The Corn King of Marob walked over to the ship and looked down into her, and Erif Gold followed him, because she wanted to see everything this spring day. The slaves looked up from their hands and knees and gaped at these glittering great ones, at the pure shining gold on the belt and knife and crown of the Corn King, and the blowing, brilliant hair of the young girl beside him. They ducked their heads down towards the decks and did not cure to think that these were barbarians. The Corn King said: ‘Who is there among you called Tisamenos?’
And after a time one of the crouching scrubbers lifted his head a little and said: ‘It was I.’
‘Come here,’ said the Corn King. The man looked up. He thought he had to obey that voice, but he also remembered pains and penalties if he disobeyed his master’s and left the ship. ‘Come here!’ said the Corn King again impatiently, standing on the edge of the quay. The man got up and limped to the gang plank and up it and knelt on the stone in front of the Corn King and Erif Gold. He looked at the Corn King’s boots, which were made of red leather with black-and-white lions sewn on to them. He heard the voice over his head say: ‘Why are you called Tisamenos?’
The man said: ‘I was given that name, Lord, when I was a boy, when King Nabis came and avenged us, the poor people of Sparta, on the rich. It means that we had been paid, Lord—’
‘I know,’ said the Corn King. ‘It is my name too.’
The man looked up a little, not understanding, and saw someone older than himself, strong and crowned and smiling. Timidly he said: ‘Lord, does it please you?’
Klint-Tisamenos said: ‘My father and mother were in Sparta once. I have heard a great deal about it. But it was King Kleomenes who paid back the poor on the rich.’
‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘but he died.’
‘I know,’ said Klint-Tisamenos, and said nothing more for a minute. The man felt he had no leave to speak again.
It was the girl who said: ‘My father was in Sparta too. You aren’t a Spartan, surely?’
The slave lifted his head and stared at her. It was terrible to say to this bright, free, half-scornful woman that he was a Spartan; it was more terrible to deny it. He said: ‘I was.’
‘And now?’ said Erif Gold. But the man had no answer.
The Corn King sat down on a bollard and the girl curled herself up on the stones beside him, fingering her shining fishes. The King said: ‘Tell me what happened.’ He wanted to sit in the sun and be told true stories. He suddenly wanted to know all about these odd affairs of Greece. He himself had been there three times. Once it was as a child on the way back from Egypt, and there had been a bigger boy who played with him sometimes, but they had left him and Hyperides in Athens, which was a very hot town and he had been bitten by fleas.
The next time was when he was seventeen. He stayed with Hyperides, in Athens most of the time; he remembered how anxious every one had been, trying to make peace between Philip of Macedon and the Aetolian League, the northern Greeks, so as to get the Roman barbarians out of the way, back to their savage west. Every one was angry with the Aetolians for calling in the Romans, with their brutal but rather efficient ways of making war and plundering, but Philip was a savage in his way too, and a tyrant, and old Aratos who used to advise him was dead—broken heart or poison, it didn’t make much difference which. It was a difficult time for Greece between Rome and Macedon, with Egypt and Syria in the background. As he remembered it, Sparta in those days was not much of a place. Machanidas was ruling as guardian of a baby king—constant chops and changes there—but no one paid much attention. Hyperides had once or twice spoken of that older boy—Gyridas, his name was—it was the only reason they ever thought about Sparta, for there’d been so much to do and see that summer. Yes, a wonderful summer it was! But Klint-Tisamenos had gone back to Marob very glad he was not a Greek, very glad he had not got to face those problems, above all that Marob had not got to deal with Rome.
He had not been in Greece again after that for more than sixteen years, though once or twice Hyperides had come to Marob, getting older every time, wanting less to do things and more to talk. It seemed to Klint that his father and mother were very happy talking to Hyperides. But Klint himself had gone out on the plains with his brothers and sisters and cousins and friends and they had danced and raced and made things, and hunted, and fought the Red Riders, and made love in the long grass or round the camp-fires, and the years had gone by and he didn’t get to Greece again because of the troubles there: Philip of Macedon and Antiochos of Syria, and always more and more these Romans out of the west, fighting and looting and going away, but always, somehow, coming back; dark, stolid little men who never knew when they were being laughed at, and were quite amazingly dead to some sorts of ideas and wonderfully unwilling to do things on their own without sending back to consult their fantastic Council, the Senate of Rome.
