The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  The voyage round the Peloponnese to Corfu was not completely uneventful—off the coast of Elis one of our ships chased and sank a transport carrying Peloponnesian troops to Syracuse, and at Anactorium, where we hoped to get light-armed troops from Acarnania, Conon awaited us in a dispatch boat. He had been sent to Naupactus with twenty ships to prevent enemy reinforcements from sailing westwards from the Corinthian Gulf to Sicily. But the Corinthian fleet was much larger than we had thought. Conon came to report the fact.

  ‘I’ll leave ten of my ships with you,’ said my uncle.

  ‘Sir,’ said Conon with uncharacteristic formality, ‘I didn’t come to ask for reinforcements; I merely wanted to keep you fully informed.’

  ‘You’ll take the ten ships. Better for you to have them, surely, than for me to sail on with my force intact—only to have the entire Corinthian navy on our backs at Syracuse!’

  At this moment word was brought that the lookout had sighted a fleet of ten ships.

  ‘Good God!’ said Conon, suddenly his old self. ‘Don’t say they’re here now!’

  But of course there was no mistaking those narrow hulls, the perfect, close formation. Our ships.

  It was evening, but the red sun still burned brightly enough in the west to make us screw up our eyes to watch the approaching squadron. I stood with Callistratus, a few paces behind my uncle and Conon, and it was Callistratus who first recognised the burly figure standing on the deck of the leading ship.

  ‘It’s Eurymedon, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Eurymedon?’ said Conon. ‘But he sailed for Syracuse in midwinter. What’s he doing here?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I muttered hopefully, ‘he’s come to tell us that we’re not needed after all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nicias may have taken Syracuse. More likely, he’s come to his senses, raised the siege, and is on his way home.’

  But I did not really believe that—and if I had, one look at Eurymedon’s expression, once we could read it, would have killed that hope.

  He had brought news of a surprise attack by Gylippus by land and sea. The sea attack had failed—eventually—but the land attack had gained the fort of Plemmyrium, under which our entire fleet had hitherto been stationed. We had lost many soldiers, slain and captured, and vast stores; but there had been a loss greater than men or money. The enemy now commanded the mouth of the harbour on both sides, and our fleet was huddled together in the small space controlled by our land force in the innermost north-west portion of the Great Harbour.

  After a moment, my uncle said, ‘So we’re doubly the besieged now, rather than the besiegers?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eurymedon. ‘Since last summer we’ve been getting all our supplies by sea—now any stores we try to get will mean a convoy and a battle.’ He took off his helmet and rubbed his forehead. ‘It’s a swine of a position,’ he said. ‘Throwing away all our advantages—we have the best fleet in the world, but a hell of a lot that counts when they’re cooped up in that damned harbour. We need space to manoeuvre—and plenty of it! You’d think that the old fool’d never heard of Salamis—never watched our ships being built in the yards—long thin beaks . . .’

  ‘Meaning?’ said my uncle.

  ‘We beat off the naval part of the attack,’ said Eurymedon, gulping down unwatered wine. ‘Just. Our people have more seafighting in their little finger than the Syracusans have in their big ugly carcasses, but what’s the good of manoeuvres in crowded waters? All you have to know is how to charge. A direct charge—and that’s all the Syracusans know!—and you’re home.’ He rubbed his hand across his eyes, and shook his head angrily. ‘And the build of our ships is all wrong for this kind of fighting!’ he burst out. ‘Those long thin beaks, high above the water, meant to be manoeuvred against other parts of ships—what good are they when it’s fighting prow to prow? And there are the Syracusans—short heavy beaks, close to the water . . .’ He was nearly in tears. ‘It’s like seeing battering rams smashing into spears.’

  My uncle remained silent. Eurymedon drank more wine, then resumed, ‘And he goes on letting himself be taken by surprise—God knows what’s happened since I left. I warned him, I said, “Look, Nicias, all Greece was talking about the force Demosthenes was bringing out—they’ll know about it here, and they’ll do their damnedest to finish you off before help comes. Be ready for anything!” But all he did was shuffle off to another session with his fortune-tellers. Demosthenes, it’s not going to be like Pylos.’

