The End of Sparta

owned ten long ships and we brought in grain and timber from Ionia. I speak a pure Attic, as you can hear, but know Ionic and Aeolic as well, as my father reminded all, and they say the same at the symposia among the longhairs with the gold grasshopper clasps.” Erinna did not sit, but walked slowly around Kuniskos and took in his anteroom. He let her explore his chambers but watched as she neared an interior door with an iron lock.

“I sing by the Ilissos at Athens. Yes, I am at home with men or women or so they also say of those who have seen Lesbos. But no one is here? The helots say the lord of the helots has a stable of women in his house, another poet, a rival that I can battle in verse. Let me wager with you that I have the best song, and you’ll send me along my way with an escort. But I bet you’re young where it counts, my Kuniskios.” With that Erinna finally took off her cloak and stretched. They went from the back further into the mess room. The front door was open and Erinna moved to the central hearth. She then edged slowly toward the kettle that was hanging over the flame. She had already caught a chill with her wool off. Kuniskos stared and grunted out some noises.

She had dark hair, short with a touch of lighter strands, maybe even some red; and firm large breasts that pointed up, and muscles on her arms and a pretty neck. Her lips were pink and eyes big. Already Kuniskos tired of his nightly play with tall Neto-like having a doe that flitted around the room and, when caught, only bore her buck with fright and pain. She was not what his years of lust had imagined. Worse still, she was not even much of a helot rebel, not a worthy foe in his bed or in battle. And there was no money yet. Not even a sign of Melon or Chion, who had thought wiser of throwing good silver after dross, much less trying to burst into the fort of a Spartan lord. Yes, he was going to send her away, to trade her eastward on the next trip with Antikrates for a younger, rougher love- or pack her off with him to Taygetos if he could not find ransom from Helikon to free her. He now found her flesh hardly what he had thought it would be when he had eyed her on the farm in the past. Fool-as if a woman were a sow or heifer who had no care who mounted her.

But for Gorgos it seemed far better to have an old wide-hipped matron who knew more than he himself. Still no ransom money here for her from Helikon as Neto promised? No reward at all? So much for the great-souled Damo, wife of Chion, and the big silver chest of Melon. No money ransom for their wasp-waist helot girl, after all, even as his men had sent word of Neto’s capture to the helots? But now, now, this other woman was different. For all her talk of song, she had a bit of the man-woman in her as well. Kuniskos liked this hard edge. She’d put up a better struggle, maybe a claw or two on his cheek before she was through-and then she would shriek in mad eros-so unlike the victim Neto, who was little more than a sacrificial carcass on his altar.

“Keep singing my Tyrtaios, woman, I’ll be right back, back yes with a surprise.” With that he left through the back interior door. The guards were strolling back and forth, three hundred paces distant outside. Erinna’s whistle was around her neck. So she slowly pulled out her dagger, and put the blade in the rock cleft above the pot. Then she pulled up her chiton high on one leg and rolled up her right sleeve and with that exposed the side of her breast, appearing as big now as she had usually wished it small. He might find her inviting, but she was now girded for battle, with her limbs free and shivering.

Kuniskos came back in, pulling and whispering to a battered woman in a cloak. “My Netike, look, another poet. And an Athenian at that. What sport we’ll have the three of us, a real triangle even with your fetters on. She’s man enough for you, Netike, and more than woman enough for me. Hail this Attis of the two faces who blew in with the northern breeze. I wager you know this little ranger, though perhaps by a different name.”

Erinna kept still. But her face was flushed as she saw Neto shuffle in-at least what she thought was Neto.

“Surprised? Or all along did you know our Netike? Don’t recognize your partner these days with her little bruises and tiny cuts? Ah, don’t hide your own eros, my stringy Attis. Why should you? My Neto here is a bit scared as I can see.”

Erinna clenched her fist and eyed the corners of the room. Neto looked down and avoided her eye. Her once long tresses were gone, with tufts here and there on her bloody scalp from the clumsy haircuts of Kuniskos’s blade. Long slashes and scratches oozed on her arms. Her right eye was swollen shut. She had a fresh brand-a gamma- burned right into her cheek, though it oozed pus and most of her right face was black. Was this her Neto?

