‘Indeed you’re wrong! I’d love to work for you. Beauty’s a god that a whole city can share. That, at any rate, was the point of the gods in the old days, in Athens anyway. And, of course, I can see that it must be as accurate as a piece of reasoning. Then it has the same value.’
‘Only more permanent.’
‘Perhaps! That’s been a difference of opinion between philosophers and artists for some time. But I’d certainly like nothing better than to be taught something new.’
Three days later they were settled in Cirrha. Erif Der produced her oracle for Hyperides, telling him something of the circumstances—she found him easier to talk to than most Greeks. He frowned and said:
‘It’s a typical piece of god-stuff—frightening you! But there’s very little in it really. Mother and daughter—a nice obvious thing to begin an oracle with—gets the atmosphere. It might be used metaphorically to cover all sorts of events. Almost any two things can be made into mother and daughter if you apply your imagination to them. The snake? Oh, that’s only the kind of thing every one says nowadays. When people are too ignorant and frightened to face life and death, they invent things to come between. The Gods don’t work now, so they make themselves snakes and kings that die—the last line is all part of the same flummery. It doesn’t mean anything at all except that Apollo is determined to follow the fashions. The second line—you’re sure to have talked about the corn. And they’ve given themselves a margin of time. Then if it happens earlier you’ll be so pleased that you’ll make up an excuse for them. Third line? Oh, that was for Berris. They saw he was something of the sort, and put it in thinking they’d hit some nail on the head. Opinion on the whole thing? A waste of money. Don’t fuss. I’m not really unsympathetic, but I’m afraid this oracle business makes me angry.’
‘Don’t you believe in it at all, Hyperides? Not a little bit?’
‘Not the least little bit. Sorry.’ He grinned at them. They both liked him so much. Berris found that when he explained his work to Hyperides it immediately came alive in his own mind. He was working far better than he had since the first year or two in Sparta, tackling new problems and materials and enjoying it. The chairs were going to be fun, and he would be well paid for them, which was worth considering, because they had spent a certain amount in Delphi. Erif had plenty of jewels still, but it always meant time and trouble before they could be turned into food and housing.
There was a piece of bad news early that summer, which shocked not only them, but every one else they saw. Antigonos had taken Mantinea, and, in revenge for the murdered settlers of four years ago, had burnt most of the city and sold the whole of the citizens, the women and children on the spot, the men in gangs to Macedonia. Not only that, but the city itself was to be wiped away, out of the hearts and thoughts of men, for the new Achaean settlers who were put there decided that their new Achaean town was to be called Antigonea. A horrible thing, nowadays; it was a long time since Hellenes had dealt so badly with one another. Kleomenes seemed to be doing little but hold the Laconian borders; but it was better perhaps not to think too much about Sparta.
Hyperides produced a good deal of Epicurean theory, while he and Berris worked and Erif looked on or experimented with dyes or wrote to Philylla—against the time when she could find some way to send the letter—or while they all three wandered about through the warm olive groves in the lengthening evenings. As this went on Erif felt a certain lifting of her spirit. For some time she did not know why, for she had plenty to make her gloomy. At last she decided that it was because he talked extraordinarily little about virtue, not at all about duty or conscience, and he used good in quite a different sense to the one she was used to, in a sense that included a number of things that she was very glad to think were good; things of the body as well as the mind, the whole of life. It was more like Marob. Suddenly she thought: if he’d come to Marob instead of Sphaeros, would Tarrik have got so entangled with himself? And the next day she thought again: if Hyperides went to Marob, could he cure Tarrik of whatever was the matter with him, as—she was beginning to believe—he was curing her of whatever it was which she had wrong? At last she said all this to Hyperides and Berris.
