hungry for food or land or for such good or bad reasons?”
Pelopidas stepped up and sighed, amused that a farmer of vines was lecturing generals on the subject they knew best. “Well, then, tell us what else, our Thespian wise man, causes war.”
“How about our pride? Isn’t there our honor-and our fears?” Melon pressed on. “Of course a sort of greed of the Spartans-the sheer desire of taking something from the Boiotians to add to what they already don’t need in the Peloponnesos.” Melon took Pelopidas’s silence as a goad to go on, as Epaminondas marched a bit quicker on ahead. “Maybe we insulted Kleombrotos and the king Agesilaos, we rustics, the
“So, Melon, do you really believe our Epaminondas should have settled up with the king? Do you think his harsh words caused a war?”
Melon frowned and went on, though he sensed his general was not serious, was teasing rather than learning from him. “Of course not, my general. Name a war, Pelopidas, that was an accident-just one that broke out over a wrong word.” He was soon stammering, worried that a big man like Pelopidas, leading an army to war, had little idea why they were at war at all. So Melon pressed him further. “Listen, my commander. The men of the Peloponnesos invaded our land because they thought they could. And, by the gods, we had done nothing to persuade them otherwise. Why not? We lost Koroneia. We stumbled at Nemea. Tegyra was only a small victory. For years when you build women’s barricades rather than raise shields chest-high, you send a message: that lesser men either cannot or will not keep the Spartans out.” Melon found his words were clearing his own head, putting into some sort of order what he knew in his breast. He could not have stopped if he had wished to. “So for our part, why do you think Boiotians march this morning? Only because Leuktra taught us that we could-and these red-capes to the south cannot keep their enemies out like they have the past seven hundred years. Had we lost at Leuktra, not a northerner would be in the ranks with us this day.”
Melon, the lone vine pruner on Helikon, had an audience and so he lectured the general on why his army was following him. He thought states were like people, and knew people well enough up on Helikon-both how to keep the bad off his land and to enlist the good to help him. “Most men have no belief, either for good or bad. They follow only the winners. So they claim we are liberators and follow you, Pelopidas, because they think you can do what you promise. If you cannot make them rich, then at least make them proud to lord it over the losers. But stumble and most will damn you not just as weak, but as bad also. Remember Backwash in the assembly. Just like at Leuktra, if we win, he’ll claim us as disciples. Lose-and he will put the nooses around our necks. Back home, right now he’s waiting and tapping his foot as we march here. Most men are like that: They pass on risks to be safe and liked.”
Melon forgot that they were making good progress toward the junction to the road through the watchtowers of Megara, along the very trail where Erinna and Neto had first met so many months earlier. Melissos was right behind him, listening as Melon talked nonstop as if he were a Theban general leading the ranks. Melon at last noticed his tall ears. “So are you listening to this, Makedonian? Or do you tire from the banter of Hellenes?”
“Master, I live and sleep war. I may be a hostage. But for four months longer, I am pledged as proof of the truce to the Boiotarchs with the Makedonians-and with Alkidamas and now you, Melon, son of Malgis. Please tell us more; the march is no march when you talk.”
Meanwhile Epaminondas gave orders to his scouts and messengers to go back up the pass and hurry up the tail of the column. “But my Pelopidas,” Epaminondas for a blink turned and took over from Melon. “If we all agree wars make no sense, if they start out over pretexts, these
“Melon just told us,” Pelopidas laughed, but he then paused before going on. They were climbing and he needed a deeper breath. The general was light-headed, but finished up his thought. “Aren’t we trying to restore our pride, the reputation we lost when we let the Spartans prance through our fields each spring?”
Melon nodded and was almost finished with his lesson. “We must with a state like Sparta. When I saw you Thebans below me hide every time Agesilaos came into Boiotia with his army, I had no stomach to go down from Helikon and join you. We are going into Sparta because we have to, because in the past you let them come to you too many times. Yes, some of you want democracy for the helots, but you march now only because Leuktra gave you honor and pride, and took both from the defeated brood of Lichas.”
