The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  When Agis realised what was going on, I had done my own share of wolfing; all the bread and half the olives had gone. I thought—and hoped—he would have a fit; his face darkened so much he looked like a boar’s head stewed in black broth. I thought he was going to repeat his strangling attempt again, but the senior Spartan captain said gruffly, ‘He’s a young swine, but there’s good material in him, Agis!’ and the man squatting next to him, a particularly leathery individual, gave a brief howl of laughter. Agis gave a last vicious swipe at me, and tossed me into a corner. I fell on my shoulder with a jarring crash, but did not faint; at least I had food in me.

  It wasn’t difficult to hear the conversation going on, since Spartans can’t talk in anything less than a barrack-square bawl. Agis was worried; Astymachus’ appeal to his father’s sense of honour had hit the old man hard; apparently he had really meant it when he had promised to return Plataean territory intact after the war, if the Plataeans would go away now. The Thebans looked murderous, agreed that they had thought so too.

  ‘Between ourselves,’ grunted Agis, busily spooning up a fourth helping of black broth, ‘he didn’t want this war at all. He’s been a friend of Pericles for years, and even if that didn’t make him soft-headed, he’s getting fanciful—says this war is going to be like no other we’ve ever known, tries to make our blood run cold with gloomy talk. And when you get to his age, I suppose you do get the idea that the gods are looking over your shoulder all the time.’

  One of the Spartans cleared his throat, then rasped, ‘Agis, why are we wasting time planning what may never be needed? The Plataeans say they’ll do what Athens tells them; what I say is, Athens’ll never tell them to resist! It stands to reason, they can’t send any help, can they? If they haven’t been able to defend their own land in the last two years, they’re not likely to risk everything by marching clean out of their territory!’

  Agis said, ‘You’re going by what Pericles has told them. I know they call him the Olympian, but he’s not immortal.’

  ‘We heard,’ said one of the Thebans gleefully, ‘that he’s caught the plague.’

  ‘Has he, then?’ said Agis, and, struck by a sudden thought, he tugged me up by an arm. ‘Here,’ he said, giving me a violent shaking to recall my attention in case it had wandered, ‘you can tell us that, I dare say! Has Pericles had the plague?’

  I said, tears in my eyes, ‘My mother died with the plague, and people say it was because you Spartans poisoned the wells, and I expect you did! But the Strategos is well!’

  ‘Take no notice of him,’ said the other Theban. ‘Pericles has had the plague, I tell you, not the violent kind, something slower altogether. But it’ll carry him off in the end.’

  ‘It won’t!’ I shouted. ‘In any case, he’ll help Plataea! He loves Plataea! Plataea marched to help us at Marathon when you Spartans were afraid!’ Here I shrieked a little when Agis clipped me across the ear, but after a moment I resumed, ‘I am very sorry, sir, that I said that. I didn’t really mean it, but I was angry. It wasn’t because you were afraid, that you didn’t come—it was because you were superstitious.’

  By this time Agis and his friends were regarding me as if I had taken leave of my wits. Certainly my voice was transformed from shrill defiance to the deference I had been rigorously instructed always to show to reverend old men. For King Archidamus was standing in the doorway.

  All the men sprang up; the Spartan and Theban officers saluted. He paid no attention to them, but put out a hand to me; I hurtled trustfully towards him. He mustn’t know either that my father was in Plataea, but there was an old-fashioned decency about him that had been singularly lacking in his hopeful son and his son’s cronies.

  ‘You’re an Athenian boy from your accent,’ said Archidamus. ‘Eupatrid, from the way you speak. Who is he, Agis, and how did he come here?’

  ‘We captured him on the hillside,’ said Agis, not saying when. ‘I was going to bring him along to you, Father. He won’t give his name, but I think he’s a relative of Pericles.’

  Archidamus took my chin in a not unkindly hand. If it came to that, he was a remarkably clean old gentleman to be a Spartan king. His grey-blue eyes studied my face thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he’s an Alcmaeonid. He’s the same remarkable eyes—most unusual shape. Pericles had a sister and a brother—their children would be grown now. Then there were two cousins; I’d say this boy came from that branch. But what’s he doing on the mountainside?’

