Read Online The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae by Nick Brown - Free Book Online
Authors: Nick Brown
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great thinker, a good companion or a particularly skilful trierarch, but now looking back I’m inclined to think that he was a better man than he was ever given credit for.
It’s only a short trip from Aegina to Athens and before long we sailed into the rocky bay that was beginning to transform itself into the great harbour of Piraeus. Standing on the only completed scrap of harbour wall waiting for us was Themistocles. Next to him was the year’s named Archon with, behind him, armed men. Next to me Lysias muttered,
“So it begins.”
As we disembarked, apart from a cursory nod towards Lysias the welcoming party ignored us. Themistocles blanked me when, remembering my message, I tried to make eye contact. He was wearing the expression he’d worn at Marathon; his killing face. It was directed beyond us out to sea where in the distance the ships of Xanthippus’s squadron were bobbing on the water.
Chapter Six
My plans to stay with Ariston changed the moment we stepped ashore. Aeschylus was there waiting. He was Themistocles man, in so far as a free thinking poet can be said to be anyone’s man. I’d assumed that he was there with the official welcome party but I was wrong: he had reasons of his own.
“If it’s true that life is sweet to him who suffers grief then your life must be steeped in honey, Mandrocles.”
Typical of Aeschylus to open our first conversation since my anger at him over Miltiades’s death with a quote, probably from a work currently being written. I didn’t respond, I hadn’t forgiven him.
“Come on, you can’t afford to cut yourself off from the few remaining friends you have. I’ve come to offer you a temporary home. It’s close by, which from the look of you must be its main attraction.”
He didn’t wait for an answer: just bent down, picked up my gear and walked off. I hesitated a moment then hobbled after him. He was right, it wasn’t far, but far enough because by the time he walked into his brother’s bar my ribs were agony.
“I’ve moved in here, hadn’t the heart to stay on the familyfarm so I help out here when the muse deserts me. It’s changed a bit since you last saw it. Look.”
He pointed to a staircase of unseasoned mountain pine with sap oozing from its crevices.
“Once it dries out and twists into position it should last forever.”
I followed him gingerly up the steps to a newly built first floor with a balcony looking down over the harbour. It smelt of the sea, I liked that and the view over the waters. This was my first room in Piraeus and it’s only a stone’s throw from where I’m sitting now as I write this.
He pointed to the bare ceiling, chanting,
“Come! Let someone work out in the ceiling a lesbian moulding in triangular rhythms.”
“And what’s that from?”
He’d drawn me back into life, almost made me smile.
“Just a fragment from an idea I’m thinking over about the chamber where the Danaids killed their husbands, long way from being worked out but seemed appropriate.”
He pointed to a chair and I sat while he poured two beakers of wine from a jug on the table. He sat on the cot, which was the only other piece of furniture. Sparse but the largest and best lit room I’d ever had. We sat in silence drinking and after a while I asked,
“What’s Themistocles up to down there?”
“He’s waiting for Xanthippus.”
“Why?”
“To demand that the Archon insists that he answer to certain charges levelled against him by true citizens of the Polis.”
“What charges?”
“Charges that he led an expedition to an enemy Polis in order to betray the interests of the city of the Goddess.”
“Fuck off Aeschylus: everyone knows the expedition wasThemistocles’s idea. What do you think the Athene Nike was doing there?”
“I think it was there because Themistocles sent it to keep an eye on the men who would betray the Demos and the Polis.”
“Don’t be stupid: Lysias and I were there. We know what went
It’s only a short trip from Aegina to Athens and before long we sailed into the rocky bay that was beginning to transform itself into the great harbour of Piraeus. Standing on the only completed scrap of harbour wall waiting for us was Themistocles. Next to him was the year’s named Archon with, behind him, armed men. Next to me Lysias muttered,
“So it begins.”
As we disembarked, apart from a cursory nod towards Lysias the welcoming party ignored us. Themistocles blanked me when, remembering my message, I tried to make eye contact. He was wearing the expression he’d worn at Marathon; his killing face. It was directed beyond us out to sea where in the distance the ships of Xanthippus’s squadron were bobbing on the water.
Chapter Six
My plans to stay with Ariston changed the moment we stepped ashore. Aeschylus was there waiting. He was Themistocles man, in so far as a free thinking poet can be said to be anyone’s man. I’d assumed that he was there with the official welcome party but I was wrong: he had reasons of his own.
“If it’s true that life is sweet to him who suffers grief then your life must be steeped in honey, Mandrocles.”
Typical of Aeschylus to open our first conversation since my anger at him over Miltiades’s death with a quote, probably from a work currently being written. I didn’t respond, I hadn’t forgiven him.
“Come on, you can’t afford to cut yourself off from the few remaining friends you have. I’ve come to offer you a temporary home. It’s close by, which from the look of you must be its main attraction.”
He didn’t wait for an answer: just bent down, picked up my gear and walked off. I hesitated a moment then hobbled after him. He was right, it wasn’t far, but far enough because by the time he walked into his brother’s bar my ribs were agony.
“I’ve moved in here, hadn’t the heart to stay on the familyfarm so I help out here when the muse deserts me. It’s changed a bit since you last saw it. Look.”
He pointed to a staircase of unseasoned mountain pine with sap oozing from its crevices.
“Once it dries out and twists into position it should last forever.”
I followed him gingerly up the steps to a newly built first floor with a balcony looking down over the harbour. It smelt of the sea, I liked that and the view over the waters. This was my first room in Piraeus and it’s only a stone’s throw from where I’m sitting now as I write this.
He pointed to the bare ceiling, chanting,
“Come! Let someone work out in the ceiling a lesbian moulding in triangular rhythms.”
“And what’s that from?”
He’d drawn me back into life, almost made me smile.
“Just a fragment from an idea I’m thinking over about the chamber where the Danaids killed their husbands, long way from being worked out but seemed appropriate.”
He pointed to a chair and I sat while he poured two beakers of wine from a jug on the table. He sat on the cot, which was the only other piece of furniture. Sparse but the largest and best lit room I’d ever had. We sat in silence drinking and after a while I asked,
“What’s Themistocles up to down there?”
“He’s waiting for Xanthippus.”
“Why?”
“To demand that the Archon insists that he answer to certain charges levelled against him by true citizens of the Polis.”
“What charges?”
“Charges that he led an expedition to an enemy Polis in order to betray the interests of the city of the Goddess.”
“Fuck off Aeschylus: everyone knows the expedition wasThemistocles’s idea. What do you think the Athene Nike was doing there?”
“I think it was there because Themistocles sent it to keep an eye on the men who would betray the Demos and the Polis.”
“Don’t be stupid: Lysias and I were there. We know what went
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