archers. Demosthenes forced his men to run risks: in the places where the Athenians filled the breaches they came within bow range themselves. Their helmets, which were of the archaic, closed style, sealed off their hearing and vision but protected them from arrows better than the Spartans’. No speeches were necessary to tell them how near the end lay. They fought that day with a hunger for victory that the Lacedaemonians had seldom encountered.
Epitadas, Antalcidas, and Frog defended their posts as if the arrows were mere raindrops. Still, the pain and bleeding of multiple wounds slowed them down, until it felt as if their arms and legs belonged to others, so sluggishly did they seem to move. Antalcidas broke his spear; he swung the buttspike like a club, spraying himself with shards of bone as he caught an Athenian full in the face. He spat the splinters at the next man, who came at him with the expression of someone urgently trying to find a seat at the theater. Antalcidas flailed with no technique, wasting precious sweat on overswings, until the force of his exertion made his desiccated tongue split like the skin of a grape.
He fought on as the boundaries of his vision seemed to collapse to a fog-fringed point. His arms still moved as they carried him to the rear; he watched as a circle of sky blue enlarged, broken now and then by the streaks of feathered shafts. The face of his brother appeared before him. Epitadas was no longer handsome-his eyes had sunken into bony wells, his cheek torn, corpuscular flesh within. His expression seemed to ask a wordless question-are you ready to lead? Antalcidas nodded. His brother bowed his head, revealing the arrow in the back of his neck, lodged in such a way that he could not even rest on his back. Antalcidas helped him to his stomach, but dared not remove the arrow.
When he was on his feet again the news spread through the fort-“Epitadas is wounded,” “Antalcidas leads us!” Frog looked at him with ample contempt. Passed over again for command, he seemed to make no distinction between the men who obstructed him. “Yes, Antalcidas leads,” he said. “How fortunate for Damatria and her wealth!” The struggle dragged on as before, with the Lacedaemonians dying in ones and twos, and the Athenians charging in inexhaustible supply, and the end always seeming near, until some Spartiate or under-thirty would, by some miraculous exertion, push the enemy out of the fort again.
Beset from all points, their position was ideal for martyrdom. If Antalcidas issued no orders at all, the day would end as Epitadas envisioned. When the Athenians swarmed over the top of the hill, and the Spartans across the bay saw it, they would send emissaries to acknowledge defeat and collect the bodies. The funeral rites would be on the beach; their bones, still steaming from the pyre, would be shoveled into a mound that would become their common grave. In years to come, they would erect some marker on them, some leonine cenotaph, which would become one of Messenia’s “points of interest,” a featured item in some future travelogue. Epitadas himself would get a bronze statue on the acropolis of Sparta. The old men would bring their boys to see the figure, and wonder if the living man really had such a fine, square chin. And then they would turn and go about their lives, never having heard the name “Antalcidas” because it appeared nowhere on the inscription.
The Spartan mind did not flirt with regrets. It would have been easy for him to blame Epitadas and his flawed strategy. (The Athenians shifted to press en masse against Frog’s men, trying to overwhelm them there. The defenders shifted with them, and the tactic failed.) Doubts notwithstanding, Antalcidas had made a thousand choices since the beginning-choices of when to fight and when not, when to speak or stay silent, that had made him complicit in everything that followed. (Frog took an arrow in the calf. He tore it out and jabbed the bloody point into an Athenian’s neck.) These things he had done would make incomprehensible any change he might imagine now, pragmatic and sensible though it might be. True, there was many a Greek who would understand if he defied Epitadas now. Those Greeks were not Lacedaemonians, however, steeped in a tradition of loyalty that transcended reasonableness. To rule men and to be ruled: these were the things that were in the bones of every Spartan, well- born or half-helot. (An enemy peltast, bearing a wicker shield, pushed through the line.)
Before he was conscious of willing it, Antalcidas confronted the intruder. “You’re a brave man to come here with a shield made of sticks!” he told the Athenian. Timon, looking at this spattered, wild-eyed Spartan bristling with arrows, took fright and ran. Antalcidas brought him down with a slashing attack to the tendons in his leg. He then slaughtered Timon as he would an animal, making a small slit in his throat to let his blood pour on the ground. “For the glory of the goddess, an offering,” he said to the dying oarsman. “And for Doulos.”
