He signed us to train Messenian freedmen as heavy infantry, some two hundred who had been chattel at Sparta but fled to forts erected by Alcibiades and Nicias, securing their liberation. We would drill them all summer, accompanying Alcibiades to Patrae with the fall to bring that city into alliance as well. When I remonstrated with our commander, at last securing an audience, that these Messenians would never be ready to fight by fall, he only laughed. “Who said anything about fighting?”
He would win Patrae by love.
And he did. Here is how.
Patrae, as you know, commands the western portal to the Gulf of Corinth. She was a democracy and neutral. Now, however, with the other great democracies of the Peloponnese—Elis, Mantinea, and Argos—brought into alliance with Athens, Patrae was a fruit ripe to fall.
Have you spent time in Patrae, Jason? It is a most agreeable place. Her dishes are squid cooked in its own ink and baked thrush. One dines there not in the marketplace, but at establishments called “flags,” which are private homes, many with terraces overlooking the sea. On entering, one takes a flag, a brightly colored swatch bearing a symbol, of a dolphin or trident, say, and ties it about his shoulders. With that, he is a son of the family. That portion is his which he desires, or he may name a dish and the proprietress will produce it. At repast’s end he folds his fare within his flag and leaves it on the bench.
The government of Patrae consists of two houses, the Council of Elders and the Assembly of the people. Alcibiades approached first those leading men with whom he was personally acquainted, and upon assuaging their fears of his and his nation’s intentions, secured permission to address the commons. He was now thirty-two years old, twice a general of Athens, and the most spectacularly ascendant of the new breed of Greece. He spoke as follows:
“Men of Patrae, I proceed on the assumption that you, as all free Hellenes, would prefer independence and self-determination for your state, to having her affairs dictated by an alien power. Neutrality, you must agree, is no longer an option. Today each state of Greece must align with Athens or Sparta; no third alternative obtains.”
The Assembly of Patrae meets in the open air on an eminence called the Collar, overlooking the gulf. Alcibiades gestured now to these straits.
“To which element, sea or land, is your nation’s future bound? This, I submit, is the decisive factor, for if land, her fate must stand with Sparta. This will produce the greatest security. But if one’s hopes lie abroad through trade and commerce, he must recognize that that power which commands the sea cannot suffer another state to make use of this element to its advantage, if this works injury to herself.
“Patrae is sited on the sea, my friends, and upon a most strategic promontory. This works to your nation’s benefit, making her of surpassing value to Athens as a friend, but to your peril, should you elect to make our city your foe. Do not delude yourself that this Peace will endure. War will come again. You must prepare now, determining which course yields the greater security—alliance with that naval power which needs you and must protect you, whose might opens up to your use all ports and sea-lanes of the world, shielding your merchantmen wherever their ambitions bear them and providing courts of law by which their interests may be safeguarded. Or choose to ally with a land power, Sparta and her League, which cannot defend you against seaborne assault, which will recruit your young men to fight as infantry where they are least well trained and equipped, and beneath whose hegemony you must suffer isolation and impoverishment, cut off from that intercourse of commerce which brings not alone the good things of life but the surplus of resource without which security is an illusion.”
He wanted Patrae to build long walls connecting the upper town to the port. When a Councilor resisted, narrating his fear that Athens would gobble Patrae up, Alcibiades responded, “What you say may be true, my friend. But if she does, it will be by degrees and from the feet. Sparta will take you headfirst and at one gulp.”
But his most telling argument required no articulation. This was the sight of the Messenian freedmen who, fired by their hatred of Sparta, had shaped into a crack unit. Here was what freedom and Athens could do for you, their presence said. Be like them, or face them.
Patrae did come over. With that, Alcibiades had detached from Sparta in her own backyard three powerful states and brought over a fourth from neutrality. He had fashioned a coalition whose combined armed forces rivaled that of her former master, all the while adhering to the letter of the Peace and setting not a solitary Athenian life at hazard. He would move next, or his proxies would, against a fifth state, Epidaurus, whose fall would complete that gambit by which the sixth and most crucial Spartan ally, Corinth, would find herself cut off and vulnerable as well.
