Long War 04 - The Great King

by Cameron, Christian

  ‘Why does it matter?’ the elder asked.

  And Themistocles stood, and pointed out over the crisp blue water of the great bay before us. ‘The war with Persia is all about the sea,’ he said. ‘Xerxes may come by land, but he cannot maintain his army – or his conquest – without the sea. This war will be won and lost with triremes, not with swords.’

  The Megaran sneered. ‘You only say that because your political power base is little men who row,’ he said. ‘Only gentlemen can win battles.’

  Themistocles shook his head. ‘Persian archers care nothing for the quality of the man in the armour,’ he said. ‘Arrows are all democrats.’

  The Megaran shrugged. ‘Only rich men can own the armour to stop the arrows.’

  Themistocles shook his head. ‘With a fleet, I can prevent the Persians from having arrows,’ he said. ‘I can prevent them from having bread, or beans, or garlic, or bowstrings.’

  The Megarans muttered, and turned to walk away, unswayed.

  Stung, the orator shouted after them, ‘After the war, there will be an empire! Don’t you see it? With a fleet, we can crush the Great King. We can take all Ionia back—’

  I put a hand on his arm.

  Themistocles sat down and glowered.

  That night, I went and drank wine with Leonidas. I was invited. He and his retinue were in a fine country house near the precinct – far finer than his house in Sparta, in fact. The floor mosaics were magnificent. Aristides was there – he didn’t attend the meetings of the conference, because of his feeling about Themistocles, but he was in Corinth and attended many private functions. Everyone knew he had been to see the Great King, and since no one could imagine the great Aristides becoming pro-Persian, they trusted him to tell them what the Great King intended, and he told them – right down to the facts of our escape from Mardonius.

  At any rate, I lay with him on a kline and listened to Leonidas plan his campaign. He had a straightforward idea – that the Greeks should send their allied army to a forward position so that the Persians would not be in a position to threaten anyone – except perhaps the Thessalians. We needed the Thessalian cavalry to match the brilliant Persian cavalry.

  And Leonidas – almost alone, let me add – looked clear eyed at the odds and the campaign. He was the first to propose a series of narrow points – where land and sea were both constrained – as the places where the allied army could face the Great King while the allied fleet contained his fleet. Our spies and our scouts – even my own work – suggested that the Persians would have almost six hundred fighting ships. Even if Xerxes gave us another year, all Greece couldn’t match six hundred ships. So the best we could hope for was a series of holding actions, and Leonidas invited me to drink his wine so that I could help Aristides to advise him on naval tactics.

  Leonidas was a fine commander and a deep thinker, but he thought sea battles were land battles with water.

  But he was very good about the narrow places and he had a much firmer grasp of geography than most men. He listened when other men spoke. He was already choosing his battlefields. Perhaps most important, he was almost alone in understanding that we would not be challenging Xerxes to a fair fight on an open field, like Plataea facing Thisbe or Athens facing Thebes.

  Oh, no.

  Leonidas, the great general, the King of Sparta, the first among equals, the best warrior of Greece, lay on his couch at Corinth and laid out our strategy.

  ‘I’ll take the allied army to a narrow place,’ he said. ‘And we’ll fight the Medes the way a cat fights a dog.’ He looked around.

  Some men flinched.

  ‘With everything we have,’ he said. ‘And with our flanks defended.’

  He chose a dozen sites based on what other men could tell him, and his own travels and his brother’s. Some of them were rendered untenable by distance from the centres at Athens and the Peloponesus. Some were so far ‘forward’ that they fell immediately to the Persians or even surrendered. But he chose the Vale of Tempe immediately, because it offered almost everything we needed for a forward strategy. He named three places to which he could retreat.

  The best of them all was the Hot Gates, and the headland of Artemis, where the north end of Euboea almost meets the coast of southern Thessaly. There, the sea is as constrained as the land.

  But Euxenis, the Thessalian, shook his head. ‘If you fight there, you will lose Thessaly,’ he said. ‘And all of our cavalry will be serving the Great King.’

