A sowing and a reaping, and another year. Animals died under my spear. I read all of Theognis from Mater's book and came to appreciate that grown men had sex with boys and grew jealous when they took other loves. And that aristocrats could be ill-tempered and avaricious like peasants.
You should read Theognis, my sweet. Just to understand that being well-born is a thing of no value.
I read Hesiod, too. I knew much of him by heart by now, of course. In Boeotia, he is our own poet, and we spurn mighty Homer so that we can love Hesiod better. Besides, his poems are for us – farmers. Is Achilles really a hero? He's as much of a bitch as Theognis, to my mind. Hector is the hero. And even he would not have made much of a farmer – well, perhaps I do mighty Hector wrong. Given a month of rain, Hector would not surrender or sulk in his barn.
I was bigger. I was stronger. I could throw a javelin farther and better than any boy my age in the valley, and Calchas was talking about the boys' games at places like Olympia.
Across the river, the farm grew richer. Every grape vine was trellised and trimmed, the apple trees had supports on the branches and all the new growth was excised in spring by what seemed to me to be a phalanx of slaves.
Miltiades' money could be seen everywhere in our community. Myron had two ploughs. Epictetus's younger son, Peneleos, went with the great man to fight, and his father bought a second farm for his older son. There was talk of his older son wedding Penelope when she turned twelve or thirteen.
Hermogenes was freed and joined his father as a man who worked for wage. All their family was freed now, and Bion made himself a helmet and a great bronze shield and was welcomed into the taxis. Not all freed men were so welcomed – but Bion was a special case.
I went with my brother and Hermogenes to watch the men dance at the festival of Ares. All of them had practised the dances since they were old enough to learn – twelve or thirteen, in most cases. And my father had done well by Bion, teaching him – something that I knew Pater did only with the quickest of learners. So Bion did not humiliate himself, although as a newly freed and enfranchised man, there were farmers eager to see him fail.
That's how men are, honey. Don't you know? With peasants, it is the same in Asia and Aegypt and Boeotia. They think there is much evil in the world and little good, and that one man's gain is another's loss. If Bion was free, then a free man would become a slave. So they whispered.
I watched them dance. I had seen it before – it was magnificent and made my blood run fast, two hundred men in bronze and leather, swaying in line, turning around, thrusting with their spears, parrying with their shields.
Two years and more on the mountain and I knew those moves better than the dancers. I watched with a critical eye – and, honey, there is nothing more critical than a boy of eleven.
It was also my brother's first year in the dance. He was well kitted, with a fine Corinthian helmet and a big shield to keep him safe in the storm of bronze. I watched him dance and thought he did it well enough, but the boy in me couldn't avoid criticism, so that night I asked him why he didn't change the weight on his feet when he went from defence to attack.
Of course he had no notion of what I was talking about, but only heard his younger brother finding fault. We wrestled in the barn – to a draw. I was weaker, but I knew quite a bit more. There's a lesson there, too. All my skill – and I had quite a bit of skill already – was not enough to match his longer reach and his smith's strength.
And even with my blood up, I wasn't fool enough to put a finger in his eye.
But the next day, he cut two poles and asked me to show him what I meant. So I showed him as Calchas showed me – how the movement of your hips reinforces the push of the spear or the rise of the shield. Chalkidis was no fool. No sooner did he see, than he was asking questions. And he took his questions to Pater. Pater came and watched us.
His eyes narrowed. 'I sent you up the mountain to learn to read and write,' he said. 'What is this?'
I was proud of my martial skills, so I showed him. I showed him the guards that Calchas taught and the spear attacks. I could hit my brother at will, although when I had the weight of a real aspis on my shoulder, I could barely move.
Pater shook his head. 'Foolishness,' he said. 'All you should do is keep your place in the shield wall. The rest is madness. The moment you lunge, the enemy to your right plunges his spear in your thigh. Or your neck. Every attack you make leaves your shield side uncovered. ' He shook his head. 'Calchas must stop teaching you this nonsense.'
'He is a great warrior,' I said hotly.
Pater looked at me as if really noticing me for the first time. 'There are no great warriors,' Pater said. 'There are great craftsmen, great sculptors, great poets. Sometimes, they must put a spear on their shoulder. But nothing about war is great.' Pater looked across the valley, towards the shrine. 'Your teacher is a broken man who keeps a shrine about which no man cares a whit. He teaches boys to read and he nurses old hatreds. I think that it is time I brought you home.'
'Many men care about the shrine!' I said. There were tears in my eyes.
Pater dusted his hands. 'Come,' he said.
We walked to the shrine. I argued, and Pater was silent. When we arrived, Pater ordered me to collect my things. And he went and spoke to Calchas alone.
I still know nothing of what they said to each other, but I never saw a frown or a harsh word. I collected my javelins, my spear 'Deer Killer', my scrolls and my bedroll. I put them on the donkey and went to kiss Calchas goodbye. He embraced me.
'Time for you to go out into the world,' he said. 'Your father is right, and I have probably filled your head with nonsense.'
I knew that he would be drunk before we walked to the base of the mountain. But I smiled and kissed him on the lips – which I had never done.
On the way down the path, I stopped. 'He will die without me,' I said. I was eleven going on twelve, and the world was much less of a mystery to me than it had been. 'By leaving, I am killing him!'
Pater embraced me. I think it is the only embrace that I remember. He held me for a long time. Finally, he said, 'He is killing himself. You have your own life to lead.'
We walked home, Pater silent, me crying.
I went back to working the forge, although I now lagged far behind my brother. I read to my mother, who fussed over my hands and bellowed abuse at Pater about how his noble son was being forced to peasant work.
Pater ignored her. I lose track of time, here. I think it was the same summer as I left Calchas, but it might have been the next. They were golden summers, and the wealth of Plataea came in with the grain. We sold much of our grain in the markets of Attica, and now that we were the richest peasants in Boeotia, our fathers plotted how to spend our wealth on the greatest Daidala in history.
Men came to the yard of the smithy and leaned against the new sheds, or sat on the stools that now littered the yard, drank Pater's excellent wine served by a pair of pretty slaves and planned the Daidala. There was no other discussion that summer, for the next spring was the moment when we would watch the ravens on the hillside, choose our tree and set in motion all the traditions and customs and dances and rituals that would lead us to a successful festival – a festival that would cause other men across Boeotia to envy our wealth and curse us. Or rather, that was the plan.
For before the summer was old enough for the barley to lose its green, the word came to our valley that the men of Thebes were preparing the Great Daidala, and had ordained that Plataea was but a community of Thebes and not a free city. What's more, Thebes had voted a great tax to be placed on us to 'support the festival'.
