The fox, p.6
The Fox, page 6
“He never visited Sparta, to my knowing.”
“Trust a sophist to judge one city from the distance of another.”
“Why do men scorn philosophy?”
“I have seen men from your schools giving out behind the temple of Zeus in Olympia. Men of great learning and little wisdom. They speak of music, but play no lyre; of politics, but rule no city; of war, yet they are not soldiers. They are like athletes over-trained in a single skill. They know one art only. Talking.”
“Your people know only the art of war.”
“Not so. Sparta’s soldiers are her citizens.”
“You are splitting hairs.” (That, from a sophist!) “Your city is divided into regiments.”
“So that every man from twenty to sixty may be mobilized instantly.”
“You train for war from childhood.”
“Well-trained soldiers live longer. They also win more battles.”
“You learn nothing but war skills.”
“We are instructed in music, poetry, law, games, horsemanship. Such learning as belongs to only the rich in other cities...” I call for more wine. His visits have become routine. He is as obsessed by laws as Philippos is by sieges, but he drinks his wine as well-watered as a Spartan. “What else do free men need to know? Sometimes we even talk of the ways of gods and men.”
“That is to say, you dabble in philosophy, without having had a proper moral tutor in your youth.”
“When we are boys, our flock commander puts questions to us. Who is the best man in Sparta? The worst? The wisest? The bravest? And so on. We must reply in few words. Answers that give understanding of values by valuing the qualities of a particular man.”
“How old are you when you kill a serf to come of age?”
Another Theban delusion Philippos heard in his youth. “Why would we kill our serfs?”
“Isn’t it your law?”
“Our serfs belong to Sparta’s land. Land titles lawfully belong to the city. To kill a serf would be to destroy what is Sparta’s. It would be punished.”
He frowns. Silent. Eyes squinted.
“Why do you play the simple soldier?” He speaks at last.
“Antalkidas asked me something like that...”
“You knew Antalkidas? The son of Leon?”
“As well as anyone could know him.”
“How did you regard him?”
“On the first encounter, gratefully. He saved me from a thrashing. I was seven.”
“He was an outstanding youth?”
“He was always quick with his replies. He played the lyre rather well. In games he was often second. I recall one time a dispute broke out, concerning which one of two youths had the straightest throw in a spear competition. Antalkidas insisted that the two must throw again to decide it. They all accepted his decision, although his had not been a very good throw. That was Antalkidas.”
“Was it?”
* * *
Four Elders came to the palace. Elders of the Council, not the Eurypontid elders; although one was both. My nurse flooded me with superfluous instructions on behaviour, before taking me to present me to them.
They were seated in graceful chairs of wood, which shimmered with a silk-like sheen. My mother had appropriated the high-backed one for herself. Her face was death-pale, her lips tightly compressed.
I was duly brought forward, my eyes seemingly downcast, my arms folded within my cloak.
“A fine boy, madam,” an Elder commented.
The shadow of a tall vase lengthened on the floor in the silence.
The Elder rose and approached me. “Leotychides, you are now seven. Would you like to live in a flock with other boys?”
A sharp intake of breath from my mother.
“Yes, sir. Please.” I nearly forgot and raised my eyes to him.
“You see, Timaia,” said the elder who was an Elder. “It is for the best.”
The palm of my mother’s strong, long-fingered hand stung the side of my face.
“You little fool! You little fool! Why didn’t you tell them kings’ heirs are not reared in flocks?”
“Leonidas was.”
“Leonidas became king purely by chance. His elder brother died in Sicily.”
“Leonidas is a divine hero.”
“Be still.” She began pacing her chambers. Sweet-scented smoke rose from the incense burning before her statue of Aphrodite. The goddess had a gold neck-chain. A new offering. “Agis has done this.”
A sudden surge of gratitude gave substance to that faceless, formless absence of a father.
She stopped pacing, bent, and seized me in one of those smothering embraces. “I’m sorry I slapped you, darling. You are too young to understand.” Reproach replaced contrition in the green eyes. “You are all I have. Are you really so anxious to leave your mother?”
