The End of Sparta

by Victor Davis Hanson

  The two of them walked the horse out through the gate to find the field camps of Epaminondas, a half-morning march to the south, where they would spend the first night. As they walked, Mêlon repeated what his father Malgis had once taught him before his own first outing at Haliartos. “There is an art, Melissos, to a muster. It’s not like a pack of dogs that snarl and sprint out after the first hare that crosses their paths. Epaminondas is already forming up the columns, right over there under the clouds of Kithairon. The first thousands will leave in the morning, over the pass with us at the van. Then the hamlets from the eleven districts drift into Thebes. Their officers will have these late-coming regiments fall into line by companies, six men wide along the road—all the baggage in the middle of their column. We at the head will be over the mountain and halfway to Megara by nightfall tomorrow.”

  “Or by midday, master,” piped up Melissos. He went on as he gazed at the long columns behind. “We are a snake then, Master Mêlon. A long snake, always ahead as its coils unwind to the rear. We’re getting longer even as we get farther from Thebes?”

  “Longer? I’d say when we head down the pass our tail will just be leaving Thebes, seventy stadia back. Who knows, Melissos, it may be snowing on us on the pass yet sunny on those behind in the plain—and all in this same winter army.” Later, near the foothills of Erithryrai, Mêlon got word that Epaminondas was waiting for him at the head of the column. The generals were already high on the Plataian road, camped outside the walls of the city that Proxenos had rebuilt years earlier. This was where Mêlon wished to go anyway, since Alkidamas had told him that one of his agents would be meeting him there by nightfall. Before sunset the two slipped into camp. They tethered Xiphos beside a fire. Maybe a half-myriad of northerners were busy around them, and at least that many Thebans all along the road back to the Kadmeia. Officers kept the road clear. The winter rains were late here. The road was free of the deep red winter mud of the valleys of northern Boiotia.

  Mêlon grabbed Melissos by the shoulder. “Stay close. These northerners, folk like your own, can’t be trusted, especially the riders. The Lokrians would run us down for play. The Phokians, well, the Phokians, they’re worse than any Spartans I know. I’ve seen some outlaws from Thessaly, too. Temple robbers and shrine looters, all of them, neighbors of yours. Still, our Epaminondas can’t be choosy in his allies. And he wasn’t.” The two got directions. They were soon in among the tents of Epaminondas, on a rise with a view of the distant hills above the battlefield at Leuktra. Mêlon noted that from the slopes above the river Asopos they could see the last light of the short winter day flickering off the white marble monument where he had met Alkidamas only two days earlier, not far from where Lichas had taken Lophis down. To the west along a bank three stadia away they could see the majestic hilltop estate of Proxenos, son of Proxenos of Plataia. Its torches on the portico above the river were blazing before the sun even fell, perhaps the household’s eager beacon to guide their master home—as if he were not somewhere already far distant, wandering down in the Peloponnesos.

  Mêlon helped Melissos unload their packs. “Sleep, Makedonian. Tomorrow we talk as we march. This twilight let the young bloods put our lochoi in their order. The peripoloi and the rangers rouse the countryside, as they search for the stay-in-beds and the hide-a-ways. Anyone is fair game that the muster officers can’t find on the first go-around. We strike out at dawn. They say we will be at the flatlands of Mantineia in five days or six. Then two more on to Sparta.”

  Then from his back a familiar voice took over from Mêlon. “Maybe seven days for our tail end. The full muster won’t even pass out of Thebes until tomorrow night.” It was Epaminondas. He had no helmet but wore a leather broad-brimmed hat that nearly covered his face. “A bad habit of walking up behind you, Mêlon. No worry. You are no snoring sentry. So in peace sleep, Thespian. All is planned.” With that Epaminondas passed on by their camp with four or five hoplites. “Come to the head of the march at daybreak. We will be waiting for you.”

  Mêlon and Melissos were drifting off to sleep even before full darkness and the Great Bear had yet taken over the sky. How had he ended up here on the ground at Plataia? Just three days earlier, he had been at work at his olive press, promising Proxenos only that he might ride over to see things at Thebes. From that sudden urge, he had fallen in with the stranger Alkidamas, taken on a new servant, watched the great debate in the council hall of the Boiotians, and been called to the head of an army on its way into the frontier of Sparta. Suddenly Mêlon jolted up. Someone had kicked him. The voice was Boiotian. He recognized the tongue as well. “Sleeping so soon? But it is not even full dark—the moon is still in hiding.”

