I woke at midday still upon the couch. Phaenarete, normally the mildest of women, had threatened the slaves with a whipping if they woke me, so everyone was tiptoeing about.
Phaenarete gave me a mirror and asked me to take a look. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The first thing I did was pick up a bucket of water and pour it over myself. A slave scrubbed me raw. Phaenarete herself bandaged my numerous cuts and applied salve to the bruises, or, as she acidly put it, the bruises upon my bruises, for I hadn’t fully recovered from the beating, nor the fight to the death with Aristodicus, before going the same round with Rizon. When she was done, I looked into the bronze mirror once more. The face that stared back at me was Nicolaos, not counting the bandages and salve, but an older, harder Nicolaos. I knew I was looking at the man I would become in middle age. Partly it was because I had lost weight during the stress of the investigation and my imprisonment, to the point I had become gaunt, but more so it was the face of a Nicolaos more confident in his own abilities, and more aware of the perfidy of his fellow man.
Phaenarete tsk-tsked over my strained muscles and advised me to see a trainer at the gymnasium immediately. After all, a midwife can only do so much for a grown man.
I said, “So I shall, Mother, but first I have to see some men.”
Sophroniscus overheard. “You’re not still intending to pursue this ridiculous path, are you? Surely not after everything you’ve been through.”
“Yes, Father, I am. It might be tough, and you are right that it’s dangerous, but I’ve come through alive, and what’s more, I did it, Father. I did it!”
He looked at me curiously. “What are you saying? You told us you were released because the Council took pity upon you.”
“Uh, it’s a little bit more complex than that, Father. I can’t tell you everything, but I think you’ll find the city will quiet down now. The democrats and the conservatives are going to cooperate to return Athens to calm.”
“And you had something to do with this?”
“Yes, Father, I did.”
Sophroniscus threw his hands up in despair.
I found Xanthippus at home, in his courtyard. He looked the worse for wear for his adventure. He was wrapped up in a blanket with a glass of watered wine beside him. A slave was massaging his shoulders.
He looked at me sourly. “You have a habit of appearing where you are least wanted.”
“There is one little detail I need to clear up before I present the result of my commission to Pericles.”
“And that is?”
“The man who arranged the death of Ephialtes.”
“Archestratus. You said it yourself.”
“There are witnesses who say Aristodicus had separate meetings with two quite different men before the assassination, and yes, the description of one of these mystery men matches Archestratus, but the second man was older. It was the older man who brought coins to their meeting. Archestratus was paying Aristodicus via his son’s bank, so who was the older man and what was he doing? I can think of two possibilities.”
“Who are these witnesses?”
I ignored the question and said, “Let me tell you what I think happened. Archestratus approached a few powerful and influential men-the inner circle of the Council-with a letter from Themistocles, offering to supplant Ephialtes and restore the powers of the Areopagus if they would drop the treason charge and allow Themistocles to return home. The inner Council agreed. But we know Archestratus also imported a hired assassin-Aristodicus-at the same time. Now why send a killer if the return of Themistocles was in the bag? The only possible answer is that death was part of the deal the Council agreed on. It follows immediately that the plan to supplant Ephialtes consisted of removing him permanently.” I paused, wanting to see his reaction.
“Go on,” Xanthippus said, picking up his cup and drinking deeply.
“Someone among the inner circle of the Council was not entirely happy with the terms, but the deal was done, so that person went straight to the assassin and altered the terms without the knowledge of the other parties. Of course, this would have required a considerable bribe to the assassin, who, having partially betrayed his employer, would probably wish to make himself scarce. Syracuse is as far away from Magnesia as you can get and still be in a civilized city.
“Now Ephialtes was shot, so I ask myself, what term of the contract had this older man altered? Pericles was due to meet Ephialtes straightaway, and Pericles was the natural heir apparent to leadership of the democrats, as in fact he proved. Aristodicus need only have waited the space of a few heartbeats to have both Ephialtes and Pericles in range, and yet he didn’t.”
Xanthippus toyed with his wine, smiled wryly, looked up at me. “I may not see eye to eye on most things with my son, but you can assume I objected to spending his life for political gain.”
