“Nicias asks a question,” Cleon replied. “Far be it for me to deny our distinguished friend an answer, fashioned in the same style with which he answered mine! He wonders how many Spartans occupy the island. I say this is a strange thing for a commander to ask a civilian! How many Spartans, Nicias? I tell you I have no idea—and I say further that the real problem lies not in my ignorance, but in yours! Why don’t you know, Nicias?”
Cleon had fallen into his signature mode now—his tone rising, his right hand pounding his thigh. The assemblymen looked at each other with anticipation; with any luck, Cleon would soon be running up and down the sanctum, voice in a shriek, excoriating citizens at random as if each of them was Nicias.
“What fun our commander makes of the basic good sense of the Athenians! While we all wonder why the Lacedaemonians are allowed to make fools of us month upon month, Nicias dares quibble over qualifications. As if only generals are permitted to take pride in the reputation of Athenian arms! As if honest citizens are not obliged to sniff out incompetence! Tell us, is this how little you think of us, Nicias? Tell us!”
A wave of sound, like one of the monstrous surges that pounded the coast after a storm at sea, rose from the back and broke over the front row where Nicias glowered.
“There have been a lot of questions posed today—questions that have gotten no good answers from either side. And so permit me to make not a question but a statement. I want to make a statement that is so simple, so self-evident, that even we, we unschooled Athenians, can understand it! Here it is. . . .”
2.
If twenty thousand pairs of ears made a sound as they pricked to attention, Cleon heard it. After the requisite pause, he opened his arms wide in a gesture of indiscriminate, encompassing, yet self-aggrandizing love.
“Neither Nicias nor I know the strength of the enemy—but I say now that should not matter! What care had the men who fought at Marathon for troop counts, Nicias? Or the citizens who took the oars at Salamis? The verdict of this war, and the future of the Athenians, depend on either routing the Lacedaemonians or taking them to ransom. For that reason the task must be done despite the odds. It must be done despite the excuses of topography, bad supplies, or interference from the enemy ships. It must be done despite fears for our personal reputation if we fail! For the Athenians can accept defeat—they can understand and forgive, as they have the valiant Demosthenes, who lost so many in Aetolia. What they cannot forgive, though, is the failure even to come to grips with the task—to flit and skulk and delay while the chance for victory slips away!
“Do I have your attention, Nicias? If I do, I call on you to avail us of the talent you showed so well against the Megarians. The moment you present yourself at Pylos, and redouble your efforts against them, the Lacedaemonians will fall in no more than twenty days. That is my prediction—you will bear them home in chains in twenty days. For I have faith in you, Nicias, if you do not!”
Cleon came down with his fellow citizens reduced to silence before him. Men came to the Assembly to hear him speak for many reasons; in a body that could only function in an air of mind-numbing decorum, they came for Cleon’s histrionic excess, for his humor, for his talent of turning any debate, on any issue he chose, into an elemental struggle between light and darkness. He had often used the tactic of picking out one member of the opposition in the crowd, some specimen of his class, and blustering directly at him. But today another line had been crossed. Pericles, in a generation on the platform, rarely deigned to mention the name of any living man, let alone expose him to direct criticism. Cleon had dropped all such delicacy in his war against Nicias. A debate about policy had become, in his hands, a prosecution.
Nicias was obliged to defend himself, but he did not rise at first. Instead, he listened as his allies whispered into his ear, showing no reaction except a weary nod as the conferral ended. There was no evidence of anticipation, no joy in rhetorical combat on his face when he came forward. Offered the wreath, he didn’t put it on his head, but held it in his hand, as if he expected to speak only a moment.
“To Cleon’s rantings, I make no reply except this: if he would do better, I would be pleased to surrender my command to him—if the Assembly agrees.”
