Tyrant

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The men stared at him in astonishment, not knowing what to think. Some yelled out unreasoning, incoherent phrases, others fell to their knees, still others burst into tears.

  ‘Throw down your arms and follow me,’ said Leptines. ‘No one will harm you. If anyone attacks you, I will order my own troops to defend you.’

  Upon hearing those words, the warriors on the hillside threw their swords and shields to the ground one after another and, beginning with the oldest, set off after Leptines, passing between the files of armed barbarians still lusting for blood.

  They advanced in silence, staring off into a void, until they reached the beach, where they collapsed on to the sand.

  The Lucanian chieftain had them counted one by one. He then boarded the ship and counted those survivors as well, and added up the sums.

  Leptines paid over one hundred and seventy talents in silver coins without batting an eye, then personally negotiated a peace settlement between the barbarian tribal chieftains and the most highly ranked surviving officers representing the city of Thurii. He ensured the Greeks’ right to gather the dead and burn them on pyres.

  At dusk he reboarded the Boubaris and ordered them to point the bow in a southward direction, towards Messana, where Dionysius awaited him, and, perhaps, the most difficult encounter of his life.

  Dionysius knew everything. He received his brother at his headquarters in Messana, his back turned to him.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking . . .’ began Leptines, ‘but you should have been there; you didn’t see the carnage, those heaps of cadavers mangled and hacked to pieces, the blood staining the land and the sea . . .’

  ‘I’ve never seen massacres?’ roared Dionysius, turning all at once. ‘I’ve seen nothing but massacres all my life! And so have you, by Zeus! You can’t tell me this is the first time you’ve seen blood.’

  ‘But they were Greeks, damn it! Greeks slaughtered by barbarians who were doing it for us! You had spoken of an agreement with the Lucanians, of strategic support, skirmishing, you never said you’d give them free reign in exterminating an entire city!’

  ‘That’s enough!’ shouted Dionysius, even louder. ‘Enough, I say! You have committed a serious act of rebellion. You signed a peace settlement which goes against my political design and against my military strategy. You have dissipated an enormous sum of money that was to serve for operations of war. Do you realize what this means? High treason, insubordination, collusion with the enemy on the field of battle!’

  Leptines dropped his head, crushed by the harsh reaction of his brother as though he hadn’t expected it. When he raised his eyes and saw the bloodshot eyes before him, the face purple with rage, the veins in his neck swelling as he yelled out still more accusations and insults, he felt that he had a stranger in front of him, a cruel, inhuman being.

  He waited until his brother had finished and, as he was still panting with the rage of his unchecked ire, Leptines replied: ‘I know, and I am ready to pay the consequences. But there’s one thing I must tell you first: when I saw all that horror, I suddenly realized what a Greek city is; I had nearly forgotten. I’m not talking about Syracuse or Selinus or Catane, I’m not talking about friends or enemies. I’m talking about any city whose people descend from a fistful of wretches forced years ago to cross the sea in search of a little fortune. They arrived here with nothing more than their lives and their hopes. Not to build empires; all they desired was the semblance of their original homeland: a little spot with a harbour for trade, a hill for their gods, fields for wheat and for olives. For every one of the cities that found a future, many others were never born. For every group that managed to find a place to land, many more finished up on the bottom of the sea, in the jaws of fish. It’s true, we’ve fought each other many times in useless wars over stupid rivalries, but I will never again permit savages to annihilate a Greek city through any fault of my own. I did what I did because I believed I was right.’

  Dionysius turned his back to him again and said: ‘As of this moment, you are dismissed from command of the fleet and are under arrest. You will be taken to Syracuse and held under custody in your quarters at the Ortygia barracks, pending my definitive decision. And now free me of your presence. I never want to see you again.’

  Leptines left without saying a word. As soon as he crossed the threshold he found two guards who took him into custody and escorted him directly to the port.

  He asked for a last look at the Boubaris and his wish was allowed. He left her, passing a callused hand over the shiny railing of the stem from which he had led so many battles; a final caress for a friend.

  Those who were close to him could see the tears in his eyes.

  Dionysius made Iolaus commander of the fleet and proceeded with operations as if nothing had happened. He had mustered an impressive army: twenty thousand foot soldiers, three thousand five hundred horses and fifty brand new warships, which were added to the others already at anchor in the port of Messana. He set sail as soon as the wind was favourable and landed his troops on the Ionian coast of Italy, a little north of Rhegium. He began to march north.

  In the meantime, the Italian League had united all her federal forces and put them under the command of Heloris, the old aristocrat who had once been Dionysius’s adoptive father and was now his most relentless adversary. They marched for five consecutive days until they reached the banks of a little river called the Eleporus, which flowed between bare, sun-scorched hills. The army stopped here, but Heloris decided to push forward with his advance guard, made up mostly of Knights anxious to come into contact with the enemy and perhaps to succeed at some surprise attack. In doing so, they distanced themselves nearly two stadia from the bulk of the League forces.

