“Geometry lesson?”
“Yes, Nikostratos and I are learning geometry from that Thespian schoolmaster your uncle bought in Athens several years ago.”
“I heard he didn’t want to teach girls.”
“He didn’t at first; but then someone pointed out that one of his favorite students, whom he had mistaken for a boy of the agoge, was in fact a girl. And, of course, he couldn’t say no to me. I think he has adjusted somewhat. Why don’t you come? You were good at math.”
“I need to change and comb my hair first,” Gorgo suddenly decided.
“Well, wash your feet off in the trough and then go up to my room, comb out your hair, and take any of my peplos.”
“OK.” Gorgo sat up and was gone at once. With a sigh, Chilonis sat thinking things over before following. She caught up with Gorgo in her own bedchamber, where the teenager was looking through her chest of clothes.
Chilonis reached into the chest to pull out a bright green peplos with a border of yellow bees embroidered on it. “This would suit you. It will bring out your green eyes and the highlights in your hair.”
“You want me to look pretty for a blind slave?” Gorgo challenged.
“Ibanolis is no longer a slave; your uncle bought his freedom. And you are to make yourself pretty to please me—and yourself. Let me help you.”
Chilonis had Gorgo strip out of her dirty chiton with its worn belt and pulled the peplos out of the trunk, folded down a broad piece, and then wrapped it around her granddaughter. She used two strong bronze pins to clasp it at Gorgo’s shoulders. She took a long silk sash and tied it at her waist, and then bloused the peplos over the sash and considered her work. Satisfied, she directed her attention to Gorgo’s hair. It was darkening with age and had lost its bright red tones to become richer in color, particularly when wet. Chilonis made Gorgo sit down at her own dresser and, standing behind her, gently combed out her hair. “You have beautiful hair, Gorgo. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It is much more interesting than the bright blond that so many of your friends have.”
“You’re just saying that,” Gorgo retorted, although she was secretly pleased and her grandmother knew it.
Rather than braiding her hair, Chilonis left it free, but clipped out of her face with some hairpins with the same bee motif. Together grandmother and granddaughter went back down to the courtyard, where the helots had already hitched two horses to the chariot in preparation for the trip into town.
As they drove past Leonidas’ kleros, Gorgo remarked, “I think it’s mean the way Eirana refuses to live here, after all the trouble Uncle Leo went to fix it up for her.”
Chilonis cast her granddaughter a sideways glance. She quite agreed, but she wasn’t sure it was good for Gorgo to take a dislike to her aunt.
“He really loves the place, you know, and now it’s half boarded up and neglected again.”
“Pelopidas and Laodice keep it in the best of order!” Chilonis defended the helot family.
“I didn’t mean the farm. I know they keep that up, and their own quarters; but look, you can see the main house is shuttered up.” Gorgo pointed and Chilonis knew it was true. She had seen it herself day after day.
“And she’s not really a good mother, either,” Gorgo continued in her self-righteous teenager tone; “she is too protective. Leo’s son will get creamed in the agoge!”
“Gorgo, don’t you think you’re talking a little out of turn? I mean, what do you know about child-rearing?”
“Well, I know I wouldn’t hover around my children all the time so that they couldn’t take a single step on their own! And I wouldn’t rush over and coddle them every time they fell and scraped their knee or just failed to get what they wanted!”
Chilonis felt she ought to reprimand Gorgo for passing judgment on her elders, but the girl was right. Eirana coddled and pampered her children. Hilaira had mentioned it, too, saying she knew how hard it was not to spoil and cosset one’s children, but she thought Eirana carried it to extremes.
“What’s that?” Gorgo asked, distracting Chilonis from her thoughts. She looked over to where Gorgo was pointing.
At first she thought it was a welcome cloud, but then she realized that it was too dark, and it billowed upright from somewhere beyond the mountain. It was smoke. Somewhere up in the mountains a fire had started, and in this dry weather it was sure to spread.
