The Athenian Women Read online

  “What do you know about it? Shut up!” her father broke in brusquely. Hearing her talk this way was a knife to his heart every time: it just reminded him that he was a poor man now, forced to send his daughter to the market to do the shopping, amidst other men. But when the subject of pay came up, he couldn’t let it drop, it was beyond his control.

  “Can you imagine such a thing, that a citizen shouldn’t receive his stipend! It’s our money! But the day that tyranny arrives, you can kiss it goodbye!”

  Polemon stuck a finger in his mouth: the shell of a seed had gotten stuck in his teeth.

  “Even though . . . ” he said slowly; and then he stopped.

  They all sat for a moment in silence. The fire was burning brightly. Charis reflected on what Glycera had said. Three obols a day was a lot of money! Certainly, though, that man at the market had spent ten obols for a fish. It’s not fair, thought Charis: when there are people who are starving, anyone who spends that much money ought to be punished.

  “Even though,” Polemon resumed, “if you stop to think about it, it’s still not much. They gobble up the money and all we’re left with are the crumbs.”

  Thrasyllus eyed him with an inquisitive expression. Polemon collected his thoughts and went on.

  “It’s like this: we are the masters of a great many cities! From Pontus to that island, what’s it called again, where the Phoenicians are: Sardinia, no? Just think how much money flows in. But to us, they dole it out drop by drop: like oil on wool. Just enough for us to survive.”

  Suddenly in Charis’s mind’s eye an image appeared, though so many years had passed: when they still owned a few sheep, after shearing they would spread the washed, dried wool out on the ground, and her father would take a small beaker of olive oil and drip it on the wool to lubricate it. That job always fell to him in person: to make sure the slave didn’t squander the oil. The young woman opened her mouth to ask a question, but Thrasyllus beat her to it: Polemon’s argument had made quite an impression on him as well.

  “You speak the truth, by the gods! But in that case, where does the money go?”

  Polemon spat into the fire.

  “The heads of the party grab it! That’s how it is, no two ways about it. They keep us living in poverty, while they get rich. And so we become their guard dogs. You know how you do with a dog, right? You beat it regularly, and then it just gets more ferocious. Then when the dog’s master sics it on you, it sinks its fangs into your flesh. The same as we do: when the party heads give the sign, it’s up and at ’em! But if they really wanted the good of the people, they wouldn’t be giving us just three obols!”

  “What would you do instead, Papa?” Charis asked, her eyes sparkling. Polemon stopped to reflect. What would I do! I’ve never thought about it, but it’s pretty simple. “Here’s what I’d do. All it would take is to require that every city be responsible for maintaining, I don’t know, say, twenty citizens. For the two of us, an island might be responsible: Rhodes, for instance. They’d say: Every month, you must send Polemon and Thrasyllus a pork shoulder, and a barrel of wine, and cheese, and rabbits. Two bags of flour, salted fish. All calculated, down to the last detail. That would do it!”

  All four of them fell silent, lost in dreams of all that plenty.

  “That would be a life befitting those who triumphed at Marathon,” Thrasyllus admitted. We must forgive him: it was their grandfathers who had fought at Marathon, but they all felt as if they’d been there. There the barbarians had seen just what free men look like.

  “Right!” Polemon concluded. “But now we chase after the stipend, like olive harvesters.”

  2

  The belated guest appeared at Eubulus’s door when it was almost dark, and the symposium was about to begin. He was a tall, strapping man, athletic, with a black beard streaked with just a few streaks of silver. Next to him was the slave who accompanied him, the torch still unlit under his arm, looking exactly like what he was: a poor wretch.

  The man knocked at the door.

  “Oh, boys! Hello in there!” he called impatiently, when no one answered. At last a woman came to the door.

  “Forgive us, sir,” she mumbled, “we’re all busy in the kitchen.” The guest crossed the threshold and sat down on a bench covered with quilted cushions.

  “Greetings, Andromache. How are things?”