The army began slowly to go downhill, bypassing the high plain of Skourta. It was veering right at the crossroads, over the road of the high watchtowers that would wind down east and south to sea and along the coast to Megara. Epaminondas hurried forward and left them with an order: “Tell me how this all ends at camp tonight.” With that he was gone, happy to be back alone out in front of the column.
Pelopidas was nearly as old as Melon of the one good leg, but was not used to the hard climbing in armor, since he rarely dug vines or scythed grain and his belly hung down at the bottom rim of his breastplate. He was wheezing. “Well, if Spartan fear and pride brought them northward, and the hunch they would walk over us at little cost, what will make them quit? We won at Leuktra. So why does this unending war go on?”
“Don’t play with me, Pelopidas,” Melon warned as they too made the turn onto the Megara road and by its first tower of many to come. He noticed that thirty or so of the Sacred Band were still marching bunched next to them, eager to hear the exchange. “Wasn’t it you, Pelopidas, in the moments after Leuktra, who called to bring the war home to the Lakedaimonians?”
Pelopidas frowned. “Yes, but I confess I like to fight-anyone and all the time. Just like your Chion or our Ainias, a bloody Ares that gets fat on the gore of war. So I am not a good touchstone of what others do. Much less our poleis. So how do you think wars, especially ours, will end? When we are all in Hades, a peace of the dead?”
Melon didn’t even look at him as he answered back, as the sun began to warm his face. “I’ll be blunter still: One side wins, the other loses. Only that way does the reason the troublemaker fights vanish, and do his big ideas get smaller. Talk never stopped any war for good; talk only passes it on to grandchildren not born.” Melon grimaced, thinking that all the spearing of Malgis at Nemea and Koroneia had only left it to Lophis to fall at Leuktra. Leuktra? The battle to end at last the war with Sparta? Hardly. As long as the Spartans had the serfs of Messenia feeding them, they would keep marching up here. He went on. “As for the truces of the Hellenes, they are not worth the stone they are cut on. The more some of the Hellenes swear to others before the gods that they will both have the same friends and enemies for fifty years, the more likely such a peace will not last for one.”
The two talked and were interrupted often by the Sacred Band, especially the younger of the three hundred. But they tired of the chatter and wanted to know only when they would arrive in Lakonia. Surely it must be over the next mountain as they looked down at the great plain of Megara before them and imagined they saw the Spartan Eurotas instead of a thousand stadia of walking ahead. Not a Boiotian in this army seemed to have been to the Peloponnesos. Melon ignored them all. “You see, we will change Sparta from what it was-take its claws away and cage it-if we can, that is. Do that, and it will never be able to make war north of the Isthmos. That is, I think, the plan of our general. So he preempts and starts this war to be the last.”
Pelopidas sighed. “I fear even with war in Lakonia, and even with the Messenians free, we will leave this war to our children unless we level Sparta and kill her kings. Our Epaminondas must make war so terrible that the Spartans can never fight us again.”
Melon slapped Pelopidas. “So this was a game all along, Pelopidas. You are no honest philosopher. No, you simply wished me to give back your own answers. I say that you are more the fire breather than iron-gut Epaminondas himself.”
“I suppose,” Pelopidas quietly offered, but then he stuck his head closer to Melon’s and in a softer voice went on. “But sometimes others can give voice to the dark truth we prefer ourselves not to utter or even hear, but wish to be aired all the same. Because you know war better even than I, and not so long ago no doubt had no appetite for this great march, Melon, you have taken a great worry off my heart.” Pelopidas stopped in the road to finish. “I know there is no other way. I am not just a war lover. There is really no other way to end this, but in the direction we are marching. Yes, we must cut off the head of the serpent and watch his slithering trunk die in pain.”
“No. No, there is no other way,” Melon answered.
“We will either end this war our way-or they will end it theirs.”
Now even Melissos echoed. “No other way, no other way-no other way than to head south and cut them all
