He was drunk. Dionysus had sneaked into his head. Or worse, he had chewed some of the wild weed with the bitter white flowers that made the horses and cattle bellow and fall over. Alone of all the leaders of the helots, Nikôn could see that an army would come, and that some men in Greece were for justice and not just plunder and their own pride when they marched to battle. He looked more to the gods above, as the late-night fog lifted, and he saw the yellow moon of the coming Dog Days, smiling at the very thought of the liberation to come.
“I am Nikôn. A Messenian. No helot. A free man. Born here in Messenia. Citizen of its Messenê to be. Messeeeniiiaaa. On free Ithooomêee.” Like the gray night wolf he yelled. He wanted his howl to reach the Spartans in their drink below and in dance behind their walls.
“Quiet, Nikôn.” From a distance across the ravine the rival helots of Doreios on their way to the villages called back. “Shut up, drunken fool. No more wine boasting—unless you want to bring back Lichas from the north and his helot henchmen to string us up. Hush, mad dog. Siga. Go home. Hêlos! Hit him, Hêlos, won’t you? Some leader—this fool who wobbles down a tiny path. Chew your bone alone, far off this holy mountain. Dry your gut out.” The helots sang and laughed, far away, at the fading cries of their would-be leader.
Let the others talk of revolt while only Nikôn’s men freed helots. Now Nikôn bayed at the moon all into the night. He clung to the ledge that pointed north to far-away Boiotia—as if in his sudden fit his godly Boiotians could hear him a thousand stadia away. “Eimi Nikôn. Eleutherios gignomai.” I am Nikôn … I am born free.
Yet for all the prophecies of Nêto and the drunken calls of Nikôn on his ledge, Epaminondas did no more marching this summer after Leuktra. Nor the next spring did he call out the Boiotians to descend on Sparta and free Nikôn’s helots. Most Boiotians instead thought that the great, the seemingly final victory at Leuktra had proved war to be the parenthesis and peace the natural, more common order of things. So in the hamlets around Thebes the yeomen hoplites went right on after the victory into their cycles of the farming year. The timeless soil cared little what its temporary human tenants thought or did. The ground mute beneath the farmers just endured and went on whether Leuktra was won or lost. War or no war, for free men or slaves, the tasks of the season—sow, weed, reap, cut, and thresh—continued day in, day out. For most of the other vineyard men on Helikon, the battle was no more to be remembered than the severed tail of the stone lizard who proudly wags his growing stub without a thought of the old one, rotting in the dirt.
After finishing the later vintages of summer, the three boys got to work on the autumn harvest of the olive trees. For all the visual splendor of the estate, there was a well-thought-out economy to it as well, as in its irrigation ditches from the pond above that meant less carrying of the water with the donkeys. The three threshing floors spaced near the grain and barley fields made the harvests far easier. The eighty plethra could produce twice the food of the neighbor Dirkê’s similarly sized place with about half her labor and expense. That gift—only vaguely appreciated in the past—was sensed by all in these days of loss. Mêlon had tried to let Myron go. But the awkward slave stayed on. Soon he followed Chiôn on the farm and even into the woods, like and not like him—both enormous, but Chiôn’s maimed arm impairing his stride far less than did Myron’s natural clumsiness. Myron had been freed by his presence at Leuktra according to the decree of the Thespians, and now earned his wages from the Malgidai.
Myron’s skill in the collection and spreading of dung hardly meant he knew pruning and tilling. But he met rebuke for his poorly cut spurs and his crooked furrows with a shrug. Like the Korinthian mirror glass in town, he turned the harshness back on his master. Chiôn was freed, but as a one-arm he was more unfree than he had been as a slave of two hands. He saw that a man’s body is his only master after all. Thoughts are nothing without the leg and arm, which alone turn word into deed. Yet he bore the hale newcomer Myron no grudge, praising his new henchman as he climbed high into the olives with his tree saw. “Myron is my left arm I lost at Leuktra,” Chiôn laughed to Mêlon. “This freed slave is not so bad, once his dung stink wore off and he picked up rocks in the field and quit collecting the mess of the public toilets. I wager no master ever will pry him off Helikon.”
