Sunset of the Gods - By Steve White Page 0,14
your cover story is that you are Macedonians who opposed submission to Persia and are in exile as a consequence. This should assure you of a friendly reception in Athens—particularly from the man we intend for you to contact. But for now, I believe it is too late in the day to begin your detailed briefing on the Marathon campaign itself—which, at any rate, should be left to the end, so as to be as fresh as possible in your minds. Also, we have other matters to take up tomorrow.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Their orientation involved a great many mundane things, such as their wardrobe.
The fabrics had to be authentic, of course—mostly wool, but also flax and the coarse animal-hair cloth called sakkos. But the Authority’s specialists had a lot of practice at producing such things. The basic male garment—there was no such thing as underwear—was the tunic known as the chiton, fastened at both shoulders and tied at the waist with a girdle. Over this was worn the himation, a large rectangular woolen cloak draped around the left shoulder and back around under the right arm and across the front. Anything even remotely resembling trousers was regarded as hilariously effeminate, which was one reason why the Athenians had underestimated the Persians before their disastrous expedition in support of the Ionian rebels. By 490 b.c., of course, the trouser-wearers from the East were no longer quite so funny. The chlamys, or cold-weather cloak, shouldn’t come into the picture in the time of year they were planning to spend in ancient Greece. As travelers from afar, they would be able to justify wearing sturdy boots rather than the more typical light sandals, and also the broad-brimmed felt hat, or petasos.
Chantal would wear an ankle-length linen tunic, held up by pins at the shoulders and at other points to form loose sleeves. Over this she would be expected to drape the himation, preferably wrapped around her head—or, alternatively, a head-scarf. Classical Athens was not all that unlike fundamentalist Islam where the status of women was concerned. At least she should be able to get away with light sandals rather than bare feet. Her hair was long enough to be pulled back with ribbons into the orthodox ponytail or bun.
The men would naturally not be lugging around the hoplite panoply. As Landry explained, even hoplites only burdened themselves with that load of armor and weapons a few minutes before taking their places in the phalanx for battle. And at any rate, Jason didn’t expect to be doing that sort of fighting; still less did Mondrago, given his assumed social class, and least of all did Landry. There were no such things as professional soldiers in fifth century b.c. Greece, aside from the Spartans, who were considered freakish for the degree to which they specialized in war. Athenian hoplites were simply the male members of the property-owning classes of citizens, who could afford (and were expected) to equip themselves with the panoply. They were liable for military service from eighteen to sixty, and given Greece’s chronic internecine wars they were likely to spend the majority of their summers that way. In between, training was minimal. In phalanx warfare, what counted was the steadfastness that held the shield-wall unbroken even in the shattering clash of spears. Those men weren’t flashy martial artists, but theirs had been the collective courage in whose shelter Western civilization had survived infancy.
However, the team’s supposed homeland of Macedon was a backwater which had retained the simple monarchy of the Bronze Age while the other Greek states had been evolving into civic societies. In fact, Macedon probably came closer in some ways to what Jason remembered from the seventeenth century b.c. Jason would pose as a minor nobleman, Mondrago as a disaffected former member of the “King’s Companions,” a Macedonian holdover of the Bronze Age war-band. As such it would be normal for them to carry swords. Rutherford let them choose their blades off the rack.
One day Jason was in the station’s gym, putting himself through some exercises with the double-edged, slightly leaf-shaped cut-and-thrust sword he had chosen—the most typical Greek pattern of the period—when Mondrago walked in from the adjacent courtyard, wiping his brow. The Corsican was holding a very simple sling: a small leather pouch with two strings attached, one of which was looped over a finger and the other gripped by the thumb. The user then swung the sling around the head and sent the stone or lead bullet on its