The rancor gathered by degrees as Nicias withdrew. Citizens turned to complete strangers and argued with them; the place divided between those who denounced Nicias’ offer as an abject surrender and those who saw it as a brilliant tactic. The latter observed that Cleon, who by upbringing knew leather making better than soldiering, would now be forced into a difficult choice: either accept nomination to lead a campaign with uncertain prospects, or refuse a command that he himself had claimed should be wrapped up in twenty days. Nonsense, replied the skeptics—Nicias’ shame for abandoning his command would damage him more than any defeat would harm Cleon. Back and forth they went as the magistrate screamed for order, and the sun climbed higher, and the lunch vendors in the market looked up and wondered why the Assembly was taking so long that morning.
At length Cleon took the floor and raised his hands for quiet. The uproar died at once.
“Athenians,” he said, “how have things come to this? The generals of our city now surrender their sacred responsibilities like fancy friends trading whores across the banquet table! Like all nobles with too much to lose, Nicias fears the consequences of defeat more than he craves the fruits of victory. In this hour of crisis, he therefore indulges in petty rhetorical ploys, hoping to confuse the People by shifting attention to his own indispensability. Nicias, your selfishness is showing! Very well, then, let us call this sad bluff! I accept your challenge, Nicias, if you truly are derelict enough to surrender your command. I have no faith in the depth of your sincerity!”
The herald accepted the wreath and looked again to Nicias. The latter did not rise to speak, but merely shook his assent. The herald looked to the president of the Assembly, who also shook his head.
“The measure is before the People,” the herald announced, “to accept the resignation of Nicias and dispatch Cleon in his place.”
A thunderous cheer went up that echoed back from the hills. But the tone was only half-serious: in these dismal times, it came as a fine joke, to replace Nicias with this windbag. It might even serve Cleon right, to get his hands dirty at last!
Cleon went white. He had not been thinking of the actual effect of his words, but only of scoring a victory over Nicias. Shaken, he demanded the myrtle from the herald, who ignored him. He tried to seize it; the herald, who was a much taller man, held it out of his reach. The spectacle became a burlesque: Cleon, desperate to take back his words, was reduced to hanging on the other’s arm, trying to use his weight to pull down the hand that held the wreath. At last the herald relented. Cleon snatched the myrtle and unleashed a stentorian wail.
“O perfidy! O my dear Athenians! Don’t let yourselves be fooled by the schemes of devious men! Perhaps I speak too earnestly in defense of my city; it is a tempting excess for me, I admit, but no vice! I say let Nicias show similar zeal as he prosecutes the war. If he had, we would not be in the position we are now, casting about for his replacement. . . .”
“WE WANT CLEON!” shouted a voice from the left. The demand was followed by an outburst of guffaws from that side, which provoked the right to rise in indignation, crying, “YES, WE WANT CLEON!” The wings of the Assembly then became locked in a competition over who wanted Cleon more; the herald and then the president could scarcely be heard over the riot as they demanded order, and Cleon stood helpless, trying to fathom what was happening.
Looking down, he regarded Nicias, who avoided returning his gaze. Cleon believed he saw mirth in the manner of Nicias’ furtiveness—some trace of smugness that boiled his blood. Cleon reached up and again felt the dispatch under the fabric of his chiton. The touch of it restored what had been shaken in him; if Nicias had known that the Spartans held the island with such a small force, he would never have surrendered his command. The advantage, then, was still
with Cleon—if he had the courage to exploit it. He raised a hand for quiet.
“The measure is before us, and I say let us vote, gentlemen! Unlike Nicias, I am not afraid of the Lacedaemonians. True, I have not seen battle in decades, since my days as an ephebe. But because Athens trusts me, and I love Athens, I accept this challenge.
“Moreover, I will not strip Athens of defenders to guarantee my word. I will take only the foreigners who are in the city—the peltasts from Thracian Aenus, the men from the islands of Lemnos and Imbros—as well as a company or two of archers. With these few troops, and those under the command of Demosthenes, I pledge to accomplish what more experienced men have not. I will wipe the sneers from the Spartans’ faces. I will capture them, or kill them where they stand. Twenty days from when I depart, it shall be done.”
3.