  White as a sheet, I said, ‘Everybody’s dead! My mother’s dead, my brother’s dead—I wanted to come back to our farm at Eleutherae where we were happy until you came and burned it . . .’

  Because I was so white-faced and obviously terrified, they were all disposed to believe me; Spartans believe that terror is the only way of getting the truth out of anyone—and particularly terror inspired by their own disgusting selves. In my case, at this particular moment, they were mistaken. I was frightened, but not of them; no, I was frightened by memories of an ugly sunburned man who had talked to me of the truth—something which no man or god need fear—and here I was, telling a lie.

  ‘And why did you come across the pass from Eleutherae?’ grated Agis.

  ‘There’s no one left at the farm,’ I said, ‘and no one in the countryside round about. So I came over the pass because in Plataea there would be friends. And I’d have a beating if I went back home.’

  ‘It’s back home you’ll have to go, nevertheless,’ said Archidamus, smiling grimly. ‘The Plataeans will soon be handing their town over to us.’

  ‘Plataea won’t!’ I said stubbornly.

  ‘Plataea will do what Athens tells her. A generous ally will tell her to surrender. What do Plataea’s forces amount to as far as Athenian strength is concerned—’

  ‘We all know your views on Athenian strength, Father,’ snapped Agis, but the old king, disregarding him, continued, ‘—and since Athens can’t defend her own territory against us, how can she send forces through the passes to protect Plataea?’

  I was too confused and bewildered to reply to Archidamus. Silence would have evoked another clout on the head where Agis was concerned, but his father merely continued after a moment,

  ‘Well, child, if you won’t tell us your name, it’s going to make sending you home a little difficult.’

  ‘Sending him home!’ Agis spat in disgust. His father’s eyes met his sternly.

  ‘Does a king of Sparta make war on children?’ he demanded.

  ‘At least,’ growled Agis, ‘we can get from him whether Pericles is ill or not!’

  ‘Pericles ill?’

  The Theban repeated gleefully, ‘We’ve been told he has the plague.’

  The old man abruptly turned on his heel, made for the tent door. Being extremely unwilling to be left with his son, I rushed after him.

  How much he knew about Agis’ habits, I do not know, but to my devout gratitude he allowed me to accompany him to his tent. There, he actually said in a low, and therefore un-Spartanlike, voice that he hoped the rumour about Pericles was untrue; they had been good friends for many years, and when the Spartans had first invaded Attica, he could not bear the thought of his troops ravaging the farm he knew his friend loved so well; he had therefore given orders that the estates of Pericles should be spared.

  ‘Sir,’ I asked in some surprise, ‘didn’t your son mind?’

  ‘My son thought it good policy,’ replied Archidamus. ‘Nothing, he said, could make Pericles more unpopular with the refugees inside Athens, than the fact that his own land remained intact.’

  He did not sound particularly fond of his son at that moment; I was emboldened by his tone to begin phrasing in my mind the best way of telling him that Timotheus was somewhere in the Spartan camp, without betraying exactly who Timotheus was. But before I could say anything, a big rawboned Spartan captain had come thundering up, was saluting, and shouting, ‘They’re calling from the city walls, Archidamus; their messenger’s r
eturned from Athens.’

  ‘Why call from the city walls?’ said Archidamus, frowning. ‘Why not send a herald in the usual way?’

  ‘That’s what I called up to ’em,’ growled the captain. ‘They said they felt safer that way—too many Thebans for their liking.’

  Wild horses could not have dragged a sound from me now; I must remain silent so that, forgetting about me, they would let me see what happened next—and I must see what happened next.

  ‘Tell the army to parade,’ said the old king slowly. ‘I’ll go myself to hear the Plataean reply.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said the captain. ‘They said they’d speak only to you.’

  ‘And give the order,’ said the old king, ‘that no one’s to speak until I give leave—no one.’

