‘You must admit . . .’ he continued, pouring wine into his guest’s cup, ‘you must admit that it’s not easy to trust a man who’s caught in such a difficult situation, and yet insists that he is animated only by his passion for freedom. But I’m telling you things that you know better than I do.’
‘Certainly, I’m acquainted with the situation,’ answered Philippides, ‘but, please, continue. I’m interested in knowing your thoughts on the matter.’
‘Well,’ Aristarkhos went on, ‘the equals present in the assembly may have been convinced by his pleas, but the fact is that the final decision rested with the ephors and the kings, and Aristagoras had made quite a bad impression on them, apart from what they already knew about the man. I remember an episode that will make you smile: one day by chance I found myself at King Cleomenes’ house, where Aristagoras was a guest. He had just got out of bed, and must have been cold, you see, because in the house of the king they wait until sunset to light the hearth. Well, there he was, sitting with his hands under his mantle, as one of the servants was lacing up his boots. The king’s little daughter, who was only six years old at the time, pointed her finger at Aristagoras and exclaimed: ‘Look, daddy, our foreign guest has no hands!’ I swear to you that I myself had to turn aside and cover my mouth so as not to burst out in laughter. In short, the man who presented himself as the leader of a revolt couldn’t even lace his own shoes without help!’
‘So we Athenians were too credulous regarding Aristagoras,’ said Philippides with a bitter smile.
‘Oh no, my friend, that was certainly not the meaning behind my words! I do not wish to criticize the action taken by Athens, which was undoubtedly quite generous. The decision to send ships and troops was certainly not solely a response to Aristagoras’ request. After all, racial ties unite you to the Ionians who settled in Asia, and it is understandable that you would want to help them.
‘Our refusal at that time depended largely on our natural diffidence: it seemed to us that Aristagoras wanted to involve us in a futile venture that only his own ambition was responsible for,’ concluded Aristarkhos.
‘I can understand what you mean to say, but the substance of the matter is that the Persians are now in Greece, endangering the liberty of all Greeks,’ his Athenian guest replied.
The Spartan was pensive, pulling at his beard with his left hand. ‘I realize full well’, he said, ‘how useless it is to recriminate past events now. We Spartans could say that if Athens had not interfered in Asia, we would not have the Persians in Greece now. You Athenians could claim that if Sparta had intervened in Ionia, the expedition would have met with victory.’
‘I see your point, Aristarkhos, but the situation at the present is desperate: Sparta must absolutely intervene at our side. United we can win, divided we can’t but lose. Today, danger is impending over Athens and the cities of Attica, but tomorrow it will be the turn of Corinth, then Argos, and even Sparta itself. The King of the Persians has hundreds of ships ready to set thousands of warriors ashore at any point in Hellas.’
‘Yes, the argument you made today in the assembly; undoubtedly a convincing speech.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Certainly. If I know my people, I’m sure that your words had the right effect. Your government made an excellent choice in sending not a politician or an orator to Sparta, but the champion of the Olympics. The Spartans are more inclined to believe in personal valour than in elegant rhetoric.’
‘So you think that tomorrow I’ll be able to bring the promise of your immediate military intervention to Athens?’
‘You will probably obtain a pact of alliance. As far as any immediate intervention . . .’
‘Well then?’ asked Philippides anxiously.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until the full moon, when the festival of the goddess Artemis will take place. The assembly of warriors will meet then to approve the decisions of the ephors. This is the law.’
‘That’s absurd!’ exclaimed the Athenian. Quickly, noting his host’s expression darken, he added, ‘You must excuse me, but asking me to wait for the full moon is the same as giving a refusal. The Persians can attack at any moment.’
Aristarkhos rubbed his forehead. ‘You could close yourselves up inside the walls and hold out until we arrive.’
‘And abandon the countryside to be pillaged and destroyed? Dozens of villages have no fortifications, and even if they had, there would be no hope of resisting. Don’t you know what happened in Eretria? The whole island of Euboea was put to fire and sword and in the end the city itself was forced to capitulate. The entire population was enslaved. No, Aristarkhos, there will be no second chance here. We must stop them on the shore, but we can’t do it alone. I just don’t see how we can do it alone,’ Philippides repeated, disheartened. He fell into silence, his head in his hands.
‘I understand all this,’ answered the Spartan, rising to his feet and pacing nervously back and forth across the room. ‘But, on the other hand, these are our laws.’
‘Then there is no hope.’
‘Listen, Philippides, tomorrow I will speak in favour of your request to send our army immediately. I can do no more than this. But at the worst, it’s only a question of gaining time. The full moon is not so far off; in a little more than a week we could be side by side at Marathon. Believe me when I say that this is sincerely what my heart wishes.’
‘I do believe you,’ said the champion, warmly gripping the Spartan warrior’s hand, ‘and this is a great comfort to me. I hope that your words will be heeded; I am sure that together we can defeat the enemy, and then it will be my honour to return your generous hospitality. Now I must ask you to excuse me, I’m very tired and would retire. I pray that the night brings counsel to you, Aristarkhos, and to your fellow citizens, in whose hands rests the destiny not only of your own country, but that of all Hellas.’
