Now the dam wall which had cracked only a hand-breadth splits to a foot and then a yard. The mass of the plunging flood builds upon itself, as ton upon ton plummets in from the courses above, adding its weight to the irresistible ever-mounting tide. Along the banked margins of the watercourse, sheets of earth calve into the churning, boiling torrent. So now did the Syrakusan center, pounded and hammered by the Tegeate heavy infantry, the king and the Knights and the massed battalions of the Wild Olive, begin to peel and founder.
The Skiritai had routed the enemy right. From the left the battalions of the Herakles rolled up the enemy flank. Each Syrakusan wingman forced to wheel to defend his unshielded side meant another drawn off from the forward push against the frontally advancing Spartans. The sound of the keening struggle seemed to rise for a moment, then went dead silent as desperate men summoned every reserve of valor from their shrieking, exhausted limbs. An eternity passed in the time it takes to draw a dozen breaths, and then, with the same sickening sound made by the mountain dam as it gives way unable to withstand the onrushing torrent, the Syrakusan line cracked and broke.
Now in the dust and fire of the plain the slaughter began.
A shout, half of joy and half of awe, sprung from the throats of the crimson-tunicked Spartans.
Back the Syrakusan line fell, not in rout and riot as their allies the An-tirhionians had done, but in still-disciplined squads and bunches, held yet by their officers, or whatever brave men had taken it upon themselves to act as officers, maintaining their shields to the fore and closing ranks as they retreated. It was no use. The Spartan front-rankers, men of the first five age-classes, were the cream of the city in foot speed and strength, none save the officers over twenty-five years old.
Many, like Polynikes in the van among the Knights, were sprinters of Olympic and near-Olympic stature with garland after garland won in games before the gods.
These now, loosed by Leonidas and driven on by their own lust for glory, pressed home the sentence of steel upon the fleeing Syrakusans.
When the trumpeters had blown the salpinx and its mind-numbing wail sounded the call to still the slaughter, even the rawest untrained eye could read the field like a book.
There, on the Spartan right where the Herakles regiment had routed the Antirhionians, one saw the turf unchurned and the field beyond littered with enemy shields and helmets, spears and even breastplates, flung aside by the stampeding foe in his flight.
Bodies lay scattered at intervals, facedown, with the shameful gashes of death delivered upon their fleeing backs.
On the right where the stronger troops of the enemy had held longer against the Skiritai, the carnage spread thicker and more dense, the turf chewed more fiercely; along the battle wall which the foe had erected to anchor its flank, clumps of corpses could be seen, slain as they, trapped by their own wall, had struggled in vain to scale it.
Then the eye found the center, where the slaughter had achieved its most savage concentration.
Here the earth was rent and torn as if a thousand span of oxen had assaulted it all day with the might of their hooves and the steel of their ploughs' deep-churning blades. The chewed-up dirt, dark with piss and blood, extended in a line three hundred meters across and a hundred deep where the feet of the contending formations had heaved and strained for purchase upon the earth.
Bodies sprawled like a carpet upon the earth, mounded in places two and three deep. To the rear, across the plain where the Syrakusans had fled, and along the riven walls of the watercourse, more corpses could be seen in scattered perimeters manned by two and three, five and seven, where these in their flight had closed ranks and made their stand, doomed as castles of sand against the tide. They fell with wounds of honor, facing their Spartan foe, cut down from the front.
A wail arose from the hillsides where the watching An-tirhionian skirmishers now looked down upon their comrades' vanquishment, while from the walls of the citadel itself wives and daughters keened in grief as must have Hekube and Andromache upon the battlements of Ilium.
The Spartans were hauling bodies off the stacks of the dead, seeking friend or brother, wounded and clinging yet to life. As each groaning foeman was flung down, a xiphos blade held him captive at the throat. Hold! Leonidas cried, motioning urgently to the trumpeters to resound the call to break off. Attend them! Attend the enemy too! he shouted, and the officers relayed the order up and down the line.
Alexandras and I, pounding pell-mell down the slope, had reached the plain now. We were on the field. I sprinted two strides behind as the boy ranged in mortal urgency among the blood- and gore-splattered warriors, whose flesh seemed yet to burn with the furnace heat of fury and whose breath appeared to our eyes to steam upon the air.
Father! Alexandros cried in the exigency of dread, and then, ahead, he glimpsed the crosscrested officer's helmet and then Olympieus himself, upright and unwounded. The expression of shock upon the polemarch's face was almost comical when he beheld his son sprinting toward him out of the carnage. Man and boy embraced with wide-flung arms. Alexandras' fingers searched his father's corselet and breastplate, probing to confirm that all four limbs stood intact and no unseen punctures yet leaked dark blood.
Dienekes emerged from the still-seething throng; Alexandros flew into his arms. Are you all right? Did they wound you? I raced up. Suicide stood there beside Dienekes, dam-ing needle javelins in hand, his own face sprayed with the sling of enemy blood. A knot of staring men had clustered; I saw at their feet the torn and motionless form of Meriones, Olympieus' squire.
What are you doing here? Olympieus demanded of his son, his tone turning to anger as he realized the peril the boy had put himself in. How did you get here?
