The End of Sparta

But none of this was so. Neto cried out again, “Lophis is gone. Gone across-do you know?”

Let her babble. His son was safe and on Xiphos. The bright crackling torchlights were leaving Melon’s head. The failed agents of death winged away for good now, still screeching as they quit their hovering above. Melon fully reentered the world of the living. Or at least he thought he had. But his hearing and sight for a time were no more than half of what they had been, and he was swarmed by these strange shapes and sounds.

More than a thousand enemy dead were piled in heaps on the ground. Four hundred, it would turn out later, were elite Spartan Homoioi. Thousands of Boiotians were walking the fields, more curious to see what Spartan hoplites looked like, when safe and dead, than just eager for booty. Melon remembered the Theban cries during battle, “A dead army. A dead poliso.”-Apethane to strateuma, he polis apethanen. Now he saw that it was no lie. In the torchlight, he made better sense of the mob about him. Some mounted longhairs scoured the battlefield for stragglers. Farmers tended the wounded. Their women were breaking out packs of rations and shooing off a new mob of looters and sightseers who were swarming over even the Boiotian corpses. Yet another heap of helmets, breastplates, shields, greaves, and spears was growing not far away beneath an old oak tree. Near it arose an even larger heap of capes, sandals, and cloaks. Silver coins were piled in the hollow shields.

Most of the dead Boiotians were being carried home by their folk. Pelopidas had posted guards over these piles of loot. Eurybiades the booty-seller and a small army of helpers were already buying plundered armor-paying for it with the very coins his slaves had scavenged from the battlefield. A dead Spartan stared at Melon not more than five cubits distant. He was naked, just stripped, and already stiffening. His legs were covered with flies and worse. A spear had gone up under the jaw. Or at least something like that had crushed in half the man’s face. “Cover him,” Melon yelled. He had no desire to see any more of the dead. The mangling of the face gave the corpse an eerie frozen look about him, almost a grotesque smile. One hand was extended in the dirt with all of its fingers cut off, except the index, which was pointing right at Melon. For a moment he thought the dead man was whispering that he had killed Lophis. But then Melon shook himself out of another trance, just as two slaves ran up, grabbed the nude body by the heels, and dragged it over to a long line of Spartan corpses.

Soon most of the plunder would be sold off by the states to pay for an annual festival to the victory goddess Nike-and for a trophe of their victory at the spot where Kleombrotos had fallen and the enemy had at last turned. Melon was finally clear enough to understand that Neto had, as ordered the previous night, hiked back up to the camp with Proxenos and joined Gorgos. But then somehow she had not gone home to the farm in the morning. Everything after that was a blur.

On her way down the hill, only with luck had she fought off the Boiotians who wanted her wagon for their own wounded. She finished her story to Melon with news that they had seen Lophis in the first charge fall-and then nothing more. She was uncomfortable with the crowd that had drawn around Melon. They pointed to him as a hemi-god and murmured, “He, that one, killed the king. There he is, the lame Thespian of the prophecy. Right there, the killer of Kleombrotos. The gods do not lie about the melon.” Yet even amid the mob, Neto thought it better that her master hear the end of his son.

She threw back her hood and stumbled on, “I saw Lophis from the hill yonder. He charged at the first trumpet blast, out too far from the rest. A Spartan knocked him off. I saw that much, and then dust rose and there was nothing more. Then Gorgos, our Gorgos ran off below into the field. He said he would fetch him. But no, it seems? He too vanished into the dust and never came back-dead or captured by our enemies or perhaps even turn traitor, I don’t know. It was chaos by then.”

She was weeping and then clear for moments, as she tried to tell her master that either his son was dead or his slave Gorgos was a traitor or martyr-or neither. “More of Lophis I heard than saw, since when I hit the flatland just now, I grabbed two bloody horsemen, wounded men from Orchomenos, one a with broken spear stuck in his mount. They told me that our Lophis had been knocked off with a huge spear, a lance larger than any on the battlefield. Lichas had targeted Lophis, the riders said. In the melee Lichas went after him. They heard Lichas yell: ‘Fetch the armor, Spartans, drag the kill with us. Bring home the armor of Lysander.’ So they told me before they too were beaten back. Right then I went farther with the wagon to pick up Lophis. Instead I found myself here with you and Chion. Master, I was swarmed by a mob. They tried to tear me off the wagon. I sliced a few arms and hands to keep Aias free. My new friend, this slave Myron, saved me from the mob. But no Lophis. He’s dead, I fear. But I tried to find him. I tried.”

