Truth and Sparta
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Truth and Sparta
By Camille Oster
Copyright 2013 Camille Oster
Smashword Edition
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the work of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
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Camille Oster - Author
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Chapter 1
Messenia, Sparta 424 BC
Chara walked through fields, over hills and along roads to make her way back to the village where she was born and raised. She noted the different landscapes as she made the long journey home. Her family worked the fields on the estate of the Menares family and she had lived with her family until her wedding day roughly a year ago. She hoped her father would accept her back. He didn’t know she was coming, but she knew in her heart that they would not turn her away. She would be in trouble if he did; she would have to beseech anyone to take her in, but it wouldn’t come to that, she was sure.
Besides, her father could use the extra pair of hands, the barley harvest was coming up soon and they needed as much help as they could get, being just Chara’s parents and her brother. Surely that would be more important than the embarrassment brought on by her barrenness.
She looked around and tried to find some bearing, she wasn’t entirely sure she was walking entirely in the right direction as she had only really been to this part of Messenia once—the day she was married and driven away to her new husband’s family. Now she only had her instincts to guide her along.
She’d slept in an orchard and continued walking as soon as the sun returned in the morning. There had been plenty to eat along the way as long as she stayed out of sight. She passed orchards with olives, dates, grapes, beans and other vegetables, even an apple orchard, but its fruit wasn’t ripe.
She had gotten along sufficiently well with her husband’s family, but they’d grown suspicious of her as her husband had grown ill, and they chased her away when he died in case she had brought the bad omen to them. Her inability to produce a single child had been a severe mark against her even before his illness.
It was close to dusk when she arrived at the modest home where she’d lived all her life except this last year. Things looked very much the same, she thought as she waited for her family to return to their small mud brick house. Their dog greeted her first and it was lovely to see the old dog that followed her father to the fields every single day.
“So you are back?” her father said when he arrived.
“Peracili died,” she said and waited for her father to give an indication of his intent. “Fever.”
“The pest?”
“No, just a fever. A small injury that didn’t heal.”
“That is unfortunate,” the weathered man said as he considered her. “You better go inside then; it will be dark before long. Don’t want to be caught out after dark.”
“Yes father,” she said and followed her mother inside. She was expected to help with the cooking—a task she didn’t mind. It was so lovely to be back with her family, and she was grateful that they didn’t reject her due to her disgrace. Her father sat close to the fire and sighed as the weight came off his knees.
“They say the Oracle has foretold of a further return of the pest,” he said as he began mending a wooden tool.
“I didn’t see any signs on the way,” Chara responded.
“We are more protected out here. The Athenians suffer very hard. It seems to have returned almost every year of late.”
Chara slipped back into her old life like she had never been away. Her brother was bigger and taller having blossomed into a young man from the skinny boy he’d been was the last time she’d seen him.
They didn’t talk about her time with Peracili or her distinct lack of productivity after a year of marriage. Month after month her bleeding had come. It wasn’t something she could hide and the reproach in her mother in law’s face only grew as time passed.
It wouldn’t be long before everyone nearby heard about her return, and they would likely draw the correct conclusion. Her marriage prospects would be limited having already proved herself defective. There was nothing she could do about it, just get on with helping her parents.
She sighed with relief at being home going about her familiar mornings chores—feeding the chickens, gathered water and tended the goats. In the afternoon, she helped her father in the fields, tended the orchards or picked grape leave shoots. There was never a shortage of things that needed doing.
The mundane activities didn’t alleviate her worry about the future. Growing up, she’d always imagined her wedding and the prospects of being carried away to start a family with a lovely man. It was always something to hope for, to work toward. That was all gone now and she couldn’t see a path ahead for herself other than working on her parents crops for the rest of her life.
“Chara, it is surprise to see you back,” Panos—a neighbor from the village—said. Chara smiled at the man she had known all her life, but still felt uncomfortable as she stood there beside her father.
“My husband died of a fever.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you.”
“What brings you over here, Panos?” her father asked.
“Menares had decreed that we are to build a bridge.”
“We know nothing of bridge building.”
“The old man seems to think that he needs one.”
“Getting too old to ride his horse?”
