The End of Sparta

by Victor Davis Hanson

  Most herds were down on flat land with the last of the spring grass and did not come up before Homôloios, so his story about goats and sheep and Gorgos in a shepherd’s hut made even less sense. Proxenos was dead. Nêto too. The helots were freed. So there was nothing much left for Ainias to do down here in the south. What happened to him, he confessed, mattered little anymore, though he wanted to learn the fate of Nêto or to kill Gorgos before he left or at least find the bones of Chiôn, or kill Proxenos’s killer. The list of his targets, he offered, was endless, after all, and gave him warmth in the spring air on high Taygetos.

  The guide was bundled in fleece, with that rough wool hood over his head. Two gray braids hung through to his shoulders, Spartan-style. A man of sixty or so, slump-shouldered Scorpas said he packed in for the shepherds of Taygetos bronze pots and other goods each spring and led back a she-goat or an ewe for the barter. “I am your eyes back here,” Scorpas finally called out, “to make sure we see any Spartan ambushers behind. We are near the crest. Be careful since we are ever closer to the border of Lakonia.”

  Ainias patted his hilt on his sword belt and gripped tighter his spear. Melissos said little, though he grunted under a pack on his back and the reins of a stubborn pony struggling with two shields that hit the brush and boughs of spruce. If there were to be spear work, he would be at the van and take a stab at Scorpas first of all. He knew that much. Melissos had started out the lackey of Mêlon but this day he would have come, slave or not, on his own accord, since the liberation disease had infected him as well—that notion that one kills for something other than money and fame, and someone far worse than oneself. Melissos had long ceased spying out the forts and landscape of the Hellenes and pondered only how the helots had revolted—and why his masters had come south to free them.

  Finally in late afternoon of their second day, Scorpas came to the fore and grabbed the arm of Mêlon. The small band spread out in the trees. “There, over there, far in the distance, in the meadow by the outcropping, see the hut? And beware, behind it there is a small cave that ends up on the other side of the peak out to an opening among a stand of spruce. There my friend said your man Gorgos hides. He is afraid of the wild monster of the forest. He won’t quite yet leave his cottage until he is forced out. There, there we go. I think dogs guard the house on the ridge. Though I don’t see them as I once did.”

  Ainias was quiet at this. He signaled Melissos to put down the shields and tether the horse. He hadn’t wanted to bring the Makedonian, but now he was glad that he had the boy’s extra right arm. Nikôn also had been silent for most of the day. He whispered, “Strangers are in this vale. Not all of them enemies. I don’t know whether I dreamed this or our dead Nêto told me or I only sense it now. And now I see Scorpas has already slipped off into the trees.”

  “No matter.” Mêlon motioned to Ainias. “Gorgos, not that half-helot, is our business. Now if there is someone alive in that hut, and if he is really our old Gorgos, then we learn whether he is our friend with a shred of good. Or, as you say, he is really the killer Kuniskos of the helots and more still.”

  Ainias knew better and laughed out loud at that nonsense. “Learn what? Oh, my Mêlon, you always knew your Gorgos in the blink you set eyes on his no-good hide on Helikon. And I would feel better if I had killed our missing Scorpas long before now. All done quietly as well. Fouler still he is now at our backsides. Let me backtrack and grab this man. He can’t be a step or two into the forest. Then at spear point he will lead us into the hut or die in his tracks. Better yet, wait till sundown. We can crawl on our bellies into that hut in the darkness and kill Gorgos or whoever is in there in his sleep or pile boughs on his walls and smoke him out.”

  Scorpas had run off the trail into the forest, since Nikôn in all the talking had lost thought of him as they spied the hut. Right now Mêlon needed every spear arm to confront Gorgos, and could hardly have Ainias chasing Scorpas down the mountain, Melissos drew his own long knife as they all quickened their pace ahead on the flat ground to the hut. He quietly spoke as he walked, “No Scorpas around here to be found. I see our Scorpas has no stomach for iron. He is nowhere to be seen. Maybe my eyes don’t spot him, or he is running through the trees to collect his wage for leading us here.”

