The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae Read Free Page B

opportunity to pull him down. But even they shouldn’t have brought his family down or tried him in the public way they did. It was like trying a walking corpse. Dragging him to court, incapable of speaking in his own defence, on that filthy stinking stretcher was deliberate. They intended to rub his nose in the dirt of public shame.
    Not that a defence would have done him any good: the trial was rigged. Rigged by the same men who fought beside him at Marathon. Once the Persians had gone, they left off being heroes and reverted to type, fighting each other for power in the sewers of the new democracy. We should have thanked the Persians for attacking us; they were the threat that made Athenians stick together. The only great thing this city of the Goddess had ever done was to stand together at Marathon and it was Miltiades who gave hope and leadership.
    The trial took no time; I suppose they didn’t want him to die in that chamber and embarrass them. He was outlawedand his family’s rights and property forfeited. Then they celebrated: all together men that hated each other but hated the General more. Even Themistocles. But the real cruelty, which by the way was the earliest indicator of what a monster democracy would become, was the fine they levied: fifty talents.
    By imposing that fine the court ensured Cimon not only lost his father but he lost his future too. Those bastards, that was the real cruelty; fifty talents levied on a penniless nine year old boy condemning him to a life of poverty and debt.
    Not only Cimon but Elpinice, because for her there would be no dowry and so no marriage thus depriving her of the only future fit for a respectable Athenian woman. As for Stesagoras, there was no official punishment: nothing you’ll find in any of our papyrus or stone records, just a warning.
    “Be on the first ship out of Phaleron.”
    You will understand the consequences, reader, whoever you are. I know as you read this you too will choke with anger. Miltiades saved Athens, saved the Demos and all free Greece and was rewarded by a painful death in a stinking gaol and the ruin of his son. The fools: they should have known the Persians would be back with the greatest army the world had ever seen
    After, when it was over, I walked back towards the house in my father’s armour, now too small and chafing my shoulders and neck. Where would I go? What would I do? As I turned the corner to Miltiades’s house I saw the answer to at least one of those questions. Athenian justice had been expedited quickly. The slaves and valuables were being taken away and there was smoke rising from the roof. I was homeless and alone in a vengeful city.
    The children were gone. But even there, watching the pillage of the once great home of the Philiads with the smoke stinging my eyes, I didn’t have the clarity of vision to foreseethe full tragedy. The effect on the boy: his homeless state and the reputation for wildness that followed him because of the way he was forced to live as a pariah outside society.
    And worse the foul slanders about the unnatural sexual relationship with his sister. You know the stories, reader, you probably enjoyed hearing them. Well, none of it was true. None of it. I was there, I know!
    Ironic, isn’t it? Eight years after I sat there watching my home burn, every single home in Athens was destroyed by the Persians. Thank the Gods we can’t see the future. I remember that I slumped down onto a low wall and put my head in my hands. Round about me men were carrying off what they’d looted from the house, shouting to each other and laughing. After a while it grew quiet, the only sound being flame scorching timber and the cracking of plaster and stone. To most people the sound of a fire reminds them of hearth and home but to me it’s the sound of ruin.
    Amongst the knot of idlers watching the flames there was a face I recognised, a free man of Miltiades who bossed the stable hands. There were tear tracks smearing