Berris did not like the idea of Hyperides going away when he was so perfect to talk to. Yet obviously this thing was more important. Besides, his work was going amazingly well, he hardly seemed to stop to take breath now! He had enough orders to last him all summer. Erif said she would write a letter to Tarrik and send Hyperides with it, and when he got there he could see what he could do or say. Hyperides liked the prospect only fairly. He was happy where he was with the two bright, half-barbarian minds; he wrote to his friends in Athens and they to him. He would go back there one day. And he was not certain how much he cared for the picture of the Corn King of Marob which he had got from the other two. Something fierce and moody and full of queer barbarous passions and customs that led him to do these strange things and think himself a god. But it would, at any rate, be interesting.
That summer they found a ship which was bound that way, for Tyras and Olbia. Yes, it would touch at Marob and consider the flax prices. The two gave him letters and money and things to take back with him, including toys for a three-year-old child. They wished him luck and saw him sail. The ship went all round the Peloponnese and up to Athens before she adventured eastward for the straits and Byzantium. Hyperides was horribly tempted to stay at home with the money and give things to all his friends, most of whom were not much better off than he was. But Berris and Erif were friends too. Finally he decided not even to land. He turned his back on Athens and began writing what was going to be a philosophical comedy of manners. Then they were off again, bound for Marob.
Chapter Eight
ALL THAT SUMMER Kleomenes was extremely busy at home, refitting his army, enlarging it and training it to the limits of confidence and courage. At the same time he had to deal with his political opponents, using all his tact and cunning and knowledge of people, missing Agiatis every day. He freed and armed a good many more helots, making those who could pay for their freedom, for many had savings. He did not care much what happened to his own household. He slept mostly in a tent or under the stars and he did not take long over his meals. He worked all the others as hard as he worked himself. Once or twice he seemed illish, a touch of the old thing, but it passed over. At any rate they kept Antigonos off, and at the beginning of autumn that king sent back his Macedonians, who were beginning to grumble, to their homes for the winter, and settled down himself in Argos, thinking it was fairly safe: Kleomenes must have his hands full. Besides, no one starts a campaign at the beginning of the winter season.
Kleomenes, however, did. He ordered his army to take five days ‘provisions and marched off north-east towards Argos. Then he suddenly turned to the left by a mountain road and camped that night on the borders of Megalopolis. Before dawn he sent Panteus off with two brigades to surprise the city. He followed with the rest of the army, and by the time he got there Panteus had taken a great section of the wall and made breaches in it. Before the citizens of Megalopolis were well awake, the Spartan army was on top of them. The city was so bravely defended in street-to-street fighting that most of the citizens escaped, though with little but the clothes they wore, into Messenia. But a thousand were taken and the whole town was left in Kleomenes’ hands. That was how it was by dinner-time. Panteus and the King had snatched Megalopolis and the army was wild with delight and renewed pride in them and itself.
The King’s Mess met just after noon with more laughter and excitement than there’d been for ages. Agesipolis had been in the first attack with Panteus. He described how they had come up along a dry water-course, and as it grew light had seen the walls of Megalopolis coming thicker grey out of the grey and chilly mist ahead of them, with towers to right and left; how the runners with ladders had gone forward quietly; how they’d followed quickly over as at practice times, one at another’s heels; how they’d caught and killed the guards
before they could wake the town, secured the nearer streets, opened the gates to the others. Oh, the lovely successful slickness of it all! It was always a surprise, in a way, that Panteus was such an exceedingly good soldier. He looked as if he could obey better than command, but when something began to happen he woke up completely, his body was at the service of his intelligence, and when he shouted or signalled his orders the bodies and minds of his men obeyed to the second. He was a good teacher too. Agesipolis understood the reason of every movement—only he himself could never have managed in the middle of a battle to come so immediately and precisely to these competent decisions.
Plundering had been forbidden. No one was to take more than he needed to eat, even. The army found comfortable quarters in empty houses, and lighted fires because there was a coldish wind. There was plenty to loot if the King would let them. But they must not: or only very little. The prisoners had been brought into the market-place and were being sorted out, the men into the gymnasium, which had high walls, and the big temple of Zeus Saviour, where they were at liberty to make what prayers they liked—the women into the temple next it, of Fortune and the North Wind. Rape had been forbidden, too, for the moment. Anyone who was of any importance was brought straight to the King.