  “Yes,” Nikôn sighed, “and I am worse. I too took my eye off him for only a moment. He is gone into the shadows. Nêto’s Porpax, our Kerberos, is gone too, but on the scent of something else—something in these dark trees, since I haven’t heard him bark like this since I found him in the woods near the camp of Kuniskos yelping at the gate. Listen to how he howls on the run. He is gone after the scent of Scorpas, who won’t get far from that hound. So we four are alone. Careful now. Kerberos has let all inside the hut know we are here. There was more to this tale than I knew when I ordered you all to come.”

  The two hoplites approached with leveled spears. Behind them Melissos and Nikôn had blades, choppers with one edge. They all imagined that Scorpas was even now backtracking down Taygetos, perhaps on his way for the coast near Pylos or right down to the gulf. Ahead in the opening was more a stockade than a house. It was dreary and dark, in the shadows of the tall spruces that ringed the building. Flat stones piled as high as a man’s shoulders were its sides that supported long beams. On them rested heavy stripped rafters of oak that held up a roof of broken tiles and flat stones. Sparks rose from a fire pit at the back of the house, and there was more smoke from a chimney inside. The light rain was unable to quench the burning in the pit. A small wooden stockade connected the shelter to what looked like a cave. A few goats and a steer were inside the fence.

  The two hoplites were no longer crouching among the grass, but stood upright and began making their way on a path that led to the north side of the hut. As they neared, both raised their shields and leveled their spears. Nikôn was behind with Melissos and could see they were almost to the hut. In fact, the four were a hundred paces from the door. There were no windows in the hut but smoke proved someone or something was inside. Gorgos, they remembered, was good enough with a bow or javelin, and there was no proof yet that he was not in the dank hut, and if so no doubt hardly alone. The trees around offered good cover for an ambusher, and the cave even better.

  Then a sharp, familiar sort of voice stopped the four who had long been seen and heard. “Hoa, you’re late, my Mêlon. Ah yes, the son of Malgis returned. Are you so rich from your winnings in Lakonia that you forgot to fetch your slave who has loyally awaited you these long months?” It was Gorgos. Gorgos was alive, after all. And now he threw open the door and waved them in.

  Mêlon wondered whether this was the Kuniskos of the fur collar and forked beard of the house of Antikrates who had cut down Erinna and killed his Nêto, or the aged helot Gorgos in rags, the harmless broke-back servant of Helikon that had stoked his fires and cooked his meat—or both. It was Gorgos, that much was sure. He was bare-chested, even in the spring mountain air despite the cold drizzle, with only a small tunic wrapped around his privates. “I was asleep. So I needed wakening and your dog did that well enough.” At that he walked a few paces from the cabin toward them, palms out and open. Mêlon kept silent at his appearance, since he had not seen him in this year and a half after Leuktra, not since the day they had wagonned together to the battle.

  Maybe this half-naked man was the killer Sinis whom the villagers in the foothills said had a dangerous voice and a new shape for each day to lull his victims to drop their swords. He wasn’t the man-bear, since Gorgos loved his Spartans and did not hang them by the toes from the forests of Taygetos. True, in winter on the farm Mêlon had never seen much of the helot without his tattered long cape, and even in summer he had worn two tunics, and often a hood. The muscles on this man suggested someone half his helot’s age. Yet his voice was surely that of the Gorgos he had known, though his words were longer and more delicate and with a Doric tinge. So was this an apparition?

  Kuniskos turned around again, pointing to the hut. “Oh yes, th
e answer to your doubts is I am Kuniskos and I am also your Gorgos—or more than your Gorgos of old, I should say. You slave liberators should welcome a freed helot in his pride. Come in. Come in. There’s a chill out here from the rain, at least I feel it on my bare back. Anyway before I napped I made sure to have a surprise for you, or maybe two or three of them. Do you remember our Nêto? Yes? Or have you gone helot-freeing without a thought of your old love back on Helikon, now that you build great cities and talk of democracy and no more the small folk like us.”

  Nêto?

