Farewell Great King Read online

  J I L L P A T O N W A L S H

  F A R E W E L L

  G R E A T K I N G

  MACMILLAN

  FOR TONY

  C H A R A C T E R S

  A d e i m a n t o s — Corinthian commander

  A d m e t o s — King of the Molossians

  A e s c h y l u s — Athenian dramatist

  A l k m e o n — an Athenian politician of the Alkmeonid family

  A m e i n u a s — an Athenian captain

  A r i s t a g o r a s — the Milesian leader of the Ionian revolt

  A r i s t e i d e s — Athenian democrat

  A r i s t o g e i t o n — tyrannicide

  A r t a p h e r n e s — Persian satrap of Sardis

  A r t a x e r x e s — Great King (464-424 bc), son of Xerxes

  A r t e m i s i a — Queen of Caria, an admiral in the Persian fleet

  D a r i u s — Great King (521-486 bc), father of Xerxes

  D a m a r a t o s — Spartan King (c. 510-491 bc)

  Datis — a Mede, commander of the first Persian expedition against Athens

  E p i k r a t e s — an adherent of Themistokles

  E u r y b i a d e s — Spartan commander of the Greek fleet

  G e l o n — tyrant of Syracuse (485-478 bc)

  H a r m o d i o s — tyrannicide

  H i e r o n — tyrant of Syracuse (478-467 bc)

  H i p p a r c h o s — brother of Hippias

  H i p p i a s — tyrant of Athens (527-510 bc)

  I s a g o r a s — Athenian oligarch, opponent of Kleisthenes

  K a l l i m a c h o s — Athenian polemarch at the Battle of Marathon

  K i m o n — Athenian politician and general, son of Miltiades

  K l e i n i a s — an Athenian captain of the Alkmeonid family

  K l e i s t h e n e s — Athenian democratic reformer, an Alkmeonid

  K l e o m e n e s — Spartan King (c. 519-487 bc)

  L a t y c h i d a s — Spartan King (c. 491-469 bc)

  L e o n i d a s — Spartan King (c. 487-480 bc)

  L y k o s — a fictional character, friend of Themistokles

  M a r d o n i o s — Persian commander at the Battle of Plataia

  M e g a k l e s — Athenian politician, an Alkmeonid

  M i l t i a d e s — an Athenian, tyrant of the Chersonese and general at the Battle of Marathon

  M n e s i p h i l o s — an Athenian sage

  P a u s a n i a s — Spartan commander, nephew of Leonidas

  P e i s i s t r a t o s — tyrant of Athens (d. 527 bc)

  P e r i c l e s — son of Xanthippos, later famous as Athenian democratic statesman

  P h r y n i c h o s — Athenian dramatist

  S i k i n n o s — Persian slave of Themistokles

  S o l o n — Athenian lawgiver (archon 594/3 bc)

  S o p h o c l e s — Athenian dramatist

  T h e m i s t o k l e s — Athenian democratic statesman (c. 527-461 bc)

  T i m o l e o n — brother of Themistokles (real name unknown)

  X a n t h i p p o s — Athenian democrat, married into Alkmeonid family

  X e r x e s — Great King (485-465 bc)

  T H E L E T T E R F R O M T H E M I S T O K L E S, L O R D O F M A G N E S I A I N T H E S A T R A P Y O F Y A U N A, TO A R T A X E R X E S T H E K I N G, T H E G R E A T K I N G, T H E A C H A E M E N I D, T R A N S C R I B E D I N T O C U N E I F O R M U P O N T A B L E T S O F C L A Y B Y G U B A R U T H E S C R I B E; A N D GU B A R U M A D E F O R E A C H T A B L E T A T I T L E, A C C O R D I N G T O T H E US A G E O F T H E A R C H I V E S O F T H E K I N G A T S U S A. T H E W O R K F A I T H F U L L Y C O M P L E T E D O N T H E T W E N T Y - E I G H T H D A Y O F M A R K H E S H W A N I N T H E S I X T H Y E A R O F A R T A X E R X E S T H E K I N G.

  Sa y to Artaxerxes, the King, thus saith your servant Themistokles: Greetings, Great King, King of Kings, Lord of the East and West, King of the Lands, King of Anshan, King of Papa, most favoured son of Ahura Mazda the All-High, Bringer of the New Year in the halls of Persepolis — three times I kiss the ground before you.

