The End of Sparta

by Victor Davis Hanson

  Lykomedes grabbed them by the arms. He led them up the stairs of one of the towers, about a stade from the gate, as they sought shelter from the sleet. For all his ugliness and age, he was spry and stopped to point out a step too high, or a gate that scraped its threshold as if the Boiotian should fix it. Then he hammered with his staff the stones at their feet, as if he could teach the architect anything about the city Proxenos had planned. “For the mud brick we have stone. For the river we have a moat. For the villages we have a fortress—all built in a year by my plans and the sweat of the men of Mantineia. This is dêmokratia, the power of people. This is what the Dorian spear so rightly fears. I am a dêmokratikos.”

  Ainias said little. But he reminded Lykomedes how their Mantineia had been reborn—and how others were at the heart of it all. “Our fortress, Lykomedes, here at Mantineia is the child of Epaminondas. It came from the mind of Proxenos here. Thebes is written over your walls. The city is not mere stone, but formed of free men. For the walls of a democracy are only as strong as the right arms of its hoplites. You can prove that soon at the Eurotas, down among the Spartans.”

  Proxenos cut in, “I wish it were so. But we will have a hard time in the days ahead to storm Sparta—if Epaminondas decides to go south once he arrives here.” He pointed to the high passes farther to the south that cut off Lakonia from the center of the Peloponnesos. “The roads are deep in winter mud. There is nothing but cold there beneath Taygetos. Colder still in the shadows of Parnon. Their barrier to the city, the river Eurotas, is ice. I feel it even from here in my bones.”

  Lykomedes bellowed out in laughter. “Spartans? They hide inside their borders. Last month they came out to test our mettle, and we hit them hard, even though our walls were not as tall as you see them now.” The three were drenched by the light rain but kept talking in their confidence of the imposing heights of Mantineia, until Lykomedes advised to go over to the city center called ptolis, to see the theater and new temple to Hera, the patron goddess that watched over the growing city. He talked as they walked. “We need only more roof-tiles for our new homes. Sparta has roof-tiles. So we will join your Epaminondas at month’s end and go down to get our tiles from the Spartans. How’s that?”

  Both nodded, since the thief would be on their side to steal from the common enemy. The cold drizzle turned to a harder rain, and then promptly abated and left a wet fog. Proxenos held his nose from the overflowing sewer. In anger he reminded Lykomedes that his plans had called for the tile drains beneath the walls to dump into the downstream of the Ophis, not into these pools inside the walls. Surely if these lowly sorts would not work for clean streets, they could at least hold their bowels and empty them only outside the city walls.

  “A minor problem, stone doctor,” Lykomedes laughed. “We piled the clay pipe outside the walls, but thieves made off with it all. We need more clay, as I said. Until then, these ditches will have to do. As you heard, we had a bit of looting. Some stealing, too—until my archers emptied their quivers. Things are settling down. You’ll see. Hang up a few thieves for the birds. Toss their corpses to the dogs. Just a few is all that’s needed. We’ll get the crap out and the fresh water flowing soon enough.” As they passed the cesspools, Proxenos saw that the stench came from the two half-eaten corpses hung above the sewers. “To teach the others,” Lykomedes pointed at them. “All executed fairly on the order of my assembly, the will of the dêmos. But first, tell me about the muster of the Boiotians. The year wanes. Rumors spread. We hear Epaminondas will not come in his tenure, that he will not be reelected Boiotarch in the year to come. Hoplites don’t march at the winter solstice, right?”

  The three were descending the ramparts and made their way down a colonnaded arch to the ptolis and the central city with its wide agora and broad stoas, the stones clean and shiny from the shower. Proxenos replied that the vote at Thebes probably was being held far to the north amid the cold as they spoke. “Boiotia was full of foreigners when we left. Xenoi, some from far above Phokis and Lokris, no less. Islanders too are camped beneath the seven gates. For good or ill, all say they have come to march. At least as far as Arkadia. Thousands of them, even as the summer is gone and the autumn wanes along with the annual tenure of General Epaminondas. Yet I wager the spirit of Epaminondas and the hard reason of Alkidamas will make it difficult for the delegates of Boiotia to stop the army. But make sure your Mantineia has enough food this cold winter to feed them all. Mêlon, the killer of Kleombrotos, may end up here in the front rank himself. They are coming, coming in just a few days.”