Word of Zeuxippos’ return from Messenia spread ahead of him through the villages of Laconia. Before it reached Kynosoura, Andreia could sense the tidings were not good. There was an air that filled Sparta with news of victories of the military or diplomatic kind—an air not of outright celebation, but of quiet reaffirmation of the expected order of things. In this world, the Lacedamonians got their way and foreigners yielded, and it would always be so until the day it wasn’t. That air was absent the day of the old man’s return. There was only a sense of cruel suspension, of a sword that had slipped a little from its tether but still hung over them all.
Zeuxippos would only come to her after he had reported to the ephors. She filled that time in the garden with her daughter, pulling out weeds from between the rows of onion and chickpea. As it was getting difficult to support herself bending over, she sat on a reed mat on the ground, directing the small girl to the places that were out of her reach. Towheaded Melitta, by now scarcely visible under a mop of fine curls, presented her mother with handfuls of stems and leaves.
“No, my silly one—take the weeds by the roots, like this—”
Melitta squealed and snapped her body around in a twist, costing herself her balance. Andreia, half in nervous suspense, made the mistake of laughing at the girl, who bloomed at this encouragement and found her feet to begin the maneuver again. “Silly one. Silly one!” she repeated in varying intonations, spinning.
With the sky threatening a storm that had still not come, she found herself eyeing the oily undersides of the clouds as they slipped by Taygetus. In fact she was indifferent to the prospect of rain. With the birth just weeks away, she would have stayed in her bed if the discomfort of lying down had not been as bad as sitting up. She had not been to the market in a month, sending instead the helot girl Damatria had lent to her. The girl was now overdue, and as her eyes rose to scan the path for her return, Andreia gave a short, involuntary gasp. Someone was approaching the house, but it was no maid. Instead, she recognized the thin form of Zeuxippos, swinging his staff ahead of him in that peculiar way he did, like a scythe.
“There is only a little I can tell you, for there may be informers about,” he began in a conspiratorial hush.
“Of course, elder,” Andreia replied, her head bowed.
“I can confirm that your husband is on the island. There is no question now. He is in good company, as the sons of many well-born families are there: Eudamos, grandson of Isidas; Areus, son of Damis; Epitadas, your brother-in-law. An entire generation of future leaders.”
“So the elders will treat with the Athenians for their release?”
“We have treated with them. There was a truce, but it has failed.”
“But won’t they try again?”
“The Athenians are infatuated with glory. The Gerousia can offer nothing more. We anticipate an attack soon.” He was blunt, but when he saw the effect of his words, he added, “You should prepare yourself.”
He watched her absorb this with the courage appropriate to a Spartan wife. Inwardly, he mused over the ancient predicament of woman, prone on the ground with breasts teeming, body replete with the seed of beautiful men fated to die. He reached out to tousle the hair of little Melitta, bright and careless. Yet how soon would she, too, suffer the perennial sorrow of her sex? The thought gave him sentimental pleasure, like the memory of some long-done hurt. He moved to leave.
“My husband—” she said, halting. He paused, looking at her. “Can you get a message to him for me?”
Zeuxippos believed such a thing to be impossible. But what harm would it do to indulge her?
“I can try, though I promise nothing.”
“Tell him—he has a son.”
The old man smiled. It is somewhat premature, he thought, but it was a good message. He then bid her good-bye with a touch of his staff to his brow.
On his way back, Zeuxippos sighted the lady Damatria coming the other direction with a harvest basket on her arm. Curious, he paused to watch her make her way down to the farmhouse. Andreia, struggling on the balls of her feet, rose to greet her. The younger woman said something to Damatria, who stared back, regarding. Andreia fell into the other’s arms, holding her so tightly that only their clothes distinguished daughter from elder. Zeuxippos sighed and thought how pretty, how reassuring, this sisterhood of shared grief. Among the Lacedaemonians, men were at war, boys growing, women weeping. May all be forever as it was!
