Christian Cameron: Salamis

‘Indeed,’ Cimon said, ‘I just saw a lass with her back all pine needles, and I do not think she was napping.’

So I made my rounds, hugging Cleitus, embracing Agariste, who was, if not very drunk, certainly jolly, and Xanthippus, who suddenly, full of wine, began to propound to me a forward naval strategy — an attack on the Persians in Ionia.

His wife pulled him down on their couch.

And I kissed my new daughters-in-law, who watched me with downcast eyes, as my leaving would mean that they were to leave too.

We walked to the chariots and the noise increased so acutely that I knew we were in for a loud night.

There was a moment … again, just as she mounted the chariot … half a hush, and Briseis put her hand on my arm where it rested as if it had been there all my life. I thought she might admonish me like a wife — you know, that I was drunk and needed to drive slowly.

Instead, she smiled into my eyes. Her own were huge and deep. And in a voice suffused with emotion, she said, ‘You are now related to two of the three most powerful families in Athens, my love.’

‘So we are,’ I said.

I didn’t whip my horses to a gallop. I did move along briskly, however, purely to leave the more boisterous elements behind us, and I confess that I went down the hill a little too fast and almost missed the turn along the northern beach, but Poseidon stayed by me and I did not. And I let the horses run a few strides and then calmed them, my hand already searching in the folds of her Ionian chiton.

She leaned into me with her whole body. Until a women does this, no man knows what a kiss is. I was driving horses, but Briseis was always as mad as I, or madder. We kissed; the world went by in a blur, and only Eros, who protects lovers, kept us from a foolish death.

And then we rolled to a stop in front of ‘my’ house. I jumped down, and lifted her. Behind me there was shouting. Hundreds of men and many women were pouring down the hill, but the chariots had kept them back, and we had a stade or more head start.

I carried her across the threshold of my borrowed house. My hands were already on her pins.

I did not put her down until I crossed the garden. I carried her into the tiny house and past the table where Eugenios had set cakes and wine and, as I tore at her clothes, I said:

σφαίρῃ δηὖτέ με πορφυρέῃ

βάλλων χρυσοκόμης Ἔρως,

νήνι ποικιλοσαμβάλῳ

συμπαίζειν προκαλεῖται.

ἣ δ’ — 5 ἐστὶν γὰρ ἀπ’ εὐκτίτου

Λέσβου — τὴν μὲν ἐμὴν κόμην -

λευκὴ γάρ — καταμέμφεται,

πρὸς δ’ ἄλλην τινὰ χάσκει.

Golden-haired Eros once again

hurls his crimson ball at me:

he calls me to come out and play

with a girl in fancy sandals.

But she’s from civilised Lesvos:

she sneers at my hair because it’s grey …

I was quoting Anacreon. She rolled away from me on the bed and took off her magnificent sandals and threw them at me, laughing, and she reached between my legs and said, ‘I am, however, unlikely to turn in wonder for another girl.’ Then she was on me.

And it was she, not I, as the sound of copper pots and bronze ladles and wooden spoons beaten on iron kettle lids filled the garden outside our door, as voices suggested positions, and others asked how big I might be, and a few made ruder jokes at her expense — it was she, who, already astride me, gathered all our clothes, a fortune in dyed wool and linen, leaned back so that I could see every inch of her splendour in the moonlight, and cast the whole ball of Tyrian red and indigo blue, glinting with gold, straight out of our garden window to the crowd below.

They roared. They roared like oarsmen in the moment of victory and like hoplites in the last push at Marathon. And I looked up into her face, still crowned with Aphrodite’s golden tiara, still wearing her earrings and nothing else …

Ah … Good night, friends. The rest you will have to guess for yourselves.

You’ll make me blush if you demand more. Hah! Pour cool wine over the hot coals of lust and tomorrow night, the last night, I’ll tell you one more tale, how the men of Greece, free Greece, stood against the Medes and Persians and men of a hundred nations, spear against arrow as my friend Aeschylus has said, and fought until the dust and haze of Ares covered all. How the men of Plataea danced the dance of Ares one last time. And how close we came to losing everything. Indeed, many of us lost life, and others lost all they owned.

But leave me to remember the happiest night of my life. Because although I never promised you a happy story, some days it was as full of glory as sunrise over the ocean, and some nights, too. And if there is sadness to come … well, here’s to your mother, my dear, the love of my life.

Το telos