But it was later that he had seen so many Romans, when he finally did go in the last year before the great war with Antiochos—because his father, Tarrik, had told him he must go now, for it would be difficult later when he was Corn King—Tarrik knowing his hour was almost come on him. Tarrik probably happy. So Klint had gone out then, and he remembered now hearing about Sparta, and he frowned and fidgeted, still uneasy to think of his home-coming that time, and the feast, and the taking over of power for him and his Spring Queen. He frowned and breathed and relaxed, and became aware again of the man with his own name kneeling at his feet. So he repeated: ‘Tell me what has happened to Sparta.’
The slave Tisamenos said: ‘Lord, I was bidden not to leave the ship. My master will come back—’
‘But this is the Chief,’ said Erif Gold. ‘He is the Corn King of Marob. If he chooses to have your master drowned off his own boat, nothing will happen. Don’t be so frightened.’ Then she got up and stood over him and said: ‘Let me see your foot.’ The man undid the rags quickly and fearfully; his foot was bruised and cut and ugly with scars and hardenings; she touched it and laughed and said: ‘You aren’t much of a Greek now, Tisamenos!’ Then she tossed the old, stained rag into the sea and began to handle the foot; she seemed to him to be putting everything into place, laying muscle and bone rightly together. For a moment it came into his head that she was one of the women out of the pictures: Agiatis—or Agesistrata—or the woman of Megalopolis.
He shut his eyes; then he opened them and said: ‘Where shall I tell from, Lord?’
‘From the time Machanidas was your King,’ said Klint-Tisamenos. ‘He reigned alone, I think?’
‘Yes. Because they had banished little King Agesipolis, as a child. I never knew why. And his uncle Kleomenes was dead. Not the real Kleomenes, Lord; his nephew. Then there was another king, who was only a child. But it was really King Machanidas. And he was allied with the Aetolian League against the tyrant Philip of Macedon.’
‘With the Aetolian League. And Rome.’
‘And Rome. Yes, Lord. But we hated the Macedonians. I was a young boy then. But nothing came of it that first time and the Romans seemed to go, and King Machanidas was besieging Mantinea and the Achaeans. And then Philopoemen who had been in Crete, learning fox-ways, came back and was made general of the Achaeans, and he killed our King Machanidas. But we did not know about Philopoemen then.’
‘Know what?’
‘I did not know I was going to hate him. Lord, as I hate him now.’
‘What were you? A citizen?’
‘No, Lord, I was a helot, the son of a helot. I herded pigs in the hills. But my grandfather had been one of King Kleomenes’ citizens till Sellasia. He was killed then. We were slaves again after that. My father was dead too. But mother told us. And the others. And we had the pictures.’
‘What pictures?’
‘The pictures of the Kings. King Agis and King Kleomenes; and the twelve; and the Queens in blue. And the stake with the vine and the great snake. We made them ourselves on the walls. When I was a child they took me to see the real ones. They are hidden in different places from
time to time, and only shown sometimes. Till the Kings come back.’
Suddenly Erif Gold laughed and said: ‘Do you know who painted the pictures?’
‘No,’ said the man, hating her because she had laughed.
‘But I do,’ said the girl.
‘And I,’ said the Corn King. ‘Go on, you with my name. Did every one think so of the pictures?’
‘All of us. All of the poor. The rich did not know about them, or pretended not to know. And then King Nabis came and they renamed me Tisamenos. It was as though the thing we had asked for had happened.’
‘What thing?’
‘A King had come to the people. But we did not know then that he would have to die too.’
‘I have heard,’ said Klint-Tisamenos slowly, ‘a good deal of evil of King Nabis.’
‘Yes, Lord,’ said the slave, ‘because you heard it from the rich! They tell it their own way.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Klint-Tisamenos, thinking of that very reasonable man, Hyperides, who had such a dislike for torture or any artificial and violent form of death.
