The End of Sparta

Lichas to kill the Pythagoreans of Thebes. Lichas would round them all up, since their talk about equality was at the root of this democracy-and their notion that their one god judged men on their merit rather than, like the Olympians, by their power and nobility. The Spartans warred not just against the Boiotians, but against the notion of democracy itself.

Melon knew Epaminondas was right to face the Spartans down, even though he did not believe he was fated to kill a Spartan king or that any such silly prophecy was needed in the ranks to win. He was here instead to do some big thing. He would accomplish something different from the last years, to end his quiet and plunge into the roaring storm’s surf rather than hear it crash from a safe distance. Perhaps the muscles of his Chion and his own skill with the spear would put an end to it all. Who better than these two veterans could stop the Spartans? Tomorrow was as good a day as any to start, here at this fight beside Leuktra creek.

Then a strong breeze blew across his face from the south, and Melon was back out of his dreams of the day and fully awake again, once again the lame farmer from Helikon and no longer the would-be savior of Hellas. The wagon had pulled up well beyond the outer edge of the Theban camps, almost alone on the upland plateau. A thousand tents spread down the slopes to the gully at Leuktra. The “white” creek of Leuktra was mostly a trickle by summer, more fouled and black with moss than white with running foam. Finally the three neared the flat top of the hillock most distant from the center of the Theban camp. Some oaks and a laurel tree there shaded a small spring that fed a clean stony pool. Only a few Theban tents were this far up, across the way on the neighboring rise above their army below.

Gorgos was still singing his most peculiar Spartan tune-“It is a noble thing for a good man to die, falling among the front-fighters, fighting on behalf of his fatherland.” The harsh beat sounded like some nonsense from an ancient Spartan war song of the poet Tyrtaios-even though the three in the wagon were supposed to be Boiotians, pledged to fight for General Epaminondas, the final arrivals from Mt. Helikon to the Boiotian camp.

Gorgos had kept on with his song even as the wagon passed by the Boiotian campfires-all the louder, the more numerous the enemy tents appeared on the hills across the gully. In his defense, he often claimed that before the Malgidai had captured him he too had been a helot, a noble of Messenia born far to the south, but one Spartan freed and Spartan trained. Now with seventy summers and maybe more behind him, his gravelly voice kept croaking out Doric song lines like, “fighting on behalf of his fatherland.” But whose fatherland did he mean?

The closer the wagon had come to the army of the Boiotians, the wilder the mind of Gorgos became. He decided now that he did not like at all this idea of fighting against his old benefactors, the Spartans. Not even if they were here up north tramping on his master’s ground and he had not been with them for more than twenty years. Only with the threat of the lash had Melon dragged him with armor to the stream here at Leuktra. And Gorgos suspected that these Boiotian pigs were not fighting tomorrow just as defenders against the Spartans’ invasion, at least not entirely, or even that this bloodletting would be the end of it. Instead if they won tomorrow, if they beat their betters, they would promise endless battles to come in the south for Epaminondas. He was their ragged dreamer who got them drunk on notions that they were going to be liberators and freers of chattel slaves and so become better even than the slave-owning gods on Olympos themselves-notions far more dangerous than fighting for mere plunder, pride, or revenge. Could not a brave man kill that faker, slit his throat, cleave off his head-and so save untold men from dying tomorrow?

Yet Gorgos still kept arguing with himself as he chanted, not quite a Spartan lover, for he was also loyal to Melon in his way, and had also known as a young helot the hard stroke of a Spartan lash, one that cut far deeper than did the Thespian. His grudge was more with the madman Epaminondas who wanted endless war, not mere battle of an hour or two-a total war and not just to defeat Sparta but to end the Spartans. And not to free a helot or two, but to free all of them.

Even his recluse master Melon would no doubt listen to the firebrand Epaminondas. His entire clan on Helikon already talked of setting up democracy, such a fantasy where dogs and birds could vote alongside landowning citizens-of marching into his Sparta, of building vast free citadels in the Peloponnesos of towering stone, of liberating the helot serfs so that the Spartan lords would finally have to farm and could not fight, of turning Hellas upside down and putting the worse over their betters. And all this craziness for what, old Gorgos now asked himself on the eve of battle. If his master in the back of the wagon was mumbling in his dreams, why could not he as well? The Boiotians claimed a Pythagorean lie that all creatures who bleed are equal and all our souls become happy in the hereafter for lives well lived. If victory tomorrow led to that lotusland, well, then, better defeat and death for his master and himself in the noble Hellas rather than to live on in the new bastard one.