By nightfall they could see the glow in the sky from throughout the Eurotas valley, and the first firefighters, perioikoi from the villages nearest the fires, were on their way. However, a strong wind was blowing out of the northeast, driving the fires south and west.
By the next day the smudge of smoke hung over the sky to the southwest; and more and more residents in the southern Eurotas valley, helots and perioikoi alike, were dropping their farm tools and heading into the mountains to try to fight the fire. On the second night the southwestern sky was ablaze, and together light and smoke blotted out the stars in that quadrant of the heavens.
A runner reached Sparta the following morning. He was black with soot and streaked with limestone dust. He dropped to his knees, vomiting, before he could get the message out. “Out of control,” he gasped as they passed him water to sip. “Completely—out—of—control.” And then, when he had got control of his heaving chest again, “Threatening—Arna.”
A company of the Conouran Lochos was dispatched at once, but by late afternoon they had sent for reinforcements. Reportedly, the whole western flank of the Taygetos was ablaze to the south. Arna had been consumed by flame, and the fire, fanned still by strong winds, was devouring the parched forest as it came closer and closer down the slopes toward the cultivated areas. Two more companies were dispatched, including the Kastor Company of the Pitanate Lochos.
They marched south to cross the Taygetos via the lower, gentler passes opposite Gytheon rather than take the brutal, direct route through the gorges. It was an eerie march, however; although they left after darkness, the unnatural glow in the sky above the mountains enabled them to see their way remarkably well. Not until they had put the spine of the Mani peninsula behind them, however, did they grasp the magnitude of the threat they were facing. Never having seen the like of it before, they had not been able to imagine what the previous messengers had been talking about. All the villages farther up the slope had been devoured by fire, and the flames were spreading still, feeding on the tinder-dry forest. The fire was coming relentlessly south, pushed by the northeast wind.
As they turned north to deploy, they saw how sparks carried by the wind rushed ahead of the main fire and, time and again, ignited the crown of needles in tree after tree with a whoosh of flame. This meant the fire was leapfrogging forward. While the main fire progressed at a steady pace, these forerunners lit scattered fires farther down the slope.
“By all the Gods! What can man do to stop it?” Oliantus exclaimed in horror. “Nothing will stop that until it reaches the sea!”
But there were scores of farms and several villages between the fire and the sea. “Has someone given the order to evacuate?” Leonidas asked Diodoros, but the company commander shook his head; he didn’t know. A man galloped by on a horse, heading back for Sparta and more reinforcements.
They went forward, wearing their leather armor and armed with axes, shovels, and picks, to try to clear a firebreak ahead of the next village, Thalamai. They found themselves engulfed in smoke, the sun rising behind a curtain of soot. Daylight remained murky, and the sun was a dirty blood-orange. Soon they were coughing and retching from smoke inhalation. The thirst was terrible.
The company of the Conouran Lochos was finished. They staggered down the hillside, half sliding, half rolling, unable to stay upright, and they were black as Ethiopians with red eyes.
A rumor started that the ephors had finally grasped the gravity of the situation and that the whole army was on the march. Leonidas didn’t believe it. They couldn’t leave their backs exposed to the Argives.
By a
fternoon Leonidas could hardly stand, and his men were dropping to their knees from exhaustion. The heat and roar of the fire was so great it was like working inside a furnace, and they were so dehydrated they could neither spit nor piss. They were coughing dry, shallow coughs, their lungs filled with filth. Overhead the smoke billowed black and ominous, blocking out the sun, and then the first sparks started hitting them. A shout went up, and they knew what it meant even before the salpinx sounded retreat.
Like the company of the Conouran Lochos before them, the companies of the Pitanate and Limnate Lochoi fell more than walked back out of the smoke to be replaced by the complete Amyclaeon Lochos—all four pentekostus—fresh in from Sparta. Leonidas and his men staggered to the fountain at Thalamai to drink before they fell into the sea—without bothering to first strip off their leather armor—to cool off.