Melon knew no slave named Myron. But the more he told Neto that Lophis lived, that the Boiotian horse had broken the Spartan cavalry, that Gorgos would carry him out alive as he had once brought the wounded Malgis from Koroneia, the more he suspected that his son was dead-too far ahead of the horsemen, the strange role of Gorgos and his current absence, the glitter of the armor of Lysander, and Lichas, always Lichas. Too many of Neto’s details proved too true. He sat back down and kept mute. Lichas was alive. Lophis was dead. So the good die and the bad live on.

“I just saw Chion!” It was Proxenos who had walked up. As always the architect kept his head while others lost theirs. “First, listen. Chion talks. He lies back in the camp of Epaminondas. His left arm will never lift a shield-at least if that wound heals like others I have treated. Neto, go to Aias. Drive your wagon a bit closer. We will put these two in and then you can get them back up to the farm.”

The wagon was just over a gentle rise, just where Neto had left it with Myron. The runaway slave had accompanied her from Thespiai in hopes of freedom, and was waiting on the battlefield. Proxenos stammered, but went on, “But I have other bad reports, Melon, now that you are back among the living. Your Gorgos is gone, at least if he is the old slave that hoplites saw head to the camp of the Spartans with a body over his shoulder. Worse still it is. Pelopidas reckons that this old man, if it is your Gorgos, probably went willingly to the Spartans. Many in the Sacred Band had seen him cross over to their camp. There is word among the horsemen that he carried off Lophis, and a pathway opened for him amid the rearguard of the Spartans.”

Neto had walked away and returned with Myron, who had stayed behind with the wagon. He had collected some helmets and breastplates off the dead Spartans, along with a sword or two that was probably Boiotian. What better way to find a new household than to offer himself along with presents? The slave was a rich man’s runaway and worried that he would be flogged, though he had followed Neto in hopes that any who walked at Holy Leuktra would be freed back home at Thespiai. Neto bent over to the sitting Melon. In front of the small crowd, Neto nodded to Proxenos. She likewise blurted out that there was more to her story than she first had admitted.

“So I feared what came to pass. I think now we know where Gorgos is. He is the servant of Lichas his true master. They will know him as Kuniskos-‘Puppy’ in the south. Nikon, the leader of the helot firebrands, sends word to me from the Messenians who once knew of his trickery. And he talked such nonsense on the hill above the fight, as I said. A loyal man-footed helot-so he will serve Sparta once more, if he has not all these years.”

Melon was tired of all these speeches. Neto ignored Melon. She went on with more in a shrill voice that replaced her tears. “He didn’t save Lophis. I see that now. And you see, too, that he joined Lichas. I speak true things, always t’alethe. Over the fire before the battle, he was talking of the good days with Brasidas. The best helot killers were always helots. I can smell his stink, even from here.”

Melon stopped her. “Leave it be. Tomorrow, tomorrow. This is all a dream. All a nightmare. I will hear all this when the sun rises. Not now, not any more.”

Ainias grabbed Melon’s arms. “Look, your head rings. But don’t listen to your wounds. Gorgos is over there. Maybe it was his work that Lichas has your dead son. Or at least he found his way or wanted to. Maybe Gorgos is dead or maybe breathing, we don’t know. Lophis I fear is gone or will be after they dragged them to their camp. The Spartans, what is left of them, stand at their camp, and with spears ready. There’s at least a thousand or two left ready to march home. The son of Agesilaos, the young Eurypontid Archidamos is almost here with another Spartan army on the coast road. The dregs of Lakonia are on the way here. We must decide tonight to let them all go home or kill them all.”

Melon was glad to change the talk. “Then we can kill two royals this season. Finish off the rest who will never see their Eurotas. And then we will rescue Lophis.”

Proxenos looked over at Ainias. “That’s my wish as well. No doubt Epaminondas will soon tell us as much himself. But look at us, Thespian. The Boiotians have gone mad in their victory. The allies are plundering the field. Our army is going home. The battlefield is nothing but shit and flies now. We stopped Sparta today, but we did not end it.”

As they argued, Epaminondas walked up. Before he reached them he threw down his shield. “Ainias and Proxenos. Where is my Thespian? Stand up. All of you. The war goes on.” With that Epaminondas pointed at them