As Gorgos kept dreaming and chanting out his poet Tyrtaios on the ride to the battlefield, he forgot again they were already passing amid the army of Epaminondas. Soon he was back in his trance as his singing returned to his childhood in Lakonia. The slave closed his eyes. He could still dream, more so now than ever. Chion had the reins, not he. Here on this eve of the end, all the more he could feel thousands of Spartans were nearby in the hills across the plain. He thought he could see, even feel the front line of the enemy Spartans ahead, thousands of tall men in red capes and long black braids. They would be grim still-just like he remembered them as a boy the first time he saw hoplites under Brasidas. The Spartan Homoioi had all been marching to pipe music, just like they did when he was later captured at the Nemea battle. Their shields would be out chest-high, the spears all lowered. Breastplates, helmets, greaves all would be dazzling in shiny bronze-horsehair crests bobbing, scarlet cloaks flapping in the wind. All in perfect order. A porcupine, as deadly as it was beautiful-with quills out and ready for stabbing.

Gorgos thought he could almost see that death walk of his noble red-caped killers. Oh how he wished he were with them and not here with the soon to be losers at his side. Sparta was always short of men, and here he was untapped, unused, a Boiotian slave no less. The helot even began tapping his foot, even in the back of Melon’s wagon, alongside the dozing master. Who cared, since they would all die anyway in a few hours. Boiotians always fall when they meet the better men of Sparta. So it did not matter that an old helot in Boiotia sang the songs of the enemy or woke up his sleeping master.

Then a hard slap. Gorgos almost fell off to the road. The song ended. The other slave, the driver Chion-“Snowy” most thought chion meant-had let loose of the reins, turned, and given Gorgos his backhand. He slapped Gorgos for no more than his bad verses, or so it at least seemed. Chion stayed silent, even as he stood tall again, always a head higher than any around him, now driving amid the rising dust. He was the young one, Gorgos the far older slave. In his years of his pout and isolation, their master Melon had let both of his two farm slaves run almost wild. They managed the vineyards on Mt. Helikon more than did their master. Now with this new notion of Epaminondas and talk of freeing of the helot serfs to the south, not much longer could a liberator own other Hellenes anyway.

Melon himself woke yet again to the sound of the slapping of Gorgos. In the back of the wagon, he had fought with his own visions. Maybe he should have long ago killed these two slaves, inasmuch as both were smarter and stronger-and far angrier-than their master, just as he thought he was to all others on Helikon. If Chion and Gorgos survived the battle, if they were freed, even in his dotage Gorgos would kill too many of the good, as if he were some whip of the Spartans; and Chion would kill too many of the bad, as if he thought he had the rights of some fury god. It was a dangerous thing to free slaves with good minds and longer memories. Who could guarantee that they would kill each other and so cancel themselves out, before the corpses of the guilty and innocent alike piled up?

War, Melon at least knew, is the great torch that brings such heat and light to everything and everyone. Nothing can hide from the god Polemos, not even the clever mind of Gorgos who now sang like a traitor. But then he saw Chion smiling; did the Spartans have any idea of how many of the red capes that one would kill? Melon went on and imagined that, like some high mountain bear, his Chion might take down all these southerners, drag them to the nearest oak, hang them up by their heels with their red tunics, and let the dogs and birds do the rest. Or so he remembered Chion mumbling, that and more still: that spearing was too good for them. Chion talked more like that because he was now close to the moment of battle, to being freed at last to make all things right, as he promised, for his master, for his slave Neto, for the good son of Melon, Lophis, for freeing slaves of the artificial laws of the polis that said some are free, others not.

The cart stopped. Gorgos unhitched a sweaty Aias. He roped and hobbled the ox to the tongue. The helot gave enough slack so that the beast could drink from the creek water. Cagey Gorgos had guided Chion well here. He laughed out loud, as he thought how clever he was to have known the spot in advance-maybe as a back escape path down the hill should the slave Chion turn feral and try to kill him right here? Or was it a way to get out the backside, should the Boiotians lose-or even win? About four stadia away on an opposite gentle rise, the three could