  With this letter the messenger will bring you the news of my death. Your anger will be great to hear how I have deserted you, great and terrible. You will not read what I have to say. And yet, it may be, later, when your anger has cooled, Lord Artaxerxes, perhaps as you make a gift to some other man, you will ponder about it. ‘To Themistokles the Athenian’, you will say to yourself, ‘I gave three cities, and land, and power, and a fine house, and vineyards. For five years I smiled upon him, and he flourished greatly, yet in the end the service he had promised me he denied me, preferring death.’

  Do not hold back your hand from giving to that other man, Great King, whoever he may be; doubtless he will repay you better than I have done. But when you have dismissed him, then perhaps you will call for this letter, and a scribe to read it to you; you will learn, if it pleases you to learn it, why I have chosen to die.

  I could say, ‘Because I cannot perform what I rashly promised you; I cannot raise my hand against my native city. Therefore, Great King, tomorrow, going to perform the accustomed sacrifice, I shall drink the blood of the bull, and quench my thirst for death.’

  And that would be answer enough for any Greek. But to a Persian, who serves a great state, rather than a city, and is bound in honour to his King — that King who brings good order and justice to all who bow beneath his equal yoke, and whose rule would have kept peace between us for ever; to a Persian this answer is a Delphic answer, or no answer at all.

  Still, it is all the answer I would give you, Great King, in return for three cities, and a governorship, and the wine and oil and gold I have received from you. You see how grudgingly, ungratefully, a Greek will serve a king. But because of other things, for other reasons, I will make you a better answer. One evening at Susa, for example, when I told you a sad tale of my broken drinking-cup, and you gave me from your own table a fluted goblet, propped on the back of a crouching golden lion. Or that day in Persepolis, when walking with me, you took my hand in yours, as though I had been your brother, and we talked of the gods of your country, and of mine, and of what the truth might be, as a Greek talks with his friends. Or the last time I attended you, in Sardis, nearer home, and we poured wine, and sat together, watching the setting sun.

  When you gave me refuge, Great King, it was as a king you acted, in that you thought you could make use of me; and as a man you acted, in that my courage and cleverness pleased you. The King is doubtless angry with me for ever, for evading my obligations, failing to obey his orders; but the man was always magnanimous, and may yet wish to understand me. Because you have been my friend as well as my King, I will make you a better answer. This day, the last day I shall live, shall be for writing to you. I will make the best account I can of what I have been; the clearest defence I can of what I have done.

  I am Themistokles, son of Neokles, of the deme Phrearros, of the tribe Leontis. I am an Athenian first, and anything else I am as well comes a long way after that. I dare say if you ever asked any of your father’s commanders about my homeland they spoke slightingly of it; and it is true that the lands you have given me here are more fertile, and nearly as large as the whole of the lands the Athenians have ever owned, and to any eyes but mine, perhaps, more beautiful. Still, I have only to say to you, as you love your lands so I love mine ... you will understand me. You told me once a tale of Cyrus, who wanted to live still hardily in the barren hills, and not go down to the rich plains he had conquered, in case they corrupted his soldiers with sunny ease. Well, Attica, too, is harsh land, not fertile, where men break their backs hoeing a stony soil. It breeds proud men. I sleep softly and wake in comfort every day now, and yet like your Cyrus I still love the land that made me great. He wrote only, ‘I, Cyrus, the King’ upon his tomb; I have seen it. I would write, ‘I, Themistokles, the Athenian’ on mine, if I did not scorn to borrow another man’s phrases, however fine. And I suppose, now I come to think of it, that someone will get my dust home to Attica, and so I will have to be buried in an unmarked place, and there will be no grand words written for me at all. For all that, and whatever harsh names they call me, there was never a time when I was not a good Athenian.

  I remember a lesson at school once, when it was very hot, and we had learned and recited our Homer for the day, and been to the Palaestra for exercise, and returned tired to the master’s house through the dusty streets, and instead of handing out wax tablets for writing he let us sit under the fig tree in the courtyard of his house and debate amongst ourselves. Each boy who spoke had to stand, as if he were addressing the assembly; it was a lesson still, in its way. The subject he gave us to talk on was ‘What is the greatest good fortune the gods can bestow on a man?’ I was a new pupil then, and I said nothing at first, but sat and listened, and enjoyed the shade of the fig tree, and wondered if any of the fruit was ripe enough to fall into my lap and, if it did, whether I could suck it without being seen.