And then, with the sounding of horns, the Athenians pulled back. After a few more arrows fell, the archers behind them also stopped shooting. The cooing of the wild pigeons in the cliffs rose again over the abrupt silence. Suddenly bereft of opponents, the Lacedaemonians stood around, bewildered; by all honest account the day was nearly lost for them, yet the enemy had flinched. “Spartans, we’ve broken their nerve!” proclaimed Frog, waving his sword above his head. His companions cheered, but Antalcidas didn’t believe it. Such a miracle could only be the work of Artemis Herself.
A more worldly explanation soon presented itself. A voice from behind the Athenian lines asked for a meeting between the captains of the two sides. It took a while for Antalcidas to register that they were calling for him, not Epitadas. As he went, Frog called out to him, saying, “Serve your men well by what you do, Antalcidas!”
13.
He emerged barehanded, helmet dimpled from glancing arrow hits, arms and legs smeared with blood, nose and eyes caked with the residue of fire. On his appearance the Athenians fell silent, staring wide-eyed at him as he strode from between the ramparts of enemy dead.
Demosthenes and Cleon, by contrast, looked as fresh as when the day began. The former had not wanted a parley at all; the notion that the Lacedaemonians would negotiate a surrender was absurd. Yet Cleon had insisted on it, thinking that the mere possibility of crowning his victory with captives was worth the attempt. Demosthenes indulged his foolishness as best he could-the men could at least be given water as the futile act was done.
The antagonists met midway. Antalcidas eyed the Athenians with more than a crease of disdain. In victory or defeat, it would always be in his nature to despise foreigners. The squat one standing before him was shifty, with flesh as soft and flaccid as a woman’s; he doubted the man had ever spent a day risking his life in the line. The taller man, whom he took to be Demosthenes, had a certain aristocratic severity, but his eyes betrayed the uncertainty in his mind. Antalcidas said nothing, allowing the Athenians to speak first.
Cleon was delighted with this display of laconic primitiveness. If it was up to him, Antalcidas would be brought back to Athens just as he was, elbow-deep in gore. What a trophy the rustic warrior would make! What a triumph awaited the People’s champion!
“Do you know who I am?” asked Cleon.
“You are my enemy,” replied Antalcidas.
The other smiled. “They say the Lacedaemonians are stupid, but I’ve never believed it. So I’ll address you frankly-what is your name?”
“Antalcidas, son of Molobrus. But I’ll thank you not to sully my father’s name by speaking it.”
“You must see that your position is desperate today. Though you have fought well, we both know the fate in store for you. I must tell you that many of the Athenians would just as well see you all slaughtered. But as we are all Greeks here, I have prevailed on them to allow me to make this offer: surrender yourselves and your arms now. You will be well treated. Provided your masters behave responsibly, you will live to see home again.
“Now I know all about you Lacedaemonians and your lust for death. You all see yourselves as part of the gallant Three Hundred, itching to die to defend the pass from the barbarians. But understand this, my friend: we are not barbarians, and you are not Leonidas. You were beaten here today not by Asian profligacy with lives, but by the superior leadership of fellow Greeks. I suspect that even Spartans must give up their childish fantasies one day; they must confront facts just like the rest of us do. I implore you, then, with respect-think of your men. Think of your wives and children. Consider our offer.”
Antalcidas looked at him as if expecting him to say more. When Cleon didn’t, he raised an eyebrow. “I think you must be right. I must be stupid, because unlike you wise Athenians, I cannot see the difference between surrender and humiliation. So if that is all you have to say-”
He turned to walk back to the fort. Cleon looked to Demosthenes with alarm. The latter, for his part, would have been glad to see the conference end. In his experience, addressing a Spartan was as useless as talking to a rock; he had once heard Aristophanes quip that although Athenians and Lacedaemonians had Greek in common,