‘He was our King,’ said the man. ‘He made the revolution again. They hated him, they tried to stop it. So he killed them and banished them. He took their land and money for us. He divided the land and made us citizens and soldiers; he built a navy and made an army, and Sparta was strong again. It was us. Us all together: no more rich and poor. The children of the first revolution were beginning to grow up. Every one was afraid of us because they saw us all together, all thinking of one thing. King Nabis was a kind of cousin of King Agis, but far off, and his wife Apea was from Argos; she thought like him. We did all the old things: the discipline and the eating-together. I was taken from herding pigs and put into a class and taught about the revolutions.’ The man dropped silent for a time after that; he did not look frightened now and it seemed as though his foot were paining him less.
The girl said softly to Klint: ‘We must tell father. He always said they were rather bad pictures. But I would like to see them.’
Klint said: ‘Your father will laugh. I hate it when he laughs that way.’
The man went on: ‘King Kleomenes started the New Times and died for them, but perhaps he did not go far enough. He left the rich too much power. King Nabis did not make that mistake. His New Times were ours, ours only. In those days we were strong on the sea; he filled Gytheum with shipyards and stores for gear and arms; he made us refuge places in Crete. He had a guard of Cretans; it was useful. They would do—anything. Every year in my class I got prouder of being one of the citizens. They treated us rough; we liked it—mostly. The captains of the class went off raiding towards Messene and Megalopolis; the Achaeans ran and our men stuck them like pigs. Philopoemen was away again. We hated him and we hated Philip. We used to get news of what was going on in the rest of the world: how Antiochos of Syria went to India and the dragon places and the lands of fire and snow, and stayed there six years in war and magic. How the King and Queen of Egypt died in a queer way, and how the people of Alexandria revenged them in the end.’
Again Klint-Tisamenos and Erif Gold looked at one another and nodded, remembering what they had heard about Sosibios and Agathokles, and how amused Erif and Berris had been at their singularly unpleasant deaths.
The man was speaking again: ‘We heard about Philip’s tyrannies, and we heard about the war between Rome and Carthage and the great battles with ships and elephants. And after that we heard how the Rhodians had sent to Rome for help against Philip, just as the Aetolians had before. That was what it was like when I was a boy.’
‘Were you a Stoic?’
The man shook his head. ‘We didn’t have time for all that. We didn’t want it. We’d got what we wanted.’ He went back to the telling: ‘Then the Romans did come; they attacked Philip. The Achaean League was friends with Macedon; they always had been. But they couldn’t help this time, because we were keeping them busy. I did my first raiding then and killed my first man. Philip couldn’t help them against us either, so they had to change sides. The Roman, Flaminius, made them do that. Then Philip tried to make peace, but Flaminius wouldn’t give him terms.’
‘That,’ said the Corn King, remembering it bit by bit, ‘was when you changed sides too.’
The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Philip gave us Argos. It was Queen Apea’s town—and, God, she did play with it too, later on, getting the revolution going! A proper little tiger bitch she was. But Philip was no good to us except for that, so he got the chuck and we made peace with Rome and even the Achaean League for a bit. Well, after that Philip was beaten, and Rome had it all her own way, and Flaminius went about making speeches about how they’d won the war and freed Greece. But we went on with our revolution. And in other states the poor people looked towards Sparta and they wanted a revolution too. So the end of it was that we had every one against us. All the rich, all the states that were jealous or frightened, and the Achaean League again, and Rhodes and Pergamon and Rome, and our own dirty lot of rich too, that we’d turned out earlier, instead of killing the whole pack of them as we ought to have. They came at us all at once, land and sea. We stuck it, though. He—he wasn’t King of Sparta for nothing! We could do it for him. But they got the coast towns, they burnt the ships, they burnt the farms, they burnt the standing corn, they stormed Gytheum. They tried to storm Sparta itself-yes, Flaminius and the Romans did that—but we lighted fires—we burnt our own homes and drove them back. But in the end we had to come to terms. The rest of the states hated leaving us alive at all, but Flaminius didn’t care. We had to give up Argos and the coast towns and the fleet and give hostages. Yes. Our King gave his only son as a hostage. But the revolution stayed and the eating-together and the way we lived. The next year the Romans left Greece again. Flaminius had plenty of friends among the rich, the ones who wanted things to stay as they are. But the poor hated him because of what he had done to us. I know that because men used to come from the other states to get what hope they could from us; we showed them the pictures sometimes; they prayed too. A great many of us were killed then, but for those who were left it was not too bad.’
