seemingly within arm’s length of the altar, the other two hunters pulled him back by the arms. The three fell in a heap. When they rose again, their oiled faces and bodies were coated in the fine dust of the track, but the Ram was fully in their control. Triumphantly, elbows and knees battered, the three led their trophy on the long walk back to the start as the spectators cheered and danced around them.
“We are in luck this year, it seems,” Zeuxippos said.
“Have they ever failed to catch him?”
“Once, not too many years ago, the Ram was well ahead but tripped over his own feet. Some say he would have reached the end if Apollo had not interceded. That was the festival just before the Great Earthquake…”
The Runners presented their captive to the magistrates. At once, the crowd fell silent, and over the buzz of children and cicadas rose the thin voice of the Ram.
“The glad-tiding, the all-seeing, cultivator of spears, bearer of horns, Karneios-of-the-House, having seen the worth of the men of the city, here and for the year extends and avouches his forgiveness for the sins of the Dorians, and by such dispels the pollution of the murder of the seer Krios, his loyal servant, and releases his suppliants to practice sacraments of war for one year, until and unless the citizens assemble again in his sight, in the fashion handed down by their fathers, to plight their virtue as they must in their bloodguilt, on the fifteenth day of the month Karneia, next year.”
With this blessing and the promise to earn it again next year, the Lacedaemonians received permission to be themselves again. A pair of belaureled priests took their places before the figure of Karneios. A real ram was then led before them with horns gilded and fleece festooned with crimson ribbons, followed by a maiden dressed in spotless white, bearing a basket. Her linen folds, freshly pleated, fell as straight and regularly as the flutes of a stone column. Priests, maiden, and animal processed around the image to the sound of the pipes, and then received the ablution-the humans with water on their hands, the ram with drops sprinkled on its head. The animal’s head remained still. The priest poured out more water, this time flicking it more forcefully at the ram’s eyes. It startled, jerking its head backward. This was good enough to resemble a nod by the ram, giving its permission to be sacrificed.
The basket was opened, the barley cakes inside shared out and consumed. The exposure of the knife produced a gasp in the crowd as if nothing of the kind had ever been seen before. With the cutting of a vessel in the animal’s neck, a strong stream of blood projected onto the side of the altar, which was stained black with the residue of a hundred previous sacrifices. As the ram poured out its life, the women in the crowd raised their hands and ululated-a sound that always sent chills up Antalcidas’ neck.
“In my sixty-two years I’ve never seen the rites done better,” avowed Zeuxippos, with a formulaic tone that suggested he said the very same thing every year.
The competitions in music and dance resumed, including a choral hymn by twenty-four maidens in purple. They stood at first in four lines of six, stepping in time to the verses, their swaying alternately exposing and hiding the nakedness between the ungirt sides of their tunics. They sang: In the center of Delphic Pytho, navel of the world, divine Phoebus Touches the strings of his hollow kithara, sending its sweet ring Over the rocky heights of Parnassus, beloved of the Muses. But faster than the glint of light from his golden plectrum, He flies to the mansions of Olympus, aerie of Zeus the Orderer. There he diverts the gathered immortals, pleased to hear the son Of fair-haired Leto play in honeyed notes, and step in radiance For the Graces so finely tressed, and Artemis pourer of arrows, And his sister, sea-born Aphrodite, who dance with hands entwined, As the Hours sing of the love of the gods, that gift to mortal men In their short, feeble spans, where there is no recourse from decay, No reprieve from death…
The blonde he had seen before was there, on the left end of the third rank. She danced and recited with her brow furrowed in concentration, lifting and placing her sandaled feet, kicking out with filleted ankles, grasping an invisible bow with the evocation of Artemis. In unison, the girls fell into a circle with each grasping the wrist of the dancer beside her, their turnings livened by ample flashing of shins and buttocks. At the quality of their extremities Antalcidas was compelled to stare: unscarred, round, softly glowing in the light as if covered with velvet. The knees of Spartan women, on the other hand, cut like swords. They were slightly discolored with the dirt of the gymnasium, or as foreign men liked to believe, in the kneeling service of their lovers. Antalcidas became so excited by these sights that he was compelled to run away without warning Zeuxippos.
“Where are you going?” the old man called after him. “We must tour the encampment!”
Antalcidas ran into the fields and found a grove of apple trees. Picking a fruit with a color as hale as the girl’s thighs, he retreated to a private place and began to kiss the smooth surface of it, using his lips in ways that increased his frenzy. His kisses became nibbles, then bites, exposing the flesh, drawing the juice through his toothmarks, driving himself to bore at the bitter center of her, splitting the whole against his cheeks, reducing seeds and rind until all that was left was-nothing.
3.
On his fourteenth birthday Antalcidas moved on to the age-class of the propaides. He was mostly beyond the rigors of outdoor life, having long since become a thief with the skills to appropriate food, water, and shelter from helots or, if possible, from the unguarded estates of Equals. Unwary weaklings and youngsters supplied the rest, including the fawning respect due to their superiors. On the negative side of the ledger, he was under increasing responsibility to educate the boys beneath him, even as he continued to receive punitive thrashings from the three age-classes above. Being both men and boys, authorities and subordinates, propaides like him were caught in the middle.
This dilemma became more acute when, upon a raid on an olive grove, he stumbled on a brawl between two younger boys. Thibron and another Firstie sat watching the fight from a log as they passed a canteen between them. The boys dueled with iron sickles, lunging awkwardly at each other. The spectators shouted encouragements, spurring them to soldier on despite their exhaustion.
“Are you finished, girls?” asked Thibron. “Didn’t your boy-herd teach you that a Spartan never raises a hand in surrender?”
“Look at the way he stares at you! Will you let him get away with that?” exclaimed the other.
The boys dutifully went at each other again, their blades flashing as they cut the air. When the taller antagonist stepped into a column of sunlight, Antalcidas was stunned to see the face of Epitadas.
He had not glimpsed his brother in many years, yet he recognized him instantly. He knew that Epitadas would have been a year behind him in the Rearing; in his idle moments, as when he lay awake on his nest of rushes at night, Antalcidas wondered where Epitadas’ pack must be. Had they been on the same mountain before, out of sight of each other around some impassable outcrop? How many times had his brother taken cover when Antalcidas’ group passed him, just as Antalcidas’ had once fled at the sight of older boys?
The fight, it seemed, had not been bloodless. Epitadas had a cut over his eye, and his opponent was bleeding from a slashing wound on his upper left arm. Both were too tired to hold up their weapons, but just circled each other out of arm’s length, darting in to attack when they saw an opening. More disturbing, neither of the adults present seemed to be interested in keeping the boys from harm.
“Honored fathers!” Antalcidas addressed them. “Do you wish me to take spotting position, or to confiscate their weapons-as custom demands?”
This sudden interference, and his particular emphasis on established custom, got the men’s attention. Thibron turned to him with a mouth full of wine, surprised; his companion frowned.
“Who the fuck are you?”
This exchange distracted Epitadas, who swiveled his head around, gaped-and took a blow from a sickle handle in the temple. He collapsed, dropping his weapon.
“There, it’s finally over.”
Epitadas’ opponent, a scrawny youth who had bitten down so hard on his lower lip that his incisors were lodged there, moved in. Laying the chipped edge of his blade against Epitadas’ neck, he waited as the latter groaned and wiped the blood from his eyes.
“Give up now,” he commanded.
Epitadas focused on his enemy above him, saying nothing.