Kuniskos had tied a rough sack weave around her that left both legs from her knees down bare. A thick cord was tied to her right ankle and cut into the flesh, and was stretched about twenty palms distant to the hinge on the door, where it was tied. “Now we drink to the helots and their lord Epaminondas.” Kuniskos laughed. “Somewhere at home in Thebes that Pythagorean faker snores in his halls, deep in drink and vomit. Then the fools of the Peloponnesos run around with lies that the fraud is really up here, near the Orthia and pulling into Sellasia, as if he would ever dare to come into Sparta. Believe not a word. He hasn’t even left Thebes, the drunkard. Yes, I know that, a brothel woman in Thespiai sent word to me. Our Phryne knows more of Boiotia than the drone Epaminondas himself. Poor Antikrates in his fear of a phantom fled back to Sparta.”

“Who are you, helot?” Erinna ignored Kuniskos and stared at Neto to play out to the end their deadly charade. Now she turned back to him. “Lord Kuniskos. Please scrub down that woman. I can smell her from here and who knows what’s under those scabs. Lice too on her stubble, phtheires crawling everywhere, Master Kuniskos. She’s a tramp and dirtier than any helot. She has worms in her belly and crawlers under her arms. Look at the ooze on her face-is she a man or beast?”

“No, no-look over here, my Attis. I have a pot of warm water, and sponges from Kalymnos no less. You can scrub her down and use all the oil you want. Give yourself a rub as well. You look the road almost as much as Netike does.”

“I am no Amazon, stranger,” Neto flashed. “I am a freewoman of Helikon. Priestess of Artemis of the Messenians.”

“Perhaps once,” Kuniskos answered. “But no longer, no more the dainty little parthenos who thought she could tease her way on Helikon to an orchard or vineyard with your Gorgos as doorman to your new tower.” He had pulled on her rope. “No, no, no-soiled women. Those who serve my lusts make no priestesses and even worse wives. So drink up and soon we roll the dice for turns. All you have left are your long legs, and I mean to club one of those as well before I’m done. To slow down a bit those doe runs of yours leading lame Melon of the Malgidai in the high woods.”

In these final days of winter calm, for all his loud bluster about a terrified Epaminondas hiding in Thebes, Gorgos had accepted his fate, the shared fate of Sparta that would soon end in Messenia. Yet the old man was strangely without much of a care, even though there were now hardly more than a hundred left, after Antikrates had taken a thousand home to Lakonia to face Epaminondas. He had been a lord, and ridden at the head of Spartan Peers, more than any helot had done since the days of Brasidas and his wild band of freed helot marauders. Yes, he was satisfied. One day as Lord Kuniskos was well worth what would now follow.

He felt the warmth in the wine, and he drank it from the time he woke until he slept. It brought with it the creeping sense of good liberation from worry and nag-a peace of mind, the hesuchia that comes when cares are all banished, and nothing as before matters-right before the fall. What did he care whether Epaminondas really did come and Melon and Chion as well, and overturned the world of the Spartans in Messenia? Let them come some day, but they surely would not arrive this day, his day. And they could hardly overturn all that he had wrought in Messenia. As for now-why, he was Lord Kuniskos, harmostes of Messenia, and couldn’t worry about what a day ahead might bring. He grimaced a bit, as he knew he would either be high lord here, an anax of the Messenians, or dead-but never a house slave, a mere oiketes on Helikon.

But then Erinna tapped Kuniskos and woke him from his idle wine thought. He caught sight of her breast and thigh and put down his cup and turned from Neto. Erinna eyed his club far off in the corner. “But play with her comes later, Lord Kuniskos. After we have done our own business. But first, I want you to promise me a boat ride from up the gulf to the Isthmos for our sport-anything to leave this frozen Hades and these dreadful unlettered helots. Remember I came into your fort looking for a ticket home.” With that last talk, she at last reached for the dirk on the ledge behind him, placed above the fire between the stones with the handle out. She was freed of her sash and had plenty of sway in her arms. With her hem cinched up tight, Erinna kicked the old man in the groin and then swung around and stabbed down hard on his shoulder.

“Run Neto. Out to Nikon, out to Nikon. Out to the gully. Now.”

But Erinna pulled out the dagger too early from Kuniskos-before she could plunge and twist it-so that she could turn and slash Neto’s rope. “Run Neto. Before …” Neto leapt free, and Gorgos for a moment was stunned. Then Erinna picked up the heavy kettle with the long wooden handle and threw the broth onto the back of the neck