Antalcidas got to be very good at this game, standing in against boys much older and larger than himself. He had perfected a particular technique of his own, using the bodies of the competition to push off at just the right moment to receive the ball. As he showed off this skill one day, he noticed an old Spartiate sitting with Endius, resting his chin on the handle of his staff as he watched the boys exercise. Without making it too obvious, Antalcidas tried to read their lips as the men exchanged comments about this or that youth, saying things like “magnificent” or “an earthy break.” Other remarks-such as “nice, tight ring”-seemed so cryptic that he thought he must have misunderstood their words. But there was no mistaking his meaning when Endius called Antalcidas over to meet his guest.
“So I hear they call you Stone, young man. Can you tell me why?”
The old man’s glance flitted down Antalcidas’ oiled flanks, his eyes shaking slightly in their veiny whites as they lingered on the patch of his adolescent down.
“It is just a name,” the boy replied.
“What an admirable economy of words!” the old man exclaimed. “It would be a pleasure indeed to help cultivate such good instincts.”
Antalcidas yawned. The old man gave Endius a significant look. The latter, as if by some prior arrangement, rose and took the boy by the arm.
“Do you know to whom you are speaking?” asked the boy-herd in a confidential tone. When Antalcidas shrugged, he went on, “You must remember the campaign of Nicodemus the Regent, several years ago. He marched with two battalions of the army and ten thousand allies to succor our friends in Thebes. Our former allies in Athens, who were still smarting after the kings dismissed them from Ithome, tried to oppose his return over the Isthmus. Nicodemus met fourteen thousand Athenians at Tanagra and made them learn the price of their folly. Zeuxippos commanded the allied left wing.”
The old man did not feign modesty as he was so flatteringly introduced. Instead, he used his staff to leverage himself to his feet and placed a hand on Antalcidas’ shoulder. As he came close, the boy could smell the smoke of a thousand campfires in his beard, and the vinegar from a thousand bowls of black broth seeping through the pores of his sagging skin. “It’s been quite a long time since I’ve offered my sponsorship,” he said.
“You could not ask for a steadier hand,” pressed Endius.
To attract the attention of an elder sponsor was a requisite part of the Rearing. What Antalcidas had not expected was to be approached by so old a Spartiate. Most mentors were young men in their twenties, barely out of the Rearing themselves, who tutored with one eye on their pupils and the other on the elders who judged them in turn. Who would supervise a man as distinguished as Zeuxippos?
“Maybe I should seek my father’s counsel…” he suggested.
“Zeuxippos is your father. As am I, and every Equal alive or dead, all of whom would have been pleased to learn at the knee of such a teacher…”
“Really, dear Endius, there is no need to force the issue!” said Zeuxippos. “Let the boy take counsel with anyone he wants. I trust he will not be disappointed at what he learns.”
In fact, Antalcidas had glimpsed his father only once since leaving home. Molobrus’ battalion was marching over the Eurotas bridge, on their way to stiffen the backs of the Megarians and Corinthians in yet another face-off with Athens. From the roadside the boys watched them, the great crimson line, setting out as they had for centuries with spearheads up and voices raised in song. Ahead went the fire-carriers bearing embers from the altar of Zeus-the-Leader in clay vessels suspended from poles. Behind the right shoulder of each hoplite followed his personal attendant in a white tunic edged with red, packing his master’s helmet, shield, and camp equipment. It was widely understood among the boys, thanks to rumors deliberately spread by Endius, that Lacedaemonian servants marched better than the elite infantry of other Greek cities. Beyond the facade of well-heeled gentlemen-soldiers, much of the rank and file in the Athenian or Theban or Argive armies bore inferior panoplies and were almost random in their footwork. Among the Lacedaemonians, however, everyone had the bearing of a gentleman, and no man was ever on the wrong foot.
And then, abruptly, Antalcidas saw his father in the line. Molobrus marched with his cap pushed back on his head, his face open and smiling as he sang the praises of Apollo. Antalcidas could feel the warmth of his humor like the heat of a bonfire as he stood nearby. His father was relaxed, good-humored, kidding with his comrades in a way he never did at home. Antalcidas only saw his father for a moment. But that brief glimpse froze him, because he recognized nothing about the man. It was as if the person he had once known was a mere ghost of this, the true Molobrus, who existed only in a place where Antalcidas must be absent. Molobrus’ eyes swept over the crowd as the paean reached its climax; his eyes passed over his son without a flicker of recognition.
Some time later he saw Zeuxippos again. The old man was approaching the grove where the Gerousia would meet that morning, while Antalcidas’ pack was on its way into Mesoa to take instruction in the chorus. Zeuxippos called to him, “O Stone, what did your father advise?”
Antalcidas presented himself without shyness or shame.
“You and my father are wise men, so you should know what he said.”
“Just as I thought,” Zeuxippos replied. Placing two fingers under Antalcidas’ chin, he raised the boy’s face to the light. “Your features are coarse, but in spirit and body you have promise. I accept the burden. You will be instructed in tactics, government, diplomacy, how to resist the temptations of gold, women, and foreigners. Above all, you will learn the two skills essential to our life: how to take orders, and how to give them to other men. With your trust-do I have your trust?-I will make your mind worthy of your magnificence.”
Antalcidas allowed himself to be inspected a bit longer than modesty dictated, gazing off into the dying mist until he became aware of his packmates whispering furiously behind him. In truth, he had as much reason to trust Zeuxippos as he did any prospective patron. Yet, in a way he could not have understood, his mother’s wounds had done their part in shaping his fears. He returned to the pack as the other boys regarded him with ill-concealed envy.
“Maybe if we ask him nicely, Stone will let us play with his knucklebones!” shouted Frog. This was the worst kind of insult, because only girls played with knucklebones in Sparta. But by the same token only girls were too proud to take a joke. Men of virtue were supposed to accept the ridicule of their fellows with equanimity. Antalcidas might have expected better from Frog, having saved him from a worse beating at the hands of the older boys, but he showed nothing but a smile. After all, was he not magnificent?
2.
The late summer festival coincided that year with a wave of torrid weather. As the crops baked amber in the heat and the green wall of Taygetus appeared to flutter in the distance, the Eurotas seemed to flow with a viscous reticence, as if saving strength for its run to the sea. Festival-goers converged on the city in much the same way, laboring but perennial. In covered wagons, on horses and donkeys, or straggling in on foot, they came from the towns of Gytheion and Pellene, Sellasia and Helos, and regions as far afield as Thyreatis and Messenia and Triphylia, and a thousand remote valleys in between that were too small to have names. They were Spartiates on respite from their estates, and Nigh-dwellers from their work-shops, and helots-a few from Messenia and most native Laconians-to attend their masters. These arrivals made the Festival of the Flocks one of a handful of times each year when Sparta ceased to be an agglomeration of sleepy villages, but a bustling center of conviviality. Many a pilgrim from other cities, such as Athens or Corinth, came to Laconia with set notions of what to expect of the dour natives, supposing them devoted to whipping each other and niggling matters of soul-deadening precedent. Instead, the visitors would be surprised by what the Laconians always knew: their city was the place to find the best dancers, the shortest skirts, and the finest men.