The End of Sparta (5 page)

Pelopidas and Ainias huddled and were whispering a bit. Those around Ainias had welcomed this killer and knew that he would cut down untold Spartans—and yet might cause themselves even greater grief. Now Pelopidas began poking the sand in places as his voice went up and he pointed with the spear end. “There is a king there, Kleombrotos, along with his royal guards; we at least know that much. They will all be on their right wing as usual—the Spartan Right that scares so many of us. Maybe two thousand or three thousand of Sparta’s finest, I reckon. All on the right wing. At least three, maybe four
lochoi
. The gods alone know how deep they will stack. Most likely at least eight. But I also reckon this time maybe even twelve shields in mass.” Pelopidas went on. “You know the Spartans. The middle of their long line will be riffraff. Those are always the half-helots or the freedmen from Lakonia. Some of these northern scavengers from Herakleia and Phlios will drift in. But on the left, these are the good allies from the Peloponnesos. They are the tough farming lot. Mêlon over there knows these southerners well from the fight at the Nemea.” He repeated himself for a moment, “I said these are allies, not enemies. The hoplites of the left wing of the Peloponnesians that the king counts on to hit our best on our right.”

“That is not the worst of it, Pelopidas. We must fight in the morning.” Epaminondas calmed him and strolled to the middle of the map because he knew the reaction to what would follow next. He began to add in the sand some lines of retreat very slowly and carefully with his own spear. “We cannot hold this army together for over a day or two ourselves—not outnumbered as we are and with even more cracks in our alliance than the king’s army. Too many Boiotians and northern tribes are wagering that the Spartans will march over us when the flutes begin to play. Or that we will crack as we did at Nemea. They always wait to praise us should we win, and join the Spartans if we lose. Their only creed is to be the winners—whether with us or not.”

The Stymphalian Ainias still stayed silent, but edgy, at his side. Next Epaminondas turned around quickly and addressed the assembled officers directly. “We must fight these invaders by tomorrow or there will be no
dêmokratia
anywhere north of Athens. Otherwise we won’t even have seven thousand of this army left. The traitors promise that our farms will be spared. They boast at least everyone would be better off with the
dynasteia
of Spartans back in control.” Epaminondas glared at Ladôn, and then backed up a bit. “But Pelopidas—step out of the way for a moment. Ainias of Stymphalos over here and I have been talking. We’ve worked something up a little different from what our enemies—or you generals here—expect. Let our southern guest speak.”

Ainias took off his cape and stepped forward again. His helmet was on the floor at his feet. His gloves and arm bands were off. His pockmarks were shadowed in the torchlight. Long matted oily hair covered his shoulders, his half-ear now and then hidden. His black beard stubble highlighted rather than covered the furrows and creases on his face. From what cave in Arkadia had Epaminondas dragged this wolf-beast out? He made Epaminondas look soft. The captains whispered he’d worked for that rogue archon down south, Lykomedes of Mantineia. Still, few in Boiotia apparently had ever seen him, much less knew of any Ainias of Stymphalos—that wild Arkadian place where the birds of Ares once flung their iron feathers at Herakles by the vast and gloomy lake.

Ainias eyed Pelopidas’s sand map. He pushed away others who stood in his light. For all his gaze at the sand below, Ainias looked as if he’d been out in the byways the night before, robbing and throat-slitting for his pleasure along the taverns on marshy Kopais. The Thebans listened in fear that he might draw his long sword and take off a nose or ear, Persian-style—the way his own ear had been lost.

Instead he startled them by talking, much louder than the voice of either Epaminondas or Pelopidas. “Your wars of trumpets and boasts are over. Over. We live in the age of
logos,
of science. I kill by an art, a skill, a
technê
. Not by the livers of goats. Not your prayers to Artemis. Not even numbers and muscles win battles. Battle is as much of the mind as the heart.” Few wanted to argue with this man’s blasphemy—but what a voice, what long words came out of the mouth of an uncouth killer. “Listen up to the new war. We all know what Kleombrotos and his royal guard will do tomorrow: what they always do whenever they fight. A suckling child without teeth could tell us in advance.”