  Chiôn was standing over him.

  “This sapling next to you, what is it? A slave boy? A helot? You were never a boy-lover, Mêlon. How did this mushroom clamp onto your trunk?”

  “Careful to kick the sleeping dog, Chiôn, he may bite yet.”

  Mêlon rose to greet Chiôn. “This Melissos comes as the hostage servant of Alkidamas. That man’s own son Kalliphon was cut down near us on the left at Leuktra. So he lent me a spare Makedonian hostage that General Pammenes brought back to the men of Boiotia. He is a truce pledge from the Makedonians of the north. If the peace holds, he goes back to the north after the barley harvest. Then we get our own captives back in the bargain. He claims he’s royal. But he won’t tell us more. In the north there every tribe boasts they have queens and kings. He watches more than he talks.”

  Chiôn nodded. “I know, I know of those two. I met both in Thespiai and sent them after you. But so they found you. I had Eudoros and Neander show them the road, and where to find you at the trophy of Leuktra.”

  Mêlon was puzzled. “Chiôn, are you here from Alkidamas? He was supposed to send me a messenger. Why you? Why leave Damô, even if she’s with the dogs and the boys? She’s with your child. The country is swarming with bad sorts.”

  “But Master, forgive me. I come for a reason you won’t like. Your coins in the well are yours. I’ve never drawn the boxes up without you. You know that.” Now Chiôn looked up and talked bolder to his former master. “But a strange helot from the south met me when I was pruning in the red grape vines two days ago. A Nikôn, he said his name was, as he ran up. A proud label for a slave, this man called “Victory.” But Nikôn could hardly stand. His sandals were worn to the soles, and he was about through and shaking. Even if he had been fresh, he was a scarred and leathery sort, an ugly one with whip scars on his neck and back, and with a stink of hides on him. Begging for money, he claimed, so that he could ransom our Nêto. In chains to the south, he swears, she was. A prisoner in the log fort of Lord Kuniskos, he swears. He hands me a note, with the block letters scratched on bark from a woman who wrote the Attic way—why in the south I don’t know. At least that’s what he said. He looked like he’d run the whole way. But he was at least a Pheidippes, an iron legs.”

  Mêlon grabbed his forearm as Chiôn continued. “I needed a thousand good silver pieces, Master. I only skimmed the top of the iron boxes, and didn’t touch the gold below. So I told this Nikôn the ransom money would follow in five days. I will take it myself to free our Nêto to keep her alive. I promised Nikôn the helot that. We gave pledges. I sent word to Alkidamas, who is on the side of Kithairon by the sea waiting for a ship. But Nikôn took off back southward out to the harbor town Kirrha on the gulf like he was running the race in armor at Olympia. Here is the letter that Damô read better than I. I memorized what she said was scratched on the bark:

  Erinna tês Ithômês tô Mêloni. O Mêlon Malgidos. Pempe nun chrêmata pros tên Erinnan en tê gê tê tôn Messêniôn. Autên apoagorazein dei tina Nêtona apo tôn Spartiatôn. Pempete auta meta toude Nikonos, andros men agathou, agrammatou de.

  “Erinna of Ithômê to Mêlon, son of Malgis: Send money to Erinna in the land of the Messenians. She must buy back Nêto from the Spartans. Send it with this here Nikôn, a good man, but an illiterate.”


  Chiôn remembered more or less the way Damô had read it, but half the words on the bark were unclear to him. So he handed it over to Mêlon and kept talking. “What do these scratches mean? That stringy helot Nikôn went to his knees in begging, an odd thing for a tanner by his smell who says he will set all of Messenia on fire. So our Damô had me pull up the coin box. I had no wish to trust this helot, even if Nêto had long said that she spoke to him while asleep. But Nikôn told Damô well enough what our Nêto looks like. So he does not lie, at least not completely. But who is this Erinna? When I asked Nikon, he said, ‘Ask Alkidamas.’ ”

  Mêlon at least knew as much as Chiôn. “I am sworn to march with Epaminondas, but it is southward all the same, and I will be over Taygetos perhaps before any of you. I see that you know that Alkidamas is not here. He left the assembly for the bay at Aigosthena and has some grand plan to sail into the port of Messenia with helot rowers, no less, that he rounded up at Athens. He was supposed to send me word when he was to leave and where we were to meet in the south. Maybe he had wind of your Nikôn last night. But I see you planned to row with him all along or at least the two of you cobbled together some sort of plan on your chance meeting when I had set out with Xiphos to Thebes. Chiôn, you did well enough. Don’t worry about the silver. But now there is no need to go yourself. We can send the pay-off with Alkidamas, who as it works out is going south anyway, even if you were his agent after all. I see that now. Trust this Erinna. I’ve heard from Alkidamas at Thebes she is with Nêto. Stay on the farm. I am marching at sunrise. As I said, I hope to beat all of you to Messenia and still keep my vow to march with Epaminondas into the vale of Lakonia. I may get there first anyway.”