I had missed two years of talk in the courtyard, but little had changed. The speakers wore a better quality of cloth, but they were the same men – solid men, who were a little richer but had no toleration for fools. Myron was not the richest, but he tended to speak for Pater's friends in the assembly, and there was talk of making him archon instead of the old basileus. The old basileus was now poorer than Pater. The world was turning on its head.
The word of the Theban tax goaded them even more than the word that we would not host the festival. Peasants hate it when other men take their money. I know that hate. Steal the money of a slave and look at his eyes. That is the look of a peasant who is taxed.
Simon had joined the men in the yard. I wasn't there when he moved back into our lives. It seems odd, after all that happened, but peasants quarrel as much as aristocrats and then settle their differences or simply move on. Simon came back, and I continued to hate him, but Pater treated him with courtesy and all was well.
It was Simon who said the words on everybody's mind.
'We should fight,' Simon said.
Every man in the yard sipped his wine and nodded.
'We should ask the Spartans for an alliance,' Draco said.
Epictetus the Younger spent more time in the yard than he should have, but he was rich enough already that slaves did all the farm work for him, and he wandered about with a body slave like a lord. It made his father frown, but his farm ran well enough and he was growing into a big man who spoke well and would fight in the front rank. He stood up. 'We should offer alliance to Athens,' he said. 'Miltiades is a friend of every man here.'
Draco shook his head. 'Miltiades is our friend, but he's almost an exile this year. They refused to let his ships land last autumn. Men say he'll make himself tyrant of Athens. He's no help to us. Besides,' and Draco looked around as if expecting enemies to leap from behind the forge, 'Sparta is ready to make war on Thebes.'
'Once we take it to the assembly, Thebes will know what we are about,' Myron said.
Pater stood forward. I remember him from that afternoon, how dignified he was and how proud I was that he was my father. He looked around the circle of men. 'What if we decide on a thing, here in this yard,' he said, 'and then Myron travels around and talks quietly to other men of substance?' He paused, and fell silent. He was never a man for big talk.
Myron nodded. 'We might call it something different. We might call it the "salt tax".'
It took a moment to explain to Draco, who could be slow, and to my brother, who had no notion of the duplicity an assembly could practise.
But that's what they did. They called the alliance with Sparta the 'salt tax' and Myron went from oikia to oikia around the whole polis, so that when they went to the assembly where the Thebans waited, and voted for a salt tax, the Thebans were suspicious but nothing could be proven.
Then the farmers sent Draco, Myron and Theron, son of Xenon, one of our richest men, and he sold his leather armor as far away as Peloponnese. His son began to wear Spartan shoes and Myron's son began to puff out his chest and speak of buying himself a horse. Epictetus came by and frowned.
'We owe Miltiades better than this,' he said. 'We should send him word.'
Pater shrugged. 'He is an exile in a barbarian land,' he said.
Epictetus looked around the yard. 'His money bought everything here.'
'Send word to your son, then,' Pater said. 'Miltiades has a factor at Corinth. I have a shipment of armour for him. I'll send word to him. But Draco has the right of it. Miltiades is our friend and our benefactor, but he has no power in Boeotia.'
'Uhh,' Epictetus grunted. Pater sent my brother with the armour to Corinth. He came back with some fine pottery and a new donkey and a small pile of silver coins. He was proud of himself – he'd been far from home, over the mountains, and returned without incident.
Pater nodded, and sent him back to the forge. I suppose it was a form of compliment that Pater always assumed that we would succeed at anything he assigned us. But an actual compliment would have gone a long way.
The message must have carried, though, because just after the feast of Demeter, the great man himself came up the lane, riding another magnificent horse. He wore a golden fillet in his hair and he looked even more like a god.
The thing that made him stand out to me this time was that I could see he'd been trained the same way I had. I could see it in how he stood and how he walked. I still did the exercises that Calchas had taught, and twice I'd gone deer hunting alone, and once killed a deer. I'd taken Calchas wine. He ruffled my hair and said little. I left offerings at the shrine when he wasn't there – or perhaps he was there, lying drunk on his pallet and waiting for me to go away.
At any rate, Miltiades came and stayed the night, and Pater invited Epictetus, along with Myron's son Dionysius and my brother. I was too young for the andron, but I served the wine.
They spoke of politics, about Athens and Sparta and Thebes.
'Our friend Draco has it wrong,' Miltiades said. 'Sparta is not going to make war on Thebes. Sparta is making an alliance with Thebes to isolate Athens.'
I thought that the red-haired man was angry, but hiding it well.
Dionysius was braver, or more foolish, than the older men. 'What do you care, sir?' he asked. 'Athens has exiled you.'
Miltiades leaned back on his kline. I was filling his cup and he put a hand on my hip. 'You fill out well, boy,' he said. 'Who taught you to move like a gymnast? You make the other boys look like farm workers.'
I froze. I knew that touch.
Pater laughed. 'He's as much a farm worker as the rest,' he said, and Miltiades laughed with them, aristocrat that he was. Then he shrugged. 'City politics can't be so different in Plataea and Athens,' he said. 'I'm an exile, but I will always be a man of the city. I have a settlement of my own, and colonists, every man of whom is a citizen somewhere else – by the gods, I have some of your own young men! And we are still loyal to our homes. Would you want me to convince your sons to be my citizens rather than Plataeans?'
They nodded. We all understood him.
'So I watch out for the good of Athens,' he went on. 'Athens needs Plataea. Plataea needs Athens. Sparta will take your alliance – and later he'll shove it up your arse.' His crudity hit them hard. He was a brilliant speaker, capable of using all words, big and small, rough and elegant, and he could modify his text to his audience, a wonderful talent. But most of all, he was a charismatic man. Later I saw him in an assembly of thousands, and his words carried an army. At close quarters, he was as deadly in argument as he was in combat.
Epictetus frowned. 'What do we do, lord? We did not seek to displease you.'
Miltiades shook his head. 'My fault for not voicing my desire openly. I shouldn't have made you guess. I'm not usually so coy. I want this alliance. I want Plataea welded to Athens with bonds of bronze and iron.' He grinned his infectious grin. 'Well, we'll see. Your embassy will be back soon enough. Doubtless the Spartans will accept and shaft you later, but perhaps I can speak sense into you before that.' He laughed. 'I'll go and visit the old soldier on the hill. Calchas. Do you know him?'
Pater glanced at me. 'He was my son's tutor,' he said.
