A Heroic King

by Helena P. Schrader

  “Correct!” Themistocles growled, dropping beside Leonidas on the marble bench of the theater. “That is the reason some fools think that what is meant by the wooden wall helping us is that our fleet should be used to transport all our citizens and their households to the ends of the earth, where we must found a new city. That, however, would leave the rest of you without a fleet.”

  “Indeed,” Leonidas agreed cautiously, wondering where Themistocles’ agile Athenian mind was leading now.

  “I, on the other hand, believe that triremes are built to fight, not flee. They certainly weren’t built to carry goats and women! They will help us best by destroying the Persian fleet.”

  “Indeed,” Leonidas agreed again, still unsure what goal Themistocles was pursuing.

  “For that small service, I expect Sparta to be willing to forfeit any claims to command at sea; am I right?” Themistocles’ eyes bored into Leonidas.

  Leonidas shook his head, but not in denial. “Lacedaemon does not claim command at sea. Athens, Corinth, or Aegina―”

  “Not Aegina!” Themistocles warned. “We officially built the fleet to teach Aegina a lesson. No self-respecting Athenian will fight under Aeginan command. As for Corinth, their navy is one-third the size of ours. They should be willing accept Athenian leadership at sea, just as they accept Spartan leadership on land.”

  “You’ll have to talk to Adeimantus about that. I speak only for Lacedaemon.”

  Themistocles shook his head. “No false modesty, my friend. Where Sparta leads, other cities follow.”

  “Only as far as it is in their self-interest,” Leonidas cautioned cynically.

  “You underestimate your influence,” Themistocles assured him gruffly―but then they were both distracted by a commotion among the men in the lower rows. Apparently some men had just entered, and soon no one was listening to the speaker. Annoyed, he broke off his monologue, and at once the president of the session (which rotated daily) brought down his gavel and announced the speech ended.

  “But I haven’t finished!” the speaker protested futilely.

  Themistocles tapped Leonidas on the shoulder. “Those are the envoys we sent to Syracuse. Let’s go hear what they have to say.”

  Themistocles was already on his feet again, moving down the steps, but Leonidas was slower, straining to see if this was true. Sparta had sent two of this year’s ephors to Sicily along with two Athenians; one of Sparta’s envoys had been Alkander. When Leonidas finally saw his friend, hemmed in by more and more delegates, he jumped up, signaling Sperchias to follow.

  Inevitably, it was the Athenian envoy who was speaking. “… a tyrant! A self-important tyrant! No one in all Syracuse dares speak their mind. He’s surrounded by sycophants who fawn and flatter! It was hardly better than the Persian court.”

  “But will they come to our aid?” a representative from Thebes called out impatiently.

  “Aid? Not on your life! Gelon lectured us for failing to help him against Carthage!”

  Alkander had caught sight of Leonidas at the back of the crowd, and he shook his head slowly and helplessly. The crowd, realizing Leonidas was behind them, parted enough to let him through. Alkander spoke to Leonidas, but the others fell silent when he spoke. “He admonished us for failing to avenge your brother Dorieus’ death. He is, as my Athenian colleague says, a man of ruthless ambition. Utterly untrustworthy.”

  “He sold into slavery the very people who helped him to victory in Sicilian Megara,” the Athenian spoke up again, outraged.

  “He won’t send any help at all?” someone from the crowd asked in a voice laden with despair. “Not even a score of triremes or a thousand hoplites?”

  “Surely he could spare some men?” another took up the argument desperately.

  “Spare them?” the Athenian asked back indignantly. “He claims to command two hundred triremes, twenty thousand heavy infantry, and two thousand horse, but he will not spare us even a tenth of it! He would come, he said, only if he is supreme commander of all Greek forces. That is like driving out Xerxes for the sake of serving under Gelon!”

  “That’s right,” Syagrus, Sparta’s other ephor, agreed. “He wants not to liberate but to enslave us. We had no choice but to turn down his offer.”

