such odds, despite the incompetence and betrayal of those they trusted, Leonidas and his three hundred were not diminished by their defeat. Instead, they gained everlasting fame.
“Today it is not Xerxes’ thousand thousand before us. Instead, we face Athenians, in numbers just two or three times our own. In these last months, in the time I have been privileged to lead you, we have contended with hunger, thirst, and fire. There have been injuries, storms, plagues of birds. The enemy thinks we are weak. He may even believe he has an advantage! But we know he is still overmatched when he faces us. For we fight now not for some distant mountain pass, but for soil vouchsafed by our ancestors, who long ago crossed high Taygetus to humble the Messenians. With their conquest it became our birthright-it became our life. I say to you, then, that I don’t expect we face Leonidas’ fate here.
“Yet I also say that if it comes to that choice, to consecrate another three hundred to eternity, I will not shrink! Nor will you, if my experience in these last months is any guide. For that is the way for men bred like us, for war. If we do our duty, if we fight as if the shades of our fathers back us in the phalanx, we must be victorious, either on the field this very day, or with our willing deaths, in the hearts of our children. And that, my companions, is all I have to say.”
No one cheered. The Spartans, who understood the importance of hearing orders above the roar of battle, were fastidious in their silence. Instead, the men simply raised their spears, checked the fit on their helmets on their heads, and tightened up their ranks. Epitadas, satisfied, turned to look down the hill at the enemy’s disposition.
What he saw encouraged him. The Athenians were pouring onto the island and collecting in the center, in the level area below the slope. His advance post, held by thirty of the younger men, already appeared to be overrun. Yet it seemed that the Athenians had landed only a company-sized force of hoplites. Did they think so few of their heavy troops, who were inferior to the Lacedaemonians under the best of circumstances, would carry the field? There were others flitting about-peltasts taking up positions on the hill, archers beyond them-but Epitadas knew from experience to focus on the real threats-the hoplites-and ignore the auxiliaries.
He was startled by a voice beside him, saying, “Look how they occupy the high positions with their bowmen. They hope to catch us between fires.”
Antalcidas was standing there, leaning into him as if to keep his counsel discreet. The presumption was galling.
“What are you doing here? Get back in line!” roared Epitadas.
The other hung his lower jaw for a moment before replying, “I just thought I would help.”
“Don’t presume upon my patience, Brother. And I’ll thank you to leave the thinking to me!”
8.
It was testimony to Lacedaemonian discipline that they could march on Sphacteria at all. They had no pipers that day to govern their pace, and the irregularity of the ground made it impossible for them to keep their ranks straight as they descended the hill. The Athenians, to Epitadas’ contempt, did not even try: Demosthenes had instructed them not to advance, but to stand still and let the archers and peltasts do the killing.
The Spartans came within bow shot. At first, their upturned spears knocked down a few of the arrows, until the archers found their range and the missiles began to drop vertically down on them. Antalcidas watched from the back as noble Spartiates were stuck with arrows straight through the crowns of their helmets. He could see a few of their faces as they twisted and fell-some dropped in their tracks like men struck by lightning; others stood for a long time with faces aghast, disbelieving, as if they had suffered a personal insult.
Peltasts pressed close on the left with their slings. Epitadas barked an order, sending two platoons of under- thirties out of the phalanx and after the peltasts. Antalcidas had seen this maneuver done better and faster elsewhere. The young men moved sluggishly, as if underwater; a good many ran as if bothered by wounds to their feet. The Athenians pulled up short, turned, and ran; being more lightly armed, most got away to slightly higher ground where the archers stood. Retreating, the under-thirties were then exposed to missiles both ahead and behind, from the bowmen shooting from the other side of the island. Half of the Lacedaemonians were wounded as they clambered back to the phalanx. A good many never made it back.
That was all Antalcidas needed to see. The enemy had demonstrated the principle behind his tactics-all that was left now was to let it succeed. With the Athenian hoplites unwilling to engage and their archers free to hit the phalanx from either flank, Epitadas could not grapple with the enemy anywhere. Nor could the Lacedaemonians survive in the open with their inadequate headgear.
Peltasts attacked from the right. Two fresh platoons bolted out to meet them. Same mistake, same result: the peltasts ran away, and the Spartans were plied with arrows. Antalcidas looked to Frog who, to his credit, seemed discomfited to be proven correct.
The stomping of thousands of feet stirred up the freshly burned ground, sending up a curtain of fine, black dust. The Spartans could no longer see where the arrows were coming from. The slingers and peltasts, meanwhile, were growing bolder, appearing out of the gloom no more than a few yards away. On impulse, Antalcidas darted out at one of the attackers, approaching him from the blind side as he turned to use his sling: Antalcidas speared him with such force that the tip passed through the man’s body and pierced his leather corselet from the inside. Stone tried in vain to extract his weapon intact as the enemy peltasts swarmed around him. “Use the cover!” he shouted to his brother as he planted his foot in the dead man’s back and, pulling the spear right and left as blood arched from some torn vessel, snapped the ashwood shaft. “Use the dust to cover a withdrawal…!” Someone came at him through the gloom, swinging a sword. Antalcidas blocked a blow by driving forward with his shield. The assailant fell back, but there was no time to finish him. Antalcidas dropped the broken shaft and retreated back to the phalanx.
The dust had become a noxious cloud, coating their throats and stinging their eyes. The Lacedaemonians kept their silence, but the Athenian hoplites were hooting and shouting, and the peltasts screwing up their courage with wild cries as they pressed the attack. All the while the arrows kept dropping from above, the tumult muffling the snap of the bowstrings, the gloom hiding the volleys until they struck. Under the circumstances, even the Spartans, who credited themselves for their calm in the face of battlefield chaos, turned with worried eyes to Epitadas.
And still he did not concede. Instead, the phalanx was ordered forward at a half march, inching along like a man groping for something in the dark. The enemy hoplites were somewhere ahead-certainly as encumbered as the Lacedaemonians were, perhaps equally as contemptuous of men who fought at a distance. Perhaps they might meet in the center, and give each other someone to kill in the time-honored way. There was still a chance a battle might break out in the middle of the massacre.
But they never saw the Athenians. Though they marched for an eternity, the hoplites seemed to recede from them, as if Demosthenes had somehow compelled the island to serve his purpose by stretching longer. Antalcidas was now stepping on or over his comrades, the finest troops in the world, now reduced to gray lumps on the gray earth. As losses mounted and the men closed ranks, and the phalanx seemed to contract on itself, Antalcidas felt he could no longer keep silent. “Epitadas!” he shouted, packing the magnitude of his despair into the one, desperate word.
Through the haze he saw the shadow of a horsehair crest-the badge of his brother’s office-turn toward him. Somewhere far beneath the unceasing clang of Attic vowels, he felt a Laconian marching command that he did not hear as much as feel in his bones. The order, relayed by the platoon leaders to all the men, reached him just as he saw the forward ranks pivot.
There was no time for fancy countermarches now, no stepping in place to wait for the officers to lead the way back. Everyone just spun on their heels and retreated up the hill. The reversal of direction was missed by the Athenian bowmen, who went on pouring arrows through the cloud to where the Spartans would have been. When the phalanx was spotted it was halfway up the slope and barely in range; as bad as the advance had been, Antalcidas saw no one fall during the retreat.