“Probably,” Panos said with derision. “But as he had decreed it, we must comply.” Chara knew Menares was not past whipping people if he didn’t get his way, and he didn’t care that it was harvest time, when they could not be spared to do such work—but they had no choice. The Spartiate family owned most of the fields in this area, their family villa was not far away—a large estate filled with the things that the rich Spartan citizens had, including a vast complex of houses, horses and servants. Chara had been there a few times when they had to drop their harvests off there. She had never been inside the house, but had seen the senior Menares man on occasio
n. The only son had been away for military training long before she had any recollection of him or the environment around her. She had only seen him once or twice that she recalled.
Her father went to discuss at length how they were going to deal with the harvest as well as this request to build a bridge to make the old man’s ride more comfortable. It would mean long hours and they would have to work on the bridge well into the night, by the light of fires. It would be more risky, but the Spartans rarely cared if the Helots had to take risks.
“He can just wait until we are done with the harvest,” Chara’s brother Doros said after watching the conversation quietly.
“Quiet boy,” her father said.
“The harvest is more important. Everyone will starve if the harvest doesn’t come in. If it gets spoilt, people aren’t going to accept starvation because some old man wants to build a bridge where none is needed. The old man can wait.”
“I said quiet boy,” her father repeated more sternly. Doros took offence and he stormed off in a huff. Chara was not used to seeing her brother so confrontational—this was something new.
Her father and Panos gave each other meaningful looks and continued discussing how they were going to build this bridge. The Spartan would have to provide the wood, they decided. Wood was expensive and good wood wasn’t readily available as it had to be brought in from the north.
Chara went to seek out her brother who was sitting at the far side of the house.
“They comply with anything that spews out of that senile man’s head. It’s harvest time, we cannot go run after some fool’s errand. We should be absolutely killing ourselves because some old man decrees he wants something. It’s not right. Why are they just taking it, why doesn’t anyone just tell him he can’t have it?”
“You know why Doros, Menares has no qualms making people suffer if he doesn’t get what he wants. Father has experienced that before, you have seen his scars.”
“He is just one old man, we are many.”
“We are farmers and they are soldiers, that is just the way it is.”
“We are the ones that belong here, not them—and we outnumber them. They might have skills, but we have numbers.”
“Doros, you know what happens every time we try,” Chara said with exasperation. “They are brutal in their retribution. It’s not worth it.”
“Our freedom is worth it, Chara. Father has just grown too used to his servitude. The Spartans are weaker than ever—now it the time.”
“No Doros, you will only get yourself killed. It would crush mother, please don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m not stupid, Chara, but I am not a quivering mess of fear either. It is time for change. You know the Spartans are getting more brutal every year, there is only so much we can take and they need to learn that. We need to be rid of them once and for all.”
“You need to lose this anger, Doros.”
“Or maybe you need to find yours,” he accused.
Chapter 2
The work in the field was backbreaking, but she was used to it, she’d been doing it as long as she could remember—bending, cutting, placing. The harvest required all their time and there were too many chores for just the four of them. She was happy that she could take some of the burden off her mother who was suffering a bit with arthritic hands.
She wandered home around midday and prepared food for the rest of the family still working on the fields, getting through the harvest of the barley as fast as they could. Her return signalled the time to take a break and they all sat down on the cart full of barley.
It didn’t take long before noises could be heard coming from over the hill, the light clanging of metal against metal. Something was definitely coming.
“It’s a garrison,” her father said. She could feel the tension rise in her father as he said it. “They’re coming through. They must be returning from up north.” Chara had never seen a garrison. “Don’t interact with them, if they pay us attention, I want you to go, do you hear? Quietly walk away so no one will notice. You too, Doros.”
Doros looked murderous, but Chara knew he would comply with their father’s wishes. Her brother might be unhappy with their situation, but he wasn’t stupid enough to take on a whole Garrison. That would get them all killed—just annoying a Spartan was sufficient for that fate it seemed.
They stayed where they were as the garrison made it over the hill and started walking through the field, flattening their crop in the process. There must have been close to eighty men, but not all of them were soldiers, there were their servants as well—Helots that had been taken very young to serve Spartan boys of similar ages.
The Spartan men didn’t acknowledge Chara and her family in any way as they passed. Some of them glanced over at the small group of peasants tending their field, but that was all. They were all fit and muscular with bare heads and crimson cloaks. They marched in uniform, quickly making their way through the field. Their tunics were dirty and some were torn. They had obviously seen battle. The servants carried most of the armor and weapons, and also tended to the injured in the carts following the main garrison.
