It was spring. I remember that well, because the end of the world began with a day of roses and jasmine and sun and beauty.
I was seventeen by my reckoning, and when I walked through the agora, women watched me. Don't laugh, thugater. I was once one of those.
And men watched me as well. What cared I? If I had been free, men would have put my name on pots. Even as a slave, I was kalos kagathos. I was beautiful and smart and strong.
Oh, the arrogance of youth.
Archi and I were boxing in the garden, Euthalia watching us from her couch, and Hipponax lay next to her, stroking her as she watched us fight.
We'd been at it for enough time for the water-clock to run out and be refilled. We were covered in sweat and euphoric with the daimon of it. And then Briseis came.
She seldom entered the centre of the house. As an unmarried virgin, she kept very much to the women's quarters. But that was the week that Hipponax had put his seal to her wedding contract with Diomedes, and she was gathering her trousseau and acting like an adult. So she was allowed out.
She looked like a goddess. I say that too often – but she was flawless. I know now that she must have done it on purpose, but she was arrayed in linen and wool worth the value of my father's farm and the smithy, too. The smell of mint and jasmine came off her, as light as a feather on the air.
I caught all of this in the same glance that showed me Penelope at her heels and earned me a blow to my upper chest. Archi wasn't distracted by his sister – far from it. He bore down. His blows came thick and fast.
But he had not had Calchas. And he had never killed. Later, he became a great warrior, a name that was spoken throughout Hellas, but when I was seventeen, he was never my match.
So I took a few blows and then my right shot out, a stop-attack into his flurry, straight through his guard on to the point of his chin, and he staggered.
Briseis clapped mockingly. 'Oh, Archi, show me that again!' she called.
He held up a hand to me and I bowed. Then he picked up a pitcher of cold water, drank half and tossed the rest over his sister and all her finery.
She screamed and her right fist shot out, as fast as mine, and she clipped his head with her blow.
Yet, for all that, they loved each other, and suddenly they were laughing – he naked, and she with the purple dye leaking off a garment that had cost more than I imagined my father made in his best year. Now ruined.
How rich they were.
She stripped the two garments over her head – Ionians don't worry about the nudity of women the way westerners do – and took a simple linen shift from Penelope, who blushed when she took it off and gave it to her mistress and ran for something to wear herself.
No one in the garden was looking at me, so I drank in the beauty of Briseis's body – her high, pointed breasts and the lush growth of black hair between her legs. I tore my eyes away and glanced around – Hipponax was spluttering wine at his daughter's behaviour, and Archi was staring after Penelope with the same lust with which I was watching his sister.
And Euthalia was watching me, her face set in cool appraisal. I flinched and dropped my eyes. There were rumours in the slave quarters that Euthalia was anything but a loyal wife – and that Hipponax cared little. But no one had suggested that her games extended to slaves. I was old enough, however, to know what that cool appraisal meant in an older woman – Cook looked at me just the same way, whether she meant to slap my hand for stealing bread or to get me in her bed.
My theory is that women who have borne a child learn the same lesson men learn when they face the enemy on the battlefield, and that after that, they look at you with the same look. That's my theory.
Learn what, you ask?
I'm old, and my cup is empty. Don't read into that, honey – just pour some wine. Learn the lesson yourself.
Penelope came back, decently covered, and Briseis stayed, enjoying the trouble she had caused. 'When is Diomedes coming?' she asked for the fourth time. Their betrothal having been signed, they would shortly have a ceremony at her hearth and then a party. She was an old woman of fifteen and wanted to get on with life.
Hipponax made a face. 'Girl, we have enough on our plates without you going womb-mad to your betrothal party!'
Euthalia slapped her husband lightly. 'We have a small problem, Briseis,' she said. 'Artaphernes has chosen to honour us with a visit. In fact, he has summoned many of the leaders of Ionia – great men, and famous names – to meet here in our city and have a synod.'
She didn't mention that Diomedes' father was a member of the other faction – the independence faction. And thus not a man to be delighted to find Artaphernes at his son's betrothal party. Only their mercantile links kept them friends. The betrothal had been planned since Briseis was born.
All this went by in the beat of a heart. Briseis shrugged. 'My betrothal is more important than the bickering of old men,' she said with a toss of her head.