“It was a huge risk,” I said.
“It was my son.”
“And if I’d managed to take Aristodicus alive?”
“Pythax was there to make sure you did not.”
“I see.”
Xanthippus gripped his cup so tightly his knuckles went white, and said, “Themistocles has been playing us all like puppets, even from faraway Magnesia. We’re going to have to do something about that.”
We sat in silence for some time. It was a beautiful day in the warm sunshine.
“You said there were two possible explanations for this older man. What is your second?”
“It occurs to me that Themistocles, being the wily politician that he is, might have sent an independent observer, to ensure Archestratus acted according to his instructions. Such a man might have delivered a second payment directly to Aristodicus. That older man would be long gone, there’s no point in hunting for him now.” I paused for effect, then said, “I’m not sure which solution to present to Pericles, though of course, if the Areopagus made any more covert moves against the democracy that would make up my mind.”
Xanthippus nodded, toyed with his wine cup, considering for a long moment. “I think perhaps the Council might be persuaded to accept the transfer of power, if there were a few concessions made their way, now that power is going to Pericles, a man they-I-admire and trust. The democratic movement is safe.”
I smiled. “I think on the whole I like my second idea best. That’s what I’ll tell Pericles.”
“Pericles will not be willing to publicly implicate Archestratus.”
I nodded agreement. “There will be three levels of truth. As far as the people are concerned, Aristodicus was acting alone. For Pericles, it was Aristodicus and Archestratus. Only we will know that you, Xanthippus, could have stopped them if you’d wished. It’s not in anyone’s interest to talk.”
“What of your lady friend with the short, sharp knife? I have no wish to spend the rest of my days wary of every young woman when I walk down the street.”
“She avenged her father’s death last night. She will never know.”
I rose to take my leave.
Xanthippus said, “I am curious. Mere days ago, you swore you would declare the truth to the people no matter the cost.”
I sighed. The same thought tormented me. “Pericles once said this to me, and I thought he was a cynical opportunist; now that I too have held the future of Athens in my hand, I have much more sympathy for him. So I say to you now what he said to me then: it’s for the good of Athens.”
Xanthippus smiled. “We’ll make a politician of you yet, young man.”
I tracked down Pythax. He was sitting upon the empty plinth in the Agora, watching the mild, pleasant, well-behaved crowd going about their business. I knew the plinth would soon be filled. Callias had commissioned a new work from Sophroniscus: a statue of Ephialtes that he would donate to the public. Sophroniscus was pleased. It would be his first major work with his new apprentice, Socrates.
Pythax eyed me. “What now?” he asked suspiciously.
“Hello, Pythax. I didn’t thank you for saving my life, twice now. Three times if you count coming to open my cell door. Four times if you count telling the truth in court. If it weren’t for you, I’d be a dead man.”
Pythax grunted. “Like I said before, you remind me a bit of me, back when I was young and stupid, of course.”
“Well, I owe you a lot.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“Xanthippus said something to me this morning. I asked him what he would have done if I’d taken Aristodicus alive and made him talk. Do you know what he said? ‘Pythax was there to make sure you did not.’ You said in court you’d been ordered to follow me to make sure I didn’t learn too much.”
I paused. “I’m glad you chose to shoot him.”
Pythax looked at me sharply. He drew in a breath. “Yeah, so am I.” He turned his face from me, and looked around the crowded Agora.
I hopped off the plinth. “Thanks again, Pythax.”
“Little boy?”
“Yes, Pythax?”
“I didn’t do it for the citizenship. I would have done what the government wanted anyway.”
“Yes, I know.”
I was escorting Diotima to her temple. The High Priestess had sent to say that the Polemarch had suddenly and most curiously removed his opposition to Diotima. What’s more, he had recommended she be invested as a full priestess as soon as possible; her ability to make sacrifice was particularly noteworthy, he said.
Pythax passed us, looking tougher and fitter than any man has a right to be after days of murderous mayhem. He was dressed in civilian clothes, no armor, and his hair and beard had been seen to by a barber who knew his business. He was carrying a gift.