When Leonidas had pulled himself together, he found Oliantus, and together they made a quick assessment of their men. Many were suffering from minor injuries—twisted ankles, broken fingers, and burns. All were coughing up black phlegm. “We ought to work with wet cloths over our mouths,” Oliantus suggested, and Leonidas nodded, grateful as always for his deputy’s diligence in trying to take care of them all. Not for the first time, Leonidas conceded to himself that he couldn’t manage without the ugly man. He looked around, wondering where they were going to get wet cloths, and noted that some of the villagers were loading wagons and preparing to evacuate. He went over to one of the men, who was hoisting his little children up to a woman already aboard the wagon. “Has the order been given to evacuate?”
“Do you think I’m waiting for some bloody order? I’m no boneheaded Spartan! I’m a free perioikoi, and I’m not standing around to see my family incinerated. I’m heading north on the coastal road while it’s still clear!”
The road north led through Leuktra to Kardamyle, and between the two lay Leonidas’ estate where Eirana had chosen to raise their children. Leonidas had time only to thank the Gods that the wind was blowing hard from the north, and not threatening his wife and children, before he was called to a conference.
There were now three full lochoi deployed to fight the fires here in Messenia, but fires had also started in Laconia itself; and the company of the Conouran Lochos was being ordered back to Sparta to help deal with the fires there, while the Mesoan Lochos moved to the Argive border to ensure the Argives didn’t take advantage of the situation—and to address any fires that might break out on the Parnon range. The entire Peloponnese was a tinderbox.
The conscientious Oliantus made sure the men got a meal, and they got some sleep, too; but by dusk they were woken and sent back into the fight. Making use of a natural gorge over a now completely dry riverbed, the firefighters had cleared a strip of land almost two thousand yards wide. By midnight the sparks from the fire on the other side of the gorge were falling on the cleared areas, starting small fires among the underbrush, trunks, and roots left behind, but unable to take hold. It looked as if this firebreak was going to hold, and the firefighters sank onto the ground to watch—prepared to take action if necessary, but for the first time daring to hope it would not be. Their state of exhaustion was so great, however, that it was several minutes before someone realized the reason the sparks were no longer threatening them: the wind had shifted.
“The wind’s backed around to the south,” someone exclaimed in alarm.
Leonidas raised his head, unable—unwilling—to believe it. But staring at the fire, his eyes confirmed the report. The flames were blowing away from them. They struggled to their feet even before an order was given, their smoke-filled brains and exhausted bodies slowly grasping the significance of the shift. There was no danger that this firebreak would fail, but to the north there was nothing whatever to stop the fire.
Orders were passed down the line to return down to the coastal road. They obeyed, still dazed and exhausted. The Amyclaeon Lochos had already moved out, heading north. They were ordered to follow at once. It was, however, impossible to see how dangerous the situation was, because smoke obscured the entire slope of the mountains.
Just before daybreak they came upon a completely incinerated wagon, with the charred corpses of the horses still in the traces and the black lumps of former humans in the box of the wagon. The fire had swept over them with such intensity and speed that they had not even had time to disembark and run to the sea, only a hundred paces away. Everything was burned right down to the beach. The paving stones they were marching on were hot.
Leonidas felt ill. Eirana and his children were on a farm in the line of the fire, and there was nothing he could do for them but pray. He prayed that the Amyclaeon Lochos had managed to get ahead of the line of fire and that someone had sent messengers warning the inhabitants to evacuate.
When they finally caught up with the support train of the Amyclaeon Lochos and the ragtag collection of volunteer firemen from the surrounding countryside, they were informed that Arkines had been lost—everyone in the village had burned to death in their own homes or while trying to escape the conflagration. The firefighters were again trying to create a firebreak, this time about eight miles north of Arkines; but the speed of the fire was as fast as a man could walk, and the erratic wind sent it now northward, now westward in unpredictable gusts.
Climbing up from the coast onto the slope, Leonidas and his men were gasping for breath long before they even reached the fighting line. On arrival, they found that at least half the men they were relieving had already collapsed, unable to stand any longer. No one spoke. The Amyclaeons dragged themselves off, and the Pitanates took over with a sense of desperation tinged with helplessness. They were exhausted and thirsty before they even started. If the wind didn’t veer again or let up, it was obvious that they would not be able to contain the fire here.
