The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  Antalcidas found himself walking stiffly onward, bewildered. Certainly Birthmark had recognized him—nobody forgot the faces of those with whom he had shared the Rearing. Such things always transcended circumstances that might take a man up or down in the esteem of everyone else. If Birthmark had been declared a trembler, Antalcidas would still have greeted him, perhaps even shared a drink with him. And he thought: how cold the Lacedaemonians had become, how petty in their resentments!

  This thought put him in mind of his dear Andreia, who once told him that, of all the Greeks, the Spartans had the broadest territory and the narrowest hearts. Remembering her, a smile came over him as he redoubled his pace toward the little house in Kynosoura. The son of Antalcidas grows. It occurred to him that the boy must be walking by then, and learning the songs of his ancestors. If he hurried, he might yet be first to put a sword in the hands of his son.

  9.

  He didn’t have to wait long to see Andreia. As he came up the path she was bent to her garden work, picking herbs for the kitchen. Hearing him, she stopped, straightened; when she turned to look over her shoulder at him there was no reaction on her face. The smile died on Antalcidas’ lips. He was reminded suddenly of a feeling he’d had on a patrol high in the mountains of Arcadia, when the snows finally broke in late spring. Standing below, he was sure the avalanche would bury them, until the streaming white comet was diverted into some hidden ravine, and he and his men stood alone, abandoned by death. Andreia, too, turned aside. Yet the wall of her frigidity still bore down on him.

  In his prison days he had spent much of his time daydreaming of her. He imagined the time of their separation—and her latest pregnancy—would have changed her, and occupied himself with imagining her appearance on the day of their reunion. As she conducted him inside wordlessly, he saw that his fantasies had failed him: Andreia’s figure had not become plumper with home comforts, nor her hair grayer, nor her cheeks more deeply lined with age. Instead of matured, she was simply diminished, as if worn down by the years. He remembered her standing nearly his equal in height, and was surprised to find that her head barely rose to his shoulders. Instead of gaining weight, she was thinner. Through the ungirt side of her chiton he could the blade of her hip protruding, the white of the bone almost visible beneath the taut translucence of her skin. Her hair had neither the luminance of her youth, nor the gray tendrils of age, but had become only darker, flatter, duller.

  She still said nothing as he washed and dressed the road blisters on his feet. Playing the proud Spartan patriarch, he would not deign to engage in domestic chatter, but would wait for the occasion to measure out his words. He got his chance when Melitta ran into the house, and upon discovering her father sitting there, froze in her tracks. Antalcidas, grinning without reservation, raised a hand to summon the girl to him. Panic flashed on his daughter’s face as she backed away and fled.

  It was not an unusual response of a Spartan girl to her father. “She looks well,” Antalcidas said at the top of Andreia’s bowed head. “But where, may I ask, is our son?”

  With a sharp upward glance, Andreia met his eyes. All at once, his seigneurial pretentions crumbled; he parted his lips to say something, but his voice died under the blaze of her look. She rose, and after dropping the cleaning rag into the basin, retreated without explanation up the stairs to the women’s quarters.

  Thus began the long process by which Antalcidas learned the fate of little Molobrus. She never said outright that his son lay with the jackals on the mountain; she let the story out in pieces, by means of frowns and significant silences, until even a proud Spartan patriarch could guess the truth. When he took to going around the house with a stricken look on his face, she said her first words to him since his return:

  “And so the father is last to know the fruit of his sins.”

  Antalcidas thought about this statement for a full day, his brow furrowed, until he attempted a defense the next morning.

  “Why do you blame me, instead of the judges who condemned him, or the ephors who stripped us of our dignity?”

  Andreia gave nothing but a bitter grimace as she took a clean rag to Melitta’s face. The girl, for her part, blamed her mother’s unhappiness on the arrival of this presumptuous stranger. The weight of a trembler’s disgrace, the gossip, and the loss of privileges, were calculated to fall on his child too, so that he was obliged to explain to her why her father was the lowest sort of man. He came to accept he would never know his daughter, and that in fact she was just waiting for him to disappear. Her cheek screamed the question when he touched it, and her hair, and her eyes: why are you still here?

