The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  There was no water to hand, no fodder, no fuel. Syracusan cavalry cut off our foraging parties. From this time the strength and morale of our crews began to decline. And Gylippus finished his wall. Now our forces were the besieged, rather than the besiegers, and more weakened by inactivity and delay than by any direct action, while the Syracusan troops were being licked into shape by Gylippus, just as their naval forces were being drilled and reinforced by Corinthians.

  Nicias wrote home saying that nothing could be done until a second, and equally great expedition was sent to his assistance.

  * A stadium was about 606 feet.

  25

  ‘To the Sicilian sea’

  Euripides, in the year after the sailing of the First Expedition, wrote Iphigeneia in Tauris. I think it is one of the most lovely of his plays, as if through sheer beauty of verse he tried to escape from the ugly present. He sought to escape in other ways too, by setting the play in the remote north-east, never in the west, by making the end a joyous triumph over all difficulties and dangers, but he could not escape altogether. Friends in a foreign land speak wistfully of home, and, above all, there is mention of Hellenic seas, the shine of them, the sound of them, and one could not forget then the summer light gilding the water as the ships of the expedition raced as far as Aegina:

  ‘Why have they urged the oarsmen of their ship...

  To shake the clinging sea

  With a great stroke and to accelerate

  With rush of rivalry the rushing wind?

  Was it to sweep the shores

  For riches, and to vie in bearing home,

  Each to uphold his house,

  The treasures and the trophies of the world?

  That glittering hope is immemorial

  And beckons many men

  To their undoing. Ever insatiate

  They sail the sea and look to foreign towns

  To fill their ships with spoil.

  But some men never find prosperity,

  For all their voyaging,

  While others find it with no voyaging.’

  So sang the Chorus, and not a soul in that audience could forget the racing ships, the laughing boasts of Sicilian plunder to be brought back soon, soon, soon . . .

  Rescues and reunions against all hope belonged to times and places long ago and far away; we sat and watched a brother finding a sister after many years, and we knew that this had been impossible for Callistratus. But at least selfless friendship always remains, the friendship of Orestes and Pylades, in which the one would cry to the other:

  ‘How can you wrong me, thinking I could live

  And leave you here to die? I came with you.

  I shall continue with you to the end . . .’

  Grandfather, rather to my surprise, approved very warmly of a play I thought he would condemn as sentimental stuff. For the last two years he had been stalking gloomily about the City predicting disaster if we neglected our old trade routes and strongholds for dreams of chimerical empires in the west. He had told Euripides this (he had told everyone) and now he sat through the play with a gratified beam on his face, and afterwards sought out the startled author and congratulated him, ‘on punching the idea home. Concentrate on those north-eastern trade routes—that’s the idea!’ Euripides hid his bewilderment (Orestes hadn’t gone to the Crimea as a Corn-Commissioner) and accepted the congratulations gratefully.

  ‘Far more sensible and constructive,’ continued Grandfather, ‘than that comedy Aristophanes got put on. In a bad time like this we expect something responsible, even in comedies, not stuff about Athenians deciding they’ll desert the City and live with the birds!’ Aristophanes gained only second prize, but was quite cheerful as he was beaten by a protegé of his called Anthemion. ‘I might as well get used to it,’ he said on this occasion. ‘In fact, when young Anthemion can really get down to writing comedies I might as well shut up shop for good.’

  Anthemion could not give much time to comedy-writing at present as he was away at Syracuse.

  And soon there was to be no more escape from reality for any of us, for Agis came to Decelea, and a letter from Nicias was read out to the Assembly. Agis came to Decelea, and people said my cousin came with him. From Decelea a man could see Athens, could see the farms and vineyards and olive groves so lately reclaimed going up in the flames of final destruction. I thought that perhaps my cousin led some of the raiding parties.

  Then Nicias sent to the Assembly the letter that was to be the death warrant of the City.