Her mother shook her head. 'No, my dear. Your betrothal can happen whenever we ordain it. These men gather to prevent a war. You have no idea what war is, dear. None of you do.'
She seldom spoke seriously, but when she did, we listened. But inside, I thought, I have seen war.
'I am from Lesbos, and throughout my youth, the men of Mytilene made war on my city. Farms burned and women raped and families sold as slaves – good families. If Athens storms this city, Briseis, you will be sold in the market to a soldier. Do you understand?'
Briseis couldn't have been more shocked if her mother had hit her. 'Athens is a town of barbarians,' she spat. 'You and Pater both say so!'
'Barbarians with a fleet and an army,' Hipponax said. 'Listen, dear. Let us have the conference and then we'll have the party. You will only have to wait a month.'
Briseis flicked her eyes around the garden and she found me, and blushed. Then she sat in the chair that Dorcus, one of the house slaves, brought for her, and she leaned out over the table to take her father's wine cup, exposing her bare side and causing my whole body to twitch. All quite intentional.
'Very well, Pater,' she said calmly. This was so far from her parent's expected reaction that her father was literally open-mouthed with astonishment.
'The good of Ionia is more important than my wedding,' she said sweetly.
If we had been on a stage, the audience would have seen the furies gathering. Artaphernes came with a whole regiment of cavalry, Lydians and Persians in separate squadrons, the Lydians armed with lances and the Persians with bows and spears. In the agora, men complained that he had brought all the soldiers to overawe them, and the soldiers were arrogant, thrusting out their chests, pushing men and flirting with women in every square in the town.
I watched them curiously. They were very different from the hoplites of Boeotia. For one thing, they were the most aggressive woman-hunters I'd ever seen, especially the Persians, and if there was a boy-lover among them, I never met him. Second, they were lazy. Not at their soldier-work – when I visited their camps, I saw swordplay and archery of a high calibre. But if they were not drilling or shooting, they did nothing but swear, fight and fuck – sorry, dear.
In my day, in the west, we had no 'professional' soldiers, except the Spartan nobles, and even the Spartans occupied themselves with ceaseless athletics and hunting. I'd never seen full-time soldiers who sat in wine shops, drinking, spitting and grabbing girls.
They were tough. They were rich, too. The average Persian cavalryman had a groom for his horse and a slave for his kit. He had his own tent and perhaps another felt shelter for his slaves and his gear. Every one of them had bronze and silver cups, water pitchers, plates – I'd never seen a soldier with so much stuff.
And they had women in their camps. Some were wives and some were prostitutes, and many seemed to fall in some mysterious (only to me) gap between the two defined roles. They worked hard, too – harder than the men, washing, cooking, sewing and minding children.
A Persian cavalry regiment was like a travelling town where all the citizens were lords. I liked them quite a bit. They liked me, too. Most of them had never seen a western Greek. They were contemptuous of Ionians, as poor warriors, but they'd heard that we Boeotians were fighters, and I told my war stories to the four men I liked best – a pair of brothers and their two friends, all from the same small town near Persepolis. They were lords, or they called themselves noblemen, and you might well ask why they talked to Greek slaves.
I was in camp on an errand to Artaphernes, carrying a herald's staff for my master. Artaphernes had a tent in camp and a lavish establishment, and he was sometimes there and sometimes at our house, for reasons that were beyond me. When he was in camp, I was the herald, mostly because he liked me and I could get to him faster than other messengers.
I was picking up a little Persian – camp Persian, hardly what anyone speaks at court. But I was there every day or two, and the delivery of a message to a satrap of Persia is never a simple or quick task, especially if there is an answer. One time I remember cooling my heels all day only to discover that the satrap was already at our house.
At any rate, one day my four Persians were on duty outside the satrap's tent-palace, and after I showed them my staff, I entertained them by pretending it was a sword and doing my exercises, since I was missing lessons by running errands. And Darius – in those days, it seemed that all Persians were called Darius – called out and asked my name.
'I'm Doru,' I said, 'companion to Archilogos, son of Hipponax.' I shrugged.
'You have the wrist of a real swordsman,' Darius said. He took my herald's staff, a pair of solid bronze rods, and hefted it. 'I'd be hard put to do my cuts with this. Cyrus, try your sword arm on this toy.' He tossed my staff to his brother, who caught it.
