The End of Sparta

by Victor Davis Hanson

  “Oh, I go by Attis. Yes, I claim to be Attis, daughter of the trader Athenaios from the Piraeus. My family owned ten long ships and we brought in grain and timber from Ionia. I speak a pure Attic, as you can hear, but know Ionic and Aeolic as well, as my father reminded all, and they say the same at the symposia among the longhairs with the gold grasshopper clasps.” Erinna did not sit, but walked slowly around Kuniskos and took in his anteroom. He let her explore his chambers but watched as she neared an interior door with an iron lock.

  “I sing by the Ilissos at Athens. Yes, I am at home with men or women or so they also say of those who have seen Lesbos. But no one is here? The helots say the lord of the helots has a stable of women in his house, another poet, a rival that I can battle in verse. Let me wager with you that I have the best song, and you’ll send me along my way with an escort. But I bet you’re young where it counts, my Kuniskios.” With that Erinna finally took off her cloak and stretched. They went from the back further into the mess room. The front door was open and Erinna moved to the central hearth. She then edged slowly toward the kettle that was hanging over the flame. She had already caught a chill with her wool off. Kuniskos stared and grunted out some noises.

  She had dark hair, short with a touch of lighter strands, maybe even some red; and firm large breasts that pointed up, and muscles on her arms and a pretty neck. Her lips were pink and eyes big. Already Kuniskos tired of his nightly play with tall Nêto—like having a doe that flitted around the room and, when caught, only bore her buck with fright and pain. She was not what his years of lust had imagined. Worse still, she was not even much of a helot rebel, not a worthy foe in his bed or in battle. And there was no money yet. Not even a sign of Mêlon or Chiôn, who had thought wiser of throwing good silver after dross, much less trying to burst into the fort of a Spartan lord. Yes, he was going to send her away, to trade her eastward on the next trip with Antikrates for a younger, rougher love—or pack her off with him to Taygetos if he could not find ransom from Helikon to free her. He now found her flesh hardly what he had thought it would be when he had eyed her on the farm in the past. Fool—as if a woman were a sow or heifer who had no care who mounted her.

  But for Gorgos it seemed far better to have an old wide-hipped matron who knew more than he himself. Still no ransom money here for her from Helikon as Nêto promised? No reward at all? So much for the great-souled Damô, wife of Chiôn, and the big silver chest of Mêlon. No money ransom for their wasp-waist helot girl, after all, even as his men had sent word of Nêto’s capture to the helots? But now, now, this other woman was different. For all her talk of song, she had a bit of the man-woman in her as well. Kuniskos liked this hard edge. She’d put up a better struggle, maybe a claw or two on his cheek before she was through—and then she would shriek in mad erôs—so unlike the victim Nêto, who was little more than a sacrificial carcass on his altar.

  “Keep singing my Tyrtaios, woman, I’ll be right back, back yes with a surprise.” With that he left through the back interior door. The guards were strolling back and forth, three hundred paces distant outside. Erinna’s whistle was around her neck. So she slowly pulled out her dagger, and put the blade in the rock cleft above the pot. Then she pulled up her chiton high on one leg and rolled up her right sleeve and with that exposed the side of her breast, appearing as big now as she had usually wished it small. He might find her inviting, but she was now girded for battle, with her limbs free and shivering.

  Kuniskos came back in, pulling and whispering to a battered woman in a cloak. “My Nêtikê, look, another poet. And an Athenian at that. What sport we’ll have the three of us, a real triangle even with your fetters on. She’s man enough for you, Nêtikê, and more than woman enough for me. Hail this Attis of the two faces who blew in with the northern breeze. I wager you know this little ranger, though perhaps by a different name.”

  Erinna kept still. But her face was flushed as she saw Nêto shuffle in—at least what she thought was Nêto.

  “Surprised? Or all along did you know our Nêtikê? Don’t recognize your partner these days with her little bruises and tiny cuts? Ah, don’t hide your own erôs, my stringy Attis. Why should you? My Nêto here is a bit scared as I can see.”

  Erinna clenched her fist and eyed the corners of the room. Nêto looked down and avoided her eye. Her once long tresses were gone, with tufts here and there on her bloody scalp from the clumsy haircuts of Kuniskos’s blade. Long slashes and scratches oozed on her arms. Her right eye was swollen shut. She had a fresh brand—a gamma—burned right into her cheek, though it oozed pus and most of her right face was black. Was this her Nêto?

