Gary Corby: The Marathon Conspiracy

“My friends aren’t good enough for you?” Pythax said to his wife.

All four parents fell to arguing.

Diotima and I stood to the side, listening to this disaster in the making. “They can’t agree on one single thing,” Diotima whispered to me.

“No.”

Diotima looked close to tears. This was her wedding day they were destroying. I caught her hand and led her from the house. Even when we stood outside the house, we could still hear the raised voices. So we walked away.

Diotima and I sat, disconsolate, on a low wall at the end of the street. Beside us was a herm, a bust of the god Hermes with an erect phallus carved into its base. The city was dotted with herms; they were meant to bring good luck to those who passed, but I doubted they could do much with difficult parents.

“This is going to be the worst wedding ever,” Diotima said. I’d heard men condemned to death sound more cheerful.

I put an arm around her. “No it won’t. The worst wedding ever was the one we performed for ourselves, when we were stuck in that prison.”

Diotima looked up at me. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t look back on what we did in that prison as the happiest moment of my life. No, that was my true wedding.”

“We thought we were about to die,” I pointed out.

“Irrelevant.”

I didn’t recall thinking so at the time, but I wasn’t about to argue.

Some small boys had been sidling up to the herm beside us, obviously wondering how they could vandalize it without us noticing. I picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them at the junior criminals. “Go away.”

They scattered.

“That was cruel, Nico.”

“Nah. There’s another herm on the corner they’re running toward. They can vandalize that one. But they won’t be able to break off its phallus.”

“Why not?”

“I did it myself, when I was their age. No one ever fixed it.”

A woman walked up the street. She stopped outside our house, hesitated for a moment, then knocked on the door. She looked up and down the street, then started to walk away. At that instant the house slave opened the door. The slave and the woman talked. The slave shook his head.

I said, “That’s odd. I wonder who she is?”

“Who?” Diotima had been watching the boys run down the street.

“That woman just knocked on our door, but then she walked away.”

Then I remembered that Pericles had sent a priestess to tell me more about the mysterious skull. This must be she. In the excitement of Glaucon coming to confess, I’d forgotten all about it, forgotten even to tell Diotima.

Diotima looked, and looked again, and then her jaw dropped.

The lady came our way. She stopped in front of us.

“Hello, Diotima,” she said. “You’ve grown since I saw you last.”

“You know this lady?” I said to Diotima.

With the muffled voices of our parents arguing in the background, which surely the lady could hear but was too polite to mention, Diotima said, in slightly strangled tones, “Nico, I’d like you to meet Doris. She was my teacher.”

“I am the priestess Doris, from the Temple of Artemis in the deme of Brauron,” she said to me.

The priestess Doris was a lady of late middle age. Her hair was gray, held back with a simple clasp of silver that was designed for practicality rather than display. The chiton she wore was of heavy linen and the oldest style; it covered her from shoulders to ankles, respectable and unpretentious. Her sandals were heavy-duty and very dusty, as well they might be since that same day she had walked to Athens.

It was obvious from her carriage, her gentle accent, and the manner of her speech that here was a well-born lady of a certain age; everything about her was simple and composed. I found myself liking Doris, and I was deeply intrigued that she had known Diotima long before I had.

We had escorted Doris to the town house that had once belonged to Diotima’s birth father, and which Diotima had inherited a year ago. At the town house we had privacy. The alternative was to take Doris to my home, where our parents continued their long, loud argument over the wedding plans.

Diotima was an heiress. Technically, once we were married, the town house would become mine to manage on her behalf. In practice, I didn’t know if we could afford the upkeep. Although Diotima was coming to me with property, there was no income to speak of at all; we would have to rely on my earnings as an agent-those would be the earnings Pericles hadn’t paid-and the upkeep on a city house is expensive. Besides which, the pressure on us to move in with my parents was enormous. That was the tradition for newlyweds.

Diotima’s town house was empty but for three slaves to maintain it. The chief of these was Achilles, a dapper little man with crippled ankles, whence his slave name.

I had promised Achilles his freedom if Diotima survived our first assignment, an adventure in which he’d had some minor involvement, but Diotima had preempted me by herself offering to free him. Achilles had refused; a slave doesn’t have to accept freedom if he doesn’t want it. Achilles had explained with these words: “I’m an old man, Mistress Diotima,” he’d said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you freed me now. Please don’t send me away.”

What he’d not said, in his slave’s pride, but which Diotima had divined at once, was that a free man can starve, while a slave will be cared for so long as the family has food to put on the table. It’s a sacred obligation. So Diotima had sworn an oath to Achilles, that she would care for him to the end of his days and never sell him, and Achilles in his gratitude had become her devoted servant.

Thus it was that Achilles opened the door to us, and we led Doris the priestess into the inner courtyard of what had once been Diotima’s father’s home. Achilles hobbled off to bring us wine. Diotima took his arm as he went and whispered to bring the best her father had stored. I knew the quality of the cellar in this house, and that told me as much as anything the high esteem in which Diotima held this priestess.

I said, “It’s an honor to meet you, Doris. Pericles said you can tell us what happened at the temple.”

“Do you know about the sanctuary at Brauron?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “It’s a girl thing.”

Doris laughed. “And therefore men don’t need to know about it? Wait until you have daughters.”

Achilles brought in a tray of food and set it before Doris: olives and bread and sliced quince and a bowl of lentils. He returned with a krater of wine mixed with water. Achilles ladled a cup for each of us.

Doris was hungry. She dipped her right hand into the lentils. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and that was before first light. I hope you’ll excuse me.”

“That’s why the food is there,” I said.

Diotima said, “It’s wonderful to see you, Doris. I often think back to my time at Brauron.”

“For our part we’ve been following your career with the greatest interest. You made quite a spectacle of yourself in that court case last year-our High Priestess wasn’t entirely pleased about that, by the way; she felt it might reflect on the temple-and the word we hear is something happened at the last Olympics. The truth is, my dear, that in the small world of our sanctuary, you’ve become something of a celebrity.”

Doris spoke between mouthfuls.

“Our temple has always been a haven for girls,” she said to me, licking her fingers. “The wealthiest and most powerful families in Athens send their daughters to us. The girls are called the Little Bears. For most of them, it’s the first time they’ve ever lived away from home. It’s good training for marriage.” Doris paused. “In fact, the reputation of the sanctuary for turning out young ladies of quality is unsurpassed. Fathers have been known to offer bribes and even fight to have their daughters admitted.”