They were as alike as statues in a temple portico – skin the colour of old wood, jet-black hair and clear brown eyes, handsome as gods.
Cyrus whirled my staff through some exercises – not my exercises, so I watched with fascination. He tossed it to me. 'Let's see you do that, boy!' he said.
So I did. I copied his moves, interested in the differences, and all four Persians applauded, and after that we were all friends. They were easy men to like, and we fenced sometimes. They never used shields, which made them very different men to face. Cyrus also taught me a trick that has saved my life fifty times – how to kill a man with his own shield. Have you seen it?
Here – you, scribe. Take that shield off the wall – I won't eat you – and put it on your arm. So you do know how to hold a shield – good for you. My opinion of you just went up. Now face off against me – damn this hip. Pretend you have a sword. Now watch, honey.
Just like that, and I've broken his arm and killed him. Sorry, lad. You can get up now. Useful trick, eh? All I do is grab the rim of the shield and rotate it. There's no man born, no matter how strong, who can hold the centre of a wheel while I rotate the rim. Yes? This is based on a mathematical principle that I could explain if I was given enough wine, but for the moment, it suffices that it is true. And see how our pen-pusher's arm is in the porpax – that bronze strap across his upper forearm? So he can't escape his shield once I start to rotate the rim – and I break his arm.
If he was a killer, he might gut me with his blade while I break his arm. If he isn't – and few men are killers, thank the gods – then I push his now helpless arm and shield rim into his face, smash his nose and he's dead. See? Cyrus taught me that, bless him.
They were free-giving, hard-drinking men, and I grew to love them in two weeks. They seemed more alive than other men. More real. They fought duels all the time, cutting other Persians over fancied or real slights, over a misspoken word or a cold shoulder. They were dangerous dogs, and they bit hard.
My status as a slave meant nothing to them, of course. To them, all Greeks were their slaves. Which rankled, but they were so far above me that I couldn't be offended at their attitude to the Ionians – an attitude I shared.
At any rate, the summer passed with lessons and struggles. I was seeing an Aethiopian girl from a house as lavish as ours, the Lekthantae, hereditary priests and priestesses of Artemis, one of the noblest and richest families of the city. Salwe was tall and thin and dark like night, and while we never loved each other, she had a sharp mind and a vicious tongue and we entertained each other, in and out of bed. I loved going out to the Persian camp. I loved working through the ever more complex problems of geometry that Heraclitus gave me. I would sit in the fountain house – after Master lifted the ban – and sing on my lyre, and Salwe would sing with me, her voice capable of curious harmony that she said her people in Africa always sang. It was a good summer.
The tyrants of Ionia were gathering in the houses of the upper town, and so we had dinner with Hippias again, and dinner with Anaximenes of Miletus, who had replaced the traitor Aristagoras as tyrant of Miletus. Aristagoras was reputed to have spoken that summer to the assembly of Athens, just as Hippias predicted, and to have been granted a fleet of Athenian ships to come and make war on the Great King in the name of the 'rebellion'.
There was no rebellion. All the leaders of Ionia were in and out of our house, and the great cities – Miletus, Ephesus, Mytilene – were, if not solid in loyalty to the Great King, at least uninterested in revolt. Some men wanted war, but most of them were penniless exiles.
It was odd, but as a slave, I probably knew more about what was happening than the satrap. I knew that on the dockside, where young men gathered when the ships came in from all over the Ionian, men spoke of Aristagoras as a hero and of Athens as a liberator. Gentlemen and rowers, seamen, small merchants – they were all fired by the idea of independence. But the nobles and the rich in the upper town were insulated from this talk, just as they were insulated from the gossip of their slaves.
As the number of incidents between the Persian soldiers and the townspeople – and the sailors – mounted, Artaphernes was forced to confront the reality that there were people in Ephesus – many people – who viewed any Persian as a foe. And his soldiers didn't help. Darius and Cyrus thought nothing more comical than to separate a pretty Greek girl from her Ionian boyfriend – by a mixture of force and persuasion that, let's be honest, young women enjoy. Some young women. At any rate, multiply their efforts by a hundred, and there wasn't a Greek virgin left in the lower town to marry her behorned and already cuckolded man, and that is the fastest way to violence.
