The End of Sparta

the number of their farms you torch. No Spartan, no Athenian-no Hellene-has ever seen the like of this army, and none will ever see such a thing again.” Epaminondas mounted his small red pony and rode among the ranks. He ordered his commanders to column his Boiotians four abreast as his third and last army headed down the final pass. It was easy following the lead army of the Argives under Epiteles, who was a master of taxis and showed all how to squeeze columns over the narrow road and out of bowshot of the Spartan garrisons.

Below, the advanced columns poured out onto the green winter fields of the Eurotas, like a herd of sheep that makes not even a grunt as it stuffs its mouth-and leaves behind stubble, and holes, and vomit and dung where there was once fresh tall grass. Soon smoke covered the vale. Later that day, the last of the Boiotians to descend saw nothing but a cloud of haze drifting toward the acropolis, the smoke of a thousand fires and more, as the army of Epaminondas did their work, tearing apart the farms and sheds in the plain to fuel their winter bonfires.

Where were the Spartans, Epaminondas wondered? Where was the dreaded Lichas? Where the lame Agesilaos? None was at the head of a phalanx on the field of battle. His great fight with the tall hoplites of Lichas was now a fantasy. What followed, Epaminondas shouted to his generals, was the greatest surprise in all the stories of the Hellenes. The invaders walked in unopposed to the supposedly impregnable vale of Lakonia. The perioikoi, the villagers who lived in subservience around the city of Spartans, either had drifted into the army of Epaminondas or had fled into the hills of Parnon. Either way, more than half the helots of Lakonia had left their farms. The rest ran to safety of the city across the Eurotas with their masters, all to the cries of the Spartan women in town.

Lichas had chosen not to send out his phalanx-not with the memory of the piles of dead at Leuktra still fresh. Myriads of these invaders, without fear of a Spartan spear or a sword, were burning even more houses and fencing, rounding up stock, killing-and always lapping up to the banks on the icy river. Finally King Agesilaos hobbled out to the banks of his side of the Eurotas and sent his guards to line the river and bar the way into the city for any of his latecomer refugees. Helot-lovers he called them-better to let them die than to let them slink as spies into the city. No more Spartans were to come across the river into the city. The peers were to kill anyone who neared the Eurotas once the bridges had been torched.

When the Boiotians at last reached flat ground a day after the allies of the Peloponnesos, Epaminondas pointed out to Melon the hillock, just six stadia from the the high shrines of the Menalaion, where the generals would camp. “We sleep there on that rise, not far from the Eurotas-there in the middle of this new sea of ravagers. Look, Melon, look how we cover the spurs of Taygetos to the west. We’re already lapping on Parnon far eastward.”

Melon could see that the countryside of Sparta was scarcely big enough for the thousands of men in the three armies. The next day they were plundering again, without the fog or even much dew to dampen their fires. Epaminondas came up with Proxenos, all in heavy woolen cloaks against the cold wind. Melon and Melissos fell in at the van with Epaminondas to head toward the city proper and the Eurotas, to scout the fords and plan the final assault. Melon shouted to Melissos above the yelling, “Epaminondas, dear boy, is an artist, you see, one better than Exekias himself; but his work is not to be found in painting clay, but in the wholesale destruction of his enemies-and the end of Sparta is his masterpiece, his ariston ergon.”

None of the Thebans around Epaminondas cared for the booty that drove on most of the coalition that had poured over the plain of Lakonia. Instead, battle was their desire, and so always they eyed the Spartans on the other side of the river. Red-capes were running about there, taunting and overturning wagons as they threw up a makeshift rampart at the fords and shook their spears. Their women on the rooftops yelled at the sight of the fires of Epaminondas-as angry at their own men who had let the unthinkable happen as they were at the Boiotian pigs across the water. A few of the younger girls had climbed the peaks of the roofs. They were prying up the roof-tiles with iron bars and handing them down to their mothers on the balconies, who stockpiled their weapons for the street-fighting to come.

“Hoa. You three. Hold up.”

It was Ainias again, marching in at dusk to the camp of Epaminondas. He was waving his hands in a way unlike the somber killer who usually stabbed first and spoke only later. “Come. Now get over here. Look at this. A Spartan party, a half lochos, maybe more. Look. They’re trapped on that farm over here just as the early sun sets. Some slow-coach Spartans are caught on our side on the river, the wrong side of the Eurotas. They will either go up in smoke with their shed or fight their way through us to their king across the water.”

Without waiting for a reply from his friends, Ainias pulled his helmet down over his face and headed back toward the Spartan holdouts.

CHAPTER 26

The Plains Afire

Epaminondas followed. As they neared the besieged farm, Ainias called over the Elean lords Talos and Philoxenos and the captains of their mounted rangers who had trapped the orphaned band of Spartans out in the plain of Lakonia. Talos broke in, “We’ve cornered something over here on this estate. Something big. A phantasma, a ghost from their Zeus is holed up there. My Eleans have plundered the field vats. But there is a hoplite bunch still in the house. And another hundred or more Spartans milling about in the courtyard. There is a big man with them that brings piss to our boys’ legs who won’t go near the tower. We were too busy with the booty in the sheds to notice this enemy island. Now we discover that we’ve surrounded a whole company of killers. They say it is the clan of Lichas-or even worse-inside.”

“Hold up. Stop your men. I know this place,” Epaminondas yelled. “I know this foul farm.” The general then sent a runner to Pelopidas and ordered after him, “Send in the Sacred Band. Send for another lochos or more if you can. Get Philliadas and his hard men from Tanagra over here. All of them before midnight.” Then he turned to Melon and pointed to the tower, still looming white as darkness fell. “Lichas may be here, or at least some of his own. This is the farm of his dead brother Leon. His kleros is somewhere close by. I passed right by here on the embassy last year to the taunts of Antikrates and his kryptes. I wager that either Lichas or his son, or maybe both are in there, or at least nearby. So maybe we have torched the grand estate of Leon.”

But it was far more than that. For the Boiotians had, in their ignorance, stumbled onto the compound of all the Lichades, all five farms, a thousand plethra of orchard and vineyard altogether near the Eurotas, with six tall towers, all built by their own hands, without the labor of slaves or helots, five of them by the grandfathers of Lichas-Xanthos and Prytanis-whitewashed purgoi all in shouting distance of each other. Little did they guess that Gorgos on his arrival from Leuktra had spent a half-year here himself, although Melon looked out among the bonfires and thought that one of the towers seemed strangely new with its fresh whitewash and a red border-and in the fashion of his own back on Helikon. Its roof and stones might easily have been built by the Malgidai.

Now Melon and Proxenos leveled their spears and advanced toward the fires and the hoplites who ringed the estate. Ainias headed to the outer field wall. It ran about twenty palms high around all the farms and had various gates, as paths from each farm led out of the family grounds. As they neared the path to the southernmost farm, maybe two hundred Eleans under their general, Talos, were throwing stones and javelins at Spartans behind the tower’s courtyard wall-a man’s height, its gate closed fast. A few were torching the door jambs of one of the abandoned towers. Talos was waving them forward. “They’re in there. No worry about that. Lichas must have an iron gut to dare to be on our side of the river.”

“Lichas has no gut, Talos. He feels nothing, but won’t give up his own estates without blood-our blood he thinks,” Melon said grimly.

“So let’s storm it and get the killing over.” Ainias pulled out his blade and put down his spear. “It will be too crowded for spear work in there, only sword killing. Man-to-man, hand-to-hand, a real blood feast for your night- loving Keres, Melon, that you so often warn us about.”