The Walled Orchard (49 page)

There were debates about it in Assembly, of course. Now one of the great things about a democracy, which anyone considering setting one up in their native city should bear in mind, is that the voters really do believe that anything is possible. If there is a food shortage, for example, it’s no use explaining to them that there is no food to be had; that the Spartan fleet is blockading Byzantium and we can’t get so much as a grain of wheat past them, or that the Public Treasury is so empty that you can see more floor than coins. They won’t believe you. What you must do is blame somebody. You must get up on your feet and say, ‘Antimachus is responsible for the corn shortage; he’s done a deal with the corn factors to create an artificial shortage, and he’s lining his own pockets while your wives and babies starve. I propose that Antimachus be prosecuted.’ Then, when all the voters have gone rushing off like happy children to lynch Antimachus, and only a few of the old and confused are left, you propose the motions necessary to do what can be done in the circumstances, bribe the few remaining voters present to vote in favour, and then get on with the job. This is rough on Antimachus, of course, but it’s a fair proposition that if he’s a politician in the public eye then he’s had it coming to him for a long time, so in the end the system works.

After the news of the Sicilian disaster, of course, the Athenians’ belief in their own omnipotence was badly shaken. At first they were rather too preoccupied with panicking to reason the thing out, but when whole weeks had passed and still the Spartans weren’t sacking the Ceramicus they stopped feeling subdued and argued thus. We ordered Sicily to be conquered (said the Athenians). It wasn’t. Now anything we order done is as good as done unless some one of us deliberately sabotages it, and since we are omnipotent, only we ourselves can stop ourselves doing something. We must therefore punish the saboteurs. Now the Generals, Nicias and Demosthenes, cannot be punished, since they are dead already. But we can do anything, including punishing the guilty. It therefore stands to reason that they can’t really have been to blame, especially since they died like heroes, and heroes don’t go around sabotaging things and bringing about their own deaths. The only possible saboteurs were the young men who damaged the statues. They must therefore be killed. Before they are killed, it is desirable that they be found. Therefore we must find them. The fact that we cannot presently find them can only be explained by a conspiracy. Therefore we will kill the conspirators.

Which is what they proceeded to do. Their test for finding out whether someone was in on the conspiracy or not was brilliantly simple. They knew that any conspirator, when questioned, would automatically deny any knowledge of the conspiracy. So when a man was standing his trial, and the prosecutor asked him what he knew about the conspiracy and he said ‘Nothing at all’, they hauled him off to the prison and stood him a large hemlock. If, however, the accused was clever and said, ‘As it happens, I do know who was involved in the conspiracy; it was Lysicles and Phaonides and the rest of that crowd from the Gymnasium’, then they would exterminate the Gymnasium set, and the informer as well, on the grounds that if he knew about the conspiracy and hadn’t told anyone before now, he was to all intents and purposes a conspirator himself.

The really odd thing about all this was that of all the people they killed, none of them actually did have anything to do with the smashing-up of the statues. Now you would have thought that, in what was effectively a random sample of the political classes, at least one of the smashers would have drawn the short straw, so to speak. But they seemed immune, and I was able to feel relatively secure. I say relatively; in context, that meant that I felt reasonably confident that if I started a bowl of porridge and ate quickly, I would probably stay alive long enough to finish it. My personal nightmare was that one of the actual smashers would be caught in some general sweep, lose his nerve and confess, giving such plausible corroborative detail that even my idiotic fellow citizens would believe him. And then of course my name would be mentioned as being someone who was actually there, and the next thing I would know about it would be an alarming feeling of numbness around the toes.

