war. Of course, Sparta had been an enemy of tyranny – but when the Spartans saw how strong the new Athens was going to be, they became enemies of democracy as well. Nation states are always that way, honey. They have no more morality than a whore in the Piraeus looking to score some wine. Anything to get what they want.
Ares, how we feared the Spartans. Cleomenes, their king, a famous man, had with him only a thousand Spartiates – the Spartan citizens, and there were six thousand Athenian citizens. But he made up the numbers with 'allies', cities of the Peloponnese that had to fight when Sparta said fight.
And how the Athenians cheered us, although we brought just a thousand hoplites. They gave us the honour of the left end of the line. The position of highest honour is the right flank. If the right gives way, an army is done – dead. Miltiades' father, also called Miltiades, held the right of the line with the senior tribes of Athens. They looked magnificent, with cloaks of tapestry-woven wool, and the whole front rank had bronze breastplates like heroes. Every man had a horsehair plume in his helmet. They made us look like farmers.
Hah! We were farmers. Half our men had leather caps. Only the front rank had helmets, and half of them were open-faced war hats. My father was one of only a dozen fighters with bronze panoply, and not all our front rank even had leather to cover their bodies. A couple of men wore felt.
Hermogenes and I were psiloi. That meant that we were to run close to the enemy, throw rocks at them and goad them into action. Sometimes psiloi just yelled insults. It was all rather like something religious. Psiloi rarely harmed anyone.
I had six good javelins – quite a few for a boy my age, but then none of the others, slave or free, had spent two years on the mountain hunting deer. I gave three to Hermogenes.
Myron's youngest son Callicles was our leader. He was a year older than me, and bossy. I was used to my brother, who would listen to any argument I made and judge it on its merits. Slow and careful and totally solid, my brother. Callicles had none of those qualities. My halting attempts to tell him that I knew a lot more about this game than he did led to him putting an elbow in my nose. He caught me by surprise and had me on the ground in an instant. I broke free before he could hurt me – but I chose to obey.
We camped for two days, watching the Spartans. The alignment meant that if we fought, we'd be the ones facing the Spartiates. They'd be on the right of their line, and we'd be on the left or ours. There was some talk, but none of the men had much time for us boys except my brother. He told me how scared he was.
'I feel like I'm going to die,' he said. 'I'm cold all the time. I'm going to be a coward, and I hate it!'
I hugged him. 'You'll be brave!' I told him. 'Just don't be too brave.' I grinned and gave him Calchas's advice, which must have sounded foolish from a beardless boy. 'Stay in the shield wall and don't let anyone over your shield,' I said.
He laughed at me, despite his fear. 'I'm in the sixth rank,' he said. 'Safer than we are in a storm at home!' He laughed, but then he was serious. 'We're going to form deep, to slow the Spartans down,' he said. 'Pater says if we form a dozen deep, we'll stand longer.'
It sounded like sense to me. Still does.
In those days, honey, men didn't fight as they do today. Well – the Spartans did. They were orderly and careful, but most men didn't even form a proper phalanx with ranks and files – something every city does today. No, back then, we were still like the war bands of the lords in the Iliad. Men would cluster around the leaders like trees around a spring, and if a leader died, all his men would run.
But my father paid attention to things he saw and heard, and it was he who had suggested that the men of Plataea should each have a place – a rank and a file – and should practise in those places, the way the Spartans and the best of the Thebans did – their apobatai, the elite fighters, who had once been the charioteers. And now Pater had ordered them to fight in a very deep order – in those days, twelve deep was twice as deep as most men fought.
But I digress, as usual. I could tell that my brother was afraid. I wasn't afraid. I thought that it would be like deer hunting. I imagined that I'd run around the flank of their line and throw my javelins into this packed mass, killing a Spartiate with every cast. Calchas had told me the truth about war, but my ears had been closed.
