The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  It is true that poor, stupid, pig-headed Philocles had talked wildly of what he would do after the victory, but no such proposal as the Spartans had alleged was ever made at a council of war. In that kind of assembly, of course, any lies could be told about Athens, and acclaimed as God’s living truth—so long as they showed us as the worst of wretches, so long as they justified any atrocity inflicted upon the prisoners.

  Every Athenian prisoner taken at Goat River was massacred, Philocles first. The bodies were left unburied.

  No victory was ever more complete in itself, more catastrophic in its consequences, more disgraceful to the majority of the generals of the vanquished. Because of this last, I do not think Lysander can claim any tremendous glory. There’s little glory in corruption—either way.

  And we who escaped?

  Men have told me since that Lysander raged to see even our little flotilla make for sea, planned to send a powerful squadron after us as soon as he could to take us—and with us every ship remaining to Athens. We, of course, were making for the south, with the north-easterlies behind us, sending us scudding along; the winds being impartial, the pursuers would have made equal speed. But there was no chase—thanks to Conon.

  For the ‘battle’, Lysander, of course, had relied on oarsmen, and since there was no place aboard to store military gear, the sails had, as is usual, been dumped ashore long before his ships went into action. Conon was the only Athenian to keep his head that nightmare afternoon; we had a slight start, and he made use of that start to cross the Strait before turning south, to put into the anchorage off Lampsacus, and seize all the sails that Lysander had left there. Then, having made pursuit impossible, we made our escape.*

  During that brief action, he gave me my orders. I must take back to Athens the worst news ever a man had to bear to the City.

  ‘And you’ll follow?’ I asked.

  ‘How can I?’ he said, his face twisting. ‘She’s finished now—no fleet left, no food supplies, he’ll blockade her and starve her into submission in less than a year. If I take my eight ships back, I’ll only add to the number of mouths to feed—I’ll be able to do nothing. I’ll make for Samos, see if I can get help there; if I can’t, I’ll make for Cyprus—Evagoras of Salamis will stay our friend.’

  There was no time for more conversation. Now, all that lay before us fugitives was the long agony of flight; for the first hour most of us had been unable to realise fully what had happened, then there had been the brief flurry of action of the raid, but after that, though we might escape Lysander, we could not escape our thoughts. And we had to take the news to Athens.

  The news of Syracuse had reached the City by degrees; a Sicilian merchant, thinking it was old news, had sat at ease in a barber’s chair in Piraeus and begun to gossip. For days no one believed what he said.

  But no one could doubt the news I brought, for I was the captain of the Paralus, the state despatch ship, and I was fresh from the disaster.

  It was night when we arrived at Piraeus. I gave my news at once to the authorities there, for soon Lysander would be upon us, and we must make what poor preparations we might, and before ever they brought me a horse, the news had spread. As I rode up between the Long Walls a great sound of wailing rose behind me from the port, and the guards lining the Walls called each to the next man the story of ruin and disaster. So the dreadful sound of moaning moved with me from the harbour to the City. And no man in Athens slept that night.

  * An American naval historian has compared this with the action of the bandits in a Western film who turn loose their victims’ horses to forestall chase.

  43

  ‘The beginning of Greek freedom’

  In one hour Lysander had finished a war that had lasted for more than a quarter of a century, but he took his time over the tidying-up process. After massacring his prisoners, he put to sea again, but made, not immediately for the City, but for our colonies and allies.

  But before I forget, one item of news detailing Lysander’s triumphant progress gave me real satisfaction.

  It seems that Gylippus was at Lampsacus too; after our fleet was captured, Lysander gave him the spoils to take to Sparta, and amid the loot was fifteen hundred talents of silver, all put up in bags, each bag also containing a scroll stating the amount. But Gylippus did not know this.

  My own idea is that Lysander deliberately planned it this way. Since most Spartans knew by this time that Gylippus had inherited the family failing, he seemed the oddest of choices for watchdog of such stupendous plunder; I have visions of this being laboriously pointed out to Lysander by frog-voiced subordinates, and Lysander giving that tight little grin and saying nothing.

  True, the laurels had withered slightly on the brow of the victor of Syracuse—but the victor of Goat River did not want any competition. And the competition was neatly dealt with by entrusting a fortune to a rival noted for his itching palm—and omitting to tell the rival that it was all accounted for.

  Gylippus obligingly embezzled three hundred talents.

  They checked the amount in Sparta, arrested him, condemned him to death—but he broke prison and fled into exile, just like his father.

  But apart from that, there was nothing to laugh over—and little to do but wait for the end.

  The day after Paralus reached Athens, the Assembly met; no one had to go into details about the consequences of Goat River. We were finished, but we decided we would make a fight for it. Just as if there were hope, we solemnly agreed to make all preparations for a siege, posting guards along the Walls and so on. All being considered, we put a good face on things, and the pretence only cracked once when it was decided to block up all the harbours save one. People flinched then. When we agreed to block up two of our three harbours, we were also saying goodbye to any action at sea, to all our proud history since Salamis.

