Of Merchants & Heros by Paul Waters

Author:Paul Waters
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: MacMillan
Published: 2008-04-08T22:00:00+00:00

NINE

FIRST THE GROVE AROUND Kynosarges and the temple of Herakles went up in flames. Next was the turn of the Lykeion. We watched from the walls as the pines flared against the sky, engulfing everything – the colonnades from where I had watched Menexenos and his friends practise for the games; the bath-house, the public rooms with their lecture rooms and sculptures and fine paintings; even the sacred grove around Wolf-Apollo, which everyone thought would be spared out of reverence for the gods.

But the Lykeion was only the beginning. Next the Macedonians turned their attention to the Akademy, a place renowned throughout all Greece for its learning and excellence. I saw grown men with tears streaming down their faces as they watched helpless as fire raged through the school and library and tended gardens. There was nothing of military advantage to be gained by such destruction. It was, they said, the accumulated wisdom of all humanity they were destroying.

Next, Philip divided his army, leaving Philokles outside the walls of Athens to keep us penned in there, while he marched on Piraeus.

I thought of the neglected Long Walls, by which the Athenians might have moved in safety between the city and the port. Now they stood in ruins. Piraeus, though so close, had to look to its own defence as best it could.

Yet, by the favour of some god, and the stubbornness of its small garrison, Piraeus held. Frustrated, Philip took out his anger on the surrounding countryside, setting fire to everything that would burn, and tearing down every temple and shrine and object of beauty or veneration he found. From the walls we watched the smoke rise all over Attika as fields and farms were put to the torch.

When, finally, there was nothing left to destroy or steal, and nothing for the army to feed on, the Macedonians withdrew, back the way they had come, northwards over the passes to Boiotia. On the day afterwards, I rode out with Menexenos and his father to see what had become of the farm.

The road beyond the city was strewn with shards. Even the dead had not been spared Philip’s wrath. The shards were the remains of funeral vases, which had stood over the tombs that lined the road.

The tombs, too, had been smashed; human bones lay over the scorched earth, spilled from their broken sarcophagi. In the rural demes the little rustic temples with their wooden posts and straw roofs had been set alight. The images of the gods lay toppled.

Kleinias was not a man to make a display of his emotion. But as we came upon some new piece of wanton destruction he would shake his head, or comment on whose wasted land we were passing.

At one point, when we were beyond Hymettos, Menexenos said, ‘Father, go back to the city. We can do this another day.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It must be faced.’

Mount Paneion appeared in the distance, and we turned down the track that led to the farmstead. Even from here I could see the blackened terraces on the slopes, where the vineyard had been.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.