  Kuniskos had tied a rough sack weave around her that left both legs from her knees down bare. A thick cord was tied to her right ankle and cut into the flesh, and was stretched about twenty palms distant to the hinge on the door, where it was tied. “Now we drink to the helots and their lord Epaminondas.” Kuniskos laughed. “Somewhere at home in Thebes that Pythagorean faker snores in his halls, deep in drink and vomit. Then the fools of the Peloponnesos run around with lies that the fraud is really up here, near the Orthia and pulling into Sellasia, as if he would ever dare to come into Sparta. Believe not a word. He hasn’t even left Thebes, the drunkard. Yes, I know that, a brothel woman in Thespiai sent word to me. Our Phrynê knows more of Boiotia than the drone Epaminondas himself. Poor Antikrates in his fear of a phantom fled back to Sparta.”

  “Who are you, helot?” Erinna ignored Kuniskos and stared at Nêto to play out to the end their deadly charade. Now she turned back to him. “Lord Kuniskos. Please scrub down that woman. I can smell her from here and who knows what’s under those scabs. Lice too on her stubble, phtheires crawling everywhere, Master Kuniskos. She’s a tramp and dirtier than any helot. She has worms in her belly and crawlers under her arms. Look at the ooze on her face—is she a man or beast?”

  “No, no—look over here, my Attis. I have a pot of warm water, and sponges from Kalymnos no less. You can scrub her down and use all the oil you want. Give yourself a rub as well. You look the road almost as much as Nêtikê does.”

  “I am no Amazon, stranger,” Nêto flashed. “I am a freewoman of Helikon. Priestess of Artemis of the Messenians.”

  “Perhaps once,” Kuniskos answered. “But no longer, no more the dainty little parthenos who thought she could tease her way on Helikon to an orchard or vineyard with your Gorgos as doorman to your new tower.” He had pulled on her rope. “No, no, no—soiled women. Those who serve my lusts make no priestesses and even worse wives. So drink up and soon we roll the dice for turns. All you have left are your long legs, and I mean to club one of those as well before I’m done. To slow down a bit those doe runs of yours leading lame Mêlon of the Malgidai in the high woods.”

  In these final days of winter calm, for all his loud bluster about a terrified Epaminondas hiding in Thebes, Gorgos had accepted his fate, the shared fate of Sparta that would soon end in Messenia. Yet the old man was strangely without much of a care, even though there were now hardly more than a hundred left, after Antikrates had taken a thousand home to Lakonia to face Epaminondas. He had been a lord, and ridden at the head of Spartan Peers, more than any helot had done since the days of Brasidas and his wild band of freed helot marauders. Yes, he was satisfied. One day as Lord Kuniskos was well worth what would now follow.

  He felt the warmth in the wine, and he drank it from the time he woke until he slept. It brought with it the creeping sense of good liberation from worry and nag—a peace of mind, the hêsuchia that comes when cares are all banished, and nothing as before matters—right before the fall. What did he care whether Epaminondas really did come and Mêlon and Chiôn as well, and overturned the world of the Spartans in Messenia? Let them come some day, but they surely would not arrive this day, his day. And they could hardly overturn all that he had wrought in Messenia. As for now—why, he was Lord Kuniskos, harmostês of Messenia, and couldn’t worry about what a day ahead might bring. He grimaced a bit, as he
knew he would either be high lord here, an anax of the Messenians, or dead—but never a house slave, a mere oiketês on Helikon.

  But then Erinna tapped Kuniskos and woke him from his idle wine thought. He caught sight of her breast and thigh and put down his cup and turned from Nêto. Erinna eyed his club far off in the corner. “But play with her comes later, Lord Kuniskos. After we have done our own business. But first, I want you to promise me a boat ride from up the gulf to the Isthmos for our sport—anything to leave this frozen Hades and these dreadful unlettered helots. Remember I came into your fort looking for a ticket home.” With that last talk, she at last reached for the dirk on the ledge behind him, placed above the fire between the stones with the handle out. She was freed of her sash and had plenty of sway in her arms. With her hem cinched up tight, Erinna kicked the old man in the groin and then swung around and stabbed down hard on his shoulder.

  “Run Nêto. Out to Nikôn, out to Nikôn. Out to the gully. Now.”