“Good morning, little boy. Good morning, young lady.” He hesitated. “Is your mother in?”
We had seen Pythax face mortal combat with barely a lifted eyebrow. Here he stood before us shaking with fear.
Diotima said, “She’s in. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“A man needs a family and a home to protect. Otherwise he’s just a lonely drifter without a village, or a city. Besides, what a woman! But…do you think she’d have me?”
“You’ll have to ask her. I do wish you luck.”
He squared his shoulders and stepped forward.
The door was opened by Euterpe. “Thanks be to the Gods, a real man at last!” She dragged him inside and the door slammed behind them.
Diotima shuddered. “Do you suppose I’ll have to call him Father?”
We walked in silence, taking the long way around to the temple across the Illisos. The Agora was quiet, not a rioter or malcontent to be seen. Diotima said, “Oh, look here, Nicolaos! This is where I hit you in the face with a fish.”
“Yes, and over there is where you knocked over enough olive oil to grease a small army. We’d better not tell the stallholders who you are.”
We laughed. The walk up the Panathenaic Way was pleasant. We stopped at the place where we had fought. It had been cleaned up by the Scythians so you’d never know men had died there.
As we looked around, Diotima asked, “Nicolaos, who do you think murdered Stratonike and those poor nurses?”
“Rizon,” I said confidently.
She nodded. “I think you’re right. He’s one of the few who could have found the buckets of seawater in the dark, and he didn’t want to live with her any more than I did. But, why didn’t you suspect me?”
“I did for a few moments.”
“You did?”
“Yes, but then I realized you would never have murdered the nurses too. Besides, you would have done it much more neatly. All you had to do was offer to relieve the nurses for an afternoon and then finish her in any number of ways. No one would have been in the least surprised if Stratonike had slit her own wrists, for example. No, those killings were vulgar. That describes Rizon, but never you, my dear.”
Diotima hesitated, then turned to face me. “I haven’t forgotten, Nicolaos, what we said when you were in the cell. But…”
“But that was when you thought we’d lost everything, before you had what you wanted.”
“Try to understand, could I leave all this?” She cast her arm around Athens, laid out before us and glorious under Apollo’s rays.
“I understand, Diotima.”
“And anyway, you have your reward from Pericles,” she said. Diotima was nothing if not practical.
I didn’t say a word.
“Nicolaos, you do have your reward from Pericles, don’t you? The house and the income?”
“Pericles is arguing about it. He says that Archestratus revealed himself before I denounced him, so it doesn’t count.”
“Why, that little bastard! I’ll go to him and-”
“It’s all right, Diotima, someone’s going to put pressure on him to pay his just debts.”
“Who?” Diotima demanded.
“His father, Xanthippus.”
“But Xanthippus hates you!”
“Let’s say he’s learned to respect my negotiation skills.”
“That doesn’t mean Pericles will pay you.”
A man approached us. It was Archestratus, son of Archestratus, backed by two tough-looking men. My hand went immediately to the dagger concealed beneath my chitoniskos. Diotima demurely placed her hands before her like a modest maiden, but I knew she had one clasped over her priestess pouch, in which lay the sacrificial knife she had used to cut the throat of this man’s father.
“Ah, I find you at last, Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus. We are mortal enemies, you and I.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You killed my father.”
I did not look to Diotima. “He died fighting alongside Xanthippus and Pericles.”
“That is the story being put out for the ignorant people. You and I know better. Know, Nicolaos, that I will do everything in my considerable power to make your life a living misery until I send you down to Hades.”
He nodded politely to Diotima and went on his way.
Diotima said, “That reminds me, Nicolaos. You don’t need to worry about Pericles paying you.” She reached into her pouch and pulled out a short piece of board.
“Is that…?”
“I found it around the neck of Archestratus after I cut his throat. If we take along witnesses so they can’t possibly argue, Antisthenes and Archestratus will have no choice but to pay us out.”
I pulled out my half of the banking token and put it against hers. They fitted together perfectly.
We kissed.
