Those states which border upon us we hold fast; this is true. As distance increases, however, the reins slacken.
“Your state stands at a remove from ours, men of Patrae. What do we want of you? Only that you remain free, independent, and strong. In this, we believe, resides our security, for a free state will resist incursion with all her might. Do you fear we shall harm you?
On the contrary, Sparta will aid in every way to preserve your independence, so long as you do not turn such strength against us.
“Now consider the Athenians. They are a sea power. They are empire builders. Already they hold two hundred states in subjection. Patrae will make two hundred and one. This speechmaker who has come before you, this general of Athens, has dispensed honeyed words and reassurance. You must see through these, my friends, for by just such blandishments have other states been seduced from their liberty. Ask yourselves if you will find this man so charming when he returns with warships to exact tribute of your treasury, when he drafts your young men for his fleet and imposes upon your nation Athenian codes and laws. How equitable will this so-called alliance feel when you must turn in the very coins of your purse and take 'owls' of Athens in return?
Your guest has promised protection under Athenian law. What does this mean, except that even the most modest private suit may no longer be settled by your own courts but be adjudicated at Athens, before Athenian juries, amid such corruption and cupidity as I pray you are never compelled to endure.
“You of the nobility are estate holders and equestrians. When war resumes, and it will-in this our Athenian friend spoke truly-who will suffer most among your countrymen? Will it be the commons, who will find work with the fleet and discover their position enhanced by war, or yourselves, whose property, which lies outside these vaunted Long Walls, will be laid waste? Whose sons will die first, whose estates be reduced and devastated?”
My mates ran other jobs for Lysander. Pay for one that autumn was thirty drachmas, a month's wages for two nights' work, but it required a man acquainted with the roads inside Lacedaemon.
When Telamon informed his employer that his mate was an anepsios, educated at Sparta, I was sent for. Lysander had his headquarters then at an inn called the Cauldron, at Ptolis on the Mantinean frontier. We were ushered in after midnight when all other officers, and witnesses, had been dismissed.
Lysander claimed to remember me from the Upbringing, extremely unlikely as he was three age-classes ahead and in an elite training battalion. I remembered him, however. Of the four Firsts a youth could win in his commission year, in Wrestling, Chorus, Obedience, and Chastity, Lysander took three. His birth, however, was so mean, and he was seen so to curry favor with his betters, that such qualities failed to gain him the swift ascent they remarked. Peace further retarded his career. He was thirty-five or about; he should hold a lieutenant-colonelcy of infantry. Instead he was just a cavalry captain, the least prestigious element of Spartan arms. In fact nothing about him impressed me this night so much as his good looks, which were nearly as arresting as Alcibiades'. He was tall, with steel-colored eyes and hair falling to his shoulders. That this individual would one day preside over the dismemberment of the Athenian Empire and reign as a god over the entire Hellenic world seemed in this hour impossible of conception.
Lysander detailed the prospective errand. Telamon and I were to convey to Sparta a fledgling owl in a cage, a gift from himself to Cleobulus, chief of the war party. The real chore, however, was to deliver a dispatch, which for fear of discovery must be committed to memory and imparted to its addressee only. This was a plea to the Board of Magistrates to take seriously the intrigues of Alcibiades. The ephors must act, and act swiftly, for the measures set in motion by this solitary Athenian, Lysander professed, had placed the very survival of Sparta at hazard. When I balked at performing this, fearing it would work harm to my countrymen, Lysander laughed. “Remember, you can always tender this intelligence, and all else you see and hear at Lacedaemon, to your friend”-meaning Alcibiades-”for love or profit.” To this day I recall the text.
…our peril lies neither with the knight Nicias nor the so-called popular leaders of Athens-Hyperbolus, Androcles, and the demagogues-whose vision extends no further than pandering to the mob for next year's election, but with this glory-driven aristocrat who alone possesses both strategic vision and implacable will. He employs this Peace as if it were war, seeking to advance his personal renown through the surrogateship of other states, his object to cut off our nation from her Peloponnesian allies. We must counter these conspiracies before it is too late, my friend, nor scruple at means or measures.
Lysander knew Alcibiades. From summers in boyhood, when Alcibiades and his brothers visited their xenos, guest-friend, Endius at Sparta. As a youth Lysander, as I said, had been penniless; he had secured tuition to the Upbringing only as a mothax, a “stepbrother” or sponsoree, dues paid by Endius' father, named Alcibiades. You may reckon to what extent such subordination galled the youth's pride and fueled the acrimony he bore lifelong toward his rival.
I ran this job and others, courier chores mostly. At Sparta one indeed felt a sea change. The war party had seized ascendancy; the young men (and, more telling, the women) clamored for action that would restore Spartan pride. A battle was coming. You could smell it.
The army took the field twice that summer, both full call-ups under King Agis. When the second fizzled at the very gates of Argos, the Spartans turned upon their own king in fury at his fecklessness. Alcibiades leapt upon this. Rousing the allies, they took Orchomenos, securing the plain and passes north of Mantinea and cutting off Sparta from her allies beyond the gulf. Tegea and Orestheum now stood vulnerable as well. The fall of these was unthinkable to Spartan arms, as they opened the entire Eurotas valley. Yet still the ephors did not act. The knights and colonels thought their king a dunce or a coward, and no one trusted the freed helots who now constituted a significant portion of the army.
The cauldron bubbled just shy of the boil.
One night Telamon came with a job. We would run it on horseback with two Athenian shields, Rabbit and Chowder, so named for his incapacity to keep a meal down at sea. The task was to descend downvalley to Tegea, twelve miles; from there to escort in secret the commander of the Spartan regiment on-site, Anaxibius, to the fort at Tripolis, where he would receive orders from the home government. We must have him there at the second watch and back to Tegea by dawn.
Lysander did not inform us of this, but Alcibiades was at that hour at Tegea. He was there with his freed Messenians, addressing the Council.
We located the Spartan and got off. Before the party had ridden a mile, however, a runner from Lysander intercepted us. Plans had changed; we must divert to the shrine of Artemis on the Tegea-Pallantion road.
Our Spartan, Anaxibius, was a full colonel and in nowise averse to employing the ash of his staff upon the tardy or slow of wit.
Twice he cracked Chowder across the ribs, demanding to know who the hell had trained us and what kind of a cocked-up operation we were running.
We reached the sanctuary well into the second watch. Clearly our irascible charge would not be back by dawn. Nor, mounting the steps, could Lysander be discovered. “By the Twins!”-Anaxibius smote the stone with the butt of his staff such a blow as nearly ruptured the drums of our ears-”I'1I flay you all for this insolence, and that bastard mothax in his turn.”
From behind a column emerged Lysander, alone save his squire, called Strawberry after a birthmark. He beseeched the colonel's pardon, who yet clutched his staff before him and continued to beat it upon the stone, taking in vain the names of abundant divinities. Lysander appealed to him to desist, as troops were encamped about and the racket might be taken as an alarm.