Miltiades gave me an appraising glance. 'Really? Old Calchas took you on? What did he teach you?'
'Reading,' Pater said quickly.
'Hunting,' I said, before I knew what I was saying.
Pater frowned, but Miltiades smiled. 'You hunt? Take me in the morning, lad. We'll have a fine time.'
'He is my son,' my father said carefully.
'I understand,' Miltiades answered. We went up the mountain together. I rode his horse, my arms around his waist and a bundle of javelins in my fists. I showed him my prize spear and he looked it over carefully and admitted that it was a fine one for a lad my age. I realized that I was striving for his approbation with every breath. I never wondered why his slave had stayed on the farm, or why he didn't lend me his slave's horse, although, in truth, I probably couldn't have ridden her.
It took us less than an hour to cross the valley and mount the slopes to the shrine. We rode into the green meadow and dismounted. I ran to the door of the hut, but Calchas didn't answer my knock. The sun was just rising, and Miltiades was fully active – he was never a sluggard, even with a skinful of wine.
He had a fine canteen, covered in leather, and he spilled a libation to the hero. Then he tethered his horse and we went up the trails behind the tomb at a run. He was in magnificent shape – I've seldom seen a man with a better command of his body – and we ran six or seven stades without stopping, until we were high in the oak forest.
'I thought we might catch up with the old bastard,' Lord Miltiades said. He was scarcely panting.
'No tracks on the trail,' I said. I was breathing hard.
Again, the lord looked at me carefully. 'Good eye,' he said. 'Can you find me a buck, lad?'
So we moved quietly across the mountainside. It took me an hour to get the spoor of an animal, and another hour – the sun was getting too high – to put the small buck between us. I charged it, yelling hard, and it broke away from me, running for its life right at the Athenian.
But I hadn't seen the other buck. He was a magnificent animal, as big as a small horse, and in autumn he'd have carried a rack of antlers big enough to sell. Even in high summer he had started his horns. He rose out of a tangle of brush, crashed shoulder to shoulder with the younger buck, spilling him and saving his life, and sprang. His leap was so high and so hard that Miltiades stood with his mouth open, his javelin cocked and forgotten in his hand, as the buck sailed over his head.
We didn't touch either animal. Miltiades slapped me on the back. 'You can stalk,' he said. 'Not your fault I missed my throw, boy. And what an animal! Artemis held my hand – I felt her cool fingers on my wrist, I swear. That beast must be her special love.'
We walked down the mountain together. The sun was too high to try again. I potted a rabbit foolish enough to sit in the middle of the trail eating a leaf, and Miltiades praised my throw, sweet praise such as I never received at home.
Yet he was not just a flatterer. He made me throw for him six or seven times, and he adjusted my body each time, correcting my tendency to advance my right foot too much, and there was none of the urgency to his touch that I'd felt with Calchas. He taught well, and when he threw his own spear, a heavy longche that I would be hard-pressed to toss across the meadow, he threw it as Zeus on high throws a bolt of lightning.
I was worshipping him by the time we returned to Calchas's hut and the shrine.
'I wanted to see him,' Miltiades said.
'I'll fetch him out,' I said, bold as brass. 'Lord, he may be a little drunk.'
Miltiades laughed. 'You fetch him out of there,' he said. 'I'll sober him up – or give him some decent wine, better than the piss you peasants drink.'
It was the first time I'd heard Miltiades speak ill of us. He could only guard his tongue so long.
Ah, listen, honey. He was not a bad man, as powerful men go. He saved Greece. He was good to me. But he was used to the finest horses, the most beautiful women. It was our foolishness that made us think he was happy to drink sour wine with peasants in Boeotia.
I climbed in through the window of horn. I'd done it dozens of times – once to steal the bow. I told you that story.
As soon as I got it open – the stick I'd whittled to prise the window open was still leaning where I'd left it – flies came out, buzzing like some evil thing. In Canaan, men call the lord of the dead the 'Lord of the Flies'. It was just like that – as if all the flies made a single creature and moved with one will.
I dropped from the sill into the room, and it smelled of old leather and bad food. At first I thought he had gone, leaving a rotten haunch of venison and an old brown cloak on the deer's carcass in the middle of the floor.
But, of course, he was there.
The details came to me one at a time, although I think I understood as soon as the flies buzzed past me in the window. The odd shaft of light over the deer carcass was shining on the sword. The sword was stuck, hilt first, into the floorboards. There was no deer carcass.
Calchas had wedged his sword into the floor and fallen on it. He had done it so long before that the brown cloak was just his hair and the last of his skin over his bones.
How long since I had crossed the valley and left a sacrifice at the tomb? How many times had I come when he already lay here, dead? I wonder, in a way, if I had already known, because I had said my goodbyes and I didn't weep. I went to the door, unbarred it and found the bronze-shod shovel Pater had made for him with his athlete's pick. I carried them out into the yard and went straight to the tomb. Miltiades called something but I didn't listen. Instead, I began to dig.
I didn't see Miltiades go to the hut, but I know that before the sun rose much higher, he was at my side, his lord's hands digging in the earth with mine. We did a proper job.
'Not much to burn,' Miltiades said, when I began to pile up the winter's supply of wood in the yard. It was old wood, and a little rotten. He hadn't cut more, nor had he burned much, last winter. This was the wood I had cut while training.
I piled it high. I was tempted to burn the cottage, but I knew that another man would come to mind the tomb. Why ruin it for him?
Then I went in and spread my cloak on the floor. I lifted his corpse and put it gently on the good wool. Some pieces of him fell away. I was not squeamish. I filled my cloak and carried him into the yard. I put copper coins in the empty sockets of his skull and set the bag of my cloak and his bones on top of the woodpile, then Miltiades got a flame going with his fire kit.
'He was a great warrior,' Miltiades said. 'Twice he saved my life in the haze of battle. Once he saved my ship. And he could sing poetry like a bard. He was a gentleman like the heroes of old. May his shade go with theirs, to the island of the blessed, for he was all the old virtues together in one man.'
Then I wept. I said a few halting words, and the flames rushed up and consumed him.
But he lives in my words, honey. Honour him. He made me. In a way, he made you. Because he put the skill of arms in me, and because of him, I am not dead. His death was the beginning of everything that went wrong.
Miltiades and I went back home. You might think that I'd have shouted at Pater, but I didn't. Pater knew – that is, he knew when we were riding away, the day he took me from Calchas. He knew what would happen, and he told the truth. We didn't kill him. We were like a sword left lying in a tavern, and then used in a murder. We were the instruments of his death.
