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  With an initial advantage of six to two, the Samians managed to push the scouts out. One of the scouts, thinking quickly, wedged the sharp end of his sword in the door. His comrade, meanwhile, screamed for help from the Athenians watching open-mouthed from a distance.

  Help came, with the Athenians gaining the upper hand in numbers. As the besiegers charged forward, the Samian archers were ordered onto the walls to shoot down on them. This, in turn, gave the shieldbreaker crews scores of new targets. From the near silence of just another morning, the war had roared to life in a few moments. Oarsmen on ships patrolling the straits heard it, as did the Milesian lookouts on Mount Mycale, who spoke of it in terms like “eruption” or “dambreak”. Somewhere on the other side of the island, a villager in a mountain hamlet heard the tumult and realized for the first time that a war was being fought nearby.

  Pressing hard, the Athenians managed to open enough of a space for armored men to slip through the gate. One, two, and then three of those brave hoplites went down, until a fourth managed to keep his feet, and swinging a torch in the Ionians’ faces, drove some of them back. He went down, too, but the fight now passed within the threshold.

  Like the army of Polycrates facing the Spartans, the Ionians made a battle of it by assembling all their able-bodied troops. Hoping to trap the Athenians in just one quarter of the city, they erected impromptu barricades out of carts, doors, window shutters, and furniture from the houses. Though the Samian streets were broad, they weren’t wide enough for the Athenians to attack the barricades in strength. Under fire from the shieldbreakers, the archers took to the roofs instead, shooting down on the invaders.

  What the Ionians lacked this time, however, was a figure like Polycrates to rally them to truly heroic resistance. The barricades, being built out of light materials, collapsed under the weight of the men fighting on them. The final blow came from within: the Samian democrats, at last seeing their chance to affect the outcome of the war, pelted the defenders from their upper-storey windows with pots, kitchen utensils, flaming coals, even costly flasks of oil. The spectacle of their own citizens fighting for the enemy deflated the morale of the Ionians. The barricades were forced, and the Athenians, like idle demons drunk with the prospect of malice, poured gleefully into the city.

  It was the two hundred forty-ninth day since Pericles led his army to the beaches of Samos.

  *

  The way the siege ended prompted an obvious question: how could it be, many wondered, that a contest as bloody and hard-fought as any in living memory could be decided with such a small but disastrous blunder? It seemed implausible. It seemed inglorious. The alternative — that the door had been deliberately unlatched by someone inside, possibly a democratic sympathizer — was a marginally better story. But no one in the captured town came forward to claim credit for the act. Perhaps he was killed, shrugged the fabulists, in the confused hours when the Athenians took the city.

  Whichever way it was staged, then, the final act of the play left the audience dissatisfied. Despite legends of astounding wealth, the city was in desperate straits when the Athenians sacked the place. There were corpses everywhere — dried, deflated husks of human beings, left to lie in honor in their houses if their families survived, otherwise piled up in alleys and storerooms by a populace too famished to bury them. On some streets, the stench of rotting bodies was absent; on others, it went beyond mere charnel house offal, striking the senses with the force of a weapon.

  The domestic prizes were few. Over the months of the siege most of the Ionians had collected their valuables and hidden them. Alas, the secret caches of the dead were lost forever. As for that other sort of prize, the impact of Pericles’s blockade on the children of Samos left the city with precious few young boys or girls to take captive. The boney, hollow-chested remains of the mothers — the ones that still lived, that is — were barely worth the trouble of violating. Many of the soldiers, starved for female entertainment, held their noses and did it anyway.

  The few hundred Ionian males still able to lift a sword surrendered en masse. As the Athenians took over the marketplace, a few old men stumbled out to greet the liberators. “Where’s Callinus?” asked the first officer on the scene. The men pointed to the council house. Investigating, the Athenians found the most prominent members of the oligarchy spread around the bowl-shaped hall, their bodies in various attitudes of permanent repose, their blood dripping down the steps and pooling in the pit. Callinus himself was discovered lying across three seats, his throat cut. On his chest and spilled on the floor was an armload of his most treasured scrolls.

