Killer of Men lw-1 Page 3

  Armies were small, because there are, thank the gods, only so many aristocrats in the world. But when Sparta created her 'League', she changed the world. Suddenly the Peloponnese could field a bigger army than anyone else. Spartans are great warriors – just ask them – but what made them dangerous was their size. Sparta could put ten thousand men in the field.

  The other states had to respond. Thebes formed her own league, the Federation of Boeotia, but other states had to find another way to provide that manpower. In Plataea, we took to arming every free man. Even so, we could never, as I have said, muster more than fifteen hundred armed men.

  In Athens, the tyrants kept their armies small. They did not permit men to carry arms abroad, and when they had to fight, they hired mercenaries from Thessaly and Scythia. They didn't trust their people.

  Don't fool yourself, honey. We're tyrants, too.

  At any rate, while I was a boy, the Pisistratidae fell. The survivors ran off to the Great King of Persia and Athens became a democracy. Suddenly, in a day, Athens had the manpower to field a big army – ten thousand hoplites or more. The Athens of my boyhood was like a boy who has just developed his first muscles.

  You've stayed awake through my history lesson – that fellow who is courting you must be having his effect. The point is – there is a point, honey – that for the first time, Athens was feeling strong, and she was suddenly open as a market for the Plataeans, just over the mountains and guarding the pass to Thebes. Some of the richer farmers had learned that if they carted their olive oil and grain and wine over the mountain to Athens, they fetched a much better price than they got in the market of little Plataea – or in the market of mighty Thebes.

  I longed to go to Athens. I dreamed of it. I had heard that the whole city was built of Parian marble. Lies, of course, but you have dreams of your own – you know what dreams are like. And we heard that the Alcmaeonidae were building the new Temple of Apollo at Delphi of marble – it had never been done before – and it was a marvel. Draco the wheelwright, as close to a good friend as Pater had, went on a pilgrimage to Delphi and came back singing of the new temple.

  Bah, give me that wine cup and never mind an old man's digressions. Anyway, the talk that summer was of the Daidala and the price of grain.

  Epictetus was the richest of the local farmers. He'd been born a slave and made all his wealth from his own sweat, and he might have been old Hesiod reborn. A hard man to cross. But he'd just made the trip to Athens the year before and he swore by it. I remember the day that he pulled up with a wagon full of hired hands.

  'This is the party?' he said. He had a grim, deep voice.

  'No party here,' Pater said. He was making a cauldron, a deep one, and the anvil sang with every stroke as he bent the bronze to his will. 'Just a bunch of loafers avoiding their work!'

  There were twenty men around the forge yard, and they all laughed. It was mid-afternoon, and there wasn't a lazy man there. They had a skin of last year's wine, the good purple stuff that our grapes make at home, dark as Tyrian dye.

  Epictetus got off his wagon and his hired men climbed down. It was a high wagon – Draco's best work, the kind that would carry five farms' worth of grain. He had a grown son – Epictetus son of Epictetus – who was a shadow beside his hard-working father.

  'Bring our wine, son,' the father said, and then he walked into the yard.

  It was quite the event, because Epictetus never came to loaf in the forge yard. He said that a man had but one life, and any time he wasted counted against him with the gods. He was the only farmer in Boeotia who owned four ploughs. He only needed two, but he built the other two – just in case. He was that sort of man.

  So he came into the yard and Pater sent me for a stool from the kitchen. It was like one lord visiting another. I fetched a stool, and Epictetus – the son – poured wine from a heavy amphora for every man in the yard. I had a taste of Pater's. It was not cheap.

  Epictetus looked around. 'I've picked the right day,' he said. He nodded. 'I have a thought in my head and I can't get it out. I wanted to talk to the men – the real men – without giving myself away to the Theban bastards in town.'

  Pater handed Bion the new cauldron. 'Punch her for rivets,' he said. 'Did you pour me a new plate?'

  Bion nodded. He was better at casting bronze even than Pater. 'Smooth as a baby,' he said.

  'He'll be a rival to you when you free him,' Draco said.