When the party was just starting to get exciting, and the juries were working flat out, in .shifts, to clear the backlog of cases, a gentleman by the name of Demeas came round to see me one evening. Now Demeas was one of the masters of a trade that has now almost died out, although there are sporadic efforts to revive it; he was a professional informer. He made a reasonable living out of it — his main work was reporting contraband goods in return for a percentage of their value, and let me tell you that he had an almost supernatural ability to tell, just by looking at them, whether goods were contraband or not. I am told that he had been apprenticed in his youth to the great Nicarchus, perhaps the leading informer of all time, and that may explain where he got his instinct from. Now when this business with the statues came up, Demeas set to work with a degree of enthusiasm which should serve as an example to skilled tradesmen everywhere. He was, however, slightly hampered by a shortage of raw materials. Just as you cannot make fine pottery without glaze, you cannot bring a successful prosecution without witnesses; and since the mortality rate among witnesses in this affair was almost as high as that among defendants, most of the professional witnesses had been used up or had retired, and for once there was no rush of amateur talent to take their place. In the normal course of events, an Athenian loves being a witness, particularly in a treason trial. It gives him a chance to participate in the downfall of a leading public figure (which gives one a feeling of pride and something to tell one’s grandchildren), as well as the opportunity to speak in public, which no Athenian not cursed with a cleft palate can resist. But with so many witnesses being promoted from the supporting cast to the leading role, so to speak, it was getting difficult to find anyone remotely plausible, even for cash in advance. Hence Demeas’ visit to me.

When a person with so much standing in the community as Demeas comes to call on you, you don’t keep him hanging about on the doorstep, particularly if there are people about who might see you. Nor do you refuse to listen to whatever it is he has to say; for if you do, you risk finding out a great many things about yourself that you never knew before.

‘Eupolis,’ said Demeas, putting down his cup and stretching out his toes towards the fire, ‘I believe you know Aristophanes the son of Philip.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You were with him in Sicily, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I’d heard.’ Demeas nodded approvingly. He was a short man; for some reason all the great informers are —Nicarchus was a tiny little chap, by all accounts. Demeas had broad, round shoulders, a perfectly circular head with short hair, and no trace of a neck whatsoever. He wore a signet ring with a lion on it on the first finger of his left hand, and there were wine-stains down the front of his tunic. I didn’t greatly care for him, but I confess I take these irrational dislikes to people.

‘Now then,’ said Demeas, ‘while you were in Sicily, did Aristophanes say anything at all about the desecration of the holy statues?’

‘No,’ I said truthfully, ‘not that I can remember.’

Demeas put his head on one side. ‘What did you talk about, then?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘we discussed the War, and how to keep out of the way of the enemy, the play he was writing, that sort of thing.’

‘So you were quite friendly with him?’

I smelt danger, and decided to hedge. ‘I wouldn’t say friendly,’ I said, after a pause for what I hoped looked like considered thought. ‘And I wouldn’t say unfriendly, either. We just got on with the work in hand — getting to Catana and so forth.’

‘But surely,’ Demeas suggested, ‘the two of you, in such close proximity, sharing such terrible dangers and with no one else to turn to but each other; surely you discussed other things.’

‘I can’t say we did, actually.’

‘I see.’ Demeas rested his chin on his knuckle for a moment. ‘You know, I believe you, of course, but other people might not.’

‘Other people?’

‘Hypothetically. Reasonable men, if you like. They might think that under such circumstances if Aristophanes had, say, something on his conscience, something that was bothering him, it would be only natural for him to confess it to whoever he felt closest to at the time, or even just whoever happened to be there.’

‘Would they?’

‘Wouldn’t you? And then you say, “No, Aristophanes told me nothing.” Now they might well think, these men are friends, they’ve been through great trials together, it’s natural — laudable, even — that the one should cover up for the other. That they should collude with each other; no, that’s not the right word. It’s on the tip of my tongue…’

‘Conspire?’

‘Not conspire exactly; but you get the general idea. But then these hypothetical reasonable men would start feeling confused, because they wouldn’t know which of them was covering up for the other. And if they happened to be forming a jury at the time, they might execute both of you, just to be on the safe side. They would take the view that covering up for a blasphemer and a traitor is no better — morally — than committing the crime yourself.’

‘That’s the way they think, is it?’

‘Sadly, yes.’

