Sunset of the Gods

CHAPTER SEVEN





The courtyard was cobblestoned, as was typical of the better class of houses. As they entered it through the door in the street-side wall, they saw the duo that was the source of the music they had heard.

“It’s not always easy getting Eupatrids to come to an address like this,” said Themistocles in the tone of one anticipating an oft-asked question. The word he used was best translated as “the well-bred”—the monumentally snobbish Athenian aristocracy’s term for itself. “So I like to invite the most popular musicians to use my house for rehearsal.” He sounded ebulliently pleased with himself for his own cleverness. Jason had a feeling that he not infrequently sounded that way.

Themistocles led the way through the courtyard, with its surrounding portico which supported a balcony of the second-story women’s quarters, to a doorway leading to the kind of reception room Jason’s orientation had led him to expect. It was a small room—almost all Classical Greek rooms were—with an elaborate black and white pebble mosaic floor. The walls were painted in a singularly handsome pattern, with a baseboard in white-lined black and the main wall above in dark red. Themistocles motioned to servants to bring in the chairs and stools which, in sparsely furnished Athenian homes, were constantly moved from room to room as needed. Like everything else the Classical Greeks made, their furniture was beautiful.

The slaves also brought wine. It was the resinated wine that unkind non-Greeks all through history compared, unfavorably, to turpentine. In this case it tasted like turpentine-flavored water, for as custom dictated the wine was diluted. It was easy to understand why alcoholism had not been a widespread social problem in ancient Greece.

“You are most kind, strategos,” said Jason, “to extend your hospitality to refugees.” The word he used actually implied even more, for a Greek without a polis was in a very real sense a non-person, without an identity. And not registered voters in Athens, he left unsaid.

Themistocles gave an indulgent hand-wave. “Who am I to quibble about background? My mother Abrotonon was a Thracian.” He bestowed a smile on Lydos/Landry.

“Ah,” said Landry. “So your mother was not . . . that is, we had heard stories that a Carian—” He shut up under a surreptitious glare from Jason. He’s already told us all we need to know, Bryan, his glare said.

It was the answer to yet another question. They had hoped that this version of Themistocles’s parentage would prove to be the correct one, as it would give their host a certain sense of kinship with them. A second theory had held that his mother had been a Carian woman from Halicarnassus named Euterpe. Either way, there was no doubt that his aristocratic descent on his father’s side had not saved him from being a youthful outsider in the maniacally exclusive society of Athens.

“In the old days,” Themistocles continued, confirming Jason’s unspoken assumption, “that was enough to deny me citizenship. We lived in Cynosarges, the immigrant district outside the city walls, when I was a boy. But then, eighteen years ago, came the reforms of Cleisthenes. The Pisistratid tyranny was overthrown, and the law changed.”

“As I understand it, strategos,” Landry ventured cautiously, with a nervous side-glance at Jason, “the need to fill out the numbers of the tribes into which Cleisthenes divided the Athenian people also helped extend the citizenship.”

“No doubt about it,” Themistocles nodded. “That was one of Cleisthenes’s masterstrokes. Faction-fighting among the Eupatrid dynasties had brought Athens to the edge of ruin and opened the way for the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons. His solution was to simply sweep away all the old family and clan identities by dividing Attica into ten tribes, made up of demes scattered all over. He even made people take their second names from those demes.” He chuckled. “One of the demes was named after the Boutads, one of the grandest of all the aristocratic families. Instead of sharing it with every goatherd in the deme they gave themselves a new name: the Authentic Boutads!”

They all laughed. Actually, Jason had already heard the story from Landry, who’d said it reminded him of an incident in the history of his native North America, where vaporing beyond description had erupted in Boston around the turn of the twentieth century when a certain unpronounceable Eastern European immigrant had taken it into his head to shorten his name to “Cabot.” It was good to have another anecdote verified. So far, this was proving to be one of those expeditions whose findings tended to confirm orthodox expectations.

