I walked straight to the place I love best in all the world: the Agora of Athens, the heart and soul of our city. It isn’t merely the marketplace; it’s also where men gather to talk, argue, and exchange opinions. In Athens, if it isn’t said in the Agora, then it may as well not be said at all. I wanted to observe the reaction of the people to Ephialtes’ death. Besides, it was lunchtime, no one would agree to see me during the meal, and my stomach needed attention.
I pushed my way through the crowd, picking up a fish cake from one stall and watered wine in a wooden cup from another. I nibbled at the fish cake in my left hand while I sipped the wine in my right. When the cup was empty I put it back on the stall and wandered about listening to the babble.
The open space in the middle was covered in a jumble of stalls, each little more than a rough plank resting upon a barrel at each end, with perhaps an awning to keep the vendors and their goods in the shade. I walked past the many stalls selling produce from the farms. These stalls were covered with jars and baskets of olives, olive oil, figs and grapes, corn, goat’s cheese, and, rarely, smoked goat meat. Behind every stall stood a farmer, his skin leathery and dark from years working in the sun, his hands calloused, wearing rough clothes and a floppy sheepskin hat, shouting his products or dealing with a customer. These weren’t men to care much of politics; it was all they could do to scratch a living from the stony soil. Barely visible, fenced off from the chaos, was the Altar of the Twelve Gods. The altar was the very center of Athens, the point from which all distances were measured. It was the only place in Athens dedicated to all twelve Gods, and so especially sacred: a place of sanctuary for anyone who could make it inside the fence before their pursuers reached them. The altar stone was made of marble, flat on top and somewhat weathered, though it had been set in place only sixty years before.
The people at the stalls were too intent on trading to talk politics; haggling was in full swing all about me. When a price was agreed on, the customer would reach into his mouth and pull out the coins he had put there before he left home. Only the rich had so many coins that they needed a purse, and no man would be so foolish as to display a money bag in the Agora. The thieves would have it cut away before he took two steps, and if he was lucky that would be all they cut.
A number of women were moving between the vegetable stalls, each with a man or boy to carry for her. Since the women were barefoot and buying, I knew them to be slaves. I recognized some of the young women since I look out for them; most households have a regular slave who does the shopping each morning, and their faces are a pleasant fixture in the Agora. I always smiled at the pretty ones but never approached; it doesn’t do to interfere with someone else’s property-at least, not in public.
To one side of the farmers were the fishmongers who had hauled their catch up in carts from the port of Piraeus before dawn. Anything they hadn’t sold yet would be unfit to eat before long. They would mark down their prices after lunch and the poor would arrive to buy it. This was the one place where most of the vendors were women. The fishwives would sell the catch while the men saw to their boats, mended the nets, and went to bed in preparation for their early rise next day. A fish-wife might have plenty to say, and whatever she said would be in language strong enough to make a soldier blush, but no woman knew anything about politics. The aroma here was strong and I passed them by quickly.
Next to the fishmongers came the bronze ware, and the famous pottery of Athens, which could also be bought at its source in the deme-the suburb-of Ceramicus. Most of the pottery was newly made, painted in fashionable red figures on a black background: kraters for mixing wine, hydriai for water, pyxides for cosmetics and jewelry, pelikai for storing olive oil in the kitchen, ordinary cups and bowls. There were still secondhand dealers selling cracked or chipped examples of the older style black figure on red, but only the poor, the tasteless, or the hopelessly traditional would touch them. There were five or six middle-aged women-respectable married women-inspecting the goods at the better stalls, each accompanied by several slaves. They talked to one another, picked up the pieces, no doubt to complain about them, and put them back down. Not one was smiling. I pitied the vendors who had to deal with them.
I looked about, but there were no respectable maidens to be seen. In any case, no girl would be allowed in public without slaves and a chaperone, and any man who approached would be asking for trouble from her guard.
All the other people jostling one another in the crowded lanes were men. How many were slaves and how many citizens I couldn’t say, because in Athens the slave of a rich man might be better dressed than a poor but free laborer. Even the resident aliens, called metics, adopted Athenian dress, and more often than not the local accent too.
The haggling was less intense here. The people were muttering to one another, asking if anyone had heard any news about what had happened.
“He was set upon by ten men,” I heard one man say.
“I heard it was twenty, and they beat Ephialtes with clubs.”
“He put up a fight, though. I heard he killed two of them.”
