The End of Sparta: A Novel (29 page)

All this Mêlon mused over, as he led Xiphos down the hill to Thebes. He left at midmorning for the ride of eighty stadia. If he pressed, he would be at the hill of the Kadmeia in Thebes not long after noon. But Mêlon did not take the main road to the capital. Instead he went south on a detour for a while on the Thisbê way, the same wagon path he and the two slaves had taken to Leuktra. He didn’t like passing on the busy path by the sanctuary of the Kabeirioi anyway—those eerie priestesses who floated about the roadway and sometimes shook down offerings from the lone wayfarers. Shrieking women with masks they were who came out of the brush and pointed their bony fingers in the face of the traveler. He had hit two before and didn’t wish to strike a third when time was short. On the main road he used to shout as they came into the middle of the path. “Leave the road, foul harpies. Make way before I put fire to your masks and shrouds and ride you down.” They parted, feebly throwing pebbles in his wake, screaming “You will all die with Epaminondas, you who forsake the old gods.” No, he would miss the Kabeirioi and gaze instead at holy Leuktra.

After a bit, Mêlon took the next fork and the narrower trail south and eastward to the field of Leuktra. He trotted Xiphos over a low rise, where he could see the battlefield among the rolling hills. There he stopped at the new marble monolith of the Boiotians—planned by Proxenos of Plataia. Scaffolding and a winch stood alongside it. So did piles of pig bones and ash from the masons who had camped out by the battle trophy. The column was almost finished save for the moldings. A bronze statue of Epaminondas was planted on the plinth high above, sculpted by Xenon, the apprentice of Aristides himself.

This was foul country for Mêlon. Lophis must have fallen not far from where Mêlon sat at the base of the
tropê.
Yes, it was near the spot perhaps where the Spartans had first been turned. His body had been dumped not far away at Kreusis, where the road led on down the cliffs to the gulf and the shrine of foul Kallista. Mêlon walked over the ground where he had killed Kleombrotos and picked up relics that had been missed by plunderers well more than a year after the battle. Here was the butt-spike of a broken shaft, Spartan from the look of it. Had it gone into Chiôn, Lophis, or Staphis? Mêlon sat for a bit. He drank some vinegar water, with sharp garlic and white cheese that Damô had packed. Then, feeling sleepy, he lay down near the monument’s base and drew his fleece cloak over him for a brief nap out of the winter wind. Closing his eyes, the farmer immediately was on that mountain again, in that now familiar stone cottage. More dreams came of bowls of hot food on the table. But the diners with him were huddling by the wall or in the corner and the soups were foul to the smell. All were ready with raised weapons as shadows came to the door. He never seemed to find out what followed from all that. Then suddenly a voice, one he should know, jeered him.

“
Euia
,
euia
, there.”

A jolt or something loud woke him. But it was a shrill, raspy, and unfamiliar voice in the world of sun, not dreams, “Wake up, sleepy man. We hear you snoring even from here.”

Mêlon jumped up at the sound of what he took to be Lichas. He had his hand on his spear, grabbing his sword scabbard with his left hand on his shoulder should he need to throw first and then close with the blade. He would hit the first of them, then stab the second in the hand-to-hand.

But the two figures that approached him could not have been sadder to the eye. They halted as they saw the Thespian hoplite plant his feet for battle. The caller proved to be an older man, far more wrinkled than Mêlon. He hobbled up on a walking stick. He was helped by a young boy. If the elder one had once been broad at the shoulders and showed that in his youth he might have been a stalwart fighter in the first rank, the younger other gave no sign that he ever could do such a thing, so thin he appeared as he neared. And he was a bit audacious as he spoke first: “We found you at last, the hero of Leuktra. You must tell us how the Thebans won here at Leuktra. They say the Stymphalian Ainias fooled the Spartans with his
loksên
attack and left wing and fifty shields and all that. And did Epaminondas really spare the allies of Kleombrotos so that they would join him in the south? Is it true that the Pythagoreans always attack from the left, or was that again the smart work of Ainias, the drill master from Stymphalos? Tell us, please. We are all ears now. But first, how can Epaminondas plan a march this last month when his tenure ends at the first of the year? Is he a renegade? An outlaw? How will he come back in time or does he not fear the noose? Oh, and how many bushels of grain will it take his army to get to Sparta, and how fast do you Hellenes march, and do the Boiotians spear as well as the men of Arkadia? And do …”