The Persians were fastidious. They didn't rape and they didn't pick on slaves, the way Greek soldiers will. So the slaves didn't mind them. But the Greeks – the smallholders of the lower town – killed a few in ambushes, and then the swords were out all over town, and Artaphernes' troubles began in earnest.
It wore him out. I saw him every day and ran messages for Mistress to him, offering him a remedy for headache or sometimes just carrying a verse or a flower. I liked running errands for my mistress, because she was kind to me, gave me money and it was an excuse to be in the women's wing. She favoured me, and she must have said something, because suddenly, after a year of forced parting, Penelope warmed to me again, and we were allowed to go out together on errands to the agora and to be together in private.
This is what I mean, my honey, when I say that masters have effects on their slaves that they never intend. I don't think Hipponax ever intended that I never see Penelope again, nor, I think, did Mistress understand how far Penelope and I might go – or perhaps she knew exactly what was happening. In fact, even as I tell this, I wonder if she sought to end another liaison – one whose discovery hurt me more than anything.
Anyway, it was on one of our errands together that I contributed unwittingly to the problems of the town. I was in the agora with Penelope – hand in hand – when a man clouted me in the head and sent me tumbling into the muck beneath the tanners' stalls. Penelope screamed. Once again, there were two attackers, but this time I was badly hurt. If my attackers hadn't been fools, I'd have died. One started kicking me and the other grabbed Penelope. In a crowded agora, that was a foolish move. She had a healthy scream and she bit him hard. Unlike a free-born girl, slave girls know just how to deal with attack. But I didn't see any of it, because my initial attacker had put his foot into my guts and I puked. He grabbed my hair – and then I was covered in blood.
Cyrus killed both my attackers. It was the will of the gods that Cyrus and Pharnakes, his particular friend, were in the market, looking for trouble, and I provided it. They killed my assailants with the joy with which men do such things.
But because there was a Greek lying on the ground and a screaming woman, many others in the agora jumped to the wrong conclusions. As I began to return to my senses, an ugly crowd was forming and Penelope was still screaming. She'd never seen a man's intestines before. Not her fault.
I got to my feet and had the sense to offer my hand to Cyrus, and he had the sense to take it, mud and blood and all. Then I embraced Penelope, and she let me lead her away.
'Best come with me, lord,' I said to Cyrus, and he and Pharnakes did as I suggested, like good soldiers. I led them up the hill and the crowd followed us for a few streets, but soon enough we got free.
After that I was much more careful when I was out of the house. Diomedes wanted me dead. I had forgotten him. The very best revenge. His betrothal had been put off all summer, and I suppose he thought to take it out on me. I told Hipponax before he went off to Byzantium on a short cruise, and he told me that he would see to it.
Cyrus told me that it was I who had saved his life, by leading them out of the agora, and not the other way around, and he treated me with courtesy and gave me more lessons. As the summer passed, my Persian got better, and by the time Hipponax returned from his ship, no one else had tried to kill me.
The 'conference' went on and on. The tyrants were not willing to raise men for Artaphernes or to give the assurances he wanted. Nor were they awed by his soldiers. Most of them were islanders, and they had a hard time imagining the Great King's cavalry coming to their shores.
Oft-times, when the guards admitted me to the satrap's presence, I would find him sitting with his head in his hands, staring at his work table. That's how bad the summer had grown, towards the end. Not that he was ever less than courteous to me, and he always paid me a compliment and gave me a tip. Even when he became my mortal foe, I never forgot his basic goodness. Artaphernes was a man. Some men are noble by nature, honey. He was one. Heraclitus once told us that the value of a man could be measured in the worth of his enemies. Well, if that's true, I was doing well.
One day in late summer, I brought Artaphernes an invitation from my mistress for dinner. We walked back together – he usually rode, but this time he left his escort in camp, and all he had was my four friends in a loose knot about him. Twice he stopped to speak to common people with petitions. He was that kind of man.
I waited on him at table, and Archi, who was suddenly tall and handsome, shared his couch and they talked together like old friends while Euthalia plied them both with fine food and too much wine. Kylix was mixing the wine as thin as he dared, but still all three were drunk in fairly short order. My four friends were in the kitchen with Cook and Darkar waiting on them. They were lords, but they were simple soldiers, and they weren't offended. We were having a fine evening. I went back and forth from kitchen to andron, and sometimes I'd carry a joke from the high to the low, or even back.
