The End of Sparta

down-or have no war and no peace, as it is now.”

With that outburst, the talkers heard the trumpeters’ order to halt and pitch camp and to wait for the twenty thousand men at their backs. Melon could already see well the Megarid below. They figured that they had gone some one hundred twenty stadia while they had talked the first day’s march away. Still Melon thought on in silence. This new power of Thebes-would there come also in time the end of its own democracy? Of course it would. Sparta had once dethroned Athens. Now Thebes was doing the same to Sparta. He knew well an end-day would arrive in turn for these Boiotians. That was the nature of states. In their wealth and pride, they forgot the harder ways of earlier men who had given them plenty. Maybe the Boiotians would muster a year or even ten of such marches at his back. But even now as he looked around the front ranks of the column, he saw few such as Pelopidas and Epaminondas to lead such men again-and far too many men like Backwash to throw away what others had given them.

Victory, the wealth of peace, proves as deadly to states as does defeat. Is that man’s doom? That as we struggle to plane down the edges for the young, old men forget that their own blisters and cuts from these knots and burls made us the savvy carpenters we are? That smoothing the splintery grain for our own children only ends up smoothing them, so that they know nothing of the rough to come? That in our wish to be good we ruin those who we wish to help, because we cannot let them suffer as we did when we have the power or the wealth to stop it? That law of iron explains the fall of families and the poleis as well. Did their Pythagoras have any answers for all this, since-Melon knew-his vanishing Zeus did not?

Only Chion and Neto and Gorgos, even-the slaves born poor and with the coarse edge of life sharp in them still-showed the stuff of the older breed, and only for a while until they would become soft lords of an aging Ithome of soft citizens who forgot that they had been helots. That was Chion’s fear, Melon knew, and what made the freed slave stay feral and far from the appetites of the city. The key, he also saw, for polis man was to match word and deed, body and mind, the work of the hoe with the papyrus, avoid the lounge of Phryne as much as did the shaggy hill men of Aitolia. Without the mean, to meson, the laborer becomes a thug, the sophist an effete. No, Chion would stay in the wild where he could do more for the tame in the town by almost alone of men not being tame. For his part, Melon consoled himself that at least for now the new Messene to come, the city of the soon-to-be-freed helots, might yet remind Hellas, even in its dotage, of the original ways of the polis-once the low rough stones were placed on the polished top. Freeing the helots would end Sparta, Melon knew. But he guessed that Epaminondas thought their liberation would give Hellas itself a reprieve, both by the struggle needed to free them and the infusion of new blood into the city-states of Hellas.

CHAPTER 23

Chion Goes South

Meanwhile, halfway to the farm, Chion had stopped. He grabbed the wrist of Myron. He spoke slowly, and then Chion began to make the freedman repeat what he said, so that Myron could say it all to Damo when he got back to Helikon-just as Chion ordered. At the fork, Chion took from Myron’s pack the sack of silver that they had promised Nikon and sent Myron back to Helikon on the horse. He alone headed south and east over the spurs of Kithairon, running to the port at Aigosthena and the windy winter gulf. He prayed to the One God to forgive his lie to Melon that he would stay on Helikon; in truth, he had already promised Alkidamas that he would meet him at the dock. If Chion went all the way back to the farm, he would surely miss the ship of Alkidamas and his promise to Alkidamas to go southward with him and keep him safe. He had promised the old man to be on the shore by midnight and to come armed to guard them should the captain-and their money-need watching. Perhaps if he brought news of Neto, Melon would grant him a pardon when they met again. Swinging the silver across his shoulder, Chion continued across the hills. The day gave way to dusk, then to black night, as Chion’s shadow moved among the trees, like a night-hunting creature in the forest, whose byways he had long ago mastered on his solitary hikes.

