Gary Corby: The Pericles Commission

“If you charge your father, you’ll be prosecuting the wrong man, Pericles.” Every head turned. Diotima walked into the center of the chamber, wearing her priestess robes, her head high and her manner haughty. “There’s only one trial we need hear for the murder of Ephialtes. That of Archestratus!”

Archestratus grinned from ear to ear and called out, “I am honored to join such august company!”

Xanthippus groaned. “Is there a queue of women outside waiting their turn? Who is she? No, on second thought, I don’t care. Throw her out!” Two Scythians took her arms and commenced to pull her back.

Diotima shouted, “Nicolaos is innocent! We can prove Archestratus hired Aristodicus to kill my father! We can prove it! He used his son’s bank to hold the fee. Archestratus-” The Scythians dragged Diotima out of the chamber, still shouting accusations.

Lysanias, his eyebrow raised but his expression otherwise neutral, turned to Pericles. “As my colleague and your proud father pointed out a while ago, we are here for the trial of Nicolaos. So far the prosecutor and the chief judge have been accused of the crime. They can’t all have killed him, can they? No, I thought not, so I suggest we continue with the trial at hand, and then schedule other trials until we run out of dramatic accusations or the dicasts become bored and seek other entertainment.” He glanced over at the excited jury. “I don’t think that will happen any time soon. I’ve seen them pay less attention to a play by Aeschylus.” The remainder of the Council sat behind the three judges with expressions that ranged the full gamut of emotion from stony unhappiness to grim hatred. They had been reduced to this court of crime. Now even that privilege had been turned into a farce.

Pericles had more to say but it was obvious after the excitement that no one was listening. He finished his oration early with the words, “Well, gentlemen of the jury, after all you have seen and heard today, we can all agree there is considerable disagreement over who killed Ephialtes. Was it the judge presiding over this case? Was it the prosecutor? Could it be the man standing in the audience? The only thing we can say with any assurance is that it was not the accused.”

Pericles sat down beside me.

Xanthippus declared, “The dicasts will proceed to vote.”

Officers of the court brought out two large urns. One was made of wood, the other of bronze. Both were passed along the benches of the dicasts. With a thousand and one votes to count this took considerable time.

Pericles said to me, “It’s going to be all right, Nicolaos. I doubt half the dicasts even remember your name after everything that’s happened today.”

Pericles might have been confident but I certainly wasn’t. My life hung on the outcome of this vote!

Each dicast placed a disk into the bronze urn as it passed by them. If he thought I was innocent, he would place a solid disk, if guilty, a disk with a hole in the center. The wooden urn was for the discards. I watched intently trying to see each disk as it went in, and to keep a mental tally. I was heartened whenever I identified a solid disk, but my guts knotted at the unmistakable sight of a holed disk going into the bronze. I looked at the face of the man who had voted for my death. He had a weathered skin, a bulbous nose, and a full dark beard and dark eyes, but I could see no evil in him. If I had passed him in the street, he would have been unremarkable. The man noticed my attention and smiled at me. I looked away.

The bronze urn was carried to Xanthippus, and he, Lysanias and Demotion counted the disks. Before long it was obvious what the result would be.

The judges turned to consult the Council behind them. The old men of the Areopagus, as Pericles referred to them, did not look happy. Men whispered to one another. There was general agreement about something, except Lysanias who was angry and shook his head. A few seemed undecided, but the majority were smiling.

Xanthippus turned back to the court and declared the result. “Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus, the dicasts have voted, eight hundred and twenty-one to one hundred and eighty. You are found not guilty of the murder of Ephialtes.”

The dicasts cheered and I smiled as broadly as I ever have in my life.

But Xanthippus was still speaking. He should have completed with the formula, “Release the prisoner,” but instead, he continued, “The Council of the Areopagus has considered the evidence before it and concluded, though you are not guilty of murder, you have committed treason against the State with your meddlesome, unofficial, unwarranted, and damaging pursuit of state secrets. In accordance with the constitution, that is, the remainder of it after Ephialtes finished destroying it, the crime of treason can be dealt with by the Council alone, without trial by jury. Your sentence is death, to be carried out at dawn tomorrow. Guards, return the condemned man to his cell.”

For a moment there was stunned silence, then the citizens of Athens erupted. The jury, even the men who had voted against me, shouted, “No! No!” They shook their fists and surged over the benches toward the Council. Some men tore planks off the benches and held them as makeshift weapons. The Scythians, the only men present allowed weapons, placed themselves between the people of Athens and the Council, who hurriedly exited through the rear of the building.

I was grabbed from behind by Scythians and dragged outside before I knew what was happening. They hurried me down the hill and along the path to my cell, where they threw me inside and slammed the door.

There was fighting in the city that night, I could hear the rumble of distant shouting and see the dull glow of fires through the bars of the door. That was bad. Fire in any crowded city can turn into a conflagration that leaps from house to house. Not that the rioters cared about me personally, I’m sure, it was the principle of the thing. I reflected bitterly that Pericles had hired me to help prevent a civil war, and instead I had become the cause of one.

My mother, in tears, brought me a last meal of all the foods I had ever loved as a child, ending with honeycomb. Only the Gods know how she managed to find some at such short notice. I apologized for bringing such shame upon the family. Father gripped my hand and refused to hear my apology, saying I was an innocent man being persecuted by the powerful. When the emotion became too high Sophroniscus led Phaenarete away. His last words to me were that he would create a statue of me in the finest marble, and that it would stand in a prominent place in Athens.

Sophroniscus was a good man. He might have reminded me, but didn’t, of the words he’d spoken about Themistocles, before I had begun this disastrous mission. I remembered his speech clearly.

“Exiled, criminalized, condemned, and bankrupted. You don’t want this to be you, do you?”

I would like to report the condemned man ate a hearty dinner, but it isn’t true. I threw it all up after they left, my stomach was in such turmoil. I wiped my mouth and sat down upon the cot and wondered what it would be like to cross the Styx and come to my final home in Hades. I knew I would wait among the recent dead for Charon to bring his ferry to the side of Life. We would crowd aboard, and he would steer us to the side of Death, where we would walk to the banks of the river Lethe. We would drink the waters and lose our memories of what we had been in life. Did that mean I wouldn’t remember what had brought me to my death? It seemed important to know, though I couldn’t have explained why.

I stared ruefully at the mess on the floor. The guards would see it in the morning and know I had lost my nerve. Even the rats were avoiding it. I greeted them now like old friends. A condemned man can’t afford to be picky about his friends. How many other men now dead had shared their last hours with these rodents? What tales they could tell of the behavior of dead men still walking, what insights into human nature!