  27

  A Wall and a Cliff

  After this last fighting, Nicias, who had failed through overcaution, at last would have had justification enough for prudence, for every day brought my uncle’s relieving force closer. At the same time, of course, the enemy knew they must strike first, before help arrived.

  Nicias played their game, and fought when battle was offered.

  Why—after so many long months of caution?

  Because Athenian naval honour demanded it—this was the reason he gave. The refusal of an Athenian fleet to give battle would be a blow to our prestige from which we would never recover. Well, a blow to prestige does not kill or starve as much as a defeat.

  Why did he fight? Because he was jealous of my uncle. Because he wanted to show he could do without him. So he destroyed those men and ships that might have made all the difference when Uncle arrived and tried to save the whole.

  It was difficult to learn exactly what had happened, for defeated men are not the best witnesses, but certain facts were inescapable.

  The enemy had sunk seven of our ships; many more had been badly damaged, hundreds of our men killed or captured. Yet a large part of our fleet still remained in being.

  The City might still have been spared if my Uncle had not made such haste—if, in other words, the First Expedition had been wiped out before his arrival.

  Such was the news of fresh disaster awaiting us the day after the defeat when our ships, not challenged by the enemy, came sailing into the harbour to the sound of trumpets, to find Nicias and his rotting ships on an open beach. We had expected that, but we had not known how marshy, how unprotected, was that position, above all, how unhealthy, so that the men had rotted like the ships. We remembered the arrogant sailing from the City, the light-hearted race of these ships to Aegina; we saw these poor wretches now, half-starved, scorched by the sun all day, choked at night by the poisonous mist rising from the marsh, and we could have wept. They were worn out by disease, as much mentally as physically.

  The bodies of the dead were simply thrown into the marsh. There was the smell of death everywhere—worse, there was the smell of defeat and fear. One could understand now the endless complaints that they were forgotten—stuck here with no relief—nobody giving a damn for them at home. They were weakened with fever, food was running low, hope was running low—all they could do was stare out to sea and pray for help.

  Nicias had remained in his tent, had not come out to welcome us. Uncle went to find him; I went in search of Philocles, to give Euripides’ greeting. Charilaus came with me; he was looking for Anthemion, who, besides being Aristophanes’ protegé, had been a member of the little group listening to Socrates in the green coolness of the groves of the Academy. I don’t know whether he found him more quickly than I found Philocles, but I should imagine his feelings were much the same as mine. These gaunt creatures, hollow-eyed and cheeked, were like slow-moving dead, and there were many, of course, who could not stand upright. Hundreds of figures lay about in sodden, tattered cloaks, some still and silent, but others groaning as they tossed to and fro.

  I recognised Philocles—just. The tall, trim Argive had become a stooping, yellow-faced creature whose hands shook perpetually. He stood looking at me, and suddenly his face was contorted—with pain, I thought, but when he spoke in a cracked voice, I realised it was a joyful grimace, that Philocles was smiling at me. ‘You haven’t caught me at my best,’ said Philocles. ‘Too bad you chose to pay your visit during the sickly season.’


  My eyes smarted as I embraced him, and for a moment speaking was impossible. Then I said savagely, ‘Do you ever get a healthy season in a camp pitched by a marsh?’ More quietly, I went on, ‘I’ve brought a skin of wine with me, and news of Euripides . . .’

  We drank, and after a while we talked of Argos. He did not think he would see it again.

  ‘We’ve come to bring you safely home,’ I insisted.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Philocles. ‘It may be that, far from coming to save us, you’ve simply come to share our ruin.’ His eyes shifted past me. ‘Hullo, Callistratus,’ he said. ‘I’m a little drunk, I think, and still a little off my head with fever. I’m glad to see you—yet I wish you hadn’t come to get involved in—this mess. Why don’t you all—go back on board ship, and . . .’

