The End of Sparta

by Victor Davis Hanson

  But none of this was so. Nêto cried out again, “Lophis is gone. Gone across—do you know?”

  Let her babble. His son was safe and on Xiphos. The bright crackling torchlights were leaving Mêlon’s head. The failed agents of death winged away for good now, still screeching as they quit their hovering above. Mêlon fully reentered the world of the living. Or at least he thought he had. But his hearing and sight for a time were no more than half of what they had been, and he was swarmed by these strange shapes and sounds.

  More than a thousand enemy dead were piled in heaps on the ground. Four hundred, it would turn out later, were elite Spartan Homoioi. Thousands of Boiotians were walking the fields, more curious to see what Spartan hoplites looked like, when safe and dead, than just eager for booty. Mêlon remembered the Theban cries during battle, “A dead army. A dead poliso.”—Apethane to strateuma, hê polis apethanen. Now he saw that it was no lie. In the torchlight, he made better sense of the mob about him. Some mounted longhairs scoured the battlefield for stragglers. Farmers tended the wounded. Their women were breaking out packs of rations and shooing off a new mob of looters and sightseers who were swarming over even the Boiotian corpses. Yet another heap of helmets, breastplates, shields, greaves, and spears was growing not far away beneath an old oak tree. Near it arose an even larger heap of capes, sandals, and cloaks. Silver coins were piled in the hollow shields.

  Most of the dead Boiotians were being carried home by their folk. Pelopidas had posted guards over these piles of loot. Eurybiades the booty-seller and a small army of helpers were already buying plundered armor—paying for it with the very coins his slaves had scavenged from the battlefield. A dead Spartan stared at Mêlon not more than five cubits distant. He was naked, just stripped, and already stiffening. His legs were covered with flies and worse. A spear had gone up under the jaw. Or at least something like that had crushed in half the man’s face. “Cover him,” Mêlon yelled. He had no desire to see any more of the dead. The mangling of the face gave the corpse an eerie frozen look about him, almost a grotesque smile. One hand was extended in the dirt with all of its fingers cut off, except the index, which was pointing right at Mêlon. For a moment he thought the dead man was whispering that he had killed Lophis. But then Mêlon shook himself out of another trance, just as two slaves ran up, grabbed the nude body by the heels, and dragged it over to a long line of Spartan corpses.

  Soon most of the plunder would be sold off by the states to pay for an annual festival to the victory goddess Nikê—and for a trophê of their victory at the spot where Kleombrotos had fallen and the enemy had at last turned. Mêlon was finally clear enough to understand that Nêto had, as ordered the previous night, hiked back up to the camp with Proxenos and joined Gorgos. But then somehow she had not gone home to the farm in the morning. Everything after that was a blur.

  On her way down the hill, only with luck had she fought off the Boiotians who wanted her wagon for their own wounded. She finished her story to Mêlon with news that they had seen Lophis in the first charge fall—and then nothing more. She was uncomfortable with the crowd that had drawn around Mêlon. They pointed to him as a hemi-god and murmured, “He, that one, killed the king. There he is, the lame Thespian of the prophecy. Right there, the killer of Kleombrotos. The gods do not lie about the mêlon.” Yet even amid the mob, Nêto thought it better that her master hear the end of his son.

  She threw back her hood and stumbled on, “I saw Lophis from the hill yonder. He charged at the first trumpet blast, out too far from the rest. A Spartan knocked him off. I saw that much, and then dust rose and there was nothing more. Then Gorgos, our Gorgos ran off below into the field. He said he would fetch him. But no, it seems? He too vanished into the dust and never came back—dead or captured by our enemies or perhaps even turn traitor, I don’t know. It was chaos by then.”

  She was weeping and then clear for moments, as she tried to tell her master that either his son was dead or his slave Gorgos was a traitor or martyr—or neither. “More of Lophis I heard than saw, since when I hit the flatland just now, I grabbed two bloody horsemen, wounded men from Orchomenos, one a with broken spear stuck in his mount. They told me that our Lophis had been knocked off with a huge spear, a lance larger than any on the battlefield. Lichas had targeted Lophis, the riders said. In the melee Lichas went after him. They heard Lichas yell: ‘Fetch the armor, Spartans, drag the kill with us. Bring home the armor of Lysander.’ So they told me before they too were beaten back. Right then I went farther with the wagon to pick up Lophis. Instead I found myself here with you and Chiôn. Master, I was swarmed by a mob. They tried to tear me off the wagon. I sliced a few arms and hands to keep Aias free. My new friend, this slave Myron, saved me from the mob. But no Lophis. He’s dead, I fear. But I tried to find him. I tried.”