  Draco was saying that wealth was the best thing the gods could give; wide fields good enough to grow wheat, and a grove of old olives, wool and linen to wear, and horses, and a hoplite’s armour made of the finest bronze, wrought like the shield of Achilles in Homer. The schoolmaster said these things were good, but there were men who had them all and found them not enough.

  Diophon said that health was a better thing. It made a man take pleasure in every movement of his body, every step he took, and if he worked and trained hard it could brin
g the glory of a laurel crown at the Pythian Games, or at Olympia. Diophon was strong, and a good athlete; he hoped to gain a crown for running in the games that year. He was to lose his race, but to win a crown in the pentathlon three years later; but the master told him that such things were young men’s pleasures, for a man who had won the crown had many years still to live in which he would lose the suppleness and strength of his finest years. Diophon was silent, and I knew why, for I had been to his house, and seen upon the wall a long row of vases of sacred oil which his father had won in the Panathenaic Games, for this event and for that; and his father had got his lovely vases still, but was grey now and walked with a slight stoop.

  Archilochus said power was the great thing; could not a tyrant help himself to anything he lacked? The master was angry, and reminded us that tyrants might die violent deaths; and besides, he said, how could one call a man blessed by the gods who did evil while he lived?

  Then Mychos said beauty might be the greatest luck. He looked sideways under his lashes at Diophon as he spoke, although Diophon did not look at him, either then or on any other occasion as far as I know. The master raised his eyes to look at his tree, and arranged his features to conceal the slight trace of emotion that had crossed them; then he advanced the same objection that he had raised to Diophon, that the gift in question was always much shorter than life, unless some misfortune cut off that life too soon.

  Aeschylus said he would for himself prefer a power that could be used without force; the gift of a golden tongue, to move men and persuade them, to honour the god Dionysos in the theatre perhaps, or bring about a unanimous vote in the assembly. That certainly was a power I would have liked for myself too. The master smiled at Aeschylus, and said, ‘My boy, if the little ode I found scarcely erased on your writing-tablet the other day is anything to go by, it may be you have the very gift you prize; go and make an offering in the shrine of the muses, and ask Apollo to make you fortunate.’

  After that a silence fell, for it was awesome to think that Aeschylus, sitting among us, might have his heart’s desire; then suddenly I said, ‘I think you are all wrong!’ getting to my feet in a graceless scramble as I spoke. The master looked surprised. I dare say he had not expected any of the smallest boys to speak.

  ‘Well, Themistokles,’ he said. ‘Come on, let us hear it, since you know better than us all. Teach us; what is the greatest good luck the gods can bestow?’

  ‘To be born an Athenian!’ said I. Without realising it I had spread my arms wide as I said it, as if to embrace us all. Everyone laughed, and clicked their fingers at me; the master smiled deeply, and said:

  ‘That is a good answer. There is truth in it.’ And Diophon said joyfully, ‘Tremendous! The greatest good luck the gods can give is something we all here have!’ so that Mychos scowled at me, for having won a moment of Diophon’s attention. But my moment of glory was brief, because another boy rose and spoke.

  ‘Better than to be an Athenian,’ he said, ‘is to be a just man in any city.’ He was a tall, lean boy, tanned golden brown, with a narrow face, and gently hollowed cheeks. He wore only a black woollen cloak, next to his skin, leaving his arms and chest bared to the sun. The master said to him:

  ‘You have answered rightly. You have spoken the wisest words today.’ And then he dismissed us to go home, and the debate was closed. And this boy was Aristeides, the son of Lysimachos, whom all his life the Athenians called ‘Aristeides the Just’. I have loved him, and hated him, and struggled against him all my life, and at the end he is in Athens, at home, and I am here, with the gifts of the Persians all around me, and a little phial of poison hidden behind the wine crater on the shelf, and yet I must tell you that it is true that he is just, and has never in his whole life done anything of which he need be ashamed. You, Lord Artaxerxes, will hardly have heard of his proverbial justice; but you might have heard of him nevertheless, for he was the Athenian commander at the battle of Plataia — he who dealt with the Thebans while the Spartans hacked up the Persian immortals, and killed Mardonios, your father’s general.