I think some of Calchas passed through the skin of my hands and into my heart. I think I became a man while I carried his body, light as dried bone, out to the yard to burn him on his pyre. Is that just memory playing tricks?
Mater had never met him, but she wept for him, nonetheless – odd, in a way. He had no use for women, and yet a woman who had never known him mourned him. Somehow, it was fitting.
We kept a three-day vigil at our home, as if he'd been family, and Miltiades joined in – or led us – and that bound him to us even more, and us to him. He sat with Mater and read to her and told her she was beautiful. She drank a little and flirted harmlessly.
Then Draco and Theron came back, riding donkeys.
They came into the yard, failure written on their bodies like words on papyrus. Draco dismounted first and he didn't meet Miltiades' eyes, but told the story simply and quickly. The Spartans had derided the three of them, called them peasants and rebels, and told them to take their petty attempts at democracy to Athens, where such things are welcome.
Draco wasn't a broken man, but he was changed by the experience. He was used to being taken seriously, and he'd been treated like a boor and a dolt. He complained long and hard. Indeed, for the rest of his life, he complained of the treatment he received in Sparta.
Myron came later. He complained less, but his resentment was hotter. Perhaps, as a farmer and not a craftsman, and as a member of an old family that claimed descent from the gods, he actually thought of himself as an aristocrat. Anything is possible. But the insults of the Spartans made his blood boil. The difference was that he never spoke of it again. Neither did Theron. For other reasons, as you shall see.
Epictetus followed, and then the archon himself. He had a horse, although it looked like a sorry beast beside the fine mounts Miltiades had brought.
Mater wanted to know who had arrived, and I went up to the women's quarters to tell her.
'Your father is about to find out why a man like Miltiades has cooled his heels for five days in our house,' she said. 'Will you grow to be a man like him? Like Miltiades? Or just another good craftsman like your father? Poor man. I led him to this. I couldn't just be the wife of a smith, and now we're about to be part of a political game.' She gulped wine. 'I should fall on a sword like your teacher. He knew what he was about.'
I sighed and left her.
I served the wine that night, when they decided to send the 'salt tax' to Athens. Miltiades sent his slave with them and stayed with us, well over the border from his home city.
We didn't have to wait long.
The events of that summer were like one of the storms that roll down the valleys of Boeotia. First you see the storm – the black clouds rising like the strongest towers, spiralling up over the mountains – and then you hear the thunder. And when the thunder comes, honey – you run, or you get wet. At first it seems very far away – a murmur on the far horizon, and perhaps a prayer to the storm god. Then, before you know it, unless you are in the barn or house, you'll be wet through your cloak and chiton in an instant, as the lightning flashes every few heartbeats and crashes to earth – sometimes all around you – and the wind rips branches from the trees and the end of the world seems just one bolt away.
When the men of Plataea sent Myron to Athens, the storm was still a tower of darkness on the horizon, and we were blinded by our own desires. But the desires of men are nothing when the gods send a storm. The first drops of rain were falling, and only Miltiades knew how big the storm was. And he didn't tell us. Athens sent a deputation back in a week, riding on horses over the trade road. They brought a decree welcoming Miltiades back and they brought us a treaty. The men of Plataea signed the treaty, promising to stand by Athens, and Athens promised the same. The men of the city went to the Temple of Hera and swore together in the sacred precincts. Pater went, and my brother. I was too young.
It was a magnificent summer. I remember them coming back from the temple, all the men of our valley in their long clothes – chitons and the big cloaks we wore then. They made a beautiful procession. I thought that this must be how the king of Persia looked.
The sun was high and the sky had the magnificent blue that is so hard to remember on a rainy day like this. We were all proud that Athens wanted us. And the men from Athens acted as if we were men of worth.
I remember that time as happy. Perhaps it is just by contrast with what came after.
The men of Athens went home and Miltiades went with them. Pater went back to work on an order for spear points. Draco went up the mountain with both his sons to cut oak for wheel rims. Myron went home to watch his slaves reap his barley.
I began to form my first cup.
It wasn't going badly when the Athenian herald rode up the valley, summoning us to war.
Two weeks. That's how long we had before the storm broke. I never doubted that I would go with the men. I went as a shield-bearer, of course – a hypaspist – I was too young to fight as a hoplite. These days men take slaves, but in those days, it was more acceptable to take boys just short of manhood to carry your equipment.
Hermogenes went for his father and I went for my brother. My father took a slave.
We never thought to refuse the Athenians. And aside from my mother, who wept and railed against the fates, there were few who saw how completely the Athenians had duped us. They were not saving us. We were marching to protect them. But no one said so.
We took less than a week to muster. We might have mustered faster, but our farmers needed to get their crops in. It was already known in the polis that Thebes intended revenge – that we were viewed as rebels. They might come and burn our crops if we didn't bring them in. It was bad enough leaving grapes on the vines and olives on the trees.
I have no idea whether any man suggested that we either forget our alliance with Athens or simply send a minimum of men. We were proud peasants, and we sent the whole of our muster over the mountains. Men like Myron worked like slaves to get their harvest in. I remember working in the fields with Hermogenes and our slaves, already feeling like a man at war. I drank wine with the men in the evening and hoped that they would present me with an aspis and put me in the taxis. Farmers freed slaves to fill out the ranks, but I was not invited.
We went across the mountains after the feast of Demeter. We marched up the same road that passed the shrine, and every man in the ranks touched the tomb, and I thought of Calchas. We'd heard that the Spartans and all their Peloponnesian allies had marched around the south end of the mountain and entered Attica. Boys like me feared that we would be too late.
War is something a man should want to be late for. We crossed into Attica, and the Spartans were sitting across the stream from the tower at Oinoe, a fortification the tyrants of Athens had built against this very kind of war. Of course, Sparta had been an enemy of tyranny – but when the Spartans saw how strong the new Athens was going to be, they became enemies of democracy as well. Nation states are always that way, honey. They have no more morality than a whore in the Piraeus looking to score some wine. Anything to get what they want.
Ares, how we feared the Spartans. Cleomenes, their king, a famous man, had with him only a thousand Spartiates – the Spartan citizens, and there were six thousand Athenian citizens. But he made up the numbers with 'allies', cities of the Peloponnese that had to fight when Sparta said fight.
And how the Athenians cheered us, although we brought just a thousand hoplites. They gave us the honour of the left end of the line. The position of highest honour is the right flank. If the right gives way, an army is done – dead. Miltiades' father, also called Miltiades, held the right of the line with the senior tribes of Athens. They looked magnificent, with cloaks of tapestry-woven wool, and the whole front rank had bronze breastplates like heroes. Every man had a horsehair plume in his helmet. They made us look like farmers.