  The soldiers came out and asked the next question. “Where’s the treasury?” Rushing off, they found they were too late — Pericles’ city guards already had the place surrounded.

  “You’re free to try the houses,” said the chief of the guard, “but this place is off limits.”

  This didn’t go over too well with the thetes who believed they’d earned a lapful of bullion. Had they not neglected their fields for a full season? Had they abandoned their wives to the attentions of the wastrels left behind in Athens, just for a few household baubles? The shoving began right away, giving way to a riot as more irate shieldmen found their way to the treasury. The victors got down to fighting each other until reinforcements from Pericles arrived. A hotheaded Acharnian pulled out a sword, announcing that his honor had been besmirched; opponents followed, leading to a desultory battle. When it was over, twenty Athenians lay dead in the market of Samos. More died that afternoon, after the war was over, than in all the time since the Ionians had sallied out to break the siege.

  Sophocles entered the city within an hour of its fall. There was, he realized, a chance that something remained of his son to honor. With Bulos trailing behind, he rushed through the unfamiliar city, bursting through the doors of likely places, interrogating exhausted Samians without pity for their own sufferings.

  “Where are the Athenian prisoners?” he barked at last at a woolen lump lying on the steps of the Athena shrine.

  “I don’t know,” came the reply from beneath the torn overcloak.

  “Where’s my son?”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  Frustrated, Dexion raised his walking stick and whacked the starving wretch. The impact did not make the fleshy slap he expected, but a disturbing click, as if two bones had been knocked together.

  He went on. As he searched, he tried to be alert to clues that might lead him to Iophon, but not to anything else. If he had looked or listened or smelled too closely, the evidence of suffering would have driven him away. He was particularly afraid to see the children — the pale, hollow-cheeked three-and four-year-olds with hair absent in clumps and eyes tormented by flies. These would stare at him from windows and doorways, most often naked, their faces filled not with anger or reproach, but with a cautious hope of basic human kindness that rent his heart. He averted his eyes at the slightest sign of them.

  He crossed paths at last with a pair of Athenians rushing in the opposite direction. One had a massive rucksack that clanked as he ran; the other was holding somewhat less booty, but cradled a tame ferret in one hand. The animal, which wore a jeweled collar, was clearly a pet pilfered from some unguarded house. The poet eyed it warily as he asked where the Athenian prisoners had been kept.

  “There’s a prison behind the council house, Dexion,” answered the animal lover, “But there’s not much left.”

  “Just tell me where it is.”

  Sophocles found some Athenians already standing outside the prison, milling and staring, holding their cloaks over their noses. They noticed him coming from some distance away, and parted to let him through. No one spoke.

  The bodies were lying in neat rows in the courtyard. For lack of flowers, the Athenians dressed them in pine boughs, which softened the odor but lent the scene an eerie neatness, as if the prisoners had conveniently expired on a single funeral bier. Sophocles passed from one to the next, inspecting t
hem all, trying to discern Iophon’s features on each blackened, gaping face. He thought, how similar all men look in the throes of bodily corruption! As similar as newborn babies to each other, it seemed.

  Dexion came at last to a body that was not branded on the forehead. Looking down, he saw that it lacked part of one finger below the last knuckle — and he knew. Sophocles’ heart sank, and he fell to his knees before this repulsive thing that he knew must be Iophon, but that looked more like some distant memory of his dead grandfather. The tears rolled free now; confronted with the body, he could do nothing to stop them. All at once he felt heavy, pulled to the ground, head bowed to wash the curled, shrunken feet of his boy. For the first time in many years, he was playing a script he had neither written nor read, and he didn’t give a thought of how it played to his audience.

  The silence that commenced when he arrived deepened into something quieter still: a whispered, reverent hush in the presence of the sacred. What Dexion would suffer, to bury his only son, was appointed him in full measure, without regard to fame or his services to the city. Though they were reminded time and again, the men of Athens were surprised when heroism proved no immunity from the hates.