  He tried with Andreia again that evening, when she stood at the hearth, stirring the stew pot.

  “So this is the homecoming you think worthy of me?”

  This was more than Andreia could take. She threw the spoon at him, scalding his cheek with the boiling sauce on its bowl. He touched the burn with this fingers, a look of childlike hurt in his eyes.

  “Tell me what I have done to you, woman—except my duty to you?”

  “I only wish I had the courage to throw a knife!” she cried, and with eyes welling over, fled upstairs again. Though a wife’s quarters were beneath a Spartan warrior’s dignity to enter, Antalcidas followed. When he topped the steps, he found Andreia collapsed on her day couch, face buried in her hands. As he approached to sit by her, she spoke from behind her fingers.

  “Even now you can’t grieve for him.”

  He thought about this. He was saddened by the news at first, but it passed; he had, after all, never met the boy. Nor was it rare for infants to die in Laconia.

  “A fine figure of a man I would be, to shed tears like you.”

  “Weep for your name, then, which is as dead as you should be now.”

  He pulled her hands from her face, and said in a voice he usually reserved for correcting subordinates in the field, “You know I had nothing to do with it.”

  “This was your city,” she replied, “yet you let this happen.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “None of that is important. It is what people think.”

  He sat trying to reason with Andreia for hours, and again the next day, and the day after that, though nothing, not even the surrender on the island, made him feel less a man than the number of words he wasted to convince her. With every day, he could see the crust of her indifference thickening. At last he took the husband’s prerogative with her, fighting his way through her stiff limbs. With his eyes, he made the only promise he could, to replace what was taken. Yet with every act of entering her, searching for her center, her could feel her receding ahead, into the darkness.

  “I can’t. Not in this place—or with you,” she told him.

  She never flung the ultimate accusation, trembler, but the word seemed poised to follow, like the inevitable conclusion to a syllogism.

  He got up, but before he left he paused.

  “Then the true coward is you,” he said.

  10.

  Three years later, the Spartan army stood on a plain near the Peloponnesian city of Mantinea, facing an allied army of Argives, Arcadians, Mantineans, and Athenians. A battle was going to be fought because the treaty ending the war with Athens had been a sham: in the ensuing years, neither side had fulfilled its obligations. The Athenians were firmly entrenched at Pylos, and the Lacedaemonians still occupied the Athenian ally of Amphipolis. All the Greek powers sent out secret emissaries to negotiate defensive alliances against their adversaries, frightening each other with vague fears of Spartan-Athenian hegemony, an Argive-Corinthian plot to take control of the Peloponnese, or a Spartan-Theban dagger pointed at the heart of Athens. Each party insisted on terms that would make it finally, completely secure—until the hard bargaining pushed the negotiations to collapse and the diplomats went off to try their luck with the other side. This, in turn, magnified the fears of everyone else, who redoubled their own underhanded dealings.

  In Sp
arta, the capitulators of Sphacteria remained in disgrace. The 120 Spartiates were still forbidden to attend their dining clubs, hold public office, or engage in any financial business; the 171 under-thirties faced permanent status as landless Inferiors. Yet, even as the people shunned them, there was a general fear that the survivors might abandon the Spartan cause. The army was by now undermanned and overstretched, having fewer than a third of the eight thousand troops it had in the time of Leonidas. To forestall their loss, all the ex-Equals were given new panoplies, free from the state, by magistrates who would barely look at them. Rumors were allowed to circulate that the capitulators might be pardoned after all—if they showed themselves worthy on the battlefield.

  Antalcidas stood in the ranks of the Inferiors with his state-granted shield and spear. It was the first time since his return from Athens that he had left Laconia. His old Spartiate comrades would barely have recognized him: he had lost his lean, hungry look, his face having filled out in a sudden lapse into middle age; his beard, which fell now to his navel, was prematurely white. In his shame, forbidden to wear the crimson of Lacedaemonians in good standing, he wore gray to the occasion of his death.