Now for the first time one began to see Spartans and Spartan agents. Their cavalry appeared across Achaea and the Argolid, followed by those surrogates in scarlet of the seventy Laconian towns, the so-called Neighbors, heavy infantry drilled to such a pitch as exceeded all save the Corps of Peers itself. Mindarus arrived, the field marshal, and Endius and Cleobulus, leaders of the war party. They and their lieutenants began showing up at coops, the first time we had seen full Spartiates recruiting shields and free lances. One excelled all in the zeal of his application. This was Lysander the son of Aristocleitus, that same Lysander whose name would toll down Athenian annals, synonymous with doom.
Telamon took work from him and chided me for my reluctance. Others of our coop ran “errands” as well. They would not recount these actions, even to me. One knew only that they were performed at night and they paid well.
With Telamon I heard Lysander address the Patraean Council.
“Men of Patrae, the speech of the Athenian general” (meaning Alcibiades, who had addressed the Assembly some days previous) “is known to all and has been countered by ambassadors of my city, whose eloquence far outstrips my own. Nonetheless my regard for your nation is such that, though I come before you as a soldier only, I must add my voice to these rebuttals. Make no mistake, friends. The course you elect now must bear profound consequences. I beg you resist the impulse to haste. The hare may leap into the pot, they say, but not back out once the lid is made fast.
“Let me speak to the distinction between the Athenian character and the Spartan. Perhaps you have not considered this. What kind of nation are the Spartans? We are not a seafaring people, nor is it in our nature to covet empire. Our portion of the Peloponnese we hold, content, never seeking its aggrandizement. Our alliances are defensive. Even when we strike overseas at our foes, our object is not to conquer, only to quell potential peril. Those states which border upon us we hold fast; this is true. As distance increases, however, the reins slacken.
“Your state stands at a remove from ours, men of Patrae. What do we want of you? Only that you remain free, independent, and strong. In this, we believe, resides our security, for a free state will resist incursion with all her might. Do you fear we shall harm you? On the contrary, Sparta will aid in every way to preserve your independence, so long as you do not turn such strength against us.
“Now consider the Athenians. They are a sea power. They are empire builders. Already they hold two hundred states in subjection. Patrae will make two hundred and one. This speechmaker who has come before you, this general of Athens, has dispensed honeyed words and reassurance. You must see through these, my friends, for by just such blandishments have other states been seduced from their liberty. Ask yourselves if you will find this man so charming when he returns with warships to exact tribute of your treasury, when he drafts your young men for his fleet and imposes upon your nation Athenian codes and laws. How equitable will this so-called alliance feel when you must turn in the very coins of your purse and take ‘owls’ of Athens in return? Your guest has promised protection under Athenian law. What does this mean, except that even the most modest private suit may no longer be settled by your own courts but be adjudicated at Athens, before Athenian juries, amid such corruption and cupidity as I
pray you are never compelled to endure.
“You of the nobility are estate holders and equestrians. When war resumes, and it will—in this our Athenian friend spoke truly—who will suffer most among your countrymen? Will it be the commons, who will find work with the fleet and discover their position enhanced by war, or yourselves, whose property, which lies outside these vaunted Long Walls, will be laid waste? Whose sons will die first, whose estates be reduced and devastated?”
My mates ran other jobs for Lysander. Pay for one that autumn was thirty drachmas, a month’s wages for two nights’ work, but it required a man acquainted with the roads inside Lacedaemon. When Telamon informed his employer that his mate was an anepsios, educated at Sparta, I was sent for. Lysander had his headquarters then at an inn called the Cauldron, at Ptolis on the Mantinean frontier. We were ushered in after midnight when all other officers, and witnesses, had been dismissed.