  We all knew surrender was inevitable, our future walked beside us day and night in the grim guise of shadows of past surrenders. Some people say we were haunted by the ghosts of Melos; I cannot say I was. My ghosts did not have so far to come, only across the pass from Plataea.

  I still thought sometimes, ‘It can’t happen.’ You would meet Aristophanes in the market-place, and think, ‘It can’t happen to him! They can’t butcher him!’ Or coming down from the Acropolis, you’d meet and talk with Socrates, and think, ‘They can’t cut his throat as they cut the throat of that poor fool Philocles!’

  But at the same time you knew that they could—and would.

  And still Lysander did not come, and still, every day, into our one remaining harbour came crowding in panic-stricken flight our garrisons and colonists—whole families of them—from the allies and dependencies being gobbled up one by one by Lysander.

  He took his time.

  He could, by bestirring himself only a trifle, have swallowed up all Athenians overseas too. But he did not. He let them all get away, back to Athens, to increase the number of mouths to be fed. For he too appreciated not the least fatal aspect of Goat River, as far as we were concerned—that it took place in early autumn, just at the time when back in Athens last year’s supply of corn from the Black Sea was running out, and next year’s hadn’t come in.

  It was only when Athens was as crammed full of folk as it was ever likely to get that he put in an appearance—as autumn turned to winter.* He had advised Agis that he was coming with a fleet of two hundred, and Agis, who had for so long cut us off from our own Attic corn and olives, came down from Decelea. At the same time the main Spartan army, under the command of their other King, Pausanias, came up from the Peloponnese, linked up with Corinthian and Theban allies and camped at our gates in the groves of the Academy.

  And Lysander came first to Salamis, and ravaged it, burned my home and the books—Euripides’ books—I’d kept on in his cave—and then at last to Piraeus.

  They didn’t need to attack, of course, they only had to wait for starvation to do their work for them.

  Conon had rushed corn suppli
es from Cyprus, but Cyprus never had much to spare.

  We held out for five months.

  Thousands died of starvation before we surrendered. It was a repetition of what had happened in Syracuse, except that now at least one could die in the open.

  As my grandfather died.

  He was practical to the last. He was now a very old man; he had never really recovered from the shock of Syracuse, and even if he had wanted to live, I do not think he could have survived the siege. But he did not want to live, and he died the day before the siege ended. Socrates, whose physical toughness kept him mobile, even if horribly emaciated, had come painfully across the City to tell me what was rumoured; somehow or other he had got hold of a little wine and brought that too. ‘If your grandfather’ll drink it, it’ll keep him going for just that little extra time,’ he whispered. Nobody talked then; nobody could talk.

  But Grandfather refused. He said, ‘Do you think I, the friend of Pericles, want to go on living in an Athens fouled by their presence? ‘

  Tecmessa, weeping, begged him to drink the wine, but he went on talking to me.

  ‘I know you wish you’d died at Syracuse, boy, but thirty can’t feel as strongly as eighty. I’ve lived too long. All hope’s not dead in you yet—you might think it is, but if the Spartans don’t cut your throat tomorrow, you’ll start hoping. I don’t say it’ll be the hope of ever seeing the City great again, but at least you can hope that one day you’ll see these swine down in the dust. I can’t hope to live that long, but you may see it—even if you see it as a slave.’ His voice grew gentler. ‘Poor fellow—the odds are you’ll be a slave for the second time—if they don’t Plataea Athens and send you the way your father went. And do you expect me to live to see that? Now, Lycius, while there’s still a little strength left to me—before I’m a dead weight—’ and here, incredibly, he chuckled—‘get me out into the courtyard. You’ll never manage me yourself.’

  With my help he dragged himself out into the courtyard, and lay down. ‘Get me burned and out of the way before they come into the City,’ he whispered.

  After that he spoke only once again, just before midnight. ‘I dozed off then,’ he whispered in the darkness. ‘Dreamed of the day my boys were born—how I lifted them up to acknowledge them. I didn’t know what I was rearing them for—butchered, both of them—still, they were luckier than you, my poor fellow, they’d known some of the great days. You’ve only seen the end of the glories.’

  Then he turned his face from me and feebly pulled his mantle over his head.

  He died two hours before sunrise on the seventy-sixth anniversary of Salamis—the day when Athens surrendered to the Spartans.

  I did not have much feeling left, of course. I made Grandfather’s funeral pyre, and the flames sprang up, and his body was burned before dawn broke on the day of the City’s surrender.

  Tecmessa and I shared Socrates’ wine; she said she would gather Grandfather’s ashes; I said I would go out to find out what was happening.

  It was true enough. We had surrendered—what was left of us. Lysander was coming in today. He had deliberately chosen today, of course.

  I heard this in the market place. Crowds had gathered there—at least, what passed for crowds in Athens just then. Not everyone was on his feet, people too weak to stand lay all over the place, some dying. But haggard and hopeless as we were, it was amazing how people could still turn pale at the news. Even the dying raised their heads, then fell back, silently, eyes staring at the bright blue sky.

