The End of Sparta

learn.”

“Says who, Arkadian?” a loudmouth interrupted the trance of the crowd, and yelled in a high pitch. They nicknamed the barker Backwash. He was some sort of low official of the Confederation, who had borrowed his father’s breastplate and agreed to a safe slot in the back of the phalanx for the price of haranguing the officers before battle and upping the hoplite pay to a full silver drachma. But if he could not talk the army out of battle, then he had some lamb’s blood in his pouch that he would smear on his helmet as he peeled out at the back of the column before the first collisions with the Spartans. His real name was Menekleidas. He was from Aulis, on the narrow strait between Boiotia and Euboia, and thought he could steal the crowd back from the Arkadian. “Tell us something we do not already know, foreigner. My lads from the Euripos can stay put and hide well enough from the Spartans over on the big island of Euboia. Tell us why we need to fight and how we can win. Does this foul bird of Stymphalos think he can wing in here and squawk to us, scratching up a fantasy victory from his fancy drawings in the dirt?”

Laughs and growls arose from behind. “You tell them, Backwash.” Menekleidas turned around to bask in them. Melon had had enough. He pushed away two or three rustics to grab Backwash by the neck, then bent him down and kicked his rear so hard with his good right leg that the would-be orator flew out like an arrow into the goat carcasses outside the tent-and to greater laughs than he had just earned with his smart talk. Backwash was lucky Melon had struck first; Chion had been about to use iron, not a fist or kick. The council was again almost reduced to a brawl. The Stymphalian hadn’t even begun his attack plans. Across the ravine the Spartans were ready to follow Lichas. Here the Boiotians were fighting each other.

Melon raised his voice, “Shut up, all of you. Especially this slimy eel from the Euripos. I know my Homer and this here man is an ugly Thersites. Remember the poet’s words: ‘I swear there is no worse man than you are.’ Yes, this Thersites, this Backwash, knows well enough to charge us jacked-up tolls for those who pass over to Euboia. Like the double current, his men know how to collect coming and going. But so far he won’t fight for his fellow Boiotians.” Then Melon, son of Malgis, gave his own brief speech in the way he did to his pruners on Helikon. “I’ve heard all this before. It leads nowhere-except to a few fistfights and a Spartan army over there at Leuktra already chopping down our olives. They’re trampling our vines while we bicker and moan. You decide, all of you, whether you wish to be the dragon-sown men of Old Thebes, the bronze giants of our grandfathers’ age-or the connivers and trimmers of this new low era of Backwash.” Melon then put his arm around Ainias and raised his voice even louder. “Let this stranger from Stymphalos speak and finish his work in the sand-unless you know the Spartan better than he. But I recognize none of you from the battle at Haliartos. Is there any more than a handful here from the fights at Koroneia? See whether the Stymphalian bird has talons or not. I have fought him and his kind from Pellene before at the river Nemea. I would not wish to again. If you know spear work like he does, go on; if not keep still.”

The crowd grew quiet along with Backwash. Murmurs went around that this fellow was the son of Malgis of myth. Here was Melon of prophecy of the falling apple-and here no less with his brand-faced slave.

Ainias resumed drawing in the sand. “As I said, this they will not do. No, no-tomorrow the best of our army on the right will not kill their worst on their left. Our lesser folk won’t be harvested by the king across the field on his right. Instead Epaminondas and Pelopidas with his Sacred Band will take the harder path. They will veer toward the royal Spartan spears. They and the veterans of Thebes muster on our left, facing Kleombrotos and his royal right. Chion and I, with Melon here, go helmet to helmet with Lichas from Pythagoras’s noble left.”

A louder rustling began at mention of the strange trick. Ainias once again raised both hands to warn them all he would finish. “I said on our left. I promise to you this: The Thebans and their generals will fight on the unlucky side of our battle line, head-to-head against King Kleombrotos to the death. We few will end everything once and for all tomorrow spear-to-spear. Let their royal right hit our choice left-best against best. Let your gods on Olympos at that very spot decide who wins Boiotia. We live or die with one blow.”

A wave of silence struck the crowd, as if the apoplexy of the sight of the lame Melon had not been enough. How could a man with a scarred face and stubble talk like he was a sage of hand-to-hand spearing, the eloquent master of hoplomachia? Officers far better than Backwash pushed and squirmed for a better view of his crazed battle plan in the sand at their feet. The Theban elite was now to be on the bad-omened left side? The dirty side. Spear-to-spear, shield-to-shield set against King Kleombrotos. Melon scanned the tent. The provincials in the past always used to face directly the enemy king and his guard, while their own city grandees of Thebes stationed far to their right were untouched-slaughtering the allies of the Peloponnesos and calling it their victory.

