“That’s good?”
“That’s the direction the strong winds come from. That hill protects the land.”
“The trees are old,” I said.
“That’s a good thing too. Do you know how long it takes before an olive tree even begins to fruit? Thirty years. These old trees have been making olives for a hundred years or more, and they’ll still be doing it when your grandkids are climbing the branches.”
Until this moment I’d given no thought to what sort of farm Pericles might be offering. I knew nothing about olives.
“I’m not sure about this, Pericles,” I said, and rubbed my chin.
“You’re not pleased?” Pericles said in a hurt tone, as if he were somehow shocked that I might be unhappy with the worst farm in Attica.
“What am I supposed to do with a bunch of old olive trees?” I said.
“Sell the olives, of course.”
“How?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Nicolaos,” Pericles said. “Athenians buy olives by the bushel every day.”
I thought of all the olives my own mother bought, which we ate every day. “I suppose that’s true,” I conceded.
“There’s always a market for olives,” Pericles said.
“The master’s right,” Sim said. “Of course, olives are a low-margin crop.”
“Now, Sim, we don’t need to go into that,” Pericles chastised his head slave.
“Lots of supply, you see,” said Sim, ignoring his master. Or more accurately, not even hearing him. Sim was a complete expert on farm economics, and like any expert, once he got going on his favorite subject he couldn’t be stopped. He said, “It keeps the price down when there’re lots of sellers.”
“Terrific.”
“That’s why the olive-oil market is so much more lucrative,” he mused. “Olive oil’s a value-added commodity, you see. Higher margin,” he explained. “Now, if I didn’t have much produce to work with, I’d strive to maximize my return per unit. With less fruit to work with, it doesn’t take so much effort to process it.”
“How do I make olive oil?” I said at once.
“With an olive press. It’s a big machine with a huge stone for crushing olives.”
That sounded expensive.
“As it happens,” Sim went on, “we have an olive press over in our main buildings.”
He looked straight at me, and rolled his eyes toward his master, Pericles. Sim obviously couldn’t speak against his own master, but I divined his meaning.
“I’m sorry, Pericles,” I said. “But I’m not going to accept this farm as it is. There’s no way it could earn enough.”
“We agreed a small, steady income.”
“This is too small, and it doesn’t look particularly steady to me. I don’t know the first thing about growing olives. Besides, this looks like very hard work. How could I run a farm without help and still carry out commissions for you? I refuse your offer. You still owe me the debt.”
This put Pericles in a bind. He couldn’t force me to take the offered land, but obviously this was the cheapest way he could expunge his debt, and Pericles liked to do things the cheap way.
Pericles looked displeased, but he said, “I imagine we could rent you the use of our olive press. At market rates, of course.”
“Market rates?” I didn’t know the going rate, but whatever it was, I knew it was more than I could afford.
“Very well,” Pericles said, exasperated. “I offer you the loan of the machine rent-free for the first five years.”
“Ten years.”
Pericles sighed. “Ten, then. But after that, it’s a commercial arrangement. Are we agreed?”
“I still don’t know anything about growing olives.”
“I’ll throw in a slave who does,” Pericles said in desperation. “In recognition of our close and trusting relationship.”
I had Pericles on the back foot, for the first time ever, and I was enjoying every moment of it. His only alternative was to pay me coins, which would have cost him far more. But I had to be careful not to overstep my advantage.
“Where will the slave live?” I asked. We all knew the answer to that one. We all three turned to look at the draughty hut.
“Perhaps some spare building material and use of the tools?” Sim murmured.
“Very well,” Pericles said quickly, clearly in haste to get this unpleasant business over with. He was losing ground with every moment that passed. “Is there anything else?” he said through gritted teeth, and I knew I’d reached the limit. I had a feeling that the free use of the olive press alone was probably worth more than what he owed.
“I think that’s it,” I said. “I accept your offer.”
With those words, I became a landholder. Perhaps not a wealthy one, but I had gone up in the world.
We began the walk back to the main buildings. As we crossed the line that was now the border between our properties, Pericles remarked, “You’ll need to see to new horos stones.”
“What?”
“The boundary markers. Surely you’ve noticed them. There’s one over there.” Pericles pointed.
I walked over. Lying in the dirt was a large stone painted white, with some words chiseled into it.
“I thought they were only for decoration.”
“By no means. Those stones are the legal declaration of ownership. Most are inscribed with a standard legal formula and, usually, the name of the owner. We’ll have to lodge notice of the sale, too, but there won’t be any problems.”
“How do we do that?” I asked.
“We see the archon in charge of land. He’s one of the lesser magistrates. I must swear before Zeus and Athena that the land I’m transferring is truly mine. You swear that you’ll assume all responsibilities as are due any landholder. The archon posts the notice of sale in the agora for all to see for a period of sixty days. If no one objects in that time, then it’s official.”
“Could that happen? Someone objecting, I mean?”
“It certainly could if I was trying to sell someone else’s land! The real owner would see the notice and complain to the archon.”
“Oh, I see.” That put me in mind of something else: the investigation. “Pericles, does anyone record who owns what land?”
“No. That would be needless government interference in a citizen’s private affairs. The horos stones do a perfectly adequate job.”
“That’s a pity. It seems obvious that Hippias went to Brauron for some reason: either to see someone or for help.”
“That seems likely.”
“Whoever helped Hippias must have owned an estate around Brauron back then. If there was a registry of lands, I could look up who owned the properties back then.”
Pericles looked at me strangely. “What do you mean? Of course there’s a record. All you have to do is walk about the countryside and check the boundary markers. It’s written in the stones, Nicolaos.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I arrived home eager to tell my father about our new property, only to walk into a family crisis.
When we’d returned home from the Olympics, not so long ago, one of the first things our father, Sophroniscus, had done was to tell my twelve-year-old brother Socrates that he had to go back to school.
Every deme in Athens has its local school, usually run by some tired fellow who couldn’t make it in the philosophy discussions at the gymnasium. Our deme was luckier than that. The local teacher was a man by the name of Karinthos, an old soldier who’d retired when he was too old to survive as a mercenary. It was widely rumored that Karinthos hadn’t smiled for at least half a century. He’d been my own teacher when I was Socrates’s age, and I believed the rumors.
Nevertheless, Karinthos knew his Homer-he could quote The Iliad from memory-and he knew how to beat his knowledge into the boys, and that was the important thing. Also, Karinthos knew from long personal experience how to comport oneself as a man, and the difference between right and wrong.