‘But then?’
‘Well, then we joined with the Aetolians against Rome. We hoped Antiochos and Philip would join too, but they were afraid. King Nabis blew on the ashes and the flame broke. We got back our sea towns. But Philopoemen was with the Achaean League again. We defeated him at sea. But—’ The man stopped speaking for a moment and screwed up his eyes painfully. At last he went on: ‘He beat us, up in the hills, a little beyond Sellasia. We were driven back through Sellasia Pass into Sparta itself. I saw that old battlefield, looking awful and evil still. When we went between the two hills we made vows to King Kleomenes; we asked him to come back and help us; we sacrificed. In the end the Romans made peace again, but we were terribly weak, helpless, and Philopoemen just beyond the frontier waiting for his time. We knew that. But it was not the worst yet.’
‘That was the time when I was in Greece last,’ said the Corn King. ‘I remember hearing about Sparta. Tisamenos! Was there a man called Gyridas? His father was Kleomenes’ foster-brother, half a helot—’
‘Gyridas!’ said the man eagerly. ‘God, yes! He was in it all, in to the neck! It was he who had the pictures first. It was he who was in command at Gytheum during the siege. He escaped then, but they killed him in the end. The Achaeans speared him clean. That was better than living on—as I did. Because the Aetolians saw we were no more use to them as allies, but they wanted to steal our State money. They sent the traitor Alexamenos with troops, as though they were bringing help; we let him into Sparta. And he murdered King Nabis in the King’s house. But we killed him. We tore him into little rags and bloody pieces. It was all we could do. But we couldn’t make our King alive again. And Philopoemen came and took Sparta and dragged us into his Achaean League. We were too badly broken to stop him. That was four years ago—more.’
‘And since then? I thought nothing had happened in Gree
ce, but the war with Antiochos. We’ve had little news up here.’
‘We didn’t matter enough to be told about, Lord,’ said the man. For a time he had been half-sitting on the stones of the quay, but now he knelt again, stiffly, stiffening himself to tell this last part, only his hurt foot sticking sideways. He said: ‘We stood it for two years. We kept things going somehow for the sake of the future; we thought they’d left us that. There were children. We told them. I got well of my wound, but most of my friends were dead. Dead as the Kings were dead. And there wasn’t any woman I wanted much. Then all those exiles began coming back; they lived in the coast towns and laughed at us trying to live our way, and began to get back their land, for they were rich again now, richer than us. There were a lot in Las, near Gytheum. At last they made us too angry; we went for them, but a good many escaped. That was what the Achaeans had been wanting. They sent—yes, they sent to Sparta!—and said the ones who’d led the attack were to be handed over to them. There were even some in Sparta who were so afraid they would have done that; but not for long, because we killed them, thirty of them, and said we would have no more to do with Achaea. It was better to belong to Rome and the barbarians than that! But it was no good. Rome didn’t care. They let Philopoemen in on us. He came marching over from Megalopolis, and the exiles came in after him. We couldn’t begin to stand against them. He took all our leaders and made a mock trial and killed them. He pulled down all our walls and forts, Lord, and dismissed all the armies and—and he said we were not to have our things any more; the things the Kings had died for, the things Lycurgos had made first for Sparta. We were to be like any other state. He sucked the life out of us. I think he specially hated all of us like me, who had been helots; he wanted to wipe all that out. Some of us went away, to Crete or wherever we could. I had nowhere to go and no money; I had only my bit of goat pasture and three olives and my little knotty vines, up between the rocks. But I thought they would let me stay in the hills of Sparta, on my own earth; they had taken away everything else. Oh, I thought I could stay when I loved it so!’
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 76