  A groan swept through the crowd and someone wailed, “We are lost! Lost!” The sentiment spread like wildfire, and other voices could be heard bemoaning and lamenting.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” The Aeginan tried to silence the swelling defeatism. “Corcyra promised sixty warships and marines to man them,” he reminded them.

  “And we’ve yet to hear from Crete,” someone else pointed out.

  “Crete? Didn’t you hear? They received an oracle from Delphi warning them to keep out of this war! They were reminded that Theseus had abducted the daughter of Minos―only to abandon her on Naxos!”

  “What about Argos?”

  “They will come only if they are given command parity with Sparta.”

  Suddenly all eyes turned again to Leonidas. Fortunately, Leonidas had learned earlier in the day about the Argive response. He had no need to consult the Assembly on this: Sparta would not accept Argive parity in command. It wasn’t just a matter of pride or principle. The Argives had not yet recovered from their defeat at Sepeia and could field barely five hundred hoplites. There were a dozen other cities in the Confederation that brought forces that size or greater. Argos had some eight to ten triremes, but again that hardly justified a position of prominence, much less command. Leonidas saw no reason to explain himself or Lacedaemon, however, and asked back instead: “How many commanders do you want? Syracuse and Argos and Athens and Aegina and Corinth and two Spartan kings? At this rate, you will soon have more commanders than soldiers.” Then he nodded curtly to the stunned audience, took Alkander by the elbow, and left the theater.

  As they walked away they could hear voices arguing behind them. Alkander and Sperchias looked over their shoulders, but Leonidas did not look back. “It’s good to have you with me again,” he remarked to Alkander. “I’ve missed you.”

  Alkander considered his friend and did not like what he saw. Leonidas had aged noticeably. He looked more worn down than when they had parted a little over six weeks ago. His once so candid and cheerful face was marked by lines that traced a frown. “What is it, Leo?”

  “What do you think? They’ll still be talking while the Persians burn down the stadium right there!” He gestured to the stadium that stood closest to the Isthmus, now deserted and sprouting flowers along the starting line. “Half of them are still talking about going to the Olympic Games―as if the Persians will respect our Olympic peace! They may be running around like chickens with their heads off, Chi,” he responded to his friend’s earlier comment, “but they still don’t grasp the urgency of the situation.” He stopped in his tracks and turned to face Alkander. “I need to talk to you in private.” With a nod in the direction of the guesthouse, he added, “Two other ephors are with us here, not to mention our attendants and twenty guardsmen. Let’s go down to Helen’s bath.” He referred to a cave on the coast below the sports facilities.

  Although Leonidas had not been explicit, Sperchias sensed that Leonidas wanted to be alone with Alkander. At one level, even after all these years, it hurt, but Sperchias had learned to live with disappointment. He saved face by saying, “I want to talk to Syagrus about Syracuse, and you need to fill Alkander in on what has happened here and in Lacedaemon since he sailed.”

  Leonidas was grateful for Sperchias’ tact. He smiled at him. “Thank you, Chi.”

  Sperchias turned and headed back to the theater, while Leonidas and Alkander took the partially overgrown path that skirted the stadium and palaestra before striking out across a field of scrub brush toward the lowest point on the shore. Here the path turned sharply to the right in order to angle down the steep incline. It then zigzagged its way to the shore, crumbling in places. It was lined with thistle and thorn and ended on a narrow beach.

/>   A light breeze rippled the waters of the bay stretched out before them. The water was deep blue in the distance and turned gently turquoise and finally aquamarine along the shore. The waves licked at the beach, rolling the little stones as they swept inwards, before retreating to leave a line of frothing bubbles that dissolved almost instantly.

  Leonidas bent to remove his sandals, and Alkander followed his example without exchanging a word. They tied their sandals by their straps, hung them around their necks, and began to walk in the shallows. The water cooled their feet as they followed the shore. Behind them the pebbles rolled into the footprints they left, so that only faint indentations marked their passing, and even these were quickly erased by the waves. They headed in the direction of a cave sculpted out of the limestone in the curving coastline, almost six hundred yards away.

