But Ajax smiled. In the bright sun of battle, that boy was altogether gone, but he was beautiful in the firelight, and in his face lingered the boy who had followed them off to war from his father’s house. ‘I love to hear the Poet,’ he said. ‘It is almost — like the hymn, to listen on such a night, and the eve of battle?’
Nicomedes rolled his eyes, and Philokles gave a snort, almost the bray of a donkey, and Ajax’s head went back in resentment.
‘The Poet knew war,’ Philokles said. ‘And he did not love it. He told a great tale — the tale of one man’s rage, and through that rage, the tale of what war is. Ajax, you are no longer a virgin.’ A rude chuckle from the fire. ‘War is madness, like the rage of Achilles.’
Ajax’s chin was still up, and his voice was strong. ‘Every man here made war today,’ he said. ‘You, Philokles, were a hero risen from the very lines of the Poet.’
Philokles stood up, and on his head sat the wreath, a crown of valour, and he seemed the tallest man at the fire, red and gold in the firelight. ‘War makes men beasts,’ he said. ‘I fight like a wise and cunning beast — a predator. I killed nine men today — or perhaps ten.’ He shrugged, and seemed to shrink. ‘A wolf might say as much. And a wolf would stop killing when his hunger was sated. Only a man kills without need.’
Ajax, stung, said, ‘If you hate it so, you need not fight!’
Philokles shook his head. The firelight played tricks with his face — his body was red and gold, but his face had black hollows for eyes, and his grin raised the hair on Kineas’s neck. ‘Hate it?’ he said through his grin. ‘Hate it? I love it like a drunkard loves wine — and like the drunkard, I prate about it when I’m sober.’ He turned away, and plunged through the circle into the darkness beyond.
Kineas followed on his heels. He followed the Spartan along the ridge, past a campfire of Olbian hoplites, and then another, and down the hill a ways, stumbling on the uneven ground in the dark until he saw the pale shape of his friend’s back settle. Philokles was sitting on a great rock that stuck up from the ground like an old man’s last tooth. Kineas sat next to him.
‘I am an ass,’ Philokles said.
Kineas, who had seen a great deal of bad behaviour on the night before battle, punched the Spartan in the arm. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘He keeps his eyes so tightly closed to the horror. He wants war to be like the poem — he doesn’t see how often they crash to the dusty earth clutching their guts.’ Philokles’ voice was soft. ‘It is easy to kill a man, or a city, yes?’
‘Too damned easy,’ Kineas said.
Philokles nodded, talking to himself as much as to Kineas. ‘If you train your whole life to be a warrior — offering nothing to the gods, learning no poet, perhaps even illiterate — you might make a superb killing man. Yes?’
Kineas nodded, unsure where the Spartan was going with his argument.
‘You might be the finest fighter in the world. Deadly with a sword, deadly with a spear, mounted, on foot, with a rock, with a club, however you chose to fight. And you might spend all of your money on equipment for it — armour, shields, swords, the best of everything. Yes?’
‘I’m sure you’re going somewhere with this,’ Kineas said, but his attempt to lighten the tone failed.
Philokles grabbed him by both shoulders. ‘Just so that you could protect yourself, because it is so easy to be killed. You could imagine every threat that might come against you — every man who wanted your purse, every man who sought to steal your horse, or your armour. You might live your life in a wilderness, to be able to see the enemy coming — or perhaps you would fight for power, so that you could bid other men to protect you.’
‘Like a tyrant,’ Kineas said, because he thought he understood.
‘Perhaps,’ Philokles said dismissively. ‘Because my point is that you can live like that — you can spend your entire life on security, either as a man or as a city. And a child with a sling stone can kill you dead in a moment. There you are — dead — and you have lived a life without a single virtue, except possibly courage — you are illiterate, brutish, and dead.’
Kineas began to see. ‘Or?’
Philokles looked out over the water. ‘Or you can live a life of virtue, so that men seek to protect you, or emulate you, or join you.’
Kineas thought about it for a moment, and then said, ‘And yet we killed Socrates.’
Philokles turned back to him, his eyes sparkling. ‘Socrates killed himself rather than relinquish virtue.’ He made a rhetorical gesture, like a man about to speak before the assembly. ‘The only armour is virtue. And the only excuse for violence is in the defence of virtue, and then, if we die, we die with virtue.’
Kineas allowed a slow smile to creep over his face. ‘Now I think I know why I haven’t heard of other Spartan philosophers.’
Philokles nodded. ‘We’re a violent lot. And it’s always easier to die defending virtue than to live virtuously.’
Kineas had heard a great deal of philosophy in the hours before battle-dawns, but Philokles made more sense than the others. He gripped his hand. ‘I think you and Ajax have more in common than you would have me believe.’
Philokles grunted.
‘He’s an ass, too. Listen to me, brother. I have a favour to ask.’ Kineas’s voice was light, but he put an arm around Philokles — a gesture he seldom made.
‘Of course.’
‘On the night before battle, I like to listen to Agis, and then I like to hear the voices of my friends. Because you are right — but tonight, we are not beasts. We are men. Come with me, back to the fire.’
Philokles had tears in his eyes that glittered like jewels in the moonlight. He wiped his eyes, and his fist brushed against the wreath in his hair. ‘Why did you give me this thing?’ he asked. ‘I am no hero.’
Kineas pushed him off the rock, and the two climbed up the hill, their feet loud on the hard turf, so that Philokles might never have heard Kineas’s reponse.
‘Yes, you are,’ Kineas said, but very softly.
23
And later that night before battle, they circled back round to the same again. Ajax couldn’t leave war alone. Kineas, who had commanded men for too many years, knew that Ajax sought to justify on the eve of battle, the death he would face, and wreak, with the dawn.
‘If we are beasts,’ he said, after brooding for an hour, while the others spoke, and sang, and Lykeles danced a Spartan military dance to Philokles’ astonishment. ‘If we are beasts, how do we plan so carefully? ’
Kineas leaned past Philokles, determined to avert disaster. ‘Which plan of mine have you known to carry through the battle?’ he asked.
Niceas laughed with the other veterans. Nicomedes glanced at Ajax as if embarrassed for his friend’s bad manners — and kicked his outstretched ankle.
Ajax shook his head. ‘We plan,’ he began again, and something exploded in Kineas.
‘It’s a fucking shambles!’ he said, too loud, silencing other conversations. ‘Madness! Chaos!’ He pointed at Ajax. ‘You know better! You have seen the animal, night and day, for months. A man has to be in the grip of delusion to believe that order can be imposed on war!’
Philokles put his hand on Kineas’s shoulder. Ajax was recoiling, leaning away from Kineas as if his commander might strike him. Philokles spoke softly. ‘We plan for war — to mitigate the chaos. We train so that our muscles will move in a certain sequence when our minds fall to panic and we become as beasts. In Sparta we perfect the making of men into automata.’
Nicomedes rose to his friend’s defence. ‘A dance troupe does the same, and so does a chorus — they train and train, so that they will automatically do what is right. But they are not beasts.’
Ajax was almost pleading. ‘You,’ he said, pointing across the fire at Niceas and Antigonus, at Lykeles and Coenus and Andronicus, and all the old comrades. ‘You are all men of war. Do you truly hate it?’
Philokles began to stand, but Antigonus rose to his feet — Antigonus, who never spoke in public, because he
