Tides of War (18 page)

I missed the race. Our coop arrived late, only ferrying from Naupactus for the free feed. Alcibiades appeared, we heard, with all three teams at a banquet in his honor thrown by the city of Byzantium, whose citadel he took by storm less than a decade later. Agis the Spartan king was there with forty of his knights. The mob abandoned him just to glimpse Alcibiades’ drivers. Ephesus, Chios, Lesbos, and Samothrace erected pavilions in his honor. The Samians sent a barge full of hymn-chanting virgins, which ran aground, and all the wrestlers went out, in their garlands, to save them. The river was about a handsbreadth deep, if I recall.

Exainetos of Sicily took the crown in the
stadion
race, that Olympiad; no one even gave the fellow a sniff. The throng had eyes for Alcibiades only or, failing him, his horses. They were battling over the turds. It’s true; I saw it. No sooner would one of these champions elevate its tail than half a dozen had thrust their caps beneath it, as if this equine asshole were a fountain disgorging nuggets of gold. They even
made away with the hoofprints, cutting them out of the sand and boxing them like mason’s impresses. I have never seen so many drunk, or been so myself, without putting out an iron spit. The incidence of public fornication was spectacular.

As for Alcibiades, you couldn’t get within bowshot. At age thirty-four he had vaulted to the firmament, champion of champions, the cardinal celebrity not alone of Greece but of Macedonia and Thrace, Sicily, Italy, which was to say, save Persia, the most famous individual in the world.

The Games themselves were epochal in a further sense. The prior Olympiad, recall, was the one from which the Spartans had been debarred, owing to their dispute with the Elean priests of Zeus. Without the Lacedaemonians, every crown was tarnished. Now they were here. Polydorus the boxer, Sthenelaides the pentathlete, plus two teams in the four-horse, neither of which had ever been beaten except by the other. Mantinea had restored their pride. Their
mythos
was back, Alcibiades would say, and they gloried in it.

For myself the Spartans’ presence bore significance in a keener sense. At every turn, it seemed, I encountered mates from the Upbringing and officers and boy-captains who had trained us. Outside the Pavilion of the Champions I ran into Phoebidas, my old commander, with his brother Gylippus, who would later scourge the forces of Athens so pitilessly before Syracuse. Endius I chanced upon as well, the boyhood friend and, some said, lover of Alcibiades. He was Captain of the Knights, in line for an ephorship with the new year.

There were many like myself, standing not in the colors of their nation, but the blistered leather of the expatriate, the shield for hire. The seasons flow so without seam into one another that a man cannot account the alterations of his person till he beholds them reflected in the aspect of a
comrade unencountered in the intervening years. Here came Alcaeus, tent companion of Socrates, the merry actor of Aspasia Three. He was a trainer now. His charge Pandion had fallen that forenoon, tethered to his stone, preferring death to second place—Pandion of Acharnae, who had taken his ephebic oath at the shoulder of my brother, what seemed only a summer gone. So it continued. Each man encountered mates of his school years, whiskerless lads when last met. How could such gray stand in this friend’s beard, such scars on that comrade’s limbs? Inquiries after sister or mother, wife or babe, elicited the same wordless reply. Soon all query ceased. Each looked into his mate’s eye and read in that glass the loss that stood, unseen by himself, within his own.

On the third dawn Eunice shook me awake in our bivouac along the Alpheus. “Rise up, Sleepy-bones! And try to look the gentleman.”

Above on the bank stood Lion. I had not seen him since Mantinea, two summers past, or replied to the fistful of his letters I yet bore within my kit.

He was decked out, sleek and prosperous, a civilian. I clapped him with pleasure. No more the reckless runaway of Potidaea, my brother was a pillar of thirty years, with children in their second decade and our father’s farm, now his alone, beneath his stewardship. We hiked to town down the traffic-clotted road.

He reproved me for yet following the trade of war.

“The money’s good,” was my defense.

“Then buy me dinner.”

We both laughed.

“You couldn’t prize an obol out of your ass, could you?”

Aunt Daphne had taken ill, he said. Did I know I was still her golden youth? “She worries about you, brother. I do too.” He wanted me to come home with him, work the land. He would put us in co-ownership, fifty-fifty. “The place is more than I can pack alone, Pommo. But together we could make her pay.”

We spent the day, my brother and I, neither capable till the instant of parting to raise that matter which burned foremost in both our hearts.

“Have you planted their bones?”

I meant those of my wife and child, and Father’s and Meri’s, in the tomb at Acharnae where they belonged.

“You’re the elder, Pommo. You know it must be you.”

With that, all joy left the Games for me. I must get home. I packed next noon to depart, which provoked a prodigious row with Eunice, for whom it was an article of faith that one day I would “put on gentleman’s airs” and quit her. I detest such scenes with women. My kit stood already shouldered when a man-at-arms entered our camp, a squire of the Spartans, seeking me. He was Endius’ man, called Forehand for his skill with the throwing ax. He wished to extend an invitation from his
master to join him at table this evening. The bid included my mates and our women.

The knight’s party was quartered not in the host pavilion, but on a private estate at Harpine outside Olympia town. Forehand came for us and took us over. I was then thirty-four; Endius in his mid-forties. As a boy my station had stood so far beneath his that even now I found myself addressing him as “lord” and stationing myself on his shield side in deference. “Relent, Pommo. We may be mates now.”

The knight was gracious to our women, even charming, permitting them to dine unsegregated beside himself and his companions, a familiarity unheard-of in Lacedaemon. “Is it true,” Eunice’s brazen tongue ventured, “that Spartan women appear in the festivals stark naked?”

“We don’t call it naked,” our host replied, “but blessed.”

“And what if they’re fat?”

“That’s why they don’t get fat.”