  We did not know as much at the time, of course; if the whole City was ghostly as we made our way to the Assembly, with the Acropolis the biggest wraith of all, you cannot expect anything but a spectral appearance when the dawn sky is no more than a greyish green. But though, by the time Nicias’ letter had been read out, the sun had brought warmth and colour back to the world, our thoughts remained haunted.

  We remembered the splendid leavetaking, and we heard of rotting ships, demoralised crews . . . the position was impossible, Gylippus had united all Sicily against him, another expedition must be sent out to reinforce him in the spring—before that he must be sent a large sum of money—and then a great deal of detail about the kidney disease from which he was suffering.

  It was the account of the state of Nicias’ kidneys that made Grandfather’s fury articulate; the Crier had barely time to bawl, ‘Who wishes to speak?’ before Grandfather was striding up the steps to the platform, seizing the speaker’s wreath.

  ‘So the ships are rotting and the men demoralised—who made them so by keeping them inactive for eight months? So Gylippus is in Syracuse at the head of a big army—who let him get there, although there was warning enough?

  ‘It’s plain what we must do—we must cut our losses. It’s insane to go on with the siege.’

  Somebody shouted, ‘You were always against the idea.’

  Grandfather replied, ‘I was against it two years ago, even when the situation in Sicily wasn’t clear, even when it was a question of fighting Syracuse alone, even when there was peace here at home. Now, when all the allies seem to be on the side of Syracuse and Agis is at Decelea . . .’

  My uncle had slipped away, was talking to the officer who had brought Nicias’ dispatch, a tall man still yellow-faced with fever, whose hands could not stay still. Thus he was not with us when, to Grandfather’s fury, the motion was finally put to the Assembly:

  First, that a second expedition should be sent as Nicias demanded.

  Second, that one of the two generals commanding the expedition should be Eurymedon, who would set out immediately for Syracuse with a hundred and twenty talents of silver.

  Third, that the expedition should be raised, and commanded on the voyage out, by my uncle.

  Fourth, that Nicias, however, should retain overall command.

  To Grandfather’s stupefaction, my uncle did not refuse the commission; in fact, it was not until many hours later, when the shadows were lengthening, that he came quietly home.

  ‘Demosthenes,’ exclaimed Grandfather, ‘you’re mad! Why in the devil did you accept?’

  Uncle looked at him steadily. ‘If I hadn’t learned from Nicias’ messenger how bad things are—far worse than he dares say in the letter—I should have refused. This second expedition—it’s pure rescue work. All our people can do now is stare eastwards and pray a fleet will come to take them home. So I must go.’

  And so I must go, and Callistratus, and Glaucon, and a young boy, Charilaus, just twenty, who had been Socrates’ shadow until he had to go to do his military training, and who now, fresh from winter months in a fortress, with charcoal burners the only links with the outside world, had returned rapturously to the discussions and conversations and searchings for truth.

  ‘One must go,’ he said to me. ‘Our people must be brought home. I suppose if I were heroic I shouldn’t feel reluctant like this; but Oh, it was so much easier to be a hero in the days when going to Troy didn’t mean giving up talking to Socrate
s!’

  My uncle gathered a fleet, an army Callistratus would command the cavalry. For all his energy, however, we could not defy the weather, so we saw our last Festival before we sailed, one last play by Euripides, Electra.

  Grandfather, during this period, was very silent. Only once did I hear him refer again to Nicias. ‘We’ve a bad reputation for fickleness and ingratitude,’ he said. ‘I wish to God we’d lived up to it a couple of weeks ago.’

  Yes, harshness and lack of confidence would be justified then, but no word of rebuke was sent to the sickly wretch, he retained supreme command, and he repaid the trust of Athens by bringing on her the greatest defeat and shame ever suffered by a city.

  26

  ‘It’s not going to be like Pylos’

  We took our places on the south-west slope of the Acropolis; coming late we had to climb to the highest seats, but this had advantages in that from there we could gaze across to Salamis. But we did not have to climb as high as we should have had to do two years before. There were empty places in the theatre today.