  But Erinna pulled out the dagger too early from Kuniskos—before she could plunge and twist it—so that she could turn and slash Nêto’s rope. “Run Nêto. Before …” Nêto leapt free, and Gorgos for a moment was stunned. Then Erinna picked up the heavy kettle with the long wooden handle and threw the broth onto the back of the neck of Kuniskos.

  He staggered with wound and burn and wine, bellowing at the door to his henchmen. But they were on the other side of the square, used to their captain’s noise and frolic, and far enough away to give Kuniskos his sport in private. The two doors to the house were unguarded, as the cold guards had built a fire far to the opposite side of the stockade. Kuniskos cursed the two women in his moment of blindness. “Helots, they’ve stabbed me! Klôpi. Klôpi. Bring Hekas. Bring Pharis and the band. Run. They’re in the house here. Fools, get them!”

  Then the raging Kuniskos dove at the ankles of Erinna, who kept ordering, “Run, Nêto. Out for us both. For us both.”

  But then Nêto paused and could not leave her would-be savior. She called back, “Fight him, Erinna—both of us, together.” Then Nêto punched Kuniskos again and again as he placed his hands around the neck of Erinna. He was old, but stronger than any guardsman a third of his age, and tall and leathery with a grip as cold as winter’s ice. Kuniskos freed one hand, and then slapped and punched Nêto back. She went out the window right through the open shutters and through the porch, rolling into the courtyard. Her sore leg hit sideways on the flat stones, and snapped at the ankle, as she fell back, got up, staggered and then fell again.

  Nêto was alive and ready to limp back in. But she looked up and here was Klôpis with his rope and blade. Then a loud sound pierced the air behind her, as Erinna blew the whistle for help and then a final yell, “For Epaminondas, for Epaminondas.” Nêto squirmed on the ground, but then Klôpis hit her with the flat of his sword handle, and she went limp and her world turned dark.

  Erinna thought she could stun Kuniskos and maybe give Nêto enough time to reach the front gate and climb over, maybe even to reach Nikôn. She thrashed and scratched at the burned Kuniskos. For a moment she got her nails deep into his thigh as she struggled to break his grip. His hands were calloused and both again on her neck. She bit at his cheek, spat in his face, and tried to slam her knee into his belly as he lifted her off the stone floor.

  Erinna got another nail into his backside and dug it deep into the flesh, searching for a vein and the burn on his neck and cut on his backside. Gorgos was burned, and stabbed and kicked, so why didn’t he let her go? “Shhh, my poet girl. Quiet now. Your Kuniskos has only scorched his neck, and your toy blade has missed my insides. But your nails bring me joy, so go on with your scratches. Oh, but your pinprick hurts.”

  He shook Erinna around and raised her higher, face-to-face, a foot maybe off the ground, her nose touching his, both hands squeezing her tighter all the while. “Shhh. Don’t fight it, my pretty little Pythagoras girl. Shhh. Quiet. Let your soul out. Let it fly quietly to Hades like the little poet you are. No pain, no pain, go limp. Take the sleep that takes all pain, little Erinna. No more worry any more, ward of your Pythagoras. Sleep in the hands of your Kuniskos. You keep your Erinna’s soul—I your body.”

  As he squeezed Erinna ever so slowly, she whispered a last “Epaminondas will come, he will, my Epaminondas …”

  Erinna’s eyes bulged and her once red face was white, as more guards ran into the courtyard to help Klôpis pack off Nêto. Erinna sputtered and then made a loud gurgle and then she too went limp. Kuniskos had forgotten his cuts and burns and kept talking as he squeezed, listening to his own voice. Still he talked on. “Ah, my pretty Attis has gone to the majority. Without even a fart or two, as most of my girls do when I send them off with that last hug.” With that Kuniskos threw what had been Erinna over his shoulder and went back into his chambers. “Bring a hot iron to close up my shoulder, and a sponge of oil for my eye and some grease for these scratches. And, oh yes, fetch her cloak to keep her warm. Carry back in that bald-haired Nêto. If she’s alive, she may still bring us some silver. But if she’s dead, we’ll post the two heads out on both sides of the road. A nice twosome for us. Klôpi. Get in here. No one does knife work better than you.”