  Two-thirds of the way to their destination, the beach was cut off by an outcropping of black volcanic rock that sliced down from the shore and straight into the sea. Without a word the friends helped each other out of their clothes, left their linen corselets, chitons, and sandals in a heap under a rock at the foot of the outcropping, and slipped into the water to swim the rest of the distance.

  They swam straight to the little cave. The water was crystal clear and the color of aquamarine. Looking down, they could see schools of fish feeding on the waving seaweed between the rocks on the bottom ten feet below; crabs and shells nestled in the sand. The gentle waves slapped against the sides of the cave and the clap of water on rock echoed overhead, but the sound of the seagulls and the wind outside were hushed. Here, with the cave protecting them from the heat of the sun and the eyes of others, Leonidas started to talk.

  “You remember that the same week you sailed for Sicily, we sent to Delphi again.”

  “Yes,” Alkander agreed cautiously.

  “It was the turn of Leotychidas’ representative to consult with the oracle, and he brought the message back to Sparta personally.”

  “Yes,” Alkander waited.

  “The oracle he brought read as follows.” (Leonidas recited the oracle verbatim, because he had memorized it.) “Hear your fate, O dwellers in Sparta of the wide spaces: Either your famed, great town must be sacked by Perseus’ sons―or, if that be not, the whole of Lacedaemon shall mourn the death of a king of the house of Herakles . For not the strength of lions or of bulls shall hold him, strength against strength; for he has the power of Zeus, and will not be checked till one of these two he has consumed .”

  Alkander did not respond at once, but Leonidas waited until Alkander felt compelled to ask, “You think you are that king?”

  “That’s what everyone thinks. The entire Council―including Leotychidas himself―turned to look at me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what the Council thinks; it only matters what the Gods intend. You had a very different oracle when you sent to Delphi three years ago,” Alkander reminded him.

  “Paraphrased, that oracle said: Even a small boy can break a single reed, but the strength of a mad bull cannot break a bundle. Clearly that referred to the need for all Greek cities to stand together―but it does not contradict this more recent oracle,” replied Leonidas.

  “No, but this one sounds suspiciously like Leotychidas’―or Brotus’―voice dressed in Delphic poetry.”

  “Perhaps,” Leonidas admitted, and then took a deep breath to add, “but Sperchias says Persian ambassadors have made frequent trips to Delphi to assure the priests of their safety under Persian rule. He thinks the oracle has been corrupted by Persian gold.”

  Alkander nodded vigorously, commenting, “I’m not surprised―and that makes it even more likely that this latest oracle was fake and that the Gods do not want your death!”

  “Alkander, if the oracle was a fake, then we can’t be sure Sparta will be spared―whether I die or not,” Leonidas reminded him, adding, “I don’t want to think that.”

  Alkander thought about that a moment and then reasoned, “Leo, the oracle didn’t say how the king had to die―or who it would be. For the oracle to be fulfilled, a dead Leotychidas would do just as well as a dead Leonidas.”

  “Gorgo said the same thing,” Leonidas admitted, with a smile at the memory.

  “You used to say that Gorgo was the brightest of all living Agiads,” Alkander reminded him.

  “She still is,” Leonidas agreed, pulling himself up on a ledge and sitting with his feet dangling languidly in the luminous aquamarine water, his upper body hunched under the curve of the cave. “But she wasn’t in Kastor’s grave with me, and she’s not impartial when it comes to divining this particular oracle.”

  “No, she’s probably not,” Alkander agreed, resting his elbows on a ledge but preferring to stay in the water for the moment. “What do you mean about Kastor’s grave?”

  Leonidas hesitated and then confessed, “At the feast of the Dioskouroi, right after Chi returned from Persia alive, I had a very odd experience. I had made the final sacrifice to Kastor, and then went into the temple over his grave, as I often do, just to think. Only someone else was there.”

  “Who?”

  “I couldn’t see anyone.”

  “So how did you know they were there?”

  “A voice spoke to me. At least I think it did.”

  Alkander seemed to think about this for a moment before asking, “What did it say?”