  'No,' Pater said. He pulled his leather apron off and tossed it to another slave. Then he poured some water over his head, wiped his face with a rag and walked back. 'It is good to see you in my yard, and a guest is always a blessing,' Pater said, and poured a libation. 'I always have time to listen to you, Epictetus.'

  Epictetus bowed. He rose, as if speaking in the assembly. And in a way he was, for in the yard were the leaders of what might have been called the 'middling' sort – the men who supported the temples and shrines, who served in war. There were some aristocrats, and two very rich men, but the men in our yard were – well, they were the voice of the farmers, if you like.

  'Men,' he said. How imposing he was! Tall, strong and burned so dark that he looked like mahogany. Even at fifty, he was someone to be reckoned with. 'Men of Plataea,' he began again, and suddenly I knew that he was nervous. That made me nervous, too. Such a strong man? And rich?

  'Last year I went to Athens,' he said. 'You know that Athens has overthrown the tyrants. They are gone – fled to the Great King in Persia, or dead.' He paused and smiled a little. 'But you know all this, eh? I'm a windbag. Listen. Athens has money – their silver owls are the best coin in Hellas. And they have an army – they muster ten thousand hoplites when they go to war.' He looked around, took a sip of wine. 'They have so many mouths to feed in their city that they need our grain. Aye – they import grain all the way from Propontis and the Euxine!'

  Men shifted restlessly.

  'I'm no hand at this. So here's what I'm trying to say. We cannot fight Thebes alone. We need a friend. Athens should be that friend. They need our grain.' He shrugged. 'I talked to some men in Athens. They talk to farmers as if they were men of substance, in Athens. Not like some bastards I've known, eh? And the men I talked to were very interested. Interested in being friends.'

  He looked around.

  I remember that I found the idea so exciting that I thought I might burst. Athens – glorious Athens, as an ally?

  Which goes to show what you know when you're seven years old. The rest of them shuffled their feet and looked at the ground.

  Draco shrugged. 'Listen, Epictetus. Your idea has merit – and it's time we started to talk about these things. No man here will deny that we need a friend. But Athens is so far. Over the mountains. Five hundred stades as the raven flies – more for a man and a cart.'

  Myron, another farmer, leaned forward on his heavy staff. 'Athens would never send their phalanx over the mountains to protect us,' he said. He had a scar on his thigh from the same fight where Pater had been made lame. 'We need a friend with five thousand hoplites who will stand their ground beside us, not a friend who will come and avenge our corpses.'

  Epictetus nodded to Myron – they had each other's measure, those two. 'It might be true,' he said. 'But we need a friend far enough away that he won't force us to be more than just an ally.' He looked around. 'Like Thebes and the so-called federation.'

  All the men spat at the mention of Thebes.

  Myron nodded. 'That's sense. How about Corinth?'

  Evaristos, the handsomest of the men, shook his head. 'Corinth is too close and has too many ships and too few hoplites. And no need for our grain. And loves Thebes too well.'

  Draco held out his cup to one of our slaves. 'A splash more, darling,' he said. 'What of Sparta? They've an army worth something, or so I hear.'

  'Ten times the distance as Athens,' Epictetus said.

  'I know,' Draco said. 'I made my pilgrimage last year to Olympia-'

  'We know!' many of the men called
, tired of Draco's endless travel tales.

  'Listen, you oafs!' Draco shouted. They jeered him with humour, but then they were silent. He went on, 'Sparta is not like us. Their citizens – all they do is train for war.'

  'And fuck little boys,' Hilarion put in. If the least rich of the farmers, he was the most cheerful and the best with a crowd. And the least respectful of authority. He shrugged. 'Hey – I've been to Sparta. Women there are lonely.'

  Draco glared at Hilarion. 'Whatever their personal foibles, gentlemen, they're the best soldiers in Greece. And they don't farm, or make pots, or work metal. They fight. They can march here, if they have a mind to. Their farms will be tilled whether they march or not.'

  'Their wives are lonely whether they march or not,' Hilarion added. 'Maybe while they march to save us, I'll just slip over the isthmus and visit a few of them.'

  Pater spoke for the first time. 'Hilarion,' he said softly. He met the younger man's eyes, and Hilarion dropped his.

  'Sorry,' he said.

