The Great King by Christian Cameron Page A

side of the treasuries. And your fellow Boeotians are just there, by the stream.’ He pointed at the nearly dry course of the river.
    ‘Thebans?’ I asked.
    He nodded. ‘Yes.’
    I didn’t quite spit. ‘Respected sir, I am a man of Plataea, and I would walk a dozen stades to avoid a man of Thebes.’
    He laughed. ‘It is a wonder that the Greeks have any common ground at all,’ he said. ‘Come – any man who brings two hundred followers to the games gets my attention. Are you the man who was at Marathon?’
    I nodded.
    He smiled. ‘I thought so. I’ll send a slave to tell Lord Cimon you are here.’
    We’d come to the edge of the valley.
    I had seldom seen so many people gathered in one place in all my life. I saw Cyrenes and Italiotes and Athenians and Messenians and Corinthians – and Spartans. More Spartans than you could shake a spear at. And with them, their women – tall, mostly blond, and all with the muscled arms and legs that mark Spartan women everywhere you meet them.
    Women were not allowed to compete at Olympia during the main festival. They had their own festival later in the season, but in the Olympic year, this was the men’s event. Nowadays, there is talk of forbidding women from watching, but in those days, women came right into the sanctuaries and cheered – not just maidens and whores, either, but married women. I think this is because in Sparta, men and women were more used to each other’s nudity in games, and girls thought it no great matter to see a naked man. Athens is altogether more prudish. The men of Elis are of old allies of the Spartans and members of the Peloponnesian League, and they have many of their ways. At any rate, in that year, there were almost as many women as men in the tents, under shelters, or in the town.
    Every house in the town had a porch built for ten or twelve beds. And sometimes rooms inside as well, and they would charge three or four drachma a day – for two wooden boards and some old straw, they charged a day’s pay for an Athenian hoplite or an elite rower. And the more enterprising men of Elis and the surrounding region would put up big tents and offer space in them at similar rates, or they would build temporary buildings, with each peg and each beam marked with a number so that they could be taken down and rebuilt, like the wooden theatre of Dionysus in Athens. There was one great inn where a room cost twenty drachmas a night and only great men like Aristides were welcome.
    All of my recent ex-slaves were earning their keep by hauling the great amphora of Chian wine, and when we had our campsite, my two hundred ran up our mainsail and two boat sails and four more military tents, and the smallest tent was quickly fitted with stumps and larger stones for men to sit on, and we began serving wine before we had our own quarters up, with a pair of marines on guard – not in armour, as that would have been impious – and with Alexandros and Giannis, who had a flair for such things, managing the pouring.
    I oversaw the tents myself – and had to pay two hard silver coins for wood to make pegs, as we’d left all of ours on the ship, like fools. It was hot work, despite the altitude, and I was pleased to see that Polymarchos and his young athlete pitched in, working themselves hard, pounding pegs, and holding poles until the work was done.
    I took the trainer by the shoulder. ‘Come and have a cup of good wine with me,’ I said.
    He smiled. ‘Later, Arimnestos of Plataea. For now I must take this young man to the temple of Zeus, so that he is officially entered for his races and events, or he will burst.’ He shrugged. ‘If they ask us about the storm – would you testify to the judges?’
    I nodded.
    I took the young man’s hand. ‘You have done very well with us,’ I said. ‘We measure a man by work, and not by good looks.’ In truth, he was a beautiful young man, and not all my oarsmen – or marines – were immune to his looks. I grinned