Except, of course, for a certain sighting on the Sacred Way near the crest of Mount Aigaleos. . . .

“But,” Themistocles continued, sobering, “it worked. For the first time, everyone—regardless of birth or wealth—could speak and vote in the Assembly. Athens became the first true demokratia.”

Jason and Landry exchanged a look, for it hadn’t been certain that this word—meaning a state in which power, or kratos, was invested in the people, or demos—had actually been in use this early.

“You have no idea what it was like,” Themistocles continued. “Under the tyrants, we Athenians had never amounted to very much. Suddenly we behaved like heroes. Enemies from Sparta and Thebes and Chalcis descended on us like vultures, thinking we’d be easy prey—and we defeated them all!”

Actually, internal dissention—probably incited by Cleisthenes’ bribery—stopped the Spartans, Jason mentally corrected, recalling his orientation. But for a fact, the Athenians had seemed transformed overnight by their democratic revolution. Themistocles’s next words helped him understand why.

“So a whole new world of opportunities had been opened up for me and others like me—there seemed no limits any more. When I reached the required age of thirty, my ancestry through my father made me eligible to run for Archon.” Jason nodded, recalling that even though every citizen could vote only the upper classes could run for high office. “I could never have dreamed of such a thing before!”

Which, of course, gave you a very intense and personal commitment to the new order, thought Jason.

A servant entered and signaled to Themistocles, who excused himself. They were left to themselves for a few minutes, and Jason motioned them to silence, bestowing a special cautionary look on Landry. Presently their host returned, looking a little preoccupied.

“That was Euboulos, a shipbuilder,” Themistocles explained. “I needed to talk with him. He’s been offering to support me in the Assembly, in exchange for my influence in sending certain contracts his way in the future.”

“When you were running for Archon,” Landry prompted, “did you not argue for a new harbor, and expansion of the fleet?” Jason kept his features immobile, for this would be well known enough to make the question legitimate.

“Expansion of the fleet?” Themistocles snorted. “We have practically none to expand! Seventy triremes! And if we did, where would we base it—that miserable open bay at Phalerum? It’s absurd! We can’t even protect our shipping from the flea-bitten pirates who infest the island of Aegina, only fifteen miles south of Salamis and squatting across our trade routes! And that’s the least of the threats we face. That very year, the Persians wiped out the Ionian fleet at Lade, after which they sacked Miletus and ended the rebellion.”

“Wasn’t the Ionians’ defeat at Lade the result of the desertion of the ships from Samos, who wanted to doom their traditional commercial rivals in Miletus?”

“You’re very well informed, Lydos.” Jason held his breath, but Themistocles continued, for this was obviously a pet subject. “Yes, that’s the curse the gods seem to have laid on us Greeks: we can never unite. Show us a common enemy, and all that most Greeks can see is an opportunity to betray some other Greek to him, for private gain or to avenge some age-old slight.” He gave the exasperated sigh of a brilliant man forced to work with short-sighted fools while pretending to respect them. “Well, anyway, as Archon I was able to get work started on a new seaport for Athens at Piraeus, just to the east of Phalerum. That’s the place!”

“Isn’t Piraeus two miles farther from Athens than Phalerum is?” asked Jason, mentally calling up the glowing map that seemed to float a few inches in front of his eyes.

“A small price to pay! That easily defensible rocky headland offers three natural harbors. It allows space for our merchant fleet to grow, as it’s been growing along with all the rest of our economy now that people know they can work for their own betterment without fear of having all they own taken from them by a tyrant. It will also provide a base for the war-fleet we need . . . if I can ever persuade the Assembly that we do need it, and if we can ever find the money to pay for it. That’s the prospect I keep holding out to Euboulos and others like him.”

Themistocles paused, brooding for a moment. Looking at him, Jason reviewed in his mind the things he knew but could not reveal: that in seven years a rich lode of silver would be discovered at Laurium, near the southern tip of Attica; and that under Themistocles’s urging the Assembly would excel itself, spending the windfall on the fleet of triremes that, three years later in 480 b.c., would (with the help of Themistocles’s genius for adroit disinformation) win at Salamis the victory on which the future of this planet and a great many others rested.