Still, they tried. They widened and lengthened the firebreak for over three hours, and Leonidas was on the brink of thinking they would succeed, when a sudden gust of wind sent a flurry of burning twigs and branches over their heads. Trees exploded into flame more than a hundred yards behind them. The auxiliaries panicked instantly, flinging down their heavy tools and running straight down the slope in sheer terror. The orders for the Spartiates to withdraw came almost at the same time, the salpinx wailing withdrawal and senior officers shouting and pointing furiously. They had to move fast to avoid being trapped. Already the flames were on three sides of them. The heat started to blister their skin. Leonidas didn’t know where they suddenly found the strength to jog out of the trap.
Leonidas’ first duty was to his enomotia. Twenty-odd years of discipline kept him from losing his head. He had to get his men to safety, and every one of them needed water and rest. But mentally he envisaged the flames, which were now encircling the stretch of mountain on which his estate stood. No matter which way the wind blew, it was endangered.
But surely Eirana had already left. For all he knew, she had left days ago. She might have returned to Laconia as soon as the fires broke out, he told himself. But another part of his brain whispered, “Why should she have done that while the wind blew from the north?” He wanted to think she would come “home” for safety as soon as any danger loomed; but the truth was, she didn’t seem to view him—much less his kleros—as home or safety.
They collapsed on the shore of the sea, and Oliantus went in search of fresh water and food, while Leonidas went in search of someone who could tell him the evacuation status of the villages and farms on the endangered mountainside. The Amyclaeon lochagos didn’t have the foggiest idea of the status of the civilians, but the perioikoi head councilman of Kardamyle said that refugees had been passing through the village all night. He wasn’t sure where they had come from, but many had surely gotten through, heading along the coastal road, which was still open.
Leonidas returned to his men. Eirana was an intelligent woman, and she was very protective of her children. She would not take unnecessary risks. She was also a good driver and had several carts
and strong draft horses on the farm. The helots on this farm were sullen but not rebellious, and it was in their own interest to get off the farm if it were endangered. Leonidas told himself he had every reason to assume that Eirana and the children had made it to safety. He dropped down beside his platoon, and Oliantus handed him a jug full of warm water. “Drink it slowly!” he ordered his superior. “One sip at a time.”
Around him his men lay as if dead—sprawled on their backs, their sides, their stomachs, their arms and legs flung any which way. They were filthy, stinking, and done in. But the sun was blotted out by the smoke, and even the air around them was thick with heat and falling ash. Oliantus handed Leonidas a chunk of bread. He took a bite, started chewing, and then fell back and lost consciousness.
Someone shook him awake. Nothing had changed. He might have been asleep for only a few moments—except that he was very stiff. The Mesoan Lochos had just arrived. The Argolid was also aflame, and the ephors had decided they no longer needed to defend the border. Kyranios had already taken overall command of the firefighting efforts. He ordered the two already exhausted lochagoi to get to work cutting a firebreak around Kardamyle itself, with its precious warehouses and port facilities, while he took his comparatively fresh lochos farther up the slope to protect the springs above Kardamyle.
Leonidas just managed to speak to Kyranios before the lochagos set off with his men. “The last I knew, Eirana was on my farm up there,” he told his father-in-law. To his own ears, his strained voice betrayed his fears.
Kyranios nodded and replied calmly, “She’s not a child or a fool. She will have had the sense to get out while she could.” Then, seeing the look in Leonidas’ eyes, he laid a hand on his arm and reminded him, “We’re doing all we can.”
They got to work on the firebreak. There wasn’t one of them without some injury, and their muscles were so stiff they couldn’t respond more than woodenly. At least they had relatively easy access to water here, and Oliantus had their attendants working in relays to bring them water every half-hour. He had organized bread, cheese, and sausage, too. Although the air was bad, the heat was more endurable, now that they weren’t working in the direct proximity of the flames.
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