Hah! We were farmers. Half our men had leather caps. Only the front rank had helmets, and half of them were open-faced war hats. My father was one of only a dozen fighters with bronze panoply, and not all our front rank even had leather to cover their bodies. A couple of men wore felt.
Hermogenes and I were psiloi. That meant that we were to run close to the enemy, throw rocks at them and goad them into action. Sometimes psiloi just yelled insults. It was all rather like something religious. Psiloi rarely harmed anyone.
I had six good javelins – quite a few for a boy my age, but then none of the others, slave or free, had spent two years on the mountain hunting deer. I gave three to Hermogenes.
Myron's youngest son Callicles was our leader. He was a year older than me, and bossy. I was used to my brother, who would listen to any argument I made and judge it on its merits. Slow and careful and totally solid, my brother. Callicles had none of those qualities. My halting attempts to tell him that I knew a lot more about this game than he did led to him putting an elbow in my nose. He caught me by surprise and had me on the ground in an instant. I broke free before he could hurt me – but I chose to obey.
We camped for two days, watching the Spartans. The alignment meant that if we fought, we'd be the ones facing the Spartiates. They'd be on the right of their line, and we'd be on the left or ours. There was some talk, but none of the men had much time for us boys except my brother. He told me how scared he was.
'I feel like I'm going to die,' he said. 'I'm cold all the time. I'm going to be a coward, and I hate it!'
I hugged him. 'You'll be brave!' I told him. 'Just don't be too brave.' I grinned and gave him Calchas's advice, which must have sounded foolish from a beardless boy. 'Stay in the shield wall and don't let anyone over your shield,' I said.
He laughed at me, despite his fear. 'I'm in the sixth rank,' he said. 'Safer than we are in a storm at home!' He laughed, but then he was serious. 'We're going to form deep, to slow the Spartans down,' he said. 'Pater says if we form a dozen deep, we'll stand longer.'
It sounded like sense to me. Still does.
In those days, honey, men didn't fight as they do today. Well – the Spartans did. They were orderly and careful, but most men didn't even form a proper phalanx with ranks and files – something every city does today. No, back then, we were still like the war bands of the lords in the Iliad. Men would cluster around the leaders like trees around a spring, and if a leader died, all his men would run.
But my father paid attention to things he saw and heard, and it was he who had suggested that the men of Plataea should each have a place – a rank and a file – and should practise in those places, the way the Spartans and the best of the Thebans did – their apobatai, the elite fighters, who had once been the charioteers. And now Pater had ordered them to fight in a very deep order – in those days, twelve deep was twice as deep as most men fought.
But I digress, as usual. I could tell that my brother was afraid. I wasn't afraid. I thought that it would be like deer hunting. I imagined that I'd run around the flank of their line and throw my javelins into this packed mass, killing a Spartiate with every cast. Calchas had told me the truth about war, but my ears had been closed.
It may sound odd to you, but I took quite a shine to young Callicles. He was arrogant but he was older, and that matters to peasants. And when he saw how far I could throw a javelin – he only had one – he treated me differently. In an afternoon of rock- and javelin-throwing on the height beside the tower, I became his second man, his phylarch, and we copied our elders, speaking at length about our 'tactics'. As boys will, we made the other boys do as we did, and we practised running and jumping and throwing javelins and rocks. Most boys merely had rocks. The slaves hung back.
Fair enough. It wasn't their fight. Those who had been freed had everything to gain by fighting well, but those who were still slaves had no interest in the fight at all. They sat around until we yelled at them, and then the older ones were slow and so obviously unwilling that they poisoned our confidence. These men were masters of avoiding work, and a couple of teenaged boys were nothing to them. These were men who were used to dealing with the wrath of Pater or Epictetus the Elder.
By the third day, it looked to all of us as if there would be no fight, and the Athenians heaped praise on us. Just by coming, we'd given the Peloponnesians pause. Now they were outnumbered. And, it appeared, they'd expected the Thebans to join them, but the Thebans weren't there yet. Or weren't coming at all.
I'll have a lot to say about war, honey. I may put you to sleep with it for a month while I weary you with my story. And one thing I'll say a thousand times is that every army has its own heart, its own soul, its own eyes and its own ears. In that army, that Peloponnesian army, they didn't really want to be in Attica. They were all too aware that the Spartans were only there to support their alliance with Thebes, and the Spartans, as was their way, had shown their lack of interest by sending only a token force under the junior king.
As they did again later, against the Medes. Never trust a Spartan, honey.
Anyway, they should have known that the bloody Thebans were coming. They were a hundred stades away or less. Ares must have laughed.
Cleomenes finally committed to fight because the Peloponnesians were starting to leave him. Allies were freer in those days. They told the king of Sparta what they thought, and then they marched away. Not many of them, but enough to make old Cleomenes decide to fight before he had no army at all.
We knew that the Thebans were coming. It was said around every fire. The Athenians and all the farmers of Attica – they had farmers too – were already looking over their shoulders and doubting the new leaders that they'd elected. But Miltiades and his father were everywhere – even among us – putting bars of iron into the spines of every man. Miltiades even came and watched our boys practising. He praised my javelin throw, and an hour later his slave came and gave me a pair of spears with blued steel heads – even now, the memory of them makes me smile. They were fine weapons. I thought my spear Deer Killer was a fine weapon – it had a bronze head made by Pater with its name engraved on the spine – but it was crude next to these, with their red hafts and their blue-black heads.
I kept Deer Killer and the gifts and gave my other javelins to other boys. Callicles took the best and gave his own to the poorest.
Three javelins for the richest boys. A hemp sack full of rocks for the poorest. What fools we were. And our fathers were being matched against the red cloaks of Sparta. The day dawned. I slept well enough, unlike my father, my brother and most of the other Plataeans. The heralds had been exchanged the night before. By the time we ate our barley porridge, Miltiades the Elder had made his sacrifices. He found them auspicious.
I'm sure they were auspicious for Athens.
I had never seen a phalanx form. Pater was one of the chief officers of the Plataeans and he walked up and down, forming men into their place in the ranks, his black and red double crests nodding as he walked, and he looked as noble and as deadly as any Spartiate. I marvelled at his performance – he knew who was steady and who had nerves, and he placed them as gently as possible, avoiding any form of insult. I was proud that he was my father. Still am.
I saw that Cousin Simon was in the sixth rank. What fool of a polemarch had ever put him in the front for the last battle? He was green already! In the middle, he'd be safe and he wouldn't hurt anyone.
