The Marathon Conspiracy (16 page)

Come to that, my own family was ancient too. Father claimed descent from Daedalus, the genius inventor who created the Labyrinth in far-off Crete, and who after the fall of King Minos had fled to Athens to begin a new life. The difference was, genius inventors don’t make money.

The road I walked followed Pericles’s land before reaching his farmhouse. I looked at the olive trees with interest, the sheep and the corn planted in the fertile soil, and I felt a glow of satisfaction that something like this would soon be mine. There was a shepherd boy trailing the sheep (of course, otherwise they would have wandered off), and I waved at him happily; he stared back as if no one ever waved at shepherd boys.

The farmhouse, when I came to it, lay off the road behind a
stone fence and a wooden gate. The house surprised me in its small size, but then I reflected that Pericles spent all his time in the city, as indeed had his father before him, and the farmhouse probably hadn’t been updated for two generations. But the house and the barn beside it were well kept and spoke of proper care.

Pericles stood out the front, in conversation with an older man who was dressed in farm clothes, which is to say a loincloth and a broad-brimmed hat of straw. His skin was as burnt as my cooking.

As I walked up to them, Pericles said, without preamble, “Ah, good day to you, Nicolaos. This is Simaristos. He runs the estate for me. He’ll be coming with us.”

The older man nodded and said, “Call me Sim. Everyone does.”

No one had to tell me that Simaristos was a slave. No free man would willingly work for another, and Simaristos—Sim—had that air of hard-won competence that comes with a man who knows his business.

Pericles excused himself to see to other matters before we set off. Sim and I waited outside.

“Do you know anything about farming?” he asked, in a voice that implied he already knew the answer.

“I’m eager to learn,” I told him. After all, how hard could it be? Put seeds in the ground, watch them grow. If an uneducated farmer could do it, so could I.

Sim frowned. “Well, I hope you have more sense than my master.”

I blinked. “Pericles doesn’t have sense?”

“The man’s insane,” Sim said, and threw his arms up in disgust. “We lose money hand over fist. You want to know why? Because Pericles couldn’t be bothered with his own estate. This place is the source of his wealth, and he couldn’t give a rat’s ass. If it weren’t for me, he’d be broke.”

This was interesting stuff. I’d never before heard Pericles criticized, and certainly not by a slave. But this was no ordinary
slave; Sim was entrusted with the good running of one of the most important estates in Athens.

“What does he do that’s so wrong?” I said. “I ask so I won’t make the same mistakes with my own land.”

“He insists we sell all our produce, at wholesale rates, mind you, and then buy what we need in the agora at retail prices. Can you believe it? May Zeus strike me dead if I lie. Dear Gods, I know of at least three occasions when my master has bought produce that he grew himself.”

Pericles walked up beside us as Sim finished his tirade. I wondered if he’d explode at hearing himself criticized by his own slave, but Pericles merely shrugged and said, “Running an estate this size is a full-time job. I have more important things to worry about.”

Sim said, “Master, I’ve told you before. You lose money every time you sell a basket of corn at wholesale rates and then buy another basket at retail. At least let me sort out what your family and the farm needs and set that aside.”

“No,” said Pericles. “Then I’d have to approve your choices, and I don’t have the time.”

This was a side to Pericles I’d never seen before: a man so engrossed in the running of Athens that he neglected his own business.

Pericles walked toward the fields. Sim and I followed.

I asked, “Where are we going?”

Pericles said, “I haven’t explained how I intend to do this, have I? Naturally I don’t have a spare farm in my purse, but this is a large estate, as you’ve seen. My plan is to apportion a part to you.”

Which meant I would become neighbor to Pericles.

We walked across the fields, through lush fields of barley. Presently I noticed a change in the land. It became harder, a trifle stonier, the vegetation more sparse.

We stopped at the foot of a large, barren hill.

“Here we are!” Pericles said in a jovial tone.

“This is it?”

We stood on stony, dry ground, with few bushes, but with straggly olive trees dotted about, so gnarled they looked ancient and ready to die. Among the trees was a small hut, so ill kept you could see through it where the wooden planks had rotted and fallen off.

This had to be the worst farmland in Attica. Pericles had tricked me.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” said Sim. He knew what I was thinking. “There are only the olive trees, no other plants, because we put lime here.”

“Lime?”

“Like from building sites. We get it cheaply and cart it in. Lime’s good for olives. Other plants don’t like it, though, so they don’t grow much.”

“You said you carted in lime,” I said to Sim.

“Yes.”

“How did you get it here?”

“How about … on a cart?” he suggested.

I didn’t own a cart. I’d have to get one. That would cost money. Of course, for the moment we had Blossom and the cart he came with, but Blossom was only a rental; we’d have to give him back.

“That stony hill’s no problem, either.”

I looked at him blankly.

“All these stones on the ground around us rolled down from the hill,” Sim explained patiently. “It don’t mean nothing about what the soil’s like, though I’ll grant you”—he gave Pericles a hard look—“I’ll grant you it would stand a little hoeing. Also, the hill’s to the north.”

“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.”

I
ARRIVED HOME EAGER
to tell my father about our new property, only to walk into a family crisis.

W
HEN 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.

Most boys would have complained, whined, screamed, or threatened to run away from home in order to avoid school, but Socrates quite liked it. Except for having to wake before dawn every day. That he hated.

Every school in Athens begins at first light and ends at dusk. The teachers used to run the schools for even longer, sometimes
from dawn to midnight, but after a few boys dropped dead from exhaustion, the parents complained, and laws were passed limiting school time to daylight. The teachers grumbled that modern kids had it too easy—things had been harder in their day—but they stuck to the letter of the law. So dawn to dusk it was.