“Yes, he’s our Sturax and Porpax come back alive,” Mêlon offered, “the new watchdog of the farm. Our lost tail has grown back longer, and the farm is as good now as can be without our Lophis.” Myron winked or twitched at that, since he knew them better than they knew themselves. So he let praise roll off his back, and looked down as they lauded him to the skies. Myron was working for different, better sorts now, and on a wage, no less—and so he no longer bore pots of dung from the city stalls to his master’s vineyard, in fear of the lash of his owner Hippias, who each summer morning galloped on his pony down the rows of the vines, hitting the backs of his slaves with his mule-tail whip. This Hippias often came by Helikon on his black horse to take back or sell off his Myron. But Mêlon’s spear and the dark look of Chiôn shooed him off, and reminded the mounted grandee that the assembly of the Thespians had freed all the slaves who had flocked to Leuktra to fight—a fact known to Hippias, who now wanted to keep the silver buyout from the polis and yet get his slave back for a double profit. No concern. Soon Hippias was no longer seen near Helikon—nor seen at all.
On a late summer morning, a year after Leuktra, it was Myron who found the rotting Medios, the Thrakian slave of Dirkê, the neighbor, hung up by his heels on a short pine tree far above the farm on Helikon—dead half a month or longer. Dirkê, Mêlon, and Chiôn soon followed Medios’s trail—he had been cutting oak for plowshares above the farm of the Malgidai, so Dirkê said—but uncovered no others tracks of his killer. Now in fear of a demon-like man-bear on Helikon, Dirkê for a while came less to the farm of the Malgidai. She certainly said no more about Medios. Dirkê told no magistrate, and wanted no talk of where Medios had been—or how he’d been hung up and sliced, and how there was a man-beast killer loose on Helikon. Otherwise, despite the warnings of endless war against the Spartans by Epaminondas, the long months after Leuktra proved among the most peaceful in recent memory in Thespiai. Soon no one missed Medios.
Meanwhile, the Spartan booty—helmets, breastplates, mess kits, swords, and even a few coins—from the battle turned up from the Attic border all the way up to Phokis. Farmers hiked often over Kithairon to Attika to buy stock and more slaves with their newfound money from the sale of plunder. The Thespian trader Eurybiades grew rich beyond his wildest boasting. His wagon full of pots and bronze creaked for days over the roads beneath Helikon to garner some of the captured Peloponnesian armor and coin in trade. At least ten thousand Spartans from the Peloponnesos, Eurybiades figured, had left most of what they had brought up. His practiced eye would find the final remnants of what they had cached in stone crevices and in cusps of trees.
“Not since my beardless days, all this money. Then I used to loot both sides of Kithairon. I’d strip the high border farms below Panakton of their roof tiles. Yes, and even the woodwork in the great war. But not like this. Never such a full cart like this. At this rate, I will buy another wagon. Maybe I’ll hire this new Myron of yours, to follow me in my dust with another ox for my wares. Why, there are even Athenians who pay to ride back over the pass with me, just to look at the soil of Leuktra, to boast that they have walked on its holy ground. I’ve got my boy over there peddling clay toy Boiotian shields to the fool gawkers, with the sides notched out just like yours in the shed, and stamped on the front side with EPAMINONDAS.”
“Oh, no, you won’t take our Myron, king peddler. I’ve taken a liking to his empty head and wide shoulders. He stays here with Chiôn.” Mêlon grabbed Eurybiades by the arm, “He’s worth more than any three of them. Even his master, the whipper Hippias, won’t get him back with a chain around his ankle.”
There were to be more battle monuments for Leuktra, and victory decrees and temple
s from the booty. Thebes for most of the winter after Leuktra and following spring had sent its best monument builders and stone-cutters up to the sanctuary at Delphi. Of course, the architect Proxenos was hired to accompany the first party to survey the site. He would barter with the holy shrine keepers over the fees for buying a spot. The Boiotians were to build their own treasury on the Sacred Way, right in front of the Athenians’ Parian marble eyesore.
