The End of Sparta

“Eirene, eirene-peace” before he had even reached the dais. Backwash announced that it was past time for a real Boiotian to speak. Yes-a real Boiotian like himself, one born in the black cow-soil nearby, a man of the people to address his own people. Melon remembered why a year and more ago he had kicked the scoundrel into the trash heap outside the tent of the generals. But now there was no Chion to be seen, nor a man quick to temper like Philliadas of Tanagra. So Backwash felt safe amid the mob with Athenian mercenaries on his flanks. He ran back and forth at the bema like a wobbly, webfooted drake who has just lost his head to the butcher.

Despite his smell and his pear-shaped bald head and jowls, Menekleidas was well liked by the Theban town- dwellers to whom he helped spread the obol dole. Now he sought to take up the hammer of his Athenian paymaster Kallistratos and pound down Pelopidas’s peg a bit farther. After Leuktra, the farmers of Aulis had driven Backwash out to Thebes, for they knew his lies and had tired of his tongue. He left his toll taking and took up his kiln work full time. His clothes were usually stained with clay, for this Backwash spun pots in the agora, when the law courts were slow and few paid for his arguments. But he had turned his cloak inside out and felt he was as lordly looking as any horse-owner.

“As a spear-wounded veteran of Holy Leuktra, let me speak not of what is right-for who knows what’s right in a difficult matter such as this? Is not ‘right’ anyway a relative thing, and always dressed up as the ‘good’ by the man with the heaviest fist? So instead, let us of the poorer kind ponder what is expedient for all of Boiotia.” He pointed over to Pelopidas, and he began to shake his body and twist his head in agitation. “Did you listen, men of Boiotia, fellow veterans of the hard fight at Leuktra, to your own Pelopidas-to his appalling madness that will engulf us all and take our sons from the vineyards so that they can rot in the mud of Sparta? For that is where this Arkadian gambit will end up.” None challenged him, so Backwash went on. “Look-men are in armor outside our walls, before our vote. They put a dagger to our throat and then ask if we dare sheath it. Consider the logic of it all. Does this Pelopidas or Epaminondas, does either have a son in the front ranks among the prostatai? Or do they instead talk of war but send your kin to the sound of Spartan pipes, like they did to us at Leuktra? Is not this childless drone, like his master Epaminondas, always buzzing about wars for the children of others to fight in?” He hurried now, just as if he were spinning out a smooth calyx or hydra for his clay kiln.

“What business do our folk have in Arkadia, in Sparta, and in Messenia on the slopes of Mt. Ithome, in shadowy cold Messenia, far after the Pleiades have set? That’s just where such an expedition of these mad Pythagoreans will all too soon end up, mark my words-with our red blood on their white snow.” He paused again, and was ready to duck. But when no fruit was thrown, he continued. “I have heard that the Peloponnesians wish to have walls; fine, let them build walls. So the Messenians wish for their freedom; fine, let them earn it as we did at Leuktra. I have heard hoplites are needed to surround the Spartan acropolis; fine. But let Pelopidas and his Sacred Band-not us hoplites of Boiotia-leave tonight.” Then his face twitched more and he became louder: “Let us spend money on Boiotians, not helots. We could have a new drain to the agora, some plaster for the columns of the Herakleion, or an extra obol for the dole, for the price of a day fighting down there.”

A few shouted in unison, “No, to war! No to money for the helots! Yes, yes, yes to peace. Stay home. Spend our coins on ourselves. Keep spinning, pothead.” The argument that neither a free Messenia nor a defeated Sparta was worth one more dead Boiotian was good Nemean red wine for many in the crowd, who had already had enough of someone else’s glorious war. That there was a free council of the Boiotians without a Spartan guard on the acropolis-and thanks only to Epaminondas-was forgotten by all.

“The truth,” Backwash said, finally slowing down and walking in tighter circles, “is that Messenians, our so- called allies, are by nature servile folk-every one of those helots fitted for their proper task as serfs to their betters.” He was pointing to the Boiotians in the first row and speaking in the drawl of the Euripos, accented with lisps and nasal drones. “By the gods, the helots are a rural and backward race of tribes and sects who quarrel and kill like savages. They are no better than Homer’s wild Cyclopes.”

