A Boy of the Agoge

by Helena P. Schrader

  They turned sharply and discovered a tall man with a thick, oiled black beard and carefully coifed hair standing at the end of the gangplank. He spoke to them in Greek, but it was heavily accented. By his bright-coloured clothes festooned with beads and bronze balls, he was clearly foreign. Looking closer, the Spartan boys were appalled to notice that he had even painted his face. Dark lines outlined his eyes, and both lips and cheeks were rouged like a perioikoi woman.

  Discomfort warred with curiosity about the ship. The man seemed to understand this. He smiled more graciously. “This is one of the finest merchant ships in the Great King’s entire fleet. She has sailed from one end of his nearly endless Empire to the other—and she is filled with treasure. Let me show some of it to you.” He gestured with his elegant, manicured hand for the boys to proceed aboard the ship.

  Alkander shook his head, and backed away. Prokles and Leonidas, however, looked at one another. There was an unspoken dare in the air. They each challenged the other to show fear, and as was usual in such contests, Prokles took the risk first. He stepped on to the gangway, effectively forcing Leonidas to follow or be a “coward” in his own eyes.

  Directly behind them came the Persian, purring to them in his strange voice. “Have you ever been aboard a Persian vessel before?” he asked, as he stepped on to the deck and made a signal to the man with the snake. The latter at once disappeared below deck.

  Leonidas and Prokles shook their heads in answer to his question.

  “I have many surprises for you then.” He winked to them conspiratorially. “First let me show you around deck.” As he showed them the various cargoes he had stowed on deck he chatted easily with them, trying to draw them out a bit. Where did they come from? Laconia. What did their fathers do for a living? Leonidas answered that his father was dead and Prokles said his “had a farm”. They were both vaguely aware that they shouldn’t be here, and didn’t want to be readily identifiable. The Persian seemed impressed to learn they were only 14. “My, you look bigger and stronger than that to me. Do you do a lot of sports?” The boys agreed that they did. The man smiled and nodded, and invited them to come below deck. “This is where we keep all our real treasures,” he told them.

  They descended a steep gangway that led down to the next lower deck. This deck was still above the waterline, and though the wooden ladder continued to descend to the oar and then into the darkness of the hold, at first they found themselves in a rather pleasant area with portholes open on both sides, admitting a cooling cross-breeze. Light flooded in from one row of portholes, and the sound of the open sea from the other. Great wooden chests, apparently filled with cargo, crammed the space right up to a curtain far towards the bows that apparently separated the accommodations. Behind them was a wooden partition.

  Their host knocked on the door in the partition and was answered. He apparently announced their presence, because a moment later the door opened and a rather fat man, also with black curly beard and hair and a puffy, painted face, stood glaring at them. “My captain,” their host indicated the fat man as he bowed deeply. The fat man frowned slightly, but then signalled the boys into his cabin.

  At the threshold, Leonidas felt a shudder of alarm. Every instinct in his body said he should retreat, but Prokles again took the lead and boldly walked into the cabin of the Persian ship captain.

  The captain was by no means as friendly as his mate. He glowered at the boys and then walked around them. Leonidas felt as if he was being inspected, but not in the way troops are inspected by their officers—rather like a horse at a horse-market. His stomach muscles started to cramp up. “Prokles, it’s time we got back to your father. He must be—”

  The mate was between them and the door, which he slammed shut with a foot. He was grinning. “You’re on Persian territory, boys.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re still tied to the Lacedaemonian shore,” Leonidas countered, in a cold sweat.

  “Ships have the nationality of their flag. You might as well be in Sardis.”

  Leonidas made a plunge for the door; the mate backhanded him and then raised his knee into his groin. The pain knocked his breath and his vision away as he crumpled to the floor, but he wasn’t out entirely. He heard Prokles also make an escape attempt, and heard him gasp and groan and fall. The captain made some remark and the mate laughed at it. A moment later Leonidas’ hands were wrenched behind his back and tied so firmly he could feel them swelling. Prokles and he were dragged out of the captain’s cabin and shoved down the ladder, past the oar-deck, to the hold. Here it was dark, dank, and terrifying.

