“Blast! I had hoped to spit you both.”
Teleutias had other foxes to harry; he dispatched us straight to Lysander. The navarch, it turned out, had intelligence of both our cases, including my indictment and flight. I had been convicted, he informed me. I had not known this. He laughed. He was handsome, I had forgotten how much so, and his self-assurance, abundant in the days when he served without portfolio, appeared amplified tenfold by his accession to supreme command.
“You are sent by Alcibiades,” he observed without rancor. “With what instructions—my assassination?”
“To attest, sir, the fidelity of his call for alliance against the Persian and the faith of his overtures to you.”
“Yes,” Lysander observed, scanning his papers, “I have this from Endius in detail, and two other covert embassies from your master.”
His glance searched mine, marking offense at that terminal word. With effort I governed my aspect. As for Telamon, the insult hadn’t been coined which could induce him to renounce self-command.
How were we fixed for cash? Lysander scribbled a chit. He ordered his Persian aide, in Persian, to secure us accommodation, at the six level, for colonels.
“The Games of Artemis will be celebrated day after tomorrow; I will address the army. Be in attendance. Alcibiades shall have his answer at that time.”
Ephesus, as you know, is one of the great harbors of the East. That massive seawall called the Pteron, the Wing, is a wonder of the world. At that time eight hundred of its ultimate eleven hundred yards had been completed, broad enough topside for two teams to pass abreast. Scaffolding sheathed the entire extent of construction, with cofferdams at intervals to sink the footings. The sea was white with mason’s dust fifty yards out.
Here was the fruit of Lysander’s regimen. Purses were flush; morale was high. The discipline which the Spartan had enforced was acknowledged, even by those who must endure it, as indispensable. Nor did he spare his own person. The commander could be descried before dawn at the gymnasium, training hard. Nights he labored, late as Alcibiades. He bore himself as if victory were his already and himself not commander but conqueror. Shit rolls downhill, soldiers say, but so does confidence. You could see it down to the runtiest corporal.
The new theater, west of the temenos of Artemis and overlooking the sea, was grander than that of Dionysus at Athens. There the corps assembled in the sequel of the Games, fifteen thousand within the amphitheater, another twenty thousand ascending the slopes, with heralds relaying their commander’s address. Prince Cyrus took the admiral’s box, compassed by the nobles of his guard, the Companions. From the theater’s twin risers, the Ears, you could see the Athenian squadrons, commanded by Alcibiades, at their blockade stations picketing the harbor.
Lysander spoke: “Spartans, Peloponnesians, and allies, the sight of your manly vigor today brought joy not only to the cities in whose cause of freedom you labor but to the gods, who prize above all such enterprise and devotion. Yet I recognize that many among you chafe. You behold the warships of our enemies advancing with impunity to the very chain which seals our harbor and you burn to give them battle. Why must we continually train? you demand of your officers. Every day more skilled oarsmen come over from the foe. Every night our ranks swell as theirs diminish. Let us attack, you cry! How long must we idle? I will answer, comrades, by recounting to you the distinction between our race, the Dorian, and the Ionian strain of our foes.
“We, Spartans and Peloponnesians, possess courage.
“Our enemies possess boldness.
“They own thrasytes, we andreia.
“Pay attention, brothers. Here is a profound and irreconcilable division. These points of view represent hostile and incompatible conceptions of the proper relation of man to God and, in this, foretell and foreordain our victory.
“In my father’s house I was taught that heaven reigns, and to fear and honor her mandates. This is the Spartan, Dorian, and Peloponnesian way. Our race does not presume to dictate to God, but seeks to discover His will and adhere to it. Our ideal man is pious, modest, self-effacing; our ideal polity harmonious, uniform, communal. Those qualities most pleasing to heaven, we believe, are courage to endure and contempt for death. This renders our race peerless in land battle, for in infantry warfare to hold one’s ground is all. We are not individualists because to us such self-attention constitutes pride. Hubris we abhor, defining man’s place as beneath heaven, not challenging her supremacy.
“Spartans are courageous but not bold. Athenians are bold but not courageous.
“I will detail for you, friends and allies, the character of our enemy. And call me short if I lie. Shout me down, brothers. But if I speak true, then acclaim my address. Let me hear your voices!
