Themistocles glanced at me. He was standing quite near me — I think in support of my forward naval strategy.
‘Arimnestos of Plataea can tell you more than I,’ he said. ‘As he had Artapherenes on his ship as a guest not a month ago.’
That was like kicking a hornets’ nest.
But it was true. And I happened to look at the King of Sparta before I began — and in a glance I realised why he had asked me whether I spoke Persian. It was because he had already heard this tale.
So I began. I told the story simply — that my ship had been caught in a storm, and emerged to find the wreck of Artapherenes’ ship close at hand and in the throes of a mutiny. I spoke of taking the satrap into Carthage and sailing out again, and I left out the difficulties.
Men frowned.
‘Surely Artapherenes would have made a mighty hostage,’ Adeimantus said. ‘Or are you some sort of secret Persian lover?’
There are insults that must be avenged in blood — although as I get older there are fewer and fewer of those — and then there are insults so ludicrous they deserve no more than a laugh. I laughed.
‘I love Persian gold,’ I said. ‘But I find it easier to take it from them than to ask for it on bended knee.’
Cimon snarled.
‘So you say!’ Adeimantus shot back.
‘If you had been at Marathon. .’ I said, and let it go.
The king smiled at me. ‘I saw the bodies,’ he offered. ‘At Marathon.’ As usual, a short speech, but one that conveyed all the meaning he needed. He raised an eyebrow — just as his wife had. ‘But — why?’
I shrugged. ‘He was an ambassador, and his life was sacred. And — I owed him my life.’
Leonidas nodded. ‘Good,’ he said.
‘And he told you that the invasion was imminent?’ the Corinthian asked. I could see Lykon looking at the older man with distaste.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He told me, his wife told me, and the captain of his guard — an old friend of mine, a guest-friend — warned me.’
The men around the fire spoke for some time.
I raised my voice. ‘The Great King intends to build a canal across the isthmus under Mount Athos,’ I said. ‘And bridge the Hellespont.’ I shrugged. ‘So says his Satrap of Phrygia.’
Adeimantus was openly derisive. ‘Bridge the Hellespont!’ He laughed. ‘I think you are trying to shock us with marvels, Boeotian.’
Even Cimon paused. ‘That’s laying it on a bit thick,’ he murmured. ‘A bridge over the Hellespont!’
Leonidas, on the other hand, looked at me with real interest. ‘That would be. . glorious,’ he said. His gaze was distant. Then his eyes snapped to me. He seemed an inch taller. ‘You believe this to be true?’ he asked slowly. ‘I mean no offence. Different men will use words to sway other men.’
I nodded. ‘A man I trust told me, and I believe him,’ I said.
The King of Sparta nodded sharply. ‘Then he is bringing a land army, and he means to have a real contest.’ His eyes went to Themistocles. He implied that a sea battle was not a real contest.
Of course, to the Spartans, it was not — because it depended on the rowers and the helmsmen, not the hoplites.
Later, when the drinking was done and most of the men had gone to their beds — or their piles of flea-infested straw — I sat in the pleasant fireside air, blessedly free from the flies and mosquitoes which had descended like some curse of the Olympians at sunset and eaten us alive for three hours. Aristides sat by me — and Styges, and Lykon of Corinth and Cimon, Empedocles of Thebes, Calliteles the Spartan and a dozen other men. Brasidas was with me, too — ignoring Calliteles, who was studiously ignoring him.
The king had made me angry. I didn’t realise it until he left in a swirl of red as his cloak settled about him. The arrogance of his cloak — was that it? I admired him as a man — and yet, the way he entered and left, as if he were king not just of the Spartans but of all Greeks. .
I was stung by the words a real contest.
I lay on my cloak, allowing resentment to penetrate my maturity.
Finally I turned, ignoring what Styges had just asked. ‘Why does your king call a land battle “a real contest”?’ I asked. The king, of course, used the same words that we use for a race at Olympia. ‘You are a Spartan, and you have seen a sea fight.’
Brasidas looked off into the darkness for so long I thought that he wouldn’t answer. And why should he? It was an angry, rhetorical question.
But he coughed, and sat up. ‘When I was young, and had just finished the Agoge,’ he said, ‘we went to war with Argos. It wasn’t much of a war, really. We knew we would win, and so did the Argives — good fighters, but not like us. And we had more hoplites.’ He turned, to make sure he had my attention. He looked into the fire. ‘Cleomenes was the king. He was attempting to breathe new life into the Peloponnesian League and to let the allies have more say. One of the allied leaders made a suggestion about tactics.’ He shrugged. ‘And Cleomenes allowed the allies to follow this man — even though his brother, Leonidas, derided the notion as un-Greek and unworthy. So the allies marched off slightly to our left, and at a set command, they moved at an incline — very rapidly — like this.’ His right hand was the Spartan phalanx, moving forward, neither slow nor fast, but inexorable.
I had seen it. Faced it. Nothing, in the aspis of the world, is more to be feared than the Spartan advance.
His left hand swung out wide to the left and then accelerated in from the flank.
Total silence had fallen. Brasidas never told a story — even those who did not know him paused to hear him. And Calliteles nodded, almost imperceptibly supporting Brasidas — yes, it was as he says.
‘As soon as they saw themselves outflanked, the Argives broke and ran,’ Brasidas said.
Many men nodded. Cimon looked like a boy who knows the punchline to the joke.
I shrugged. ‘Outnumbered, facing Spartans, and outflanked?’ I said. I nodded. ‘I’d run, too.’
Brasidas nodded. ‘They ran a stade — out of the jaws. Then they stopped. They reformed their phalanx.’
His eyes flicked to Calliteles, who was older. He was an Olympian, and that meant, I knew, that he’d probably been in the Hippeis — the Spartan Royal Guard — with Cleomenes.
He raised one eyebrow. ‘Then they mocked us.’
Calliteles nodded.
‘They sent a herald. They said, “O Spartans, mighty in war — have your arms lost their strength, that you stoop to trickery? Meet us chest to chest and shield to shield in a real contest, or march home and be damned.”’
Brasidas allowed himself a small smile. ‘We told the allies to stand aside. We marched down the field, and the Argives came to us, and we fought.’ He nodded. ‘We defeated them, of course. They sent heralds to offer submission and to request permission to bury their dead. We granted it.’ He nodded.
Calliteles nodded also.
Cimon nodded in his turn. ‘I know that I have heard this story told a dozen times,’ he said. ‘I was at dinner with Leonidas and Gorgo one night and an ephor told the story. I thought the point was that the Peloponnesian allies had wrecked the pincer movement by being too slow. I said so, and Gorgo looked at me — well, the way a wife looks at you when you say something foolish at temple.’ He raised his eyebrows and spread his hands like a mime.
Brasidas looked at the ground.
Calliteles looked at the stars.
Styges had grown to manhood with Idomeneaus. He understood immediately — as did I, thanks. I had been with the Cretans. He leaned forward — a young man, and thus not quick to offer his views — but after several breaths, he said, ‘I understand.’
Brasidas looked at him. ‘Yes?’ he asked. He sounded tired, as if using so many words had exhausted him.