  Leonidas smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But if I lose Thessaly, I’ll have to fight somewhere.’

  Sparthius raised a hand. ‘Why not just meet them here, at the isthmus?’ he asked.

  Leonidas shrugged. ‘If we fight here, then Athens and Thebes are lost, and Megara and probably Corinth.’

  Sparthius looked at me and winked. ‘So? None of them has a single Spartan citizen.’

  Now, my friends, you may think this is dull – but this is what we faced, in building the alliance. Every state could see how to protect its own interests. And the men of the Peloponnesus were in the most secure position of all.

  ‘If Xerxes’ fleet defeats our fleet, he can land an army anywhere,’ I said. ‘He could take Olympia.’

  ‘Avert!’ said a dozen Spartiates. Men glared at me.

  ‘Or Sparta itself,’ I said, ignoring them.

  Every head turned.

  ‘Not while there was a single Spartiate left alive,’ Bulis said.

  But Queen Gorgo nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. She was only passing through the room – collecting her small weaving bag, or so she claimed, although like many women I’ve known, she knew how to linger at an all-male party for an hour.

  At her one word, all the Spartans fell silent. And she smiled – a carefully dramatised hesitation. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You would all die, and then an army of his slaves would take Sparta.’

  An hour later, with far too much wine in me, I staggered to my feet and clasped hands with Aristides before nodding to the king. Spartans use very little ceremony in private.

  I had made it through the doors of the andron when Hector took my arm without a word and led me across the marble-paved courtyard, past a magnificent and ancient olive tree in a basin of marble, and up a set of carved wooden steps to the porch – the exedra – of the women’s wing.

  Gorgo sat quite decorously with a pair of maidens, enjoying the moonlit air and the scent of olives.

  ‘A Spartan,’ she said, as soon as I was at the top of the steps.

  I was not at my best. ‘What?’ I mumbled, or words to that effect.

  She waved dismissively. ‘Why do men drink so much? Listen, Arimnestos, I need your wits. Let’s have a Spartan navarch. A Spartan of unimpeachable nobility and some ability, who can give clear orders – and take them, if necessary. From Themistocles. No – listen! No one in Corinth or Megara or Thebes can imagine that Themistocles the Democrat is really going to ally with Leonidas the great noble. Let us put in a Spartan admiral, and all our troubles are at an end. And we are rid of Adamenteis.’

  I leaned against the rail. ‘I think Adamenteis is in the pay of the Great King,’ I said.

  Gorgo shrugged. ‘Half the conference have been sent money by Xerxes.’ She lowered her peplos from over her head to show her eyes and a bit of her mouth. ‘I have myself.’

  I was charmed. ‘What did you do with the money?’ I asked.

  ‘I sent half to the temple of Artemis at Brauron and the other half to Themistocles to build a ship,’ she said. ‘Do you think we can defeat Xerxes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I insisted. ‘If you are navarch.’

  We laughed together.

  The next day, I proposed that Eurybiades of Lacedaemon be chosen as navarchos. I had wandered about – half drunk – and informed Themistocles and Aristides and a dozen of the important men, so that, as soon as I made the proposal in council, a dozen orators rose and supported it.

  Adamenteis never had a chance to rally his supporters. We put i
t to the vote and the thing was done.

  Athens chose to trust Sparta with its fleet. Friends – in many ways, it was Athens’ finest hour. Someone had to trust a stranger.

  And with that trust came the scent of victory. Until Athens conceded that it would give the command to Sparta, we were some sixty odd cities with a common language and a lot of shared hatred. But after the question of the arch-navarchos was settled, the smaller cities began to show signs of fight. And as the last week of the conference rolled along, Themistocles framed a resolution calling for an even division of spoils – as in the Iliad – and the wording suggested strongly that if we won, we would punish those who stood with the Medes.

  On the last day, Leonidas walked among the delegates and asked each how many hoplites his city could bring. And when he had counted them all, he nodded, and said – quite loud, so that it carried acorss the temple –

  ‘Sixty thousand.’

  Silence fell.