  Dionysius’s native scouts had already been posted everywhere, on foot and horseback, hidden amidst the brushwood and the groves of pine and holm oak, so that the command was immediately informed of the situation.

  Dionysius did not wait an instant, and personally guided the attack with selected troops in a series of rapid waves: first the archers, then the assault troops and last, the heavy line infantry. Heloris and his men were overrun and slain before their requests for help even got back to the army that was camped on the other side of the river.

  The commanders of the various divisions of the federal forces decide to engage in battle nonetheless, but they were attacking without their generals and were demoralized by the loss of their vanguard contingent, and they were soon overwhelmed. A good number of them, about half of the army, managed to withdraw in closed ranks and reach the top of a hill overlooking the narrow Eleporus river.

  Dionysius surrounded the hill, preventing any access to the river. He would not need to do anything but wait: the baking sun and the absolute lack of water would do the rest. Iolaus landed before dusk, had a horse brought and reached the ground army command before the sun set behind the mountains. He beheld the battlefield strewn with dead bodies and the arid hill on which the survivors of the Italian League had dug themselves in. He felt as if time had stopped. What he found before him was the same scene that he had already seen at Leptines’s side just a few days before at Laos.

  Dionysius noticed how shaken he was by the sight and said: ‘You seem upset. It’s certainly not the first time you’ve seen a battlefield.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ agreed Iolaus. ‘It’s that I’ve already seen this very scene.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Dionysius.

  ‘I imagine you must have already made your decision.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  One of the guards entered just then. ‘Hegemon,’ he said, ‘the Italians want to negotiate. They are outside.’

  ‘Have them come in.’

  Four Crotonian officers entered the tent and approached Dionysius, who received them on his feet, a sign that their meeting would be short.

  ‘Speak,’ he said.

  The oldest of them, a man of about sixty with a deep scar on his face, began to speak. �
�We are here to negotiate an agreement. There are ten thousand of us. We are well armed and we stand in an advantageous position. We can still . . .’

  Dionysius raised his hand to interrupt. ‘My point of view,’ he said, ‘is very simple. You have no way off this dry, barren hill and as soon as the sun rises, the heat will become unbearable. You have neither food nor water. And so it doesn’t seem to me that you have a choice. All I can accept from you is an unconditional surrender.’

  ‘Is that your last word?’ asked the officer.

  ‘It is,’ replied Dionysius.

  The officer nodded solemnly then gestured to his comrades and left the tent.

  Iolaus bowed his head in silence.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ said Dionysius. ‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.’

  The sun rose over a desolate landscape, illuminating the land all around the Eleporus, still cluttered with corpses. Swarms of green flies buzzed over the death-stiffened bodies, and the monotonous song of the crickets had already given way to the harsh screeching of the cicadas.

  There was not a breath of wind and the rocks on the river bed were soon red hot, making the air quiver and creating the illusion of shiny pools of water where there was naught but sand and stones. There was not a single tree to cast a bit of shade on top of the hill, not a shelter where one could seek a little relief from the merciless blaze of the sun.

  The shrieks of crows could be heard in the midday heat; they had come to feast on that field of death. A little further over, big black-and-white-winged vultures with long featherless necks were swooping down from the tree branches.

  Below, under the camp pavilion, Dionysius sat reading the reports of his informers, and waited. A servant fanned him with a flabellum and poured water into his cup and into a basin where he could wet his wrists every now and then.

  Iolaus sat just a short distance away under the shade of a lentisc.

  Much of the day went by thus, without anything happening. Then, towards mid-afternoon, they could see something going on at the top of the hill. The echoes of voices, seemingly raised in anger, reached them, and then a group of unarmed men began to wend their way to the valley, walking towards the pavilion. They were the same men that Dionysius had met the day before and they had come to offer the unconditional surrender of their troops.

  ‘I’m glad you have come to the right decision,’ replied Dionysius.

  ‘We beseech your clemency,’ began the man with the scar on his cheek. ‘Today fortune is on your side, but one day you could find yourself in our condition and . . .’

  Dionysius interrupted him with a characteristic wave of his hand. ‘Tell your men that they are free to return to their homes without paying any ransom. There will be no retaliation on my part. All I ask is that a peace treaty be drawn up between us and signed by the authorities of the Italian League.’

  The man looked at him in amazement, incapable of believing what was being said.

  ‘Can you guarantee that the League will sign?’

  ‘I can guarantee it,’ replied the officer.

  ‘Then go. Return to your cities and never raise your arms against me again.’

  The officer did not know how to answer. He mutely searched the gaze of the man before him to find an explanation for behaviour that contrasted so completely with anything he’d ever heard about the tyrant.

  ‘Go,’ repeated Dionysius. ‘I will gather up your dead.’ And he took his leave.

  They passed, armed, through the ranks of Syracusan soldiers who held their spears lowered as a sign of respect.

  Ten days later the Thurians sent the signed treaty to Dionysius, with a golden crown.

