A Heroic King

by Helena P. Schrader

  “Yes,” Sperchias and Bulis said in unison.

  “Ah.” Xerxes leaned back in his throne, and his eyes shifted from one to the other. Then he looked up at the older man behind his throne and smiled slightly. “Very interesting. So you will accept any sentence we decree?”

  “Our lives are yours to do with as you please.”

  “You are either very brave men, or very stupid. Do you not know the punishment for crimes against the Great King?”

  “King of the Medes,” Sperchias began, “we have heard that your father instituted many very wise laws, one of which was that no man should be put to death for only one crime, but always given a second chance―” Xerxes drew a breath to answer, but Sperchias kept talking, “but we know this does not apply to us, because what the Spartans did was not a crime but an offense against the Gods. Also, we have heard that men who speak against you have their tongues twisted out of their mouths, and men who give false witness have their eyes burned out with hot pokers. We know that men caught spying have their ears cut off and then spikes are pushed into their ears until their eardrums bleed out of their heads, while those who rise up in rebellion against you have their skin cut off from their living bodies and are then hung up to feed the flies. We have not heard the specific punishment for men who kill the personal representatives of the Great King, but we presume,” Sperchias glanced once at Bulis and continued, “that it is terrible.”

  Xerxes considered the men before him, his eyes again shifting from one to the other. Then he nodded once and spoke in a loud voice, pitched at the chronicle of history rather than the men in the room. “Then hear the sentence of the Great King. The King of the Persians and the Medes, of the Parthians, Babylonians, Elamites, Scythians, Indians, Egyptians, Armenians, Arabians, Nubians, Ionians, Cretans, and many other peoples, Xerxes son of Darius, will not sink to the level of beasts who murder ambassadors in violation of the laws of civilized men. The Great King will not do that very thing for which he holds your countrymen in abject contempt. Nor will he”―Xerxes’ voice was getting louder, whether for greater effect or because he was genuinely agitated―“nor will he, by taking reprisals on two brave yet insignificant sacrificial lambs, absolve the Spartans of the blood guilt for their crime. You cannot make reparation―brave and noble as your gesture may be―you cannot save your fellow citizens from the punishment they deserve―and will reap!

  “So, remain as long as you wish in my capital. My servants and treasury are at your disposal. You will want for nothing as long as you wish to remain my guests, and when you wish to return, you will be escorted by a company of cavalry who will see to your safety and comfort.

  “But take this message back to Sparta―her kings and her citizens alike: Sparta is not yet absolved of its barbarous crime, and has yet to pay the price of offending the law of civilized nations.”†

  * This speech is recorded in Herodotus, as is Sperchias’ answer.

  † Herodotus records that this was the fate of the Spartans Sperchias and Bulis, who were sent to Xerxes to atone for the murder of the Persian ambassadors.

  CHAPTER 16

  DEFENDERS OF SPARTA

  THE FEAST OF THE DIOSKOURIA, IN honor of the Divine Twins, was one of Sparta’s most sacred holidays. However, because it fell after the autumn equinox, when travel was uncertain, it was not well known outside of Lacedaemon and was rarely attended by strangers. In consequence, it was a more domestic festival than the Hyacinthia, Karneia, and Gymnopaedia, but no less important in Spartan eyes.

  The Dioskouria traditionally followed the end of the Phouxir, and was an opportunity to celebrate the successful graduation of a class of little boys to the status of youths. It also anticipated the winter solstice, when a class of eirenes would graduate to citizen status. The five-day holiday celebrated the most important deeds of the Divine Twins and culminated in a torchlight sacrifice at Kastor’s Tomb, conducted by the reigning kings. Events included singing and dancing to mark the birth of the twins and their sister Helen, equestrian events in honor of Kastor, boxing to honor Polydeukes, and a day-long boar hunt culminating in an outdoor feast on the banks of the Eurotas. Throughout the holiday, special pear pastries and a pear cider were consumed in large quantities. All in all, the Dioskouria was one of Sparta’s most pleasant festivals.

