Iggulden, C [Golden Age 01] Lion by Conn Iggulden

Author:Conn Iggulden
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-03-28T23:00:00+00:00

21

A month had flown, bringing a week of rain and even a night of snow across Athens as winter deepened. Despite the frost, the theatre was busy as a hive. Four different playwrights had found choregoi patrons for the festival the following spring – sixteen plays between them. Each company demanded as many hours as they could get on the single stage. Musicians practised new tunes in discordant competition. Scenery painters found themselves negotiating with carpenters from another set. Different choruses came to blows as they fought for space to practise. The festival of Dionysus gave employment to a great number of Athenians. Perhaps some of them might even remember that and be grateful to their patrons for the rest of their lives.

High in the arc of wooden seats, Pericles looked down. He shook his head in awe as he tried to count the number of men working in that place. There had to be hundreds – and the vast sums Aeschylus said were needed made a little more sense. Pericles reminded himself it was an honour to be chosen as choregos for a playwright who had already won the great spring festival once. Only the famous Phrynichus had won it more often and he was approaching the end of his career, his honours all behind. Pericles was no longer sure whether it had been his idea or Aeschylus’. Either way, Aeschylus was the future and even an investment of four thousand drachms was surely not too much.

He tried not to think about it. Each day, new bills arrived at the estate. He had given his word to Aeschylus and so they had to be honoured. Neither his mother nor his wife seemed delighted to see so much silver flowing away from the family coffers. Thetis in particular insisted on checking every bill and sending runners to query the amounts. She didn’t understand the damage it did, the embarrassment she caused him. Whenever he objected, Thetis just folded her arms and said they would rob him blind if she let them. Pericles bit his lip at the thought. The two women were very different, but in that one thing – that single, forbidding expression – he sometimes found it hard to tell them apart.

He cheered up at the thought of the child growing. Women changed when they were pregnant, as he understood it. Perhaps when the child was born, if all went well – he touched the wooden bench for luck – his wife would once more become the playful woman he had married.

He found he was chewing the inside of one lip as he thought. Thetis was already showing her pregnancy. She began most days heaving weakly into a bowl. Her feet had swollen and she complained about their hurting every time he saw her. One of the house slaves had the job of rubbing them at the end of each day, though it did not seem to improve her mood. She was always hot or irritated – and Pericles was the most common target of her wrath.

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