  Chapter IX

  HYDRA

  “O to be wafted where the wooded sea-cape stands upon the laving sea. O to pass beneath Sounion’s level summit, that we might salute sacred Athens!”

  — Chorus, Ajax, 1. 1215

  *

  On the last day of the trip home, the fleet benefited from what navy hands called the “Aeginetan wind.” This was a suddenly refreshed pace, a lightening of the oars, as the bows completed the great right turn around Cape Sounion and the men began to pull north for home. The new Temple of Poseidon, smiling toothy white on the cleft chin of Attica, was better than wine for the oarsmen’s spirits. Dexion, too, felt his bottom lighten at the sight of the familiar coastline. Rising to his feet, he found himself naming the little coves and villages under his breath as they slipped by. Though still in mourning, his heart skipped a beat when he got his first direct sight of Athens: the reflection of the early afternoon sun on the helmet of the Acropolis statue of Athena Promachos, towering free and gathering brilliance like a tiny dawn.

  Poristes, seeing that his passenger had left his bench, came up beside him. He had become so used to silence from Sophocles that he’d forgotten to position his unburned side, with his good ear, toward the poet. Perceiving his mistake, the captain turned, facing inboard as he leaned against the arrow screen.

  “When we were called to sea, we left so quickly my wife and son couldn’t see me off. Now I expect no one will miss our return.”

  “Fortunate for you,” came the perfunctory reply.

  “They’ll come for you most of all,” said the captain, patting the other’s shoulder. “Officer of the deck, slow us down! Let them wait a little longer for the hero of the day.”

  The pipers reduced the cadence, cutting Antigone’s pace through the water as her sister ships rushed on toward the sheds.

  Poristes’ chatter now put a worry in Dexion’s mind: if Nais was not at the Piraeus waiting for him, would it mean she was already dead? Would it mean the news about Iophon had reached her already, and that she couldn’t look him in the face? What would Photia’s presence — or her absence — mean? When he was back on Samos and anticipated being this close to home, he imagined he would be relieved. With a prompt tie-up and clear streets, he would be in Colonus that very afternoon. But now that he was here, his hunger for resolution had grown, until the Saronic Gulf had grown to the dimensions of an ocean, and home seemed an insuperable distance beyond. He took his spot on the bench again, a look on his face like a condemned man awaiting the dawn.

  The first fishing boat reached the Antigone just as it came abreast of the harbor at Munychia. It was filled with young men in their party clothes, wearing eyeliner and rouge, toasting the ships out of silver cups. The pilot must have been as drunk as the passengers. The boat kept wandering into the path of the ship’s oars, obliging Poristes to scream at him to keep clear.

  One of the revelers passed a skin of wine up to an oarsman on the top tier. Poristes saw it and ordered him to drop the gift in the sea.

  “But sir, they say it’s Thasian!”

  “Officer of the deck, either toss the skin overboard or toss the man.”

  The oarsman disposed of the wine. Poristes leaned to Dexion, saying “We must keep order now — most of our accidents happen with the end in sight.”

  Debarking, they were greeted by a waterfront crowded with faces. At Piraeus, the fleet’s successful return was always an occasion for an impromptu festival. Citizens and foreigners showed up in their best clothes, drinking, singing, waving streamers bearing the colors of their tribes. Smoke and sparks from the vendors’ carts hung over the scene, rising until the offshore breeze caught and carried them over the ships. There was a history of fires on such occasions. The magistrates in charge of the sheds kept crews standing by with water buckets, to keep the Athenian fleet from being burned by its well-wishers. But there was never a question of keeping the people from celebrating another victory.

  Dexion was mobbed by his fellow citizens from the moment he stepped ashore. If Nais or Photia had come there was no way for him to know. He could see no more than an arm’s length ahead of him as hands converged from every direction to make contact. He was patted, caressed, pinched, and goosed; someone doused him with perfume. He was sunk in a dull roar of jabbering voices, out of which he could make out a few random utterances:

  “ … surprised if you ask me … ”

  “ … could have sacrificed his own son!”