  Pater walked into the middle of them. 'My sense of what you say,' he began, 'is that you all support the idea of finding ourselves a foreign friend.'

  They looked at each other. Then Epictetus stood and emptied his cup. 'That's the right of it,' he said.

  'But none of us knows what will suit us – Athens or Sparta or Corinth – or perhaps Megara.' Pater shrugged. 'We're a bunch of Boeotian farmers. Epictetus here has at least been to Attica, and Draco's been to the Peloponnese.' He looked around. 'Who would want to be our friend?'

  Epictetus winced, but said nothing.

  'If we trained harder, our men could beat the Thebans!' said Myron's son, a fire-breather called Dionysius. 'And then we'd have no need of these foreigners.'

  Myron put a hand on his son's shoulder. The boy was only just old enough to take his stand, and hadn't been there for the defeat. 'Boy, when they bring five thousand against our one thousand,' he said, 'there's no amount of training that will help us. No man here cares a tinker's damn how many we kill – only that we win.'

  The older men nodded agreement. The Iliad was a fine story for children, but Boeotian farmers know just what war brings – burned crops, raped daughters and death. The glory is fleeting, the expense immense and the effect permanent.

  They talked more, but that's how I remember it – the day the idea was born. In fact, it was just grumbling. We all hated Thebes, but they weren't hurting us any.

  Epictetus stayed to dinner, though. And he offered to carry the cream of Pater's work over the mountains to Athens – and back, if it didn't sell. And Pater agreed. Then Epictetus commissioned a cup. He'd clearly seen the priest's cup and wanted one for himself.

  'A cup I can drink from, in the fields or at home,' he said.

  'What do you want on it?' Pater asked.

  'A man ploughing a field,' Epictetus said. 'None of your gods and satyrs. A good pair of oxen and a good man.'

  'Twenty Athenian drachmas,' Pater said. 'Or for nothing, if you carry my goods to Athens.'

  Epictetus shook his head. 'Twenty drachmas is what you're worth,' he said. 'And I'll carry your goods anyway. If I take it as a gift, I owe you. If I pay you, you owe me.' That's the kind of man he was.

  Pater worked like a slave for the rest of the summer, making finer things than were his wont. He made ten platters, the kind gentlemen served feasts on, and he made more cups, including the fanciest of the lot, with a ploughman, for Epictetus. And he made a Corinthian helmet – simple in design but perfect in execution. Even in the summer of my seventh year, I knew perfection in metal when I saw it.

  Pater had no patience in him to teach the young, but he let me put it on my head. He laughed. 'You'll be a big man, Arimnestos,' he said. 'But not yet.'

  He made bronze knives for me and for my brother, fine ones with some work on the backbone of the blade and horn scales on either side of the grip.

  I worked like a slave that summer, because we were poor and we had just Bion's family as slaves – and Bion was far too skilled to waste his time putting air on the fire or punching holes in leather, or any of the other donkey work. And though my brother was too small to plough, he ploughed anyway, with help from Bion's son Hermogenes. Together they made a man.

  Occasionally men like Myron would appear out of the air and take a turn at the plough, or repair a wheel, or perhaps sow a field. We had good neighbours.

  When I wasn't in the forge, I was in the fields too. I loved that farm. Our land was at the top of a hill – a low hill, but it gave a view from the house. In the paved yard, where men stood to talk, you could see mighty Cithaeron rising like a slope-shouldered god, and you could see the walls of our city just across a little valley. Up on Cithaeron, we could see the hero's tomb and the sacred spring, and if we looked towards Plataea, we could see the Temple of Hera clear as a lamp in a dark room. The trees of Hera's grove were like spears pointing up the hill at our little acropolis, even though they were stades away. We had an apple tree at the top of the olive grove, and I went up and trimmed the new growth in the spring and again in the autumn. We had grapes on the hillside, and when we had no other work to do, Hermogenes and Chalkidis and I would build trellises to carry the vines.