Then I saw that he was one man to the right of my brother. Chalkidis looked worried, but he waved. He was the only man in the sixth rank who had greaves and a fine helmet. That's what you get when you are a bronze-smith and the son of a bronze-smith. He had his helmet tipped back on his head, the way you see the goddess Athena in her statues. And he managed a solid smile for me. I pushed through the ranks and hugged him, leather cuirass and all. I was jealous, but he looked magnificent and he was still a head taller than me, and suddenly all I wanted was for him to succeed and be a hero, and when we were done embracing, I hurried to the roadside shrine and poured a little of Pater's honeyed wine on the statue of the Lady and prayed that he would be brave and succeed in battle.
I had no doubts that he'd be brave.
Before my first battle story is told, I think I have to speak about courage, honey. Are you brave? You don't know, but I do. You're brave. And when it's your turn to face the woman's version of the bronze storm – when a child comes from between your knees into the world – you may scream, and you may be afraid, but you'll do it. You'll get it done. No one expects you to like it, but all your friends, all the womenfolk who've borne their own children, they'll crowd around you, wiping your brow and telling you to push.
It's the same for men. No one is brave. No one really, deep down, wants to be Achilles. What we all want is to live, and to be brave enough to tell our story. And older men who've done it before will call out and tell the younger men to push.
The thing is, hardly anyone is such a coward as to stand out. You are there with the whole community around you. Courage is asking a girl to marry you, alone against her parents. Courage is standing before the assembly and telling them they're a pack of fools. Courage is fighting when no one will ever see your courage. But when the phalanx is locked together, it's hard to be a coward.
Fucking Simon. He was no coward in other ways, but when the phalanx formed, he lost his wits. Gods, how I still hate him.
Our phalanx looked a poor thing next to the Athenians. They had blue and purple and bright red and blinding white, and we had all the homespun colours of peasants. Pater had a good cloak, and so did a dozen men – all Miltiades' friends. The son of the basileus's sister looked as good as the Athenians. The rest – even some of the better men – looked drab and dun.
We formed our boys in a thin line in front of our fathers. We saw the Athenian psiloi. They were a poor show compared to us – all slaves, and half of them didn't even have rocks. So we joked that there was one thing we did better than the men of Athens.
We were still forming when the Spartan helots came across the ground at us. They had rocks in bags, and they threw hard. I caught one on my shin and I fell. That was the glory of war. Just like that – the first rock, and I was down.
Two or three of us fell, and the rest of the boys ran like deer on the mountain. I hadn't even had time to think about how I might be a hero. I hadn't even thrown a spear. But my pater was right there, so close I could almost touch him, and I was not going to run. Besides, as I got up, I found that I couldn't. My shin hurt too much and there was blood.
The helots were almost close enough to touch, too. In fact, two of them had just begun to lob rocks at our phalanx. They ignored me.
I killed the one closest to me. Deer Killer knocked him flat, just as she had done a dozen times to deer.
That got their attention. A rock came so close that it brushed my ear like the whisper of a god, telling me that I was mortal. I planted my feet, ignoring my shin, and a beautiful blue-tipped spear killed a second helot. They died. This is no boyish boast. We were as close as your couch and mine, honey – and I threw to kill.
They broke. They were slaves, and like our slaves, they had nothing to gain from bravery. They didn't even care about avenging their comrades. Slaves have no comrades. They turned and fled as our boys had just moments before.
That's when I learned that Calchas had come into my body when I burned his corpse, because when they fled, I killed another. I liked it. I cocked back my arm and threw my spear into the back of a fleeing slave and I liked it.
Then I hobbled forward and retrieved my javelins.
Behind me, the left-most Athenians and the right-most Plataeans were cheering. They were cheering me. It went to my head like unwatered wine. The other boys came back fast enough. They weren't cowards. They just hadn't understood the game.
We still didn't understand. Callicles slapped my back and we ran forward together. I tried to angle across the Spartan front, because I knew we'd be safer on the flank, but I was slowed by my shin.
When I looked up, the Spartans terrified me. It's not like being in the phalanx, out there in the middle between the armies. And the Spartans – they all look the same, with matching shields of bronze, like the richest Athenians, and with almost identical helmets. I actually wondered who made all those helmets. They looked very fine. And they scared me.
But I couldn't flinch now. Although a curious reaction hit me – I still remember it. I felt cold as I hobbled forward and I began to shake. Then the other boys began to throw. We were too far away and Callicles started to yell like a real officer, pushing them forward. He turned his back on the Spartans and yelled at us to come on, come on, throw from closer.
I was near him when I saw the Spartan file-leader call an order and four hoplites burst out of the front of the shield wall. They came so fast, they were like javelins themselves. They were all athletes in high training, of course, not boys. I knew from the first long leg kicking that they were faster than I was when I wasn't injured. There were only four of them against thirty of us.
Callicles died first. The fastest Spartan singled him out. I remember that the Spartan had a smile on his face under the helmet. I screamed at Callicles to run, but the fool stood his ground and threw my second-best spear, and the Spartan ducked his head and it passed him. He never even slowed, and his long doru went into Callicles above the groin and drove out of his back like some wicked growth, and then there was an explosion of blood, front and back. I'd seen it a hundred times hunting. Callicles was a dead boy.
All four of them killed a boy, like farmers cutting weeds. The leader killed a second boy next to Hermogenes.
Hermogenes fell to the ground without being touched, and then used his javelin to trip the lead Spartan. He went down in a clatter of armour, but he was up in less time than it takes to tell the sentence. Yet he was off balance and he was using his shield hand to push himself off the ground. Calchas had taught me better than that.
It was my worst throw of the day. I was terrified and elated at the same time, and my Deer Killer went into his left arm behind his shield, pinning the arm against the shield back. And he couldn't get it out.
The others stopped to help him, because he was bellowing, and then Hermogenes grabbed me and helped me run.
By all the gods, my thugater – I thought those were my last moments, and when we were clear of the Spartans, I vowed that I would never, ever put my body in front of the phalanx again. I vowed it like a drunkard vowing not to drink.
Hermogenes and I got clear of the right flank. We had no idea where the other boys were. Then we lay down in the grass and heaved. Ares! We were alive. Wait until you bear a child, honey – you'll feel the same rush of eudaimonia unless Artemis comes for you. Avert!
But when we looked up, the Spartans were charging.
They came forward to the music of pipes. And all the giants going to war with Father Zeus couldn't have looked more dangerous or noble.