  Worse, they were shoved forward into a very small cage where they could not stand. The door of the cage was slammed and locked shut. It had evidently most recently been used for transporting fowl, because the floor of the cage was covered with dried bird shit.

  The mate bent down to grin between the bars at them. “See what nice treasures I have here? Two pretty boys to please the tastes of many a master. Too old for castration, perhaps; but pretty, healthy boys equally suited to the perfumed couch or the oar-bench! You will bring me a very good price.” He laughed and left them in the dark.

  It had all taken less than two minutes.

  “Alkander will bring my dad,” Prokles managed to cough out after a moment.

  Leonidas nodded. He had to believe that, but the sound of shouting and feet running directly overhead terrified him. It sounded to him as if they were getting ready to cast off. Now it struck him that everywhere the chests had been full of cargo—even the deck cargo was loaded. The mate had evidently been returning from some mission ashore. Perhaps they had been awaiting only his return before putting to sea. The shouting was clearly increasing, and with a tiny, insignificant lurch, the boat moved under them. First only a tiny bit, but then more and more.

  “They’re putting to sea!” Prokles cried out horror. Together they threw themselves at the door of the cage and beat at it with their shoulders. It was utterly hopeless. Bent over and with their hands pulled behind their backs, they couldn’t deliver serious blows. All they succeeded in doing was bruising themselves.

  Prokles fell on to the floor of their cage gasping, “Poseidon! Help us! Get us out of here! Help!”

  Leonidas bit his tongue, but he prayed nevertheless. Castor, Castor, Castor. Nothing more articulate—only a plea to his protector, the protector of sea-travellers and guests.

  Over their heads they could hear the oars being shoved out. Under their feet the ship rocked very gently in the relatively calm waters of the harbour. Then with a dull thud, a drum started. The oars fell into the water with a loud slap and hiss just beside their heads. The vessel seemed to surge forward, and now they could hear the water gurgling past the hull and the slushing sound of the prow cutting into the water. With each drumbeat came a new surge forward, then a lag, then a surge. Yard for yard, thud for thud, they were being taken away from everything they knew.

  It had happened so fast that they still couldn’t fully grasp it. Leonidas found himself going over in his mind how he had come to be here, and asking himself how he could have been so stupid. Alkander had clearly seen the danger. Prokles and he had come aboard in part because they were frightened. They had been frightened—and afraid to admit it. They had to prove to each other and themselves that they could overcome their fear. And this was where it had got them. There had to be a lesson in that, but Leonidas couldn’t see it entirely. Overcoming fear was something they had to be able to do—like going to the pits for a flogging or standing in formation when the enemy charges you.

  By now he had lost the feeling in his fingers, and the pain in his shoulders was becoming severe. He started to wonder how long they were going to be kept in the cage. As “valuable” cargo, surely they couldn’t be kept in these conditions for the entire journey. They would have to be given water and food. They were worthless dead.

  “When they let us out of here, we’ve got to act tame,” Prokles told him, apparently sharing his thoughts. “We�
��ve got to lure them into a sense of security, so they think they don’t have to lock us up. That’s the only way we’re going to get our hands on weapons.”

  Leonidas nodded, “Agreed.”

  “The fact that they’ve got us down here shows they are afraid we could get away,” Prokles continued.

  Leonidas wanted to believe him, but he found himself unable to picture escape on the vast ocean. Where could they run to or hide on a ship at sea? “When your dad finds the ship gone, what will he do?”

  “Inform the harbour master, I guess.”

  “And then?”

  “They’ll come after us.”

  “How? Even if they can get someone to lend them a ship, how will they know where to go?” Leonidas was picturing that vast ocean without any obstacles. Once a ship was out of sight, it could go anywhere, and how was anyone to find it again in all that endless ocean?

  “I don’t know,” Prokles admitted.