  Iolaus picked it up. ‘A sign of gratitude. It happens rarely. Clemency is the greatest merit of a leader, especially when he has won, and this gift has been given in recognition.’ Dionysius did not answer; he seemed absorbed in reading the document that the League had sent him. Iolaus waited until he had finished, then spoke again. ‘Can’t you really understand Leptines? You’ve done the same thing he did; I’m sure you must understand. If the sight of that massacre moved you to mercy, why can’t you pardon your brother?’

  Dionysius placed the roll with the treaty on the table and replied: ‘My gesture has ensured the neutrality of the League, if not her friendship. It has freed my hands to take Rhegium; the city is now completely isolated.’

  Iolaus could not hide his disappointment.

  ‘What did you think?’ asked Dionysius. ‘That I would give up my plan for sentimental reasons? Is it possible that you know me so little?’

  ‘Few people know you better than me, but it’s difficult to resign myself to the fact that what I have always loved in you no longer exists.’

  ‘Time changes everyone,’ replied Dionysius in a monotone. ‘You could have refused this position. Instead you accepted and you have taken Leptines’s place.’

  ‘It’s true. I’m the supreme commander of the fleet but there is a reason . . .’

  ‘Certainly. You want power, and you know you can have it only if I stay in power. If I fall, all of you will follow me into ruin. You might as well support me then, and not waste too much time on useless nostalgia.’

  ‘There is some truth in what you say,’ replied Iolaus. ‘And yet that is not the explanation. You forget that I am always capable of finding within myself a good reason for living, reasons that I have learned from my teachers and never disavowed.’

  Dionysius regarded him with an enquiring expression.

  ‘The reason why I accepted his position,’ continued Iolaus, ‘is not because you asked me. It’s because Leptines asked me.’

  He did not wait for an answer. He left the tent and rode his horse down to the sea, where the Boubaris awaited him, ready to set sail.

  28

  PHILISTUS ENTERED THE east wing of the barracks and approached the door to Leptines’s apartments, guarded by two Arcadian mercenaries. ‘Open it,’ he ordered.

  ‘No one can enter: orders of the supreme commander.’

  ‘I have command of Ortygia when he is absent and I assume complete responsibility for my actions. Open the door or I’ll call the officer on duty.’

  The two warriors gave each other a look, then one of them drew the bolt and opened the door, allowing him to enter.

  Leptines was lying on a cot with his back against the wall, his arms crossed and his gaze fixed on the wall opposite. He said nothing, nor did he turn. His eyes were red, his lips dry, his beard and hair unkempt.

  ‘You can’t go on like this. Just look at you, you’re a mess.’

  Leptines did not answer.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, and I feel no better than you do, but letting yourself go like this doesn’t serve any purpose. You must react! The Company has met and they are indignant over the way your brother has treated you, and I’d say they’re ready to . . .’

  Leptines started. He turned slowly towards Philistus and said: You shouldn’t have. There was no reason for you to do so. I disobeyed orders and I’m suffering the consequences.’

  ‘I don’t agree. You were right, and I feel the same way you do. For years and years we stuck by him in his plans for an entirely Greek Sicily. We tolerated execrable operations because we envisioned a future of peace and prosperity, but now things are totally out of hand. He is taking openly hostile action against the Italian Greeks and I say no, this is no longer tolerable. I refused to negotiate the alliance with the Lucanians.’

  ‘And why didn’t you tell me?’ asked Leptines.

  Philistus took a stool and went to sit next to the cot. ‘Because he didn’t let me. Maybe he thought I would convince you to see things my way, and he didn’t want that to happen. He had the negotiations carried out by men who never say anything but yes to him, and he never told you the whole truth. It was all done by the time you got there; you found a horde of barbarians massacring Greeks and you reacted as any civil person would have done. Leptines, for what it’s worth, you can still c
ount on all my esteem and my friendship. And not only mine . . .’

  He lowered his voice and continued. ‘The people are tired of these continuous wars, of seeing foreign mercenaries growing rich beyond measure and obtaining privileges that are not even granted to citizens. He continues to demand sacrifices in the name of a radiant future that keeps getting further away rather than closer. And with every passing day he becomes more gloomy, suspicious and intractable. He has an heir but he barely looks at the boy, even when he is at home. He says the child trembles as soon as he sees him, that he’s a little coward . . . do you see what he’s become?’

  Leptines sighed. ‘I thought I’d bring the lad with me to the countryside, teach him to raise bees and chickens. I wanted to take him out fishing, but my brother is too jealous of him, he doesn’t want his son influenced by anyone but the tutors he has chosen. The problem is they’re brainless and heartless. They’re turning him into a wretch who will be afraid of his own shadow . . .’

  Philistus took an apple from his pocket and put it on the table at Leptines’s bedside. ‘Eat this. Looks like they’ve been starving you here.’

  Leptines nodded and bit into the fruit. ‘What is he doing now?’ he asked between one mouthful and another.

  ‘He has laid siege to Rhegium, but the city won’t give in.

  Iolaus is returning with part of the fleet, but he is remaining. That’s what I’ve been told.’