  ‘If every city here does as they have promised, we Greeks can put sixty thousand hoplites in the field.’ He looked around, imperious in his scarlet cloak, but he would have been imperious naked.

  Adamanteis didn’t exactly shrug, but he said – loudly enough to be heard – ’Xerxes will have a million.’

  Themistocles laughed. It was a derisive, orator’s laugh, but it cut through whatever noble thing Leonidas meant to say.

  ‘We Greeks are poor. We don’t have enough wood to build more ships, nor enough food to feed all our people, nor enough bronze to make more armour, nor iron to make weapons.’ He raised his hands. ‘But thanks to the will of the gods, we will have enough Persians to allow all of us to be heroes.’

  We arrived at the conference as factions – as Megarans and Plataeans and Lacedaemonians and Athenians and Thebans and Thesbians.

  Most of us left it as Greeks.

  The Vale of Tempe – 480 BCE

  Tempe, (plur.) a valley in Thessaly, between mount Olympus at the north, and Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the Ægean. The poets have described it as the most delightful spot on the earth, with continual cooling shades, and verdant walks, which the warbling of birds rendered more pleasant and romantic, and which the gods often honored with their presence. Tempe extended about five miles in length but varied in the dimensions of its breadth so as to be in some places scarce one acre and a half wide. All vallies that are pleasant, either for their situation or the mildness of their climate, are called Tempe by the poets.

  John Lampriere ‘Classical Dictionary’ 1788

  That winter was one of the most delightful of my life. Perhaps it is only warm and full of light in memory – perhaps I see it that way in contrast to the two years of fear and horror that were to come.

  But I had my daughter, and my son. I had Aristides all to myself, except for Jocasta, who has always been one of my ideal women. We were a happy house. Hipponax might have made a great deal of trouble, with his tendency to violence and his angry need for my approval, locked in a house with two old heroes, some women, and a lot of wine. But he didn’t. He’d had a strong mother and a strong grandfather – he had good bones, as Plataeans say. And he had Hector.

  It was not all ease and light – the two of them stole a sacred bull and drove it through the town; they cut a swathe through the town’s unmarried girls and that had consequences; and when they were caught drunkenly spraying urine on a statue of Pan erected by the victors of Marathon, I decided it was time to send them away for a while. I sent them to Idomeneaus on the mountain.

  And Euphonia adored them. It could have gone either way, but she chose to follow them around and gaze adoringly at each in turn – and to brag about their exploits to other girls.

  As for me, as I say, I was with Aristides. When you are twenty, men of thirty-five seem quite old – and finished, mature, fully developed. But when you come around to that old age, you find yourself young, fit, hale – and still growing, if not in size, then in skill and maturity and some other ways. At thirty-five, I found Aristides to be more the man I wanted to be than any of them – even Leonidas. Oh, he was still a prig. His sense of honesty was so absolute that he would insist on telling his wife where she had gained weight, or how her breasts had looked when she was a maiden.

  You may laugh, but I’d like to suggest to the men present that, unless you are Aristides, this is a foolish way to behave with your wife or anyone else’s.

  Yet despite this failing, and his stubbornness, which could be blind and obstinate or pure and noble, he was in every other way the man I wanted to be. I especially admired his calm. I am a good man in a crisis – none better on a blood-drenched deck. But tell me that the house is out of olive oil and the best maidservant is pregnant and guests are at the door, and I am a very difficult man.

  One night, with the winter rains pouring on the fields of Green Plataea and Kitharon lost in the dark and clouds, we lay – promiscuously, let me add. One aspect of change that Aristides had accepted was private dinners with the women in chairs. We had lamb in something saffron and sticky, and a slave had dropped the whole platter, and in a spectacular display of terror – he was new – he’d then collapsed across the as-yet-undamaged food, and then, leaping to his feet, managed to smear saffroned mutton on my second-best chiton.

  Really, it was as good as Athenian comedy.

  But I shot off my kline and struck him. Then I was in the kitchen, demanding that my butler get the mess cleaned up, when Jocasta brushed past me, shot me a withering glare, and snapped her fingers for attention.