  “If Gorgos is this Kuniskos,” Mêlon went on, “then he will not kill her, at least not yet. He knows us, that we will send ransom money. You or I will even up with him. The man Alkidamas, I saw just these last two days in the assembly at Thebes. He is on his way. He must know this Nikôn and is close with Nêto and what she was up to. She never said anything much of her plans to me before she left.” Mêlon finished slowly. “So take the money from the farm to him at the port. Do it this day. Then it will go by sea to Ithômê, while I try to get south first. Yes, go to the port and find your Alkidamas.”

  Chiôn looked troubled. So Mêlon warned him a last time. “Chiôn. This is not your fight. Your one arm, wife, your son to come, and the farm, too—all that means you stay on Helikon. You give the money to Alkidamas at the port, and then go home. That is enough. I’ll race the old man by land to Messenia, and see if I can beat his ship to deal with Gorgos wherever and whatever he is. That way one of us at least will get to Messenia, by land or sea.”

  Chiôn paused. “Maybe. But I fear I can do far better in hunting Nêto down than you, Master. Besides, I’ve only seen the Spartans twice. At Tegyra and Leuktra. Not in their home. I can even up with Lichas for my arm. I’ll make him bow to Lophis in Hades—or worse still. No one knows Gorgos better than his fellow farm slave. I can figure out where he is before either you or Alkidamas. And we hear still of the boast of that Antikrates. We missed him at Leuktra. The tongues of your Olympians say he will do harm to our Epaminondas. So I will give the money to Alkidamas and come back and march with you to the Isthmos.”

  “No. No. All in good time, Chiôn. I let Nêto go off, and it is my debt to bring her back safely. I have waited far too long this autumn in my anger at her leaving. These other debts are on my ledger as well, along with seeking Nemesis for Lophis and Malgis. The reckoning is soon. Lichas, or so my daimôn tells me, is not long for this earth. Not with all of Boiotia heading south in the morning. But remember the words of Nêto,” Mêlon ended with a laugh. “You are not to see the sea. So again head home, and keep our farm safe. Take our Xiphos here. You need him on the farm, and you can save me from having a Plataian ride him back over there. Either Alkidamas or I will find Nêto.”

  Chiôn frowned at that. “How silly. Proxenos was not to cross the Isthmos, and yet he is now a hero down there in the south. I will swim in the sea anyway if I give the silver to Alkidamas at Aigosthena late this night. But, yes, I go to the sea and then home to Helikon.” With that he nodded, took the reins of their Xiphos, and led the horse away. Then he was gone as abruptly as he had appeared. Mêlon almost thought he saw Myron, or some brute, in torchlight waiting for his friend on a crest not far from camp.

  As Chiôn headed toward Helikon, he seemed to see visions again in the starry night, as if, amid the stars and moon, there were bright outlines of a timber stockade. Then he paused and the trance was clearer and right before his eyes. Inside this fort he saw through the lamplight the head of Nêto shaved—was it on a pole? Nêto was either dead or close to it. Gorgos was near or at the center of this crime, though he seemed to go by different names and had altered his look, or so they said of the helot lord with the shaved head and fine cloaks. So Nêto spoke all this to him for a moment from across the Isthmos far to the south. His dreams had stayed with him in the waking hours, and now were even stronger enough to stop him in mid-stride. Myron shook him and the visions ended as the two picked up their pace.

  After Chiôn left, Mêlon and Melissos slept for only half the night, and then arose well before sunrise. Mêlon was eager to press ahead to find Nêto, but he was still not sure whether this Nikôn was a scoundrel who had heard Nêto’s master had coin, or was an agent of Alkidamas, or was a lover of Nêto. In any case, for now all Mêlon could do was send Chiôn with his money for Alkidamas at Aigosthena. He would march with the army into the Peloponnesos, and then hope by burning Lakonia that the helots on the other side of Taygetos would rise up and so free Nêto wherever she was—though he thought he would slip away at some point and arrive at Messenia before the army.