Since the time of Kreon, the nobodies of Hellas in the battles between the city-states had been the fodder to die on the ill-fated left wing. Melon was always told by the Boiotarchs not to lose the battle before their good men could win it over on the easy right. Malgis his father used to joke, “A funny sort of war it is, when the weak fall to the strong-on both sides of the battlefield.” Then Ainias called out some more. He would either convince the Thebans or enjoy bashing the heads of the shouters. “Yes, on the left. It’s been done before in the south and maybe elsewhere as well. Do you hear me, the left-the good-omened Left Hand, the divine Left of Pythagoras, where our strong hits their strong. There it will be for most of us in this council tomorrow. I and this Melon and Epaminondas and Pelopidas over there.”

Ainias went on. “But that is not all the Spartans will see at noon.” The raspy voice of the torn ear had three cups of wine behind it, so he was louder even than before. “We will not stack sixteen men deep. Not like your fathers did at Nemea. We will not crowd even up to twenty-five shields-as your grandfathers fought at Delion. No, no, no. Epaminondas will lead a column of fifty deep. To push over the king from our left. Fifty shields deep, I say.”

Fifty? Fifty shields on the left. How? Why? Now at more of these crazy taktika, the throng began pushing to see this map of Ainias in the sand, to find out whether he was mad or drunk or both. In the midst of the crowd’s chattering, a tough Boiotarch of wide shoulders from Tanagra came forward, with cratered face, a burn scar down his chin, and a smashed nose. He was no trembler like the whiny wide-butt Backwash or lord of pomegranates, Ladon. No, this veteran scowled and he forced his way to the fore in a well-earned swagger. Hoplites parted since they had seen him cut a similar wide swath in the mess of battle. Ainias himself was not sure whether to hit this man-or, better yet, pull his sword out. For now the Stymphalian kept his blade in his scabbard on his shoulder.

“Enough of this sophistry. Philliadas, I claim to be. Son of Philostratos. You all know me,” he yelled as he turned back to the crowd. The coarse farmer had cleared his barley ground near the battlefield of Tanagra. He was covered with ugly welts and healed-over rips, from both spears and goat horns. Grime and splinters were under his nails. Worse was on his hob-nailed sandals. This Philliadas also knew his numbers. In the past he had earned an Athenian drachma a day settling fights as a surveyor on the borders at Panakton near Attika. Philliadas could measure boundaries in his head-and box any who questioned his number reckoning. He would have done the judging free, just for the chance to kill a man without the charge of blood guilt.

He stared down Ainias. “I wouldn’t try to slap me, sophist. Keep that shield still, or we’ll settle it here.” He stuck his finger almost into the chest of Ainias. “But listen, Arkadian, all you big fellows over there on the left will be only sixty men wide in your square-if even three thousand of you show up tomorrow and I can square my numbers. I figure Kleombrotos and his Spartans on the right wing will add up to twenty-five hundred, if not three thousand-at least as much as the men of Thebes. They may be eight shields to the rear. Or they may be twelve deep at most. Either way, with your sixty shields wide in the front row, you men on the left will be facing two or three hundred of them. I say you will be swallowed up in an eye blink one against four or maybe five. You Pythagoreans talk big about numbers and the good left hand. But these you don’t have a clue about.”

This Philliadas had the crowd’s attention, even though most could not add or subtract, much less multiply his numbers. But they grasped well enough his point: The king’s wing of the far bigger army would be broader and quickly outflank the narrow deep column of the outnumbered Epaminondas on the left. It was madness to put your small head into a wide Spartan noose. Philliadas was chewing on the stem of a dried fig as he growled. “With that wider bunch, the king’s Spartans will go around you in no time. They’ll be at your rear and in the baggage in eye blinks. Even if my boys of Tanagra are out of the storm, soon they will be left naked in the center. We’ll be cut and spliced from our backsides. You Thebans will spear nothing but shadows way over on the naked left.”

Voices of agreement followed. This torn-nose Philliadas had seen his share of crashing shields. “Maybe this will happen,” Ainias nodded, “if our mass charges straight ahead or to our right, dear Philliadas, as you seem to think. But why in your Apollo’s name should we when fifty deep?” Ainias then threw out