All at once, the full realization of just who it was whose watered wine he was drinking truly hit Jason.

Landry interrupted their host’s thoughts. “We have heard that there were other issues as well . . . such as the impending trial of Miltiades the Younger.”

“Ah, yes,” said Themistocles, animated once more. “As you probably know, being from the North, the elder Miltiades was a member of a Eupatrid family called the Philaids who was forced out of Athens sixty years ago because he opposed the tyranny of Pisistratus. He founded a colony in the Thracian Chersonese.” (The Gallipoli Peninsula, Jason translated automatically.) “He died childless, and his step-nephew Miltiades the Younger ruled the colony as a tyrant. He joined the Ionian revolt and fought heroically, capturing the islands of Lemnos and Imbros in the name of Athens. When the revolt collapsed, he fled to Athens. And what did the Assembly do when the most renowned Persian-fighter of them all landed at Phalerum and offered his services? Put him in prison for the crime of tyranny in the Chersonese!” Themistocles gave another sigh of utter weariness and frustration. “Fortunately, his trial was scheduled after that year’s election. As Archon, I was able to exert some small influence on the proceedings.”

I’ll just bet you were! It was, thought Jason, yet another reason why that election had been one of the most crucial ever held in all history. Aloud: “Yes, we’d heard that he was triumphantly acquitted, and has now been elected one of the ten strategoi.”

“True. We need him now, in light of the current situation. Speaking of which. . . .” With an air of getting down to business, Themistocles proceeded to ask them a rapid-fire series of very shrewd questions about the state of affairs in Macedon, now a Persian satellite. Drawing on their orientation, they were able to give very specific answers. As heirs to centuries of painstaking historical research, they knew far more about Macedon, Thrace and adjacent areas in the early fifth century b.c. than contemporary Athenians did. Themistocles was clearly impressed.

“Yes,” he finally said, leaning back. “You’ve been very informative. That obligates me to help you in any way I can—which is my inclination anyway, since you obviously hold the same views I do on appeasement of the Persians. The first need is to get you established as metoikoi.”

Resident non-citizens, Jason translated: accepted in polite society and not without certain civil rights, but unable to vote, own land, or marry citizens—and at the same time liable for military service. For Classical Greeks, polis identification was everything. As metoikoi they would at least have a recognized status in Athens.

“You’ll also need a place to stay,” Themistocles continued. “I know people who have accommodations to let. I assume. . . .” His voice trailed off. As an aristocrat—at least on his father’s side—he naturally could not bring up so crass a subject as ability to pay.

“Of course, strategos,” said Jason, earning a smile of approval from Themistocles for his ability—surprising in a hick from the north—to grasp what had been left unspoken. “We are indebted to you for your help in arranging all this.”

“And,” Mondrago spoke up, “we doubt whatever information we have been able to provide will be useful enough to repay your kindness, now that the main Persian threat is no longer from the north.”

“No, it isn’t.” Themistocles‘s brooding look was back, but now it held a new undertone of discouragement. They didn’t break into his black study with matters of common knowledge.

The natural approach for the Great King Darius to take in chastising the Athenians for their support of the Ionian rebels had been a southward advance from his satrapy of Thrace through his new client-state of Macedon. But such a strategy required the support of a fleet working its way around the northern end of the Aegean—a fleet that had been wrecked in a storm off Mount Athos. Then Mardonius, the swashbuckling Persian general in command of the northern front, had buckled one swash too many and gotten himself seriously wounded in an attack on some mountain tribe of goat-stealers.

So the Great King had adopted a new strategy—an unsettlingly original one.