  “Count on that,” Ainias broke in. Lykomedes listened more to his fellow Arkadian. “The Thespian killer will tire of his olive press and his protest that he is a misanthrôpos who just wishes to be let alone. We saw that before we left. His man-hatred was cured by Epaminondas. Yes, he of prophecy will come, limp or not—as long as he knows that his Epaminondas can leave Thebes still as Boiotarch with a right to lead out an army, even if it be a winter one that is not even across the Isthmos when his tenure ends.”

  Lykomedes spat out between his teeth. “He might, but I hear the gods are finished with your Mêlon, son of Malgis, and from now on he will kill no more kings. Tell him to keep far from our Skopê, as they say it bodes badly for you northerners. Nonetheless, even cripples are needed. We turn none away. We have filled the city’s granaries since late summer’s good harvest. I had to stretch a few fingers of the wealthier ones, and even brand a few, to find their buried grain stashes. But they all coughed up in the end, all legal on the order of the dêmos. A thousand sheep and goats graze inside the walls. Another thousand are along the tall river grass outside near the walls.”

  Proxenos wanted to know something else, something he had promised Mêlon to find out back at the press on Helikon. “Now tell us Lykomedes, have you seen Mêlon’s freedwoman Nêto, the prophetess from Helikon? She listens to the priestess of Pasiphai for the things that will happen before they do. Well before last high summer she was down here, scurrying around to find exiles of Messenia to stir the helots on. She might have had this poetess, Erinna, they say with her? They would have stopped here on the way west to Ithômê.”

  “Yes, yes, Nêto who babbled about, but a fine tight sort nonetheless she was. But without the erôs of men in her eye, as I learned.” Lykomedes looked sideways and kept on. “The other girl, well now, the fiery one Erinna was even crazier with her talk about a new Athens on the slopes of Ithômê. I know of her songs. That is one reason why she walked freely in my city. But while I have long heard her hexameters—both the laments for her lost girlfriend Baukis, and the dirge on spinning—many have gone by that name Erinna, and all claimed that they were the one poetess of myth. I had never met any of them, so I was surprised that this latest Erinna seemed like one of Queen Hippolyta’s she-men from Pontos with that wicked bow on her shoulder. But maybe she’s more a woman than she let on. Both left—and with raggedy helots, no less. Your Nêto almost took my little Aristôn with them. Yes, the troublemakers left Mantineia thirty days or maybe forty or more ago, and with a full pouch of coins, headed toward the great mountains of Taygetos. Both will draw men, good and bad, on the road—if they are lucky enough to avoid the man-bear or wolf-men on the high passes. Look for that dirty Nikôn; he followed the two women. He’s that helot upstart that I’d rather kill than let run free in my city. All of them found too few Messenian helots here for their liking. They said they were going south. To the new city, no doubt. Nêto fell under the spell of your Alkidamas. Most who do don’t end nicely.”

  Lykomedes went on. “This summer Nêto fired up our helot exiles here in Mantineia with visions of a free Messenia—all twenty of them. And that helot mob leader Nikôn, who stinks of leather and lye? Well, he was worst of all the helot brigands, the killer who ambushed and waylaid and had no parley with the Spartans. Still, helots were no concern of ours. She gathered a few of these loiterers off our streets. If they kill Spartans, why, all the better. So she came here, poked around,
and left.” Something about Nêto had set the boar’s mouth flapping and he couldn’t stop spitting. “That pale poetess Erinna performed here, as I said, and breathed hard on your Nêto. Nêto thinks that they will lead an army of helots from the highlands of Arkadia. She plans on killing Spartans and freeing her people. I tried to talk some sense into the pair, but who can when these half-helots and crazed poets think they’re gods?”

  Proxenos laughed. “You mean you tried to talk erôs into Nêto, goat, and got beat by a poetess no less.”

  “That too,” Lykomedes chuckled, “that too, for I like a tall woman with ribs that I can see and yet with breasts that flop and the rear of a wide sort as well. But your philosopher Alkidamas already won Nêto over. Why, I don’t know. He has no fun in him, only serious stuff. For all that Erinna’s short hair, I imagine she had some love of men left in her yet. If not, she’s as good as my pretty little Aristôn all the same.”