Down at the shore, the dockers on the quays at the port of Aigosthena were calling out at the lights that were visible on the waves-Thauma! Lampades, ide lampadas. Lampades en thallasse-A wonder! Lights, look, lights. Lights on the sea. Soon even the eyes of Alkidamas saw them, the twinkling flames over the water. Well after midnight at last the torches bobbed over the swells, without a sound of the approach. The clouds parted, and in the cold moonlight they could see the far peaks of Arkadia across the gulf, but nothing else. Then, late but safe, the long-expected ship quietly swished into port, oars up.

Alkidamas could smell it, as the wind swirled near shore, before he made out the trireme’s silhouette. All that was missing was his bodyguard Chion and the ransom money for Neto, and he hoped either the crew was honest or Chion would be soon here to ensure they were. He had plans-all at the mercy of the winter seas, a leaky boat, and a brawling captain-to take these helot-born Athenians to Messenia to organize the people before the arrival of Epaminondas. If he left now on the water, he would be in Messenia before the army would even reach Sparta-and so have a precious month or so to rid Messenia of its Spartans. The unlettered helots would need a few of their more polished about who knew the ways of democracy. He had received word of Nikon and his news of Neto, so Alkidamas was glad not only to have Chion watch the captain Gaster, but also to have his bodyguard when the two would search for Neto in Messenia.

Quickly the shivering, wet stewards roped the long boat into the dock house. Porters in wool cloaks and hoods tramped off for food and water. It looked like a trireme, but one of the older brands-smaller than most, with the paint faded and the timber warped. The sea-snake’s eye painted on the side was half peeled away by the brine. Usually these warships came out of the water like serpents, with their sleek lines and bright colors. But this old thing was more like a smashed jellyfish washed up on the shoreline.

Once the creaky ship touched shore, a one-armed captain stood balancing himself with his good left arm on the outrigging in torchlight. Someone yelled, “There’s Gaster, our fat friend. Hey Alkidama. He’s here.”

The dark figure of the captain himself called back from his bobbing boat. “Hoa, Alkidama. I’m late. Fighting the damned crosswind out of the Piraeus all the way to the Isthmos. But this water is nothing compared to the straits off Asia, or the high waves off Rhodos. But then you’re no Alkibiades either, not by far. Why that master, he knew more in his thumb than you folks today. Hey. Your crew of land boys you hired me can’t row, and instead think that talking will push the ship along. I spent too much silver at the diolkos, getting this boat dragged across the Isthmos. But don’t worry, I’ll have all of us at your Messenia well before your friends by land.”

He jumped down off the planks to the draw board. “Those Korinthian draggers are worse than Thrakians, always with one begging hand out as they work. The buggers will doze off right in the middle of their rope pull, unless we throw more silver into their general’s chest-and a pithos of unmixed red wine for their tug work. But here we are, pulling hard the oars, hard all the way from the port at Korinthos. With a boat full of your helot captains with splinters in their butts-just as ordered, ready to get things ready for your Epaminondas. They hit each other with their wood as much as they did the water.”

Gaster then stalked back up along the top planks, swinging a torch in the dark like a sword, ordering the lower oarsmen to get out, to stretch their legs, to empty their bowels and be back before dawn. He had a long beard, but the ugly kind that was scraggly and showed his chin beneath, and caught food and worse in its thin folds. Once his cap came off, he was all bald and might have taken a razor to his head, since his dome was shiny in the torchlight. Unlucky he was that his only arm was his left arm. He looked all belly. But he had thick blubber on his arm and his shoulders, blubber everywhere, so that he was more a mountain than even were stronger men. His legs were sturdy. It would take a hard blow, maybe two for him even to feel the hit.

“No one pissing in my dirty ship and no slopping. I won’t have stink on my water. We won’t stop till well out of the mouth of the gulf. Not until we get an out wind with ice from Epiros. Then we turn to the left and my what a breeze will push us to Messenia. So eat and crap now, Alkidama. What a nice night-cold, and black and windy-what more could we ask of Lord Poseidon? Get on board, get out to my sea.”

When one of the thalamians lingered and began to vomit, Gaster grabbed his hair and pulled him on up. “Out now, my pretty helot boy. Puke on the beach, not my ship-or you’ll row in chains to the gulf.” With that he broke off