Wundery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad free right now.

Join Wundery Plus in the Wundery App or Apple Podcasts. He walked down the packed dirt of the street, stepping carefully to avoid the puddles of urine and piles of manure left behind by the

donkeys, horses, and oxen that shared the city's narrow thoroughfares.

It was noisy and crowded on this hot dry day in early summer.

The sun shone down on the man's bald pate. His wife had told him to wear a hat to avoid a

sunburn, but he had waved her off. A citizen on his way to conduct the business of his police

couldn't look like a common farmer. What would his fellow pulletase, his

fellow citizens say? He already had feet covered with dust from the walk

through the parched countryside.

His wife would laugh.

He was a common farmer, she would say.

The backbone of the city and every police like it, wherever the Greeks lived.

There was nothing wrong with that. They weren't rich, but they prospered and so did Epidaurus. They had a house and fields less than half a day's walk from Epidaroos, his city and that of his ancestors. They had raised four children, all of them citizens with a

lineage to be proud of. The breeze blew in from the sea to the east. The two

harbors on either side of the city's peninsula were sheltered from storms,

but the wind had a way of whistling through the streets of Epidaurus, kicking up dust.

The man loved that sound.

He had known it his whole life as long as he could remember. So had his father and his

grandfather and so on as far back as their whole family could remember. They were

the police and the police was them. They voted, served in offices,

sacrificed to the gods, participated in the processions, and stood side by side with

their fellow citizens and the failings, holding spear and shield in the heat of battle.

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