“Few of them can read letters. Fewer still know anything of mastery of the sea or the polis. Do they know of anything other than tilling for Sparta in their black soil of the Peloponnesians? They don’t even have their own language or race. Any other people would long ago have built cities and harbors and at least a trireme or two. So let us stay put and far away from such folk. Let us, the heroes of Leuktra, start finishing our own walls in our own cities, and rebuilding our ties with Athens whose friendship Kallistratos here has so ably outlined.” Kallistratos stood up and waved to the crowd. But Menekleidas ignored him and went on, not about to let even his benefactor cloud his moment. He was laughing, and chuckling at his own jest. “As I warned all of us on the night before Leuktra, is Ainias the killer not that fair-weather crane from the shoreline of Stymphalos? Has he not flown back home, cawing and cackling, when his feathers were ruffled that he could not muster our folk to do his own dirty business down south? No, men of Boiotia, let us accept the world as it is-not as we dream it might be. Enough of this mad democracy-spreading.”

Melon shrugged. He had come to Thebes to learn what the army of the Boiotians would do. Maybe he would get a word about his Neto to guide him when he went south to find her soon. But as he heard more slurs from such folk, it had the unintended effect of making Epaminondas, for all his talk of freeing helots a thousand stadia away, only wiser in his own eyes-especially as he contrasted these sophists and windbags with the quiet general facing down Lichas in those moments on the left at Leuktra.

Backwash turned to end his case against the march south. He leaned against the bema and took the corner of his cloak to wipe sweat from his dry forehead. “Then there is our acquaintance, the ghost of Pythagor-aaaas, who, it seems, is floating always right above this madness. Why all these strange -as names. I am sick of -as this, - as that-these plotters like Pelopidaaas, Epaminondaaas, Alkidamaaas. Yes, this new Pythagoreaaas cabal who have taken over our democracy. They taught not merely the secrets of triangles and the patterns of numbers, but apparently, in between their frolicking with our women, they schemed to take good men from Boiotia and get them killed for the nonsense of Messenian freedom.”

Backwash was using his hands to bring on the hoots, working his fingers, even, almost as if he were at the wheel turning out a grand wine bowl to be painted with red-figured dancers around its base. “So let us next spring find it to our advantage to march when the grain is in ear and food on the march is aplenty. Let us wait until there are strong walls and proven allies to cover our retreat. We should cultivate our alliance at home in soft familiar ground rather than in vain break our plows over barren and rocky soil abroad.” While no one was ready to abandon entirely Epaminondas’s notion of invading Sparta-given their prior sanction for a winter muster-the rough sanding done by Kallistratos was now polished fine by this Menekleidas.

Still, there was always that hope and doom of democracy-what the majority wanted, anytime, about anything, they got in a moment’s notice. The mob cared little for the yoke of the law or the time-wasting of the overseers in the council or the shame of turning a previous day’s vote upside down. Old Herodotus had it right: It is easier to get thousands of hotheads in a democracy to muster than to win over a few stern-faced oligarchs. So Melon looked over and watched a grim Epaminondas in his armor and tattered cape slowly stand up, smile, and carefully make his way onto the bema. As the general passed, Melon saw him slap Backwash on his temple, “Phugete, phugete. Foul mouth of the channel, flee, before you get a fist as well. Get back to your clay.”

The small Theban began in a slow style and without anger for the hostile crowd he addressed-since he knew that outside the walls was an army mustering far larger. “Men of Boiotia. These two who have spoken to you can always give a hundred reasons not to act. But never a single reason for taking action.” Epaminondas pointed over to the Athenians and Backwash. “Wait, stop, relax, ponder, consider. What is new about all this throat-clearing and back-stepping? Are you really to be persuaded by a channel bottom-feeder named Backwash? You know all this is only the coddling of Sparta. The man who bows and does the Persian kow-tow, the ground-kisser, always dresses up his cowardice and unconcern for others-in appeals either to collective self-interest or to neutrality.”

Epaminondas went on with a voice louder than any before. “You all have forgotten the battle of Koroneia. You know nothing of Tegyra. Even Leuktra of year last is as old as Troy.” He was pointing his finger at Menekleidas and Kallistratos and the others. “These bought sycophants up here are the foul carrion of hindsight. Their beaks always try to peck away the great deed of Leuktra. No one seems to remember the ancient rule: The more the Spartan army has marched into Boiotia, the more the next year it comes back into Boiotia. Lichas and his sons crow that their dead are always buried in someone else’s earth.”