He would have continued, had not his old master slapped him twice to silence him. “Keep still, my little barbarian, before strangers. Quiet unless you want three welts on your cheek. We have not yet introduced ourselves to our sleeping lord. And down here in the civilized south we do not speak so rudely without a warning first of who we are.” Then the old man continued. “Stranger, he tries, this Melissos does. But be careful. As I now warn, and as you just heard, he may not be as dull as he seems; his bad eyes dart about even if his mouth stays shut, and see more than mine or perhaps yours as well.” Then the man finally extended his arm, “But my apologies. I am Alkidamas, student of Gorgias, born in Elaia, a man of Asia. I need no introduction to you or to your clan. I hear that you are to stay in Thebes during your trip, which I don’t think is as sudden as you thought.” He paused, as if he had said too much, but then went on, far more slowly. “I am often a Theban, it seems. Though Athens is now my home, and, as I said, I claim Ionia as my birthplace as you can tell from my speech—so I am an itinerant.”

Mêlon was relieved they were not robbers. He found the old man a good sort and was struck by the boy’s spirit, even as he kept noticing that the boy’s dark arms and legs were like the thin reeds of the lowlands by the Euripos. His long nose was sharp and bony even without much flesh. All that was made even funnier by being stuck between squinting eyes that were not so much crossed as half-closed and bleary. This boy seemed to have suffered from the blurs. That was the curse of Zeus that made men squint with their weak eyes that could see little more than the palm before their face. He had some fuzz on his chin as sign of his age. But it gave no sign that it would ever be any more than that. He didn’t look quite Hellene at all. Instead the youth had a darker, barbarian look to him, with low bushy brows, like a northerner, maybe Epiriot or even a Makedonian with the short forehead. Before he replied to this strange boy, Mêlon paused in his approach. For a bit he was thinking how the gods sometimes bedevil men. They put into one Thersites like this, Homer’s ugliest man at Troy, all the physical lapses that others abhor. Only with difficulty are these eyesores to be endured if such ugliness can be trumped by cunning, or at least by spirit. The more Mêlon stared at him, the more it seemed that a strong wind off Helikon would have blown this boy into the marshes. His hair was like chaff in the wind, sticking in all directions and not to be combed. How could such a fellow ever amount to a man of any worth? Through audacity? Luck? Cruelty?

The older man Alkidamas had seen Mêlon smile at Melissos. So he now saw an opening and continued nonstop, “As I said, please excuse the boy, you won’t see northerners like him here in the south. He is young and not one of us, and knows too much for his own good. But now I will tell you more about him—a barbarian, as you have guessed. Maybe ten and three. Or at least between fourteen and fifteen years, though he claims he knows less about how old he is than we do.” The man went on still more, as Mêlon listened to his word-flood dumbfounded. “Our Pammenes got him as a hostage for Thebes to ensure those lying kings of Makedon up above Tempê keep their oaths about the peace. This boy Melissos is a pledge: If they invade, he dies; if they keep north, then after his year he goes back untouched. They say he is of royal blood. But who knows? Even if he is as important as they think, he still looks more like a Thrakian beggar than a Makedonian royal to me. He has a name I suppose. But I forgot it long ago and so call him Melissos—a honey gift from the general Pammenes to carry my bags, at least for the rest of his year. Those sticks he has for legs and arms, I’ve also learned, are of solid oak. Stronger than yours, old man, I wager. But then he is not quite what he stutters he is. I’ll be sad to give him back when the hostages are returned in the spring. Yes, he says little, watches everything, cares for nothing. I’d say he was a spy, but the blockhead has nothing to spy for. But enough of me. I know you are Mêlon, son of Malgis, of the line of Antander on Helikon, killer of King Kleombrotos. How fine finally to catch you here at the scene of your
aristeia
of last year.”

Mêlon at first did not like the sophist in him, and thought,
rhêtôr
. Another wind bladder. He earns his silver by not working. Then he made plans to leave them both, or so he thought. “Old man. I was just leaving this ghost field. I have another half-day or so on the road. I’ve decided for the rest of the way to lead my Xiphos. The pony has not been off my farm on the hard stone for a year or more. So forgive me for leaving now, but I don’t go in with strangers on the road, whether old men or the infernal Kabeirioi.”

