The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae Read Online Free PDF

wine and rich food he’d have made a good Spartan. And he hadn’t even finished.
    “But be very clear about whose side you’re on, Mandrocles, because you’re treading the deck of his ship.”
    I was about to tell him I’d never ever be Xanthippus’s man but he beat me to it.
    “No, not Xanthippus. Use your brain, boy; do you seriously think he’d arrange for you to be brought on board? The Athene Nike sails under Themistocles now; it’s his pay off from the trial.”
    All I could remember was the warning Themistocles gave me before Paros. Again Lysias read my mind.
    “But don’t think that all is forgiven, there’s a score youhave to settle and a debt to pay before that.”
    He had only one more observation to make and not a comforting one.
    “So while we’re on Aegina we work together: after that who knows? Which of us will go over to the Great King and which of us will stay and fight?”
    The morning breeze had sprung up so the sails were fully unfurled and the rowers pulled in their oars. It was only a short way to the pirate island of Aegina and the men had hardly worked up a sweat. The wine skins were broken out and food shared. Soon the buzz of talking spread across the deck. Athenian triremes are crewed by free men who choose to be there, not slaves, and they behave accordingly. You’d never die wondering what someone’s opinion was on a trireme.
    Other Greeks and the Persians, of course, used to laugh at us for this. For letting men voice their opinions and behave like equals in their down time. They regarded it as weak, ill-disciplined and against all the laws of sea craft. They’re not laughing now.
    Aegina was like a war zone: not the hot war of blood and battle but the cold war of intrigue and treachery. The arena of war where no man can trust even his neighbour and where loyalties are bought and sold several times each day. Who would expect anything less of Aegina, a nest of vipers? An island where they offered earth and water to the Great King almost before he demanded it. The Persians were made welcome if only because they would destroy Athens. Because then their rival in trade would be no more. It didn’t matter to them that it was their fellow Greeks the Persians would be killing.
    Back then Aegina looked like an island inhabited by Greeks but it didn’t feel like one. The fighting war may have temporarily ceased but the intriguer’s war was in full swingand the island was unstable and unsafe. It reminded me of Athens while we were waiting for the Persians. Every morning the dead were collected by the city guard. They were found in alleys, middens, watercourses and sometimes left naked and mutilated on their own doorsteps as a warning to others.
    No one saw the killings or who wielded the knives, all was done under cover of night. The dead man’s last thoughts must often have been surprise. Surprise that with no warning it was a friend doing the cutting. A man who maybe just minutes before had suggested a last drink or a quiet walk to discuss a proposition or deal.
    So no one knew what to expect and who they could trust and the miasma of fear sweated off by this hung like a metaphysical pall over the city: see, reader, I wasn’t born on the island of philosophers for nothing.
    We pulled slowly into the harbour and after the customary hostile welcome were made to wait and then overcharged for one of the worst moorings. So it was near dark before we got our first close up look at the city. It could have been anywhere in the Persian Empire rather than Greece. The harbour housed ships from all over including many Phoenician war ships in the service of the Empire lightly disguised as merchantmen. The bars, stalls and brothels on the quayside were crowded with the mixture of Greeks and barbarians being roughly equal. Not what I’d expected after Marathon.
    You could sense the ferment and treachery from the boat: the island was seething. The excitement was infectious, I was eager to get