  ‘I survived the end of Plataea,’ said Callistratus, getting him to lie down and tucking his cloak about him; ‘I don’t intend to survive the destruction of Athens.’

  The deadly marsh mist was rising with the onset of darkness; this was for us the camp of a nightmare—but not any longer for the survivors of the First Expedition. Our coming had roused them to false life; they had heard that my uncle wanted to sail back to Athens as soon as possible, and now they sat round their watch fires, sunken eyes glittering with hope, cracked voices laughing, even singing. We went from group to group, trying to find some familiarity in the haggard faces—and, when we did, being glad when we could move back out of the circle of firelight which betrayed expressions so badly.

  Then we went back to my uncle’s headquarters. He said briefly that it had been difficult to get Nicias to the point; ‘All he’d talk about at first was the precocity of Sicilian corn—he’d never seen such a yield, must send some home for spring sowing, he said.’

  Uncle had said, ‘Take it home, surely?’

  Nicias had said he would not go back until Syracuse was taken.

  ‘So frightened!’ I burst out.

  ‘So unreasonably frightened!’ came Callistratus’ cool voice. ‘If ever an unsuccessful general’s been treated with patience and tenderness . . . So are we going to try?’

  ‘It seems we must, and that means at once. An army’s never so formidable as on its first appearance’

  ‘That’s what Lamachus said two years ago.’

  ‘If Nicias had listened then, the place would’ve dropped into his hands like a ripe plum. It won’t now. And then it was Athens taking on Syracuse; now we’re taking on pretty nearly all the rest of Greece.’

  ‘How much chance have we?’ I asked suddenly.

  ‘Fifty-fifty,’ said Uncle. ‘It’s our last chance, too. If it comes off, we’ll take Syracuse; if it doesn’t, we’ll simply have to sail home at once. I think even Nicias realises now that sending out the second fleet meant taking every obol and nearly every ablebodied man from the City. We can’t linger here.’

  It was the voice of sanity, but there was little sanity left in Nicias now.

  The key to the whole position, as my uncle saw it, was the wall built by Gylippus from east to west on the slope of Epipolae, the wall to the north of ours which had transformed us from besiegers to besieged. Until this wall was in our hands, we could not stir a step.

  We might gain possession of it in two ways. We could make a direct attack, try to storm it from the front, or we could try to turn it from the western end. The second of the alternatives was so risky, involving a climb up a narrow, winding path, that Uncle decided on the direct frontal attack—though one could hardly be optimistic of success in it.

  It failed. So much was to happen after it that I have little remembrance of it, except that it was hot, terribly hot, so that I kept flicking my tongue over my cracked lips, like a lizard among the rocks on the Acropolis. I got a dart in the fleshy part of my arm, but that only prodded me on. We reached the walls, and some of the pioneers started to demolish the defences. But the enemy rallied, and we were driven back, back—away from the clouds of grey-white dust where we had begun to break down the wall, the limestone dust which, above all things, will always symbolise Syracuse for me.

  With the failure of the direct attack, we had no choice but to try to turn the wall from the west. This involved first a march up the valley of the Anapus under the noses of the Syracusans and then climbing an extremely narrow and winding path, the path by which Gylippus had come when he marched into Syracuse, with Nicias not lifting a finger to stop him. Gylippus would not return the compliment, Gylippus was watching us with the unwavering stare of a bird of prey. We should stand no chance at all by daylight, our only chance was to try by night—even now the boldness of the idea is breathtaking. But to desperate men boldness is mere common sense.

  Nicias remained in camp, my uncle made his plans for the first moonlit night. He led a force of heavy and light infantry, together with pioneers and engineers, for he wanted to set up a fort. For this reason he told us to carry iron rations for five days—bread, olives, salt fish, water.

  Nicias held back most of the troops of the First Expedition. This was important, for they knew the ground, having come this way, in the opposite direction, on their march to Syracuse. It was completely unknown ground to my uncle’s command—difficult ground, too, at the best terribly rough and uneven.

  But on that night of fitful moonlight, what other choice had we?