  “That I could choose immortality. I protested that Brotus would never rescue me from the dead as Polydeukes did Kastor, but the voice said that my immortality did not depend on my brother, only on me making the right choice about my life―and death.”

  “What do you mean?” Alkander persisted.

  “The voice said―Kastor said―that I had to live for those in my care―which I have tried to do―but also that I would have to die for a good purpose. He implied I would have to die not for my own sake, not for my own fame as Achilles did, but for something greater.”

  “You think that something greater is Lacedaemon,” Alkander concluded with a sigh.

  “Not just Lacedaemon,” Leonidas corrected him, “but all of Greece: our language, our culture, our unique belief in the value of each individual.”

  “Is that what Greece is? Isn’t Gelon part of Greece? And Brotus? And the men who drove Miltiades to his grave? You have always idealized what we are, Leo, but the reality is: if you sacrifice yourself in this conflict, not only will you no longer be able to help those in your care, you’ll be dying as much for the petty, greedy shopkeepers of Athens, the fat and selfish oligarchs of Aegina, and the cheating, whoring merchants of Corinth. You’d be throwing away your life, and your chance to do more good, for the likes of Brotus and Alcidas and all the others who have fought you tooth and nail over the last decade.”

  “Yes,” Leonidas conceded, clearly shaken by Alkander’s words, “but what else can I do? There isn’t any way to separate the good from the evil. The only way to save that which I love most is to do what the Gods demand of me.”

  Alkander could think of a thousand objections, but they counted for little if Leonidas’ mind was made up. “You believe, then, that the oracle was true, and that you are the sacrifice the Gods demand.”

  “By all the Gods, I wish I didn’t!” Leonidas cried out, with such strength of feeling that his words reverberated on the walls overhead and seemed to frighten even the minnows swimming under their feet. More gently he added, “Alkander, Pleistarchos is barely twelve. He’s still small and fragile―as I was at his age. He’s got potential. He’s quick-witted and he’s bright, but he’s still―I don’t mean this pejoratively―soft. His personality is still unformed―like young bones that are not hardened yet.”

  “You don’t have to explain to me how vulnerable young boys are, Leo. Have you forgotten I spent the best years of my life as deputy headmaster for the little boys?”

  “Alkander, if I’m killed in this coming campaign, they’ll yank Pleistarchos out of the agoge and lock him up in the royal palace with Brotus as his guardi
an. Brotus! What did we not do―short of killing him outright―to prevent Brotus from coming to power in Sparta? How can I go to my death knowing that he will win in the end?”

  “The oracle didn’t say you would die alone. If we are to fight, you won’t be the only casualty. Brotus, for all his faults, is not a physical coward.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Leonidas cried out in a renewed burst of emotional pain. He dropped back into the water with a splash, and sank below the surface to overcome his embarrassment at this confession. When he resurfaced, he pushed his long hair out of his face with his hands and then braced himself against the side of the cave, as Alkander did. Then he spoke softly and slowly, his eyes deflected from his oldest friend in shame. “There’s so much I haven’t achieved yet. The land reform I wanted to enact to ensure poor citizens don’t lose their citizenship is still little more than a raw concept! There are so many details that need to be worked out before I can submit it to the Gerousia, much less the Assembly. The law prohibiting parents from selling their children into slavery is only a draft. The legislation about the emancipation of helots who serve in the army is not even drafted―it’s still all in here!” He tapped his head. “And then there’s Agiatis, changing from child to maiden before my eyes. She gets prettier by the day, and her childish impudence is softening into alluring coquettishness. How can I turn her future over to Brotus? Brotus would take pleasure in finding the man least suited to her high spirits! I wouldn’t put it past him to marry her to Pausanias, or even a brute like Bulis!”

  “Then you must contract her marriage before you take any risks. Whether the oracle is genuine or not and whether you’re interpreting it correctly or not, it would be irresponsible to go into battle against Persia without ensuring Agiatis’ future. All you need do is arrange her betrothal before you depart.”