12

The meeting of the Assembly was called with the low notes of conch shells reverberating over the city. Though the sun approached noon, the people of Athens barely paused in their labours. If anything, the bustling markets in the open Agora became a touch more frenzied as voting men tried to finish their purchases, pressing parcels of food into the arms of slaves. Those few women of the upper classes who were out on the streets stood back from crowds or turned for home, knowing from experience how they could be manhandled in a crush. Poorer women had no such restraints on their comings and goings. Some of them in the market stalls bawled even lower prices, trying to catch bargain hunters in the last moments before they had to leave.

Epikleos and Xanthippus were seated on the edge of the Pnyx hill, a few paces from the speaker’s stone, the favoured spot already busy with clusters of men. Neither of them had contested a place on the flat rock that raised speakers the height of a man above the rest. They’d been summoned to a regular meeting, long scheduled. As if on a normal day, they’d greeted one another with the traditional ‘What news?’. The truth was the news had already spread so far and fast that few making their way in had to be informed. The prospect of great wealth was exciting, like wine in the blood. It could be seen in the whites of the eyes, heard in nervous laughter.

Little by little, the Pnyx began to fill with young and old, drawn by curiosity and pride, by heralds and the conch notes, even a sense of civic duty.

‘I wonder if they’ll need the red ropes in the Agora today,’ Epikleos said to his friend. He nodded as Xanthippus began to retort. ‘Yes, of course they will. Our people do not like to be told what to do, even when it is for their benefit. The gods bless them for it.’

The Pnyx hill sat high above the valley that had the Agora at its heart, with stone steps wide enough for thousands to sit and listen to speakers. On normal days, it was not uncommon for just six or seven thousand to attend the meetings, barely enough to decide new laws or cases. On days like this, upwards of twenty thousand would pack themselves in.

With the news from Laurium, members were making their way in from demes outside the city as well as every part of it. Athenians being what they were, there were still stragglers, deep in conversation or bargaining for whatever goods or favours they had been trying to purchase.

The team of public slaves employed by the Assembly began the work they clearly enjoyed – dipping long looping ropes in red paint to herd the last voters up the hill. Depending on the public mood and the insults called to them, they could make it hard or easy to avoid. No one wanted to be touched by paint that would mark any item of cloth for ever – and skin for a week or more. Those red stripes were always cause for laughter and comment whenever they were seen, with men called ‘laggard’ or ‘slowfoot’, to the amusement of others with no voting rights at all.