Proxenos had become a court builder for the Boiotians. He traveled with scrolls stuffed with charts and lines drawn to make sense from the wild rantings of Epaminondas. Why he left his estates and horses on the Asopos, none were too sure, only that he came up to Thespiai more even than to Thebes, and to his home Plataia not at all. He was at work redesigning the walls, building clay models of vast new cities and for weeks taking trips south of the Isthmos with his packs of scrolls. Perhaps he wanted to build anew entire shrines and cities even, without the bother of old temples and the burden of poorly placed stones to hamper him—straight streets and right corners of fresh cities to rise, and not the hard work of straightening winding pathways of their fathers’ cramped and dark poleis. Maybe too Proxenos wished to bring the mind of Epaminondas to stone, so that when his words were forgotten the ramparts of Megalopolis or Messenê would not be.
Soon Proxenos designed a white marble monolith right at Leuktra itself, on the spot where King Kleombrotos had fallen. The polished stone trophê was shaped like a cucumber of sorts. At its base the trademark notched Theban shields ran continuously around the circumference. Mêlon visited the builders at the big monument at Leuktra four times over the winter and spring. The tall column was as high as the new pyramids outside Argos on the Tripolis road, but of better stone than the plastered Herakleion at Thebes. For all the talk of Leuktra as the beginning of a new Hellas, it now appeared to have been the end of that idea, especially since nothing much had happened after the battle. If the tenure of Epaminondas were not renewed at the winter solstice, the new Boiotarchs would end all talk of a grand march into the Peloponnesos.
Widowed Damô was slowly regaining her looks. With her glow came back her power that had once reduced Lophis to teary entreaties to win her from the other nine suitors in Thebes, who had as much land and money, but also the coveted flat black earth around Kopais. Beauty is the great leveler among men, Damô remembered after Leuktra. She knew that folk didn’t like some men because they were short, or dark, or had the barbarians’ blue eyes and red hair, or could not speak the language of Hellas or owned only a cloak, rather than bottomland along Kopais. But the unspoken prejudice was really against their ugliness. In turn, the favor and advantage went not so much to the well-born, or the male, or even the moneyed, but to the beautiful. Children had suited Damô’s look, and had widened her hips a bit only, but had added a sheen on her skin and a sway to her walk. This new Damô, hair black and skin without a blemish, with the high mountain narkissos of spring in her hair, went quickly through to the agora and the stalls, lest the women pelt her with roof-tiles and flower pots as she called them out.
Had she wanted, she could have robbed the mesmerized peddlers’ stalls to their own applause. In this way each six days as she went into Thespiai, Damô shamed and confused and laughed and swore at those down the hill in the town of Thespiai below the farm on the spur of Helikon. She spat at them that they had sent no hoplites to help Lophis and their fellow Boiotians at Leuktra. “Gaze out at our monument to Leuktra, built by our Proxenos, a hero of Leuktra. See it from the acropolis of Thespiai, and feel shame,” Damô barked at the Thespians as she shook her head and her black hair flew in the breeze. Without a husband, but with plenty of silver, she was bolder than ever now. All that only gave her sensible words even more credence, but it hardly stopped the rumors that Chiôn was up in her tower when the torches went out. Would that be so bad after all, the older one-toothed widows countered and hissed?
Despite the unexplained murder of Medios, the winter and spring after Leuktra on Helikon were ending in quiet—almost. After the summer solstice, Hippias, the former master of Myron, was found dragged by his horse on the mountain road to Aigosthena. His hand had strangely been caught and wound up in his reins, or so they also said, even as he boasted he was on his way with a decree from the city archon to get back his Myron from the Malgidai. No doubt, the horse bucked and bolted with Hippias trailing for a stade or two on the ground, his skull battered on the rocks. A freak accident, it was.
Or so they said.
CHAPTER 13
The Fall of Mêlon
The dizziness and head shakes Mêlon had suffered after Leuktra had finally stopped by the new year. His skull cleared from the blow of Kleonymos. He was alive; Kleonymos was not. So the pain had meant nothing. Mêlon’s slaves were free. But still, he found that he missed the sharp tongue of Gorgos and the goat the two used to roast in the evening in the shed. Myron did his best at the shed talk, but he was a dense head. Even the dogs were gone. Sturax had gone into the belly of Lichas, as the Spartan had boasted, though dog-eating was usually the work of barbarians, both north and across the water. Nêto had lost Porpax along the coast. Perhaps the dog had gone wild with the wolves on Kithairon once he had tasted man-flesh, feeding among the corpses of the wounded Spartans. No doubt he too was gone for good.