He was standing on the steps of the temple of Zeus Saviour, resting his hand only lightly on his great spear at arm’s length, his purple cloak hanging loose to his heel, the red and purple plume jutting up and back from his helmet. Two or three of his friends were beside him, all fully armed, too, and very victorious looking, with dark beards and bright eyes and more high spears to stand up with his. He watched the prisoners going by into the temples, the men mostly with their hands tied or chained. They were being checked off in tens, made to stay still, and then shoved on, often with the intention of being made to look funny by tripping on the threshold or knocking into the ring on the door. Some of them recognised Kleomenes and called on him for mercy. They were not at all sure what the Spartans at this bitter stage of the war would do to their prisoners.
He did not answer, but smiled a little. He was feeling good all over. He saw a girl in a grey woollen dress and red cloak go by among the women prisoners, with her head a little bent, playing a shepherd’s whistle. The notes of it hardly reached him; only the tiniest possible sad little defiance. He thought she was playing for the children who came after her and who were just not crying. One of his soldiers knocked the pipe out of her mouth; she snatched it up again, wordless, and hid it in the fold of her dress, and glared, half terrified, at the man. The children behind her began to cry miserably. She looked straight across the steps, past the soldier, at Kleomenes. She had brown hair, parted at one side and held close to her head by a band of red stuff, and straight, thick eyebrows and a straight nose, and her under lip stuck out a little either with anger or near tears. She must have been quite young. Something very odd happened to the King then, because he quite suddenly and seriously remembered his own cold orders about rape. He wanted that girl hauled over to him. The next moment it was out of his mind again; he had looked away from her. But she had got it full in his look back at her. She went on sobbing into the temple, not knowing what was to happen to her, nor to the rest of the free-born men and women of Megalopolis.
Idaios came up the steps in three bounds, shouting that they had taken Lysandridas and Thearidas among the prisoners. The King looked all the satisfaction he felt. They were two of the richest and most important citizens; if he had them he had an obvious place to start. Idaios pointed them out, being hustled along to the steps, their hands chained behind them. Lysandridas was the elder of the two, a rather jolly-looking man in armour—they had both been among the defenders of Megalopolis—but without helmet or weapons. He saw Kleomenes on the steps of the temple of Zeus Saviour and shouted up to him: ‘King of Sparta!’ Kleomenes passed his spear quickly to Idaios and came down a step to meet them, signing to the soldiers not to hurry them too much. They were both halted just in front of him and a little below. Lysandridas said: ‘Now you’ve got your chance, King of Sparta.’ When Kleomenes did not answer, he went on: ‘Your chance to do something finer and bolder than you’ve ever done—even you.’
They looked at one another hard. Kleomenes felt all the implications behind the words: they pleased him. Lysandridas saw he was pleased. They could not avoid meeting one another’s eyes with a curious, excited intimacy. Kleomenes ordered the soldiers to unchain them both.
‘Thanks!’ said Lysandridas, stretching and rubbing the inside of his arm over his sweating face. ‘That’s better. Well, King of Sparta?’
Kleomenes said: ‘Lysandridas, you are surely not advising me to give you back your city after all my trouble?’
‘I am,’ said Lysandridas.
‘But you can’t think I’m going to take your advice?’
‘I can,’ said Lysandridas, ‘easily.’ He left it for a moment, then said with passionate earnestness of voice and mind: ‘Sir, don’t ruin us, don’t make us enemies for ever! Give us back our city and make us steady and faithful friends and allies. We can be brave on your side as we were brave against you.’
Thearidas said suddenly: ‘We know you can be generous enough for this. Buy our hearts and swords, King of Sparta!’ He was a little man and he had a sword-cut on his knee that showed the bone through; he had walked very lame and stumblingly because of it, but now he did not seem to notice it at all.
