When he awoke he saw nothing but blackness. He had somehow lost his blanket, and felt a damp rigidity pressing against his back. His bladder had emptied as he slept, the fountain of his own water soaking him. In that instant his cold, his loneliness, and the discomfort in his stomach fused into a single knot of misery. He poured his heart into a long, arcing wail, and then a staccato of piercing sweeps. As he screamed, his face burned red and wet as his tiny fists punched the air. He cried with such violence that his breathing could not keep up. He choked, wept, choked. No one came.
Other voices came to him from beyond the walls. Across vastnesses he could not yet conceive, his brothers and sisters whispered to him from their stony cradles. They were collected at the bottom in their thousands, tender humeri scattered in the stream, toothless jaws rolled and polished by the water. Bits of scalp clung to some, covered with fine hair, residues of blood mingled across the boulders. Like Antalcidas, the bones lay in silence, but did not lack for attention from the rats and jackals that suckled their soft ends. As their mothers lived their days nearby, weaving their shrouds of forgetting, the children of Sparta lay gathered against that hard but eternally accepting bosom, calling to him.
Then something loomed at him from out of the dark. He felt it snatch him up, and through his tears he saw the gathering of a luminant mass, a moonscape of light and dark that resolved into his mother’s face. What he could not recognize, though, was the peculiar shape of her mouth as she brought him close. For the first time, as she offered her breast, she was smiling.
4.
Damatria had realized a single, sustaining prospect-to have a truly legitimate child. To that end, she attacked her husband in a procreational frenzy. Molobrus kept up as best he could, but showed fear in his eyes as she bared her legs for the third, fourth, fifth go in a night. Even in his ignorance he could sense there was no pleasure in the act for her, only the obstinate purpose of a commander marshaling his forces for some greater end.
A son was born the following summer. Molobrus took an afternoon to come home from the barracks, looked down at young Epitadas, and pronounced himself pleased. But to Damatria his arrival marked the time of her own rebirth, of joys that were finally unmixed. Her months of shame, of lies of omission, were over.
She responded with a tenderness that surprised Lampito. The infant’s wine baths were diluted to one-sixth strength and less. While Antalcidas lay without cover in a basket across the room, Damatria took Epitadas to bed with her. His hunger and chills, his teething, and the softness of his blankets, were constant matters for concern. One day, when Lampito looked in on them, she was pleased to see that Antalcidas had begun to pull himself upright against his mother’s legs. Damatria, however, would barely glance at him as she cooed at Epitadas.
“I would think you were a first-time mother, the way you coddle him,” Lampito said. “Remember I told you that Sparta needs…”
“Sparta needs spears, yes,” the other interrupted. Breaking her gaze at Epitadas, she looked down at Antalcidas with something more than her usual severity. As she stroked his head, he became excited, trying to pull himself into her lap. She withdrew her hand.
It would be untrue to say Damatria never developed any feelings for Antalcidas. With the blessing of Epitadas’ arrival, the well of her compassion overflowed enough for her to spare a few drops for his brother, who was really a fine, strong boy. When she thought about how cruel she had been to him, she was even inclined to regret-though for Epitadas’ sake she did not take her self-recriminations too far. In time, she came to make peace with her secrets, and to the temporary weakness in her that had spawned her eldest. In place of useless resentment, she nurtured grandiose plans for achievement. Epitadas stood at the focus of her ambition, but his brother would have an important role to play. She pulled Antalcidas up and gave him the other breast; she fell asleep with both boys clinging to her, staring into each other’s eyes across the chasm.
5.
The austerity of the Lacedaemonians was practiced in the richest landscape in Greece. Sheltered between the Parnon range in the east and Taygetus in the west, Laconia was secure, expansive, and fertile. The river Eurotas descended from the borderlands of Sciritis to water the estates of citizens in the valley. Figs, almonds, olives, grapes, pomegranates, pears, cherries, and apples fell from tree and vine; the climate was so congenial for barley that farmers reaped two harvests a year. The profusion of boar and stag in the foothills afforded ample hunting, while goats, sheep, and oxen flourished on grasses nurtured by pure snowmelt that persisted deep into the summer.
It was a common rite of passage for young Spartan males to climb into the lower reaches of Taygetus, to the very spur where, two thousand years later, the tonsured monks of Frankish Mistra would fly to escape secular corruption. The Spartan boys would flee nothing, but gaze in pride at the verdant tapestry below, comprehending better than ever the magnitude of their worldly good fortune. Even the helots seemed to go around in a permanent state of wonder at such stupendous plenty-the wealth that for some, in their secret hearts, was worth the sacrifice of their freedom.
In due course the damage from the earthquake was repaired. Houses were rebuilt larger and stronger, with luxuries such as windows. This drew the criticism of the elders, who wondered aloud if the Lacedaemonians were going soft. But in fact the indiscriminate destruction had pauperized, not spoiled, many of the citizens. Men who lost the produce of their farms by physical loss or the shortage of helots could no longer contribute to their dining clubs, costing them their citizenship. Families whose farms were spared could then afford to acquire more land. Some used the extra income to build bigger houses.
The loss of citizens-soldiers through penury aggravated Laconia’s chronic shortage of manpower. Spartiates were enjoined to multiply, and spawn they did. But the fruits of this boom would not enter the army for another generation. Meanwhile, the revolt of the helots seemed interminable, costing the city more casualties, more ruined estates. At last, four years after it had begun, the toughest of the rebels were confined to fortified positions at the top of Mount Ithome, sixty miles northwest of Sparta. There they remained, resisting all attempts to dislodge them.
The Gerousia, envisioning operations against Ithome might drag on indefinitely, then did something unheard of in the history of Sparta: it asked for foreign help against a domestic foe. The Athenians, in particular, were known to be skilled in siege warfare. Why not let the allies of Sparta do the bleeding against the Messenians? At best, the Athenians would solve the problem; at worst, the rebels would hold the mountain, but Athens would lose men and prestige fighting them. Indeed, as the Athenians acquired alarming wealth and power after the Persian Wars, it was hard to say which result most benefited Sparta.
But the old men of the council had not anticipated the effect of four thousand Athenians let loose among the people. Damatria encountered them in the streets of Kynosoura: gangs of jabbering, overdressed, smooth-cheeked children. As respectable Athenian women rarely ventured out of doors, their men assumed every Spartan female they saw was a streetwalker. In her short peplos, her hair uncovered, Damatria got more than her share of attention.
“Look at that, will you! Give my pay for a go with her!”
“A real thigh-flasher, that one!”
“Hey girlie, look here!”
The Athenian parted his tunic to reveal what he carried there. As he stared at her unashamed, he commenced to yank back and forth on the foreskin. Furious, Damatria would have buried her fist in his face, but knew that would accomplish nothing. It was the third time that day she had been accosted.