Christian Cameron: Marathon: Freedom or Death

There was a sign on the altar, the remnants of a burnt offering and a hank of black wool. So — Simon’s sons lived. And they had come here in the dark of the moon to curse someone. Not hard to guess who. I smiled. I remember that smile — a wolf’s snarl. Hate comes easily when you are young.

It was a clear night, and I could see out to the rim of the world, and everywhere I looked, I could see fire. And I thought: War is coming . The thought came from the god, and his eyes helped mine to see the girdle of fire all around the world, standing there on the summit of the mountain.

I heaped brush on top of the pile of ash on the old altar, and I rolled the boar’s hide, hooves and bones around the fat, then lit the fire. That fire must have been visible to every man and woman from Thebes to Athens. I set the boar to burning and made my prayers. I fed the fire until it was so great that I couldn’t stand near it naked, and then I went back down to where the slave girl waited.

She served me food. ‘Will you free me,’ she asked, ‘or sell me?’

I laughed. ‘I’ll free you,’ I said. ‘With that twisted foot, you’re not worth selling, honey. Besides, I keep my word. Do I not?’

She didn’t laugh. ‘I wouldn’t know.’ She stuck out her bad foot and stared at it.

‘Your barley broth is delicious,’ I said, and it was. That’s all the flirtation a slave gets. ‘I was a slave, honey. I know what it’s like. And I know that all my talk isn’t worth shit until you have your freedom tablet in your hand. But I give you my word, by the high altar of my ancestors, that I will free you in the Agora of Athens and leave you twenty drachmas as dowry.’

Every god in Olympus must have been listening. A man needs to be careful when he swears, and careful what he promises.

‘The sons of men lie,’ she said, her voice hollow, so that just for a moment I wondered what goddess was sharing my campfire. ‘Will you be different?’

‘Try me,’ I said with a young man’s arrogance. I moved towards her, and as I put a hand behind her head, the ravens came, a great flock, and they alighted in the trees around my fire — the same trees where the Corvaxae feed them, of course — and they knew me. I had never seen so many. The fire reflected their eyes — a thousand points of fire — and when I put my mouth over hers, her eyes glowed red in the fire, too.

We made love anyway. Ah, youth.

We were five days crossing Cithaeron, at least in part because I became infatuated with her. Sometimes one body just fits another — hard to describe to you virgins. Suffice it to say that despite her twisted foot and odd face, my body adored hers in a way I have seldom experienced. I wanted her every minute, and the wanting was not slaked by the having, as it is so often with men, especially young men.

After we had made love on a rock by the trail, where you can first see the rich blue of the sea over Attica, she rose from my best efforts, smiled and threw her chiton over her shoulder and strolled on, naked, by my horse.

‘Don’t you want to get dressed?’ I asked her.

She smiled and shrugged. ‘Why? It will only come off again before the sun goes down a finger’s breadth.’

And she was right. I could not have enough of her.

She wouldn’t tell me her name, and sometimes I called her Briseis. That got a bitter laugh and a hard bite. I begged her and tickled her and offered her money, but she said that telling her true name would break the spell. So I called her Slave Girl, and she resented it.

After the slowest trip over the mountain in the history of the Greeks, we came down by the fort at Oinoe, where my brother had died. I poured wine to his shade and we rode on, the horse useful now. We didn’t camp in Attica — I was a man of property, and we stayed in inns or I claimed guest status from men who I knew a little, like Eumenios of Eleusis, who was happy to see me, toasted me in good wine and warned me that he’d heard that the Alcmaeonids were out for my blood.

I sneered. ‘They don’t even know who I am,’ I said. ‘I’m just some hick from Boeotia.’

Eumenios shook his head. ‘No. You’re a warrior and a friend of Miltiades — and Aristides. It’s said in the city that you can lead three hundred picked men of Plataea over the mountain whenever Miltiades snaps his fingers.’

I shook my head and drank my wine. ‘Who the fuck would say that? Myron is the archon — Hades’ brother. In Plataea we care very little for who lords it in Athens, as long as the grain prices are good!’

But then I thought of the black wool on Cithaeron’s altar. Simon’s sons would spread that story, if it would help them to revenge.

In the morning, Eumenios pretended he’d missed a night’s sleep because of my antics with my slave girl. He saw me mounted, poured a libation and sent me on my way. But before I’d turned my mare’s head out of his gate, he caught my ankle.

‘Go carefully,’ he said. ‘They’ll kill you if they can. Or bring you to law.’

Nine days on the road, and we came to Athens.

My daughter, and young Herodotus, have both been to Athens — but I’ll tell you about the queen of Greek cities anyway. Athens is not like any other city in the world, and I’ve been everywhere from the Gates of Heracles to the Mountains of the Moon.

Most men come to Athens from the sea. We came down from the mountains to the west, but the effect is the same. The first thing you see is the Acropolis. It was different then — now they have new temples a-building, fantastic stuff in white marble to rival anything in the east, but it was impressive enough in my day, with the big stone buildings that the Pisistratids, the tyrants, had put up. New temples, and new government buildings, and power in every stone. Athens was rich. Other cities in Greece were stronger — or thought they were stronger — Thebes, and Sparta, and Corinth — but any man with his wits about him knew that Athens was the queen of cities. Her Acropolis had held the Palace of Theseus, and men from that palace went to the war in Troy. She was old, and wise, and strong. And rich.

More people lived within the precincts of Athens than in the whole of Boeotia, or so men said. The city was bigger than Sardis, and had almost twelve thousand citizens of military age.

Athens had bronze-smiths and potters — the best in the world — and farmers and fishermen and sailors and oarsmen and perfumers and tanneries and weavers and sword-smiths and lamp-makers and men who dyed fabric and men who whitened leather and men who did nothing but plait hair or teach young men to fight. Moreover, they had women who did most of these things. The world was turned on its head in Athens, and in my time I’ve met women who played instruments, women who coached athletes, women who wove and women who painted pots — even a woman philosopher. It was the city.

The City.

They’re a greedy, rapacious, foxy lot, the Athenians. They lie, steal and covet other men’s possessions, and they argue about everything.

I’ve always liked them.

I’d never been to Aristides’ house, but he was a famous man, even then, so it was easy enough to ask directions. But I had to turn down a dozen offers on my slave girl — the truth is, she shone with some power, and no man who saw her cared an obol about her limp — and for some reason men fancied me, too, and even offered for my horse and my saddle blanket and my sword and anything else visible.

We should have passed around the shoulder of the Areopagus and walked on, down the hills to the cool countryside on the east side of the city. Instead, I paused for a cup of cheap wine. What I really wanted was to walk down the street of the bronze-smiths, so I left my horse with Slave Girl and headed to the Agora. Now, there’s a fancy new temple for Hephaestus. Back then, it was a much smaller affair, with tiny cramped streets all over the low hill and a small shrine to Athena and Hephaestus at the top — just one priest and no priestess. But I went, made a small sacrifice and left the meat for the poor, as befitted a foreigner, and then I walked down into the smiths’ quarter. I’d have done better to take the Boeotian dog-cap off my head — but I didn’t.