The End of Sparta: A Novel (35 page)

The engineers of Proxenos ensured that no machine of the Hellenes could tear down his stacked blocks, not even the new belly-bows from Sikily that sent iron shafts of twenty palms and more in length—and faster and heavier than any arrow—for two stadia. Double iron clamps, in the shape of axes, joined his blocks, and heavy lead sealed them from rust. The walls were half as deep into the ground as they were tall. Far beneath the earth they were anchored to hold the weight. Subterranean stones stopped the burrower and the miner from pulling out earth from beneath. King Agesilaos could not go over, under, or through these stones, or flood or starve out those inside, either.

Scaffolds still rose above the street. Ainias pointed to them in every direction. Thousands of Arkadians were hoisting cut stones and trays of mud bricks on ropes and pulleys up from booms for the final courses, even as the wind blew ice over the works. Wagons made a continuous trek into the circuit’s gates from the farms beyond, full of household rural folk moving into the still unfinished fortress. Ainias tried to make sense of it all as the sleet began. “Walls reveal a people. You are a Zeus who has taught these Mantineians that they are better than Spartans and can do things because they think they can do things. Yet something more even than Mantineia will soon be rising to the south at Megalopolis, and perhaps in Messenia something greater than Megalopolis. You have turned the men of the Peloponnessos into hemi-gods, and from the barren earth they are building a new Olympos.”

Proxenos stayed quiet and at the boast of Ainias hoped only that the Spartans were wrong who charged that Epaminondas instead was intent on a Hades above the earth, with an Acheron and Styx in the light of day, inhabited with thousands of anonymous and identical empty souls who only looked alive but had long been dead inside. As the two passed through the gate and into the bustling city, a wealthy-looking archon in a clean white tunic, fat and loud, met them. This was Lykomedes, the son of Aristoteles, democratic leader for the ages—barker of the agora. He was the head of the new Arkadian league, the democracy of allied poleis that was to follow the example of Boiotia and turn itself into a federated empire of the city-states. What had struck the careful architect Proxenos—who had seen him first three summers earlier—was not the ambition of Lykomedes, nor even his belly or his clean new long shirt, but his nose. It was Olympian, and worse, out of plumb, in need of saw or hammer work, its boar-like snout nearly resting on his lower lip, with his two bottom teeth like tusks protruding out.

Such a blemish, he thought, would have earned Lykomedes a date with the deep
Kaiadas
from the Spartans. Even at Athens such defects of birth were seen as a window into a flawed soul. Proxenos frowned, since he certainly did not think his new perfect city should have rabble like this in power—men that did not deserve the proud stones he was building for them. And he only worried more that the Spartans were right, after all.

Ainias remembered that it was also a mythic Lykomedes who the poets said had murdered the good Theseus, and he expected no less from this reincarnated, fouler version. Still, Lykomedes’s success was visible in the looming stones about them. Who could argue with that, since the final end always trumps the messy beginning and middle? In any case Lykomedes was aptly named “cunning of the wolf” for his plots and conspiracies. Because his nose muffled his speech, he had a boy crier with a screeching voice that met the two well before they could greet the man properly and get much beyond the gates. When they neared, Lykomedes’s low murmur and hissing took over. “How do you like Homer’s ‘Mantineia of the many grapes’? Better than your Thebes of dragon-born legend? We have ten gates, not your mere seven. Now Arkadia prepares to build a grand monument, right on the Sacred Way at Delphi. We will buy our spot right in front of the Spartans.” Then, turning to Ainias, he coughed and whispered, “My, my, our famous mercenary. I heard you were back among us.”

Ainias said little but nodded to Proxenos. On the journey over the pass, they had talked of meeting this Lykomedes. The Arkadian had prophesied to Proxenos, “Before this is all over, this boar will rut at the Thebans his benefactors, as much as he grumbles about his hatred for the Spartans. He will do all that for the people, as he puts it.” Ainias boasted that he could read men the way he separated out the fat and thin hoplites in his files and lines of the phalanx, and the cowards as well. His gaze centered on the eyes and the carriage of the head, the steadiness of the hand, and the direction of the toes, to learn who would drop his shield, foul himself, turn tail—or plant himself firm and stab ahead. He knew as well that Phrynê was passing messages all over the Peloponnesos, encouraging the Dorians south of the Isthmos not to expect the arrival of Epaminondas, so confident were she and her cadre in persuading her customers to stop the muster of Epaminondas. And barring that, she would at least provide the Spartans with the numbers and the nature of the Boiotian alliance. All that and more he now read in the face and bearing of Lykomedes.