  Proxenos wanted to have his leave of foul Lykomedes and start on the way to Megalopolis to muster more men for Epaminondas. “But she is among her own folk. And Nêto is far wiser from her long walks with Alkidamas, who, to be frank, is a different sort than you, Lykomedes. I hiked with this woman to Leuktra. It was her prayers that brought the gods out of the temples and her portents that the simple folk cheered. Had she not been with me, Epaminondas would have had only half the number needed to stop Kleombrotos.”

  The three walked out of the theater. They kept bantering along the grand porticoes of Lykomedes, planning the provisions for the army they all hoped was already marching. It was decided that Ainias and Proxenos would head immediately westward into Arkadia and the new site of Megalopolis. There they would prepare another army of liberators of the south and join the Eleans marching as well. Perhaps Ainias and Proxenos would be back in half a month with a new army to meet the horde descending from Thebes, as well as the Mantineians under Lykomedes. The three armies would meet up for the final descent into the vale of Lakonia itself—if the generals voted to go on.

  Proxenos finished with a warning to the plotter at their side. “Be careful, Lykomedes, when you soon meet Epaminondas. He has gotten word that you are to march with us. His spies have told him you have food that he will need. Don’t deceive him. He is not of the sort as we, but has become something far different, far more dangerous. This is a man, after all, who when he kills his sleeping sentries on his nighttime inspections, only shrugs and says, ‘I left them as I found them.’ ”

  CHAPTER 21

  Two Women

  Not long after her summer parting with Mêlon, Nêto had visited Theanô, the widow of Staphis, and prepared to head south across the Isthmos. She thought that she might have a half-year, maybe more, to rally the helots and prepare the way for Epaminondas at the end of the year. Yet Nêto had never been beyond the confines of Boiotia. At least not since her childhood kidnapping and sale to Mêlon at the port of Kreusis. But she was glad to leave the north after her words with Mêlon. Alkidamas had told her the way and arranged for a guide to get her to Mantineia—and then, when near the borders of Messenia, for the helot Nikôn to lead her up to Ithômê. Still, Nêto wondered, how do northerners find a path over the peaks near Korinthos and then catch the trail that leads deep into the Peloponnesos beyond? Then do they go down farther south into Ithômê, and if so, on what road? She needed her Porpax—now no doubt in the belly of the man-bear on Kithairon.

  After Leuktra, Nêto had slowly made herself believe that as a freedwoman she was no longer needed in Boiotia, much less on the home estate with the Malgidai. Chiôn with the boys could handle the chores for Mêlon as the master idled in town with Phrynê—while his terraces caved and the bindweed and thistle dotted his barley fields. Instead her new mentor Alkidamas had urged her to go south. “You speak of messages in your head from this Nikôn, whom I know as well from my travels in the Peloponnesos when I was still not considered an enemy of Sparta and walked freely beneath Ithômê. I think you will find him in the new Mantineia, or so he says he will find you should you go there. There are now twenty of you Messenians for each citizen of Sparta, yet no common voice, no plan of revolt. Our Nikôn sounds as if he has the spirit, but not yet the sense, to free his kindred. Use your prophecies and miracles in the temples to aid his cause, and tell him visions, if you have them, of things to come. Hundreds of wayfarers won’t all wait on Epaminondas and the muster of the Thebans. Already in twos and threes these men, our allies, make their way to join the new cities of the Arkadians, and soon you will find me in Messenia as well, and maybe well before the arrival of the army of Epaminondas. Still, be careful in the south. A woman without the black shroud and the toothless mouth is in as much danger on the road with men as she is alone with the man-bear on Parnassos or Taygetos to the south.”

  Nêto remembered that Alkidamas had added, “About that guide for you. Well, she is a strange sort, a misfit they say, like you, maybe. I have asked her to join you when the clusters redden and the grapes sweeten. She is a poetess, by name Erinna, a follower of the Muses at Athens, born out at Tenos, where the afternoon waves swamp the fishing boats. Many would-be poets, now and in the past, have gone by that name, both good and bad students of the Muses. But she is the true one who sang of her lament for the dead Baukis, that tale which is now played in the symposia of Athens and Thebes. And she is tired of Athens and its shouting democracy and its descent into chaos. Like you, she is a restless sort, in search of a great deed, and like you she hears songs in her head of Ithômê and the great awakening to come. She claims visions of tall ramparts to rise, and is a devotee of Epaminondas, though I doubt the woman has ever met our general. Men know of her songs and perhaps her name alone will open gates otherwise shut tight. You two women will hike to Ithômê, the blind with a hand on the shoulder of the blind. Both of you will be heading to war ahead of the great throng of Epaminondas.”