“Athenians do not fear God; they seek to be God. They believe that heaven reigns not by might, but by glory. The gods rule by acclaim, they say, by that supremacy which strikes mortals with awe and compels emulation. Believing this, Athenians seek to please heaven by making clay gods of themselves. Athenians reject modesty and self-effacement as unworthy of man made in the image of the gods. Heaven favors the bold. And experience, they believe, has borne them out. Bold action preserved them from the Persian twice, brought them empire, and has maintained it since. Athenians are peerless at sea because boldness wins there. The warship accomplishes nothing holding the line but must strike her enemy. Boldness is a mighty engine, friends, but there is a limit to its reach and a rock upon which it founders. We are that rock.”
Tumultuous acclamation interrupted Lysander’s address. A wave rose from those near enough to hear unamplified, augmented by a second crest, as the heralds relayed their commander’s words to the thousands upslope, and enlarged yet again as the rearmost at last received the heralds’ resonation.
“Our rock is courage, brothers, upon which their boldness breaks and recedes. Thrasytes fails. Andreia endures. Imbibe this truth and never forget it.
“Boldness is impatient. Courage is long-suffering. Boldness cannot endure hardship or delay; it is ravenous, it must feed on victory or it dies. Boldness makes its seat upon the air; it is gossamer and phantom. Courage plants its feet upon the earth and draws its strength from God’s holy fundament. Thrasytes presumes to command heaven; it forces God’s hand and calls this virtue. Andreia reveres the immortals; it seeks heaven’s guidance and acts only to enforce God’s will.
“Hear, brothers, what kind of man these conflicting qualities produce. The bold man is prideful, brazen, ambitious. The brave man calm, God-fearing, steady. The bold man seeks to divide; he wants his own and will shoulder his brother aside to loot it. The brave man unites. He succors his fellow, knowing that what belongs to the commonwealth belongs to him as well. The bold man covets; he sues his neighbor in the law court, he intrigues, he dissembles. The brave man is content with his lot; he respects that portion the gods have granted and husbands it, comporting himself with humility as heaven’s steward.
“In troubled times the bold man flails about in effeminate anguish, seeking to draw his neighbors into his misfortune, for he has no strength of character to fall back upon other than to drag others down to his own state of wickedness. Now the brave man. In dark hours he endures silently, uncomplaining. Reverencing the round of heaven’s seasons, he does what must be done, sustaining himself with the certainty that to endure injustice with patience is the mark of piety and wisdom. This is the bold man, and the brave. Now: what is the bold city?
“The bold city exalts aggrandizement. It cannot remain at home, content with its portion, but must venture abroad to plunder that of others. The bold city imposes empire. Contemptuous of heaven’s law, it makes of itself a law unto itself. It sets its ambition above justice and acquits all crimes beneath the imperative of its own power. Need I name this city? She is Athens!”
Such an ovation acclaimed this as to resound throughout the harbor and roll, as thunder, even to the Athenian ships at their stations.
“Look there to sea, brothers, to those
squadrons of the foe which flaunt their supposed supremacy at the very portals of our citadel. They have accounted our inexperience at sea and deliberateness of action, which they deem liabilities and by which they hold to overturn us. But they have not reckoned their own impatience and restiveness, which are their flaws, and fatal. Our deficiencies may be overcome by practice and self-discipline. Theirs are intrinsic, indelible, and irremediable.
“Alcibiades thinks he blockades us, but it is we who blockade him. He thinks he is starving us, but it is we who starve him. We starve him of victory, which he must have, which the demos of Athens must have, because they do not possess courage but only audacity. And if you doubt the truth of these words, my friends, remember Syracuse. The world knows how that game played out. They err fatally, our enemies, in their conception of the proper relation of man to God. They are wrong and we are right. God is on our side, who fear and reverence Him, not on theirs, who seek to shoulder their way up Olympus and stand as gods themselves.”
Citations interrupted Lysander so repeatedly that he must make interval now at nearly every phrase and wait for subsidence of the uproar.
