The Flowers of Adonis

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  The andron of his house was like any other building that I had seen in Sparta so far; beaten earth underfoot and things that rustled in the thatch overhead. But a brazier burning brushwood and charcoal drove out the worst of the autumn chill and made the place seem almost cheerful, compared with the Mess Hall we had just left. There’s a man sitting on a stool beside the brazier, mired from his journey, and with a scarlet Phrygian cap pushed far back on his head of greasy curls, in the way that a man pushes his bonnet back when he’s mortal tired. He gets up stiffly at our coming; and it doesn’t look to me as though he’s been given food or drink in that house, though by the looks of him he could make good use of both. (When I was a small boy and dropped food from too large a mouthful, or made water on the doorsill because I’d left it to late to get properly into the yard, my mother used to cuff me and say, ‘You have no more manners than a Spartan!’) But I suppose it’s a case of ‘Eat when you’ve earned your supper’, and Endius doesn’t consider it earned yet.

  He says, ‘This is the man.’ And then to the merchant, ‘Speak now — all that you told me.’

  The man looks troubled, as though he doesn’t above half like the story he has to tell. He scuffles a bit, and swallows, and blurts out, ‘You are Alkibiades, son of Cleinias?’

  ‘Who else, fool?’ says Endius; and suddenly I gets the feeling that behind that dour face of his, he’s fair hugging himself with amusement at what’s going forward.

  The General sits down on the stool and stretches his feet to the warmth, and says, ‘I am Alkibiades, son of Cleinias; and (you know how curious we Athenians are) waiting with pricked ears to hear what you have to tell me.’

  The man swallows again, and brings out all in one rush, ‘I’m from Athens, before this; the whole city was full of it. They’ve tried you in your absence, Lord, it’s all over.’

  ‘They found me guilty, of course. Did they condemn me to death?’ Alkibiades says gently.

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  I was watching his face as the man spoke. His mask had slipped, and he looked for an instant like a man who has been hit between the eyes. I think until that very instant, something in him, deep down, hadn’t believed that it would happen. He says just as quietly as before, ‘Give me details.’

  The man nods, rummaging inside the folds of his waistcloth. ‘I managed to get a copy of the indictment. I thought maybe there’d be those in Sparta that’d be interested; though I couldn’t guess that Alkibiades —’

  He stops short, and there’s one of those silences that make the back of your neck prickle. Then Alkibiades holds out his hand. ‘May I see it?’

  And when the man hands over the small papyrus scroll, he unrolls it and sits rocking the stool back on its hinder legs, glancing along the lines. Then he starts reading aloud, half to himself and half to us.

  ‘“Thissalis, Son of Kymon, of the Deme Lacidae” (may his soul rot) “impeaches Alkibiades son of Cleinias of the Deme Scambowdae, for committing crimes against the Goddesses of Eleusis, Demeter and Kore, by mimicking the Mysteries and showing them forth to his companions, wearing a robe such as the High Priest wears when he shows forth the Sacred Secrets to the Initiates; and calling himself High Priest; Polytion Torchbearer and Theodorus of the Deme Phagaea Herald, and hailing the rest of the companions as Mystae, contrary to the laws and institutions of the Heralds and Priests of Eleusis …” Were we really as drunk as that, that night, Antiochus?’

  My memory — I admit it’s a bit cloudy — is that it wasn’t anything like as elaborate as that, and certainly didn’t go as far. But I knew he didn’t want an answer.

  ‘And so they found me guilty and condemned me to death. They have been busy. Well, since I’m not there to drink their hemlock there seems not much they can actually do.’

  ‘They did what they could,’ the merchant says.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘They have ordered the whole priesthood of Attica, formally and publicly to curse your name; and the curse to be inscribed on iron tablets, that it may endure for all time.’

  ‘That seems carrying things almost vulgarly far,’ Alkibiades says. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes — as you are now dead in the eyes of Athenian Law, they were selling up your property when I left. As soon as that was done, they were going to start pulling your house down. It was a nice house, too.’

  ‘Yes, wasn’t it,’ Alkibiades agrees, and then after a silence. ‘Do you know what happened to my horses?’