  They all ignored me and looked at her.

  ‘That was an accident and nothing to be afraid of,’ she said crisply. ‘Get Paolis cleaned up and see if we can have those nice large beans from last night – eh?’ She smiled at the cook, who had to smile back.

  Then she turned on me – the very look that I would give to a helmsman who abused his authority on one of my ships. ‘Would you be kind enough to step in here?’ she asked, stepping into the cook’s tiny office.

  I had to bend my head to get in, and I was so close to Jocasta that I could smell the mint on her skin.

  ‘The trouble with men is that, since they feel they are best at crises, they seek to create a crisis at every turn,’ she snapped. ‘A new slave dropped a platter. The Queen of Sparta was not at your table, and by Aphrodite, sir, even if she had been, there was no cause to strike the boy, who was already terrified. Your anger communicated itself to the servants, and now it will be an hour before we eat.’

  Yes, yes.

  The nice thing about getting lessoned by Jocasta is that, like a good trierarch, her authority was absolute. I couldn’t even manage male indignation. I merely stood, the hero of a dozen battles, and was dressed down – rightfully so – for cowardice and panic in the face of a dropped platter.

  I’m sure a dozen other incidents occurred that winter, but that’s the one that sticks with me.

  The three forges roared, too. They made armour and helmets, and the small phalanx of Plataeans grew better and better armed, until we were a fair show. Women complained that pots were not being repaired, and indeed, Myron called our building the ‘Forge of Ares’. Heron the ironsmith took on a pair of journeymen from Thrace – that is, Greeks from the Greek cities of Thrace, not Thracians – and they made magnificent swords, folded and folded again while still white hot so that the breath of the smith god showed on the surface, or that’s what they told me. Their swords were as good as the sword I’d brought from Babylon – flexible, sharp and beautiful. I had one hilted up in ivory.

  And we made money. Aristides mocked me and said I was now a true aristocrat – my forges made money, my farms made money, and my ships, captained by other men who took the risks – Moire made a winter voyage to Aegypt – made yet more money, so that I sat and learned to be calm and dignified at home while other men worked.

  Ah, but I worked too.

  I polished the phalanx of Plataea the way Hermogenes was polishing breastp
lates – the bronze thorakes that keep men safe in the storm of iron. I had my Epilektoi out in the hills after deer, over the fields after a wolf, up the mountain for boar – every week. I organised them into Spartan-style messes, as I’d learned from Brasidas, and I made up three new Pyricche that winter; first I taught them to my elite, and then to the entire phalanx.

  There was considerable grumbling. Hilarion objected that he didn’t want to be a hero in the Iliad and had a farm to manage. Draco’s grandson Andromachos thought that he was too good a warrior to need to drill.

  The sons and cousins of Simon stood in a group at drills and glowered.

  But they did the dances. And I tried to be fair, but I refused to have faction in my ranks. It is the principal duty of a strategos – or a polemarchos – to choose a place in the phalanx for each man, and to assign the places. A weak leader causes dissent. A strong leader can cause unease. Not every man appointed to the front rank truly wants to be there. The front rank is the place of honour, but it is a terrifying place to endure a battle, even for me.

  That said, I had some superb warriors, and a good number of warriors who were ‘merely’ fine, and veteran. With my marines and sailors added in – all citizens, now, and some had bought property with their profits – I could muster sixteen hundred men, and the front two ranks of eight were almost all veterans of a dozen fights.

  I concentrated on teaching them a variety of simple manoeuvres and a few complex ones. I was determined that they would be able to form at a run, from a long file of men into a phalanx, and in any direction, because my experience of war said that this one talent was better for the group than that every man present be Achilles come to earth as an individual. I made them march with their aspides on their shoulders or on their arms – everywhere. As often as I could, I made them run.

  Draco’s sons built us carts, and we hoarded sacks for grain, so that we could march out of Plataea with our food and our weapons and move at a donkey’s speed. My understanding was that we’d be marching all the way to Thessaly in the spring, and I was determined to be ready.