Late in the meal, Hipponax came in. He'd taken a new ship to sea that morning to try her, and he was back early and none too happy with what he'd just seen.
'There was a riot in the lower town,' he said.
This was old news to me, and shows how little they knew, really.
'Two of your men dead and five lower-class people – but citizens, damn it!' Hipponax shook his head. 'Artaphernes, you must send those soldiers away before you create the very climate you seek to avoid.'
Artaphernes sat up on his couch. 'No man tells me what I must do,' he said quietly, 'except the Great King whose servant I am.'
Hipponax smiled. 'It's like that, is it? Very well, be the satrap, lord. But those soldiers are doing more harm than good.' He wasn't drunk, thank the gods, or we might have had trouble.
Artaphernes shook himself. 'Bah, I'm drunk,' he admitted. 'I need to get out of this cesspool. Before I do something I'll regret.' His frustration showed. And something about Hipponax's arrival set him off. He frowned. 'This stinking cesspool.'
Hipponax refused to take offence. 'I've never heard sacred Ephesus described as a stinking cesspool before,' he said. 'I must say that it won't make it as a poetical contribution.'
His wife laughed. She brought wine to the satrap with her own hands. I could smell her perfume from my station – heady, musky stuff. 'Perhaps I will smell less like a cesspool, lord,' she purred.
'You are the only thing worth having in this town,' Artaphernes said.
Hipponax's eyes met mine. I bowed and fetched two slaves to help me move a kline for him, and we set him up with a wine cup and some food. Darkar came up from the kitchen and caught my eye. I slipped out.
'You have this under control?' he asked.
I shook my head. 'There's something here I don't get,' I admitted. 'The satrap is angry and he's taking it out on Master.'
Darkar looked at me with something very like pity. 'I will take your place. You go and wait on your young master only, and get him to bed as quickly as you can convince him – or just feed him wine.'
'What of Cyrus and the others in the kitchen?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'They're no trouble. Off to your duty, now.'
So I tried to put wine into Archi. I needn't have bothered. He had a head for wine by then, and he could probably have gone bowl for bowl with his father, but suddenly he smiled at me and shook his head, pushing away his bowl. 'I'm for bed,' he said.
Darkar shot me a glance, but it was none of my doing. I escorted my master to bed, but he was impatient with me, and after a few attempts at conversation I was dismissed.
I went back to the kitchen to visit my friends. I was off duty, unless Cook or Darkar, the two senior slaves, chose to order me about. In fact, as I waited on the Persians while I chatted to them, we were all at our ease. I served them wine and they laughed and joked and flirted with Penelope when she came through – I assumed on an errand for Briseis, bored in the women's wing and not invited to the party. I'd seldom seen Penelope in the kitchen. She didn't linger.
After an hour, Darkar leaned in and shot me a look. I drank off the wine I'd poured and followed him into the hall. He looked flustered and somehow apologetic. 'Master is going back to his ship,' he said. 'I need you to be a porter.'
Well, that's the life of a slave. It wasn't my job, but by this time all our porters were asleep or drunk. It was a feast day, I think – I can't even remember where they all were. So I went to the portico and hoisted Master's bags and followed him through the dark town.
He didn't say a word.
The Pole Star was high by the time we made his ship. He exchanged a few terse words with his boatkeeper and walked along the waterside. Then he whirled on me.
'I'll be damned if I'm to be thrown out of my own house,' he said, as if I had ordained this strange fate.
I fell back a step.
'Oh – sorry, lad. Not your fault. Come on!' He started back up the hill.
It was a hard walk, but we were healthy men, and anything I had on him in youth was balanced by the weight of his sea bags. At the portico, he put a hand on my shoulder. 'Here's a daric,' he said – a fortune. A gold daric? Then, suddenly, I knew that something was wrong. Masters don't give slaves a daric for carrying their bags. Not on purpose, anyway. 'Go somewhere, Doru. Go – go and check on Archilogos.'
Whatever was happening, he wanted me gone.