Lysander claimed to remember me from the Upbringing, extremely unlikely as he was three age-classes ahead and in an elite training battalion. I remembered him, however. Of the four Firsts a youth could win in his commission year, in Wrestling, Chorus, Obedience, and Chastity, Lysander took three. His birth, however, was so mean, and he was seen so to curry favor with his betters, that such qualities failed to gain him the swift ascent they remarked. Peace further retarded his career. He was thirty-five or about; he should hold a lieutenant-colonelcy of infantry. Instead he was just a cavalry captain, the least prestigious element of Spartan arms. In fact nothing about him impressed me this night so much as his good looks, which were nearly as arresting as Alcibiades’. He was tall, with steel-colored eyes and hair falling to his shoulders. That this individual would one day preside over the dismemberment of the Athenian Empire and reign as a god over the entire Hellenic world seemed in this hour impossible of conception.
Lysander detailed the prospective errand. Telamon and I were to convey to Sparta a fledgling owl in a cage, a gift from himself to Cleobulus, chief of the war party. The real chore, however, was to deliver a dispatch, which for fear of discovery must be committed to memory and imparted to its addressee only. This was a plea to the Board of Magistrates to take seriously the intrigues of Alcibiades. The ephors must act, and act swiftly, for the measures set in motion by this solitary Athenian, Lysander professed, had placed the very survival of Sparta at hazard. When I balked at performing this, fearing it would work harm to my countrymen, Lysander laughed. “Remember, you can always tender this intelligence, and all else you see and hear at Lacedaemon, to your friend”—meaning Alcibiades—“for love or profit.” To this day I recall the text.
…our peril lies neither with the knight Nicias nor the so-called popular leaders of Athens—Hyperbolus, Androcles, and the demagogues—whose vision extends no further than pandering to the mob for next year’s election, but with this glory-driven aristocrat who alone possesses both strategic vision and implacable will. He employs this Peace as if it were war, seeking to advance his personal renown through the surrogateship of other states, his object to cut off our nation from her Peloponnesian allies. We must counter these conspiracies before it is too late, my friend, nor scruple at means or measures.
Lysander knew Alcibiades. From summers in boyhood, when Alcibiades and his brothers visited their xenos, guest-friend, Endius at Sparta. As a youth Lysander, as I said, had been penniless; he had secured tuition to the Upbringing only as a mothax, a “stepbrother” or sponsoree, dues paid by Endius’ father, named Alcibiades. You may reckon to what extent such subordination galled the youth’s pride and fueled the acrimony he bore lifelong toward his rival.
I ran this job and others, courier chores mostly. At Sparta one indeed felt a sea change. The war party had seized ascendancy; the young men (and, more telling, the women) clamored for action that would restore Spartan pride. A battle was coming. You could smell it.
The army took the field twice that summer, both full call-ups under King Agis. When the second fizzled at the very gates of Argos, the Spartans turned upon their own king in fury at his fecklessness. Alcibiades leapt upon this. Rousing the allies, they took Orchomenos, securing the plain and passes north of Mantinea and cutting off Sparta from her allies beyond the gulf. Tegea and Orestheum now stood vulnerable as well. The fall of these was unthinkable to Spartan arms, as they opened the entire Eurotas valley. Yet still the ephors did not act. The knights and colonels thought their king a dunce or a coward, and no one trusted the freed helots who now constituted a significant portion of the army. The cauldron bubbled just shy of the boil.
One night Telamon came with a job. We would run it on horseback with two Athenian shields, Rabbit and Chowder, so named for his incapacity to keep a meal down at sea. The task was to descend downvalley to Tegea, twelve miles; from there to escort in secret the commander of the Spartan regiment on-site, Anaxibius, to the fort at Tripolis, where he would receive orders from the home government. We must have him there at the second watch and back to Tegea by dawn.
Lysander did not inform us of this, but Alcibiades was at that hour at Tegea. He was there with his freed Messenians, addressing the Council.
We located the Spartan and got off. Before the party had ridden a mile, however, a runner from Lysander intercepted us. Plans had changed; we must divert to the shrine of Artemis on the Tegea–Pallantion road.
