We all picked at our food that evening. Diotima and Socrates went upstairs to our room early-it would have been unseemly for a woman and child to tarry amongst the rough men with whom we shared the table. Aeschylus opened his travel bag to remove some old papyrus, a small jar of ink, and a thin brush of the kind used by scribes. He pulled one of the tavern’s lamps close, smoothed the papyrus out before him, dipped the brush in the ink, and began to write words.
I watched him do this.
“Is that a play?” I asked, unable to restrain my curiosity.
“Yes,” he said, without stopping the movement of his brush across the papyrus.
I’d seen plays at the theater, but this was the first time I’d seen one written down.
“I write military adventure,” Aeschylus said as he scribbled. “The Persians. Seven Against Thebes. They’re all war stories. That, and family drama like this trilogy I’m doing now. Dysfunctional families slaughtering one another. You know the sort of thing.” Aeschylus shrugged. “It’s what people like.”
“You never thought about doing serious work?” I asked. “Like Pindar does? I met him at Olympia.” Pindar was the foremost poet of the Hellenes and deeply revered.
“People say they admire Pindar, but in the contests what they vote for is my stuff.” Aeschylus paused. “Did you say you know Pindar?”
“Yes.”
“A decent writer, if a little stuck-up.”
I was beginning to wonder if that was a common trait among writers.
“What’s this one about?” I asked.
“It’s called Agamemnon,” he said. “I’m writing this for the next contest.”
He hadn’t stopped scribbling all the time we’d been talking. I peered over his shoulder to read the words.
“You just misspelled KATAKAPΦOMENHΣ.”
“I’m not surprised,” he said calmly. “There’re a lot of letters in it.”
But he didn’t go back to correct his error. Aeschylus continued to scribble new words.
“Aren’t you going to fix it?” I prodded after a moment.
“I’ll catch it in the edits,” he said, and ignored my helpful correction.
I got the impression Aeschylus wanted to be left alone, so I resolved to remain silent. I watched over his shoulder while he wrote a few more words.
“You just used the wrong declension of ΔYNATON.” I leaned across him to point out the mistake. Unfortunately my finger slipped and I smudged the line.
Aeschylus threw down his brush. “Perhaps I’ll write later,” he said. “I’m not concentrating well at the moment.”
“Oh, don’t mind me!”
“Not at all.”
Aeschylus called to the innkeeper for his best wine, in the forlorn hope that it might be drinkable.
“So what happens in your play?” I asked as we drank.
“It’s in three parts. In the first, Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, murders her husband with an axe. That’s in revenge for him using their daughter as a human sacrifice before going off to the Trojan War for ten years. Also, she’s very angry about a slave girl that he brings back with him.”
“Yes, I’ve had that problem too,” I murmured, half to myself.
“Your wife took an axe to you?” Aeschylus asked solicitously.
“No. Diotima and I aren’t married yet. The bit about the slave girl.” I explained that Diotima had once been very displeased to find me in the company of a beautiful slave by the name of Asia. It had all been entirely innocent, but convincing Diotima of that had been tricky.
Aeschylus shrugged. “Wives can be irrational about such things.”
“What happens next in the play?”
“In part two, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, slaughters his mother in revenge for her taking an axe to his father. He also offs his mother’s lover.”
“Fair enough.”
“Then in part three, the Furies attack Orestes as a kin-slayer. He’s saved at the last moment by the goddess Athena. The gods hold a trial over the whole affair. Orestes gets off on a hung jury. Athena invites the Furies to live in Athens forever by way of compensation, since they’re not allowed to tear Orestes into little bits. The play closes with women and children singing the praises of the gods and the mysterious workings of destiny.”
“Seems a bit flat on the climax,” I said.
“What’s wrong with it?” Aeschylus said. For some reason he seemed defensive.
“After all that murder and mayhem, it ends with a not-guilty? Your fans will never go for it, Aeschylus. Also, it’s obvious Orestes did it. I have an idea to fix the plot-”
“If you can do better, young man, I look forward to seeing you at the next contest. Come with your own play, then we’ll see who’s got the plot.”
“I might do that,” I said. Now that I’d seen how Aeschylus did it, the writing seemed very simple, and I knew I could spell better.
The plan was for Aeschylus to stand where he’d stood all those years ago, when he saw the flashing signal. We would try to reflect light using his shield, from the direction in which he said the signal had come. At the end, we would know whether it was a soldier or someone else who had talked to the enemy. The answer would narrow our field of suspects.
There was nothing to distinguish Marathon from any other Hellenic fishing village. The people lived on the coast, beside a spring where a stream of fresh water flowed. Their homes were small and designed for shelter from the wind more than comfort. They didn’t bother with a jetty. Each morning the fishermen hauled their craft off the sands and straight into the sea.
We ate a simple breakfast of figs and bread and watered wine, before Aeschylus led us out of the town, through a grove of olive trees that grew behind the houses, and onto the open field. It was a short walk. Aeschylus stopped at the edge.
The plain of Marathon didn’t look like a battlefield. It looked like a good place for a camping holiday.
“This is the first time I’ve been back,” Aeschylus said to us as he surveyed the scene for long moments. “It’s been thirty years.”
We could only imagine what Aeschylus must be feeling.
“Has it changed much since you saw it last?” Diotima asked.
“There are fewer Persians,” Aeschylus said shortly. “It’s a distinct improvement.”
He stepped forward and we followed behind, not wishing to disturb his memories with our talk.
I’d always thought of Marathon as being a small place, but it wasn’t. The open land before us was roughly rectangular in outline, some two thousand paces across the short side, and perhaps three times that in length, stretching along the coast to the northeast. From where we stood, the village lay in the bottom right-hand corner of the field of battle.
Before us, two hundred paces away, was an enormous mound of dirt, upon which grew grasses. It was easy to see that the dirt had been shoveled there by men, because it was perfectly round at the base and rose evenly on all sides. A monument of marble stood at the top. That mound was in the perfect location for a good view.
Aeschylus strode toward it. The soil underfoot was rich and soft and covered with fennel plants that grew to knee height. It was like wading through a sea of yellow and green.
I thought that, like me, Aeschylus wanted to climb it for the view, but instead he stopped short, careful not to tread upon its slope. He held out an arm, to prevent our passage.
“My brother lies in there,” he said, simply.
“Your brother, sir?” Socrates asked.
“You see before you the burial mound of the heroes of Marathon.”
I canceled my plan to enjoy the view from the top.
Aeschylus said, “The memorial stone displays one hundred and ninety-two names.” He pointed to the far end of the field. “And in that direction you will find the trench where we buried the Persian dead. All six thousand four hundred of them.”