  With a sudden shock I recognised one of them; he had survived the stone quarries at Syracuse with me, was one of the slaves we had liberated. I squatted down beside him, raised his head on my bony arm. ‘Hold on!’ I whispered. ‘Hold on!’

  He opened his eyes, knew me, but was too far gone to speak.

  And then we heard voices—loud, harsh voices, strong voices, that needed no Laconian accent to identify them for us, voices followed by a tramp of feet thundering along, it seemed to wretches who could barely manage to shuffle or crawl.

  A most extraordinary agitation took hold of the crowd—which way were they coming, up from Piraeus, or from the Acharnian Gate? How they would come seemed far more important than the fact that they were in Athens.

  The first Spartans came up from Piraeus—headed by Lysander. I watched him go by on horseback. He and the fellows tramping behind him had no interest in us—for the time being. They were too set on getting up into the Acropolis. After a time I got tired of watching them, there were so many of them, hundreds, thousands of them, they seemed to have risen up from the ground like the Dragon’s Teeth. I began to look about me then, up above to the pure blue sky—with an occasional wisp from a funeral pyre, though down in the direction of Piraeus I could see great clouds of smoke floating up. So they had spared a few troops to begin the work of destruction already.

  It was becoming hot. There was a dead body not far from me, thick with flies.

  Still the Spartans marched past, watched in astonishing, immense silence—no tears as yet, just silence, though in some gaunt watching faces the sunken eyes gleamed with suppressed hatred.

  I thought, ‘If they let Athens survive, I wouldn’t be a member of the Spartan garrison after dark for much.’

  The head on my arm grew heavy. He had died as the Spartans marched past. The wonder was that I had recognised him; he was a young man, about twenty-eight years old, but much of his hair was white. I wondered if my own were any better.

  * November, 405 b.c.

  44

  Barracks on the Acropolis

  My grandfather had died in misery, believing the best fate which could befall me was that of slavery; his last day of complete consciousness had been the day when the City heard that in a meeting between Sparta and her allies, Corinth and Thebes had urged that no peace should ever be made with us, that the name of Athens should be blotted out, her population butchered or enslaved, her territory turned into sheep pasture. It was a Theban, Erianthus, who proposed this. ‘Pull it down,’ he bawled. ‘Wipe them out, when we have the chance.’ But a man from Phocis suddenly sprang to his feet and began to chant a chorus from the Electra of Euripides, and though the Thebans and Corinthians still clamoured for our annihilation, people from the smaller states cried out that a city which had produced such men should never be destroyed.

  So he, whom the city had cast out, saved her a second time.

  Dis’ flinty heart might be melted with Orpheus’ singing, but the hearts of Agis and Lysander were of less impressionable stuff; fortunately, however, on this occasion, since the hardness of their hearts was matched only by the hardness of their heads, they thought they might well defer to the sentimentality of their lesser allies; if we were wiped out, Thebes and Corinth would become over-mighty—who was going to possess all those square miles of sheep pasture? Thebes being particularly cock-a-hoop, an Athens surviving as a Spartan dependency was the thing to work for. Agis, who had been deaf to the siren voice of historical indebtedness where Plataea was concerned, spoke, for the first and only time in his life, in favour of mercy.

  So the peace terms were as follows:

  The Long Walls and the Piraeus fortifications were to be destroyed.

  We were to evacuate all territory other than Attica.

  We must surrender all our warships.

  We must re-admit all exiles—save one.

  We were to become allies of Sparta, to follow her leadership both by land and sea, to recognise her friends and enemies as ours.

  They lost no time in burning the arsenals and unfinished ships in Piraeus; all that had started to go up before Lysander was in the Acropolis. They would have liked to have pulled down the Walls just as fast, but even they could not manage that, though they all lent a hand the first day—honest to God Spartans doing the menial work of helots!—and the Corinthians brought in flute girls to play and dancers to wriggle while this was going on, and the Thebans, so noted for their love of democracy, kept bellowing
that this was the first day of Greek freedom. After the first day, though, we were told to get on with the job ourselves—without the flutes and dancing girls, of course. Lysander descended from the barracks he had established on the Acropolis and told us we had to finish the work within a given time; if we did not, he observed raucously, we had broken the peace terms, and our Spartan protectors were not going to interpose themselves any longer between us and the cheerful fate urged by Thebes and Corinth.

  It so happened that we did not finish pulling down the Walls in the time given us; to say the least, our hearts were not in the work, while there was also a point that the Spartans and their friends had not taken into consideration, the fact that the work would be done by wretches still more than half dead with starvation. When Lysander descended, god-like, among us, to hearten us with conjectures as to the fate of treaty-breakers, I, since the role of spokesman for a slave-gang amid stone and dust was no new one to me, pointed out to him that we were not exactly in the best physical shape for the job—though Socrates, working beside me, made my own physical shape even more deplorable by kicking me on the shin and muttering, ‘They’re only empty threats, you young fool.’

  Lysander squinted at me through the clouds of stone-dust, and did not seem to like what he saw.