The recovery of Damô, Mêlon saw, had mostly to do with Chiôn—just as the gossips said (and the slurs were spoon-fed by the neighbor hag Dirkê and her surviving Thrakian, Thrattos, who was finishing the oak cutting of the dead Medios). Damô hunted Chiôn down in the high fields and tamed him with soup and bread, and soon they talked of Pythagoras and how the spirit of Lophis was among them, awaiting both of them in the vortex, or perhaps even now in a new body—walking among the believers in Thebes with one or two more lives yet needed until perfection.
During the first winter after Leuktra, all during the month of Prostatêrios, it had been the neighbor gossip-monger Dirkê who reminded Mêlon of how much he had lost—hinting he might want to sell the worry of his farm to her. She went up too often as the new year approached. The shrew wanted to see whether stories were true that the harvest of Malgidai was slow and would be lost. Were the terraces of Mêlon’s crumbling and overgrown with weeds? Surely the path up there was eroded and needed gravel? Was it true there was a great march to the south in the works—and perhaps the farm of Malgis might be sold for want of upkeep? Would not the hero of Thespiai know best the mind of Epaminondas? “Eleutheria is not so sweet, eh, hero of Thespiai and giver of freedom? Or at least for those who are foolish enough to be tricked into doing the dirty work of your helot-loving Epaminondas?”
“Sweet enough, and sweeter to come still,” he answered.
“Boast like that when you’re spear-gutted on black Ithômê—while some helot woman, with a Spartan rope around her ankle, slits your throat. Then you’ll lie in the dirt on a hill of thistles, and with a toothless smile, no less. I know you’ll die with a spear in you in the south. It will be far from home, far in the Peloponnesos. Or so it is written.” Dirkê then trudged farther up to the vineyard and the shed, as far as her bad hips could take the climb. There was always money to be made in the aftermath of battle. She wanted to rent out her slave Thrattos as a wage-hand to help her crippled neighbors with the olive pressing—and also through him hear the gossip of the Malgidai and get someone planted on the farm of Malgis. “Even your big oil stone press is not good when you don’t have men to run it. The best oil is long past. Your fruit is black. Too long on the trees. Prance in armor all you want. It won’t get your olives picked.”
Dirkê seemed quite unconcerned about the past killing of Medios (she had even let his Thrakian corpse stay out there to rot where it was found). So she poked her head into the shed and kept on jawing. “With your Lophis gone, and Chiôn no good and free to boot, you might give us down the hill one of your second thoughts. That Myron slave, if he is even that, is a dung gatherer. He’s no field hand. I’ve been told you will hear soon from the son of
his dead master Hippias. Yes, you know him, new Lord Hipponichos, will go to the courts to get him back from you soon, as his father tried. They called me to come in as juror. So Mêlon—give me two obols a day. Add in some food. Yes, yes, for the belly of my big Thrattos and a bought vote or two to keep your Myron free up here. Thrattos will be yours for the winter. At least until your oil is pressed. Or are you short of coin? They tell me at the fountain that even your gold-inlaid breastplate is gone. Godlike Lichas the killer wears it down south, or so they tell.” She kicked a few clods and then leaned on her stick. Then she spat out the seeds of a dried gourd, smiling with her one tooth over the lower lip. How had all that felt to the Malgidai? she wondered.
Mêlon liked the idea of an extra hand, but not a Thrakian. Dirkê had noticed that Chiôn was in the grove also striking the short limbs with a long reed stick from Kopais. Deftly he hit with his good right hand. She saw Zeus’s black cloud over her Thrakian whenever he got near. “No worry, master,” Chiôn yelled from the nearest olive, “I handle all of them as easily as before. Myron promises he will stay until the winter solstice to finish the picking. No need of her Thrakian; less of Dirkê. Send the no-goods away.” With that he put down his pole and started his way over.
The End of Sparta Page 17