“No bother at all,” the sage cast back with his wide smile as he pointed to Melissos to follow. “We are going your way to Thebes. No doubt Thebes you head for—even by your roundabout way? Your Zeus on Olympos apparently guides us where we should go, since we saw your servant Chiôn this morning in Thespiai, not far from the house of Phrynê. We were going to walk up to your farm until he told us to head you off on this detour.” Mêlon had not yet said a word in answer, and the man continued. “I’ve wanted a word with you for some time. But some such thing always bars my path to your vineyards—whether that cold wind on Helikon or these bony legs that tire from the hike. The battlefield is so much nicer for talking than catching you on the main road to Thebes by those dreadful Kabeirioi that even we Pythagoreans fear. And with all these bounders in the countryside it will be safer for three of us than one.”

Mêlon paused and at last said his first word of greeting. “Did my Chiôn talk to you now? But he—like my Nêto—was freed by decree of the people of Thespiai, and so can say what he pleases. After Leuktra I have no slaves. But you, our architect of liberation, apparently do? Your boy here has a pack on his back large enough for the two of you.”

Melissos backed off out of slapping distance, and then interjected, “His son fell at Leuktra, not far from the Spartan king. Lichas killed him. Where is this Lichas? Will we ever meet him? I have no fear of this man. We in Makedon have no fear of the Spartans.”

“Enough, Melissos, before you become too familiar with my right arm.” Alkidamas was encouraged by all the free talk, and pointed his finger at Mêlon’s chest. “Ignore his babble. Just three days ago we came through the Oropia from Athens. The boy and I sat on the Pnyx beneath Athena’s temple. The Athenians sent an embassy that should be in Thebes ahead of us—to stop Epaminondas from marching south any way they can, to save their dear Sparta. Old silver-bags Kallias will come. I know these Athenian folk. Some of them are my pupils. I had better be there with you to counter their lies. I saw windy Platôn himself and his longhairs as they went out on the Panathenaic Way toward Thebes. In any case, a word-fight will come tomorrow in the assembly of the Boiotians. Remember, Mêlon, that the Athenians are a tired folk. They have no belly to fight Sparta, much less to worry about Persia and Makedonia. They are exhausted from their long war of the past with Sparta, and simply wish to curry favor with whoever they believe is strongest. Athens is a dead city that believes in nothing other than finding the foe of its foe useful. Do not believe they are now a democracy, if they ever were. They are a mob, an ochlocracy that votes themselves free this and free that that they have not earned. As the orators dress up their greed with purple words once again, they seek to shake down their allies abroad to pay for their sloth at home. They damn the Spartans for their helots, but once in the days of empire had far more helots of their own that they called ‘allies.’ And the beauty of it all is that they still call themselves ‘the school of Hellas,’ as if wiping out the Melians or the men of Skionê, or trying to enslave the polis of Syracuse, is a fine and noble deed because it was done on a vote of the ‘people.’ No wonder they drove out the good men like Euripides and Sokrates and welcomed back the bad like Alkibiades.”

Mêlon had begun to like this rant, for he hated the Athenians as much as did any Boiotian, and Alkidamas put all that venom in much better speech than he ever could. So, Mêlon thought, at last, here was the great speaker Alkidamas in the flesh. The clever teacher of his Nêto, who had put thoughts enough into her chest for her to leave Helikon altogether. The more he examined the
rhêtôr
, the more Mêlon had no bile at this man. The stranger, by a second look at his hands and shoulders and the wear on his frame, seemed that he’d been behind the ox perhaps, or maybe stood his time in battle as well. When the winter sun hit Alkidamas’s worn face at odd angles, Mêlon could see beneath the wrinkles and creases a fighting man of stout nose and broad chin. And best of all, this man of Asia hated both Athenians and Spartans as if he had been born on Helikon.

So as the probing eye had seen, this Alkidamas had once been a grand man of action. That he said nothing to Mêlon about his own high station made their first meeting seem even more remarkable. For indeed this was Alkidamas, the most eloquent of the sophists of Hellas and a man known in Thebes as the student also of Lysis and Philolaios, the inheritor of the rhetorical style of Pythagoras himself, whom the best men at Thebes and Athens asked for advice, the sole philosopher of Hellas who had called for the serfs of Messenia to be freed and all men of Hellas to be judged on their talents rather than their birth. Mêlon was speaking to the greatest persuader in all the city-states, right here on the road to Thebes. Yet he did not quite fathom that this meeting was by design rather than chance, and that it could prove to be of more consequence than it now seemed.