  “Fine, sir,” the woman replied in a weary voice. She kneeled on the floor, took off his sandals, and washed his feet in a basin. The guest saw that under her woolen chiton she was still slender, her body fit; but she too, he noticed with surprise, had a few gray hairs. How long has it been since I last set foot in this house? he wondered. I thought it hadn’t been that long. Time passes . . .

  “Where are we eating?” he asked, as the woman was drying his feet.

  “In the big room. We have a great many guests this evening.”

  “In the big room! But it will be cold,” the man pointed out, somewhat put out. He exercised every day and rode horses for hours in the rain, but when he was home he liked his creature comforts. To hell with old-fashioned houses, he thought to himself.

  “I don’t think it will be cold,” the woman said. “We’ve put charcoal braziers in all the corners. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see how things are going in the kitchen. Boy!” she called, gesturing to a young slave standing in the shadows. “Show the gentleman to the big room.”

  “There’s no need, I know the way,” said the guest.

  The big room opened directly onto the portico, but a curtain had been drawn to close the opening. The man pushed the curtain aside and walked in. To his satisfaction, a blast of warmth greeted him. The room smelled of smoke, and the braziers illuminated it with a reddish light.

  “O Kritias!” exclaimed the master of the house. “My dear man, we were only waiting for you.”

  Eubulus came forward and threw his arms around him. The host was older than him, wrinkled and slightly bent and bowed, but he had an imperious gleam in his eyes.

  “You already know everyone, I think.”

  Kritias looked around. Yes, they were all trusted people, party comrades. Considering the topic at hand, this is not an evening to invite anyone who isn’t one of us.

  “Karikles, son of Chereleus, was supposed to come too. But he sent word that he had a cold. I hope that’s the truth,” Eubulus added cautiously. “You know each other, I believe.”

  “He’s the same age as me, and we frequent the same gymnasium; we often train together,” Kritias confirmed. “If he says he has a cold, then that’s the truth. With this weather!”

  “Well, that’s good to know,” Eubulus concluded, clearly reassured. “Then we can begin. You, Kritias, here by me. Boys!”

  A pack of beardless naked boys entered the room, bearing myrtle crowns for the guests, whom they helped to get comfortable on their cushions; then the boys brought in water for the guests to wash their hands, and began serving dinner. The dishes arrived one after another from the kitchen, the young boys carried them around, and each guest dug their hands in, taking as much as they pleased. The dogs leashed beneath the beds whined and wagged their tails, frantically anticipating morsels that might be tossed their way. The guests ate in haste, focused on the food almost without speaking: it’s not good manners to talk while eating, it’s seen as a way of telling your host that you’re not interested in what you’ve been served. The only sound from time to time was a contented exclamation: “Delicious! This is quite some perch!”

  Kritias was eating like all the others, smiling at Eubulus, and all the while he looked around and counted. Twelve men, plus two young men who were already almost fully grown, though still beardless. Each of the two was reclining next to an older guest, who looked at his younger companion with ardent desire, from time to time popping a tasty morsel into the younger man’s mouth with his own fingers. Kritias knew the couples by si
ght and understood that they were lovers; slightly perplexed, he wondered whether such young men shouldn’t be left out of their business, but then he told himself that Eubulus had been wise to invite them. They too need to know what’s coming. But Eubulus’s son wasn’t there! And yet, he must be about the same age—or no? With other people’s children you always lose track . . .

  “What about your son?”

  Eubulus furrowed his brow.

  “He’s still too young for this sort of thing.”

  Kritias smiled courteously. With other people’s children you always lose track, but our own children are always too young.

  “And anyway, he’s in the countryside,” Eubulus added. “I ought to tell you how crazy he is about horses. You can’t imagine the expense! Any chance he gets, he hurries out of town. I consider myself lucky if he comes back to sleep here.”

  Once they had polished off the last skewer of meat, the master of the house addressed the servants.

  “Boys! Drinks for our guests!”