Ainias then waved his hands as he went through the Spartan way of war bit by bit. The entire crowd was hypnotized; those who had just before been punching each other were now pushing to get nearer this curious sand map. “The flutes will start up. The army will walk out on their heavy feet. They stare. They do their slow two-step. The king and his wing slant. They swerve to the right. We will be blinded by the sun at their backs. Or scared by the glare of their polished shields—a thousand and more of the Spartan Similars, all shuffling in the king’s charge. Flute music all the while. These shaved lips come on. On always—like the crab we see on the seashore that can only walk sideways and at an angle. They hope, they
expect
to break you rustics from the provinces. Their strong right wing faces off against our weak left. Then they get to your rear. Then stab you in the back. Then turn. And they come up behind your best Thebans on your right. Then you all die. And we are burned and float away as ash. I know this. I did just this as an ally alongside them for twenty seasons. I killed many of your fathers at the Nemea and Koroneia.”

He calmed and with almost a murmur finished, “But this they will not do. Not tomorrow. Not ever. I swear to you all that Leuktra will be no Nemea.” Ainias, bathed in sweat under the summer torchlight, tore off his leather tunic and was focused on the captains. Epaminondas then stepped up and yelled to his men, “Watch and learn.”

“Says who, Arkadian?” a loudmouth interrupted the trance of the crowd, and yelled in a high pitch. They nicknamed the barker Backwash. He was some sort of low official of the Confederation, who had borrowed his father’s breastplate and agreed to a safe slot in the back of the phalanx for the price of haranguing the officers before battle and upping the hoplite pay to a full silver drachma. But if he could not talk the army out of battle, then he had some lamb’s blood in his pouch that he would smear on his helmet as he peeled out at the back of the column before the first collisions with the Spartans. His real name was Menekleidas. He was from Aulis, on the narrow strait between Boiotia and Euboia, and thought he could steal the crowd back from the Arkadian. “Tell us something we do not already know, foreigner. My lads from the Euripos can stay put and hide well enough from the Spartans over on the big island of Euboia. Tell us why we need to fight and how we can win. Does this foul bird of Stymphalos think he can wing in here and squawk to us, scratching up a fantasy victory from his fancy drawings in the dirt?”

Laughs and growls arose from behind. “You tell them, Backwash.” Menekleidas turned around to bask in them. Mêlon had had enough. He pushed away two or three rustics to grab Backwash by the neck, then bent him down and kicked his rear so hard with his good right leg that the would-be orator flew out like an arrow into the goat carcasses outside the tent—and to greater laughs than he had just earned with his smart talk. Backwash was lucky Mêlon had struck first; Chiôn had been about to use iron, not a fist or kick. The council was again almost reduced to a brawl. The Stymphalian hadn’t even begun his attack plans. Across the ravine the Spartans were ready to follow Lichas. Here the Boiotians were fighting each other.

Mêlon raised his voice, “Shut up, all of you. Especially this slimy eel from the Euripos. I know my Homer and this here man is an ugly Thersites. Remember the poet’s words: ‘I swear there is no worse man than you are.’ Yes, this Thersites, this Backwash, knows well enough to charge us jacked-up tolls for those who pass over to Euboia. Like the double current, his men know how to collect coming and going. But so far he won’t fight for his fellow Boiotians.” Then Mêlon, son of Malgis, gave his own brief speech in the way he did to his pruners on Helikon. “I’ve heard all this before. It leads nowhere—except to a few fistfights and a Spartan army over there at Leuktra already chopping down our olives. They’re trampling our vines while we bicker and moan. You decide, all of you, whether you wish to be the dragon-sown men of Old Thebes, the bronze giants of our grandfathers’ age—or the connivers and trimmers of this new low era of Backwash.” Mêlon then put his arm around Ainias and raised his voice even louder. “Let this stranger from Stymphalos speak and finish his work in the sand—unless you know the Spartan better than he. But I recognize none of you from the battle at Haliartos. Is there any more than a handful here from the fights at Koroneia? See whether the Stymphalian bird has talons or not. I have fought him and his kind from Pellene before at the river Nemea. I would not wish to again. If you know spear work like he does, go on; if not keep still.”

The crowd grew quiet along with Backwash. Murmurs went around that this fellow was the son of Malgis of myth. Here was Mêlon of prophecy of the falling apple—and here no less with his brand-faced slave.

Ainias resumed drawing in the sand. “As I said, this they will not do. No, no—tomorrow the best of our army on the right will
not
kill their worst on their left. Our lesser folk won’t be harvested by the king across the field on his right. Instead Epaminondas and Pelopidas with his Sacred Band will take the harder path. They will veer toward the royal Spartan spears. They and the veterans of Thebes
muster on our left
, facing Kleombrotos and his royal right. Chiôn and I, with Mêlon here, go helmet to helmet with Lichas from Pythagoras’s noble left.”