It may sound odd to you, but I took quite a shine to young Callicles. He was arrogant but he was older, and that matters to peasants. And when he saw how far I could throw a javelin – he only had one – he treated me differently. In an afternoon of rock- and javelin-throwing on the height beside the tower, I became his second man, his phylarch, and we copied our elders, speaking at length about our 'tactics'. As boys will, we made the other boys do as we did, and we practised running and jumping and throwing javelins and rocks. Most boys merely had rocks. The slaves hung back.
Fair enough. It wasn't their fight. Those who had been freed had everything to gain by fighting well, but those who were still slaves had no interest in the fight at all. They sat around until we yelled at them, and then the older ones were slow and so obviously unwilling that they poisoned our confidence. These men were masters of avoiding work, and a couple of teenaged boys were nothing to them. These were men who were used to dealing with the wrath of Pater or Epictetus the Elder.
By the third day, it looked to all of us as if there would be no fight, and the Athenians heaped praise on us. Just by coming, we'd given the Peloponnesians pause. Now they were outnumbered. And, it appeared, they'd expected the Thebans to join them, but the Thebans weren't there yet. Or weren't coming at all.
I'll have a lot to say about war, honey. I may put you to sleep with it for a month while I weary you with my story. And one thing I'll say a thousand times is that every army has its own heart, its own soul, its own eyes and its own ears. In that army, that Peloponnesian army, they didn't really want to be in Attica. They were all too aware that the Spartans were only there to support their alliance with Thebes, and the Spartans, as was their way, had shown their lack of interest by sending only a token force under the junior king.
As they did again later, against the Medes. Never trust a Spartan, honey.
Anyway, they should have known that the bloody Thebans were coming. They were a hundred stades away or less. Ares must have laughed.
Cleomenes finally committed to fight because the Peloponnesians were starting to leave him. Allies were freer in those days. They told the king of Sparta what they thought, and then they marched away. Not many of them, but enough to make old Cleomenes decide to fight before he had no army at all.
We knew that the Thebans were coming. It was said around every fire. The Athenians and all the farmers of Attica – they had farmers too – were already looking over their shoulders and doubting the new leaders that they'd elected. But Miltiades and his father were everywhere – even among us – putting bars of iron into the spines of every man. Miltiades even came and watched our boys practising. He praised my javelin throw, and an hour later his slave came and gave me a pair of spears with blued steel heads – even now, the memory of them makes me smile. They were fine weapons. I thought my spear Deer Killer was a fine weapon – it had a bronze head made by Pater with its name engraved on the spine – but it was crude next to these, with their red hafts and their blue-black heads.
I kept Deer Killer and the gifts and gave my other javelins to other boys. Callicles took the best and gave his own to the poorest.
Three javelins for the richest boys. A hemp sack full of rocks for the poorest. What fools we were. And our fathers were being matched against the red cloaks of Sparta. The day dawned. I slept well enough, unlike my father, my brother and most of the other Plataeans. The heralds had been exchanged the night before. By the time we ate our barley porridge, Miltiades the Elder had made his sacrifices. He found them auspicious.
I'm sure they were auspicious for Athens.
I had never seen a phalanx form. Pater was one of the chief officers of the Plataeans and he walked up and down, forming men into their place in the ranks, his black and red double crests nodding as he walked, and he looked as noble and as deadly as any Spartiate. I marvelled at his performance – he knew who was steady and who had nerves, and he placed them as gently as possible, avoiding any form of insult. I was proud that he was my father. Still am.
I saw that Cousin Simon was in the sixth rank. What fool of a polemarch had ever put him in the front for the last battle? He was green already! In the middle, he'd be safe and he wouldn't hurt anyone.
Then I saw that he was one man to the right of my brother. Chalkidis looked worried, but he waved. He was the only man in the sixth rank who had greaves and a fine helmet. That's what you get when you are a bronze- smith and the son of a bronze-smith. He had his helmet tipped back on his head, the way you see the goddess Athena in her statues. And he managed a solid smile for me. I pushed through the ranks and hugged him, leather cuirass and all. I was jealous, but he looked magnificent and he was still a head taller than me, and suddenly all I