“You’re all wrong! What I heard, he was speaking to the Council of the Areopagus, and when he angered them with his words they rushed upon him all together and beat him with their fists.”
“No, it was clubs.”
I realized with a shock that I knew what had happened, and the people of Athens did not. I felt a thrill of power and excitement, and I had to bite my lip to stay silent and not contribute to the rumors. Contrary to the general opinion, I knew for sure that the rock had not been awash with homicidal statesmen. It would have been the most fun of my life to hold court among the men as the only one present with any sure knowledge, but I knew instinctively that calling attention to myself would destroy any chance of succeeding in my mission. I told myself firmly I was there to gauge the mood, not to make a bad situation worse, and I walked on before the temptation to speak overwhelmed me.
I moved to the perimeter, where I stubbed my toe on a building stone, stumbled, swore, and lost the last handful of my lunch. The men around ignored me, except for one fellow who turned and snarled, then marched off with squashed fish cake and sticky sauce attached to his back. It happened every day. The Agora is a building site in which anyone could stumble and fall. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.
I had walked to a highly controversial building, half risen, with a strange circular wall in place of the normal four corners at right angles. It had been designed by an architect, so it bore little resemblance to any normal structure. My father, who has to deal with architects from time to time in the course of his trade, considered it typical of their alienation from all normal sense and taste. This was the Tholos, which, when it was completed, would house the leaders of the Boule: the committee of five hundred that manages the agenda for the Ecclesia and oversees the running of the city. They would live in the Tholos when on duty, since they have to be available to the people day and night. The Boule had existed for generations, but because its members were chosen each year by lot from among the citizens, and no man could serve twice, it was part of the new democracy. There was talk too, since it was close to the Agora, of placing in the Tholos the standard weights and measures, so that any dispute in the marketplace could be settled quickly before it came to blows. That idea alone would decrease the annual murder rate by an appreciable amount.
The workmen had stopped for lunch. They sat among the formwork, rivulets of sweat making tracks down the dust on their faces and chests, in the shade of that strange circular wall. Their hands cupped small bowls of lentils and bread. I sat among them but heard nothing of value. All they talked about was women and sport.
Curiosity got the better of me. “Aren’t you men interested in the latest news? Haven’t you heard Ephialtes has been murdered?”
A small, thin man with a hook nose and sparse hair looked at me as if I were mad and said, “What do I care? I’m a slave. They treat me the same no matter who’s in charge.” His friends nodded their heads gloomily. A man in another group spat into the dust and said, “I’m a free man, but I’m so poor I gotta work for someone else. You think Ephialtes matters to me? Promising to cancel debts, was he? No? Thought not. Well, when you find me a politician who wants to cancel debts, redistribute the land, and make the poor richer I might care. In the meantime I gotta work hard to feed my kids.” He spat again. “At least the slaves here get enough to eat. I ain’t even got enough for the kids.”
I wished them luck and went on my way, coming to the statues of the Ten Heroes, each of whom lends his name to one of the ten tribes. All the people of Attica-the large region of mainland Greece that Athens controls-belong to one or the other of these tribes, and government jobs are shared equally among the men of each tribe so that no group can have too much influence.
The Ten Heroes are spread out in a line, each hero in such a noble pose that I’m sure his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. Eight of the Ten were famous kings of old: Aegeus, Erechtheus, Pandion, Oeneus, Leos, Acamas, Cecrops, and Hippothoon; then there was Ajax, who fought at Troy, and finally Antiochus, the son of Heracles, the tribe to which my own family belonged.
These then were the famous heroes of old, their statues in the Agora, and not for the first time I wondered why Theseus, surely the greatest hero Athens ever produced, was not among them. Theseus, after all, sent himself as a sacrificial tribute to Crete, slew the Minotaur, and returned to Athens having delivered the city from subjugation at the hands of King Minos. You can’t get more heroic than that.
As I always did when I came this way, I walked around to the rear of Antiochus, to check once more on my greatest triumph as a young boy in Athens. There, scratched deep into the hero’s ass, just below the cloak line, was a large N. It’s very hard to cut graffiti into marble, the other boys had had to make do with ink that had soon washed off; sometimes being the son of a sculptor has its advantages.
The monument serves as the notice board of Athens; anything of importance, any official proclamation, is announced by writing it on the plinth. Someone had splashed whitewash across the plinth, obliterating everything
that had been there before, replacing all those words with a single message in large letters: EPHIALTES IS MURDERED.