  They fell silent. Leonidas tried to find a more comfortable position, but the numbness seemed to be creeping up his arms from his fingertips. Before long, hunger and thirst started gnawing at them as well. Again they talked to keep from thinking about it. They reassured themselves that they would surely be let out of the cage as soon as the Persians thought it was safe to let them out. Prokles again argued for “acting tame”. “They have to put into another port to take on water,” he argued now. “That will be our chance—but only if we get out of here.”

  The discomfort and claustrophobia of this cage made Leonidas agree—even if he was afraid of what would happen between the release from the cage and their arrival at a port in two or three days. The boys sank down to sit on the filthy floor, leaning forward awkwardly because of their tied hands.

  Meanwhile the rhythm of the oars and the drum never faltered. Now and again they heard fragments of chanting from the oar deck, but it never lasted long. It died away again, and then there was just the splash-surge-pause, splash-surge-pause and the steady thump-thump of the drum.

  Finally a man emerged out of the darkness. It was not the mate. It was a black man. He did not speak Greek. To their questions, he just shook his head and with gestures indicated that he would pour water into their mouths if they held their mouths up to the top of the cage. They had no choice. He poured carefully so they would not choke. He made eating gestures and they nodded fervently.

  He seemed to take forever to return, but he eventually brought them bread—which he fed to them through the bars of the cage as if they were wild animals. Clearly his instructions had been not to untie them, let alone release them. That was depressing. The black man disappeared.

  “Are we supposed to piss in here, too?” Prokles asked in outrage as the water worked its way through him.

  Leonidas nodded miserably. They were captive beasts, he told himself, trying to understand it and believe it. Slaves. They no longer had names or fathers, rights or dignity. They were animals to be bought and sold, fed, watered, and worked all at a master’s whim.

  The heat was also increasing steadily and oppressively. The only air circulating in this lower deck came down the gangway from the oar-deck, and this stank of sweat and urine. In the stuffy, hot air, Leonidas started to feel as if he were suffocating. It was only partially physical. His brain was telling him he was dead. He was no longer Leonidas, son if Anaxandridas. He was not a future Spartiate, much less an Agiad prince. He was a beast in a cage. The thought was so overwhelming it was numbing. His breathing became increasingly laboured. He started to drift in and out of consciousness.

  He was shaken back awake by a volley of shouting from overhead. The rhythm of the drum altered sharply, becoming faster. The oars no longer hissed as they slipped into the water, but splashed. The water rushed by the hull.

  At last these changes penetrated to his brain, and Leonidas tried to sit up. “They must be running from something!” he decided excitedly.

  “Shhh!” Prokles retorted. “I’m trying to hear something!” Everything had gone still again—except for the drum and the oars beating faster now. Soon, however, they heard the first grunting that indicated the oarsmen were tiring. An order was shouted. Silence returned. Then a new order, and the pace increased again. The whole ship seemed to strain. Prokles and Leonidas just stared at the tarred beams above their cage. Leonidas was certain that at any moment he would see the sweat of the oarsmen seeping through the deck. That was just fantasy, of course, but they did hear the first crack of a whip.

  “Slaves,” Prokles declared contemptuously. “Greek ships are manned by citizen crews. They never use the whip on them.”

  “Merchantmen sometimes use slaves,” Leonidas reminded him.

  “Listen!” Prokles hissed. There was another sound coming through the water. A rushing, slashing, churning sound. “That’s another ship!”

  Leonidas held his breath, hoping and praying. Another ship that had overtaken this one could surely mean only one thing. Or did it? What if it were a pirate ship? Leonidas had heard Lysandridas talk about what a terrible plague pirates had become. The capture of many Greek cities in Ionia had forced more and more men to take to piracy. And Persian ships, filled with oriental luxuries, were the favourite targets of pirates. But a pirate would bring no relief to the two captive boys. They would still be slaves. And allegedly pirates treated their slaves worse than anyone.

  Shouting again.

  “Did you hear?!” Prokles asked excitedly. “Did you hear?! Someone said something about ramming!”

  Leonidas was not at all delighted by the prospect. He could picture the ram piercing the side of the ship right here, crushing them before sending them forever to the floor of the ocean.

