something he sensed untapped in himself as well. Now Melon joined Chion in a final slumber, blank and without memory, as if both were ordered by the One God to banish both dark and light dreams and rest for Leuktra and the sunup.
Up on the hill above, Neto was not dreaming of Helikon, but still awake. Proxenos, the Plataian, was sleeping under the wagon nearby, sent there by Melon after the meeting to guard against Gorgos, who grew reckless as he neared his Spartans. The One God had this night sent to her the dreams of Chion and Melon, and now at last she too would sleep, relieved that they would fight and battle well, as the images of those on Helikon reminded them both of who they were on this eve of battle. What a strange clan, these men of the soil of Helikon, Neto thought. Richer than the rich who despised them-and yet rich from Malgis’s killing in Sikily rather than from the great bounty of his vineyards on Helikon. Gorgos and Chion were as free as their master-two forgotten slaves out on the uplands of mountain Helikon with no need of town who yet boasted to themselves that they were gods who would shake the very cities of Hellas. Damo, the wife of Lophis, and Neto more like men of action than wives or servants. Melon, the center of it all, the savior of the Boiotians, said to be the apple of the prophecy about to fall on the Spartans who knew not how to farm, the master whose slaves acted as his master, the great farmer with but a single son, neither all Pythagorean nor Olympian-and with his bad leg and bald head somehow pledged to Epaminondas, although why or how he hardly knew. All this, Malgis had wrought from the word of Pythagoras and booty from Sikily, even as Neto assured them all that they had been chosen to be carried along according to the order and plan of Pythagoras.
CHAPTER 5
Melon and Chion roused themselves right before daylight.
Chion woke up pondering all the grand talk of fifty men deep. True, fifty pushers should have more power than twenty-five. If they did, why not a hundred or a thousand? Better, Chion thought, to mass four or even eight deep, and then outflank the Spartans. That way each man could fight his way into the enemy rather than be pushed through. Better to forget all this
Melon heard the waking Chion at his side mumbling. He too had his own fears about this ragtag army of Boiotians. Some had cloaks, some did not. The men on his line were supposed to have the club of Herakles on their shields, but some had betas for the Boiotians, others their own family and tribal blazons-poorly painted crabs, and flies, and birds and the like. Sloppy men fought sloppily. They feared all the more those who looked like real hoplites, the Spartans most of all. There were dozens of different helmets in the army of Epaminondas-crest, no crest, cone shaped or flat on top, open, or close-faced. His peers should have the old-style bronze on their chests- but most had only linen with some metal woven inside. Those in the middle and some at the back had little at all. Only the officers of the
This day of battle had begun oddly dark for the summer. Now it was humid as well. A few gray clouds even drifted over the battlefield. Now and then the gray cut off the early sun entirely. Beneath the clouds there were only brief flashes from the bronze of the Spartan phalanx, a twinkling from the shields and helmets of the Similars, all shined to a high gloss with oil. Suddenly, thunder rumbled in the hills.
A chestnut filly galloped across the Theban line out between the two armies-only to be roped by five hoplites of the Sacred Band. Pelopidas ran out. He cut the horse’s neck. Then for the army he offered a prayer to the Olympians. He called out that Poseidon had sent the equine gift to the Thebans to show them the way of victory. At that, the Thebans began to regain their senses and yelled in approval to this other general bathed in horse blood.
The Spartans as expected marched out first. Lichas put on a show for thousands of rural folk who had flocked to the nearby hills to gaze on the spectacle. Each man filed into neat rows to the sounds of pipes and the signals of flags. The teeming crowd of their camp was slowly unfurling into a red line that grew ever deeper across the gentle rolling plain of Leuktra. One by one, files of twelve deep walked out-and halted on the crest of the low rise to the blare of trumpets. Slowly, side-by-side, these columns filled out the phalanx. Hoplites in long lines raised their bronze-coated shields, with even their red lambdas, the insignia of Lakedaimon, visible in the distance. The army was stretching fifteen stadia along the crest above the streambed.
Suddenly on a trumpet blast, helots of Sparta ran among the ranks and stripped off their masters’ cloaks. The bronze fronts twinkled now and then in the darting sunlight-outlined at the shoulders, and arms and waists, by their red chitons beneath. Melon focused on the battle line where the enemies’ tall black-and-white crests bobbed. Now they lowered their spears and jostled shields just a stade away. Spartans had no pause in their walk. They seem to have emptied their whole damn city.
Then, for a blink only-the first and final time at Leuktra-Melon lost his nerve, as he thought about their spear work to come. Dying was no dread, he thought, not even losing Chion or Neto, or even his son Lophis with the horse. No, the rub was the sound, and especially the look, of the death-bringing Spartans across the way. The bristles of their phalanx and the pitch of the music made all afraid, if just for that moment, about how they were to die, the pain and cutting to take them into the final sleep. Are these killers even human as other hoplites? he wondered. His bowels rumbled and his bladder felt full. The men from the south across the way looked like hemi- gods on the high stone altars who did not tremble, drink, or tire as other men did. No living thing could get between their solid line of shields. There was no reprieve from their spears. These men did not lag or slow. It would take a god, he feared, to stop their onset. No, they came on at a steady pace-always to the tune of pipes, never too fast, but never slow, either. They stopped only when cut down.
Then the terror vanished as quickly as it had come. The madness of the war god Pan had no more hold over him, a god that left the glens at the sound of bronze and the chance to confuse thousands. In hopes the madness would not infect his men, Melon stared back at the ghost of the hoofed god in front of him in anger. “Be gone, foul god. Back to the herds and flocks!” Melon took in the Spartan line opposite him, ever nearing and now little more than two hundred paces away. He imagined that he could see these brutes smiling, even in their helmets, stomping their stiff legs on the ground in unison, in their eagerness. He looked at them with reason rather than fright. Spartan targets offered little open flesh. Maybe a spot beneath the shield in the upper groin, maybe some skin of the neck between the breastplate and the chinstrap. Always there was a peep of bare flesh or an open fold of their chitons when they turned, on their sides between the front and back plates.
For all his efforts, Melon could not calm all the men at his side. Too many other young Boiotians at his side shuddered at such killers. They had let the shade of clever Pan into their ranks as the ghost god galloped toward the front lines. They trembled at the shrieking of the horned spirit, of the wild goat god in their ears who struck men dumb before the crash with his screeches-oooha, oooohaa, ooooohaaa. And they for a moment ignored their officers who went among them answering the god. “No fear,” bellowed Pelopidas. “No fear of these red-shirts. Forget the mad goat-horned ghost of Pan who gallops across the field and strikes your shield with his back kicks. Forget him and watch him vanish back into the woods where he belongs. There is no
Across the way Lichas, waiting for just this moment, trotted on a black stallion in and out of the wings. Kleombrotos was king, but all looked to Lichas to form up the phalanx. For a moment he reared his horse on its back legs and waved his helmet in his right hand, motioning for the Boiotians to come and take it from him. “They’re already upon us. The pigs are here at last. Wait until the horsemen are through before marching out. Let me and my cavalry fight first, you later.”
For all his bellowing, Lichas worried that the Boiotian army had formed up too quickly and had caught his