  Others this morning were stirring even before Mêlon and Melissos. Soon they were waiting impatiently at the head of the column, nervous to move out. There was a growing noise of horse and leather and wood and bronze, with plenty of clatter and cursing in almost every dialect of the Hellenes. Everywhere arose the din of the heavy tread of thousands of feet milling about as they readied to march out. “Look back toward Thebes,” Melissos yelled. “The torches, a myriad of them. Even more, below.” Then they heard the voice of Epaminondas. “March out!”

  With that the mob at the back of the hoplites let out, “On to Sparta. To Sparta.” Then a roar of just “Sparta, Sparta …” The columns at the van moved out toward the mountain passes, in the gloom as the winter sun was behind the mountains. In quiet the army knew it was late in the year for war, on this the shortest day of the year—the great brooding solstice when all shuddered that the colder times were ahead. This northern horde was perhaps three or four times larger than the one mustered at Leuktra. All Hellas north of the Isthmos seemed to be on the move, either to fight or follow the throng peddling food and drink and women. Even more would join up in the south. Northerners had never marched in mass before, much less had they joined with islanders and the men of the Euboia to the west, soon to be alongside hoplites mustering at Elis, Argos, and Arkadia to the south. In the early darkness most appeared strange folk. Some had open-faced piloi without nose guards in the new style. Others wore cheap armor on their chests from the foundries of Euboia that were scarcely tempered or hammered. Most had painted the club of Thebes over their shield blazons—as if for the next few days they were Epaminondas’s own Boiotians. A few had the heavy sheet-bronze breastplates of their grandfathers, but far more wore glued fabric with small metal plates. Freedmen and the poor had neither the thôrax nor even greaves. Many, Mêlon noticed, were the hide men from the mountains on the north shore of the gulf. These carried small Thrakian leather crescent-shaped shields and long javelins or bows across their shoulders—the tribes of Aitolians, Akarnanians, and Ambrakions for whom ambush and outlawry in the hills alone won honor. Thessalonians and Lokrians rode on past atop shaggy ponies, with long fur capes and quivers and javelins strapped to their saddles. The looters of Delphi, the Phokians, came w
ith good bronze armor—no doubt lifted at night from the votive racks in the temples.

  “No worry, Master, about how they look. The uglier the better, yes?” Melissos stammered. He went on. “As for us, up in the north, we pay any who will fight. And Master, when they fall, we burn their corpses, without charge for the timber to their families, as promised. That’s enough. These are men who have strong right arms; why worry why they fight? For now, aren’t they on our side?” He went on with an eye on Mêlon to see whether his new master was ready with a slap to quiet down. “Who cares any more whether spear-men own land or meet your census? Our poor men from the hills, why, they can kill a lord with his five hundred plethra of wheat land just as easily as they can a snake. Watch when this army pours into Lakonia. One of our landless robbers from Ambrakia will jump on the back of a Spartan ephor. Cut his throat without any music or two-step or any of those other things the Spartans drill at. These are the wages of dêmokratia of your new Hellas, a real equality—in killing. Why dye your cape scarlet when it keeps you no warmer?”

  Mêlon laughed at his new talkbox servant. For a blurry-eyed boy he knew too much about the darker nature of men—and how much better it is to use than be disappointed by it. Yes, this Melissos was hardly the gangly servant that he had dismissed in his mind just three days earlier. He had grown up royal in the rough north, it seemed. There the Makedonians grunted rather than spoke the Hellenic tongue. They poked or killed anything that they wished to in their wine halls after battle. They fought for women, or gold, or land, not for ideas, and much less for helots. So how odd, Mêlon mused: These northerners like Melissos and his brood flocked to civilization to enjoy the finer life that the law and justice would bring, even though, like the flat worm in the gut, they would eat enough holes to starve and kill their life-giving host. Odder still, the more the Hellenes adorned their cities in marble and wore gold clasps and purple cloaks, the more they lost their stomach to get into the muck and fight those like Melissos who thrived here in the mess and would storm their gates. No wonder Epaminondas dressed in rags and drank gruel and had no children—no concerns for the safety of kin that so blinds men, no worry whether he would tire of ice baths in the river. To keep his soft Hellas free, Epaminondas would shun its softness. When a man gives up gold and land and family, he’s halfway living in the other world anyway. But then so were men like Proxenos, and Ainias—and Mêlon himself. Was not that why they followed Epaminondas in the first place? Mêlon thought of all that—and how this Melissos might be a good servant to have in the days ahead.