  The young naked boys cleared away the plates, hastily gobbling down the most appetizing leftovers, and then reappeared with the krater and the amphoras. The amphoras were so large that it took two boys to lift one. Once the krater was half filled with wine, Eubulus had his goblet refilled.

  “Libation, libation! Silence!”

  The master of the house pushed the curtain aside, stepped out onto the portico, and scattered a few drops onto the ground, reciting under his breath the proper formulation to invoke the goddess of the hearth; then he poured the rest of the goblet into the flames and distinctly said, in a louder voice: “Lord Dionysus, good neighbor, born of flame, sweet as honey, donor of the ripe grape clusters, this is the last wine of last year’s vintage! This is the last time that we’ll drink it, next time we’ll be drinking the new wine. A gift from you, and we thank you for it, Father. Good luck to us, may it all go well for us!” he recited, as the flames crackled.

  As Eubulus went over to Kritias and lay back down on the cushions next to him, the slave boys watered the wine, refilled the goblet, and handed it to the master of the house. Eubulus drank, and after him so did all the others, taking turns as the one goblet made the round of the room, always filled back up to the brim by the slave boys each time that a guest had drunk.

  “The hymn!” Eubulus ordered, once the round had been quaffed.

  The slave boys, immediately imitated by the guests, intoned the hymn to Dionysus. Kritias was singing under his breath, staring straight ahead as he sang, and in the meantime wondered: how many of them really believe in this, and how many instead, like me, know that it’s a piece of buffoonery? The gods don’t exist, we invented them ourselves, because men don’t know how to live without believing that there’s someone more powerful than them, someone who can protect them . . . But these weren’t thoughts that he could share with Eubulus, who was singing with determination, his eyes glittering with pride. For that matter, how can a master of the house who’s inviting guests and spending his own money do any differently?

  Once silence had returned, Eubulus cleared his throat and spat into the brazier. Everyone looked at him expectantly.

  “Now then, men!” he began. “Today we have some important things to talk about, so I’d suggest we take it a little easy with the wine. Just at first, I mean; the night is long, and we’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

  “Excellent!” someone called out in approval, from the partial darkness.

  “So I’d suggest we follow this rule: I’ll yield the floor to Kritias, who has much to say, and as long as he has the floor, it will be up to him to decide when we can drink and when, instead, we must listen to him carefully.”

  “Excellent! Go on, Kritias!” many voices exclaimed.

  “Well then,” said Kritias after looking around the room, “here’s what I have to say to you. This city is going from bad to worse. And it’s going from bad to worse because with a system of government like this one, it can hardly help it. De-mo-cra-cy!” he said, enunciating the word with disgust. “Sheer madness, and the worst thing is that everyone knows that it’s madness, everyone knows that, I tell you—and yet no one dares to say a thing!”

  Everyone in the room fell silent.

  “Sheer madness, and a crime: the violence of the worst against the best. You can see it for yourselves: it’s impossible to live in this city nowadays, with ruffians in charge, there’s no justice in the courts, parasites triumph, public money is wasted. And on the other hand athleticism, music, all the highest forms of human life are derided. Those like us who know how to care for our minds and bodies must be afraid if a fishmonger or an oarsman drags us into court, because there we will be judged by other oarsmen and peasants, and on top of that we even pay them a stipend to do so!”

  Kritias fell silent, lifted the goblet to his lips, and realized that it was empty.

  “Anyone who is in agreement with me thus far can drink!” he joked. The young slave boys hastened to refill the goblet and another round began. One after another, all the guests took a hasty drink.

  “You’ve all drunk the wine, which means that so far I haven’t been far off the mark,” Kritias went on. “Let’s see whether what I’m about to say pleases you as much. Up till now, we have accepted this . . . democracy, in the belief that the people are like children, that we need to leave them their illusions, and that we will always know how to guide them.”