  “Oh yes, your Nêto. Well, she may not be quite dead, at least not yet. Or then again, she may be gone by now. Let me go on a bit about her. She is here, or at least something like her is. Inside, inside as I said. So come in, come in—look under the table when you enter and see if she breathes with that iron collar on her neck or maybe I replaced it with a rope. My, how age has clouded my memory. Yes, just a rope now. Or maybe the mind loses its edge up here in the high country. Dogs need leashes of some sort. I think she’s better than any dog I have. Down here they called me the little dog, so I should know. I’m not so sure she breathes with her hood and limp, and that pretty branded cheek. She is copying our gimpy master these days and has been quiet the last two in her night trances and murmuring. Yes, Mêlon, if her heart still beats, her leg is worse than yours—and likewise the work of Sparta. But come in. Let’s pull her out from under the table, take off her cape, and together see what’s left. I’m heating up some black barley broth out back. Your servant has set a table like in the old days. Though my new house is less than what I enjoyed below on Ithômê. It surely isn’t like our shed on Helikon where I slept in the dung with your animals out back. I want company. There are black rumors of a wolf-man or shape-changer out here. By Zeus, a monster in fur with an iron club who eats Spartans and tidies up his dinner plate by stringing up their bones. Or have you heard? Yes, beware you of the man-bear loose on Taygetos. How did you get by him to reach me?”

  Melissos grabbed Mêlon’s arm. “Don’t go in. We have room out here to fight, Master, plenty of room to spear and stab, since this vagabond will have others like him lurking in the corners and rafters. He’s lying about Nêto. She’s dead, months ago he killed her. Or better yet, let me and Ainias go in first. Nikôn can guard our rear.”

  Mêlon would have praised this Makedonian boy for his growing sense, and taken his advice as well. But he had heard “Nêto,” and wanted to find her or her body—and then kill all who had a hand in her torture or death. So he went in, spear ready, and all three followed. The room ahead was dark with a weak lamp light on a table. The four were not sure Gorgos was alone. The murmurs inside below the table were of a dying or sick dog, at least at first so they thought. But as they reached the long table, it leapt up. Alive? Or at least they thought this caped thing was something close to alive. Nêto? The four pulled it up.

  It was Nêto and alive!

  They could see their old Nêto beneath the dingy blanket, and the scabs and scars. Mêlon embraced her, as Ainias kept his eye on Gorgos. Melissos helped Mêlon quickly cut off her binds. Nikôn kept his blade in the face of Gorgos as they all stepped back to the wall. Mêlon grabbed some wine as he passed the table and soon had her talking and wide-eyed. She was a lot more alive than she looked, and was soon pointing to the door and crying at the same time. “No worry, Nêto, no worry ever again.” Then he sat her down gently and put himself between her and Gorgos, alongside Ainias.

  The Stymphalian called the old man out. “Gorgos, you speak well for a man about to be speared, for one who invited in four of his executioners.” Ainias then lowered his spear as they all backed up to the corner of the hut and prepared to charge the helot. But first Ainias grazed Gorgos with his spear tip. “I never liked you, helot. We are here to fetch or kill you for what you have done to the Messenians and to our Nêto and to our Erinna. I prefer to end you here; the others down in new Messenê want to hang you, no doubt. Save us all much labor and come with us back to Ithômê so you can sit in the dock of the Messenians and hear their justice. They will swing you up for ten days above the Arkadian Gate until your bald head rots off.”

  Mêlon kept quiet at that. He slowly made his way around to the corner of the dank room behind Kuniskos, with Nêto up and shuffling at his rear next to the wall, her hands on his shoulders. Nikôn felt for his sword. Melissos stayed near the threshold with Ainias. Both had iron ready. Kuniskos had his eye on all of them, all the time. Nêto was shaky, but growing stronger from the wine and her hatred of Gorgos. She hissed over Mêlon’s shoulder. “He’s alone, though he wants you to think his army is outside. Kill him and we go home.” Mêlon nodded and was ready to spear him.

