Proxenos wanted to know something else, something he had promised Melon to find out back at the press on Helikon. “Now tell us Lykomedes, have you seen Melon’s freedwoman Neto, the prophetess from Helikon? She listens to the priestess of Pasiphai for the things that will happen before they do. Well before last high summer she was down here, scurrying around to find exiles of Messenia to stir the helots on. She might have had this poetess, Erinna, they say with her? They would have stopped here on the way west to Ithome.”
“Yes, yes, Neto who babbled about, but a fine tight sort nonetheless she was. But without the
Lykomedes went on. “This summer Neto fired up our helot exiles here in Mantineia with visions of a free Messenia-all twenty of them. And that helot mob leader Nikon, who stinks of leather and lye? Well, he was worst of all the helot brigands, the killer who ambushed and waylaid and had no parley with the Spartans. Still, helots were no concern of ours. She gathered a few of these loiterers off our streets. If they kill Spartans, why, all the better. So she came here, poked around, and left.” Something about Neto had set the boar’s mouth flapping and he couldn’t stop spitting. “That pale poetess Erinna performed here, as I said, and breathed hard on your Neto. Neto thinks that they will lead an army of helots from the highlands of Arkadia. She plans on killing Spartans and freeing her people. I tried to talk some sense into the pair, but who can when these half-helots and crazed poets think they’re gods?”
Proxenos laughed. “You mean you tried to talk
“That too,” Lykomedes chuckled, “that too, for I like a tall woman with ribs that I can see and yet with breasts that flop and the rear of a wide sort as well. But your philosopher Alkidamas already won Neto over. Why, I don’t know. He has no fun in him, only serious stuff. For all that Erinna’s short hair, I imagine she had some love of men left in her yet. If not, she’s as good as my pretty little Ariston all the same.”
Proxenos wanted to have his leave of foul Lykomedes and start on the way to Megalopolis to muster more men for Epaminondas. “But she is among her own folk. And Neto is far wiser from her long walks with Alkidamas, who, to be frank, is a different sort than you, Lykomedes. I hiked with this woman to Leuktra. It was her prayers that brought the gods out of the temples and her portents that the simple folk cheered. Had she not been with me, Epaminondas would have had only half the number needed to stop Kleombrotos.”
The three walked out of the theater. They kept bantering along the grand porticoes of Lykomedes, planning the provisions for the army they all hoped was already marching. It was decided that Ainias and Proxenos would head immediately westward into Arkadia and the new site of Megalopolis. There they would prepare another army of liberators of the south and join the Eleans marching as well. Perhaps Ainias and Proxenos would be back in half a month with a new army to meet the horde descending from Thebes, as well as the Mantineians under Lykomedes. The three armies would meet up for the final descent into the vale of Lakonia itself-if the generals voted to go on.
Proxenos finished with a warning to the plotter at their side. “Be careful, Lykomedes, when you soon meet Epaminondas. He has gotten word that you are to march with us. His spies have told him you have food that he will need. Don’t deceive him. He is not of the sort as we, but has become something far different, far more dangerous. This is a man, after all, who when he kills his sleeping sentries on his nighttime inspections, only shrugs and says, ‘I left them as I found them.’ ”
CHAPTER 21
Not long after her summer parting with Melon, Neto had visited Theano, the widow of Staphis, and prepared to head south across the Isthmos. She thought that she might have a half-year, maybe more, to rally the helots and prepare the way for Epaminondas at the end of the year. Yet Neto had never been beyond the confines of Boiotia. At least not since her childhood kidnapping and sale to Melon at the port of Kreusis. But she was glad to leave the north after her words with Melon. Alkidamas had told her the way and arranged for a guide to get her to Mantineia-and then, when near the borders of Messenia, for the helot Nikon to lead her up to Ithome. Still, Neto wondered, how do northerners find a path over the peaks near Korinthos and then catch the trail that leads deep into the Peloponnesos beyond? Then do they go down farther south into Ithome, and if so, on what road? She needed her Porpax-now no doubt in the belly of the man-bear on Kithairon.
After Leuktra, Neto had slowly made herself believe that as a freedwoman she was no longer needed in Boiotia, much less on the home estate with the Malgidai. Chion with the boys could handle the chores for Melon as the master idled in town with Phryne-while his terraces caved and the bindweed and thistle dotted his barley fields. Instead her new mentor Alkidamas had urged her to go south. “You speak of messages in your head from this Nikon, whom I know as well from my travels in the Peloponnesos when I was still not considered an enemy of Sparta and walked freely beneath Ithome. I think you will find him in the new Mantineia, or so he says he will find you should you go there. There are now twenty of you Messenians for each citizen of Sparta, yet no common voice, no plan of revolt. Our Nikon sounds as if he has the spirit, but not yet the sense, to free his kindred. Use your prophecies and miracles in the temples to aid his cause, and tell him visions, if you have them, of things to come. Hundreds of wayfarers won’t all wait on Epaminondas and the muster of the Thebans. Already in twos and threes these men, our allies, make their way to join the new cities of the Arkadians, and soon you will find me in Messenia as well, and maybe well before the arrival of the army of Epaminondas. Still, be careful in the south. A woman without the black shroud and the toothless mouth is in as much danger on the road with men as she is alone with the man-bear on Parnassos or Taygetos to the south.”
Neto remembered that Alkidamas had added, “About that guide for you. Well, she is a strange sort, a misfit they say, like you, maybe. I have asked her to join you when the clusters redden and the grapes sweeten. She is a poetess, by name Erinna, a follower of the Muses at Athens, born out at Tenos, where the afternoon waves swamp the fishing boats. Many would-be poets, now and in the past, have gone by that name, both good and bad students of the Muses. But she is the true one who sang of her lament for the dead Baukis, that tale which is now played in the symposia of Athens and Thebes. And she is tired of Athens and its shouting democracy and its descent into chaos. Like you, she is a restless sort, in search of a great deed, and like you she hears songs in her head of Ithome and the great awakening to come. She claims visions of tall ramparts to rise, and is a devotee of Epaminondas, though I doubt the woman has ever met our general. Men know of her songs and perhaps her name alone will open gates otherwise shut tight. You two women will hike to Ithome, the blind with a hand on the shoulder of the blind. Both of you will be heading to war ahead of the great throng of Epaminondas.”
All that was after Neto had left Helikon, and Melon had sent no word for her to return to the farm. Now in the Dog Star days and a full year after Leuktra, the young Erinna of Tenos had left Athens to find Neto. She waited for her for three days at the pass inn near Eleutheria as she hiked up from Athens on the high border road. Soon they were on the summer road to the south, a half-year before the Boiotians would even vote to march.
Nevertheless, the plan of Alkidamas for the two women was to head to Mantineia in seven days, and find a