  Our preliminary arrangements had been carried out so carefully that the enemy suspected nothing. We left the camp, marched silently along the left bank of the Anapus at the foot of the southern flank of the all-important heights until we came directly below the narrow ridge forming the extremity of the high ground looking westward. Then the vanguard wheeled to the right and went racing up the path winding along the face of the cliff.

  We took outpost after outpost, meeting little resistance. We stood triumphant on the extreme summit of the height, then pressed eagerly down the gentle moonlit slopes towards the city, routing fresh startled Syracusan forces that tried to hold up our advance. We stormed their wall. The enemy abandoned their lines, ran for it, our pioneers and engineers began to dismantle the fortifications. Somewhere ahead of us a harsh Spartan voice was roaring, sending wave after wave of men to hold us, and we broke them and sent them back in headlong flight.

  I took part in that advance convinced that the miracle had happened, after all; Uncle’s daring had been rewarded. It was night and yet I felt as if it were noonday—my surroundings, which should have been black or bluish-white, seemed a kind of reddish-brown, but there was nothing wrong with my sight, I could see more clearly than I had ever done in all my life. And there was heat as well as light, but this heat didn’t oppress, it penetrated, almost like a fever, but it didn’t tire.

  I felt I could have gone on fighting for ever, but the enemy had given way before us, and I could have cried with angry disappointment.

  And then the moonlight showed me one body of heavy infantry that had not given way. Low on the slope, against the walls of the town, stood a brigade of Boeotians, stolid, in perfect order, unruffled by the terror and disorganisation flooding about them. They were preparing now to advance.

  And I could hear my uncle’s voice, calling desperate orders, and I realised that we had broken line in our triumph, were in confusion, and it was night, and we could never reform our line in time.

  There was something wet on my lips and in my mouth. I did not like what they were trying to make me drink, was about to spit it out when I realised it was blood, my own blood, and remembered with a groan that I had been wounded by a fellow Athenian, who had been driven, screaming, over the side of the cliff a few minutes afterwards, just before Callistratus, fighting every inch of the way, had burst through a knot of enemies to get to me.

  How he recognised me, I never knew. The moonlight was strong enough to make things and figures clear enough—but not features.

  The moon now, as later, fought against us.

  But we had disobeyed my uncle’s order too.

  His intenti
on had been only to break through the enemy wall, and then hold that position until daylight. ‘A night battle’s too chancy,’ he had said, ‘especially as we don’t know the ground.’

  We had disobeyed, broken rank, rushed forward in wild pursuit, and the Boeotians had driven our first ranks back, back on our people advancing from behind, still assured of victory, and themselves urged on by fresh troops closing up in the rear, ignorant of what had happened at this eleventh hour.

  Clouds were now drifting across the moon, so thousands fought with blind ferocity in that black, narrow, uneven space. Our first casualties were people like myself, driven back on ranks behind us, and mistaken by them for the enemy, and then the clamour and confusion grew worse. In the untrustworthy light one could not rely on sight, only on sound—but, God help us, a man fighting largely in darkness and with terror taking the place of triumph, cannot judge coolly, distinguish between an Argive accent or that of Syracuse. Allies at our rear and centre were mistaken for enemies; in little more than an hour victory had given way to disaster.

  We must return as we had come. It is one thing to climb a steep path in orderly silence, unseen by the enemy, but even the widest of roads can seem too narrow for terrified fugitives. Hundreds fell over the cliffs.

  Callistratus carried me down somehow. At the foot of the cliff my head had cleared, and I was losing no more blood, and so could walk. He left me then, went back to help my uncle rally the army and make a fighting retreat. Eventually I had drawn far enough away for the cries and screams to be mere sounds, signifying nothing. Not pain. Not fear. I sobbed as I blundered forward, never realising I was one of the lucky ones. So many of the Second Expedition who were lucky enough to get down the cliffs found that their luck ended there. The country was unknown to them; many of them wandered helplessly about till morning, when they were massacred by the vengeful enemy.