  My guess was that his mind was still oppressed by doubts as to the justice of his action. He had been urged on by Agis and the Thebans to march on Plataea, but Astymachus’ challenge, the very sight of the tiny town he had first seen as a boy fifty years before in sadly different circumstances, all this had created a revulsion in his mind against what they had persuaded him to do. To attack Plataea, of all places, at the bidding of the very state which, in the great battle half a century before, had helped the barbarians! Hence his offer.

  He said suddenly, ‘Child, you needn’t worry; I shall let you come with me. I want someone to carry a message back to Athens. I fear that you and I, one so old, one so young, will see today the beginning of the end of something very beautiful and good.’

  I said, ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘I mean the end of honour,’ said the old king. ‘The end, perhaps, of Spartan honour—the end, too, of Athenian honour.’

  I fought my fears down as best I could, but my voice trembled as I replied, ‘Sir, I can see how Sparta’s honour will be involved if she has to fight Plataea, but I don’t see where Athens’ honour comes into it.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ said Archidamus slowly, ‘honour won’t come into it at all. Athens will talk only of strategy—Plataea has no real place in her strategy.’

  ‘As long as Pericles lives—’ I cried passionately.

  ‘Ah, child, but he won’t live for ever, will he? It is true he’s ill, then—not that I meant to trap you, boy, I’d never try to trap even a barbarian into telling me something I wanted to hear more than anything else in the world, and God knows I don’t want to hear of the illness of my friend! But he’s growing old, child, just as I’m growing old—that’s why I opposed this war, because it’s going to be a long war, and I shan’t live to see the end of it, nor will Pericles, and to the people who’ll take our place in the conduct of affairs honour will be just a word.’

  I said, my voice trembling more than ever, ‘But the Plataeans believe in honour.’

  ‘Yes, poor devils,’ said Archidamus, ‘and they’ll be ground down between the millstones of two great powers who care only for expediency. These Plataeans have as little part in the new world as Pericles—or myself. Now come, child.’

  We stood before the walls of the tiny town, walls rebuilt only fifty years before, after the Persian destruction. Behind us the long lines of Spartans stood like rocks, but the Thebans shifted impatiently. Easy enough for even a child to realise—‘Plataea doesn’t matter to the Spartans, but it does to the Thebans.’

  And suddenly I was praying that Plataea would not have to cling to the old alliance, her loyalty to ancient ties, I prayed with all my heart that Athens would be generous, would tell this little town, so isolated and alone, to remain neutral in this war, to save herself.

  But Athens was not being generous. Already this was not the Athens of Pericles—though it spoke in a travesty of Pericles’ voice.

  From the city walls Astymachus repeated proudly, confidently the message sent to small, lonely Plataea in reply to her query whether she might accept the old Spartan’s terms.

  ‘Men of Plataea, the Athenians say they have never yet permitted you to be wronged since the alliance first began, nor will they now forsake you, but will help you to the best of their power. And they adjure you, by the oaths which your fathers swore to them, not to depart in any way from the alliance.’

  I heard the old king beside me catch his breath, knew then, that he too, like myself, had been hoping—and not for selfish reasons—that Athens would be generous. He had done what he could to check the Thebans, had offered Plataea a chance of escape that he believed she would take, but Athens had slammed the door in his face. Now he had no alternative but to go on.

  You can read what he said eventually—I remembered it faithfully, and told it to those who could set it on record—but it reads far better than it actually sounded. For the old man spoke stumblingly, almost brokenly.

  What he said was addressed not to the Spartans behind him, not to the defenders of Plataea lining the city walls, but to the dead, the Spartan dead, recalled to him by Astymachus, and to the gods and heroes of the city he must now attack. He called them to witness that he had not come to Plataean territory as an aggressor, asked them to grant that those who had justice on their side would inflict it righteously.

  And as he spoke, I kept repeating silently, as a prayer, ‘We will not forsake you now, but will help you to the best of our power.’