  The Spartans had been late to realize their enemies were on their way. As the battle would occur on Mantinean soil, the natives took pride of place on their right wing, with the Arcadians, Argives, and Athenians stretching out to their left. Guided by their training, the Lacedaemonians formed their lines rapidly, with the Sciritan Nigh-dwellers facing the Mantineans, the ranks of Inferiors—including Antalcidas—against the Arcadians, and almost all the surviving Spartiates filling out the line opposite Argives and Athenians. The Eurypontid king Agis, who occupied the center with his three hundred knights, would fight with very heavy burden that day: to win the field, or find the Lacedaemonian army broken in his hands. Sparta herself, unwalled and unguarded, lay only two days’ march away.

  Antalcidas picked up his shield. He had made sure to get command of a twenty-four man platoon, with himself in the front rank. This would make him visible to all his men when his time came. Turning to examine them, he faced a gallery of greenhorns, Nigh-Dwellers, reprobates, and reformed cowards like himself.

  “Your orders are simple, scum: keep the pace—and watch how men should die!”

  He cracked the head of his spear against his shield, and waited for the others to do the same. He heard their answer, the percussion of iron against bronze, the ancient music of the ranks, stretching back to echo the battle order of the Homeric heroes before the walls of Priam. Satisfied, he raised his cheek guards, spat, and pulled his helmet down low around his ears.

  The enemy line came down the hill, approaching on the double-quick. The boy-pipers behind the Spartans began to play. Without thinking, the Lacedaemonians moved their feet to that deliberate cadence, marching at a slower pace but good order. Antalcidas’ heart was pounding now, surging with exhilaration, for there was no feeling like being swept before a clanking human beast of ten thousand legs, propelled unstoppably toward that wall of hostile spears. His urine coursed down his legs, but not in fear—in time, with the inevitability of it, he would ejaculate too, for there would be much fucking to do that day. He would rip pussies for them all, the men he would penetrate with his spear. As his men watched in wonder, he charged into the arms of the enemy, letting out as he ran a wail of joy like a man coming into his beautiful bride.

  Those who witnessed it spoke for years of Stone at Mantinea.

  11.

  The lady Damatria laid out Antalcidas on the same table where her youngest was honored a few short years before. Equals from all over Laconia came to marvel at her good fortune: to have a husband acquit himself well in battle was worthy enough, and to see him followed by a heroic son like Epitadas a true bounty. But to live to savor the glory of a second son was a rare thing indeed. With the victory at Mantinea, she became the most envied woman in Sparta. Instead of being known as “Damatria the Grasping” or “Damatria, Queen of Bitches,” she earned a new epithet among her peers in Kynosoura: “Damatria the Thrice-Blessed.”

  She sat by the garlanded head of the corpse with a handkerchief to daub away the tears that could not come. No one could blame her, for what was there to cry about? She received her admirers all in turn—the two kings of Sparta, Agis and Pleistoanax, and Ramphias, the former governor of Cythera, and old Endius, the boy-herd, and the packmates Redhead, Cheese, and Rehash, and all the members of the Hill Wolves. She knew that all of them had shunned Antalcidas when he was alive, but had rushed to see him when they learned the manner of his death. She wondered, would he have forgiven them? Of course he would! The boy was such a fool—he lacked the wits even to keep a secret grudge. She kissed her fingers and laid them along her son’s cold temple. No one ever claimed he was sprung from good stock.

  But he had served his mother well in another sense. She had been sitting there all morning, accepting the gifts of cake and good wishes from people she relished despising, when she realized she had not imagined the face of that helot all day. At some point she had not been aware, the rape had ceased to dominate her thoughts. It was a memory now—painful to be sure, which she loathed to dwell upon—but a memory nonetheless. Somehow repaired now, she loosed a tear for Antalcidas’ sake. She would invite Andreia and her little girl to live with her in her big house.

  “Rejoice, for you have given your last child to Sparta!” old Isidas, the ex-ephor, told her. Wetting his ancient lips through their thicket of beard hairs, he asked, “So, do you still think him ‘the shame of Sparta?’ ”

  Damatria smiled. “Not at all. Both of my sons were good boys. They have exceeded their fathers.”