Around us other faces reacted with equal wrath. Olympieus swatted his son, hard, across the skull. Then the boy saw Meriones. With a cry of anguish he dropped to his knees in the dirt beside the fallen squire.
We swam, I announced. A heavy fist cuffed me, then another and another.
What is this to you, a lark? You come to sightsee?
The men were furious, as well they should have been. Alexandros, unhearing in his concern for Meriones, knelt over the man, who lay upon his back with a warrior crouched at each side, his helmetless head pillowed upon a hoplon shield and his bushy white beard clotted with blood, snot and sputum. Meriones, as a squire, had no cuirass to shield his breast; he had taken a Syrakusan eight-footer right through the bone of the chest. A seeping wound pooled blood into the bowl of his sternum; his tunic bunched up sodden with the dark, already clotting fluid; we could hear the hissing of air as his sucking lungs fought for breath and inhaled blood instead.
What was he doing in the line? Alexandras' voice, cracking with grief, demanded of the gathered warriors. He's not supposed to be there!
The boy barked for water. Bearer! he shouted, and shouted again. He tore his own tunic and, doubling the linen, pressed it as a dressing against his fallen friend's air-sucking chest. Why don't you bind him? his youth's voice cried to the encircled, gravely watching men. He's dying!
Can't you see he's dying? He bellowed again for water, but none came. The men knew why, and now, watching, it became clear to Alexandras too, as it was already to Meriones.
I've got one foot in the ferry, little old nephew, the ancient fighter's leaking air pipes managed to croak.
Life was ebbing fast from the warrior's eyes. He was, as I said, not a Spartan but a Potidaean, an officer in his own country, taken captive long years past and never permitted to see his home again. With an effort that was pitiful to behold, Meriones summoned strength to lift one hand, black with blood, and placed it gently upon the boy's. Their parts reversed, the dying man comforted the living youth.
No happier death than this, his leaking lungs wheezed.
You will go home, Alexandras vowed. By all the gods, I will carry your bones myself.
Olympieus knelt now too, taking his squire's hand in his own. Name your wish, old friend. The Spartans wil
l bear you there.
The old man tried to speak but the pipes of his throat would not obey him. He struggled weakly to elevate his head; Alexandras restrained him, then gently cradled the veteran's neck and lifted it. Meriones' eyes glanced to the front and the sides where, amid the churned and liquid turf, the scarlet cloaks of other fallen warriors could be seen, each surrounded by a knot of comrades and brothers-in-arms. Then, with an effort which seemed to consume all his remaining substance, he spoke:
Where these lie, plant me there. Here is my home. I ask none better.
Olympieus swore it. Alexandras, kissing Meriones' forehead, seconded the vow.
A dark peace seemed to settle upon the man's eyes. A moment passed. Then Alexandras lifted his own clear pure tenor in the Hero's Farewell;
That daimon which God breathed into me at birth I with glad heart return now to Him.
In victory Dekton brought to Leonidas the rooster which would be sacrificed as thank-offering to Zeus and Nike. The boy himself was flushed with the triumph; his hands shook violently, wishing they had been permitted to hold a shield and spear and stand in the line of battle.
For my own part I could not stop staring about at the faces of the warriors I had known and watched in drill and training but until now had never looked upon in the blood and horror of battle. Their stature in my mind, already elevated beyond the men of any other city I had known, now rose close to that of heroes and demigods. I had witnessed the mere sight of them utterly rout the not-unvaliant Antirhioni-ans, fighting before their own walls in defense of their homes and families, and overcome within minutes the crack troops of the Syrakusans and their mercenaries, trained and equipped by the tyrant Gelon's limitless gold.
Nowhere in all the field had these Spartans faltered. Now even in the hot blood aftermath their discipline maintained them chaste and noble, above all vaunting and boasting. They did not strip the bodies of the slain, as the soldiers of any other city would eagerly and gloatingly do, nor did they erect trophies of vainglory and conceit from the arms of the vanquished. Their austere thank-offering was a single cock, worth less than an obol, not because they disrespected the gods, but because they held them in awe and deemed it dishonorable to overexpress their mortal joy in this triumph that heaven had granted them.
I watched Dienekes, re-forming the ranks of his platoon, listing their losses and summoning aid for the wounded, the traumatiai. The Spartans have a term for that state of mind which must at all costs be shunned in battle. They call it katalepsis, possession, meaning that derangement of the senses that comes when terror or anger usurps dominion of the mind.
This, I realized now watching Dienekes rally and tend to his men, was the role of the officer: to prevent those under his command, at all stages of battle-before, during and after-from becoming possessed. To fire their valor when it flagged and rein in their fury when it threatened to take them out of hand. That was Dienekes' job. That was why he wore the trans verse-crested helmet of an officer.
His was not, I could see now, the heroism of an Achilles. He was not a superman who waded invulnerably into the slaughter, single-handedly slaying the foe by myriads. He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example. A job whose objective could be boiled down to the single understatement, as he did at the Hot Gates on the morning he died, of performing the commonplace under uncommonplace conditions.
