Damatria, however, kept her smile as she retrieved her hand and wiped it on the back of her cloak.
“Lovely,” she said.
“For the sake of my young brother, who is innocent in this, you have my word that I will do as you ask,” pronounced Antalcidas. “But even in Sparta, as we honor our elders, every woman is bound to honor the Equals. The words you have spoken to me here today, woman, show me no respect as a man. This will therefore be the last time we speak at all. Now get out of my sight.”
Turning his back to her, he ignored her reply by focusing his attention on the sound of the cicadas in the trees around them. Rising to a crescendo, the cacophony lapsed, then began again in a different key. Other random insignificances preoccupied him: on the breeze he detected the tinkle of bells from the nearby altar of Aphrodite- in-Fetters, and the fragrance of myrtle. It occurred to him how little he cared to encounter Zeuxippos again, who would see the dejection on his face and chide him for feminine moodiness. When he finally looked back, his mother and her servant were gone; only Doulos was left beside him. His posture was akimbo, inquisitive.
The helot was puzzled further when his new master sat on the ground. Was he expected to sit too? He would have asked to take his burdens on his back, if Antalcidas had been carrying anything. As the time of his idleness stretched on, Doulos fidgeted, then felt an overwhelming compassion for this cross-legged young man in the weeds. And so he did sit down, and looking into the other’s face, cleared his throat. Antalcidas regarded him as one would examine a puzzling blemish.
“It is the fate of even great men to be ruled by their juniors,” Doulos ventured. He paused to see if the boss would thrash him or demand his silence, then completed his thought: “Themistocles the Athenian, architect of the victory at Salamis, once claimed that his son was the most powerful of the Greeks. The Greeks, he said, were led by Athens, and Athens by Themistocles, who was in turn ruled by his wife. And the one who ruled his wife was his son.”
Antalcidas narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you have pledged to serve your younger brother, just as Themistocles-”
“Not that! What do you mean, ‘the Greeks were led by Athens’? The Greeks have always been led by Spartiates. Even at Salamis.”
“With respect, master, that is not how the Athenians remember it.”
“Just because the Athenians lie does not oblige us to believe them.”
“Without question. But I submit that they don’t perceive their version as a lie…”
Getting to their feet, they went on arguing like this for some time, shoulder to shoulder, as they walked back to the village.
9.
In their twentieth year the young candidates for citizenship were cast back into a state of transition. They were not considered children anymore, but would not count as Spartiates until they were granted property and admitted to a dining group. For some, the anxiety of this passage was the hardest of all to cope with, as it seemed to wipe away whatever record of achievement they had compiled over the years of the Rearing. This was, in fact, one of the prime purposes of this time, to level the proud before they could carry their bad habits into the citizenry with them.
After their years of military training the recruits were ready for promotion into the ranks of the army. They were not placed in regular service at first, but consigned to a reserve force that kept watch on foreigners at Gytheion and the shrines, or patrolled the boundaries with Pisatis, Arcadia, and the Argolid. It was on one of these excursions that Antalcidas, with Doulos carrying his field kit and shield, penetrated as far as the river Alpheus and followed it downstream to Olympia. Indulging his curiosity, he went as far as a hill overlooking the Altis and peered through the oaks at the marble-girt sanctuary. There were no games that day-there would not be for several years-but the helot was determined to show his excitement.
“Pindar wrote of tradition that is both deeply rooted and always ripening. Can we agree now his wisdom must have been divinely inspired?”
“I see only vanities,” his master replied, nodding his head at the red-tiled edifices below. “The gods do not need fancy buildings.”
“Vanity, or the glory of the Thunderer? The poet wrote: Water exceeds all, and gold, like a blaze of fire in the night, is monarch of all varieties of wealth. But if, my heart, you wish to praise contests, seek not in vain some star warmer than the sun, shining by day through the heavenly vault, nor let us not pretend any contest is greater than Olympia…
“Helots read, men do,” Antalcidas said.
Like any good Spartan boy, Stone was indifferent to any poets other than Homer or Tyrtaeus. He did have one thought of his own that verged on the Pindaric: of all the foreign places he had seen, the green vale of Zeus reminded him the most of Laconia.
At last the season arrived when the dining groups voted on whether to admit recent graduates of the Rearing. Mess membership was necessary for full citizenship, and demanded in turn the payment of monthly dues-in the form of produce or wild game-that approximated what the member consumed. For this purpose the graduates received farm-land from their families and helots from the state to work it; elder patrons did their part too, helping to set up the households of the young men they had mentored. Damatria gave Antalcidas a corner of her property situated on a west-facing slope, with a modest farmhouse and a view of the mountains. Zeuxippos contributed a suite of furniture, including a sleeping couch, linens chest, and a fine wrought-iron brazier. These were the first significant possessions he owned since he gave up his toys in boyhood. Still, as he was in training or patrol for most of his time, and would be obliged to sleep in the public barracks until he was thirty, his domestic property would stand unused by anyone-with the possible exception of his partner in an early marriage.
The most immediately useful of Zeuxippos’ gifts was a full panoply of arms and armor. At last, he was free to stop drilling with a blunt-ended pole and wooden training sword. Instead, he was now the proud custodian of an ash-wood spear, about eight feet long, with a iron point and bronze butt-spike. The spear was a veteran, Zeuxippos said, having served in the line at Plataea and during the last helot revolt. A tear swelled in the old man’s eye as he said this, which Antalcidas took to mean that the spear was carried by the young Zeuxippos himself. The sword, with its iron blade shaped like an olive leaf, seemed of similar vintage. Like all Lacedaemonian swords, it was no longer than a man’s forearm, and therefore useful only for the kind of close-in fighting fit for a Lacedaemonian. He also received an old-style muscle-cuirass and greaves, but no one wore such encumbrances on the battlefield anymore.
Instead, the modern Spartan warrior relied for protection on the shields of his countrymen. Zeuxippos gave him a newly fashioned design-three feet wide, with a prestressed hardwood core and a front of beaten bronze. While it was still common in those years to see individual insignias on shields, Antalcidas’ new model bore the emerging standard for the Spartan army, the bold red?, for “Lacedaemon.” His patron never explained why he could bear to part with his old spear and sword but not his original shield, but Antalcidas could well guess the reason: as the shield was worn on the left arm, it was designed to protect not only the wearer but also his immediate neighbor on the left. More than any other piece of equipment, then, the shield represented the sacred compact of each warrior with his comrades in the line. In Spartan houses it was not uncommon to find a sword used for gutting fish or a spear stuck in the ground to hold open a door. An old warrior’s shield, however, was always proudly displayed over the hearth.
Voting for new members of a dining group occurred after the meal but before the wine flowed. Those wishing to advocate for or against the applicant were asked to state their case. Then bread was distributed to the diners, with a helot assigned to walk around the room with a bowl. Those voting for admission tossed one piece of bread into the vessel; those casting a veto squeezed the bread before dropping it. By the end, if there was even one pinched piece in the bowl the candidate was rejected-or in the vernacular, he was “bread-bowled.” The confidentiality of the voting varied from group to group, with some encouraging all to speak openly about their preferences, and others going so far to assure secrecy that they made the helot go around with the bowl balanced on her head, so no one could see the ballots already in it. A young man could stand for membership in as many messes as he cared, though news of rejection tended to get around, damaging his prospects elsewhere.