Men had been streaming into the Agora in the time I had been walking about, so that the normally crowded marketplace was now as fit to burst as a boil ready for the lance. They had come to hear the latest about the murder or to offer their own opinions to anyone who would listen. I pushed my way with some difficulty to the other side of the Agora, which was open-ended and so had some space for the crowd to spill out to.
This was the site of the new Stoa Poikile: the Painted Porch. Like the Tholos it was still under construction, but it was almost done, and the pressure for it to open was so strong that men were already making use of its wide, cool, covered walkway. Unlike the Tholos, everyone was already remarking how well it looked. The Stoa was a long portico with columns on the side facing the Agora, and a flat wall at the back. Two painters were using charcoal to sketch on the wall, far apart from each other, ignoring the chatter of the excited crowd about them. One had enough detail in that I could see he was about to paint a battle between the Hellenes and the Amazons; the other had barely begun.
“What’s it to be?” I asked the second man.
“The Fall of Troy,” he said, not turning. His eyes stayed on his work and his arm didn’t stop moving.
His lines were simple and direct, no fancy touches, not much detail, I marveled as the strong walls of Troy suddenly appeared beneath his confident hand. Without a pause he left the walls and began on a figure, a woman whom I guessed to be Helen.
I said, “Well, don’t put me in it.”
That stopped him. He gnashed his teeth and said, “Gah! Why must onlookers always say that?” He threw a dirty rag at me, which I dodged, and I skipped out of the porch.
It was outside the Stoa that the political argument reached a crescendo.
“The Areopagus has murdered Ephialtes!”
“Kill the bastards that murdered Ephialtes!”
“How do you know it was them?”
“Who else would have done it?”
“Serves him right for upsetting traditions. We’ve always been ruled by the smart men. He wanted to replace them with common idiots.”
“Who are you calling an idiot, you pox-faced scum?”
I left them grappling in the dirt and moved on to another argument.
“He was a dangerous revolutionary. We’re all safer without him.”
“You sound the sort of guy who might have killed him!”
“Me? Don’t be ridiculous. That sort of trouble I don’t need. Anyway, why would I when it was obvious the Areopagus would get him in the end?”
“You’re talking about the man who stopped the oligarchs from taking all our power. You want to go back to the days when the rich told everyone what to do? You don’t want to vote anymore?”
“That’s a good point. Ephialtes protected the democracy. Who’s gonna do that now?”
“Don’t forget Archestratus! He wrote the laws, you know. He’s still around.”
“But for how long? If they killed Ephialtes that means they’re gonna be looking for Archestratus too!”
“I don’t care about Archestratus. What about Pericles? What’s he say?”
“What are we going to do if the oligarchs take up their arms? What if they take back their power by force?”
“Hundreds of rich men against us thousands? Don’t be daft!”
“Yeah, but they got shields and good swords. You own a shield, do you?”
“Hades, he’s right! We ought to take over the shield factories and pass out shields and armor to everyone!”
If what I was hearing was anything to go by, Pericles’ evaluation of everyone’s reactions was correct. The one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that Ephialtes was murdered because he removed the powers of the Areopagus. The only difference of opinion centered on whether they were right to kill him for it.
It wouldn’t take much to turn this lot into a mob. I wouldn’t have been a Council member in this crowd for anything. In fact, the old men of the Areopagus were not to be seen. They had wisely decided to stay safe in their homes, or they would be scurrying through the streets to the homes of their colleagues, to confer. The men who mattered among the populist politicians had not come to the Agora either. I guessed they were banging on each others’ doors. There was a power vacuum to be filled. I had little doubt that at least three conspiracies would be underway before nightfall.
I edged my way out for fear the mood might turn to rioting. There was a pile of building stone waiting to be used and I climbed up it. From the top I could see over the heads as if they were so many sheep. I could see the Panathenaic Way, which leads from the end of the Stoa to the Acropolis. It is one of the few paved roads in Athens, and no wonder, because this is the route the people of the city walk during their religious festivals. It was this path I had been walking in the morning. From where I sat I could see it reach to the base of the Acropolis and then curve right to begin winding its way round to the top. The path disappeared from view a hundred paces before the spot where Ephialtes had fallen.
“Hey, Nico!”
An ugly little boy threw himself onto my back. He almost knocked me down but I managed to stagger, reach behind and swing him before me. Like me he wore the chitoniskos tunic but his was filthy, smeared down the front with some kind of dark dirt, and ripped at the bottom.