  This play, Electra, is the only play by Euripides to which I did not give my full attention, for my mind was so divided by bitter memories of the past, and bitter foreboding of the future, that I had little thought to spare for the present. But I remember the closing lines—‘Meanwhile we will go to the Sicilian sea and busy ourselves with saving ships in danger.’ Everyone burst out cheering, then.

  But that boast was made by gods, not men.

  One last memory of that lost world I will pen it myself.

  The fleet had gathered at Piraeus—sixty of our own warships, five from Chios. We would sail within three days—and here was Agis raiding up to the very walls of the City. It was too much to endure that a great force should be raised within the Walls, to go sailing westward without lifting a finger against our invaders.

  Callistratus received permission to clear the area between the Walls and Cephisus of the enemy—for a little while, at least. And so I donned my armour for my first action, and Grandfather was saying, ‘I’ll be there at the gate to see you go out; let’s hope that damned expensive armour gives value for money!’

  For years a cavalryman, if he wore a cuirass, had worn the same kind as an infantryman’s, with lower edge of breast and backplate turning sharply upwards to form a wide projecting rim running round just below the waist. For an infantryman, this was an excellent guard for the belly against spear-thrusts coining down from shoulder-level, but it was precious little use when it came to protecting a cavalryman against a thrust coming up from the ground. Callistratus had therefore persuaded his armourer to make for him a cuirass the lower edge of which instead of projecting outwards, curved upwards over the hips on both sides. This only after many arguments—it all took much more fitting, and time, and skill. My equipment, of course, was modelled on his.

  I can remember fastening every strap and every buckle. My fingers were quite steady, even though my heart was stammering prayers to the Maiden that I should not shame my friend when we rode to war together. I can remember how we mounted, formed rank, trotted along very quietly, out through the gate. I lifted my hand to my grandfather, but my thoughts were more with another relative, twelve miles away, I believed, there with Agis at Decelea. I had with me my two javelins of cornel-wood, one to throw from a distance, one to strike with at close quarters. I had won plenty of contests for throwing the javelin on horseback, but if I had the luck to have one particular target, I’d wait—I wanted him to know me before he got my javelin in his throat.

  Grandfather had said to me in disgust, ‘Why, boy, you’re wearing a Theban helmet’, because my helmet, like those they wear in Boeotia, had no cheekpieces. I had replied, ‘This way I get an unobstructed view, sir.’ This way, too, I hoped someone would get an unobstructed view of me.

  Callistratus too disliked nasal and cheek pieces for cavalry work. I was glad of that when the spoor of the raiders changed from blackened stubble to flames still licking about tall green corn, and the vines, and the olives, for I could watch his face, hard at first, hard as if carved from stone, with eyes glinting like agates. And then, when we sighted the confused distant group of the enemy, his face was transformed—eyes brilliant, cheeks flushed, yes, he was flesh and blood now—yet more than mere flesh and blood. For me all the terror and beauty of war was in his face.

  He called an order and looked back at me for a moment. He said nothing, but for the first time I really understood that I might die in this corner of Attica on this sunny afternoon. My body grew numb—and suddenly my soul was agonisingly lonely. They can say what they like about the comradeship of battle; that may come when the fighting actually begins, but in the rushing yet dragging moments before the clash, no matter how well-armoured his body may be, every normal man’s soul is naked and lonely and scared and he wishes to God he were anywhere else.

  We cornered the raiders against a stretch of wall marking the boundary between two farms they had laid waste. I could have cried out with vexation because they were Theban cavalry, not Spartans. But after the moment of identification vexation soon gave way to other emotions, and a jumble of impressions—cantering over the thin grass, bright iron flashing in the sun, hoof beats sounding a deadly rhythm in the moment before the crash of impact, and then the clash of metal and I was sweating in that hot sun, but not with fear, for there’s a kind of heart-wringing glory in a cavalry charge against an enemy raiding one’s own land.