  “Antigone! How amateurish!”

  “ … better than Aeschylus … ”

  “ … stuck with the program.”

  “Who’s to say?”

  “We need more like him!”

  Soldiers were posted to keep order, but many of these stood by as the crowd swelled around Dexion. He shouted that he needed to get through, but his voice was lost in the din.

  At last Poristes cupped his hands around his mouth and cried, “By the gods, move aside! Dexion has a sick wife!”

  That deck-voice, which was known to cut through the loudest of storms, did the trick. A few of the celebrants took it upon themselves to bring out the walking sticks with the brass handles. Sophocles saw blood spurt from broken noses as the self-appointed escort started swinging, crumpling the laggards and shoving aside all obstacles.

  The poet turned to thank Poristes; his last glimpse of his friend that day was of the captain placing a loose fist to his temple in salute. Dexion did the same, holding the pose until the mob closed around Poristes. Only at that moment — and not the hour of victory at Samos, or his first glimpse of the city — did he feel that a long diversion in his life was behind him at last.

  A sizable crowd followed him all the way to Colonus, narrowing behind him as the thoroughfare got tighter, shouting ahead so all the people would know the hero of Samos was in the neighborhood. On the Street of the Armorers, women and children stuck their heads out of second-story windows to witness his passing. An old woman leaned out to dump a chamberpot in the gutter, saw him below, and held her fire. In the scant moments he was in front of another house he saw a young lady brazenly lift the hem of her tunic for him. He was shocked. It was too gloomy in the house to see anything, but the dramaturge in him admired her timing.

  And then he was home.

  The abruptness of his arrival gave him pause. He recognized the little gate, the meandering fence in front of the garden, and the timber cornice of the house beyond, but it all bore a troubling air of unreality. The prancers behind him stopped prancing, and the pipes left off piping, as the crowd stood silent in the street, seeming to share in the poet’s confusion.

  He pushed open the gate and stepped inside. As he did so, the admirers left behind did him the courtesy of keeping quiet. The peace allowed him to hear a sparrow somewhere nearby give the sam
e desultory chirp he heard every day in his tent on Samos. There was no sound at all from inside the house. For all he knew, Nais and Photia could have been at Piraeus, looking for him.

  He proceeded, a little stiff-legged, through the garden where he had spent so many hours. The pink oleanders were blooming around the pit where he collected rainwater, as they did every year. The old milling stone under the plane tree was exactly as he remembered it, as was the stump where Bulos worked and the little bench where he lay down to dictate his verses — though the latter was in need of a fresh coat of paint. The beds of the kitchen garden could have used weeding.

  As for any Greek, the model in his mind of such homecomings was that of Homer’s Odysseus, returning to Ithaca after twenty years of warfare and wandering. The story had been retold to him since before he could declare a memory of it; he had thrilled to the adventure since he was a schoolboy, and had returned to it many times in his adulthood to admire the perfection of its bardic verse. In the master’s version, the hero was deposited asleep on the beach by his escorts, the Phaecaians. Athena, wishing to conceal him from his subjects until she could instruct him on the proper way to deal with the suitors afflicting his house, caused Ithaca to be shrouded in fog. When Odysseus woke up, the landscape was so strange to him he had to ask a stranger where he was. The passerby was, of course, the goddess herself in disguise. When she lifted the fog at last, the fact of his homecoming burst on him like an unexpected gift. Odysseus, the prince of liars, had an honest emotion at last, falling to his knees to kiss the ground.

  Sophocles had not been away twenty years but only nine months. His war had been hard-fought, but by ordinary men, not heroes. The only goddess he had seen was Pheidias’s Athena, and that only distantly, from at sea. The recognition of his home did not inspire him to fall to his knees. Instead, after so many months of anticipation, the place seemed vaguely diminished to him: how small his old world had been! After traveling such distances, and seeing such things, was it possible that his satisfaction with home would never return?