The rest of the Peloponnesians hesitated, and the Athenians came forward cautiously, but they came on, and the Plataeans weren't cowards. They went forward into the Spartans.
The two lines hit each other like – well, like two phalanxes coming together. Imagine every cook in this town with every bronze kettle and a wooden spoon flailing away at it. Imagine every man bellowing with all his might. That is the sound of the storm of bronze, the battle line.
Hermogenes and I watched from the safety of the far right. And we saw what happened when the Spartiates hit our fathers.
They reaped them like wheat, that's what happened.
What made the reputation of Plataea was not that our men were great fighters – at least, not that day. What forged our reputation for ever was that our men wouldn't run. But Hermogenes and I watched men die. It was horrible – and awe-inspiring. The two blocks of spearmen crashed into each other at the same speed, and not a man flinched. Spartans tell me that they remember that day well – because so few foes withstand the impact, yet the men of Plataea slammed in, aspis to aspis. And then the killing started.
We watched as the helmet plumes in the front rank went down. It took only seconds and it seemed as if the whole front rank was gone. And then the Plataeans gave ground – grudgingly – but they lost ten steps.
I think it was Pater who stopped it from being a rout. Pater gave ground, but Bion says he killed a man – a spear thrust to the throat against a Spartiate file-leader. Then he and Bion pushed into the gap and Bion says they each took a man down. No one cares in the heat of a fight whether you kill your man as long as you put him down.
In that little eddy of the overall whirlpool of Plataean defeat, the Spartans hesitated. How often did men push through their front rank? I think it was Pater. I could see the plume on his helmet when the others, like Myron's, were gone. And then the file-closers planted their feet and pushed at the back of the Plataean lines, and suddenly the Plataeans weren't moving back – they were standing firm.
But some of the Spartans had broken through the front ranks, where men were capable and expected to fight. Soon they were pounding the rear ranks to ruin, killing like the machines that they were.
A few men broke from the rear of our phalanx and ran – and Simon must have been one of them. But elsewhere, our neighbours closed their files and shocked the Spartans who'd broken their ranks, crushing them like insects, stabbing them front and rear. There's a reason why breaking ranks is punishable by law, and a reason why veterans call it foolish. The Spartans thought that we'd break – but we didn't, and their young men died.
Who knows how long the men of Plataea would have held the Spartans? Another fifty heartbeats, perhaps. Perhaps less. The Spartans were going to win. The miracle of Ares is that our men stood their ground at all. They held for the time a goat takes to birth a kid – the time it takes a smith to make a sheet into a bowl with a few quick blows of skill.
But the Peloponnesians didn't know any of this. What they saw was that the Athenians outnumbered them, and that their precious masters were being held up by a bunch of farmers from Boeotia.
The allies broke like songbirds faced with an eagle. They broke before the Athenians even hit them. They ran before the spears crossed, and not one of them stood. The Spartan king cursed, no doubt, and then backed his phalanx away, step by step. Unbeaten. Virtually victorious. But they backed away, and the Plataeans had just barely clung to their formation. From where we stood, Hermogenes and I knew that more men had started to flee from the back of our deep block. But enough stood to hold on.
Just barely.
Plataea was never the same. No one cheered.
I've been on a hundred fields, honey. I've won against the odds and seen black defeat, but that's the only time I've seen men so shattered by victory that they couldn't cheer. Nor did they pursue. The men of Plataea shifted and recovered their ranks, because they were good men, and then they stood, silent, awed by their own success. Then some of the fallen began to stand up – Myron got to his feet, bleeding from a thigh, the red coming in little spurts where something big had been cut.
Let me tell you how it is in the line, honey. When you go down – and you can fall just because you lose your balance – why, then you won't ever get up in that fight. Against honourable men, if you stay down and pull your shield over your body, no one will kill you just for sport. Maybe they will strip your armour if they win, but no one will kill you. You hope.
Anyway, Myron stood and began to sing. He sang the 'Ravens of Apollo' from the Daidala and all the voices of Plataea took it up, boys and men. We all knew it. It was an odd song for a battlefield – the song men sing while they wait for the ravens to pick us a tree to make the statue of the fake bride. Who knows why Myron chose that song?
Across the field, the Athenians were slowing. They'd never reached the Peloponnesians, and now, ranks untouched, they were coming to a halt and heads were turning to look at us.
Just two stades away, the Spartans halted in perfect order, covering their camp.
The Plataeans kept singing.
Then Cleomenes made a mistake. He didn't trust the Thebans, and his Peleponnesian allies were running all the way back to their homes. And the Plataean farmers were singing as if they could stop the Spartans every day, for ever. That song had more effect on the battle than Pater's stand, honey. That song was defiance of a different sort. Whether it was true or not, the 'Ravens of Apollo' told Cleomenes that there were men opposing him who would not flinch if he came on again. And if we held him for a hundred heartbeats, then all the hoplites in Attica would be in his flank.
Cleomenes sent a herald. He requested a truce to collect his dead.
By our law of war, this ended the battle and allowed the defeated free passage home. And it meant that, whatever the Thebans might do, the Spartans were done.
What changed our world was that Cleomones sent the herald to us rather than to the Athenians. That was respect. They knew they were the better men, and men who are better are never petty. They respect accomplishment, and they respected that we tried.
So their herald came and he walked towards Pater. Pater looked around, but the archon was dead and Myron, who had started the song, was down again – sitting on a rock, supported by his sons. Pater had two wounds on his sword arm; I had his helmet under my arm and he was pouring his canteen over his head.
'Hey!' Bion called. 'Hey – look sharp, Technes! The herald is coming.'
Pater looked up, and there was the Spartan, resplendent in his scarlet cloak, with a heavy bronze staff to show his status. He bowed.
Pater returned his bow, head dripping water. I remember how the water from his canteen mixed with the blood on his hands and arms.
'Cleomenes, King of Sparta, requests your permission to retrieve and bury his dead,' the herald intoned.
Pater didn't smile. I did – I was wearing a smile as big a wolf's. Hermogenes had his father's aspis on his own arm and he was grinning like a fool. Bion was grinning too. But Pater simply nodded.
'Our archon is dead, and our polemarch is badly wounded.' Pater turned to the Plataeans. 'Am I in command?' he asked.
Again there was no cheer – just a soft grumble. But every man in the first two ranks nodded. So Pater turned back to the herald.
'The Plataeans grant the truce,' he said. No mention of himself or his own name. Oh, he made me proud.