Kleomenes did not answer for a minute or two. Panteus began to speak, but he checked him. At last he said, not very loudly: ‘It is hard to trust so far. How can I? I’ve no margin to pay for it if it fails.’ He came down nearer to the two men and looked at them closely. And then he said again, but louder: ‘Very well, I’ll risk it. May I never get too old to take these risks! Lysandridas and Thearidas, you two can go off to Messenia with a herald from me and tell your friends they can have their city again if they will break with the League and be my allies.’
He nodded at Lysandridas, and was not unpleased when Lysandridas took him hard by the hands and said in fierce excitement: ‘Is that all you want of us, King of Sparta? No indemnity? No land?’
‘Yes, that’s all,’ said Kleomenes, ‘only your friendship.’
‘I think I can promise you that,’ said Lysandridas, and turned to his friend. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Thearidas, ‘I do. At least—No, you mean it honestly and we’ll show them. Can we go this evening, sir?’
It was after supper that evening that the King, considering this day, suddenly wished that someone else had seen him taking this generous risk, offering to save Megalopolis. Some woman. Agiatis. Some other woman, even. He said to Panteus: ‘It would be a good thing to let the prisoners know about this offer of mine.’ ‘I’ve done that,’ said Panteus. ‘Men and women both?’ ‘No; but I will. I suppose the women may be useful with their husbands later.’ ‘That’s it,’ said Kleomenes.
Thearidas and Lysandridas and the herald from Kleomenes rode over the pass in gathering darkness and into Messenia. They were very hopeful. The thing seemed almost done. The few people they spoke to that night agreed. A full assembly was called just after dawn. They stood up and told what had happened; the Spartan herald confirmed it all. There were a good many shouts of agreement and for Kleomenes. But they had reckoned without a young man who had been one of the leaders in the defence of the city, almost the last to get away in the retreat; a young man who had to be helped to his feet and held there because of his wounds, a short, thick, eloquent, angry young man called Philopoemen. He spoke against them, violently asking the assembly if it was going to crawl for Kleomenes, bringing it back firm to its old hatred of Sparta, asking if it was not enough that Kleomenes had their city without his having their bodies and minds as well, asking if they had forgotten all they had ever known about Sparta and Spartan ways. The assembly, in a great burst of heroism, overwhelming those whose wives and children were among the prisoners, refused the terms. Let Kleomenes burn Megalopolis!
He could not lure or threaten them into friendship. Philopoemen should lead them against him yet!
They drove out Thearidas and Lysandridas and the herald, who rode back grimly and silently to the city. They were hurried along to Kleomenes, who had been waiting, not very patiently, for them all the afternoon. They had to tell him of their failure and Philopoemen’s hatred and success. The King heard it all in silence. He said to Lysandridas and Thearidas: ‘You can go.’ ‘But—’ said Lysandridas. ‘I advise you to go quick,’ he said, ‘or you may see something you won’t like. You can take whatever you can carry or get anyone else to, from your own houses.’ He wrote and signed an order. ‘And get your wives and children from among the prisoners. It was a pity Philopoemen was too much for you.’ He turned his back on them and they hurried out, white and whispering. He gave orders that all the statues, pictures, and everything else of value, was to be loaded carefully into carts and sent under guard into Sparta. His army could then do whatever they liked with the shell of the place. He suggested that they should burn it. Slave and foreign prisoners were to be distributed or sold. Citizen prisoners were to be held for high ransom.
He walked up the temple steps again. None of his Mess were with him, as they all had their various orders to carry out. The doors were opened for him. He went in. The women did not know yet what had happened, only about his offer to save them and their city. They knelt to kiss his hands and the edge of his cloak: grey-haired, solid mothers of families. He told them succinctly what had come of it. It was funny to see them shrivel away in horror and misery. It was probable that most of them would be ransomed, but if they thought that they and their children were going to be sold, let them! It had been done at Mantinea by Antigonos. Well –
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 46