  But already an order had been given, and the drum abruptly stopped. Overhead they heard things falling on to their heads, as if men had collapsed over their oars the moment the order came to stop. The ship was clearly gliding to a halt.

  As the ship lost forward momentum it started to roll quite unpleasantly, apparently turning its side to the swell. But the shouting overhead was furious, and now it was very clearly in Greek. Although they only caught snatches of it, evidently the demand to board had been made and carried out.

  The voice of the mate was easily identifiable. “...But how was I to know? They looked like runaway slave-boys—barefoot and shaved.” They could not hear the words of the man he was speaking to, but the mate insisted again, “It was an honest mistake. They gave only shifty answers to my questions—just like runaways. One of them even said his father was dead—”

  The other voice was an angry rumble.

  “Of course, kings die; but how was I to imagine that you let your king’s sons run about unescorted like common street urchins! The sons of even our noblemen would not set foot outside without a dozen servants to pave the very streets with their own cloaks—”

  “The sons of our kings grow into men, not women,” came the terse reply, and Prokles gasped out, “It’s my granddad!”

  The gangway darkened, and several figures clattered down the ladder and came toward the cage. The mate led; he unfastened the cage and reached in to help drag the boys out, using his knife to cut the bonds around their wrists as he did so. Their arms at once fell uselessly to their sides, and the dead weights of their useless hands unbalanced them, making them stagger helplessly as they tried to regain their feet. Lysandridas caught Prokles, and the perioikoi mate who was with him caught and steadied Leonidas. “Steady on, boy. You’re safe now,” the man told him kindly.

  At the gangway, Leonidas was horrified to find he could not make his hands respond and grasp anything. The perioikoi mariner had to take him in his arms and lift him up in front of him. The light of the sun hurt his eyes, too, and he had to screw them up. He tried to lift his arm up to shade them from the sun, but the motion sent a stabbing pain through his shoulders, and his fingers looked like blood sausages hanging limply from his raw, red wrists.

  But despite the blinding sun, he could make out the silhouette o
f a trireme. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see that her flapping sail bore a single lambda. Leonidas could have kissed it or bowed on to the floor before it—it stood for Lacedaemon. The warship, with her three banks of oars, had easily overtaken the merchantman, but how had she known what course to steer? Around them was absolutely nothing but ocean—not a shoreline nor island nor any landmark at all. Leonidas didn’t understand, and that made it seem all the more miraculous. He thanked Castor silently and profusely.

  Grapples held the two ships side by side, and an unsteady gangplank bridged the gap between the gunnels of the two ships. “Can you make it?” Lysandridas asked the two boys. They nodded. It was the only way home.

  Once they were safely aboard the Lacedaemonian trireme, it backed decorously away, and turned slowly to set a course back for Lacedaemon. The rhythm of the oars that had terrorised them for the better part of the day became a melody.

  “How did you ever find us?” Leonidas asked their rescuers.

  The perioikoi captain laughed. “The ship had just reported to the harbour master, announcing her departure and declaring her cargo and destination. She was making for Troizen, and there are really only two sea routes. With this wind,” he glanced to his sail and indicated the waves, “we could be fairly certain he’d go this way, but Philippos went with a second trireme on the other route just in case. You must be hungry. Why don’t you make yourselves comfortable afore the mast, and I’ll have my boy bring you something to eat.”

  They took this suggestion gratefully and sat down on the spare sails rolled up in front of the main mast. The pain was slowly easing in Leonidas’ shoulders and arms (if he didn’t move them much), but he kept anxiously testing his hands. So far they just flinched and twitched a bit when he tried to get them to open and close.

  “You two are going to get the flogging of your lives when you get back to Sparta,” Lysandridas warned them, shaking his head. “Launching two triremes with full crews to chase you halfway across the Gulf of Argos cost the Lacedaemonian government a small fortune! And all because you were too stupid to see a trap when it stared you in the face! Thank God, Alkander has more brains than the two of you together!”