  It was brief, but sharp, that skirmish. I rode against a big fellow, with light eyes squinting in the sun at me from a brick-red face. He hurled his javelin at me, and hit me squarely on the breastplate, nearly sending me out of the saddle, but I had managed to lurch back just as he turned his horse away. Nothing could have been more timely; it was just the moment for striking at him near the collarbone. He went over with a clash like a tower falling.

  Then the shouting and yelling and clanging were over, they were all down, and we were dismounting slowly, almost stiffly, patting our horses, someone was saying in disgust, ‘D’you see what the swine were doing? Taking the very doors and tiles from the houses—’

  ‘I don’t quarrel with that—it slowed them up enough for us to catch them.’

  ‘You’d quarrel fast enough if it were your farm—’

  All the enemy were not dead; one had his eyes open, lay groaning. I ran across to him, knelt. ‘Did you come from Decelea?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Was Alcibiades there?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Wanted to come,’ he said, ‘but Agis wouldn’t let him. Agis—doesn’t trust him.’

  Then his head rolled sideways and he, too, was dead.

  A voice said, ‘That’s how you should be, too. Why in the devil didn’t you throw your javelin earlier?’

  But even Callistratus must not be told of my hope to meet my cousin face to face. I got up and said, ‘The longest throw isn’t always the safest.’

  Yet I was very glad I wasn’t dead like the Theban and that I could still smell the fragrance of thyme and fennel, and see the undersides of the leaves of those olives that had not been destroyed shining as brightly under the glittering sun as burnished silver.

  Then came the moment for sailing. There were no great crowds thundering applause for us—only the desolate families of those who had sailed two years before, crying, ‘Bring them back safely!’ We were not a force bent on conquest; our mission was rescue.

  On the other hand, some of the people we saw at the quay had not been there at the sailing of the First Expedition. Socrates was there, to say goodbye to Charilaus and me. His face was grim; for the first time I realised why most people called him a phenomenally ugly man. He said little; I remembered that we had met originally when he had brought back the possessions of my dead brother, and wondered if he were remembering that too, and if I reminded him of Theron—or of someone else.

  I might have asked him this if I had not broken off our conversation at the sight of t
he last face I would have thought to see on the bustling quays, the dark eyes and ravaged face of Euripides. He was talking to Callistratus; they were both looking for me. Hastily I bade farewell to Socrates, and hurried across to them.

  ‘Euripides!’ I said. ‘But we came across to Salamis to say goodbye!’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But after you had gone last night I thought I must come to see your sailing today. It wasn’t enough to say goodbye to you in a dim cave remote from—from all this,’ and he indicated the confused, noisy background, the yells of command, the whinnies of frightened horses, the creak of tackle.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ I said. ‘This kind of thing distracts you from your writing.’

  ‘My writing must get used to it, then. I shall come here every morning until there is good news of your safety and success.’

  Then I had to leave him and Callistratus, for Grandfather was talking to my uncle a few yards away and I must go for his blessing. He was uncharacteristically soft-spoken; with a pang I remembered his fierce pride at the time of Uncle’s triumph at Pylos. It would be a bad time for those waiting for news.

  And then we went aboard, and the boatswain’s pipes squealed, the thin cries of those on the wharf were drowned by the grinding noise of the oars, and we drew away from the harbour.

  As long as we looked back we could see the three dissimilar figures standing there one awkward, stocky, the second tall, stooping, the third stiffly erect. I think they stood there staring after us long after the other groups had dispersed.

  I can remember few details of the voyage to Syracuse; if it remains unreal in the memory it seemed unreal at the very time, one day following another, the ships ploughing their way through the dark blue sea, and most of those they carried oddly silent, content to stare at the friendly dolphins who played about us, the light spangling their leaping, carefree bodies with gold and green.