The End of Sparta

After a bit, Melon took the next fork and the narrower trail south and eastward to the field of Leuktra. He trotted Xiphos over a low rise, where he could see the battlefield among the rolling hills. There he stopped at the new marble monolith of the Boiotians-planned by Proxenos of Plataia. Scaffolding and a winch stood alongside it. So did piles of pig bones and ash from the masons who had camped out by the battle trophy. The column was almost finished save for the moldings. A bronze statue of Epaminondas was planted on the plinth high above, sculpted by Xenon, the apprentice of Aristides himself.

This was foul country for Melon. Lophis must have fallen not far from where Melon sat at the base of the trope. Yes, it was near the spot perhaps where the Spartans had first been turned. His body had been dumped not far away at Kreusis, where the road led on down the cliffs to the gulf and the shrine of foul Kallista. Melon walked over the ground where he had killed Kleombrotos and picked up relics that had been missed by plunderers well more than a year after the battle. Here was the butt-spike of a broken shaft, Spartan from the look of it. Had it gone into Chion, Lophis, or Staphis? Melon sat for a bit. He drank some vinegar water, with sharp garlic and white cheese that Damo had packed. Then, feeling sleepy, he lay down near the monument’s base and drew his fleece cloak over him for a brief nap out of the winter wind. Closing his eyes, the farmer immediately was on that mountain again, in that now familiar stone cottage. More dreams came of bowls of hot food on the table. But the diners with him were huddling by the wall or in the corner and the soups were foul to the smell. All were ready with raised weapons as shadows came to the door. He never seemed to find out what followed from all that. Then suddenly a voice, one he should know, jeered him.

“Euia, euia, there.”

A jolt or something loud woke him. But it was a shrill, raspy, and unfamiliar voice in the world of sun, not dreams, “Wake up, sleepy man. We hear you snoring even from here.”

Melon jumped up at the sound of what he took to be Lichas. He had his hand on his spear, grabbing his sword scabbard with his left hand on his shoulder should he need to throw first and then close with the blade. He would hit the first of them, then stab the second in the hand-to-hand.

But the two figures that approached him could not have been sadder to the eye. They halted as they saw the Thespian hoplite plant his feet for battle. The caller proved to be an older man, far more wrinkled than Melon. He hobbled up on a walking stick. He was helped by a young boy. If the elder one had once been broad at the shoulders and showed that in his youth he might have been a stalwart fighter in the first rank, the younger other gave no sign that he ever could do such a thing, so thin he appeared as he neared. And he was a bit audacious as he spoke first: “We found you at last, the hero of Leuktra. You must tell us how the Thebans won here at Leuktra. They say the Stymphalian Ainias fooled the Spartans with his loksen attack and left wing and fifty shields and all that. And did Epaminondas really spare the allies of Kleombrotos so that they would join him in the south? Is it true that the Pythagoreans always attack from the left, or was that again the smart work of Ainias, the drill master from Stymphalos? Tell us, please. We are all ears now. But first, how can Epaminondas plan a march this last month when his tenure ends at the first of the year? Is he a renegade? An outlaw? How will he come back in time or does he not fear the noose? Oh, and how many bushels of grain will it take his army to get to Sparta, and how fast do you Hellenes march, and do the Boiotians spear as well as the men of Arkadia? And do …”

He would have continued, had not his old master slapped him twice to silence him. “Keep still, my little barbarian, before strangers. Quiet unless you want three welts on your cheek. We have not yet introduced ourselves to our sleeping lord. And down here in the civilized south we do not speak so rudely without a warning first of who we are.” Then the old man continued. “Stranger, he tries, this Melissos does. But be careful. As I now warn, and as you just heard, he may not be as dull as he seems; his bad eyes dart about even if his mouth stays shut, and see more than mine or perhaps yours as well.” Then the man finally extended his arm, “But my apologies. I am Alkidamas, student of Gorgias, born in Elaia, a man of Asia. I need no introduction to you or to your clan. I hear that you are to stay in Thebes during your trip, which I don’t think is as sudden as you thought.” He paused, as if he had said too much, but then went on, far more slowly. “I am often a Theban, it seems. Though Athens is now my home, and, as I said, I claim Ionia as my birthplace as you can tell from my speech-so I am an itinerant.”