Author’s Note
This story really happened, though not, perhaps, precisely as it appears in the book. There really was an Ephialtes. He really did create the world’s first democracy. He really was murdered days later.
Democracy began in the middle of a blind spot in written history. The Persian Wars had been fought twenty years before. Herodotus recorded them. The next great war was the long and destructive fight between Athens and Sparta, which Thucydides recorded. Democracy began in the gap between, when no one was recording much of anything. The longest record is a few paragraphs in a book called The Athenian Constitution, which is usually attributed to Aristotle, but quite possibly was cobbled together by a couple of his students. Here’s what it says (from the Penguin Classics edition): Ephialtes son of Sophonides became champion of the people, a man who appeared to be uncorrupt and upright in political matters. He attacked the Council of the Areopagus. First, he eliminated many of its members, bringing them to trial for their conduct in office. Then in the archonship of Conon he took away from the Council all the accretions which gave it its guardianship of the constitution, giving some to the Council of Five Hundred and some to the People and the jury-courts… Ephialtes too was removed by assassination not long afterwards, through the agency of Aristodicus of Tanagra.
Later in the same book it says: “They took down from the Areopagus hill the laws of Ephialtes and Archestratus about the Council of the Areopagus…” From which we know a legal technician by the name of Archestratus had been assisting Ephialtes.
You can see how the characters in the story come together: Ephialtes, the reformer; Archestratus, the lawyer; Conon, the archon; and Aristodicus, the hit man, are all there to be found in the ancient sources. If you made this stuff up, people wouldn’t believe it.
When Ephialtes was finished, the Ecclesia had the sole right to decide all policy, domestic and foreign. Every citizen, irrespective of who they were, had exactly the same vote, and exactly the same inalienable right to speak before the people. It was the world’s first democracy.
At that moment, Western civilization began.
There are other dates you could argue for, but it’s hard to go past this one: a sovereign state with one man one vote, free speech for every citizen, written laws and equality before the law, with open courts and trial by jury. Modern drama was being invented at the same time as democracy. Aeschylus was writing his plays; two young men called Sophocles and Euripides were beginning to write their own. Anaxagoras was developing a theory of matter in which everything was made of infinitesimal particles; it was the beginning of atomic theory. Herodotus was traveling the world, writing his book, and in the process founding both history and anthropology. A young kid called Socrates was outside somewhere, playing in the street, and on the island of Kos, a baby called Hippocrates was born to a doctor and his wife.
Within days of pushing through his reforms, Ephialtes was murdered. The world’s first political assassination in a democracy had happened within days of the world’s first democracy, and the victim was the man who created it. The assassin was caught, but Aristodicus was a hired killer. The men behind the plot were never discovered.
It’s difficult to comprehend from our distance what Athens must have gone through. The United States was traumatized when JFK was assassinated, imagine the same thing happening when your newly minted democracy is less than a month old. Anything might have happened. The old men of the Areopagus might have gathered troops and resumed control of Athens. The new government might have collapsed. Civil war might have broken out.
But if Ephialtes was killed to stifle the democracy, then the plot failed, because when they killed Ephialtes they replaced a great statesman with a political genius. Ephialtes had a lieutenant, a rising young politician by the name of Pericles.
Pericles held it together. Somehow. It must have been a challenge even for him, but Athens didn’t collapse, didn’t fall into civil war, and didn’t lose its democracy.
Pericles was the son of two great political families. His father Xanthippus was a hero of the Persian Wars, and a member of the Council of the Areopagus. His mother was the niece of Cleisthenes, the man who had begun the drive for democracy fifty years before, and descended of an ancient lineage that had held power in Athens in ages past. Pericles was as close as you could get to aristocracy in a city that, technically, didn’t have any. But he was also a political radical, and when Ephialtes went down, Pericles stepped into the breach.
Perhaps the greatest joy of writing a book like this is interweaving fiction into the fabric of truth. Nicolaos didn’t exist. Socrates had no known full siblings, and yet, Nicolaos would not be impossible. The fact that Nicolaos doesn’t show up in the historical record is no objection. The period is poorly documented and even some quite prominent men have only a few lines in the histories. When you throw in the fact that Nicolaos is doing discreet investigation…of course no one has heard of him until now.
