Polydoros was more familiar with the site. He pointed. “You can see a fragment of the old wall there among the olive trees.”

Had he noticed it, Mithredath would have taken it for a pile of rocks. Now that he looked closely, though, he saw they had been worked to fit together.

“Most of what used to be here, I suppose, has been carried off over the years,” Polydoros said. Mithredath nodded. Stealing already worked stone would be easier for a peasant than working it himself. Polydoros pointed again, to the top of one of the hillocks ahead. “More of the wall around the akropolis- the citadel, you would say in Aramaic-is left because it’s harder to get the rock down.”

“Aye,” Mithredath said, pleased to find the Hellene thinking along with him. It was his turn to point. “That is the way up to the-the citadel? “ At the last moment he decided against trying to echo the local word Polydoros had used.

The Hellene dipped his head, a gesture Mithredath had learned to equate with a nod. “Of course, it would have been an easier ramp to climb when it was kept clear of brush,” Polydoros said dryly.

“So it would.” The eunuch’s heart was already beating fast; he had endured more exertion on this western journey than ever before in his life. Still, he had a job to do. “Let us go up. If that is the citadel, the ruins there will be important ones and may tell me what I need to learn of Athens.”

“As you say, excellent saris.”

On reaching the top of the akropolis, Mithredath felt a bit like a conqueror himself. Not only was the ancient ramp overgrown, it was also gullied. One of the eunuch’s servants limped with a twisted ankle; had the donkey stumbled into that hole, it probably would have broken a leg. Mithredath was winded, and even Polydoros, who seemed ready for anything, was breathing hard.

Rank grass and weeds also grew on the flat ground on top of the citadel, between the stones of the wrecked wall, and over the lower parts of the destroyed buildings the Persians had sacked so long ago. One of those buildings, a large one, had been unfinished when Athens fell. Marble column drums thrust up from the undergrowth. Mithredath could still see scorch marks on them.