Then he stopped in the middle of the Boiotian front line. Here Epaminondas yelled out a final time, “We are better men than the Spartans, better in peace and far better men in war. I swear a great oath to every man here: We will kill their king today. It is fated. I will not live after today if we lose. I will not breathe the air of Boiotia in shame and laughed at by all. We shall not lose this Holy Leuktra. Follow me into their spears. Follow Herakles who roams above us. Avenge the daughters of Skedasos. Follow me into song and story. Give me one more step forward still. The Thebans are mightier in war.”
The army behind him shook their spears and clapped them against their shields. They let out a thunderous roar with their own paean to death, “Death, death, death-thanatos, thanatos, thanatos-the Thebans are mightier in war. The Boiotians are better than Spartans.” They were immediately cut short by the ping of metal against wood and flesh as a thousand Spartan horsemen galloped out and hit the Theban cavalrymen head-on. Lichas led them, with a spear in his right hand and a cleaver in his left, reins in his mouth, his own men behind likewise chanting “Thanatonde, thanatonde-deathward, to death.” To no avail. His horsemen were outnumbered, and they soon proved to be mere boys compared to the skilled riders of the plains around Kopais. The Boiotians had hit them in a massive rhomboid and then sliced through the thin line of Spartan horse, forcing them all back into their own ranks. Then the Boiotians threw javelins at the confused jumble of foot and horse, as they split off and rode back to the wings-even as the Boiotian phalanx now bore down on the men of Sparta. Dust engulfed the wine-soaked Spartans, and the oncoming hoplites of Boiotia could see only the raised spear of Lichas, as he shouted in vain, “Rally to me, my riders, rally to me!”
Pray God that Lophis my son was ready for that hippomachia, thought Melon. But then without warning almost everything in the ranks began to move, as the pushing from behind started up. Dust rose again. A cloud of it was already hanging in front. The phalanx of the Boiotians was on the move as the horsemen parted ways and yelled to them to finish their own against the jumble of Spartan riders and hoplites. More summer dirt blew into Melon’s face. Staphis-or was it the pressure itself pushing Staphis?-crowded him and knocked him off balance into Chion. The men at his side were all moving at a double-step, with their spears held underhand. He could feel that much. The butt of Melon’s Bora caught on something to the rear. The men behind were that close, their shields battering the back of his own shoulders. Even though the hoplites of the Peloponnesos were a few cubits distant across the rolling field, an enemy horseman broke through on his right. He was a Spartan hippeus and he had got turned around after the cavalry collision. The fool, with his flying braids, had galloped back into the wrong army. The Spartan rider was quickly stabbed on all sides-but not before taking a few hoplites down with him as his horse crashed over onto the men of Tanagra.
Next Melon heard an even worse sound than the neighing horses, worse even than the straps and shields bustling, and wood hitting iron as spears and shields bounced together: the sickly sweet music of Dorian flutes. Or was it women’s shrieks in the air above them? No, it was enemy flutes, as the Spartan infantry were upon them and at last slanting into the leftward march of the Theban massed wing, each side now desperate to outflank the other. Melon could not even hear Epaminondas in the ranks a few feet away. His ears were instead full of Neto’s Thisbean flute, as if she were playing it inside his head to drown the death music of the enemy. He chanted to himself to blot out the enemy tune. His general was pleading with the men at his immediate side. “The sound of the Spartan dirge. Ignore it. The music is coming for them. Not for us. You hear the pipes of a dead city. A dead people. The enemy is lost. They are fleeing. Their flutes are sweet music to our ears.”
Epaminondas might as well have been on Olympos. His men were charging ahead. They were already running in the dromo. Their heads were encased in bronze, tucked behind their shields, ready for the crash.
CHAPTER 6
Like some tawny hedgehog that is riled by the hunter’s dog out of his deep field hole with spines erect, the Boiotian phalanx had shuddered and then, at last, had lumbered out to face the red Spartan line-this, the best army of men Boiotia had ever fielded in the memory of the elders, better even than the men at Delion who beat back the Athenians over fifty summers before. Never had Melon marched leftward. He squinted out the eye-holes of his Korinthian helmet. But he could see no helper god Herakles yet at his side. He thought he saw a glimpse of some deity in the sky, but it was a harsh one-in black with white incisors, and a pale female one at that. She flapped her long wings of ugly skin and feather, the length of two, maybe three hoplites. Ugly pale breasts with black braids bounced about on this thing, this monster, the Ker, scavenger of the dead, the courier woman of Hades. Where were the virgins of Leuktra, who were promised to fly up and bat away the smelly daughters of night?
Then Melon’s trance ended as the two armies kept on course for the crash. Spartans ahead. A long spear line of them. Now not more than twenty paces away. Their death music louder. He could hear that much. They would come on, shield touching shield-not like the farmers of Boiotia running with underhanded spears hoping to crash in and break through the slow-moving wall.
Lichas had already led the Spartan cavalry against the Theban horse and saw his mounted men beaten back and mostly killed. Now he leaped down and headed to the king’s guard on foot, his side braids flapping out of his helmet, his retainer taking his mount behind the phalanx. Lichas was laughing in joy to be spearing as a hoplite, even as he yelled to the flutists, “Play them louder still, my pipers. It makes the pigs mad with the god Pan. We will eat them by noon. Look how they herd up. All good and ready to be slaughtered. All in a neat bunch. Follow me to the kill. Keep in step, not a gap in the ranks. Don’t let them get to our sides! Shields chest high. Forward into the spears-eis dorata. Slow, steady in our walk of death. Spear, bleed these pigs. I rout their horsemen as play. Hear our Tyrtaios, hear him-‘Let you never relax from war.’ Where are you now, my Antikrates, where is my boy killer?” He screamed on without worry that not a one of his helmeted Spartans heard him and that the mass of Thebans was heading right for him.
Melon across the way knew that none could hear him either, given the clatter of gear and their bronze helmets, and the war cry of the Spartans. But the same advice came out nonetheless to Chion on his right and the quivering Staphis on the left. “Run. Keep moving. Shields out. High and out. Bunch together. No gaps. No gaps. No stops-all eyes ahead. Look at the men you kill. Steady, men, steady. Spears level. All at once. All at once, aim for their throats. Hit them as one, all together. Chion, my Chion, here they are, the eyes of these Spartan snakes. Endure it, men. Endure it, my Staphi. Staphi, Staphi stay left. Left. Left, left-drift to the good side. Always to the good side move. Hit them on their right, from the flank on their naked right. We go left. Pros t’aristeron. Eis euonumon.”
Still, few heard a word. There was too much iron and wood-and, for most of the terrified, the shrieks of the circling black Keres above. Melon’s helmet was down. Dust was in his mouth and ears. He was dizzy and wondered why he was running. No more trot now, he was running with the bad leg-faster even to the hated left, faster than he remembered from the old battles. The rear ranks are pushing me ahead, he thought. They’re knocking me over, my own men, the fifty aspides from the rear. My elbows are free as we run. Good sign, good sign in these early moments. Yes, the big shove, the othismos that knocks us ahead. Do these doomed reds, these blurs up ahead, do they have any notion of these fifty shields at our backs? Poseidon’s wave is about to knock them over. Yet they walk, walk into our charge?