As they embraced, the women thought of what each faced losing on the island. Damatria believed she could be forgiven for thinking of Epitadas, just as the other must worry for her beloved Antalcidas. Yet as Andreia wrung out tears on her shoulder, Damatria felt a certain awe in the trust she had earned. She had never favored women very much in her life, after all. There were few things in this world, she believed, that were more ignoble than woman. Yet now she found herself embracing another of her kind, close enough now to smell the dampness on her face, and feel both her trembling and the capsule of her womb, hard as a full wine sack, pressed against the pit of her abdomen.
Melitta, feeling left out, grasped the thighs of her mother and grandmother. Had he seen it, Zeuxippos would have approved the girl’s early taste of the portion of mortal females. But he was already gone, down the path to mess with the Spit Companions.
IX
The Starlings
1.
They heard the flock before they saw it. The sound was like that of a second sea on the landward side—a rhythmic rising and falling of sibilant waves washing the island. When Antalcidas poked his head from beneath his cloak he saw a flickering cloud conceal the dawn. As the starlings came nearer, he made out their individual forms in the mass. Each was a black, pointed, busy thing, fluttering in synchronized fashion with the whole. Of their number he could not guess; the Lacedaemonians, who had little use for figures above ten thousand, could only look at the immensity and think, “Many birds.”
The fire had burned for three days, scorching the island from end to end. The Spartans had lost no one to the flames, yet stood bereft of cover, pregnable, on a smoking spit of ash. The provisions they had hoarded from the truce were ruined, as were whatever shields, cloaks, and spears were left in the fire’s path. As if smelling their vulnerability, the enemy ships made ever tighter circles around the island. Every man, from the youngest under-thirty to Epitadas himself, understood that the Athenians could now gauge their exact numbers from the heights of old Pylos. An attack would come soon.
But the misfortune of the Lacedaemonians presented an opportunity for the birds. Approaching in their hundreds of thousands, the starlings broke into two cohorts—one making for the vertical cliffs on the lee shore, the other directly for the Spartan camp. Along the cliffs, they intruded into the nesting holes of the swallows and doves, stabbing at whatever moved inside. The mothers fled by thousands into the air, flying over the bay and wheeling around to protest their nestlings’ slaughter. But they were still outnumbered by the frantic invaders, who flew in patterns alternating between chaos and unity, tips of beaks wet with blood, feathers gleaming an iridescent purple-black like the carapaces of beetles.
“This kin
d of bird,” observed Doulos, “is rare so far south, over water.”
“A foul portent,” said Frog.
“Foul for the Athenians.”
The starlings at the top of the island came to feast on the seeds that littered the ground after fire. The flock descended in a broad wedge, crowding onto the ashes. The birds in the vanguard pecked as others flew over them from the back, rushing for the uneaten seeds a few inches ahead. In this way the mass resembled a liquid wave that rolled forward but never broke. Now and again they would come upon some insect or lizard baked in its tracks, and a knot of inky opponents would gather around the carcass, picking it apart as the great black wave rolled on, leaving them behind until the contestants had split their prize.
The Lacedaemonians said nothing as the birds worked their way down the slope. The visitors took wing at last as they reached a line of sterile boulders, forming themselves into a pliant cloud that seemed to flash white and black as the birds, in choral unison, alternately exposed dark backs and pale bellies. Rising, they merged with the other cohort ascending from the cliff. The reunited host formed itself into a twisting tower, then a sphere, then a flattened disk as it flitted in indecision. By whatever reason moved them, the birds finally went south. A moment later they were over the Athenian base on Little Sphacteria. A pair of birds dove toward it, trailed by a game few, but when the majority refused to follow, the deviators reversed course and rejoined the mass. The flock was far over the water, halfway toward a double-humped mountain on the shore, when Antalcidas lost sight of it.
2.
“Epitadas, I would speak with you,” said Frog as he planted his defiant squatness athwart the path. Epitadas, bending to the inevitable, turned an impassive face on the other; Frog had been insisting on yet another public confrontation since they had driven the enemy from the island, but had been frustrated so far. At least this time he chose a place away from the other men.
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