  He missed his wine and was soon roaring with pain from the burn and stab. But the idea of hanging them up or at least their heads, that notion got his blood even hotter. “Soon two beauties will smile on us, guarding the path of the camp of Antikrates. So Klôpi, bring me a tall pole, two men’s height and more, and your cattle knife. We will have our little Attis mounted for all to see this Amazon. In this winter cold, the pretty head of Erinna-Attis will stay fresh enough up there for the season. Look at little Erinnikê, why she smiles—the smile won’t leave. What does she know that we don’t?”

  Nikôn and his four helots were near at the first sound of Erinna’s whistle but as he looked through the brush the ramparts were thick with Spartans running along the parapets and now the shrieks of the two women ceased. There was no chance to storm the Spartan fort with a hundred kryptes inside. So he sent his men back to Ithômê for help and then found a thicket of willows to sleep in until night. He whispered to the four helots as they left, “Maybe tonight at moonlight I will sneak in to fetch the bodies of Erinna or Nêto, at least if there is anything left of the two. Gorgos has chopped his last head—save one. The next will be his own. Or so even to me the god spoke that. I will bring the heads back and leave Spartan ones in their place.”

  Nikôn went alone back to the camp of Kuniskos at dusk. He crawled on his belly alone to the stockade, and shimmied up the back walls, like his helot hunters on Taygetos who went after bear cubs in the tall firs. He did as he had promised, as he always did, and by dawn had brought back the head and body of Erinna. But for all his night crawling through the compound of Kuniskos, Nêto was nowhere to be found.

  Gorgos woke to two heads on his gate poles, but they were male and Spartan.

  PART FOUR

  Freedom

  CHAPTER 30

  The Shadows of Mt. Taygetos

  If Agesilaos won’t come out, and we can’t get in, then we will make the Spartans feel in just a few days what it is to be a helot forever.” With that warning of destruction, a defiant Epaminondas led the armies into the Lakonian plain to ravage even what they had gone over once before. Yet not all in the huge army wished any more to follow his lead, given the failure at the Eurotas and the death of Proxenos—and beyond that, the growing cold and the end of their tenure in Boiotia that made them all outlaws. Still, Ainias, Pelopidas, and Mêlon roused the troops, and for the next seven days the Boiotians, alongside the men of Argos, the Eleans, and the wild Arkadians, tore and burned their way through all the remaining houses and sheds of Lakonia.

  It rained, and fog hugged the ground, with evening snow near the foothills. The ravagers found fuel from the fences and the woodwork of the windows and doors. Fires continued all over the farms in every direction to the mountain ranges east and west. Despite the cold, the men
of Epaminondas sang and chanted as they kept at it, piling on the roof-beams and torching all the Spartan farms they had once passed over in cold mists and fogs, cutting down the smaller trees and hacking the limbs of the larger. To destroy centuries of what was once Sparta was no easy thing. The carnage spread from the Spartan port at Gytheion back up to the mountains near Sellasia where the ravagers had entered in the north, and then across the plain from the slopes of Parnon to Taygetos. Three hundred stadia east to west, and another three hundred from the north to south, the ravagers scoured the countryside.

  It was not Boiotia, but Lakonia that was the new treeless and barren sheep walk of the Hellenes. That was what Epaminondas promised when he told his Boiotarchs that in a Lakonia denuded of its trees the grasshoppers of Sparta would soon all sing from the ground. If there were any alive next spring, they surely would. For the funeral of Proxenos, the Thebans piled carts and any wood they could find on the banks of the Eurotas—a pile ten times as tall as any tall man, with the dead builder of walls at the very top, looking out over the houses of Sparta across the river. Then Epaminondas lit it. “O king Agesilaos. Look at the campfires of your enemies. Look right before your faces. Not a Spartan man among you can stop it.”

  All during the night Ainias stalked around the fire, adding logs as the Spartans looked back out from across the river at the coals of the pyre of Proxenos. Still, King Agesilaos would not come out to fight. The Boiotians had learned the enemy had horded months of food stores across the Eurotas and more than five thousand goats and sheep. The Thebans tried to incite the red-capes. Yet Agesilaos kept his men on the hills of the city, despite the shrieks of his women who saw their fathers’ orchards shamed. Elektra in her wild tresses ran berserk along the opposite bank, begging her grandfather to cross the river and with her husband Lichas drive Epaminondas out of their farms. She was met by a backhand from the king, “Go inside, mad woman, before you kill off what was left of us after Leuktra.”