And with those words, the Battle of Oinoe came to an end. The Athenians killed a hundred Peloponnesians, more or less – the slow ones, I assume, since the Peloponnesian allies didn't linger to fight. They put up a magnificent trophy on the Acropolis, a chariot and a set of slave fetters, to celebrate their victory over the Spartans. The Medes later pulled it down and took the bronze, but the base is still there with eight lines of verse. They don't mention us. But on the day, they treated us like heroes come to earth. Miltiades ran up, his plume nodding, and embraced Pater and then every man he could find. His investment had paid off.
Men began to trickle off the ground. We had our dead to bury, and the Spartan helots were coming for their own.
We had forty-five dead. Seven of them died in the week after the battle, so on that morning, we had thirty-eight bodies. And one of them was my brother. He lay with his face to the enemy, a Spartan spear in his right side under his sword arm. He fell clutching the spear, and the other fifth- and sixth-rankers brought the Spartan down and killed him because my brother held that spear point with his dying hands.
I wept. Pater wept. Bion and Hermogenes wept, and Myron and Dionysius wept. We all cried.
The Spartans had nine dead. Two more died later – so we lost forty-five to their eleven. If you want to understand the heart of phalanx fighting, honey – and I can see you don't – you need to see that Pater killed three of those Spartans and that our whole thousand lived or died by the actions of a few valiant men. Myron didn't give a foot of ground. Bion followed Pater into the hole Pater made. Epictetus and his son gave ground, but then they locked their shields with men in the second rank and held the rush, and Dionysius killed a Spartan in the fifth rank when they broke through. Take away any of those actions and the result is different.
Karpos, our best potter, died, and Theron, son of Xenon, who made all the harnesses and wineskins and much of the armor the men wore. Pater said he was the first to die, a Spartan spear in his throat at the first contact, and he didn't live to see Cleomenes come to us for truce – after refusing our embassy.
We buried the dead – the boys and the slaves did the work. The men sat and drank. They had endured the storm of bronze for the time it takes a man to run the stadion, and they were exhausted.
That night it rained. We were wet and cold, but Pater came and wrapped his arms and his heavy Thracian cloak around me. He was still crying, but he held me tightly, and after a while I slept. The rain stopped, and I was cooking eggs – I'd purchased a Boeotian hatful from a shy girl who had crept into our camp with the dawn. I used Pater's money, and his flash of a not-quite-smile told me I'd done right. I had a fine bronze patera with the figure of Apollo as the handle. It wasn't Pater's work – it was his father's work, and the planishing on the pan was like a reminder of greater days. If we'd lost, it would have been loot for a Spartan.
Miltiades came to Pater with a wagon. He had a dozen Athenians with him, important men with Tyrian purple in their cloaks. Pater was eating a bowl of eggs with a scrap of stale bread.
'Technes of Plataea, all Athens mourns your losses.' Miltiades bowed.
He had a priestess of Athena with him, and she was dressed, even at that hour, in the whitest chiton I'd ever seen, with gold thread in the hems. Bumpkin that I was, I couldn't take my eyes off her.
Pater had a mouth full of egg. He swallowed. His eyes were red from weeping, and he wore a damp chitoniskos of linen that had once been off white and neatly pleated, and was now grey with age and shapeless. There were slaves in our force who dressed better than Pater.
He rose to his feet. 'I was not chosen in the assembly to lead the men of Plataea,' he said formally. 'But until the assembly chooses another, I accept your words on behalf of all the men of our city.'
Miltiades spread his arms wide. It was interesting to watch him be a public man – I had only seen him at close range. He was about twenty-five then. Just coming into his powers.
'Plataea brought one eighth of the force we had to face the Peloponnesians,' Miltiades said. 'We offer Plataea one quarter of all that we took with our spears, and we call you the bravest of the allies.'
The wind ruffled their cloaks. Pater said nothing, but the men of Plataea behind him were gathering, and they began to shout – approval, almost a cheer. Then the priestess stepped forward and she chanted a prayer to the Lady, and all the men present joined her. Then she purified us, for killing. She was good – her voice was gentle and firm, and every man felt better for her words, and the spirit of the goddess that we call the Lady and Athenians call Athena was on all of us.
Miltiades invited Pater and Myron to attend him at a meeting of the commanders. I found Pater my best chlamys, and I put it on him with a gold pin from the loot. Pater was above such things, but Myron gave me a nod of approval. No one wanted Pater to look like a ragman in front of the Athenians.
The two of them came back before the sun was high, and their faces were strained, and Pater had black marks in the corners of his eyes. Pater ignored my questions, and sent me and Hermogenes and every other boy we could find to assemble all the Plataeans.
There were only a thousand hoplites and another thousand boys and slaves. We assembled before the birds stopped singing. We were on the hilltop by the old fort, and Pater and Myron carried spears, as if they, jointly, were Speakers. Pater nodded at Myron, and Myron held up his spear.
'Men of Plataea!' he said. He was leather-pale. He'd lost quite a bit of blood, and he walked carefully where the Athenian doctor had burned the wound near his groin. He might have been a walking dead man, if the deadly archer willed it. But Myron had the courage that allows a man to go about his business, even with a wound. 'The archon died serving the city. We have no new archon and we have no strategos.'
'Who cares?' someone called. 'Let's go home. We can debate in the assembly!'
'Men of Plataea,' Myron said. His voice was quiet, but men were silent to listen to him. 'The army of Thebes is a day's march away, and the men of Athens call on us to stay and fight.'
That was greeted with a wave of grumbles and muttering.
Pater stood forth. He held up his own spear. 'Don't be fools!' he shouted. 'We fight them tomorrow with Athens by our side, or we face them in a month at home, alone.' That shut them up. Then Pater nodded. 'We stopped Sparta!' he said. 'What has Thebes got?'
Now they cheered. Everyone hated Thebes. Sparta was a noble and scary monster from travellers' tales, but Thebes was the familiar enemy.
Myron pointed at Pater. 'I move that Technes of the Corvaxae be strategos.'
They didn't roar. Pater had none of the magnetism that can make men love you. But every hand went in the air.
Myron nodded to Pater. Pater pointed his spear at Myron. 'I move that Myron of the house of Heracles be archon of the Plataeans until we stand in the assembly.'
And so it was done.
Before the day was another hour older, the shield-bearers were packing. We had donkeys now – dozens, as part of the spoils of the Peloponnesian camp. I was trying to figure out a foreign pack frame on a stubborn beast when Pater's hand fell on my shoulder.
'Take your brother's armour,' he said. 'And take Hermogenes as your shield-bearer. You will stand with the men tomorrow. No more playing with the boys.'
And just like that, I was a hoplite.