We do know the parents of Socrates (and Nicolaos) were Sophroniscus and Phaenarete. By popular tradition Sophroniscus was a “polisher of stone,” which is code for a sculptor in marble. I’ve accepted the tradition as true in the absence of anything better, though there’s a fair chance it’s apocryphal; the family trade isn’t mentioned anywhere until the following century. Phaenarete was a midwife, which we know for sure because Plato says so in Theaetetus, one of the many books he wrote featuring Socrates.
A surprising piece of trivia is the family of Socrates and the family of Pericles had friends in common. In Laches, Plato names Lysimachus, the son of a famous statesman, as a close friend of Sophroniscus, in which regard he dines with the family in The Pericles Commission. The connection is surprising because Pericles and Xanthippus were wealthy landholders and Sophroniscus was, at best, a middle-class artisan.
The trial of Nicolaos descends into farce, but there is very little that happens at his trial that did not happen at one time or another. Athenian juries were huge: the minimum size was 101 jurors, and numbers as high as 501 were perfectly normal. The 1,001 jurors who hear Nico’s trial is high, but not surprising considering the importance of the case. For comparison, the number of jurors who heard the infamous trial of Socrates sixty years later is usually given as 501, but that’s because 501 was the average jury size for a case of heresy.
When Euterpe rips off her dress before the jurors, she is anticipating by more than a hundred years the trial of Phryne the hetaera. Phryne was the most sought-after courtesan of her day and a stunning beauty. Praxiteles, the greatest sculptor of ancient times, used Phryne as the model for his most famous work, the Aphrodite of Knidus. This got Phryne into trouble. By posing as Aphrodite she was claiming to be as beautiful as the Goddess of Love. Phryne was charged with impiety, the same charge that had got Socrates killed.
Needless to say, the best lawyer of the day was among her lovers. Hyperides struggled to save her, but he was failing because the complainants had her dead to rights; for a mortal to pretend to divine attributes was a crime. It looked like Phryne would be sent to her death. With nothing to lose, Hyperides walked over to Phryne, standing in the court, and in one movement ripped down her dress.
The entire (all male) court took a close look at Exhibit A.
The charges were dismissed.
Phryne thus became the only woman in history to be declared divinely beautiful, by order of court.
I stole this famous incident wholesale for Euterpe. Or an alternative explanation is Hyperides, who as a lawyer had a fine appreciation for precedent, recalled Euterpe’s dramatic gesture of a hundred years before and was inspired to try the same for his own client.
Pythax is my invention, but the Scythian Guard was very real. The Scythians were a barbarian people far to the north. The Scythian Guard of Athens was created after the Persian Wars when three hundred slaves, supposedly Scythians, were bought for the purposes of crowd control within the city. We know this from the works of two orators called Andocides and Aeschines. The trick of using a painted rope to quell the rioting mob outside the house of Xanthippus was standard operating procedure and apparently worked very well. The Scythians frequently used the same method to herd reluctant citizens to vote at the Ecclesia and is described in the comic play The Acharnians by Aristophanes.
The bow was the favored weapon of the Scythians and they carried it unstrung when on patrol, as a baton with which to beat, which they would happily do if faced with a disorderly drunk. By the time of Nicolaos it’s unlikely the Scythian Guard were in fact all Scythian. Their numbers would have been replenished with whatever suitable slaves came to hand. It may seem odd that the Athenians allowed slaves to push them around, but the reason Nicolaos gives in the book is correct: it was illegal for one citizen to lay hands on another, but it was legal for a slave under approved circumstances.
There was no police force as we know it. If a crime was committed, it was up to a private citizen to charge the criminal and prosecute him in court. It’s not even certain there was a jail at the time, because there was no such thing as a prison sentence. Criminals were killed, fined, or exiled. There were no other options. I created the holding cell because it makes sense there was one to hold the condemned.