I bowed, took the coin and walked into the house, heading into the men's quarters. I walked across the hallway that separated the servants and slaves from the family, and something – automatic obedience, I suppose – caused me to walk into Archi's room instead of going straight to my bed.
He had lamps lit, and he was riding Penelope. She saw me instantly, over his back, his buttocks pinned between her thighs, her mouth slightly open. She wasn't unwilling, to say the least.
He didn't see me.
I flattened against the wall, my heart beating as if a horse race was crossing my chest. Let me say it – I had never ridden the girl myself. She had been very careful with me, and I got a blow to the ear if my fingers strayed.
But I didn't see red, either. I've said it before – when you are a slave, you know that you don't have control of some things. Such as your body. If Archi had ever had a mind to have me, I'd have had no choice. He took Penelope, instead. And I'm no hypocrite – I'd been with a girl or two that summer. Penelope owed me nothing.
I walked around the corner, then stopped and took some deep breaths.
I don't know how long I stood there. Longer than I realized, because suddenly she was there, a shawl over her, slipping along the wall of the portico towards the women's side. I knew her movements. I followed her and called her name. She looked back and ran.
I ran after her. I ran right into the women's quarters.
Then everything began to happen in slow motion. I was running like a fool and suddenly she stopped. In the light of a single hall lamp, I saw that there was a man in the hall, and that Penelope had run into him full tilt. He had a sword.
Penelope screamed.
But I knew him immediately. It was Master. With a sword. In my state, I took it in without understanding – somehow I thought he was there to punish me for entering the women's quarters.
Penelope must have recognized him, because she was silent after that first scream.
And then Artaphernes stepped out of the room behind me – Mistress's room – and I understood.
'You've always told me that you never lie,' Master said to Artaphernes.
He had the sword loosely in his hand. He was no swordsman. And he was calm – murderously calm, I think. He had already dismissed Penelope and me as superfluous to the scene. Penelope backed away from him and into my arms. I put a hand over her mouth.
Artaphernes was naked, and it was no secret what he'd been doing. 'I do not lie,' he said. He was afraid, but covering it well.
'Why did you have to fuck my wife?' Hipponax asked.
Artaphernes met Hipponax's eyes. He shrugged. 'I love her,' he said. 'And if you kill me, Ionia will burn.'
Hipponax laughed grimly, and I knew what he intended. 'Let her burn, then,' he said.
I had spent the last heartbeats with my hand over Penelope's mouth, and now I pushed her, hard, into Hipponax. Remember, I'd walked with him – I knew he was sober. But it was a risk that he would spit her. Perhaps I did blame her for her little ride. She'd looked well pleased under Archi's cock, damn her.
At any rate, she was not spitted on Master's sword. He lifted the blade to keep her safe, and I stepped in and stripped it from his hands. And then fell to the ground, as if I too had stumbled.
All three of us went down in a tangle.
Artaphernes was no fool. He ran.
Everything might yet have been well – or well enough – but Pharnakes came into the corridor with his three friends at his heels. They had blades in their hands, and as soon as they had their satrap clear, they charged us. Who knows what they thought.
I had the sword. I got to my feet and stopped their rush with a parry and then Pharnakes and I exchanged a flurry – four or five cuts and parries. That's a lot in real combat. A man can only take so much, and then he falls back. The tension is too high. We both backed a step, and Cyrus said, 'It's the slave boy. Hold hard, brother!' in Persian.
I didn't have the daimon in me yet – I hadn't been injured.
'Our lord is safe,' Darius said. 'Let's get out of here!'
Pharnakes shook his head. 'We should kill the husband.'
'This isn't Persia, you fool!' Cyrus said. 'Greeks don't care! And murder is not what our lord needs right now.'
'Come and try,' I said in Persian. Aye, I'm a fool.
Pharnakes shot me a look – such a look. Even in torchlight, I knew that look. But Cyrus laughed. 'Quite the bark, for a pup,' he said.
All that was in Persian.
And then they were gone.
Pharnakes was right, though. They should have killed the husband. Because that night, Ephesus changed sides, and the Ionian Revolt began, in a corridor in the women's quarters. The Long War. And like the Trojan War, it started over a woman. Part III Freedom It is hard to fight with anger, for what it wants it buys at the cost of the soul. Heraclitus, fr. 85