  The atmosphere this year was mixed. The summer festivals had been celebrated hardly at all. Word of the fever had spread and the foreign visitors stayed away, while the Lacedaemonians themselves were either mourning the dead, tending the ill, recovering from the fever, or terrified of catching it. The summer sporting events had been canceled for lack of competitors, and the choruses’ singing and dancing were decimated by losses.

  But by late summer, about the time when Sperchias and Bulis should have reached Susa, the fever stopped claiming new victims. After that only a handful of deaths occurred among those already infected. By the fall equinox, everyone who had survived had recovered. Sparta had lost almost 12 per cent of all school-aged children and 4 per cent of the adult population, but the wrath of the Gods appeared to have abated.

  The agoge reopened, and all active army units returned to barracks. Even the Phouxir went ahead, albeit somewhat shortened. Elections were held for next year’s ephors and to replace three Council members who had died of the fever, including Leonidas’ mentor and old friend Nikostratos.

  By the time the Dioskouria arrived, some people felt a need to celebrate lavishly, while a minority, particularly the parents of the dead children, still mourned. A majority argued that it was only appropriate to honor the Divine Twins wholeheartedly, because they had again proved their affection for their homeland―as demonstrated by the fact that the Agiad twins, Leonidas and Cleombrotus, had come through the ordeal unscathed, while Leotychidas had been touched and scarred by the illness.

  This had the effect of increasing the standing of both Agiads, while diminishing Leotychidas’ already weak position even further. People started to say openly that Demaratus must have been the rightful king, while Leotychidas had merely benefited from―and possibly instigated―the sacrilegious bribing of the oracle at Delphi. Some of Brotus’ followers―particularly Talthybiades, who had been elected to one of the vacant seats on the Council―hinted that Leotychidas ought to be deposed and exiled not so that Demaratus could return, but in order to give his place to Brotus. This faction argued that no one could be certain Leonidas was the elder twin, and that before Sparta’s fate was left to two usurpers, it would be better to put Brotus on the “vacant” Eurypontid throne.

  “You’d better win the boxing today,” Brotus warned his firstborn son bluntly, as the pair set out from their kleros on the second day of the Dioskouria. The first day of the Dioskouria had been marked by sacrifices and women’s choral singing to celebrate the birth of the twins and Helen, but the second day celebrated the voyage of the Argo and was marked by boxing contests in honor of Polydeukes. “It looks like I’ll be king soon, and that makes you the heir apparent, but you don’t act like one! You haven’t won a damn thing since Artemis Orthia,” Brotus complained. “You’re lazy, that’s what you are! And you lack ambition, too―just like my jackass brother, Leo.”

  Pausanias glanced resentfully at his father, noting with inner relish the little rolls of excess flesh that pushed their way out at the armholes and along the lower rim of his father’s breastplate. His father had somehow managed to squeeze himself into the bronze, but the excess flesh had to find somewhere to go, and formed a pudgy, fleshy rim to the sleek-looking metal case. In answer to his father’s words, Pausanias remarked as if surprised, “For such an unambitious man, Uncle Leo has gone far. As for the boxing, you know it isn’t my sport. I don’t have the―ah―head for it.”

  “If you don’t want your head hurt, then use your fists better!”

  “Oh, is that how you got a broken jaw at Olympia?”

  “Don’t be impudent!” Brotus barked. “Or I’ll give you a lesson in manners.”

  “Ah, ye
s, of course. That’ll be what was missing up to now,” Pausanias answered sweetly.

  “You’re trying my patience, boy!” Brotus grabbed his son’s upper arm and spun him about to make him stand face to face with his father. Brotus’ face was red with agitation and his eyes glinted in fury.

  But Pausanias was half a head taller now, and he stared his father down. “Just what exactly do you plan to do, father?” Pausanias asked, his lips curling in more of a snarl than a smile.

  “Why, you―” Brotus cocked his balled fist to strike his son, as he had so often in the past, but Pausanias was faster. He caught his father’s forearm in midair and held it arrested there. For a moment they were frozen in this pose, Brotus struggling with all his might to complete the blow, and Pausanias warding it off. Then Brotus tried an underhanded punch at Pausanias’ stomach, but again Pausanias anticipated the blow, stepped lightly aside, and then spun about, twisting his father’s arm behind his back.