  Mêlon knew no slave named Myron. But the more he told Nêto that Lophis lived, that the Boiotian horse had broken the Spartan cavalry, that Gorgos would carry him out alive as he had once brought the wounded Malgis from Koroneia, the more he suspected that his son was dead—too far ahead of the horsemen, the strange role of Gorgos and his current absence, the glitter of the armor of Lysander, and Lichas, always Lichas. Too many of Nêto’s details proved too true. He sat back down and kept mute. Lichas was alive. Lophis was dead. So the good die and the bad live on.

  “I just saw Chiôn!” It was Proxenos who had walked up. As always the architect kept his head while others lost theirs. “First, listen. Chiôn talks. He lies back in the camp of Epaminondas. His left arm will never lift a shield—at least if that wound heals like others I have treated. Nêto, go to Aias. Drive your wagon a bit closer. We will put these two in and then you can get them back up to the farm.”

  The wagon was just over a gentle rise, just where Nêto had left it with Myron. The runaway slave had accompanied her from Thespiai in hopes of freedom, and was waiting on the battlefield. Proxenos stammered, but went on, “But I have other bad reports, Mêlon, now that you are back among the living. Your Gorgos is gone, at least if he is the old slave that hoplites saw head to the camp of the Spartans with a body over his shoulder. Worse still it is. Pelopidas reckons that this old man, if it is your Gorgos, probably went willingly to the Spartans. Many in the Sacred Band had seen him cross over to their camp. There is word among the horsemen that he carried off Lophis, and a pathway opened for him amid the rearguard of the Spartans.”

  Nêto had walked away and returned with Myron, who had stayed behind with the wagon. He had collected some helmets and breastplates off the dead Spartans, along with a sword or two that was probably Boiotian. What better way to find a new household than to offer himself along with presents? The slave was a rich man’s runaway and worried that he would be flogged, though he had followed Nêto in hopes that any who walked at Holy Leuktra would be freed back home at Thespiai. Nêto bent over to the sitting Mêlon. In front of the small crowd, Nêto nodded to Proxenos. She likewise blurted out that there was more to her story than she first had admitted.

  “So I feared what came to pass. I think now we know where Gorgos is. He is the servant of Lichas his true master. They will know him as Kuniskos—‘Puppy’ in the south. Nikôn, the leader of the helot firebrands, sends word to me from the Messenians who once knew of his trickery. And he talked such nonsense on the hill above the fight, as I said. A loyal man-footed helot—so he will serve Sparta once more, if he has not all these years.”

  Mêlon was tired of all these speeches. Nêto ignored Mêlon. She went on with more in a shrill voice that replaced her tears. “He didn’t save Lophis. I see that now. And you see, too, that he joined Lichas. I speak true things, always t’alêthê. Over the fire before the battle, he was talking of the good days with Brasidas. The best helot killers were always helots. I can smell his stink, even from here.”

  Mêlon stopped her. “Leave it be. Tomorrow, tomorrow. This is all a dream. All a nightmare. I will hear all this when the sun rises. Not now, not any more.”

  Ainia
s grabbed Mêlon’s arms. “Look, your head rings. But don’t listen to your wounds. Gorgos is over there. Maybe it was his work that Lichas has your dead son. Or at least he found his way or wanted to. Maybe Gorgos is dead or maybe breathing, we don’t know. Lophis I fear is gone or will be after they dragged them to their camp. The Spartans, what is left of them, stand at their camp, and with spears ready. There’s at least a thousand or two left ready to march home. The son of Agesilaos, the young Eurypontid Archidamos is almost here with another Spartan army on the coast road. The dregs of Lakonia are on the way here. We must decide tonight to let them all go home or kill them all.”

  Mêlon was glad to change the talk. “Then we can kill two royals this season. Finish off the rest who will never see their Eurotas. And then we will rescue Lophis.”

