The End of Sparta

“Well, Chion and I come as we are,” Melon softly replied. “The two of us fight in the ranks. Somewhere, my son Lophis, my only one, is with the horse. Take care of him. I wish only that we break their ranks tomorrow and kill their king or Lichas or both-then go home to Helikon without fear of Spartans in our vineyards.” Melon was suddenly restless. He got up and continued as he paced, pointing his black iron sword at Epaminondas. “Die or not, yes, we three will battle for the name of Malgidai. As for the rest of you-you, Lord Epaminondas-may say it is justice, for the equality of Pythagoras and for the freedom of helots to the south, and for democracy where men end up equal when they were not born that way, and for the promise that your souls will live on forever after your bodies rot-or for anything that you wish.”

Epaminondas smiled at that. But then he rose and raised his voice as he strode into the center of the throng with his arms extended at last to address the crowd of officers. He knew the men were scared, but at least they were not as terrified as they had been before the arrival of the Malgidai. “The men of Sparta will go nowhere until it is over. The king is here to stay and to fight. He cannot leave-even if he wished to-until he knocks us out of his way. Lichas the Ephor, they say, is with him-to force their poor king to spear us. No, this time they will not run back to their Lakonia. Tomorrow we will become Spartans or they Boiotians. There is no third way. Leuktra is not the end of things, but the beginning of the end of the Spartans. Our road from Leuktra leads on to their hearths beneath Mt. Taygetos a thousand stadia to the south.”

Epaminondas in a blink had silenced the crowd, as the Boiotarch drifted to the back of the tent in the shadows. The Boiotians whistled for their leader to go on, and had forgotten the old Ladon and his five hundred pomegranate trees on the high ground above the Euripos. The general walked back over closer to Melon and changed his topic and voice. “The deserters from Sparta tonight claim as well that we will have quite a royal parade tomorrow. Their Deinon the polemarch, and Sphodrias, our friend who used to rule Thebes as Sparta’s harmost, their overlord, are here. The son of Sphodrias marched out as well, the big one, Kleonymos, the favorite of the royal blooded Archidamos. Kleonymos, I remind you, sent ten Thebans to Hades at Tegyra. The spies also say the Theban killer Antikrates, the son of Lichas, comes as well. They swear that he will kill most of us in this assembly. The worst of the Spartans are here at last. I know them all from my trip to the south last summer. If they die in Boiotia, there are none like them to bar the passes of the Sparta to the south. Pelopidas will show us how.”

Three of the Sacred Band stepped forward on cue to pour two baskets of sand over the ground and rearrange the torches in a circle. Then they sprinkled water over the surface to make it hard. They smoothed it all out with straw brooms and a long board, and let Pelopidas with a spear butt mark out the armies. But for some reason, the foreigner Ainias, the Arkadian from the lake at Stymphalos, south of the Isthmos, now stepped up with his own shaft. To murmurs he stood right at the side of Pelopidas. Was this outsider to have his own hand in the battle planning of the Boiotians-a bought Peloponnesian advising them how to kill Peloponnesians? Melon muttered to himself, “We have come to fight. Not to draw lines and boxes with Spartan-lovers.” But the more he watched this mercenary, noticed his wide shoulders and big hands, heard his measured speech, the more he liked what he saw- especially his shredded right ear. He looked as dangerous as Chion and had the same stare as the slave as well. Before Ainias began talking, Pelopidas had been able to put the scouting reports of his own Sacred Band into some sort of larger sense. Now he quickly marked out two rectangles, faced off against each other. The Spartan phalanx in his drawing was nearly twice as broad. Both its flanks went well beyond those of the Thebans.

Pelopidas and Ainias huddled and were whispering a bit. Those around Ainias had welcomed this killer and knew that he would cut down untold Spartans-and yet might cause themselves even greater grief. Now Pelopidas began poking the sand in places as his voice went up and he pointed with the spear end. “There is a king there, Kleombrotos, along with his royal guards; we at least know that much. They will all be on their right wing as usual- the Spartan Right that scares so many of us. Maybe two thousand or three thousand of Sparta’s finest, I reckon. All on the right wing. At least three, maybe four lochoi. The gods alone know how deep they will stack. Most likely at least eight. But I also reckon this time maybe even twelve shields in mass.” Pelopidas went on. “You know the Spartans. The middle of their long line will be riffraff. Those are always the half-helots or the freedmen from Lakonia. Some of these northern scavengers from Herakleia and Phlios will drift in. But on the left, these are the good allies from the Peloponnesos. They are the tough farming lot. Melon over there knows these southerners well from the fight at the Nemea.” He repeated himself for a moment, “I said these are allies, not enemies. The hoplites of the left wing of the Peloponnesians that the king counts on to hit our best on our right.”