  The next day I fell in with him as we walked to the Palaestra, and said, ‘But of all cities in which it is good to be a just man, it is best to be a just man in Athens!’ Then he laughed, and said, ‘You are like a dog, Themistokles, that gets its teeth into something, and won’t let go!’ In the Palaestra he gave my cloak a sudden tug, pulling it from me and leaving me naked, and then cast off his own, and threw it in a bundle with mine upon the bench, and crying ‘Race!’ he tore away for the finishing-post, with me running in the dust thrown up from his heels.

  The boys in my cities here exercise Persian fashion, on horseback, or at archery, with all their clothes on their backs, and wash themselves afterwards in private, I suppose. It strikes me as I think of it that you cannot know each other as the Greeks know their friends, every inch, seeing them naked daily. I wonder if this is why you are always more formal than we, in visiting, in talk, in respect for those above you? I even saw two lads the other day, walking by the river, their arms about one another’s shoulders, over their cloaks, and I thought how muffled their touch was, by all that wool. Well, I know what you think of Greek ways in matters such as that ... but I was going to say how a man’s body and mind are after all the same animal; a man can be known through his body. We would both judge the spirit of a horse by looking at muscle, you and I.

  Aristeides was lean, but taut, not loose-limbed as a fine runner often is. When exercise has made us sweaty and dusty from head to foot, we rub oil on our skin, and scrape ourselves clean with a strigil, as I once told you. Nobody can reach his own back; friends help each other. When I poured oil into the hollow between Aristeides’ shoulders the golden pool lingered for an instant, because he was leaning forwards, sitting on the bench, hands on knees. Then it divided, softening in the warmth of his body, and of the sunlight, a rivulet flowing sideways across each flat shoulderblade, and a torrent down the hollow of his spine. I caught the running gold with outspread hands, rubbing upwards, and sideways, damming it from running off him to drip wasted into the dust, watching the trickle that had found a channel between his thin ribs and was flowing round to his chest, sliding my hands over him, with the surplus oil pushing up between my fingers, until he shone like polished marble, and moved contentedly, arching his back slightly under my hands.

  ‘You have used too much, Themistokles,’ he said.

  ‘From my own alabastron,’ I said. Then I took up the strigil, and scooped off the surplus oil, bumping down the rounded protrusions of his spine, outwards across his shoulders, leaning over him to scrape down his arms.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said, and tackled my wide, flat, muscular back energetically, till the skin tingled, and then glowed in the supple oil. He had his cloak on in moments, and was ready to go; he waited for me.

  ‘You have the body of a wrestler,’ he said. ‘Is that to be your chosen path to glory?’

  ‘No!’ I said, sharply. ‘All that pure-minded striving after laurels! A rich man’s game, for those who have nothing to do.’

  ‘Nothing to do?’ he said laughingly. ‘Have you seen how they train?’

  ‘There are better things to do,’ I said.

  ‘The names of the victors in the games are inscribed in marble for ever,’ he said, with mock grandeur.

  ‘I’ll make my mark on something better than a block of stone!’ I said.

  ‘You’ve a sharp tongue,’ he answered. ‘In a contest of wits you’d leave me standing, as surely as I’d outrun you in a race. But I wasn’t debating, I was asking. You, Themistokles, you won’t learn your Homer, or else you won’t recite it. You won’t learn to sing; anyone can see how you hate to be made to play the lyre; you fall asleep when we read a poem longer than a skolion; and it isn’t to be wrestling either, it seems. You’ll be a terrible rough nut of a man for the head of a priestly family, however they’ve come down in the world. What is it that you want? Tell me, what do you expect to do with yourself?’ That’s why I liked Aristeides; he talked about important things. There was much to talk about when we were young.

  We always differed in talk. Nothing remarkable about that, especially in Athens, where men will talk nonsense on purpose, just to keep an argument going — a practice which horrifies my Persian friends, for it seems to them close to lying. But Aristeides and I were in a very similar situation when we were young, and might have seen things from a similar viewpoint. We were both nobly born, both one day to be the head of a family, for he was the only son, and I was the eldest. And both of us would inherit too little money to shed glory easily on our future. Even when we were boys, the prospect of duties and scant means to discharge them weighed on us both, and, as always, in talking of it we differed.