Medes by sea and

  land. Sometimes we bested them. Miltiades made money and so

  did I. I owned my own ship, and I was rich.

  I kiled many men.

  And then we faced the Medes in Thrace – just a few ships

  from each side. By then, Briseis had married the most powerful

  man in the Greek revolt – and had found him a broken reed. We

  beat the Persians and their Thracian alies and I kiled her

  husband, even though he was supposedly on my side. I laugh

  even now – that was a good kiling, and I spit on his shade.

  But she didn’t want me, except in her bed and in her

  thoughts. Briseis loved me as I loved her – but she meant to be

  Queen of the Ionians, not a pirate’s trul, and al I was in those

  years was a bloodyhanded pirate.

  Fair enough. But it shattered me for a while.

  I left Thrace and I left Miltiades, and I went home to Plataea.

  Where the man who had kiled my father and married my mother

  was lording it over the family farm.

  Simon, and his four sons. My cousins.

  Your cousins too, thugater. Simon was a wreck of a man and

  a coward, but I’d not say the same of his get. They were tough

  bastards. I didn’t hack him down. I went to the assembly, as my

  bastards. I didn’t hack him down. I went to the assembly, as my

  master Heraclitus would have wanted me to do.

  The law kiled old Simon the coward, but his sons wanted

  revenge.

  And the Persians were determined to finish off the Ionians

  and put the Greeks under their heel.

  And Briseis kept marrying great men, and finding them

  wanting.

  The world, you know, is shaped like the bowl of an aspis.

  Out on the rim flows the edge of the river-sea that circles al, and

  up where the porpax binds a man’s arm is the sun and the

  moon, and the great circle of earth fils al between. Medes and

  Persians, Scythians and Greeks and Ionians and Aeolians and

  Italians and Aethiopians and Aegyptians and Africans and

  Lydians and Phrygians and Carians and Celts and Phoenicians

  and the gods know who else fil the bowl of the aspis from rim to

  rim. And in those days, as the Long War began to take hold like

  a new-started fire on dry kindling, you could hear men talking of

  war, making war, kiling, dying, making weapons and training in

  their use, al across the bowl of that aspis from rim to rim, until

  the murmur of the bronze-clad god’s chorus filed the world.

  It was the sixth year of the Long War, and Hipparchus was

  archon in Athens, and Myron was archon for his second term in

  Plataea. Tisikrites of Croton won the stade sprint at Olympia.

  The weather was good, the crops were roling in.

  I thought I might settle down and make my
self a bronze-smith

  and a farmer, like my father before me.

  Ares must have laughed.

  Ares must have laughed.

  Part I

  Lade

  The time will come, Milesians, devisers of evil deeds

  When many will feast on you; a splendid gift for them,

  Your wives will wash the feet of many long-haired men,

  And other men will assume the care of my temple at Didyma

  Oracle of Apolo to the Men of Miletus

  In Herodotus, Book 6:19

  1

  Shield up.

  Thrust overhand.

  Turn – catch the spear on the rim of my shield, pivot on my

  toes and thrust at my opponent.

  He catches my spear on his shield and grins. I can see the

  flash of his grin in the tau of his Corinthian helmet’s faceplate.

  Then his plumes nod as he turns his head – checks the man

  behind him.

  I thrust overhand, hard.

  He catches my blow, pivots on the bals of his feet and steps

  back with his shield facing me.

  His file-mate pushes past him, a heavy overhand blow driving

  me back half a step.

  The music rises, the aulos pipe sounding faster, the drums

  beating the rhythm like the sound of marching feet.

  beating the rhythm like the sound of marching feet.

  I sidestep, faster, and my shield rim flashes like a live thing.

  My black spear is an iron-tipped tongue of death in my strong

  right hand and I am one with the men to the right and left, the

  men behind. I am not Arimnestos the kiler of men. I am only one

  Plataean, and together, we are this.

  ‘Plataeans!’ I roar.

  I plant my right foot. Every man in the front rank does the

  same, and the pipes howl, and every man crouches, screams and

  pushes forward, and three hundred voices cal: The Ravens of

  Apollo! The roar shakes the wals and echoes from the Temple

  of Hera.

  The music fals silent, and after a pause the whole assembly –

  al the free men and women, the slaves, the freedmen – erupt in

  applause.

  Under my armour, I am covered in sweat.

  Hermogenes – my opponent – puts his arms around me.

  ‘That was . . .’

  There are no words to describe how good that was. We

  danced the Pyrrhiche, the war dance, with the picked three