“Guess what!” he demanded in great excitement.
“Ephialtes has been murdered. He was shot by an arrow and fell from the Rock of the Areopagus.”
He gaped. “How did you know?”
“I was there. He came within a pace of falling on me.”
My little brother gaped at me in admiration, as if being felled by a falling corpse was a sign of great virtue.
“There you are!” A man elbowed his way through to us, slightly out of breath and frowning. “Your father ordered us to find you; where on earth have you been hiding all morning?” This was Manes, one of my father’s slaves. When a boy is judged old enough to wander the streets, his father gives him a pedagogue to accompany him everywhere, to provide a role model, possibly to teach him a little, and hopefully to keep the boy out of trouble, though that was asking too much of any man when it came to Manes’ current assignment. Manes had been my own pedagogue ten years ago. Now that he was quit of me, he was landed with my brother. It hardly seemed fair on the poor old man.
My brother said, “There was a boy said I was ugly as a toad.”
“So what did you do?”
“He almost killed him,” Manes interjected. “I pulled them off each other and sent the other boy running.”
It was true. My little brother was as ugly as a toad, but I would never have admitted it to anyone, least of all him or my parents. This was odd, because I conversely was considered quite handsome. We had the same unruly dark hair, the same brown eyes, but where he was short, I was medium height; where his face was squashed like a…well, like a toad’s, mine was rounded; where he had a bulbous nose pasted into the middle of his face, my nose was typically Hellene; and where he was stocky, even squat, I was the normal build of any young man.
“Did you hurt him?” I asked.
“Yes, Nico.”
“Well done. Next time you see him, hit him again.” I knew from my own bitter experience what it is like to be a boy in Athens. You either prove yourself with your fists, or you are persecuted by the bullies for the next decade. I had been too quiet to fight, too happy to live within my own imagination, believing the other boys would become bored and leave me alone, and had suffered grievously for my miscalculation. When I was finally goaded into attack they were ready for me and beat me black and blue. I hoped my brother would take the fight to them.
Manes looked from one of us to the other in dismay. “Master Nicolaos! If I had not lived with your family for fifteen years, listening to this I would have said you were the sons of a Spartan, not an artist.”
“Nico, I’ve been thinking-”
“Yes?”
“Is it true the murderer ran away?”
“No one knows who did it.”
“Whoever killed him must be a really good shot. And they’d have to practice a lot to be confident.”
“What makes you say that?” I was intrigued and annoyed at the same time. This was my case, not his, though he didn’t know it yet.
“What if he missed with his shot? The killer must have been far away, because if he’d been close he would have used something more certain, like a sword or a spear. But if he was far away he must have been sure he could kill with a single arrow. If he’d missed with his first, then Ephialtes would have run away quickly. The killer must be an expert marksman.”
“Who have you been talking to?” I demanded, angry. Not only had he reproduced the logic I had used to impress Pericles, but he’d gone on to deduce more.
“No one! I swear it, Nico.”
“Then how do you know all this?”
“I thought about it, that’s all. I’m sorry, Nico-”
“This is my case, not yours, so don’t butt in.”
“Your case, Master Nicolaos?” Manes asked.
“Mine,” I said firmly. “I have a commission from Pericles to discover the murderer.”
“Wow! Can I help?”
I ignored my brother.
“But, Master Nicolaos, your father-”
“I will talk to my father,” I cut Manes off.
“I was about to say your father is looking for you. He expects you back at the workshop immediately. He said to tell you. That’s why we’ve been out, looking for you.”
I groaned. The excitement had made me forget I should have been assisting my father all morning. Father cannot conceive of any better life for a man than that of a sculptor. It was not that he disapproved of my rejecting his profession, it was simply that he couldn’t even comprehend such a thing. He was as determined to turn me into a polisher of stone as I was to avoid that fate.
My commission was like a gift from the Gods. I had a chance to learn about Athenian politics from the inside. This could be the start of my proper life if I succeeded, or the end of it if I failed.
“Go to Father, Manes, and tell him I have been unavoidably detained by this murder. I will explain the rest later. Warn him it may be some time before I can return.”
“The master will not like that.”
“I know. It’ll be a long explanation.”
“Nico, I’ve been thinking-”
I sighed. I didn’t want to hear any more ideas from my clever little brother. No matter how much I might love him, I was determined this was going to be my case, my success, the making of my name. “Try not to think so much, Socrates. It will only get you into trouble.”
“Yes, Nico.”