‘And is it likely that a jury should be faced with this sort of dilemma?’ I asked. ‘In the near future, say?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ Demeas confirmed. ‘Where were you, the night the fleet sailed?’

‘Here,’ I said. ‘Ask my wife.’

‘Does she sleep at all, your wife? Or does she suffer from permanent insomnia?’

‘She has been known to sleep, yes. Where were
you
the night the fleet sailed?’

‘In Samos,’ he replied smoothly, ‘having dinner with the Athenian governor and his staff. I was investigating the smuggling of prohibited goods, and they were helping me.’

I remembered the trial. ‘You’re lucky to have such a good alibi,’ I said.

‘Alibi?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know, people are very hard on us public-spirited people. I don’t care if I’m being immodest here, but I believe I make a substantial contribution to the preservation of our democracy.’

‘Without men like you,’ I said, ‘there could be no democracy.’

‘Exactly. And you know, I’m not a thin-skinned man, but I do get hurt sometimes by what people say.’

‘People?’

‘Just ordinary people, you’d be surprised. But not just ordinary people. There’s always someone ready to point the finger.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’ He looked sad. ‘For instance, there was a play I went to a few years ago which contained a personal attack on me. I think it was meant to be a Comedy. Anyway, there was this man in a funny mask purporting to be me, doing all sorts of antisocial things on stage, and everyone was laughing. It was really quite upsetting, especially for my wife.’

That explained the interest in Aristophanes; the play had been one of his. It wasn’t a particularly good scene, either.

‘And that wasn’t all,’ continued Demeas, now sadder than ever. ‘The very next year, I can’t remember the name of the play or who wrote it, but there was a Chorus which suggested that I was no better than a tapeworm or some such creature, and that if ever the City found itself short of funds it should put me through a press as if I was an olive and squeeze out all the bribes and blood-money. There was also a reference to my domestic arrangements that I found singularly distasteful.’

That explained the interest in me. I don’t know what gets into these people,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said Demeas, now virtually in tears, ‘it just goes to show. For the sake of a cheap laugh and a round of applause, some people are prepared to throw around the most damaging — I might say dangerous — accusations, and they don’t give a damn if they ruin reputations or even lives. It’s highly irresponsible, if you ask me. Why, men have been convicted of serious crimes just because the Theatre has poisoned the public mind against them. I think the people responsible have a lot to answer for.’

‘You have a point, of course,’ I said.

‘You think so?’

‘Indeed.’

‘That’s comforting to know,’ said Demeas, and he got up to leave. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I won’t take up any more of your time. If you remember anything. .

‘I’ll be sure to tell you.’

‘You know where I live?’

‘Yes indeed.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll say good night.’

‘Good night.’

Now I don’t think they’re as popular as they used to be, but at one time Athens used to be crawling with those teachers of philosophy, men like the celebrated Socrates and Gorgias the Sicilian, who used to give little lectures; it was three obols for a seat, and a drachma to take part, or something like that. They would present a moral dilemma, and then everyone would say how they would act under the circumstances, and the lecturer would prove beyond doubt that they were all as evil as Hecate, and they would go home highly delighted and tell their friends. I went to one of these entertainments once — I think someone bet me I couldn’t keep awake — and the topic was whether it was justified to allow a wicked man who was charged with a crime he did not commit to be executed for it in order for a good man who had in fact committed the crime in question to go free. I don’t remember what conclusion Socrates or whoever the lecturer was came to — it’s an odd thing about those lectures, but nobody ever can seem to remember that —but the general impression I took home with me was that if ever I got into such a mess I should do whatever I liked, since virtually every course of action put forward had been shown to be fundamentally wrong.

As I closed the door and bolted it, I thought about that lecture and reflected that I had been cheated out of three obols, since here I was in a highly similar situation and I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. There were differences of course; Aristophanes was wicked and guilty, and I was good and innocent. Nevertheless, it was a close enough parallel for me to be tempted to go round to Socrates’ house and demand a refund there and then.