Demetrios came out to stand beside him. They made an odd pair, for the Athenian was short and squat, while Demetrios, who had a godlike physique, towered head and shoulders above him. “Hail, people of Athens!” he said, and his voice also outdid Stratokles’. “Antigonos, my father, is concerned for the freedom and autonomy of all poleis of Hellas, and especially for those of Athens, the greatest and most famous polis of them all.”
That won him a warm round of applause. The Athenians were no more immune than anyone else to hearing themselves praised. Demetrios went on, “This being so, my father has ordered me to restore to you your ancient democratic constitution, which tyrants have trampled on for far too long.”
More applause, a great roar of it. Sostratos clapped his hands along with the rest. He lived in a democratic city, and thought well of democracy. But he couldn’t help wonder what sort of strings Antigonos and Demetrios would attach to the restoration.
“My father has also told me to tell you he is pleased to send you 150,000 medimnoi of wheat from Anatolia for your storehouses and your bakeries,” Demetrios said. “And he will also send you timber enough to build a hundred triremes and restore your fleet to the glory it once enjoyed.”
Amid the rapturous cheers from the Athenians all around, Menedemos muttered, “Ha!” Sostratos dipped his head. Rebuilding a navy took more than timber. It took skilled rowers by the thousands. Where would Athens find them? How would she pay for them? Demetrios said nothing about that. And triremes were the small change of fleets these days, anyhow. Fours, fives, and sixes-all full not only of rowers but also of equally expensive marines-did the bulk of the work. Some of Demetrios’ promises were less extravagant than they seemed.
That might have occurred to the two Rhodians. It didn’t seem to have crossed a single Athenian’s mind. Well, that’s their worry, not mine, Sostratos thought. He hoped it wouldn’t be the Athenians’ worry, but feared and expected it would.
As the applause faded, Demetrios bowed to the assembled people of Athens and stepped back, leaving the stage to Stratokles again. The orator said, “With our first decrees as men free once more, let us praise the great Antigonos and Demetrios for liberating us from the hateful yoke of Demetrios of Phaleron and Kassandros, his puppetmaster!”
More cheers rang out. Demetrios son of Antigonos looked artfully astonished, as if he hadn’t imagined Stratokles would propose such a thing. “See how modest he is!” someone behind Sostratos exclaimed.
Sostratos had other ideas. He glanced over at Menedemos, who was also looking his way. “Put-up job,” Sostratos mouthed. His cousin dipped his head.
“May it be propitious,” Stratokles continued: the opening formula for a decree. “Let us set up gilded statues of Antigonos and Demetrios in a chariot, the said statues to stand near those of Harmodios and Aristogeiton in the agora so that one pair of liberators may regard the other. Do I hear an opposing voice?”
No one spoke in opposition. The decree passed without a single mutter. Sostratos thought it extravagant, but shrugged mental shoulders. Harmodios and Aristogeiton were credited with helping to overthrow the tyranny of Hippias and usher in democracy at Athens two hundred years earlier. Anyone who’d read Thoukydides, as Sostratos had, knew things weren’t nearly so simple. But, by now, what the Athenians believed was at least as important as what had really happened.
And-statues! Whoever was making those gilded statues would need beeswax to coat his mold and take the fine detail he would sculpt. “Beeswax,” Sostratos muttered. “Beeswax.” He didn’t want to forget.
Stratokles hadn’t withdrawn. “May it be propitious,” he said again.
“Let us reward our liberators with honorary crowns valued at two hundred talents of silver, to show the world that the Athenians’ gratitude is not to be despised or taken lightly. Do I hear an opposing voice?”
Again, Demetrios looked modest and surprised. Again, no one dissented. Again, the decree passed by acclamation. Sostratos slowly dipped his head. Athens would pay, and pay plenty, for the privilege of liberation. Even for a polis as rich as this one, two hundred talents was a lot of money.
“May it be propitious,” Stratokles said once more, and Sostratos wondered what was coming next. He didn’t have to wait long: “Let us consecrate an altar to Antigonos and Demetrios, this altar to be known as that of the Saviors. And let us consecrate another altar where Demetrios first came down from his chariot and set foot on the soil of Athens, that one to be known as the altar of the Descending Demetrios. And let the chief priest who serves the altar of the Saviors henceforth give his name to the year, as the arkhon does now. Do I hear an opposing voice?”
There stood Demetrios. No matter how abashed he looked, his men had just driven Kassandros’ out of Athens. He said he’d set the city free. What could he do if he changed his mind? Anything he wants to, Sostratos thought. The Athenians no doubt thought the same way. Stratokles heard no opposing voices. The decree-one servile enough to make Sostratos faintly sick to his stomach-passed without a single protest from the Assembly.
And more followed. The newly free-or so Demetrios had named them-people of Athens voted to add to the ten tribes among which they divided up their citizens two more, to be named Antigonis and Demetrias. They voted to hold annual games in honor of Demetrios and his father, with sacrifices and a procession. And they voted to include the portraits of Antigonos and Demetrios on the ceremonial mantle offered to Athena in the Parthenon every five years, “along with the images of the other gods,” as Stratokles said. Like the ones that had come before, those motions passed without dissent.
That seemed to be all of them. As if to prove it was, Demetrios stepped forward once mare. He bowed. “Men of Athens, I thank you for your generosity, and f know my father thanks you as well,” he said.
Sostratos fought down a strong urge to retch. That hadn’t been generosity. It had been the most revolting display of sycophancy he’d ever seen. No one, he was sure, had ever flattered even the Great Kings of Persia like this. But now the Athenians, who’d beaten the Persians at Marathon, at Salamis, and at Plataia, who’d preserved liberty for all of Hellas, wriggled on their bellies to kiss the dust through which Demetrios had walked. And they called that freedom! No, he didn’t want to retch. He warned to cry.
Demetrios went on, “You have been kind to my father and me. Because you have, we shall also be kind to you, in the ways I have promised and in any other ways that seem good to us.”
How the Athenians cheered! Demetrios practiced that abashed smile once more. Or maybe it wasn’t so practiced. Maybe all this praise heaped on him really had turned his head. He surely couldn’t have heard anything like it before. Yes, he was Antigonos’ right-hand man, but Antigonos, by all accounts, was not a man one could safely flatter-he had wit enough to see through it. Nor was he one to spoil his sons, either Demetrios or Philippos.
Sokrates had to drink hemlock here, Sostratos thought. He shivered. Two years before, he’d watched Polemaios drink hemlock. Dying of the drug was neither so neat nor so philosophical as Platon made it out to be. But now the Athenians have found a sweeter poison.
Stratokles moved that the meeting adjourn. That drew no more argument than any of his other motions had. The people of Athens streamed out of the theater, by all appearances well content with what they’d done. The morning remained young.
As long as he and Menedemos were in the midst of the Athenians, Sostratos said nothing. All his cousin said was, “Well, well.” That could have meant anything. Sostratos knew what he thought it meant. He agreed, too.