baskets of bread, apples, figs, almonds, olives, and cheese. The boy learned where to find his mother in the woods. They met without exchanging words-Damatria keeping watch for intruders, Epitadas stuffing the provisions into his mouth as fast as he could. On occasion, their eyes would meet. In her glance, there was the urgency of a need that transcended any prospect of shame; in his, Damatria saw neither thanks nor affection, but only the appetite of a starving animal.
From her vantage nearby, she could see the fruits of her crime. Where the other boys became undersized on their scanty diet, Epitadas came to tower over them all. In six months he outweighed boys three years his senior. With these advantages he dominated the competition, ruling his pack with intimidation backed by capricious outbursts of force. Damatria would watch him humiliate the other boys, strike them down, kick them, grind their faces into the dirt. She wished it didn’t need to be so, and hoped that one day he would not take such joy in it, but mostly she was thankful it was Epitadas who gave the beatings and not the other way around. Then she set her mind to the pleasurable task of thinking in what other ways she could enhance his supremacy.
II
Redoubt
1.
Thirty years later, in the seventh year of the war between his city and Sparta, Demosthenes the Athenian invaded enemy territory with five ships and a thousand men. He did it midway through a trip around the Peloponnese, touching land in the extreme southwest of Sparta’s dominion under cover of a storm.
The Athenians beached their vessels in a vast bay in the old kingdom of Messenia, beneath the capital of Homeric Nestor, just down the coast from the horseshoe strand where Prince Telemachus once sought news of his father, Odysseus. Millennia later, near modern Pylos, a combined British, French, and Russian naval force would help assure Greek independence by annihilating a Turkish fleet there. Centuries after that, the oily waters were plied by tankers whose size and ugliness would exceed the ancient imagination, but inspire no poetry. These gave way in their time to German and American holidaymakers escorted around Navarino Bay in motorboats, seeking camera-ready pathos among the drowned sarcophagi of six thousand Turkish sailors.
Unlike Telemachus or the tourists, Demosthenes came ashore with vengeance in mind. The region of Messenia had been the conquered territory of the Lacedaemonians for centuries, its population confirmed in its generational servitude. As the Athenians walked lightly on the beach, imagining the very ground might recoil from their weight, their eyes sought out their general, seeming to ask him, “O Demosthenes, do you know what trouble you invite by bringing us here?”
To which the general answered, “Of course.” He understood that the passage around the Peloponnese, with its storms and rocks, was exhausting enough in peacetime. As his men waited for fair weather, they might take their rest, cook a meal, or make repairs to their ships. Demosthenes had no plan, except that they should stay awhile and annoy the Lacedaemonians with their audacity. He would undertake no attack, he pledged, but conduct only those defensive operations that would allow them to escape. “But for now, let us do what the enemy has done to us for seven years,” he told them. “Let them know what it is to have invaders on their territory! Let them wear themselves out with worry for a change!”
With these declarations Demosthenes made them forget their fears. The Athenians saw they had come to a sandy beach on the northern limb of a crescent bay some three miles in extent. An elongated island sheltered the bay from the Ionian Sea, leaving only two outlets: the narrow strait before them, and a somewhat wider passage beyond the island’s southern end. A cobbly promontory to their west protected their flank; behind them stretched a marsh, half-salt, that precluded attack from the mainland. The only unimpeded approach was along the narrow bridge of sand that formed the beach to the east. To even the most tactically innocent of the Athenians, the spot seemed a promising defensive position. The lack of fresh water was the sole disadvantage.
“What is this place called?” someone asked.
“The beach and the hill the Lacedaemonians call Koryphasion. Before them, this was the Pylos of King Nestor, who went to Troy. And before him, it was the dwelling place of the cows stolen from Apollo by Hermes. They say the stockade is still here, in a cave under the rock.”
“And the island?”
Demosthenes tossed his head.
Some Athenian soldiers took off their armor. After they had stood around for some time, distressing the pebbles with their toes, they resolved to prepare cooking fires, and at last to swim in the bay and play ball games. These diversions drew sneers from the ships’ carpenters, who were obliged to tend to the inevitable cracked and chipped oars, popped strakes, loose oar tackle, and any of the thousand other things that went wrong with triremes at sea.
An alarm was sounded by Demothenes’ lookouts on the promontory. Three figures were seen standing on the rock, looking down on the Athenians. The hoplites swam back to don their armor and loft their spears. They stayed that way, at attention, until it became clear that the intruders were just three young boys-probably Messenian helots from a nearby village. Even this knowledge did not reassure the Athenians, for the boys would no doubt return to their homes to report what they had seen, and it would not be long before the Spartans learned of their enemy’s presence. Or so it seemed to everyone except Demosthenes.
“I would not count much on the Messenians’ loyalty to the Lacedaemonians,” he ventured. “In fact, I would say our secret is more safe here than if we had landed in Attica, at the estate of some aristocrat!”
Exactly as he predicted, the helot boys did not run off to warn their parents. Instead, one of them-the smallest-clambered down the crags to have a look at the visitors. He was naked except for a sweat-soaked leather fillet around his head, and he seemed to weave and slip through the nettles with the ease of a snake. Closer, and the Athenians could see the scar on his arm of an iron brand-a mark of his helotry-standing pale against the flush of his exertions.
“Are you Athenians?” the boy asked.
Demosthenes presented himself with palms upturned.
“We are,” he said, “and therefore come as allies of the Messenian people.”
“Are you here to fight the Lacedaemonians, or are you going to run away like all the others?”
“We will do what is necessary to preserve our honor.”
The boy reversed himself and started back up. At what seemed like a safe distance, he turned and shouted down to the beach:
“What took you so long?”
This question, though it had come from a mere boy, had an encouraging effect on the Athenians. The blessing of the local Messenians could only improve their position, for the invaders would need local supplies of food and fresh water if they decided to stay. What little was stored in the ships was needed for the trip to Corcyra, where the admiral, Eurymedon, expected Demosthenes’ help in breaking the Peloponnesian siege on the capital.
Demosthenes did not so much order his men to fortify the Pylos beachhead as allow the idea to germinate in their own minds. His only command was a quiet one to his lieutenant, Leochares, to retrace the path the helots had used to approach them and keep watch on it. This was, after all, the sort of thing a responsible commander would order. He would then retire for the night to his hole in the sand, where he would fold his limbs carefully so as not to break them, as this responsible commander had for some time been convinced that his legs were as fragile as the clay stems of one of those high-pedestaled drinking cups. This was no metaphor: ever since his defeat in Aetolia the year before, he had become convinced that no pair of greaves could hide the fragility of those legs, which would shatter if he stepped on them too abruptly. Leochares and the rest of his men had noticed the tentative way that he had come to walk, placing his feet just so, and had supposed it had to do with some old battle wound. Little could they suspect that their general had in his mind an image of himself toppled, helpless among his own shards.