‘May the gods’ wisdom be with us,’ said Aristarkhos, rising to accompany his guest to his room.
*
‘Brithos! Brithos! Hurry, our men are on their way back! You can see the vanguard from the road to Argos.’
‘I’m coming, Aghias, wait up!’
The two boys ran along the road that crossed the centre of the city in the direction of the northern port. They got past a crowd of women, old men and children thronging on the main road, and managed to find a good vantage point. Having been informed by a messenger, the ephors were already at the gate awaiting the army’s arrival.
‘Look, Aghias,’ said Brithos to his companion, ‘there’s the head of the column, and there’s the king!’
King Cleomenes advanced on a black thoroughbred, surrounded by his escort. The king’s rather curved shoulders and greying hair revealed the weight of his years.
‘It’s strange,’ said Brithos to his friend, ‘I don’t see my father; as a relative to the king, he should be at his side.’
‘No reason to worry,’ Aghias reassured him, ‘there was no battle, so there couldn’t have been any fallen; that’s what the messenger told the ephors. They said that our warriors arrived after the Athenians had already won the battle. The field of Marathon was still covered with Persian bodies. We’ll soon know more. Look, the king is meeting the ephors. The herald will be making a public announcement in the square this afternoon.’
The boys drew closer to the column of warriors entering the city, who broke ranks as they met family and relations waiting for them.
‘There’s my brother Adeimantos,’ said Aghias, pointing to a hoplite of the rear guard. ‘Let’s go hear what’s happened. Surely he’ll be able to tell us about your father. ‘Look,’ he added, ‘your mother’s arrived too, with your nurse. They must be worried.’
Abandoning their observation point, the two boys ran together towards Adeimantos, who at that moment was stepping away from the ranks and removing his heavy helmet. Aghias nearly tore it from his hands.
‘Give us your weapons to carry, Adeimantos, you must be tired.
’
‘Yes, we’ll carry them home for you,’ echoed Brithos, slipping the shield from his left arm.
The group moved towards the western section of the city, where Adeimantos’ house was. The warriors had been allowed to return to their own family homes instead of to their respective barracks, as was usually the case.
‘Where’s my father?’ Brithos asked immediately. ‘Why didn’t he come back with you? The women of my house are troubled.’
‘Don’t worry,’ answered Adeimantos, ‘your mother will be notified immediately by one of the horsemen of the king’s guard. Your father decided to stay to participate in the funeral of a fallen Athenian warrior.’
Meanwhile, they had arrived home. The returning warrior was greeted joyfully by his family. He loosened his armour and sat down, waiting for one of the women to prepare his bath.
‘Do you know who it was?’ asked Brithos curiously.
Adeimantos frowned. ‘Remember that Athenian champion who came to Sparta to ask for our aid?’
‘Of course,’ replied Brithos, ‘he was our guest when he stayed in the city.’
‘The champion of Olympia?’ asked Aghias.
‘Yes, exactly,’ answered his brother. ‘When the battle was over, the defeated Persians returned to their fleet to attempt a surprise attack against Phaleros, the port of Athens, which they thought was unguarded. But Philippides, the champion, had been sent by the Athenian commander to announce victory and to warn the city’s defending forces. He covered the two hundred and fifty stadia from Marathon to Athens without ever stopping, after having fought the entire morning on the front line. It cost him his life. He arrived in time to bring his message, then he collapsed to the ground, dead from exhaustion.’
The two boys were silent, fascinated and struck by his words.
‘He was a great and generous man; his was a warrior’s and a champion’s death. The Greeks will remember him!’
Brithos nodded thoughtfully and rose to his feet. ‘I must be going home,’ he said. ‘My mother’s alone and she’ll be waiting for me. See you tomorrow at the training field,’ he added, turning to his friend. Leaving the house of Adeimantos, Brithos walked quickly down the road towards the northern gate from which he had entered. At the gate, he turned right towards Mount Taygetus, in the direction of his own house, which was nearly at the foot of the mountain.
At the side of the road, he noticed a small crowd of old men, women and children. They were the families of the Helots who had followed the Spartan army as servants and baggage carriers. The joy of these people was tremendous. Many of them had seen their loved ones depart with great fear and anguish. They had heard terrible things about the Persian army, and even though the Helots were not used in combat, there was reason for worry. If the enemy had won, at best their men would have been captured as slaves and taken far away. The poor wretches would have had no hope of ransom or of bargaining with the Persians, since their families had barely enough to survive. The news of frightening Persian massacres on the islands added to their terror. They had heard that entire populations had been deported to distant countries with no hope of return.
Young Brithos watched them with a sense of contempt. People who thought of nothing but saving their own squalid lives didn’t seem worthy of being called human beings. At the same time, the embarrassment of the futile intervention at Marathon weighed upon Brithos, as on the whole warrior caste, quite heavily. The unthinkable and striking Athenian victory obscured the prestige that the Spartan military forces had always enjoyed. It seemed to Brithos that those wretched Helots were delighting, even if they dared not show it, in their masters’ embarrassment.