  The merchant shook his head. ‘I am sorry, no.’

  ‘Pity, I should have like to know who they’d gone to.’

  Just for the moment I wonders whether he’s going to ask about his son; but after all, there’s no need. When his wife died, her brother took the boy over; and as Callias’ ward he’ll be well clear of any trouble. Besides, he’s not a child that any father in his senses would trouble himself much about. It’s odd how a family like that, the kind that breeds lions and princes all along the line, seems now and again to gather up all its bad blood and throw off something that should be drowned at whelping.

  We’re all waiting for something to crack; some lightning-blast of fury. But Alkibiades only gets up and walks over to the doorway, and stands for a little with his back to us, as though he were looking out. But it’s in my mind he’s not seeing much of the dark courtyard, nor hearing the sudden pattering of the autumn rain. He gives his shoulders a little shake, and turns back to us. He says, ‘It is a mistake to try flaying a lion before one has made quite sure that he is dead. I will show Athens that I am still alive.’

  And that was all.

  Except that later, alone in the guest porch where we slept, he says, ‘So the Herm charge was dropped altogether.’

  ‘Perhaps too many people remembered about the moon.’

  Next morning in the Agora, Alkibiades, chosen for the rough work of speaking first, mounted the hummock of beaten earth that served as the rostrum, and made the speech which, in the end, brought Athens to ruin.

  The rain had cleared, and there was a cold wind blowing down from the north. I can feel the edge of it now. And when Alkibiades stands up to speak, it’s as though his eyes catches up the reflected snowlight from the first winter whiteness on Taygetus, and it makes them burn in the way that cold burns; with a bright, bitter blue.

  He begins by justifying himself for his own success against Sparta in the past, reminding the Spartan Assembly of old family ties between himself and them. (I’d forgotten that his grandfather had been Consul for Sparta in Athens, and that at one time he thought of trying to get the Consulship back.) None of it mounts up to much, but the start of Alkibiades’ speeches seldom did, in his politician days. It’s different when he speaks to the troops; they don’t need warming up; but with others, especially those stolid bleak-faced Spartans, he needs time to tune up both himself and them, and get the feel of them. I’d not have known that of myself, but he once tells me.

  And then, when he’s ready, he comes to the part that matters. So far as I remember, it goes like this.

  ‘You Spartans are a monarchy, and an aristocracy; and here I stand up to speak before you, a known Democrat. Therefore, before you judge mistakenly of me in this, I must break down all cause for misunderstanding between us. I have been always, as my father and my grandfather before me, one of those who stand opposed to tyranny. In Athens, all who stand against tyranny in political life go by the name of Democrats. That democracy I uphold. But the thing that democracy has become in Athens, its insane policies, its jealousy of any who possess more than others of skill or courage or beauty, so that all must be dragged down to a grey and greedy mediocrity, this I utterly repudiate.’

  ‘That’s clever,’ thinks I. Furthermore, in a way it’s true. And I feels the crowd stirring round me and knows they’re beginning to answer to the helm. Not that the crowd matters much, this being Sparta. It’s the Kings, and even more the Ephors, he has to make his mark with.

  ‘So, that is dealt with, truly
and in good faith, that there may be no shadows of hidden things between us. Now I am free to turn to those matters of which I came here to Sparta to speak with you.

  ‘The Athenian fleet sailed for Sicily to conquer Syracuse. That you know. This you do not know, though maybe some have guessed: we sailed for Sicily to conquer Sicily. After that, Italy; after that, Carthage. After that,’ he shot it out at them, ‘you!’ and waited a heartbeat for the word to strike home. ‘With fighting men from Iberia to reinforce our own, with a fleet enlarged by galleys built from Italian timber, with gold and corn of Carthage to pay and victual our troops, your turn, my friends! A fleet greater than has ever been known in these waters to blockade you from the sea; an army stronger than all Hellas has seen since the Persians were driven back, to siege or sack the cities — Oh not of Lacedaemon alone, but of the whole Peloponnese not already our subjects or allies. All Hellas ruled from Athens! And what of all the pride and power of Sparta then?’

