Gorgos was freed of Melon, freed of Proxenos, freed of all memories of his twenty seasons and more as a slave on Helikon, so sure he was of a grand Spartan victory below. He too was a Messenian, and, like Neto, born a helot. But the old man cared not a whit for any of those serfs, and he liked their masters better than their slaves. There was no law that said Spartans must prove strong, and helots weak. Sly Gorgos knew that the weaker usually hide behind their race, their color, their homeland-refuges all for failure. So now for the first time Neto talks of her helot birth. More than that still, a liberator of her people-this slave who can’t remember the look of Mt. Ithome or even tell helot talk from the Spartan Doric. She was not like him, not like Gorgos, he thought, who chose his race, his people, his land as he saw fit and so trumped a mere accident of helot birth. Spartans were his because they, like him, were better than the helots. In contrast, his master was worse and only by silly laws kept the true master Gorgos his slave. How odd that these Boiotian liberators brought their slaves like Gorgos to battle. But then again, Gorgos still liked his master and was, after all, born a helot as well, whose people were underfoot from the Spartans that he now boasted about. He figured that he could hate helots and their masters, both Spartans and Thebans, praise Lichas and at times his master, too-mixed up at least for a while more before battle.
Gorgos climbed down from the wagon. “So much, Neto, for your gods yesterday. Your omens will get Boiotian men killed. Close your mouth, and we all live-paying money, fair tribute to Spartan occupiers and their ruling harmosts, and as you know, keeping our masters alive. These are our betters-yes they are-from Sparta, who rule with the iron hand. We helots, you and me both, know they earn what they enjoy-and how the two of us can prosper with them. But bet me-will our Boiotians run like Thespians or die fighting as they do in Sparta?”
Neto paid this two-shoe no heed in his dotage; traitor long ago to the cause of the helots, traitor he seemed now to her master Melon. She packed her bedroll and then moved farther away from the wagon where she had slept the previous night. Neto led the ox Aias over to taller grass. The master and Chion were far below. Apparently, Neto thought, Gorgos cared little who heard him as he yelled out at what he saw below. For the first time in their lives the two farm slaves, Neto and Gorgos, were alone without Chion or Melon somewhere nearby in the vineyard. They kept eyeing each other as the sun rose and the armies below marched out to crash. Neto gasped when she suddenly realized that Gorgos no longer limped. She was struck mute when he pulled off his ragged cloak to reveal the broad chest of a man more forty summers than seventy. Maybe he been faking his age to avoid plowing on the farm, secretly scything and pruning after dark to build such muscles. Or perhaps this brute was a demon god-maybe some foul half-animal from Hades that had taken over the body of the old slow-wit Gorgos.
Had he taken some drink from the fountain at Hippokrene on Helikon that had smoothed his wrinkles and put muscle where his fat used to hang, and made him talk as if were a lord? Surely he was no Odysseus whom Athena made young and strong in moments of crisis. The voice of Pythagoras had taught Neto to scoff at these child stories of the Olympians. But she thought she would soon see hooves as well on this new Gorgos, who might have been a foul offshoot of Pan all along. Then this fresher, taller helot stood erect and blared out in a stronger voice and a better way of speaking. His Doric seemed purer now and with all trace of Helikon twang gone.
“By the gods, I wish this day we were on the other side of that battle line. You see, my Neto, I was a slave up here only by name, not by heart-not like you and Chion, who found your proper station as the property of Melon. In Sparta I was free-only to see my freedom end when reduced to a slave on Helikon. All this is the logic from the would-be liberators of serfs. Slavery is good if you and those servile like you obey their betters, bad only to the degree that a natural lord like Gorgos sometimes trips on the battlefield and finds himself reduced to your lot. But in Sparta they know all that and so keep down the Messenians as the serfs they are, and make free those like me who soon prove that they were born to the wrong parents. Perhaps Sparta needs me as her men run out and her serfs increase. Watch below-the king steps forward. Now the music starts, Neto. The most beautiful sounds to ears of men. Come here-akouete. Hear the Spartan pipes with me.”
So this slave-turned-philosopher dropped all pretense and raised his voice in delight at the sight of thousands of Sparta’s best below. A mania was in him at the sight of Spartans after twenty years and more. Neto hoped those below might hear his loud treason, his high traitor talk, as if the dirty helot farmhand could have spoken like a Spartan lord all along. He went on without fear. “The killing begins as the sun warms. It peeps through the clouds, peeps through to show its face, Neto. Look, sassy helot, at Spartans in their pride. Look at me. Look what Spartan men can do. Their fine steps, their shields chest-high, not a crest, not a spear tip out of order. That is the real eunomia, the real law. Tough and hard. It gives obedience and order. Not your freedom. They’ve had their late-morning wine. Hot they are for battle. Hot and ready, all up with the desire for warcraft-with their eros polemou.” Then this new Gorgos turned directly to face Neto and at twenty feet distant beckoned with his right hand, as he hummed and danced to a Spartan war tune. “Come nearer, woman. Sit next to your Gorgos as we watch our men from our Peloponnesos, our shared birthplace. You too may come to see the power of Sparta and how we can help the winners take care of their children, we two who still speak with the Messenian accent. Your Gorgikos will tell you a long story of Spartan lore. Sit here. Learn of the Spartan way. Let me sing the Spartan poets, Alkman especially, to his Netikon, or some more Tyrtaios.”
The maddened Gorgos had moved downhill and left Neto back near the wagon, so intent was he on getting an even better view of the great slaughter below. He hiked down to yet another hillock of scrub cedars and tamarisks, wanting to get far closer to the battle than even the rise below the camp. From his early years with Brasidas, he had a sharp eye for terrain and the pulse of fighting. The son of Melon had ridden right out at the head of a column of cavalry, the first of the Boiotians to hit the Spartan horse. In a moment, the reckless Lophis at the point had been swallowed in dust and horseflesh. But before Lophis was lost to the mob, Gorgos determined that he had been knocked off and disappeared into the melee-unhorsed but perhaps alive.
“Don’t wait. Save our master,” a voice yelled at him from his rear. It was Neto again, who had crept down with blade in hand. In her own wildness, she too had thoughts, but of killing Gorgos, cutting his throat from the rear. She believed in her visions at night that Gorgos could still, even at his age, even if the Spartans lost today, do great evil; and she thought some far better than he might live if he bled first. Neto was worried too that he saw the false in her, that the more she had forgotten the distant helots of Messenia, the more she made up stories about them, the less she sounded like one, the more she tried to. But upon observing the cavalry charge below, she decided that she needed Gorgos to save her master’s son, and put away her knife.
Gorgos barked back, “Leave woman. You deserted our farm. Go. It’s man-killing here. In the raw. Look. Your Lophis fallen. Slaughtered. Or will be.”
Neto replied, “He is your master, too, or have you forgotten who saved you so often from the lash of Melon? If you won’t go down, I’ll go. Lophis is buried in men, not yet deep in dirt. No Spartan can beat him in the one-on-one, not our Lophis. The phalanx is on them now. If we can get down there, if he survives the trample, we can save him from the locusts that will strip and kill him on the field. If your mania leaves you, the two of us can drag him to the wagons.”