Her eyes moistened, not at the prospect of my going from the comforts of the palace to a life harsh beyond reckoning, but because I preferred the company of my contemporaries to her own.
Once she had a maid, a young serf woman with shining black hair, and hands that moved like butterflies as she arranged my mother’s hair. The serving-woman lavished upon me all the love that had been her dead son’s, but it was not a consuming love, and I returned it freely. My mother banished her to country lands for attempting to steal my affections. It taught me to conceal fondness of anything from her.
My mother loved me exceedingly; but her love was a flawed thing, tainted with jealousy.
The flock was encamped in a plain between two hills to the north of Sparta. It was a world of boys. Boys with shorn heads. Youths with rough-cut hair. All barefoot. Some completely nude. All oblivious to hunger.
The food was watery, tasteless black broth, every evening. The palace cooks prepared meaty, well-seasoned broth to accompany our meals. Here it was the meal, and never enough. Life was hunger. Once I bit into a bitter, green, unripe olive that had fallen to the ground. The recollection still puckers the membrance of my mouth. I swallowed it. It was food.
On the plateau of the heights above the camp boys ran, wrestled, and gathered about grey-bearded teachers. Conspicuous by our long hair, good cloaks and tunics, we new boys were at their mercy. Our lot was to do whatever an older boy ordered. Arcane demands. “Bring my jumping stones.” “Fetch my oil flask.” “You – my stlengis. Make haste!” Where were such things to be found? No one told us. If we were slow about it, we were clouted.
Night brought the sweet forgetfulness of sleep. As it was early summer, we slept under the stars. Morning came too soon. A walk to a deep stream was followed by a plunge into water, still cold from its journey down the mountains. A boy called Euagoras hesitated on the river-bank. Was shoved in. Howled. Pulled out and clouted for screaming. He was a very small boy. Looked more five than seven. I distanced myself from him in the rush back to the camp, where serfs handed out the meagre fare to break the night’s fast. We youngest were pushed aside and got none.
The third dawn, as we vainly tried to make our way into the forest of bare legs and feet for something to eat, a shaven-headed boy about ten smiled, and extended a share of his portion. We grasped the kindness proffered, as eagerly as the bread he offered.
There were smothered guffaws when small boys bit into their bread with the full force of their hunger. They reeled back, spitting out pieces of milk teeth. The pale-eyed youth still watched, as a carrot-haired boy followed my example and soaked his in water. Youths meant trouble. I swallowed the bread quickly, before someone could seize it.
That day, youths practised a complex exercise. Arrayed in columns, they wheeled at a command, changed places without missing a step, and re-formed, so that the strongest were always in front. Had I known it, I was watching the basis of those rapid changes with which the Spartan army confronts its enemies, keeping the best men in the vanguard facing the foe, whatever direction he approaches from.
Sometimes the orders were not passed from the commander to the patrol leaders. The boys took their orders from the notes of a flute...but I must say no more. The secrets of Spartan warfare are not for foreigners.
Weapon training was a disappointment. The boys’ spears were blunted, and their shields only hollow, wooden frames. The oldest had man-high spears. Their shields were full-sized, but even the commander’s lacked the splendid bronze covering of those carried by real warriors.
This exalted personage of about nineteen reclined on the only dining couch in the flock each evening, and put questions to older boys while they served him like a king (a foreign king; no Spartan king was shown such deference). He judged conduct and achievement, meted out punishment and praise. His orders to younger boys reached them only through patrol leaders. Commanders were appointed yearly, although one was dismissed after only a few months by the Inspector of Boys on one of his surprise visits, for punishing boys too severely. Another was reprimanded for leniency.
Our duties were restricted to a simple drill devised (not always successfully) to teach us our left feet from our right. This was because we were seven-year-olds, and seven-year-olds were nothing. Sphodrias explained it, as we took our evening meal of watery black broth sitting under an oak tree.