“When the newly assembled Persian fleet of six hundred ships departed from Cilicia earlier this year,” said Themistocles, speaking more to himself than to them, “nobody was too alarmed at first. Surely, everyone thought, it must be headed north, to follow the coast around the Aegean. That was the way it had always been done. But then, once past the ruins of Miletus and through the strait between Mount Mycale and the island of Samos, it turned westward, straight out across the open sea from island to island! First they obliterated Naxos and enslaved the population. Then they stopped at Delos, the sacred birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and their commanders Artaphernes and Datis—he’s the real commander; Artaphernes is just a blue-blooded Persian figurehead that they had to have because Datis is a Mede—put on a hypocritical display of respect for Apollo. This, after the Persians had burned Apollo’s oracle at Didyma and plundered his bronze statue! Maybe some Greeks will actually be stupid enough to be taken in by it.”

Carrot and stick, thought Jason.

“Do you know what that smooth-tongued snake Datis had the nerve to tell them on Delos?” Jason could have sworn Themistocles’ indignant tone held just a touch of professional envy. “He actually claimed with a straight face that the Ionian rebels hadn’t been worshiping the true Apollo at Didyma, but rather a kind of imposter: one of the daiva, the Persian demons or false gods or whatever. What a gigantic load of goat shit!”

Themistocles, Jason reflected, was even more right than he knew. As Landry had explained during their orientation, Datis’ propaganda line was nonsense in terms of Zoroastrian dualistic theology. Just as Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of truth and light, had his counterpart in Ahriman, god of lies and darkness, so his six emanations, the amesha spenta or “beneficent immortals,” had dark shadows in the form of the daiva. A Zoroastrian priest would have gagged on the idea of Apollo—one of the daiva himself, according to them—having such a shadow. But the Greeks of Delos hadn’t been up to speed on such subtleties, and with the Persian army occupying their island they hadn’t been disposed to dispute the point.

“I understand the Persians have Hippias with them,” said Landry.

Themistocles gave him a sharp look. “You really are very well informed, Lydos.”

Jason shot Landry a warning glance, for once again he was displaying an implausible level of knowledge. “We heard people in the streets saying so,” he explained quickly.

“Well, it’s true. The last tyrant of Athens, chased out twenty years ago, has been a faithful toady of the Great King ever since. And now the doddering old bastard has convinced himself that if he betrays Athens to them the Persians will restore him as tyrant. Ha! He’s a fool as well as a traitor. They’ll just use him as a source of information.”

“And,” Jason suggested, “maybe for any contacts he still has within the city.” The term fifth column would of course mean nothing to Themistocles.

“Yes.” Themistocles grew very grim. “And even if there aren’t really any of his fellow traitors within the walls, the suspicion that there may be some aristocratic faction ready to open the gates from the inside poisons our air.” He shook his head. “Ah, well, it’s just one more reason why we’re lucky to have Miltiades. I only hope that he was right in talking the Assembly into trying and executing the Persian ambassadors that came last year demanding earth and water.” He was clearly worried that Athens, at Miltiades’ urging, had forfeited the moral high ground.

“If possible,” Landry said diffidently, “we’d like to meet him, having heard so much about him.”

“Hmm. Yes, I think that could be arranged. I’ll see what I can do. But for now, you’re welcome to stay here tonight.”

As they got up, murmuring their thanks, Jason spoke up, hoping his interest sounded only casual. “Oh, by the way, we’ve heard certain odd rumors on our journey. Have there been any incidents of . . . well, of people claiming to have seen manifestations of the gods?”

Themistocles gave him a look which he could not interpret. It was never easy to know just how literally the people of pre-scientific societies really took their gods. One of the few things of which the Classical Greeks were intolerant was atheism . . . strictly speaking, asebia, or failure to worship the gods. It was the crime for which Socrates would be sentenced to drink hemlock eight decades from now. But what was the real gravamen of the offense: impiety, or a dereliction of civic duty? Jason knew he had to tread very warily.

“No, not that I’ve heard of,” said Themistocles after a pause. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, only curious,” said Jason hastily. They made their exit as soon as was gracefully possible.