power. I was being asked – politely, one aristocratic pirate to another – if I was prepared to expend my prestige and patronage on Polymarchos and his runner.
No, pause and think. You must understand this, or you will never understand what happened in the years of the Long War, as we fought the Medes. Hellenes compete about everything. Small men will race turtles, and great, rich men and women race chariots, and those of us in between will compete with whatever comes to hand. So here was Cimon – a friend of my youth, a man I trusted absolutely – stating that he was not going to help me to help Polymarchos – unless I made it worth his while. And nothing bald had been said.
Greeks are not natural allies. That’s all I’m trying to say. Business and political competitors; always looking for advantage. In business, in politics, on the seas or in the stadium.
I met his eye. ‘I’d like to see this young man entered,’ I said.
Cimon smiled. He didn’t say anything as wild as ‘what would that be worth to you?’ but I was suddenly reminded of Anarchos. There were similarities.
He rolled to his feet with the agility of a trained man. ‘Let’s go and see the judges, then,’ he said. ‘I came through the storm, too. Perhaps they’ll want my testimony.’ He flashed me a toothy smile, and I knew I owed him a favour. He was going to help me put ‘my’ runner in the race, despite the fact that Athens had a competitor in that race.
But I owed Polymarchos. It is hard to say exactly why, or how. Part of my general debt to the gods for my mistreatment of Lydia, I think.
I had a name, then, but not nearly the name I have now. The same was true of Cimon. Yet, despite the fact that we were not yet truly famous men, it took us almost an hour to cross the camp to the temple. Night was falling – fires were lit across the plain. The smell of burning wood and the smell of dung – human and animal – and the smell of cooking onions and meat and the sweat of twenty thousand mostly unwashed and unoiled humans rose to the gods. Small clay oil lamps lit the camp, and sparkled in the falling twilight like a thousand tiny stars. It was a glorious night, except for the smell.
Polymarchos was impatient – he clearly thought that the judges would pack it in for the night. And he might have been right, except that I sent Hector running across the camp as my herald. So we walked, and men accosted us and offered us wine and praise, and asked us pointless questions so that we would speak to them, or asked us to make judgements on things about which we knew almost nothing. Such is the life of fame.
Eventually we made it to the temple, with Polymarchos all but bouncing up and down as we approached the broad steps. But the judges were still seated at their five tables, all lit by handsome bronze and silver lamps, and as we approached, most of the judges rose and bowed.
We were interrupting something official, that much I could tell. There was a man – a very handsome older man with the long, oiled hair of a Spartan aristocrat, and a woman – I assumed his wife, not beautiful, yet somehow magnificent, with arm muscles like an oarsman’s and hair, thick and black as the falling night, piled like a tower on her head. She had the oddest eyes – one very slightly higher than the other, and both very slightly slanted, as you see in some people from the Sakje and the Aethiops.
I am not doing either one of them justice. He was dressed in nothing but a simple scarlet cloak pinned with gold, and she wore a fortune in jewellery – but for both of them their principal adornment was their sheer fitness. They looked like gods.
They looked angry. Deeply angry.
So did the judges. Who also, let me add, looked afraid.
Cimon nodded pleasantly to the Spartan couple, and the man – he was over fifty, and he had the kind of dignity that I’ve only seen a dozen times in my life – returned a small, but very genuine nod. He said, ‘Under
No, pause and think. You must understand this, or you will never understand what happened in the years of the Long War, as we fought the Medes. Hellenes compete about everything. Small men will race turtles, and great, rich men and women race chariots, and those of us in between will compete with whatever comes to hand. So here was Cimon – a friend of my youth, a man I trusted absolutely – stating that he was not going to help me to help Polymarchos – unless I made it worth his while. And nothing bald had been said.
Greeks are not natural allies. That’s all I’m trying to say. Business and political competitors; always looking for advantage. In business, in politics, on the seas or in the stadium.
I met his eye. ‘I’d like to see this young man entered,’ I said.
Cimon smiled. He didn’t say anything as wild as ‘what would that be worth to you?’ but I was suddenly reminded of Anarchos. There were similarities.
He rolled to his feet with the agility of a trained man. ‘Let’s go and see the judges, then,’ he said. ‘I came through the storm, too. Perhaps they’ll want my testimony.’ He flashed me a toothy smile, and I knew I owed him a favour. He was going to help me put ‘my’ runner in the race, despite the fact that Athens had a competitor in that race.
But I owed Polymarchos. It is hard to say exactly why, or how. Part of my general debt to the gods for my mistreatment of Lydia, I think.
I had a name, then, but not nearly the name I have now. The same was true of Cimon. Yet, despite the fact that we were not yet truly famous men, it took us almost an hour to cross the camp to the temple. Night was falling – fires were lit across the plain. The smell of burning wood and the smell of dung – human and animal – and the smell of cooking onions and meat and the sweat of twenty thousand mostly unwashed and unoiled humans rose to the gods. Small clay oil lamps lit the camp, and sparkled in the falling twilight like a thousand tiny stars. It was a glorious night, except for the smell.
Polymarchos was impatient – he clearly thought that the judges would pack it in for the night. And he might have been right, except that I sent Hector running across the camp as my herald. So we walked, and men accosted us and offered us wine and praise, and asked us pointless questions so that we would speak to them, or asked us to make judgements on things about which we knew almost nothing. Such is the life of fame.
Eventually we made it to the temple, with Polymarchos all but bouncing up and down as we approached the broad steps. But the judges were still seated at their five tables, all lit by handsome bronze and silver lamps, and as we approached, most of the judges rose and bowed.
We were interrupting something official, that much I could tell. There was a man – a very handsome older man with the long, oiled hair of a Spartan aristocrat, and a woman – I assumed his wife, not beautiful, yet somehow magnificent, with arm muscles like an oarsman’s and hair, thick and black as the falling night, piled like a tower on her head. She had the oddest eyes – one very slightly higher than the other, and both very slightly slanted, as you see in some people from the Sakje and the Aethiops.
I am not doing either one of them justice. He was dressed in nothing but a simple scarlet cloak pinned with gold, and she wore a fortune in jewellery – but for both of them their principal adornment was their sheer fitness. They looked like gods.
They looked angry. Deeply angry.
So did the judges. Who also, let me add, looked afraid.
Cimon nodded pleasantly to the Spartan couple, and the man – he was over fifty, and he had the kind of dignity that I’ve only seen a dozen times in my life – returned a small, but very genuine nod. He said, ‘Under
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