“May it be propitious,” Stratokles continued: the opening formula for a decree. “Let us set up gilded statues of Antigonos and Demetrios in a chariot, the said statues to stand near those of Harmodios and Aristogeiton in the agora so that one pair of liberators may regard the other. Do I hear an opposing voice?”

No one spoke in opposition. The decree passed without a single mutter. Sostratos thought it extravagant, but shrugged mental shoulders. Harmodios and Aristogeiton were credited with helping to overthrow the tyranny of Hippias and usher in democracy at Athens two hundred years earlier. Anyone who’d read Thoukydides, as Sostratos had, knew things weren’t nearly so simple. But, by now, what the Athenians believed was at least as important as what had really happened.

And-statues! Whoever was making those gilded statues would need beeswax to coat his mold and take the fine detail he would sculpt. “Beeswax,” Sostratos muttered. “Beeswax.” He didn’t want to forget.

Stratokles hadn’t withdrawn. “May it be propitious,” he said again.

“Let us reward our liberators with honorary crowns valued at two hundred talents of silver, to show the world that the Athenians’ gratitude is not to be despised or taken lightly. Do I hear an opposing voice?”

Again, Demetrios looked modest and surprised. Again, no one dissented. Again, the decree passed by acclamation. Sostratos slowly dipped his head. Athens would pay, and pay plenty, for the privilege of liberation. Even for a polis as rich as this one, two hundred talents was a lot of money.

“May it be propitious,” Stratokles said once more, and Sostratos wondered what was coming next. He didn’t have to wait long: “Let us consecrate an altar to Antigonos and Demetrios, this altar to be known as that of the Saviors. And let us consecrate another altar where Demetrios first came down from his chariot and set foot on the soil of Athens, that one to be known as the altar of the Descending Demetrios. And let the chief priest who serves the altar of the Saviors henceforth give his name to the year, as the arkhon does now. Do I hear an opposing voice?”

There stood Demetrios. No matter how abashed he looked, his men had just driven Kassandros’ out of Athens. He said he’d set the city free. What could he do if he changed his mind? Anything he wants to, Sostratos thought. The Athenians no doubt thought the same way. Stratokles heard no opposing voices. The decree-one servile enough to make Sostratos faintly sick to his stomach-passed without a single protest from the Assembly.

And more followed. The newly free-or so Demetrios had named them-people of Athens voted to add to the ten tribes among which they divided up their citizens two more, to be named Antigonis and Demetrias. They voted to hold annual games in honor of Demetrios and his father, with sacrifices and a procession. And they voted to include the portraits of Antigonos and Demetrios on the ceremonial mantle offered to Athena in the Parthenon every five years, “along with the images of the other gods,” as Stratokles said. Like the ones that had come before, those motions passed without dissent.

That seemed to be all of them. As if to prove it was, Demetrios stepped forward once mare. He bowed. “Men of Athens, I thank you for your generosity, and f know my father thanks you as well,” he said.

Sostratos fought down a strong urge to retch. That hadn’t been generosity. It had been the most revolting display of sycophancy he’d ever seen. No one, he was sure, had ever flattered even the Great Kings of Persia like this. But now the Athenians, who’d beaten the Persians at Marathon, at Salamis, and at Plataia, who’d preserved liberty for all of Hellas, wriggled on their bellies to kiss the dust through which Demetrios had walked. And they called that freedom! No, he didn’t want to retch. He warned to cry.

Demetrios went on, “You have been kind to my father and me. Because you have, we shall also be kind to you, in the ways I have promised and in any other ways that seem good to us.”

How the Athenians cheered! Demetrios practiced that abashed smile once more. Or maybe it wasn’t so practiced. Maybe all this praise heaped on him really had turned his head. He surely couldn’t have heard anything like it before. Yes, he was Antigonos’ right-hand man, but Antigonos, by all accounts, was not a man one could safely flatter-he had wit enough to see through it. Nor was he one to spoil his sons, either Demetrios or Philippos.

Sokrates had to drink hemlock here, Sostratos thought. He shivered. Two years before, he’d watched Polemaios drink hemlock. Dying of the drug was neither so neat nor so philosophical as Platon made it out to be. But now the Athenians have found a sweeter poison.

Stratokles moved that the meeting adjourn. That drew no more argument than any of his other motions had. The people of Athens streamed out of the theater, by all appearances well content with what they’d done. The morning remained young.

As long as he and Menedemos were in the midst of the Athenians, Sostratos said nothing. All his cousin said was, “Well, well.” That could have meant anything. Sostratos knew what he thought it meant. He agreed, too.

Protomakhos was also conspicuously quiet as he and the Rhodians made their way back to his house. Once inside, he led them to the andron and called for wine. Then, making sure none of his slaves was in earshot, he spoke in low, intense, furious tones: “You young fellows, you come from a polis with a democracy that really works, isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” Sostratos said. Menedemos dipped his head.

The Rhodian proxenos took a long pull at his winecup. Then he went on, “Me, I’m not a youth any more. I’m old enough to remember how democracy is supposed to go. I recall the days before Philip of Macedon won at Khaironeia and put all of Hellas under his boot. People then cared about the way things went. They cared about doing what was right, doing what was best. They cared about something besides bending over and showing Demetrios how wide their arseholes were.” A disgusted look on his face, he drained the cup and dipped it full again.

Sostratos said the only thing he could think of that might make the Athenian feel a little better; “You haven’t had a real democracy here for quite a while, most noble one. Maybe, now that this is done, your people will get the hang of it again.”

“Do you think so?” Protomakhos asked morosely. “I don’t, Stratokles got to play the sycophant today, but plenty of others haven’t had the chance yet. They’ll take it. And they’ll take revenge on everybody who backed Demetrios of Phaleron, too. You wait and see. If Kleokritos didn’t go over the border with his master, I wouldn’t lay an obolos on his chances of living to grow old. Would you?”

“Well, no,” Sostratos admitted. The proxenos was all too likely to be right. Whenever one faction ousted another, the first thing it usually did was get its own back against its rivals. Sostratos could have gone into detail about that; he’d read Herodotos and Thoukydides and Xenophon. But few Hellenes needed to read the historians to understand what their folk were capable of. Protomakhos almost certainly hadn’t. Hellenes who knew themselves, knew their own kind, could see what was coming.

Menedemos said, “As long as the city doesn’t break out in civil war”-he might have been talking about a pestilence-”we’ll do all right. And so should you, best one,” he added, pointing to Protomakhos. “They’ll probably want to buy lots of slabs of marble to inscribe the decrees they passed today”

“Yes, I suppose they will.” Protomakhos seemed less than delighted at the prospect. But then he brightened, a little. “If they are going to buy them, they may as well buy them from me.”

“That’s the spirit!” Menedemos dipped his head. He seemed perfectly friendly toward the dealer in stone. Knowing how… friendly Menedemos had been with Protomakhos’ wife, Sostratos found that bemusing. He knew Menedemos shouldn’t jeer at the man he’d cuckolded, but his cousin was proving an even better actor than he’d expected.