  All that was after Nêto had left Helikon, and Mêlon had sent no word for her to return to the farm. Now in the Dog Star days and a full year after Leuktra, the young Erinna of Tenos had left Athens to find Nêto. She waited for her for three days at the pass inn near Eleutheria as she hiked up from Athens on the high border road. Soon they were on the summer road to the south, a half-year before the Boiotians would even vote to march.

  Nevertheless, the plan of Alkidamas for the two women was to head to Mantineia in seven days, and find a Lykomedes. “A trickster of sorts,” the sophist had warned, “with tusks instead of teeth in his ugly head.” Once there, they were to round up helots and head westward and to send a runner back with news of the preparation for the revolt of the Mantineians. Alkidamas reminded Nêto that she was not alone, but if she and this Erinna could rouse the helots, if Epaminondas and Mêlon could stir the Boiotians, if Proxenos and Ainias could rally the Arkadians, they all might descend like a horde of locusts, converging on the pastures of Lakonia. “Lykomedes may find you useful and so will not have his thugs slit your throat and throw you in his proud new moat. That is the custom for them when they catch a helot on the road—and a pretty one at that. So I gave him some silver Athenian coins. He promises that he has food and a room for you two under the third tower from the main gate. But be out of Mantineia by a day or so with your helots. Prick your ears up to hear word of Proxenos or Ainias, who may be crossing back and forth all year at the Isthmos, though both may not get to Mantineia until you leave. On some winter day the two will be leading an army back from Megalopolis—or so we hope.”

  As the month of Theilouthios waned, Nêto and Erinna slept most of the late afternoons. They walked at sunset before nightfall when the Aegean wind came up and the stars and early moon give softer light than did the glare of Helios. In the beginning of their trek southward, it was not hard to find the road out from the border at Boiotia. All Hellas was afire this late summer, even though the congress of Boiotia would not take up the march for months more. Then the army might not set out until the cold and the year was well over. For now, the two could always tail
along the mercenaries who headed for the new city of Mantineia, the rumored meeting winter place of the armies. Small parties were camping on the paths to the Isthmos, some in wagons, a few with horses. At daybreak Nêto and Erinna sought out the resting shade of the orchards and groves on the slopes of the Megarid opposite the sea.

  From there they peered out at hundreds more on foot, with servants trailing laden with panoplies, all these zealots convinced that Epaminondas would soon be going south and they should wait the summer out for him down in Arkadia. Alkidamas was right. It was good that she had a companion to share the road—especially one like Erinna. From the looks of the warrior poet, she guessed that they could beat away even a determined throat-cutter. The two women made their way south on the Peloponnesos road that Proxenos and Ainias had trod so many times in the year after Leuktra, in their journeys to oversee the building of Mantineia and Megalopolis—and would make one last time after the women, marking out the grand route for the katabasis of Epaminondas to come.

  As they made their way farther southward, Erinna explained her devotion to the Muses and her worship of the goddess Artemis. She gave Nêto bits and pieces of her long song on spinning and the loom. She was composing as they hiked, and by the second day the two were back walking in the light and returned to sleeping at early night. Her day speech was made with a high Attic pitch that so many of the islanders aped after living in Athens, though she had left Athens for the Boiotians because she wished to believe that men—men like Epaminondas—sought to serve their democracy rather than be served by it. But when she sang at night her song was more Doric, though more often a south Asian strain than from the Peloponnesos. “Hymen! O Hymenaeus, while the dark night in silence whirls about, darkness covers my eyes …” Nêto looked about, worried that robbers might hear Erinna’s strains, and grabbed her knife as the poetess let out loud lines in the night. As they passed the islands below in the gulf, she sang more softly how Nêto was bathed in the scarlet of the huge sun that rose over Salamis out to the east. She went on about a prophecy that a new Themistokles was coming to defeat tyranny—and other such visions that came to her on the road. Nêto dubbed her “Epaminondas” because every third word seemed to be “Epaminondas will …” or “Epaminondas can …”