  The men round me growls uneasily; a deep sound and ugly. And the Ephors are leaning forward in their seats. Alkibiades has them now all right.

  He says, ‘There is no man better qualified than I to tell you of these far-reaching plans; for it was I who made them!’ The mutter of the crowd deepens and for the moment takes on a note of menace. And I thinks ‘Be careful! For the sake of all the Gods be careful!’ But he’s made his point, and sidesteps neatly on to the next thing; and the crowd’s beginning of anger turns to admiration for his cool effrontery. It’s harder to tell what the Ephors are thinking. ‘My plans,’ says he, ‘and much as they hate me personally, my fellow Generals will carry them out if they can. As things stand, I see little to stop them. The Syracusians’ (he makes a little bow towards the Envoys) ‘for all their confidence and their undoubted courage, are unused to our kind of fighting, unused to fighting at all for two generations. They cannot long survive alone. And if Syracuse falls, all Sicily falls. The rest I have already foretold to you. In the spring, you must send out ships, not manned by rowers and a dozen marines, but with fighting men at the oars, ready to become infantry the moment they beach the galleys. But more even than this, you must send them a leader; a Spartan General to bring them the certainty of your full support — and who can hammer their new levies into a single disciplined force. At the same time, you must thrust against Attica, thus making sure that the Athenians have nothing to spare from their needs at home for reinforcing their army in Sicily.’

  Agis, sitting in his high seat, speaks for the first time, then, holding up his rod of office, according to the Spartan custom. ‘You have a plan for this, too?’

  ‘I have,’ says Alkibiades; and he stands rocking lightly on his heels and looking at the Council and down at the crowd. We’re all silent now, waiting. ‘It is a very simple one. Do you remember how it was every year before the truce? Every spring your raiding bands came down into Attica by the pass at Dekalia. Every autumn they returned by the same way; and behind you the people swarmed out from the city to reclaim their farms and undo the summer’s damage. Next year you must build a fort at Dekalia and keep your quarters there through the winter. From that strongpoint you can cover the road in from Thebes and Boeotia, thus forcing Athens to bring the entire corn supply round by sea. With a Spartan force so near, they will not dare to work the silver mines at Laurium from which comes the chief wealth of the state; and if they try it, the mine slaves will desert to you in droves. For ordinary folk, there will be no going back to the farms to make good the summer’s wreck or to gather the olive harvest. I tell you, Athens will be hamstrung lacking the means to live, let alone make war.’

  It was odd to stand there and feel the dull Spartans stirring and pricking their ears around us, and feel nothing myself except maybe a bit sick. Not very, just a bit.

  He says, ‘Maybe you are saying in your hearts “He has broken faith with his own state and joined himself to her strongest foe; will he then, not break faith with us as soon as it suits him?” Remember that Athens first broke faith with me! You have harmed only your foes, and that is right — the duty — of every people and every man; but Athens has declared war on me, who was her own. And therefore, outlawed from my own people, I come to you. I loved and love my state, but I’m not a dog to fawn on the lord who kicks me, and crawl back to be kicked again. Indeed, I do not feel myself to be turning on my own country, but seeking to win back the country which was once mine but is mine no longer. That for me, is the way for a man to love his country! Therefore I beg you to trust me as I will trust you. Use me for the hardest and most hazardous work; I shall not fail you!’

  (Oh there’s a lot more of it, of course, but not being Thucydides with his little note tablets, I’ve only my memory to rely on; and that’s the gist of it, anyway.)

  Gods! The clamour that rose then! The deep harsh shouting of the crowd make it clear the fighting men are his! But when the garboil falls away a bit, King Agis sits forward in his chair, his head thrust out on his thick neck, his little bright eyes thrusting among the crowd, though it’s to Alkibiades he speaks. ‘The plans are good; but there is one point that you have forgotten. The truce of Nikias still holds, as you yourself have said. To send troops to Syracuse would be only to support an allied state in giving aid to one of her own colonies; but in the instant when we set warlike foot in Attica, we violate the truce. And shall we, the Spartans, stand before the world as truce breakers?’

