our faces will be chiseled in marble on the high temples at Delphi. But if we trip, well, then you know the fate of Epaminondas and all of us who follow. There won’t be a gorge-not even the Apothetai of the Spartans-big enough to hide all our corpses.”
Together they made ready to walk out. Alkidamas turned to Melon. “So, are you, ready? To leave your fine press on Helikon? Your newly acquired Makedonian hostage, Melissos, is waiting down by the square. He is already here with your horse Xiphos and two packs. The boy has been walking the entire circuit of the wall, bored to get going. I suppose that he will be not be behind the ox, after all, but at your side with a spear-as I confess I wagered to myself when I so graciously put him into your service. Still, you will be lucky to have him at your side. One more thing. I sensed our general would win over the crowd, and so I asked Chion to meet you for a last farewell at Plataia at tomorrow lamp-lighting time-just as you and the army all will enter the borderland of the Athenians. As for your new friend Alkidamas, look for me in the spring down south, four new moons from now at vine bud time when you arrive. I will wait for you under the slopes of a liberated Ithome, with a board of free helot officials to meet you. Perhaps some of us will find your Neto. She is a holy woman, or more than that, they say. News has reached me that in the past half-year she has let loose lightning above Ithome and soon we will hear its thunder. I think you had better go southward to find her.” He stepped away, then almost as an afterthought, Alkidamas turned again.
“The army marches at sunup. But I leave tonight on the road by the sea. There is a young man, though a frail sort at that, I must see on the way. A writer of history, Ephoros, an Athenian born in Kyme, and of some use to us, he may be soon enough. Who knows, perhaps this fellow and I will boat to the Peloponnesos and be in Messenia before you. In any case, as I told your Chion two days ago, I go to Aigosthena to meet a ship full of Athenian helots, and a fat one-armed captain.”
CHAPTER 20
After leaving Helikon and Melon at his press, Proxenos and Ainias had climbed out of the plain of Korinth. They had continued to the south, with the massive rock of forebidding Akrokorinthos on their right. The peaks of the hazy mountains of the Argolis rose on the left. They were going to Mantineia to prepare the way for the army of Epaminondas to follow. The Korinthian farmers in the fields paid the odd travelers no heed. The two had kept away from the Long Walls of Korinthos and crossed the road to Kenchreai at night. The Doric speech of the Arkadian Ainias and their broad leather hats and wool cloaks made them appear to be two mere rustics of the Peloponnesos doing their business with ships on the
At last the sun broke out of the clouds and the beauty of Hellas, north and south, was before them. The winter sea had turned deep blue. All day long Ainias had his hand on his sword hilt. He assumed that to get to the south, they would have to kill a man or two, whether bandits or Korinthian rangers. Ainias followed Proxenos, who was singing ahead as he climbed fast toward the hills above Nemea. The Plataian had never liked the south, where he had done most of his stone work, but he thought his melodies would at least lift his melancholy. The next day the two had the brisk northern breeze at their backs as they continued southward. They had stopped at Zeus’s high temple at Nemea for the night, and paid well for two sacks of food. The townspeople were advised to look for Epaminondas and his horde ten days before the new year-and that they would be well paid for their flocks and granaries by Theban agents four days before the army’s arrival. Finally the two zigzagged down the steep road, and on their sixth day from Kithairon could see fog blowing out from the great swampy plain of Mantineia clearly below them. Ainias was confident that Epaminondas could make this same march this winter, at least this far, and the return home back north across the Isthmos. He had put out more than a hundred stakes to mark the way for the army where food was plenty and local folk were eager to sell the Boiotians supplies.
The two slowed as they made their way down through the mud and past the junction at the Tripolis road. Then in silence Ainias pointed to the left jaw of the mouth of the plain. He had decided first to climb to a low spur of hills overlooking the rising city of Mantineia to scout and ensure the city below was safe to enter. Perhaps from the hillock they could get a good view of the first stronghold of the Boiotians’ grand plans to close off Sparta with cities of free people. From this small lookout mountain-Skope, the locals knew it as-both would be able to gaze out at the borders of Arkadia and see land that months ago in summer had been rich with cherries and grapes and thigh-high wheat between the ranges of Maenalos and Ktenias.
Here and there on the fields of the plain barley sprouted, though there were few farmers in the field in the winter cold. The sprouts of next spring’s grain had already come up green and were a palm’s width from the ground. But there were no ripe crops of any sort in the countryside. The dirt paths below long ago had turned muddy with streams from the storms raging down from the mountains. Yet the two travelers, who had a good eye for farmland, were struck nonetheless at the layout of this new city in the rich bottomland below-especially Ainias, who stomped and kicked the ground of his native Arkadia, as he climbed up the small lookout. Suddenly a laborer, a dirty-looking stranger in patched leather, came down the path and muttered to a surprised Ainias, “
Proxenos was atop first, and calling out over the breezes as he gazed from the low summit of Skope at the city below in the distance. “Forget that rustic. Ignore his superstitions. Look down instead at my Mantineia, and how your Arkadia has a polis bigger than Athens, the tired democracy. Thirty stadia and more it goes off into the horizon. Look at my
Ainias snapped back, “I see, I see. I know who planned it and who built it. But who was that leather-clad fellow coming down off Skope-the one scared out of his wits?” He was full of bile, and angry at his own detour. On the way up, they had had to fight through dead thistle and the branches of tamarisk, slipping in the mud and ash on the slope. The view from the top was not worth the climb. “From boyhood I knew this valley,” lectured Ainias. “But I never liked the scent up here on Skope. Now something about this perch riles me even more, more than the terrified stranger who just warned me. A bad wind blows across the crest. Neto could tell us why. Had we her gift, we could make something of that circling black hawk up there, warning us what plans Zeus has. I wager that black bird above is really a Ker, and not a hawk after all. I can keep you alive to finish Megalopolis, but only against those who bleed, and not the shades who feed on them.” With that Ainias grabbed the arm of his friend. “Proxenos, come down from this place. I don’t want to ever come back here. Voices of the dead waft in.”
Proxenos laughed. “Ainias, you sound like the bitch Hekuba barking at the crossroads. Skope is no more than rocks and dirt, not the home of the goblin Empousa to scare little boys. But we go down now. There are four towers unfinished down there in Mantineia that I can see from up here. Another bridge over the water is no farther along than when I was here a month ago-and in the wrong place.” The two began to lumber down and headed back along the road from Tegea to the new city. Ainias immediately felt better to be off. He was home at Mantineia and the two were safe. Now as they walked on flat ground he felt embarrassed about his fears of the hill and tried to praise the genius of his friend, who was somehow growing fainter in voice and slower in his walk.
“Proxenos, you have your immortality. These three cities-if later Megalopolis and Messene on Ithome grow as Epaminondas promises-are your legacy. If your scrolls burn tomorrow, it doesn’t matter anymore. Our ideas are already set in stone. For a thousand seasons and more they will be known-or at least until the stones of these cities themselves are carried away by folk whose names are not yet even known. Men not yet here will praise your work. They will wonder how the style of Epaminondas’s cities-your
“Perhaps, Ainias,” Proxenos said as they walked on. “But we have no idea of the way we shape others, or what word or small act sparks another to do good or evil. Some of us were noble by our disposition and our voice