Diotima was a real person, but what little we know of her comes from only one source: a famous book by Plato called Symposium. In it, Socrates credits “Diotima, a priestess of Mantinea,” as one of his early teachers of philosophy. The only other woman listed among Socrates’ teachers is Aspasia, the future wife of Pericles and a genius of rhetoric (which we know from Plato’s Menexenus). This was a world where women received no education. It took enormous natural talent for any woman to rise above such repression.
Diotima must have had a towering intellect for Socrates to speak proudly of being her pupil, and for Plato to have passed it on as simple fact. One wonders how a priestess from another city could have been teaching the young Socrates anything, but obviously it happened, and my answer to the question is as likely as any other.
The inheritance law that forces Diotima to marry Rizon was quite real. It was an absolute imperative of Athenian inheritance that property remain within the family. This, and the rule forbidding women to own property, combined on rare occasions to cause chaos. If there was a son to inherit then there was no problem, but if the only possible heirs were all female, then a search was made for the closest male relation of any sort. The heiress was then required to marry the distant relative, even if she had to divorce to do so, and the man was required to marry the heiress, even if he had to divorce.
Pericles himself was trapped by this rule. He was forced to marry a woman he disliked when an obscure relative, presumably the woman’s father, died, leaving her an heiress. She had to divorce her existing husband to marry Pericles. They suffered an unhappy marriage until Pericles met Aspasia and fell madly in love with her. At this point things got a bit complex, but he was able to divorce his wife with her agreement because she’d borne him an heir, and Pericles took up with Aspasia. They became one of the world’s first power couples, and the ex-wife married the son of Callias.
Callias, the richest man in Athens, made his money from a rent-a-slave business, supplying slaves (short-lived ones) to the state-run silver mines. He was a fervent democrat who fought in the line at Marathon, and also a diplomat par excellence. The most surprising thing about Callias, to me, is that despite his qualities and unlike most of his peers, he did not try to become leader of Athens. Callias was a friend and supporter of Pericles, and yet also the brother-in-law of the arch-conservative Cimon, Pericles’ greatest enemy. He probably exerted a stabilizing influence.
Conspicuously offstage in The Pericles Commission are two men of vast importance: Cimon and Themistocles. Both had been ostracized-which means exiled for a period of ten years-before the book opens. Themistocles was the deep strategist whose battle plan saved the Greeks during the Persian invasion, but who later was accused of treason. He departed about nine years before the book opens. Cimon was ostracized mere months before the rise of the democracy. It was his departure that made it possible for Ephialtes to make his move.
So Nicolaos has survived his first taste of investigation, and he’s foiled one plot, but Athens’ position in the world is very far from safe. The city is caught in a cold war with the vast super-state of the Persian Empire. The Persians may have been beaten twenty years ago, but they haven’t given up.
Athens has perhaps thirty thousand men to serve in the army. Their enemy is the largest empire the world has yet seen, covering all of what today we would call the Middle East, plus Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, plus the Arabic Peninsula and Egypt. It’s not exactly even odds.
At the same time the league of Greek city-states that united against the Persians is collapsing. The cities bordering the Persian Empire desperately need Athens to remain strong; they know they’ll be swallowed up if Athens weakens. But on the other side of Greece the powerful city-states fear the astonishing and ever-growing influence of the democracy. Corinth is in a vicious trade war with Athens, which will lead to open fighting at any moment. Sparta, an insular, ruthlessly militaristic state in which every citizen is required to be a professional soldier, distrusts the clever Athenians and fears the democracy will spread across Hellas and incite rebellion.
In the coming years Athens will be on the knife edge of disaster, and if they fail now, our future goes with them. They need a breathing space. Fifty years will do. In that time they can invent almost everything that’s important to our civilization. But it can only happen if Athens doesn’t fall, and with the Persians to the east, and Sparta and Corinth to the west, the world’s first democracy is like a deer caught between two wolves.
Nico has his work cut out for him.
In the next book Nico will step inside the Persian Empire to meet Themistocles, who has defected to the enemy. A secret awaits him there, and he’d better be ready to deal with it, because he’ll be inside enemy territory with no one to help him. No one, that is, except a priestess from Mantinea.