  “I’ve had enough of your lessons, old man!” Pausanias told him in a low, ominous voice. “Do you get the message, or do I have to underline it?” As he asked this, he twisted Brotus’ arm ever harder.

  Brotus clamped his jaw shut and gritted his teeth. His eyes met his son’s with a look between hatred and defiance. The blood was flooding his face, and his veins seemed close to bursting, but his eyes said he would not back down. Father and son confronted each other for another couple of seconds, and then Pausanias realized he wasn’t willing to risk doing his father serious injury. He wasn’t a citizen yet. There might be consequences. He slowly released his father and stepped back warily, out of range. Brotus drew a deep breath, their eyes locked.

  “Do we understand each other better?” Pausanias ventured to ask at last, trying to cover his capitulation with bravado.

  “I see you’re not the son I wanted!” Brotus countered.

  “Perhaps,” Pausanias shrugged, a twisted smile on his face. “But whatever I am, you made me that!”

  The third day of the Dioskouria commemorated the participation of the Dioskouroi in Herakles’ hunt of the dangerous Kalydonian boar. The central event was a boar hunt led by the kings and guard, in which theoretically every able-boded Spartan male participated. As citizen numbers had grown over the years, however, such a hunting party became unwieldy. Nowadays, many citizens, particularly the older men who felt they couldn’t keep up with the Guard, went off in small groups to hunt on their own. The objective was to bring in as much game as possible to lay on the altar of the Twins. After the hearts and livers of the game had been given to the Divine Twins, what was left of the carcasses was taken down to the Eurotas and the meat roasted over open fires for a collective feast.

  Preparations began almost as soon as the hunting parties departed. Under the direction of the syssitia cooks, the helots brought, chopped, and stacked firewood in long trenches beside the Eurotas north of Amyclae. When, shortly after midday, the trophies of the day’s hunting started to arrive, the syssitia cooks hung the carcasses up to bleed, while other preparations for a collective feast continued energetically. Barrels of onions, carrots, and cabbage were collected near the roasting trenches, where the first fires were lit under massive cauldrons. Freshly baked bread and pear pastries were brought on carts from bakeries in the city. Amphorae of wine and pear cider were brought from Amyclae, and spring water was carted down from the springs of Taygetos. In addition, hundreds of tables and benches were hastily constructed. These would be dismantled and the wood used for other purposes as soon as the feast was over, but for one night they needed enough tables and benches for almost ten thousand people.

  As a skilled carpenter, Pantes did not usually waste his time with this kind of work, but there was money in it. Since his workshop now employed seven trained and three apprentice carpenters, he didn’t need to do the work himself in order to profit from it.

  Pantes allowed his nephews Pelops and Kinadon to come along as water boys for the carpenters. Their mother was trying to convince him to let Pelops apprentice with him, but Pantes preferred the sons of strangers, knowing he could never treat his nephew the same way he did the others. Still, Chryse could be persuasive, pointing out that her sons had no future on the kleros as long as Polychares and Melissa had living sons, and noting (correctly) that other helot craftsmen were reluctant to give apprenticeships to the sons of a Spartiate father. The boys enjoyed being in the midst of the excitement, so much so that they forgot their duties more than once and had to be forcefully reminded of it by Pantes or one of his men.

  By late afternoon most of the tables and benches were finished, and the air smelled of the stew bubbling in the cauldrons. The first deer, wild goats, and hares were spitted and turning over the trench to roast. The hunters themselves, having delivered the game, went to wash, change, and collect their families before returning, but well before dusk the men who had been out at dawn and had brought in the first trophies were gathering. They arrived with their wives, their children, and sometimes an aging parent. Since the agoge was closed for the holiday, even school-aged boys were with their families.

  By dusk people were streaming in. Matrons carried smaller children on their hips, grandparents held young children by the hand, youths and maidens flirted openly, and the men were exuberantly exchanging accounts of the day’s hunt as the scent of roasting kid, pig, venison, and hare mingled with that of smoke, hot oil, and cooked onions.