Only Sphodrias explained things. He had an enthusiasm for explanation. He did not explain why the fat boy, the big boy and that smallest boy Euagoras suffered even more than the rest of us. Nor did he explain mysterious matters such as Passing Out, the Hidden Thing, and the Great Fight. That was not for nothings like us.
He was a gangly twelve then, all knees and elbows, with a short crop of rusty curls and bold eyes. “A boy is a rhodibas between eight and twelve.” He spoke between bites. (Where had he got that good bread?) “From twelve to sixteen he is a melleiren.” Bite. Bite. “From sixteen to twenty he is an eiren.”
“How can you tell a first-rank melleiren from a fourth-rank rhodibas?” Big Aristokrates asked. He was the son of Lysander’s friend Pharax, and would have all know it.
“A rhodibas still has his head shaved. I am a melleiren,” Sphodrias added importantly.
His own hair was shorter than the rough cuts of most youths.
“I think, Sphodrias,” I said, although had I thought I would not have spoken at all, “that you have not been a melleiren very long.”
Another melleiren laughed. Sphodrias scowled, seized me by my tunic, and called for an olive switch.
“Leave it alone, Sphodrias.” My saviour was that tall, thin youth with the triangular face and pale eyes. “It was a good observation.”
Sphodrias still grasped the knot of my tunic. “Nothings must respect melleirens, Antalkidas.”
“And first-rank melleirens obey second-rankers, Sphodrias.” The pale eyes went to me as Sphodrias reluctantly released his hold. “Has it a name?”
“It is called Leotychides, and it thinks too much of itself.”
“Better too much than too little,” Antalkidas replied. “I shouldn’t mind having it in my patrol next year.”
“If you have a patrol,” one of his companions said.
“How could I not?” The pale eyes looked skywards, as if he were sharing a secret jest with some Olympian. Perhaps he was. Only the gods knew what Antalkidas was thinking.
I dreaded dire retribution from Sphodrias as the cause of his humiliation, but he continued to treat me with the same good-natured disdain he accorded all the newcomers.
Often we were ordered to gather herbs for the cooking pot. This meant to steal them from the kitchens and storerooms of Sellasia, the nearest town. We also learnt to ease our ever-empty stomachs with purloined fruit, bread, or cheese by the same means. If we were caught, we were thrashed. It was shameful to be caught. Anyone who has seen a Theban straggler spearing hungry peasants knows it is better to forage discreetly, but we were given no reasons. Only told obey. Obey. Obey.
Winter brought the meaning of hardship.
The elders now taught in the plain. Only the hardiest youths braved the windy height to exercise barefoot and nude. The air became too bitter to sustain that interlude of talk after the evening dip, while smoke rose from the cooking-fires into the early darkness. Euagoras groaned and wept without punishment, as he was unconscious most of the time. His eyes were reddened and moist. Although he sniffed constantly, droplets invariably hung from the end of his nose. Some of the boys feared he was dying; some of us hoped he was, for his whimperings disturbed our sleep. Sleep was the only escape from the wretchedness of existence.
“It is a wonder that one survived the wine-bath.” Hekataios, the carrot-haired boy, thrust shivering arms inside his cloak.
“Better he had not,” said Aristokrates. Older boys did not usually trouble to discover the author of a sob or shriek before clouting for cowardice, and often punished the wrong boy.
Now the flock slept in a large rough hut, but the thistle-down added to our pallets could not keep out the cold. One would turn from one’s right to one’s left, knees pulled up to chest, yet the icy fingers of winter always found some exposed place to rend the surface of sleep.
One morning, as we crowded about the season’s steaming cauldron, holding out wooden bowls, a rhodibas assessed us with a knowing look and asked another, “How many do you think will last the winter?”
“A sorry lot this year! That one might live.” He indicated big Aristokrates, “if we let him.” One seized the big seven-year-old’s bowl, and drank down its contents himself.
I fell into the trap of looking up.
“You–” The rhodibas allowed me no time to hold out my bowl to the serf’s ladle. “Go to the heights and feed the boar.”