“Our race, brothers, has set itself to study courage, and we have learned its source. Courage is born of obedience. It is the issue of selflessness, brotherhood, and love of freedom. Boldness, on the other hand, is spawned of defiance and disrespect; it is the bastard brat of irreverence and outlawry. Boldness honors two things only: novelty and success. It feeds on them and without them dies. We will starve our enemies of these commodities, which to them are bread and air. This is why we train, men. Not to sweat for sweat’s sake or row for rowing’s sake, but by this practice of cohesion to inculcate andreia, to lade the reservoirs of our hearts with confidence in ourselves, our shipmates, and our commanders.
“Men say I fear to face Alcibiades; they taunt me for want of intrepidity. I do fear him, brothers. This is not cowardice but prudence. Nor would it constitute bravery to confront him ship for ship, but recklessness. For I reckon our enemy’s skill and observe that ours is yet unequal. The sagacious commander honors his enemy’s might. His skill is to strike not at the foe’s strength, but at his weakness, not where and when he is ready, but where he is lax and when he least expects it. The enemy’s weakness is time. Thrasytes is perishable. It is like that fruit, luscious when ripe, which stinks to heaven when it rots.
“Therefore possess your hearts in patience, brothers. I tell you: I am glad we are not ready. Were we, I would seek pretext to hold even longer. For every hour we deprive the foe of victory is another we turn his own strength against him. Alcibiades in his godless vanity flatters himself that he is a second Achilles. Well, if he is, boldness is his heel and, by heaven, we will strike that heel and send him sprawling!”
More acclamation, deafening and unbroken.
“Lastly, men, let me tell you of this Alcibiades, and what I know of him. Brave men tremble at his name, so many are the victories he has brought his nation. Yet I tell you, and stake my life upon it, that he will fade away, by the hand of heaven or his own countrymen’s. He must; his own nature calls this fate forth. For what is this man but the supreme embodiment of Athenian thrasytes? His victories have all come from boldness, none from courage. Let him strike us with terror and we will hand him his triumph. But only hold firm, brothers, undaunted by whatever flash and dazzle he throws at us, and he will crack and his nation with him.
“I know this man. He slept under my roof at Lacedaemon when he had fled there, condemned by his own countrymen for outrage against heaven. I loathed him then and despise him now. Before God I swore a mighty oath, that if He brought this man before my prow, I would break his pride and free Greece of his blasphemy and the tyranny of Athens with which he seeks to enslave us all.
“I plant my trust in you, brothers, in our arms and our andreia. But before all I place it in God. Nor is this wishful thinking but objective observation of heaven’s laws, for I perceive these faithworthy as the tides and immutable as the transit of the stars:
“Boldness produces hubris. Hubris calls forth nemesis. And nemesis brings boldness low.
“We are nemesis, brothers. Called into being by heaven’s outrage at this would-be tyrant’s pride, and at his city’s presumption. We are the Almighty’s right arm, God’s holy agent, and no force between sea and sky may prevail against us.”
XLI
FIRE FROM THE SEA
The alarm sounded deep into the third watch. I was dead asleep, in the villa at which Telamon and I had been billeted, which housed a dozen other officers and their women. These staggered now into the street. “Is it a drill?” one bawled from a terrace. The harbor lay a quarter mile below; you could see fire ships pouring in over the chain and, in their flare, Athenian triremes pulling fast in two columns with tow arrows and flame catapults arcing fire in all directions.
We armed and raced down the hill. You know the city, Jason. Mount Coressus overstands the eminence, her shoulders embracing the sprawl of suburbs spilling back from the port. The great seawall, the Pteron, spans the harbor mouth. Behind its base extend the commercial wharves, the Emporium, and beyond these the Toll, the inner fortifications, and the naval bastion, Huntress’ Hood. The river Cayster debouches, dense with silt, between the temple of the Amazons and the great square of the Artemisium, with the dredging works and the marsh on the south side, the cavalry grounds, and more suburbs outside the walls. These are all on hills and were all ablaze.
It was clear to any who understood Alcibiades’ frame that this assault was his answer to Lysander’s speech and a leap upon the main chance of Prince Cyrus’ presence on-site. Given the audacity of his generalship, he could have landed every regiment he had or even called in his Thracians, heaven help all who must face them. “I’m not too keen on this,” I shouted to Telamon amid the waterfront crush, meaning I was in no mood to go epitaph-hunting for either side. “Let’s find a rat hole and sit this son of a whore out.”