  Pelops sat astride one of the benches his uncle’s men had made earlier in the day and explained to his wide-eyed younger brother Kinadon, “… and it was on a night just like this that Aristomenes and a companion slipped across Taygetos from Messenia. They were dressed all in white with golden headbands with bright stars on them, and they rode pure white horses!” Pelops narrated. “It was getting dark, just like this, but a moon was rising,” he continued, pointing unnecessarily to the far side of the Eurotas. “And the light of the moon made Aristomenes and his companion on their white horses stand out in the darkness. Aristomenes was tall with long, golden hair,” Pelops explained to his awestruck younger brother. “And his companion looked just the same―like twins, you see?”

  “Leonidas doesn’t look like Brotus,” Kinadon protested.

  “That’s different!” Pelops retorted, dismissing the annoying interruption. “The Divine Twins looked so much alike that mortals couldn’t tell them apart. And from a distance, Aristomenes and his friend looked just the same. When the Spartans saw these two beautiful youths on white horses riding along the side of Taygetos, they thought they were the Divine Twins come back to life!” Pelops started giggling. “The Spartans threw themselves down on their knees, and started worshiping Aristomenes of Messenia as if he were a god! And so he and his companion rode closer and closer, and the Spartans were so dumb they still didn’t see through his disguise. So he rode right in among them and then jumped down and started―”

  Pelops was cuffed so hard on the back of his head that he nearly fell off the bench. Reeling, he turned to see who had delivered the blow, and came face to face with his father. “Since when do you tell tales of Aristomenes of Messenia?” Temenos demanded. Then, without giving his son a chance to answer, he added, “Aristomenes was a coward! A man who preferred to attack unarmed women and children. A man who attacked by night and in disguise. A man who impersonated Gods and raped priestesses! Where did you learn to admire such a creature? If Pelopidas has been telling such tales―”

  “Temenos!” Chryse hissed, coming up beside him. “Not so loud! You’re attracting attention. Of course my father didn’t tell them about Aristomenes. They hear it from their friends.”

  “What friends? Laconian helots don’t idolize Aristomenes.”

  “There are plenty of Messenians here, Temenos, working as attendants, or in the workshops and stores and factories. Aristomenes appeals to some Laconian helots, too―”

  “You mean because he fought us?”

  “Yes, it’s only natural―”

  “Natural? Nat
ural to admire a man who kidnapped girls, raped priestesses, and impersonated the Dioskouroi? Why do you think he lost the war despite all his tricks?” he demanded of his sons, but he did not give them a chance to answer. Instead, he declared himself, “Because the Gods were offended by his impious behavior!”

  “Yes, Temenos,” Chryse tried to calm him. “Of course. Come along, boys. It’s time to go home.”

  The boys had long since gotten to their feet, expecting this, and yet something got into Kinadon and he burst out angrily: “Why can’t we stay? Why do we have to hide? Everybody knows about us! What more can they do to you after making you walk around naked with a dead―” It was his mother who hit him to shut him up, but his father’s face was enough to make him wish she had killed him. His father hadn’t known they knew ….

  The equestrian events on the fourth day of the Dioskouria included horse and chariot racing. One of the favorite events was a two-horse chariot race in which Spartan maidens drove light chariots in competition. Over the years it had become customary for the sweethearts of the maiden charioteers to gallop alongside their favorite’s team, cheering and urging on the horses. Gorgo had hated the event as a maiden because she didn’t have a sweetheart, and though she was sure she could have won the race itself, she was ashamed to advertise her lack of popularity by competing.

  Agiatis, however, was so excited by the event that she immediately rushed to the barn calling, “Pelops! Pelops! You’ve got to cheer me on this afternoon!” Agiatis was entered in the junior races for girls under the age of fourteen, which entailed driving a pony in front of a two-wheeled cart from the Menelaion to Kastor’s tomb.

  When Agiatis burst into her father’s stables, Pelops was in Elephant’s stall, brushing the last traces of stable stains from the gray’s hocks. (Leonidas was racing the horse himself in the last event of the day.) Pelops paused to look over the stall door at Agiatis, perplexed. “Of course I’ll cheer you―even if you won’t see me behind all the crowds of Spartiates.” He spat out the last word as if it tasted foul in his mouth.