  Then the helot laughed at her. “Put those points away. Of course, I am alone. Your Gorgikos is tired of the slur of Kuniskos. I am no puppy dog, but a dragon man, a Gorgon of Helikon, watcher and protector of the farm of Malgis. The gods wish me back home on Helikon. You hate me because I killed your Erinna, yes, that red-headed Medusa sent to kill me. Was I supposed to stare at her and turn to stone? Gorgikos the loyal hound is to be killed because he bit first the master’s son who wanted to kick open his head? Master, at least give thanks to me. I both kept your dear little Nêto alive and yet ensured you need worry no more that she might like other men far better than she did you in your dotage and lameness—especially with the passing of that faker Proxenos of Plataia. Let us eat, since I know you know your way around this hut. I wager you had the same dream about it that I and your late Chiôn once did—since we met here before in our sleep, as you know from the nighttime shades that Hypnos and his son Morpheus sent to us alike.”

  Mêlon ignored him and was wondering if he could stab this Kuniskos before Ainias the spear-tosser impaled him. The Thespian also noticed that, in fact, Gorgos was right. He thought that he had seen the table before in his night visions and even on the wagon ride to Leuktra. He also wondered whether, as in the apparitions, there were also two doors to the hut, not one, as it had seemed when they first entered. So he looked into the shadows at the back of the long dwelling, and in fact thought he saw some sort of a smaller rear door.

  Then Kuniskos seemed hurt and wounded and so sat sunken back into his leather-woven chair. Then his voice lowered and he was almost once more what they remembered of the broken-down Gorgos nearing his seventh ten-years on Helikon. He pointed his fork at his friends and softly, slowly told them the way of their world to come. So there would be peace and a quiet descent with him as their prisoner back to Messenia after all. “The great game is over. My Spartans are broken, a race humbled by lesser folk by far. My helot people are free, as I suppose they should be. You have forgotten. I, whom you slur as Kuniskos, I too am a Messenian, born one, bred one, and so should be happy at their freedom. Even here I pick up things from my messenger, my dear Scorpidion. Yes, I heard that your Chiôn could not stop his killing on Helikon. Who else could have hung up Medios or drowned Thrattos, my friends and neighbors. So he died an outlaw now, a killer of the old and weak? Or was it all on your prompt, Master, who wishes me to face the law of bloodletting? Who is the killer and who in contrast pulls wounded boys out of battle at great risk to himself? And my, my, how everyone seems to have passed on.”

  This fluent Kuniskos was for a blink confusing his old friends with his long new way of talking as Lord Kuniskos. “Are you four alone? Just four? No more? So few to come so far? Three with good legs in your new band, and two sadly now with not? I thought I spied five of you as you came down the path. Or were there shadows in the woods? Were there not five or perhaps six of you? So many to fetch—or is it to kill—your Gorgikon. No Alkidamas here? I hear he is never far from you all but always safely distant when iron is drawn. Of course, Epaminondas stays warm back in my fort, too wise to tramp up here in the spring rain. And where is my Scorpas, always the loyal messenger to the end?”

  Mêlon kept his spear pointed at his helot. “Ready your things. We have a night of walking down the mount
ain still. Epaminondas wants you to face the diskastêria of the Messenians. Down the mountain I will settle up with you for Nêto and Lophis, if the court of the Messenians leaves me a few scraps.”

  “Calm, calm down, Master, my master. Nêto no doubt will tell you soon enough that she lives due to me. I kept her safe in my fort. I tried to save Lophis, at Leuktra, though he was near dead when I picked him up from the gore of battle. How could I return to the Boiotians when your Chiôn swore he would kill me after the battle? I had no choice but to cross the battlefield, since for all my babble I loved your Lophis and you too in my way. I yelled in vain to my Lichas to let him live. I, no one else, dressed out his body. I, Gorgos, left my own good money on the road south for the priestess Kallista at Kreusis to keep him safe from the birds and dogs. I was the good servant, and you are angry only because I the lowly now am free. May Zeus bless Lichas who alone let me live free, the true, the only liberator among you.”

  Mêlon stopped for a moment, and thought he heard traces of the old Gorgos in the talk of Lord Kuniskos. Indeed the helot was slumped even further in his chair, and seemed wrinkled as he always had been. Yes, he was almost the helot of Helikon once more—tired, old, flabby even. He had a tear in his right eye and slobber at the side of his mouth. Maybe he had tried to save Lophis after all?