  There was a small wood by the stream at the base of the hill, and the old people had dug a fish pond. I could pretend that we were great lords, with our own hill fort and our own woods for hunting, although we didn't have an animal larger than a rabbit to hunt. But there's no memory dearer to me than walking home from the agora in Plataea with Bion – we must have just sold some wine, or perhaps some oil, and I was allowed to go to town – walking home past the turning where our road went down to the stream and then up the hill to our house, and thinking, this is my land. My father is king here.

  Most nights, unless Mater was raving drunk, we'd meet in the courtyard after dinner and watch the sun set. We had a swing in the courtyard olive tree. Pater showed me the grooves in the branch that bore it, sunk into the wood the way chariot wheels will cut ruts even in stone. The swing had been on that tree for many lives of men.

  It may sound dull to you, dear, but to watch a sunset from a swing on your own land is a very good thing.

  It must have been after the festival of Demeter – because all the harvest was in – that Epictetus arrived with his wagons. He had two. No one else we knew had two wagons.

  'Well?' he said, when his wagons were in the yard.

  Pater and Bion had all the bronze laid out, so that our courtyard looked as if it had been touched by King Midas.

  Epictetus walked around, handled everything and finally nodded sharply. He picked up his cup – snatched it up – and then looked at Pater for confirmation that it was, indeed, his.

  'Don't get many requests for a plough and oxen,' Pater said.

  Epictetus looked at it, then hefted it in his hand.

  Bion stepped forward and poured wine into it. 'You have to feel it full,' he said with a smile.

  Epictetus poured a libation and drank. 'Good cup,' he said. 'Pay the man, boy,' he said to his son.

  'I'd rather have it in bronze, from Athens,' Pater said.

  'Less a quarter for cartage?' Epictetus asked.

  'Less an eighth for cartage,' Pater said.

  Epictetus nodded, and they both spat on their hands and shook, and the thing was done. Then the hired men loaded all the work of a summer and the big wagons rolled away down the hill.

  I was old enough to know that all of Pater's stock of bronze was rolling away in those carts. He had nothing left but scraps to make repairs. If robbers took Epictetus on the roads, we were finished. I knew it.

  And I felt it over the next weeks. Pater was a fair man, but when he was dark, he hit us, and those weeks were dark. One afternoon he even hit Bion – savagely. And I dropped a fine bowl and he beat me with a stick. He beat my brother when he caught him watching the girls bathe, and he raged at us every day.

  Mater was sober. It has an odd sound to it, but it was as if she kne
w she was needed. So she stopped drinking and did housework. She read aloud to us every day from a stool by her loom, and she was very much like the aristocratic lady she'd been born to be.

  I loved her stories. She would tell us the myths of the gods, or sing pieces of the Iliad or other stories, and I would devour them the way my brother devoured meat. But when she was done, and the magic of her voice faded, she was just my dull and drunken mother, and I couldn't like her. So I went back to the fields.

  It was in those weeks that I went into Plataea with Bion and pledged the family's credit to an iron knife. Only the gods know what I was thinking – a little boy with an iron knife? Who had a perfectly good bronze one on a thong round his neck? Children are as inscrutable as the gods.

  Pater beat me so badly that I thought I might die. I see it now – I had pledged money he didn't have. And we were at the bottom. All our harvest and all our work was off at Athens, or lost on the road. I see it now, but at the time, it hurt me far more than just a beating. I decided that night, tears burning down my face, that he wasn't really my father. No man could treat his son that way.

  That was a deeper pain than any blow. I still bear it.

  The next day he apologized. In fact, he all but crawled to me, making false jokes and wincing when he touched my bruises, alternating with making light of my injuries. It was a strange performance, and in some way it was as confusing as the heavy beating.

  And then he recovered. Whatever daimon was eating his soul, he rose above it. It was three weeks or more after Epictetus had left, and he was a week overdue. Pater came out into the vineyard with us and started building trellises – work he never did – as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He didn't complain, and he didn't hit anyone, and we worked steadily all day under the high, blue skies of autumn. The grapes were almost ripe and the trellises creaked. Bion and I were both physically wary of him – we had bruises to prove that we had the right – but he passed no reproof harder than a look. My brother fell on a vine and wrecked an hour's work, but Pater merely shook his head and took up his light bronze axe. He went off to the wood to cut more supports, and sent my brother to the river to cut reeds.