  Proxenos looked over at Ainias. “That’s my wish as well. No doubt Epaminondas will soon tell us as much himself. But look at us, Thespian. The Boiotians have gone mad in their victory. The allies are plundering the field. Our army is going home. The battlefield is nothing but shit and flies now. We stopped Sparta today, but we did not end it.”

  As they argued, Epaminondas walked up. Before he reached them he threw down his shield. “Ainias and Proxenos. Where is my Thespian? Stand up. All of you. The war goes on.” With that Epaminondas pointed at them in the torchlight. “Our friend Lichas is in command over there. He’s sent us a herald for parley. He wants out of Boiotia. Pelopidas is over there, meeting with his henchmen. All their other big men are dead.”

  Proxenos, as always, thought more clearly than most. “Lichas will want free passage for his hoplites to the coast. So the rub is whether we want to lose five hundred hoplites to kill Lichas and maybe a thousand that are alive or not scattered. He has enough men to get across the Isthmos. Or maybe he hopes the young royal Archidamos can do the same coming up from the south to save him. Those Spartan allies who ran away—well, they are scattered in the hills and will rejoin him tomorrow. They have nowhere else to go. If they can all meet up with Agesilaos’s son, the red-capes will easily make it out of here. So let them skulk home instead right now and in shame. Let them go.”

  “No, no,” Mêlon pleaded as he got to his feet a third time, limped around, and then slowly sat down again, as the dizziness returned and his head throbbed. If he once had been reluctant to march out to fight, now he was adamant to finish what Epaminondas had started, even though he was in no shape to pick up a shield. Lophis was all that mattered now. But he would have to break through the Spartan camp this very night, and, as a half-dead hoplite, take back his son, dead or alive—or perhaps kill Lichas at parley or go back into battle this evening.

  Mêlon had changed, into what he didn’t quite know—just that he was no more the same recluse he once had been on Helikon. If his son were captured, he would take him back. If he were dead, then his life as he knew it on the farm was over, and his vineyards would be a mere respite between the unending campaigning for Epaminondas against the Spartans. Either way he wished to find out this very evening—and do something about it.

  “Do not be fooled by such men. The Spartans are hungry now, without food. Trapped here in our country. Surround them. They came here to destroy our democracy. Lichas will be back to finish us off soon. Winning a battle is not the same as winning a war—unless we destroy the army who started it. Remember, the Thessalonians will be here soon as well as our newfound friends. We will have even more spears to deal with them when the word gets out about the victory here at Leuktra. The Hellenes like to pile on the loser.”

  “Mêlon is right. We beat them all day, Ainias. Didn’t they lose, or am I possessed?” Epaminondas was talking to tough folk of his own rank who had just killed the king of Sparta. But they were tired. They wanted to enjoy, not second-guess, their victory. Still the Theban went on, “Nothing in war is as dangerous as to wound but not to kill the enemy. Sparta is defeated, but not humiliated.”

  “Enough of this idle talk.” Mêlon struggled a bit before Proxenos offered both his hands to pull him up. “They wish to kill Lophis, so be it. I will kill them. Ten for my boy, twenty if I can. Re-form the ranks, such as they are. Tonight all together, one more time, all of us on this long day. We will kill this Lichas, hang his Antikrates up by his feet. If the light is already gone, we can at least muster the troops by our torches. I did not ask to fight this battle. But now that I am here, I finish what we started.”

  Proxenos cut in one last time. “With what? You were lame before the battle and are lamer still after. Count us. Most have gone home as we already said. We have no more than a thousand—if that still. Good men all. But not everyone is alive who was this morning. The best are dead or will be. I could build walls for us—but in one year, not one day. There are far more than Antitheos that lie over there. The flies are on them already. My Plataian Lakôn, of our city’s oldest family, has no throat and his nephew Archias with a bashed-in head won’t make it until dawn. The work of Lichas again. Sour Philliadas has done his hard work and taken his bunch back to Tanagra. The men near Kalamos are all gone or dead. No, our Ainias even without his charts and maps is right. Have words with this Lichas and we will let him run in shame out of Boiotia to spread the word of our warcraft.”

