Athenian Monologue

Monologue- an Athenian Man
Fed up of the dark, tossing sea I was keen to lay down our spoils at the foot of Apollo in dedication, already planning the arrangements of invitations, wine and Hetari for the feast I would give out in celebration of my homecoming.
Wearied by the hills of Cerata, wetted with blood- a righteous token of the brute treachery of our Megarian allies, our trireme Aianteia, was pulled with steady shoulders, the eretai crying “rhup-pa-pai” as, skirting the moles, we made for the wide open harbor of Piraeus. Her bronze embolon had suffered damage while blockading the Western shoreline. As a pentacontaetia who could afford it, was my lot as trierarch of this leitourgical year to see to her repair, but for the moment, my
Rather, I spent most evenings exercising in the Lyceum, visiting bath houses, attending symposia and hosting them. The mornings I spent in the Agora. The Agora, rich in market, and debate, where once old men crouched round-shouldered over games of petteia, bread wives and kapeloi shouted their wares. Now the stoa shaded naught but bodies. My friends were absent from their usual haunts, as was that young man who visited the same barber as I, Argentarius, who was due to inherit a string of lucrative gold mines at Scapte Hyle. We had been about to draw up a dowry for my orphaned niece, for whom I am now kurios. Indeed, what of my son? I had barely the chance present him before the hearth and initiate him in the oikos before leaving for war. He was small and jaundiced, scarcely a warrior bred to defend his polis. His amphidromia had been delayed, and I would have left him exposed under the sun if it was not for his mother. She raged, wailing and tearing at her face, having been delivered from death only by the child-giving grace of Artemis. So, I assented and let my son live, for what good it has done him, in this Athens that resembles not the proud city I had