  “But in fact, o Kritias,” one of the guests broke in, “that’s exactly what I wanted to bring up. You say that this is a democracy, but what I see is that there’s always someone in charge, and the people go along with them. I’m not even certain that this system of ours really is a democracy, there are so many ways it differs. There are those who call it a democracy and others who use different words, everyone can call it whatever they want, but in reality it’s an aristocracy, just one that enjoys the support of the masses . . . But we’ve always had kings!”

  Kritias smiled, baring his teeth.

  “If Pericles were still here with us, I’d have to agree with you. But Pericles is gone now. And these kings, as you rightly say, are no longer our people. They’re mere demagogues. We can no longer rely upon them. It’s pointless: we need to admit the way things stand, that the experiment has been a failure, the people are incapable of governing themselves, and it’s time we take the toy out of their hands. And don’t come try to tell me that the system can be improved. Democracy needs to be demolished, it can’t be changed, because that’s impossible, it can’t be modified, it can’t be improved! No one who can think straight can hope to engage in politics in a city where the people are in command! And for that matter,” and here Kritias paused and then suddenly changed his tone, to make perfectly sure that everyone was paying close attention; though there was no need, they were all hanging on every word, “for that matter, it’s the very idea of separating power and wealth that’s mistaken, mistaken at its very root. Those who are struggling don’t share their struggles and misfortunes with others, after all. So why should we, who are better than the others, share anything that we possess with them? No, men, it’s over: we will no longer share anything. We were born to command, we alone are deserving of power, not the roustabouts in the marketplace. If the Greeks have any respect for our city, it’s thanks to the money that our fathers and we ourselves have spent on the procession at Olympia. Who pays to fit out and arm the triremes? Who stages the dramas? We do, not the people! Now, let’s drink!”

  They all drank, exchanging glances. Kritias felt the blood pounding ever denser in his veins, or at least that’s what he believed was happening, because of course he’d never heard of adrenaline. He knew that he held his audience in his hands, and this knowledge exhilarated him. Even the slave boys listened openmouthed. Kritias saw the boy who was serving him bend over to lift the krater and a stab of lust caught him off guard at the sight of that skinny little nak
ed butt. Later, he told himself: soon, just not now. You lose nothing by waiting.

  “Remember that whoever drinks is in agreement with everything I’ve said so far, that’s our understanding!” he resumed. “And I’d add that, by drinking, we all swear not to divulge a word of what is being said here.” A buzz of approval underscored his words.

  “Now then,” Kritias continued, “if you are in agreement with me, you recognize that things can no longer go on like this. We must accept no further compromises. A politician who is willing to work in a city run by democracy can only be a scoundrel with something to hide. Those who understand this have only two choices: either they retire for good, or they take back their city. And I, by the gods, have no desire to retire anytime soon. Now, Eubulus, send these youngsters out of the room for a moment, because what I have to say is for our ears alone.”

  The slave boys left the room, strangely silent. Kritias waited a moment, then went on.

  “Here’s what I have to say. We need to take our city back. Immediately. In the next few months. Then we can decide whether or not we should continue the war: that’s not what matters right now. We’ll take our city back, and the day that happens, we’ll settle all our old scores.”

  Kritias looked around and lowered his voice.

  “We’re going to have to kill a lot of people. Kill so many of them that we can rest assured the people will never again raise their heads.”

  “That’s right!” exclaimed a voice in the semidarkness. It was one of the two young men, embracing his male lover.

  “But how?” someone asked.

  “How?” retorted the same young man, sitting up straight with his eyes sparkling. “We need only seize the Acropolis! Tomorrow we’ll go up to the Acropolis, every last one of us armed to the teeth, and we’ll occupy it. I’d just like to see who’ll dare to oppose us.”

  Kritias smiled.

  “Sure, we could do that, too. We could take the Acropolis, certainly, and issue orders to the city from up there. And if necessary, we’ll do that too. But if we do, there will always be a majority that is obeying under duress. They’ll cry tyranny, and if they don’t cry it, they’ll whisper it, which would be even worse. We, on the other hand, will ensure that the people themselves vote to abolish democracy!”