  Mêlon then gave up as his head beat inside harder and in a quieter voice sighed, “But if the beast limps home, if it crawls away, well then like every wounded lion of your fables, it will lick its wounds to healing. It will come back right here and many of us will die in other battles—some far from Thebes. Lophis knows that, he would tell you the same.” Epaminondas and the rest picked up their arms. With a hundred or so Theban hoplites, the small band of bloodied veterans headed with torches for the nearby hill to parley with the Spartans. There under light Pelopidas and the rest of the phalanx—maybe a thousand or so in armor, it turned out—were squared off against Lichas’s formations.

  Only the ditch and some rough thrown-up brush stockade separated the spears of what was left of the two bloodied armies. Mêlon looked around at his men in arms. Ainias and Proxenos were with him, dressed in their full armor. Dozens of guards followed around Epaminondas, all of them covered with the gore of battle. The Boiotarchs had already dismissed the ranks for the night. But Pelopidas’s men had cobbled together enough of an army to guard the Spartan camp through the moonlit darkness. Mêlon had left Nêto with this new fellow Myron, the ungainly slave whose wide neck at least rested on broad shoulders and could help her shoo looters away from the wagon. Myron watched over Chiôn and put him under blankets on straw in the wagon—since he knew this hoplite was not quite dead but might prove a fair sort with a good memory if he lived.

  The hound Sturax that followed Gorgos was nowhere to be found. But some of the Thespian slaves who had tagged after Nêto from the assembly to the battlefield had trickled back. They were fighting over the wagon, pilfering food and the good red wine of the farm in between knife jabs from Nêto.

  Pelopidas ran up. He had made sure the Spartans stayed on their side of the barrier, and that none of his own men tried to storm their ground until Epaminondas arrived. “This killer Lichas is over there.” Pelopidas pointed to two Spartan hoplites with torches and a raised spear. Both were now walking down from the camp and across the broad trench on a wobbly tree limb. “For a moment I saw his bald head.”

  Epaminondas then gave orders. “Ainias and Proxenos and you, Mêlon, you who killed Kleombrotos, will all come with Pelopidas and me. We speak for Thebes and the Boiotian towns around it. Keep your chin straps on, hands on your spears. Lichas should know that a man like Ainias from the Peloponnesos is with us as well. I would have liked to have Chiôn, if he could walk, with us as well. So that these Spartans can look upon the slave that took down their best and sent Kleonymos into Hades.”

  The five set out with torches about halfway between the two bands. Mêlon noticed in the glare that Ainias and Proxenos were even taller than Pelopidas. He in turn towered over Epaminondas. Yet the general was broader than a
ny of the three and gave the look of one the Spartans would be most wise to avoid in battle. His arms were in constant motion, pointing, slapping Pelopidas on the back, waving others to follow—still dripping blood from a bandaged deep cut along the back of one arm.

  A fierce-looking Spartan hoplite now came into view. His shield blazon was torn off, there was a crack in the concave willow planks. His right arm was also streaked with blood. Half his head was already shaven in mourning for the Spartan loss or in shame over defeat. “I am Teleklos. Royal blood. Regent now. I say Lichas talks for Sparta. You listen.”

  Another man with him stepped up. He was a red-haired pale sort, Lykos, a Eurypontid bastard youth, who was the “eye” of the surviving King Agesilaos and an ephor who reined in Lichas when he could. They planted a torch pole in front of them. For a moment the Boiotians let out a gasp. The Empousa, the bogeyman of their baby stories, was a few cubits away as this last Spartan hoplite finally came out of the shadows. His finger was already pointing in their faces. He blurted out before he even reached them—and sounded as if he had sand in his throat. “Cow-lovers and eel-catchers. Who claims to be good enough to speak to Lichas? Speak. Where are their hoplites? Not these beggars, these vendors in rags? Where is this faker, the general of this ochlos?” Lichas appeared as large as he had earlier when Mêlon had faced him in the melee. Yet the darkness, flame, and shadows made him more foul-looking still.

  So he was older, after all, than Mêlon, as old maybe as Gorgos. Lichas was like the Satyrs or foul father Selinos he had seen on the pots from Athens: high pock-marked forehead, snub broad nose and jutting jaw, completely bald on top, with two white horse tails braided that grew from around his ears and hung halfway down his chest and lay on the breastplate—his son’s bronze. The Spartan, then, had stripped the armor of Malgis from his son, and so was most likely his killer. Almost immediately Mêlon froze and looked down, careful not to betray his hatred. He then looked up carefully to see what sort of man he would have to kill and how.