Our Spartan, Anaxibius, was a full colonel and in nowise averse to employing the ash of his staff upon the tardy or slow of wit. Twice he cracked Chowder across the ribs, demanding to know who the hell had trained us and what kind of a cocked-up operation we were running.
We reached the sanctuary well into the second watch. Clearly our irascible charge would not be back by dawn. Nor, mounting the steps, could Lysander be discovered. “By the Twins!”—Anaxibius smote the stone with the butt of his staff such a blow as nearly ruptured the drums of our ears—“I’ll flay you all for this insolence, and that bastard mothax in his turn.”
From behind a column emerged Lysander, alone save his squire, called Strawberry after a birthmark. He beseeched the colonel’s pardon, who yet clutched his staff before him and continued to beat it upon the stone, taking in vain the names of abundant divinities. Lysander appealed to him to desist, as troops were encamped about and the racket might be taken as an alarm. “Take your staff to me, sir, if you wish, but hear the message I am ordered to impart.”
Anaxibius at last lowered his lumber. In that instant Lysander snatched forth his own blade and, striking upon the colonel’s undefended right, fetched him such a blow, backhand, as to cleave his neck to the bone and in fact nearly decapitate him. Anaxibius dropped like a sack from a wagon; fluid gushed as from an overturned pail. Our four gaped as Strawberry spun the fallen form facedown on the stone and, plunging again and again into its back the bared steel of a nine-foot spear, inflicted such wounds as could only be read as the blows of cowards and assassins.
Weapons filled my mates’ hands; our squad had formed up, backs to each other, certain that our own murders were next, at the hands of other concealed confederates of Lysander. No sound came, however. No squads materialized from shadow. If indeed there was a camp about, no stir arose from it.
“What a waste.”
Lysander broke the silence, indicating the corpse of his countryman. He spat blood. He had bitten his lip through, accidentally, as one does frequently in such exigencies. “He was a good officer.”
“For whose murder we four will be accounted.” This from Telamon, indicating himself and our party.
“Not by name,” was our employer’s cool rejoinder.
Lysander knelt, examining what had been a man and was now meat.
One came by degrees to grasp his perfidy’s object. The colonel’s assassination would be passed off as the work of agents of Athens. We who had been dupes need neither be named nor apprehended; the act alone would suffice to ignite outrage at Sparta. The home government would shuck its sloth and rise, in time to snatch Tegea from the brink.
&nbs
p; “Will you murder us now, Captain?” Telamon inquired.
Lysander rose, pressing at his cut lip. He had, by his demeanor, never entertained such a notion.
“Men as yourselves, who stand apart from the fealty of statehood, are invaluable to me.”
He nodded to his squire, who accorded us our pay.
“Then we will require more than this,” spoke Telamon.
Our patron laughed. “I’m flat.”
“We’ll have the horses, then.”
Lysander approved this.
Rabbit had crossed to the portico; he motioned all clear. My own blood, which had run chill for all this interval, now refound its course and heat. “Who slaughters his own, Captain,” I heard my voice address the Spartan, “scorns God as well as man.”
Lysander’s eyes met mine, as steel-black as I recalled. “Take your man’s portion, Polemidas, and leave heaven to me.”
XI
MANTINEA
I would not have been at Mantinea save for my brother. He was at Orchomenos with Alcibiades and got a message to me.
The greatest battle in history is about to be fought. I shall try to hold it for you, if you hurry.
One must understand the topography of the Peloponnese to reckon the peril to the Spartan state had she failed to carry that day. From Mantinea the Argives and allies, had they been victorious, would have swept down the plain to Tegea, then south to Asea and Orestheum, from which the entire Eurotas valley lay open to the sword. Sparta’s serfs would have risen, in numbers ten times their masters’. Slaughter by hoe and mattock would have confronted the lads and women of Sparta. Joined by whatever remained of the Corps of Peers, the defenders would have resisted to the last breath, perishing in a bloodbath unprecedented.