Long-distance runners exercise themselves to a point where the walls of reality become thin. He fondly recalls the time – on this same run – when a troop of centaurs emerged from the woods and trotted alongside him for part of the journey. Labras is still unsure whether this actually happened, but very much looks forward to it happening again. [p. 165]
Twenty-four interconnected short stories, each focussing on a scene from life in Athens in 416BC, just before the festival of Dionysia. It's a brief interlude of peace (after the Peace of Nicias five years previously) but Alcibiades is keen to invade Sicily. Meanwhile, the ordinary folk of the city -- hoplite and hetaira, slave and spy, fish-seller and fig-smuggler, vase painter and long-distance runner -- go about their business.
Matyszak is a witty and well-informed writer, drawing from classical texts and art as well as the archaeological record. I learnt some fascinating facts ('Figs are not really fruit at all, but a specialized environment called a syconium...The actual ‘fruits’ of a fig tree are the many tiny single-seeded fruit contained within the skin of the syconium...' Those who inform on fig-smugglers 'are called ‘sycophants’ (literally ‘fig-tellers’)' [pp.207-12]) and gained a greater understanding of the cultural ambience.
I was particularly struck by the perspectives of various enslaved characters: 'Both girls have been slaves all their lives, and regard themselves as well above some of the freeborn poor whom they regularly see begging in the gutter. At least they are fed and clothed and have a warm bed to sleep in at night. [p. 27] and 'In Athens, a regular job with a single employer makes one barely a step above a slave. A slave looks to one man for food, housing and clothing. It is hardly different when one man instead supplies the money with which food, housing and clothing are purchased.' [p. 200].
And I enjoyed the ways in which the stories were connected to one another: the councillor who has to spend his lunch break with the appalling Critias, while in another chapter his wife meets her lover; the owner of a failing tavern employing a sorceress to cast a curse on his more successful rivals, whose son-in-law is the temple guard whose story opens the book...
This is the first book by Martyszak that I've read (thanks, Kindle Unlimited!) but it definitely won't be the last: readable, informative, well-researched and with credible and appealing characterisation.
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