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By consensus it was the finest funeral seen in Laconia for some years. Though there was some concern that Damatria’s ostentatious ways would spoil the event, her taste this time was impeccable, her conduct beyond reproach. She gave all the requisite feasts on the third and thirteenth days after the ceremony. Best of all, she did not embarrass the Spartans by breathing the name of her other son.
Epitadas was held exempt from the general decree that stripped the capitulators of Sphacteria of their status as Spartiates. The prisoners in Athens, who were now publicly known as “tremblers,” were denounced in absentia by their dining clubs. If they ever returned from their captivity they would find their legal rights to land and helots curtailed. Those they left behind in the city, such as wives and daughters, were no longer welcome to participate in the festival choruses, or become betrothed to boys of respectable families. The trembler and his family were required to give way to other pedestrians in the streets, and forbidden to wear bright or conspicuous clothes. That a trembler or his wife would smile or otherwise show good humor in public was inconceivable, for such a miserable fate could leave them nothing to be happy about.
With the prisoners on their way to captivity, little came back to Sparta about the circumstances of the disaster. At some point Cleon and Demosthenes would testify before the Assembly, of whose deliberations the Peloponnesians received regular reports from their paid informants. Until then, gossips spoke of an uncoded message sent to Antalcidas from Zeuxippos, regarding the existence of an unborn son. Zeuxippos’ rivals among the Spit Companions brought the story up at the mess, hinting that the message might explain the surrender of his former protege.
The old man rose from his bench, and with an expression more sad than indignant, said, “Gentlemen, if you wish to suggest that I would do anything to make the boy behave disgracefully, I believe you already have my answer. The message was sent out of compassion for the wife, who wished to reassure her husband that his line would live on, regardless of what Fortune had in store for him.
“For my own part, it pains me to know that I will not live long enough to learn what really happened on the island. But I am more troubled to see the direction of this discussion, which seems designed to blacken the name of a young man who has been noted for his fighting skill. In the past, it was the virtue of the Lacedaemonians not to assassinate without cause the characters of decent men. I see now that I no longer live in the city I once loved. And so, for the first time in a half century, I must surrender my spot on this board-the one I remind you was once occupied by Eudamos, son of Styphon, who died with Leonidas at Thermopylae. Good night.”
With that, Zeuxippos removed his chiton and overcloak, left his staff leaning against the wall, and strode out of the mess wearing nothing but a breechcloth. Later, a helot reported seeing a bony figure walking into the forest, toward the moonlit wall of Taygetus. The old man was never seen alive again.
3.
Though she dreaded it, Andreia was prepared for word of her husband’s death. But what was she to do with news that he was a prisoner?
The helots were removed from her household the day after the Gerousia demoted Antalcidas. She was eight months pregnant and already quite large; being reluctant to leave Melitta alone in the house, she fretted over what to do with the child when she went to the springhouse or on market days. But the girl, who was perceptive beyond her few years, laid a small hand on her mother’s arm and begged, “Let me carry too!”
At the market, Andreia felt a sharp plunge in the social temperature. She overheard snatches of whispered conversation around her-phrases like “poor Thibron,” “he stole the credit from Praxitas,” and, of course, the epithet Antalcidas’ own mother had once used against him, “the shame of Sparta.” Some voices were less subtle: under- thirties felt license to murmur lewd insults as they passed, and her bread-seller made her burn with humiliation by proclaiming, loudly enough for all to hear, that he didn’t sell to the families of tremblers.
She wrote to her father for advice. Ramphias, who usually replied to her letters in rapid order, took a week to respond, and then only by sending her two of his own helots to keep her house. “Has he given you any message for me?” she asked them. The helots shook their heads.
Her consignment to oblivion took time to sink in, and had a curious effect when it did. For all her years she had looked with ambivalence at her membership in the community. To be a Spartan seemed something petty, parochial. Of her fellow Lacedaemonians, her feelings had always been divided between pity and contempt; when she learned of the civilized pursuits of Athens or Thebes, she was convinced that she was literally mislaid by Fortune-born into a tribe for which she was not intended. Antalcidas, who accepted her as she was, would listen to her opinions and look at her as if she had dropped out of the sky. Would it ever occur to him to feel so detached from his people? She thought not.
Yet, to be a true outsider was something for which she was completely unprepared. When she appeared in the street and was made to feel like nothing more than a ghost, she shed tears like a young girl shunned by her schoolmates. She conceived an irrational attachment to roads, buildings, and statues she had barely looked at before. Avoided by all those she respected, she found herself respecting everyone. She fell to such depths that she worried for the son within her, thinking that he might somehow partake of her sadness, and be tormented by low feelings for the rest of his life.
She knew only one person who might have influence over the powers that had condemned her husband. When she left to find Damatria, she considered leaving Melitta behind, but thought the girl’s presence could only help her suit. And so they went off together just after sunup, in overcloaks with heads wrapped, as an autumn haze lay over the fallow fields. It was a short walk to her mother-in-law’s house-just out to the wagon road, over a small hill, and right at the cobbled way. As she made her way slowly, rehearsing in her mind what she might say, she saw a group of six young women approach from the other direction.
They all seemed to be late teenagers, barefooted, dressed in short tunics and hair tied back with fillets, as if on their way to exercise in the gymnasium. As the distance closed between them, Andreia perceived the exact moment when they recognized her: she saw that look, that resentment of her existence on the public roads, that she had seen in the faces of a hundred others. Partly out of shame, partly to save herself the pain, she had learned to avert her eyes. Yet something made her keep staring back this time-something about Melitta’s presence, perhaps, that made Andreia slow to abase herself. She locked eyes with the evident leader of the group, the tall, long-faced, sharpkneed girl around whom the others seemed to orbit. The face-off continued until they were abreast of each other.
“What are you looking at, coward’s wife?” the leader asked.
Andreia, startled at such brazen disrespect, could say nothing at first. One of the other girls, whose features hinted that she might be the leader’s sister, put a hand on the other’s arm.
“Leonis, let’s go.”
“Shame on you, Gorgo!” said Leonis. “Don’t you want to know why a breeder of tremblers goes around with her head up?”
Andreia was so furious that she forgot her circumstances. “How dare you address your elder so impertinently!” she snapped. “What kind of mother raised you?”
“A mother of brave Spartiates raised me, whore.”
Without thinking, Andreia slapped the girl across the left cheek. “That’s for showing disrespect in front of my daughter,” she said.
Leonis turned to give her sister a single glance. Gorgo reacted with dread, as if having seen this look before.
The girl’s fist landed on Andreia’s temple, knocking her backward. Andreia fell hard, landing with a sharp rock square in her back. Through the pain, a memory flashed before her: an incident many years before, when she was beaten in the gymnasium by a girl one year her senior. Spartan schoolgirls were not encouraged to brawl by their elders-it was something they seemed to do because they wanted to. Just like in school, the other girls gathered around in a circle, their purpose as much to screen the fight from view as to watch it. Only Gorgo hung back.
Leonis was kicking Andreia indiscriminately around the neck and face. Melitta, frightened, let loose a scream. Between blows Andreia begged, “Hold my child! Don’t hurt my child!” Gorgo picked up Melitta and walked some distance away, holding the girl’s face away from the spectacle.