  Acknowledgments

  The primary source for the events at Sphacteria is Thucydides’ History, Book Four. This ancient account is concise, substantial, but by no means copious in detail. I am indebted to the scholarship of Anton Powell, Adrienne Mayor, J. K. Anderson, A. H. M. Jones, Robert Flacelière, James Davidson, Victor Davis Hanson, and Barry Strauss in filling out this version at least semiplausibly. Richmond Lattimore translated the Tyrtaeus poem included in Chapter 1; Prof. James L. McGlew of the University of Missouri—Columbia advised me on the ancient Greek in Chapter IX. Thanks to Prof. Paul Cartledge of the University of Cambridge and Prof. David Hollander of Iowa State University for reviewing the manuscript, and to Prof. Joan Ramage of Lehigh University, who was invaluable in helping me to understand the natural history of Sphacteria. Special thanks as well to my editor, Brent Howard, my infinitely-patient agent, Jeff Gerecke, and of course, to my wife Maryanne.

  List of Characters

  Aeimnestus (Spartan): Renowned slayer of the Persian commander at the Battle of Plataea

  Agis II (Spartan): Eurypontid king of Sparta

  Alcander (Spartan): A city elder

  Andreia (Spartan): Daughter of Ramphias; wife of Antalcidas; mother of Melitta

  Antalcidas (Spartan): Illegitimate son of Damatria and an unknown helot; husband of Andreia; half-brother of Epitadas

  Arcesilaus (Spartan): A city elder

  “Beast” (Spartan): Nickname of Antalcidas’ second pack leader during the Rearing

  “Birthmark” (Spartan): Nickname of Antalcidas’ first pack leader during the Rearing

  “Cheese” (Spartan): Nickname of packmate of Antalcidas during the Rearing

  Cimon (Athenian): Noble and general; after the Great Earthquake of 464 BC, led Athenian expeditionary force to Laconia to expel the Messenian rebels from Mount Ithome

  Cleinias (Athenian): Oarsman of the lowest rank on the Terror

  Cleomenes I (Spartan): Renowned Agiad king of Sparta in the time before the Persian Wars; famously died by self-mutilation

  Cleon (Athenian): Popular politician and would-be military commander; leader of war party after the death of Pericles

  “Cricket” (Spartan): Nickname of packmate of Antalcidas during the Rearing

  Damatria (Spartan): Mother of Antalcidas and Epitadas; widow of Molobrus
and wealthy wife of Dorcis

  Damonon (Spartan): Member of the Spit Companions dining club

  Demosthenes (Athenian): Noble and general; after suffering defeat in Aetolian mountains, led the successful incursion into Messenia at Pylos (not to be confused with the fourth century orator)

  Dicaearchus (Athenian): Oarsman of the highest rank on the Terror

  Dorcis (Spartan): Wealthy landowner and second husband of Damatria

  Dorieus (Spartan): A member of the Spit Companions dining club

  Doulos (Helot): Servant and shieldbearer, given by Damatria to Antalcidas upon his maturity

  Endius (Spartan): Public official in charge of Rearing of Spartan youth (“boy-herd”)

  Epitadas (Spartan): Son of Damatria and Molobrus; half brother of Antalcidas; leader of Lacedaemonian garrison on Sphacteria

  Erinna (Helot): Servant and mistress of Dorcis

  Eudamidas (Spartan): A member of the Spit Companions dining club

  Eurymedon (Athenian): Fleet commander and superior to Demosthenes at the outbreak of the Pylos campaign

  “Frog” (Spartan): Nickname of packmate of Antalcidas during the Rearing; restive member of Lacedaemonian garrison during siege of Sphacteria

  Gorgo (Spartan): Sister of Leonis

  Herippidas (Spartan): A member of the Spit Companions dining club

  “Ho-hum” (Spartan): Nickname of packmate of Antalcidas during the Rearing

  Ianthe (Athenian): Wife of Demosthenes; succumbed to plague

  Iphitus (Spartan): Admiral and member of the Spit Companions dining club

  Isidas (Spartan): Ex-ephor, member of the Gerousia, and member of the Spit Companions dining club; peace emissary to Athens during the Pylos affair