We cracked into a warehouse adjacent the Armorers’ Lane. You could see the fire ships brilliant as daylight now; crewless galleys stacked with pitch and blazing like Tartarus. I had never experienced an attack of Alcibiades from the receiving end. It struck like a terror show of shock and thunder, and it was pasting the piss out of the Peloponnesians. Twelve-oared longboats towed their incendiary trailers at a furious clip, sidescreens up to shield the oarsmen from the missile fire of the defenders, so far conspicuous only by its absence. A jig of Spartan six-stickers hauled to intercept the lead towboat. We could see the attacker dump her line; two enemy sixes struck her just as her fire ship, loosed now, ploughed into the roadstead where a dozen Spartan triremes rode at anchor. The impact snapped the incendiary’s booms; they crashed thunderously, dumping their cargo of pitch and sulphur onto the decks of the foe.
Now a second line of fire ships lit up astern of the first. The eruption of these, invisible heretofore, produced among the Peloponnesians a disseverment of the senses both palpable and paralyzing. “Don’t mill about like bloody sheep!” A Spartan colonel waded into the press. “Launch ships, curse you!”
At this instant Lysander himself thundered into the lane, horseback, compassed by his lifeguard of Knights. We could see the colonel dash before him, informing him of his order. Lysander countermanded it. Peloponnesian infantry were pouring onto the site. Athenian pinnaces continued to rake the ship sheds, slinging pinwheels and hello-theres. Shall we rush the Pteron? the colonel cried to Lysander, meaning make for the seawall to repel the landing.
Lysander rejected this as well. One must give the bastard credit. Any other of his race would have hurtled mindlessly into battle’s maw, seeking victory or glorious death. Lysander knew better. As he had baited Alcibiades, now his rival baited him. Lysander would not bite. He hauled toward the Artemisium and the great parade ground fronting the city. “Draw back! Marshal on the square!”
Lysander had built walls dividing the residential quarter of Antenoris from the dockyards, an undertaking sc
orned even by his own officers as make-work and folly. Now one perceived its brilliance. The ramparts funneled seaborne attackers—those striking from the Pteron, as the Athenians had—onto the Exposition Road, quayside, with water at one hand and wall at the other. Here was a pen made for slaughter. All Lysander need do was wait.
Where Telamon and I hid had become no-man’s-land. From seaward rushed the Athenians and allies; landside marshaled the Spartans and Peloponnesians. They would clash in the rock-hemmed pound before us, and our troops would be massacred. So futile, however, are all designs of war. At once sprang an overthrow from the last quarter Lysander could have projected, for the lone motive against which he could not contend.
This was Prince Cyrus, on fire for glory.
We heard hooves on the Lane of the Armorers; into the open thundered a cohort of Royal Persian Horse. The troop galloped onto the square of the Artemisium, parting the massed Peloponnesians. The prince reined in before Lysander. The lad himself was but seventeen and slight as a stalk, yet so fired by the nobility of his blood and the impulsion to emulate the deeds of his ancestors that he seemed lit as though aflame.
“The enemy is there, Lysander! Why do you hold?”
Meet him! Attack!
The prince wheeled and spurred. His Guard thundered at his heels. Peloponnesians and allies could not be held; the throng flooded onto the Exposition Road. Our warehouse sat right in its path. Athenian rangers who had advanced thus far now spun and bolted, slinging their brands into every eave and alley.
Telamon and I peered about our coop. Paint. Our rat hole was a hive of pitch and encaustic. We flushed from this covert the instant she exploded. I felt hair and beard erupt; flaming turpentine spewed upon me. I careened into the lane, beating at the flames with my cloak, but it, too, was drenched with oil and blazing. Telamon pitched me into a mound of pumice, annexed to a construction site, moments before the hordes overran it. A Peloponnesian sergeant rounded upon us, beating at us with his staff to join the affray. My entire left side had been incinerated; I could not see nor feel of my face aught but charred meat. Telamon defended me. “By the gods, this man cannot fight!” He drew on the sergeant. “Go!” I propelled him, before he got himself arrested or worse.