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 self-less ness, 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