A louder rustling began at mention of the strange trick. Ainias once again raised both hands to warn them all he would finish. “I said
on our left
. I promise to you this: The Thebans and their generals will fight on the unlucky side of our battle line, head-to-head against King Kleombrotos to the death. We few will end everything once and for all tomorrow spear-to-spear. Let their royal right hit our choice left—best against best. Let your gods on Olympos at that very spot decide who wins Boiotia. We live or die with one blow.”

A wave of silence struck the crowd, as if the apoplexy of the sight of the lame Mêlon had not been enough. How could a man with a scarred face and stubble talk like he was a sage of hand-to-hand spearing, the eloquent master of
hoplomachia
? Officers far better than Backwash pushed and squirmed for a better view of his crazed battle plan in the sand at their feet. The Theban elite was now to be on the bad-omened left side? The dirty side. Spear-to-spear, shield-to-shield set against King Kleombrotos. Mêlon scanned the tent. The provincials in the past always used to face directly the enemy king and his guard, while their own city grandees of Thebes stationed far to their right were untouched—slaughtering the allies of the Peloponnesos and calling it their victory.

Since the time of Kreon, the nobodies of Hellas in the battles between the city-states had been the fodder to die on the ill-fated left wing. Mêlon was always told by the Boiotarchs not to lose the battle before their good men could win it over on the easy right. Malgis his father used to joke, “A funny sort of war it is, when the weak fall to the strong—on both sides of the battlefield.” Then Ainias called out some more. He would either convince the Thebans or enjoy bashing the heads of the shouters. “Yes, on the left. It’s been done before in the south and maybe elsewhere as well. Do you hear me, the left—the good-omened Left Hand, the divine Left of Pythagoras, where our strong hits their strong. There it will be for most of us in this council tomorrow. I and this Mêlon and Epaminondas and Pelopidas over there.”

Ainias went on. “But that is not all the Spartans will see at noon.” The raspy voice of the torn ear had three cups of wine behind it, so he was louder even than before. “We will not stack sixteen men deep. Not like your fathers did at Nemea. We will not crowd even up to twenty-five shields—as your grandfathers fought at Delion. No, no, no. Epaminondas will lead a column of fifty deep. To push over the king from our left. Fifty shields deep, I say.”

Fifty? Fifty shields on the left. How? Why? Now at more of these crazy
taktika
, the throng began pushing to see this map of Ainias in the sand, to find out whether he was mad or drunk or both. In the midst of the crowd’s chattering, a tough Boiotarch of wide shoulders from Tanagra came forward, with cratered face, a burn scar down his chin, and a smashed nose. He was no trembler like the whiny wide-butt Backwash or lord of pomegranates, Ladôn. No, this veteran scowled and he forced his way to the fore in a well-earned swagger. Hoplites parted since they had seen him cut a similar wide swath in the mess of battle. Ainias himself was not sure whether to hit this man—or, better yet, pull his sword out. For now the Stymphalian kept his blade in his scabbard on his shoulder.

“Enough of this sophistry. Philliadas, I claim to be. Son of Philostratos. You all know me,” he yelled as he turned back to the crowd. The coarse farmer had cleared his barley ground near the battlefield of Tanagra. He was covered with ugly welts and healed-over rips, from both spears and goat horns. Grime and splinters were under his nails. Worse was on his hob-nailed sandals. This Philliadas also knew his numbers. In the past he had earned an Athenian drachma a day settling fights as a surveyor on the borders at Panakton near Attika. Philliadas could measure boundaries in his head—and box any who questioned his number reckoning. He would have done the judging free, just for the chance to kill a man without the charge of blood guilt.

He stared down Ainias. “I wouldn’t try to slap me, sophist. Keep that shield still, or we’ll settle it here.” He stuck his finger almost into the chest of Ainias. “But listen, Arkadian, all you big fellows over there on the left will be only sixty men wide in your square—if even three thousand of you show up tomorrow and I can square my numbers. I figure Kleombrotos and his Spartans on the right wing will add up to twenty-five hundred, if not three thousand—at least as much as the men of Thebes. They may be eight shields to the rear. Or they may be twelve deep at most. Either way, with your sixty shields wide in the front row, you men on the left will be facing two or three hundred of them. I say you will be swallowed up in an eye blink one against four or maybe five. You Pythagoreans talk big about numbers and the good left hand. But these you don’t have a clue about.”