The sky was dark with late dawn. Dark with rain clouds. Even in darkest night, torches were permitted no one. The heights were a black outline. In the distance, snow capped the mountains. Boar? Was this some jest? What did one feed a boar? A bitter wind blew from north, north-east, east, assailing me from all directions. My feet flew pointlessly on the frosty ground. I did not understand what I was to do. Only that if I did not do it, I would be thrashed. My breath formed a frozen cloud’s embrace. Tripped. Stumbled. Fell.
I lay in high grasses. My body melted the frost into a damp that seeped into my cloak and tunic. I did not move. The rhodibas was right; I would die. I cared not. I lay on my stomach, my face pillowed in my arms, waiting for the Wayfinder.
By some trick of the landscape, I had fallen in a sheltered place. With first daylight, the sun broke through the heavy clouds. A steady warmth on my back made me drowsy. The sleep that flitted intermittently in and out of the hut now consumed me, the hard ground welcoming as the cushions of my bed in the palace.
Laughter woke me. A short distance away, some melleirens threw the spear. The wind whipped their hair and their cloaks. A burly fellow stepped on to a squared stone, and made a fine, straight throw. The others cheered him. I parted the high grasses in front of me, to watch the competition. Tall, thin Antalkidas was next. His spear veered to the side.
Another seven-year-old plopped beside me. “They are good.”
“Some of them.” My eyes still on the melleirens.
“I’m Anaxandros.”
The fat boy had been called Anaxandros. No longer about. I glanced at my uninvited companion. This boy was as lean as the rest of us, but the wide eyes were the same.
“I thought you were dead.”
A tall, slender, dark-haired melleiren mounted the stone, turning his spear by its loop.
“Are you from Sparta?”
“There are no up-country boys in flocks.” Raising his arm like the statue of Apollo in the temple at Amyklai, the dark-haired melleiren made a throw as straight as the best. There was grace in his movements. Another cheer.
“We’re all Spartiate,” Anaxandros replied. “But some of the boys here are from half-way to Amyklai. You have the look of a City man.”
It pleased me to be called a man, if only by a contemporary. “I’m from Kynsouria.” We call our parts of Sparta by the names of the four villages that formed it in times before memory.
“I’m from Pitane.” Anaxandros reached into the folds of his cloak, and withdrew a partially eaten apple.
“My cousin lives in Pitane.” The last youth was throwing.
“Is he in this flock? My cousin Pityas is here, but he won’t speak to me because he is a rhodibas. Here.” He extended half the chewed apple.
I took it. “I’m Leotychides.”
“Why did they give you a royal name?”
“I’m the son of King Agis.” A dispute broke out amongst the melleirens. I caught my slip too late. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I’d tell everyone if I were a prince.”
“Not if you had wits. You know that big boy Aristokrates? He talks about how great his father is, and the older boys don’t like it.” I grasped his wrist. “So you say nothing.” I tightened my grip.
“I won’t say anything. Let go.”
The melleirens were shouting. Antalkidas stepped into the midst of the angriest. He pointed. Said something. They drew back. He motioned the burly youth, and the graceful dark-haired one, to the stone. The burly youth repeated his first straight throw. The dark-haired melleiren mounted the stone. I parted the grasses more, the better to see.
“You–” A melleiren looked my way. “Both of you lazy nothings. Fetch us water for a wrestling-ground.”
We ran all-out towards the stream. Anaxandros halted abruptly half-way there. “A rhodibas told me to feed his boar.”
“We’ll say a melleiren sent us for water. Melleirens count for more than a rhodibas.”
We exchanged grins. Complicit. Allied. Friends.
After the time of the olive harvest, Apollo brought up a strong sun in his chariot. Each day he drove closer, as he carried it across the sky to Taygetos. The snow disappeared; the yellow-brown fields became a carpet of green. Croci blossomed, new leaves fluttered on the plane trees, and purple iris shot up amongst the rushes of the river bank.