  Says Alkibiades, with that silky softness, the fur over the sheathed claws, ‘You’d not be forgetting the plain of Cynera? Argos has been a touchy point between Athens and Sparta since the old dispute. I believe that a couple of raids into the Argolid will bring a return raid from Athens on the Lacedaemon coast. So the Athenians will be the one to break the truce.’

  After that, there’s little need for the Syracusian envoys to speak at all.

  *

  All Alkibiades’ proposals were put to the Assembly and passed within the day. But that night in our quarters, he says to me, ‘Talk is a fine thing, even in Laconic Sparta.’

  ‘Meaning?’ says I.

  ‘Didn’t you notice that there was no time limit set? There’ll be endless delays. For all that they cheered me, I have not fully gained their trust yet.’

  ‘You’ve not made so bad a start without it,’ says I. ‘How does it feel to have ruined Athens?’

  He leans back against the wall scratching behind the ear of a big red hound bitch that has come padding in after him. ‘My dear Antiochus, I never knew you for a patriot.’

  I shrugs. ‘I leave that kind of thing to other men. I’m thinking of the farms, the burned thatch patched up each autumn, the hacked-down olive trees replanted. And in the six years since the fighting stopped, the farming folk have slaved their hearts out to bring the land back to life. Now, they’ll never harvest the olives from the new trees they planted. Everything will be destroyed; and there’ll be no more going back to make good the damage. You said that yourself, this morning, standing out there on the Speaker’s Rostrum, and proclaiming in the next breath that you love Athens still!’

  ‘Love — hate — the balance is very delicate, you know.’ He went on playing with the bitch’s ears a few moments longer. Then he looked up at me. ‘Yes, I do love Athens still, Antiochus.’

  I stands looking at him, trying my damnedest to understand — though why I wastes my time in trying to understand Alkibiades I don’t know. Then I thinks I have it. ‘A jealous lover! If you cannot have Athens you’ll break her — and have the jagged shards to tear your own heart to pieces with afterwards.’

  ‘Congratulations, my dear, I never knew you could think like that,’ he says.

  ‘So I’m right.’

  He smiles at me, long and lazy. ‘You’re wrong; quite beautifully wrong. Will you bid the slave listening at the door to bring me some wine?’

  7

  The Seaman

  We gets news from time to time through that long dreary winter. We hears of a fight before Syracuse itself, lost
by muddled generalship. We hears that the Athenian force is wintering at Catana. We hears that they’re building a siege wall along the heights behind Syracuse. Towards winter’s end we hears that old Shoe-Leather Lamachus is killed — sorry about that — and Nikias and the other Commanders have sent back Tydius (a good choice, he being Lamachus’ son and having got himself honourably wounded) to get more men and more money out of Athens.

  That’s about the time the Spartans gets moving enough to send out the General that both Alkibiades and the Syracusian envoys have been howling for. Just four months, it’s taken them! They sends out Gylippos, a big rawboned fellow with as many scars on him as an old boar hound; and under him a picked force of six hundred Helots. (I’ve never been able to make out why the Helots don’t desert in a body, when sent overseas to fight for their Spartan masters. Unless it’s because Lacedaemon is their own earth that they belong to even more than they do to their masters. Unless it’s because the Spartans still hold their women and families. Unless it’s just habit.)

  Coming with such a small force, Nikias must have thought Gylippos not worth troubling about. At all events, he lets him through. It seems beyond belief, then and now; but it’s true. Nikias lets him through; and by the time he discovers his mistake, it’s too late.

  Gylippos isn’t one to stand while the bindweed grows up his legs; and it’s not long before we hears that he’s contrived to throw up a cross-wall to stop the Athenian siege wall in its tracks; and he’s raising fresh troops from the Sicilian cities.

  And then at last Sparta wakes up and decides the time’s over for holding back. The Ephors presents their plans (Alkibiades’ plans) to the Council, and the Council summons the Assembly; and slow and heavy at first, then gathering way like a wagon when the oxen sets their necks into the collar and take the strain, Sparta begins to grind into war. In March, half a regiment of hoplites actually sets off on the Argos raid to make Athens break the truce.