As Brithos drew nearer, the excited voices fell silent, and every gaze dropped to the ground save one: that of a boy a little younger than he, who looked him directly in the eye with a strange expression, then took off in the direction of Mount Taygetus with a curious rolling gait.
4
THE SHIELD
THE LAST PART OF that tumultuous year passed uneventfully for the mountain people. They returned to their monotonous existence, punctuated only by the passing seasons and their work in the fields.
Talos had become a strong young man and, as he was often out on his own, he began to seek the company of other young people. The remote position of his grandfather’s cottage, near the high spring, had kept him separated from other children throughout his boyhood. But the Helots were used to living such isolated lives in the fields and pastures because the Spartans had always prevented them from gathering in villages. Only the old men recalled the ancient times when the Helot people had their own cities, surrounded by walls and crowned by towers.
They told of the dead city, abandoned on Mount Ithome, in the heart of Messenia. The towers, crumbled and corroded by time, now served as nests for crows and sparrowhawks. Figs and wild olive trees had sunk their roots among the dilapidated houses.
But beneath those moss-covered ruins slept the ancient kings. The shepherds who passed with their flocks during the seasonal migrations had strange stories to tell. On the night of the first full moon of spring, they said, eerie flashes of light pulsed through the ruins, and a great grey wolf could be seen wandering among the fallen walls. And if the moon disappeared behind a cloud, a lament would be heard, coming from beneath the earth, from deep within the mountain: the cry of the kings, prisoners of Thanatos.
Talos listened fascinated to these marvellous stories, but he considered them imaginings – fables told by old men. His thoughts were occupied, instead, by the work that needed to be done and by his daily tasks: it had become his responsibility to deliver their produce to the family of old Krathippos. He knew that they could continue to live untroubled as long as nothing was lacking in the home of their Spartan master, down in the valley.
On his daily journey from the mountain to the plain he often met up with a Helot peasant who farmed another stretch of land near the Eurotas river that was also the property of Krathippos. The elderly peasant, Pelias, was a widower. He had only one daughter, and had been finding it quite difficult to carry on his work in the fields alone. And so Talos sometimes brought his flock down to the plain and entrusted it to the care of Pelias’ daughter, Antinea, while he took care of the heaviest and most pressing chores himself. He sometimes stayed several days in a row on Pelias’ farm.
‘It seems that you have forgotten where you live,’ teased Kritolaos. ‘We see you so rarely here! It wouldn’t be, by chance, little Antinea infusing you with all this new enthusiasm for working in the fields? By Zeus, I wanted to make you into a shepherd, and here you are becoming a farmer!’
‘Oh, stop that, grandfather,’ Talos replied brusquely. ‘That girl doesn’t interest me at all. It’s poor old Pelias that I’m worried about. If I weren’t there to help him with the toughest jobs, he could never manage on his own.’
‘Naturally,’ replied Kritolaos. ‘I know that you have a good heart as well as strong arms. It’s only that I have heard that little Antinea is becoming very pretty indeed, that’s all.’
In fact, Pelias’ daughter was beautiful. She had long blonde hair and eyes as green as grass moist with dew. Her body, although forged by the hard work of the fields, was lithe and graceful, and Talos was often distracted from his work as he saw her pass with her quick step, carrying an earthenware pot full of spring water on her head.
But that wasn’t all. Sometimes he tried to guess the shape of her breasts and the curve of her hips under the short chiton that she wore gathered at the waist with a cord. And this threw his normally serene spirit into such confusion that he was quite brusque with her, almost rude. He was afraid that she could read how he felt plainly on his face, and he did everything he could so as not to be discovered. And yet, he couldn’t help but watch her as she bent down to gather a sheaf of dry grass for the animals and her thighs were bared: a sudden blaze rushed to his head and his temples throbbed madly.
What confused him the most was that Kritolaos didn’t n
eed to guess at anything: he seemed to know Talos’ every thought. It was unbearable to be considered a young ram in heat! So, at times Talos preferred to set out alone to listen to the skylarks and blackbirds or to lay traps for the foxes in the forest.
Was this what it meant to become a man? Yes, this, but so much more: mysterious sounds resonating within, sudden tremors. Wanting to climb up to the highest peaks, to let out a yell and wait for it to echo back from far off pinnacles. Tears in your eyes when the sun at dusk sets fire to the clouds, like thousands of lambs, fleece in flames, grazing in the blue and then dissolving into the darkness. Your chest swelling with the melody of the nightingale and the raucous shrieks of the sparrowhawk. A desire for wings with which to fly far away over the mountains and over the valleys glittering with silver olive trees; over the rivers, between the willows and the poplars in the scented silent night, by the pale light of the moon . . .
These were the things that Talos, the cripple, felt in his heart.
*
One day, Talos was bringing his sheep down from the mountain to Pelias’ house so he could lend the old farmer a hand. The great feast of Artemis Orthia, when the young Spartiates would be initiated as warriors, was drawing near. Krathippos’ house had to be put in order and decorated, the wood for the hearth had to be prepared, and a lamb had to be slaughtered for their banquet. Talos had left home at the first rays of dawn, taking the path that led to the plain. He emerged from the forest just as the sun was rising above the horizon. Suddenly he heard yelling from a nearby clearing.
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