Melon was relieved they were not robbers. He found the old man a good sort and was struck by the boy’s spirit, even as he kept noticing that the boy’s dark arms and legs were like the thin reeds of the lowlands by the Euripos. His long nose was sharp and bony even without much flesh. All that was made even funnier by being stuck between squinting eyes that were not so much crossed as half-closed and bleary. This boy seemed to have suffered from the blurs. That was the curse of Zeus that made men squint with their weak eyes that could see little more than the palm before their face. He had some fuzz on his chin as sign of his age. But it gave no sign that it would ever be any more than that. He didn’t look quite Hellene at all. Instead the youth had a darker, barbarian look to him, with low bushy brows, like a northerner, maybe Epiriot or even a Makedonian with the short forehead. Before he replied to this strange boy, Melon paused in his approach. For a bit he was thinking how the gods sometimes bedevil men. They put into one Thersites like this, Homer’s ugliest man at Troy, all the physical lapses that others abhor. Only with difficulty are these eyesores to be endured if such ugliness can be trumped by cunning, or at least by spirit. The more Melon stared at him, the more it seemed that a strong wind off Helikon would have blown this boy into the marshes. His hair was like chaff in the wind, sticking in all directions and not to be combed. How could such a fellow ever amount to a man of any worth? Through audacity? Luck? Cruelty?

The older man Alkidamas had seen Melon smile at Melissos. So he now saw an opening and continued nonstop, “As I said, please excuse the boy, you won’t see northerners like him here in the south. He is young and not one of us, and knows too much for his own good. But now I will tell you more about him-a barbarian, as you have guessed. Maybe ten and three. Or at least between fourteen and fifteen years, though he claims he knows less about how old he is than we do.” The man went on still more, as Melon listened to his word-flood dumbfounded. “Our Pammenes got him as a hostage for Thebes to ensure those lying kings of Makedon up above Tempe keep their oaths about the peace. This boy Melissos is a pledge: If they invade, he dies; if they keep north, then after his year he goes back untouched. They say he is of royal blood. But who knows? Even if he is as important as they think, he still looks more like a Thrakian beggar than a Makedonian royal to me. He has a name I suppose. But I forgot it long ago and so call him Melissos-a honey gift from the general Pammenes to carry my bags, at least for the rest of his year. Those sticks he has for legs and arms, I’ve also learned, are of solid oak. Stronger than yours, old man, I wager. But then he is not quite what he stutters he is. I’ll be sad to give him back when the hostages are returned in the spring. Yes, he says little, watches everything, cares for nothing. I’d say he was a spy, but the blockhead has nothing to spy for. But enough of me. I know you are Melon, son of Malgis, of the line of Antander on Helikon, killer of King Kleombrotos. How fine finally to catch you here at the scene of your aristeia of last year.”

Melon at first did not like the sophist in him, and thought, rhetor. Another wind bladder. He earns his silver by not working. Then he made plans to leave them both, or so he thought. “Old man. I was just leaving this ghost field. I have another half-day or so on the road. I’ve decided for the rest of the way to lead my Xiphos. The pony has not been off my farm on the hard stone for a year or more. So forgive me for leaving now, but I don’t go in with strangers on the road, whether old men or the infernal Kabeirioi.”

“No bother at all,” the sage cast back with his wide smile as he pointed to Melissos to follow. “We are going your way to Thebes. No doubt Thebes you head for-even by your roundabout way? Your Zeus on Olympos apparently guides us where we should go, since we saw your servant Chion this morning in Thespiai, not far from the house of Phryne. We were going to walk up to your farm until he told us to head you off on this detour.” Melon had not yet said a word in answer, and the man continued. “I’ve wanted a word with you for some time. But some such thing always bars my path to your vineyards-whether that cold wind on Helikon or these bony legs that tire from the hike. The battlefield is so much nicer for talking than catching you on the main road to Thebes by those dreadful Kabeirioi that even we Pythagoreans fear. And with all these bounders in the countryside it will be safer for three of us than one.”

Melon paused and at last said his first word of greeting. “Did my Chion talk to you now? But he-like my Neto-was freed by decree of the people of Thespiai, and so can say what he pleases. After Leuktra I have no slaves. But you, our architect of liberation, apparently do? Your boy here has a pack on his back large enough for the two of you.”

Melissos backed off out of slapping distance, and then interjected, “His son fell at Leuktra, not far from the Spartan king. Lichas killed him. Where is this Lichas? Will we ever meet him? I have no fear of this man. We in Makedon have no fear of the Spartans.”

“Enough, Melissos, before you become too familiar with my right arm.” Alkidamas was encouraged by all the