Her father breathed a sigh of relief as they went. It was scary seeing so many of them in one place, and not just Spartans—soldiers. It was never a good day running into one of them. They always came in and did what they wanted; they took livestock, crops and equipment as they pleased. It was sheer luck that they came through this time of day—if is had been near dusk and they would have set up camp and who knows what would have happened. There was always a risk that the Spartans would make sport of the Helots. They may seek to humiliate the men by making them dance, but sometimes they were worse to the women—sometimes they just took the young women with them.
“I wonder why they are back,” Doros said.
“Who understands their ways?” her father said.
“They’ve no doubt been killing peasants and other innocents up near Athens,” Doros said bitterly.
“Watch your tongue, Doros. You will bring trouble to our house if you don’t. Now back to work.”
Chara watched the anger boiling in her brother as he attacked the barley. Her father was right, he needed to lose that anger—it would attract attention, and that was never a good thing.
Chara had to go to the village a few days later to pick up a knife that her father had sent to the village to be sharpened. This village was the lifeblood of their community. It wasn’t large, a total of fifteen small mud brick houses. There was another village about an hour’s walk away that belonged to the same estate. While they would sometimes see the people from that village, it was mostly only at harvest time when everyone had to drop their crops off at the Menares villa. The Spartans didn’t like the Helots consorting widely—they grew suspicious very quickly. It was no secret that the Spartans were paranoid about Helot revolts. There were revolts on occasion as some village got fed up with their treatment, but large, co-ordinated revolts were not common; although a large one occurred not that long ago. The Spartans had not forgotten, and now there were less of the Spartans around and more Helots.
The villagers were on occasion ordered to convey the harvest to the messes in Sparta where the citizens ate. Chara had never been to Sparta, going there was a task that was typically reserved for the men. She had heard stories though, of Spartans and their strange ways.
“Did you see the garrison that came through the other day?” Chara’s friend Della asked. “I couldn’t believe how many of them there were.”
“We saw them as they came through our field when we were working.”
“They’re back from Athens, I’ve been told. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many young men in one place,” Della confided. Della was always impressed by young men, even if they were technically the enemy. Her impressions were further exasperated by the fact that she hadn’t found someone to marry. Young men were in increasingly short supply, their shortage exasperated by the fact that the Spartans declared war on them o
nce a year—the Crypteia—where they would cut down anyone who tried to put up any kind of resistance. This had resulted in a hollowing out of the marriageable male Helot population. “Gave me goose bumps seeing them all in the flesh. Apparently that was the garrison that the Menares son is in. He was probably there yesterday when they walked through. I hear he is returning here until they go on campaign again. I don’t even know the last time he was here.”
Chara didn’t particularly care about this gossip, but she guessed that the Menares’ son, Nicias’ return outshone her own in importance, and she was grateful for that. She hated being the source of gossip, but there was always gossip in the village.
“Can’t find a wife, what I hear,” Della continued.
“Who?”
“Menares’ son. I hear from someone who works in the house that he is of marriageable age now, but there is no one for him to marry.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t have killed off all their new-born girls,” Chara said. “Who did they expect there would be to marry?”
“I don’t know what they were thinking. They couldn’t possibly have wanted this outcome. They killed off all the future breeding females, what did they expect? I hear they have forbidden the practice now,” Della pointed out.
“The damage has already been done.”
“Maybe they will breed themselves out of existence.”
“It would be nice to think—we have suffered with their presence for long enough.” While Chara discouraged her brother’s anger and resentment, she couldn’t deny it was there—ever present in all of them. She knew no one who wished the Spartans to thrive. They had allies, but even amongst them, they were universally despised.
“Their arrogance will be their own downfall,” Della said.
“Unless the Athenians decimate them.”
“With them being struck by the plague endlessly, I am not sure they have the capabilities to defeat them.” Della looked around to see that they were still unobserved. Even in their own village, they had to be careful. The Spartans killed anyone who was too vocal in their dissent, and there were always ears around that you weren’t sure you could trust. There were many Helots who’d grown up with their Spartan masters, and they were sometimes more loyal to their master than to their own kind.
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