Ainias’s hard look, his scars, his wide-gapped teeth and stubble beard made his speech even more forbidding and bleak. He also had something of Mêlon in him—with taller ears for the bad than the good, a curse that made him moody with the black bile though seldom wrong. So he warned all to keep their distance from this Mantineian demagogue. Yes, he knew Lykomedes as a two-shoe who would have his new Mantineia turn to either Thebes or Sparta as the iron vane on the tower of the seasons spins to follow the wind.

Lykomedes grabbed them by the arms. He led them up the stairs of one of the towers, about a stade from the gate, as they sought shelter from the sleet. For all his ugliness and age, he was spry and stopped to point out a step too high, or a gate that scraped its threshold as if the Boiotian should fix it. Then he hammered with his staff the stones at their feet, as if he could teach the architect anything about the city Proxenos had planned. “For the mud brick we have stone. For the river we have a moat. For the villages we have a fortress—all built in a year by my plans and the sweat of the men of Mantineia. This is
dêmokratia
, the power of people. This is what the Dorian spear so rightly fears. I am a
dêmokratikos
.”

Ainias said little. But he reminded Lykomedes how their Mantineia had been reborn—and how others were at the heart of it all. “Our fortress, Lykomedes, here at Mantineia is the child of Epaminondas. It came from the mind of Proxenos here. Thebes is written over your walls. The city is not mere stone, but formed of free men. For the walls of a democracy are only as strong as the right arms of its hoplites. You can prove that soon at the Eurotas, down among the Spartans.”

Proxenos cut in, “I wish it were so. But we will have a hard time in the days ahead to storm Sparta—if Epaminondas decides to go south once he arrives here.” He pointed to the high passes farther to the south that cut off Lakonia from the center of the Peloponnesos. “The roads are deep in winter mud. There is nothing but cold there beneath Taygetos. Colder still in the shadows of Parnon. Their barrier to the city, the river Eurotas, is ice. I feel it even from here in my bones.”

Lykomedes bellowed out in laughter. “Spartans? They hide inside their borders. Last month they came out to test our mettle, and we hit them hard, even though our walls were not as tall as you see them now.” The three were drenched by the light rain but kept talking in their confidence of the imposing heights of Mantineia, until Lykomedes advised to go over to the city center called
ptolis
, to see the theater and new temple to Hera, the patron goddess that watched over the growing city. He talked as they walked. “We need only more roof-tiles for our new homes. Sparta has roof-tiles. So we will join your Epaminondas at month’s end and go down to get our tiles from the Spartans. How’s that?”

Both nodded, since the thief would be on their side to steal from the common enemy. The cold drizzle turned to a harder rain, and then promptly abated and left a wet fog. Proxenos held his nose from the overflowing sewer. In anger he reminded Lykomedes that his plans had called for the tile drains beneath the walls to dump into the downstream of the Ophis, not into these pools inside the walls. Surely if these lowly sorts would not work for clean streets, they could at least hold their bowels and empty them only outside the city walls.

“A minor problem, stone doctor,” Lykomedes laughed. “We piled the clay pipe outside the walls, but thieves made off with it all. We need more clay, as I said. Until then, these ditches will have to do. As you heard, we had a bit of looting. Some stealing, too—until my archers emptied their quivers. Things are settling down. You’ll see. Hang up a few thieves for the birds. Toss their corpses to the dogs. Just a few is all that’s needed. We’ll get the crap out and the fresh water flowing soon enough.” As they passed the cesspools, Proxenos saw that the stench came from the two half-eaten corpses hung above the sewers. “To teach the others,” Lykomedes pointed at them. “All executed fairly on the order of my assembly, the will of the
dêmos
. But first, tell me about the muster of the Boiotians. The year wanes. Rumors spread. We hear Epaminondas will not come in his tenure, that he will not be reelected Boiotarch in the year to come. Hoplites don’t march at the winter solstice, right?”