Eunice absorbed this with amusement. “And are Spartan women indeed the most beautiful in Greece?”

“So Homer attests,” Endius replied, citing the daughters of Tyndareus—Helen of yore and Clytemnestra, and their cousin Penelope, whom Odysseus had borne away to Ithaca, his queen.

Toward close of the meal, another Spartiate appeared. This was Lysander. He had made the leap to colonel since Mantinea—and of heavy infantry, not horse. He took the place beside Endius. When the Hymn of Thanksgiving had been sung and the party adjourned, this pair made motion to Telamon and me to linger. It was late, but there was a moon. Would we accompany them into the countryside for a breath of air? Mounts had been drawn for us; the Peers’ squires would trot ahead bearing brands.

What could this be? Talk at dinner had eschewed all mention of Alcibiades, no mean exploit in this hour with his name upon the lips of all. Endius himself had spoken only two words of his friend, those in response to an observation by our captain Telamon that the most magnificent of the pavilions erected in the victor’s honor was that of Argos, which, since Mantinea, had made herself a democracy a second time, and among whose men of influence Alcibiades numbered scores of allies and friends. Could he be exploiting this occasion politically? “Nothing he does,” remarked Endius, “is absent politics.”

We had advanced several miles along the Alpheus. The countryside sprawled, rich in olives and barley. Endius observed that these lands, specifically the estate we now overlooked, were the property of Anacreon of Elis, his wife’s kinsman, who stood gravely in his, Endius’, debt. At a nod the Spartans’ squires drew up. Our party reined in on the bluff above the river.

“What my comrade and I speak now,” the knight began, “comes neither from the kings nor the magistrates of Lacedaemon, but alone ourselves, as private individuals. Will you attend and repeat nothing?”

The hair stood up on my neck.

“We’ll ride back on shoe leather,” I replied, dismounting. Telamon’s hand drew me up.

“These gentlemen wish to speak of business, Pommo. I for one am in business.” He rapped my knee to cool me. It obliged nothing to give ear to a proposition of employment.

“Would you call yourself a patriot?” Endius resumed, addressing me.

I would return to Athens with the dawn, if that was what he meant.

“I mean would you defend your city against her foes? Would you count your life as nothing, if expending it preserved your country’s freedom?”

Trusting the gods, I replied, I would hope to save both.

He smiled, glancing to Telamon. My mate held silent. Lysander spoke, addressing me.

“You have said you would sacrifice your life against the enemy which threatened your country. I believe you and honor this, as any would. Now let us pursue the supposition. Were a great pestilence to advance upon your nation, a famine, say, or affliction…”

“Say it straight out, friend.”

“…would you strike as boldly? Say that with a single blow you might preserve…”

“Do you take me for a homicide, Lysander?”

Endius broke in with heat. “Who slays a tyrant is no murderer but patriot. A deliverer of his country, as Harmodius and Aristogeiton!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” Telamon raised a hand. “We speak of commerce, not passion.”

Endius ignored this, continuing to me with fire. “Would you not name him savior, who cleansed his homeland of this scourge?”

“Endius!”

This from Lysander, sternly.

With effort Endius brought himself under control. “Let us speak straight then. No more fencing. You have eyes, Polemidas; you are not stupid. Your country’s enemy is not Sparta. Her real foe lies twined within her own bosom. Not ourselves, but that thrice-crowned serpent whose ambition, fueled to fever pitch, would by its excesses destroy her.”

“Do you fear him so much, Endius?”

“I fear and hate him. And love him too, as you.”

He turned away. For long moments none spoke.

“What would be this patriot’s portion,” my mate broke in, “who purged the breast of Athens of such a viper?”

“All you see.”

This from Lysander, indicating the olive groves and fields of barley. Telamon whistled.

“A noteworthy incentive. But how long would this savior live to enjoy it?”

“Beneath our aegis, all his years.”

“Since when does Sparta,” I inquired of both Peers, “trouble herself so with the well-being of an enemy?”

“Enough!” Endius barked. “Will you kill him?”

“I’d sooner you both, and for half the price.”

The Peer’s knees dug so hard that his mount began to spook. Lysander must reach across and seize the bridle.

“Relent, my friend,” he addressed Endius. “We will not convert our comrades here tonight. Perhaps they are correct. If Athens is indeed our nation’s foe, then our role, yours and mine, must be to succor all by whose agency she may be brought low.” He smiled, looking me in the face. “May heaven prosper our friend who wears the triple crown.”

Telamon and I dismounted. Endius wheeled above us on his balking mount. “Hear this now; I will speak a prophecy. One day Athens will lie broken, her fleet sunk, Long Walls razed, widows and orphans wailing in the streets. All this shall come about by the instrument of one man….”

I burned to cut him off with something sharp, but at his words my blood ran chill; I could summon no rejoinder.

“What crime is it, brothers,” Endius continued, “which the gods abominate beyond all? Not murder. Not treason. Pride! To quench this, Zeus himself looses his bolts of heaven.” He wheeled above us, elevating his palm. “Mark this testament, which I pronounce this night in your hearing.”

The knight drove his heels; man and mount spurred off. Lysander lingered, motioning to the squires, who sprang onto the backs of the beasts which had borne Telamon and me to this promontory. Before our vantage the groves and fields sprawled silver beneath the moon.

“Enjoy the prospect, comrades,” Lysander spoke. “Perhaps on this account we shall do business at another hour.”

After the Games we trekked home to Athens, my brother and I, employing the four days to reacquaint ourselves. I had wages due and sent Eunice ahead on the ferry, via Patrae and the Isthmus; she would be safe traveling with Telamon and Chowder. Others of our coop had set themselves to try the city as well. There would be work with the new fleet for Sicily.