The officers gasped. Proxenus, inscrutable as always, paused briefly before raising his cup to the prince in return. "A generous offer, your lordship. I shall convey it to my men, and though I cannot yet speak for them, I feel confident that under those conditions they would follow you to Hades and back."
The officers erupted in loud exclamations, standing up and raising their goblets to the prince, and clapping each other on the shoulders. Xenophon, however, was slow to raise his cup and stood quietly in place beside Proxenus, saying not a word while the men around him chattered enthusiastically with each other. He would tell me later that he imagined that the sorceress Circe had cast her weird spell on the greed-blinded men and turned them to swine. I wondered what old Gryllus would have said, when told of a war fought by Greeks not for pride or principle, but for three Persian darics a month.
The banquet proceeded in a merry way. Cyrus' slaves poured copious amounts of pine-aged, resinous Thasian wine carried all the way from Greece for the enjoyment of the guests. Steaming stacks of roast fish were brought in fresh from the river, drenched in syrupy pomegranate and peach juices and garnished with leeks and other greens, followed by thrushes served on steaming beds of asparagus. Just as the guests' appetites had been whetted, a chorus of oboes sounded and six men staggered into the tent carrying a roasted ox spit between two poles. Laying it carefully upon a wide, flat board, one of them drew a scimitar, and with three enormous blows split open the beast's belly from sternum to crotch. The attendants leaned their arms into the cavity up to their shoulders, for what we expected to be the removal of the viscera, only to proudly emerge with a roasted sheep, steaming and dripping with onions and herbs, the sauces pouring from its sides. The man with the scimitar then split this open, spattering the nearby guests with fragrant juices. A roast pig emerged from the mess, its own belly neatly sewn up. The scimitar man gave a sigh of mock exasperation, to the delight of the guests, and with another blow split open the pig. It had been stuffed with a kid goat, the empty spaces filled with baked apples that had been simmering for hours inside the entire concoction, lending their perfumed fragrance to the meat of all the animals surrounding them. The scene continued, each animal containing another one smaller-a fat goose, a chicken, a partridge, an ortolan, a nightingale, and several animals more, no doubt down to a final grasshopper or grub, though I was too far in the back of the tent to see what precisely the cook was displaying. The servants soon ensured that every man was happily gnawing a favored limb, and watched carefully that no empty space appeared on a guest's plate without another slab of steaming meat or a chunk of flat, toasted bread being heaped on.
A banquet by Cyrus would not have been complete without entertainment, and this he provided in abundance, from the talent he had brought with him or later recruited among the camp followers. The Spartans looked on in dumb amazement and no little consternation as jugglers and tumblers, whose services they thought they had banned months ago from the army's presence, pranced through the tent, sometimes performing several acts at once for various groups of eaters. Clearchus, because of his fierce countenance, was a favored foil of the jesters and magicians, though amazingly, he took it in good humor. Lovely, nude flute girls from Syria supplied even more active entertainment, dancing and contorting their limber bodies through ever-spinning series of hoops tossed into the air and caught in time with the music, or juggling small, razor-sharp swords, glittering in the lamplight. One girl danced and writhed on the floor with an enormous trained snake, and it was remarkable the things she had taught it, or perhaps she had drugged it.
Suddenly, however, at a signal from Cyrus, all the slaves simultaneously snuffed out the lamps along the walls, to the consternation of the always tense Clearchus and his captains. The callipygian beauties then danced wildly with flaming torches, threatening constantly to set the tent or the Spartans' long hair afire, but never failing to complete their intricate steps in perfect precision. The cheering for their performance was deafening. On their way out, they stepped delicately among the diners, seeking spare coins, pausing here and there to good-naturedly slap a wayward hand that had accidentally worked its way too high up a slender, brown thigh.
To the surprise of all, Clearchus then stood up with a serious expression, pounding the table with the flat of his hand for attention until all were silent. He expressed his thanks to Cyrus in a gravelly voice, and swaying slightly on his feet, moved seamlessly into what we soon perceived with dismay was a military harangue.
"Fellow officers: These girls have proven that they have no less natural ability than men, but lack only judgment and physical strength. No one who witnesses these amazing feats of swordplay and fire can deny that courage is a trait that can be taught, when these fragile girls throw themselves so daringly onto the sharp blades. Just so, we Spartans must also teach our troops, by rote if necessary, to heed the call to arms and to exhibit such courage that…"
Cyrus, exasperated at this unexpected and unwarranted interruption of his celebration, tossed a hunk of hard bread at Clearchus, striking him in the throat and stopping him in mid-harangue. The Spartan looked up, shocked at this violation of protocol and military solemnity, and peered fiercely through the darkness and haze of the tent in an attempt to see the source of the offense. Cyrus' cheerful voice rang out through the silence.
"Sit down, Clearchus, and shut up. Tonight I don't give a damn whether you are a Spartan general or my old grandmother. There is a time to show courage, and a time to be merry. No one questions your superiority in matters of war. But if you persist in demonstrating your inferiority in matters of sociability, I will not hesitate to throw you bodily out of the tent!" With this he clapped twice and two enormous Ethiopians stepped to his side, all but invisible in the dim light of the tent but for the whites of their eyes and gleaming teeth, who stared avidly at the astonished Clearchus. The men roared at this unprecedented slap to the fierce general, and he sat back down on his couch with a sheepish expression. The Spartan captains, unused to the quantities of wine they had been drinking, spontaneously broke out in a Spartan victory song, clumsily attempting to make up for Clearchus' awkward digression, and the musicians gamely accompanied them as the other officers joined in.
As the dancers and flute girls drifted back toward the rear entrance, Cyrus began looking expectantly toward the front, barely able to maintain his concentration. The officers' table conversation had resumed, and the tent was again filled with raucous laughter, the boasts and taunts of happy men. Finally, the prince was rewarded as the tent flap was pulled aside and Asteria stepped into the room, looking for all the world like Artemis or golden Aphrodite, her small lyre under one arm, her eyes cast demurely down to her feet, a shy smile on her face. She wore a diaphanous gown that allowed fleeting glimpses of her girlish profile as she passed in front of the lamps. Her waist-length black hair had been elaborately braided and coiled about her head, with an assortment of colorful feathers threaded through the locks, forming a lovely contrast to her bare, unadorned neck and arms. She was barefoot and wore only the lightest of rouge on her cheeks, for her naturally olive complexion already lent her a radiant glow in the lamplight. She was heart-breakingly young and beautiful, though the gentle swell and quiver of her breasts visible through the thin fabric of her backlit gown betrayed the fact that she was a grown woman, and one who was fully aware of the enervating effect she was having on the room.