The three were descending the ramparts and made their way down a colonnaded arch to the
ptolis
and the central city with its wide agora and broad stoas, the stones clean and shiny from the shower. Proxenos replied that the vote at Thebes probably was being held far to the north amid the cold as they spoke. “Boiotia was full of foreigners when we left.
Xenoi
, some from far above Phokis and Lokris, no less. Islanders too are camped beneath the seven gates. For good or ill, all say they have come to march. At least as far as Arkadia. Thousands of them, even as the summer is gone and the autumn wanes along with the annual tenure of General Epaminondas. Yet I wager the spirit of Epaminondas and the hard reason of Alkidamas will make it difficult for the delegates of Boiotia to stop the army. But make sure your Mantineia has enough food this cold winter to feed them all. Mêlon, the killer of Kleombrotos, may end up here in the front rank himself. They are coming, coming in just a few days.”

“Count on that,” Ainias broke in. Lykomedes listened more to his fellow Arkadian. “The Thespian killer will tire of his olive press and his protest that he is a
misanthrôpos
who just wishes to be let alone. We saw that before we left. His man-hatred was cured by Epaminondas. Yes, he of prophecy will come, limp or not—as long as he knows that his Epaminondas can leave Thebes still as Boiotarch with a right to lead out an army, even if it be a winter one that is not even across the Isthmos when his tenure ends.”

Lykomedes spat out between his teeth. “He might, but I hear the gods are finished with your Mêlon, son of Malgis, and from now on he will kill no more kings. Tell him to keep far from our Skopê, as they say it bodes badly for you northerners. Nonetheless, even cripples are needed. We turn none away. We have filled the city’s granaries since late summer’s good harvest. I had to stretch a few fingers of the wealthier ones, and even brand a few, to find their buried grain stashes. But they all coughed up in the end, all legal on the order of the
dêmos
. A thousand sheep and goats graze inside the walls. Another thousand are along the tall river grass outside near the walls.”

Proxenos wanted to know something else, something he had promised Mêlon to find out back at the press on Helikon. “Now tell us Lykomedes, have you seen Mêlon’s freedwoman Nêto, the prophetess from Helikon? She listens to the priestess of Pasiphai for the things that will happen before they do. Well before last high summer she was down here, scurrying around to find exiles of Messenia to stir the helots on. She might have had this poetess, Erinna, they say with her? They would have stopped here on the way west to Ithômê.”

“Yes, yes, Nêto who babbled about, but a fine tight sort nonetheless she was. But without the
erôs
of men in her eye, as I learned.” Lykomedes looked sideways and kept on. “The other girl, well now, the fiery one Erinna was even crazier with her talk about a new Athens on the slopes of Ithômê. I know of her songs. That is one reason why she walked freely in my city. But while I have long heard her hexameters—both the laments for her lost girlfriend Baukis, and the dirge on spinning—many have gone by that name Erinna, and all claimed that they were the one poetess of myth. I had never met any of them, so I was surprised that this latest Erinna seemed like one of Queen Hippolyta’s she-men from Pontos with that wicked bow on her shoulder. But maybe she’s more a woman than she let on. Both left—and with raggedy helots, no less. Your Nêto almost took my little Aristôn with them. Yes, the troublemakers left Mantineia thirty days or maybe forty or more ago, and with a full pouch of coins, headed toward the great mountains of Taygetos. Both will draw men, good and bad, on the road—if they are lucky enough to avoid the man-bear or wolf-men on the high passes. Look for that dirty Nikôn; he followed the two women. He’s that helot upstart that I’d rather kill than let run free in my city. All of them found too few Messenian helots here for their liking. They said they were going south. To the new city, no doubt. Nêto fell under the spell of your Alkidamas. Most who do don’t end nicely.”

Lykomedes went on. “This summer Nêto fired up our helot exiles here in Mantineia with visions of a free Messenia—all twenty of them. And that helot mob leader Nikôn, who stinks of leather and lye? Well, he was worst of all the helot brigands, the killer who ambushed and waylaid and had no parley with the Spartans. Still, helots were no concern of ours. She gathered a few of these loiterers off our streets. If they kill Spartans, why, all the better. So she came here, poked around, and left.” Something about Nêto had set the boar’s mouth flapping and he couldn’t stop spitting. “That pale poetess Erinna performed here, as I said, and breathed hard on your Nêto. Nêto thinks that they will lead an army of helots from the highlands of Arkadia. She plans on killing Spartans and freeing her people. I tried to talk some sense into the pair, but who can when these half-helots and crazed poets think they’re gods?”