  In hopeless misery I narrowed my eyes against the sun, and peered at Astymachus, leaning out over the wall. But Astymachus was no longer alone. A tall figure had joined him, and my heart turned to water, for it was my father. I had come to try to bring him back to Athens; now I could only take back with me a clear image—I must stare and stare to remember exactly what he was like, for when one is young it is so difficult to remember over any length of time how people look. But I must not give any sign of recognition, could not call to him, hold out my arms to him, for his sake. He had enough to worry him, being shut up in beleaguered Plataea; if he should see his son there below him in Spartan hands—no, it did not bear thinking of.

  I sank my teeth into my lower lip and thought blindly, ‘It’s as if he’s dead. Theron told me that story once about Odysseus going down to the Underworld and seeing his mother. He kept trying to reach her, but he couldn’t touch her.’

  I began to say inwardly, again and again, ‘By the oaths your fathers swore. By the oaths your fathers swore.’

  I told myself I would take one more glance at Father, then resolutely refuse to look in his direction again. I could not bear it.

  The last glance told me someone else had joined the little group, a tall woman in a deep violet mantle, holding up in her arms a tiny child. She seemed very beautiful. This, then, was Timotheus’ mother.

  ‘Have you finished, Father?’ came Agis’ hard voice, and the spell was broken.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the old man heavily, ‘I’ve finished.’

  ‘Then,’ said Agis rubbing his hands together, ‘we can start the real business.’

  But first, said the old man, he would send me back to Athens. I collected my wits and said I had a friend somewhere. They found Timotheus after a fairly lengthy search; he looked pinched and white. The old king gave us bread and wine, food and water for the return trip. Agis, rallying, said it would not be safe to let the brats go back to Athens to talk about Spartan numbers, what they were planning to do; his father said wearily he would blindfold the pair of us till we were past Cithaeron.

  Timotheus and I did not exchange a word until we had seen safely out of sight the Spartan officers Archidamus had ordered to send us on our way to Athens. They were two of the hard-faced individuals who had conferred with Agis. From Archidamus I had learned their names; one was called Gylippus, the other Clearchus.

  Our escorts bade us farewell by giving us each a final clip on the side of the head, and told us genially that next time we met they’d take great pleasure in spitting us on the ends of their spears, after which they rode awkwardly away.

  I whispered after them, ‘I hope you fall off and break your ugly necks.’

  ‘That’s too goo
d for the swine who had me!’ burst out Timotheus. ‘Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!’

  ‘Oh, Timotheus,’ I whispered, ‘Did he knock you about a lot?’

  ‘Not more than you’d expect from a Spartan,’ said Timotheus, his eyes murderous, ‘but he took my father’s ring from me, Lycius, that’s why I think a broken neck’s too good for him!’

  He flung himself face downwards on a heap of pine needles, thumped the ground with his clenched fists, wept a little. I looked away as he told me in weak, angry misery how, when he had left home two years before, his father had given him one of the family seal-rings—‘in case anything happened’—and he had always worn it under his tunic on a string round his neck. And Gylippus had found it.

  Yet in a way, this theft, shameful as it was, helped Timotheus for the moment; he was in such a frantic, helpless rage against Gylippus, he could not think very clearly; the implications of the fact that Plataea would now have to withstand a siege by Spartans as well as Thebans, had not as yet really sunk in.

  It was my grandfather who explained to me how the miracle of escape happened. Anyone but a Spartan, finding two well-bred children scrambling alone about the slopes of Cithaeron, trying to get milk from a goat, would have been intensely and immediately suspicious, but the Spartan mind would see nothing odd in it at all. Their boys ran wild and had to forage for themselves, so they had not found anything abnormal in our appearance. The only Spartan who had imagination and wisdom enough to realise that people outside Sparta preferred their sons not to act like savages was the old king, who ‘did not make war on children.

  After the searchers found us early next morning, I remember little of what happened; hours of grief, hopelessness and fear have, in the long run, all the effect of an infusion of poppy. I dropped off to sleep five minutes after I was dumped on to a horse, and did not wake until next day—and then only because of the sudden sound of women wailing. Terrified, I jumped from bed, ran along sobbing, ‘Is Tecmessa dead?’