The men were collecting their tickets now. These, to which I alluded earlier, are the woodentwig bracelets tied with twine which each man makes for himself before battle, to identify his corpse if necessary in the aftermath. A man writes or scratches his name twice, once on each end of the twig, then breaks it down the middle. The blood half he ties with string around his left wrist and wears with him into battle; the wine half stays behind in a basket maintained with the tram in the rear. The halves are broken off jaggedly on purpose, so that even if the blood name were effaced or defiled in some other way, its twin would still fit in an unequivocally recognizable manner. When the battle is over, each man retrieves his ticket. Those remaining unclaimed in the basket number and identify the slain.
When the men heard their names called and came forward to take their tickets, they could not stop their limbs from quaking. All up and down the line, one beheld warriors clustering in groups of twos and threes as the terror they had managed to hold at bay throughout the battle now slipped its bonds and surged upon them, overwhelming their hearts. Clasping their comrades by the hand, they knelt, not from reverence alone, though that element was abundant, but because the strength had suddenly fled from their knees, which could no longer support them. Many wept, others shuddered violently. This was not regarded as effeminate, but termed in the Doric idiom hesma phobou, purging or fear-shedding.
Leonidas strode among the men, letting all see that their king lived and moved unwounded. The men gulped greedily their ration of strong, heavy wine and made no shame to drink water as well and plenty of it. The wine went down fast and produced no effect whatever. Some of the men tried to dress their hair, as if thereby to induce a return to normalcy. But their hands trembled so badly they could not do it. Others would chuckle knowingly at the sight, the veteran warriors who knew better than to try; it was impossible to make the limbs behave, and the frustrated groomers would chuckle back, a dark laughter from hell. When the tickets had all found their mates and been reclaimed by their owners, those pieces bereft within the basket identified the men who had been killed or were too badly wounded to come forward. These latter were claimed by brothers and friends, fathers and sons and lovers. Sometimes a man would take his own ticket, then another, and sometimes a third besides, weeping as he accepted them. Many returned to the basket, just to look in. In this way they could perceive the numbers of the lost.
This day it was twenty-eight.
His Majesty may set this number in comparison alongside the thousands slain in greater battles and perhaps judge it insignificant. But it seemed like decimation now.
There was a stir, and Leonidas emerged into view along the front of the assembled warriors.
Have you knelt? He moved down the line, not declaiming like some proud monarch seeking satisfaction from the sound of his own voice, but speaking softly like a comrade, touching each man's elbow, embracing some, placing an arm around others, speaking to each warrior man-toman, Peer-to-Peer, with no kingly condescension. Assemble, the word spread by murmur without needing to be spoken.
Does every man have the halves of his ticket? Have your hands stopped shaking enough to fit them together? He laughed and the men laughed with him. They loved him.
The victors formed up in no particular order, wounded and unwounded, plus squires and helots.
They cleared a space for the king, those in front kneeling to allow their comrades behind to see and hear, while Leonidas himself strode informally up and down the line, presenting himself so that his voice would carry and his face be seen by all.
The battle priest, Olympieus in this case, held the basket up before the king. Leonidas took out each unclaimed ticket and read the name. He offered no eulogy. No word was spoken but the name. Among the Spartans, this alone is considered the purest form of consecration.
Alkamenes. Damon. Antalkides. Lysandros. On down the list.
The bodies, already retrieved by their squires from the field, would be cleansed and oiled; prayers would be offered and sacrifices made. Each of the fallen would be shrouded in his own cloak or that of a friend and interred here upon the site, beside his mates, beneath a mound of honor. Shield, sword, spear and armor alone would be borne home by his comrades, unless the omens declared it more honorable for his corpse to be restored and interred in Lakedaemon.
Leonidas now held up his own bracelet and slid the twin halves together into place. Brothers and allies, I salute you. Gather, friends, and hear the words of my heart.
He paused for a moment, sober and sole
mn.
Then, when all stood silent, he spoke:
When a man seats before his eyes the bronze face of his helmet and steps off from the line of departure, he divides himself, as he divides his 'ticket,' in two parts. One part he leaves behind.
That part which takes delight in his children, which lifts his voice in the chorus, which clasps his wife to him in the sweet darkness of their bed.
That half of him, the best part, a man sets aside and leaves behind. He banishes from his heart all feelings of tenderness and mercy, all compassion and kindness, all thought or concept of the enemy as a man, a human being like himself. He marches into battle bearing only the second portion of himself, the baser measure, that half which knows slaughter and butchery and turns the blind eye to quarter. He could not fight at all if he did not do this.
The men listened, silent and solemn. Leonidas at that time was fifty-five years old. He had fought in more than two score battles, since he was twenty; wounds as ancient as thirty years stood forth, lurid upon his shoulders and calves, on his neck and across his steel-colored beard.
Then this man returns, alive, out of the slaughter. He hears his name called and comes forward to take his ticket. He reclaims that part of himself which he had earlier set aside.
This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath.
What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy's spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell?
When a man joins the two pieces of his ticket and sees them weld in union together, he feels that part of him, the part that knows love and mercy and compassion, come flooding back over him. This is what unstrings his knees.
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae Page 12