Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great Read Online Free PDF Page B

speech.
    He looked fit for a man of nearly seventy years. His skin glowed like a ploughman’s in summer—a consequence, no doubt, of a recent sea voyage from his academic posting on Rhodes. His tanned skin set off his abundance of snowy hair and a gleaming white chiton adorned by a purple-fringed girdle. Sitting there, serenely indifferent to the plight of the loose lamb, he seemed to be playing the role of a character who slept very well at night, yet had very important matters weighing on his silver-crested brow. Or at least that’s how it seemed to Swallow, who was old enough to remember Aeschines’s former career on the stage, specializing in kings, gods descendant, and honored corpses lying in state.
    The gavel sounded again, this time swung by the presiding judge. The seat was filled, surprisingly, not by a junior functionary but the King Archon himself. The only trials he presided over were supposed to involve special heinousness, such as parricide and profanation of the Mysteries.
    “Isn’t that Polycleitus?” Deuteros whispered, noting the same irregularity.
    “It is. So they’ve brought Aeschines back, and put Polycleitus in charge. Somebody has a great interest in seeing this Machon put down. Maybe we should change our verdict…”
    “Silence in the courtroom!” Polycleitus commanded. “The clerk will read the indictment.”
    “Hear O Athens! This court is convened according to all proper custom, under the due supervision of those so charged and here present, before a jury properly appointed, and in the names of Themis-bearer-of-scales and Athena-may-she-protect-us, and of Aglauros, Hestia, Enyo, Ares Enyalios, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone, Heracles, and the spirits of wheat, barley, vines and figs, and of the Boundaries of Attica. We gather here now, on this second day of Pyanopsion, under the archonship of Ciphisodorus, to hear and judge the citizen, Machon, son of Agathon, of the deme Scambonidae, on the charges so listed…”
    The clerk had to rustle through his notes, which seemed to be out of order. There was complete silence in the room now, and a general pricking up of ears and lightening of backsides, with the sole exception of the man who brought the lamb, who slumped down from the bench and hit the floor with a thud. No one helped him.
    “…the charges of, first, that he did contravene the instructions given him by the Assembly twelve years ago when he set out on campaign with the god, known in his human guise as Alexander III of Macedon; and second, that he did commit impiety before said god, who was deified by decree of the Assembly of the People on the sixteenth Metageitnion of last year. These are the charges.”
    “Who brings the indictment?” asked Polycleitus.
    “By the gods, I bring it,” said Aeschines, rising to his cue. His voice had a depth typical of actors, but with an orator’s urgency. It broke on the audience like the crash of a falling boulder—abrupt, inescapable.
    “Begin your statement. Start the water.”
    The clerk pulled the stopper out of the water clock. At the outset, the prosecution had the floor for twenty minutes, with additional time at the discretion of the archon. Blatherers and incompetents were given little indulgence; Aeschines, to be sure, would be given all the time he wanted.
     
    Athenians, I stand before you today after a long time away. In those years among foreigners I had much opportunity to observe the ways of other people, and to weigh their respective features in light of what I know as a citizen of this city. And in that time I never lost faith in the basic superiority of our arrangements, no matter how sadly abused, and in the inherent repugnance of our people against indecency and injustice, no matter how ubiquitous those vices may now seem. And I appear today with complete confidence that you will again judge rightly as I offer you the facts. Please understand that I make such charges with reluctance, and have so only sparingly in the