“That is not the worst of it, Pelopidas. We must fight in the morning.” Epaminondas calmed him and strolled to the middle of the map because he knew the reaction to what would follow next. He began to add in the sand some lines of retreat very slowly and carefully with his own spear. “We cannot hold this army together for over a day or two ourselves-not outnumbered as we are and with even more cracks in our alliance than the king’s army. Too many Boiotians and northern tribes are wagering that the Spartans will march over us when the flutes begin to play. Or that we will crack as we did at Nemea. They always wait to praise us should we win, and join the Spartans if we lose. Their only creed is to be the winners-whether with us or not.”

The Stymphalian Ainias still stayed silent, but edgy, at his side. Next Epaminondas turned around quickly and addressed the assembled officers directly. “We must fight these invaders by tomorrow or there will be no demokratia anywhere north of Athens. Otherwise we won’t even have seven thousand of this army left. The traitors promise that our farms will be spared. They boast at least everyone would be better off with the dynasteia of Spartans back in control.” Epaminondas glared at Ladon, and then backed up a bit. “But Pelopidas-step out of the way for a moment. Ainias of Stymphalos over here and I have been talking. We’ve worked something up a little different from what our enemies-or you generals here-expect. Let our southern guest speak.”

Ainias took off his cape and stepped forward again. His helmet was on the floor at his feet. His gloves and arm bands were off. His pockmarks were shadowed in the torchlight. Long matted oily hair covered his shoulders, his half-ear now and then hidden. His black beard stubble highlighted rather than covered the furrows and creases on his face. From what cave in Arkadia had Epaminondas dragged this wolf-beast out? He made Epaminondas look soft. The captains whispered he’d worked for that rogue archon down south, Lykomedes of Mantineia. Still, few in Boiotia apparently had ever seen him, much less knew of any Ainias of Stymphalos-that wild Arkadian place where the birds of Ares once flung their iron feathers at Herakles by the vast and gloomy lake.

Ainias eyed Pelopidas’s sand map. He pushed away others who stood in his light. For all his gaze at the sand below, Ainias looked as if he’d been out in the byways the night before, robbing and throat-slitting for his pleasure along the taverns on marshy Kopais. The Thebans listened in fear that he might draw his long sword and take off a nose or ear, Persian-style-the way his own ear had been lost.

Instead he startled them by talking, much louder than the voice of either Epaminondas or Pelopidas. “Your wars of trumpets and boasts are over. Over. We live in the age of logos, of science. I kill by an art, a skill, a techne. Not by the livers of goats. Not your prayers to Artemis. Not even numbers and muscles win battles. Battle is as much of the mind as the heart.” Few wanted to argue with this man’s blasphemy-but what a voice, what long words came out of the mouth of an uncouth killer. “Listen up to the new war. We all know what Kleombrotos and his royal guard will do tomorrow: what they always do whenever they fight. A suckling child without teeth could tell us in advance.”

Ainias then waved his hands as he went through the Spartan way of war bit by bit. The entire crowd was hypnotized; those who had just before been punching each other were now pushing to get nearer this curious sand map. “The flutes will start up. The army will walk out on their heavy feet. They stare. They do their slow two-step. The king and his wing slant. They swerve to the right. We will be blinded by the sun at their backs. Or scared by the glare of their polished shields-a thousand and more of the Spartan Similars, all shuffling in the king’s charge. Flute music all the while. These shaved lips come on. On always-like the crab we see on the seashore that can only walk sideways and at an angle. They hope, they expect to break you rustics from the provinces. Their strong right wing faces off against our weak left. Then they get to your rear. Then stab you in the back. Then turn. And they come up behind your best Thebans on your right. Then you all die. And we are burned and float away as ash. I know this. I did just this as an ally alongside them for twenty seasons. I killed many of your fathers at the Nemea and Koroneia.”

He calmed and with almost a murmur finished, “But this they will not do. Not tomorrow. Not ever. I swear to you all that Leuktra will be no Nemea.” Ainias, bathed in sweat under the summer torchlight, tore off his leather tunic and was focused on the captains. Epaminondas then stepped up and yelled to his men, “Watch and