The Isle of Stone

1.

Twenty-eight years earlier, Stone, Frog, Redhead, and Cricket left the herd of young boys to enter the most junior of the single age-classes-a pack made up solely of youths who had started their education in the same year. Antalcidas had already learned much in the half decade since leaving home. Along with Tyrtaeus, he knew great swaths of Homer, and most of the basic marching songs such as “Castor’s Air.” He had his letters, and soon would be literate enough to decipher the simple battlefield dispatches that constituted the only proper reading of the Spartan male. And though he had not yet practiced marching in formation, he already knew the steps of the Pyrrhic dance, which included most of the dodging, thrusting, and turning movements he would need in battle.

Survival out of doors, in all seasons, became second nature to him. He was proud of the engrained dirt on his knees and elbows, and the calluses that clad his feet. After his boyhood tunic was taken away, replaced only by a single cloak issued to him each year, he grew to despise the wearing of any clothes. Noble Thibron looked with approval on anyone who went around in defiant nakedness, standing up straight in front of the girls as they whispered and pointed in the streets. To Antalcidas they would exclaim, “There goes the boy who throws stones!” and laugh in mockery until, despite himself, he blushed in his hurt. Caring what females thought was one weakness he had not yet conquered.

To be sure, in their time the girls had also come in for derision. With their homebound diets, most of them had grown taller and stronger than the boys, and liked to show off the strength of their legs by gathering their tunics in bustles above their waists. Yet in their pride they would reveal exactly what they lacked. Antalcidas was much amused one day when, on the banks of the Eurotas, he spied three girls trying to piss standing up. They made such a mess of it, wetting themselves more than the ground, that he and his packmates fell out of the weeds laughing at them.

With the passage of years the attitudes of the adults hardened toward the boys. Every grown male in Laconia seemed to have a stake in their proper instruction, even to the extent of applying discipline. Boys who went around with eyes up or arms sticking out of their cloaks were rebuked in the street. Redhead and Cricket earned worse after an evening foray into Limnae, where they were caught taking cheeses from a storage pit. They were beaten first by the owner of the pit, who worked the lash with such skill that the boys’ cries were heard as far as Kynosoura three stades away. When they were let go, another man, a complete stranger but an Equal, seized them by the arms.

“Are you the brats who were beaten for stealing cheeses?” he asked them.

“Yes.”

The man struck him on the shoulder with his walking stick, then tried to kick Cricket in the rear end.

“By the gods, what was that for?”

“That’s for being clumsy enough to get caught!” the stranger cried.

Most of his time in the villages was spent in the gymnasia, where supplies like olive oil, wrestling powder, and sporting equipment were made available free to youngsters of both sexes. The most popular game was called, simply, “wall ball”: the boys would collect in a mob in front of a stone wall, against which one of them would serve a hard leather ball. The object for the receivers was to catch the ball on the fly. This had to be done with the competition doing everything it could to interfere, including pushing, punching, and tackling. The thrower served the ball as many times as he could, as long as no one caught it cleanly.

Antalcidas got to be very good at this game, standing in against boys much older and larger than himself. He had perfected a particular technique of his own, using the bodies of the competition to push off at just the right moment to receive the ball. As he showed off this skill one day, he noticed an old Spartiate sitting with Endius, resting his chin on the handle of his staff as he watched the boys exercise. Without making it too obvious, Antalcidas tried to read their lips as the men exchanged comments about this or that youth, saying things like “magnificent” or “an earthy break.” Other remarks-such as “nice, tight ring”-seemed so cryptic that he thought he must have misunderstood their words. But there was no mistaking his meaning when Endius called Antalcidas over to meet his guest.

“So I hear they call you Stone, young man. Can you tell me why?”

The old man’s glance flitted down Antalcidas’ oiled flanks, his eyes shaking slightly in their veiny whites as they lingered on the patch of his adolescent down.

“It is just a name,” the boy replied.

“What an admirable economy of words!” the old man exclaimed. “It would be a pleasure indeed to help cultivate such good instincts.”

Antalcidas yawned. The old man gave Endius a significant look. The latter, as if by some prior arrangement, rose and took the boy by the arm.

“Do you know to whom you are speaking?” asked the boy-herd in a confidential tone. When Antalcidas shrugged, he went on, “You must remember the campaign of Nicodemus the Regent, several years ago. He marched with two battalions of the army and ten thousand allies to succor our friends in Thebes. Our former allies in Athens, who were still smarting after the kings dismissed them from Ithome, tried to oppose his return over the Isthmus. Nicodemus met fourteen thousand Athenians at Tanagra and made them learn the price of their folly. Zeuxippos commanded the allied left wing.”

The old man did not feign modesty as he was so flatteringly introduced. Instead, he used his staff to leverage himself to his feet and placed a hand on Antalcidas’ shoulder. As he came close, the boy could smell the smoke of a thousand campfires in his beard, and the vinegar from a thousand bowls of black broth seeping through the pores of his sagging skin. “It’s been quite a long time since I’ve offered my sponsorship,” he said.

“You could not ask for a steadier hand,” pressed Endius.

To attract the attention of an elder sponsor was a requisite part of the Rearing. What Antalcidas had not expected was to be approached by so old a Spartiate. Most mentors were young men in their twenties, barely out of the Rearing themselves, who tutored with one eye on their pupils and the other on the elders who judged them in turn. Who would supervise a man as distinguished as Zeuxippos?

“Maybe I should seek my father’s counsel…” he suggested.

“Zeuxippos is your father. As am I, and every Equal alive or dead, all of whom would have been pleased to learn at the knee of such a teacher…”

“Really, dear Endius, there is no need to force the issue!” said Zeuxippos. “Let the boy take counsel with anyone he wants. I trust he will not be disappointed at what he learns.”

In fact, Antalcidas had glimpsed his father only once since leaving home. Molobrus’ battalion was marching over the Eurotas bridge, on their way to stiffen the backs of the Megarians and Corinthians in yet another face-off with Athens. From the roadside the boys watched them, the great crimson line, setting out as they had for centuries with spearheads up and voices raised in song. Ahead went the fire-carriers bearing embers from the altar of Zeus-the-Leader in clay vessels suspended from poles. Behind the right shoulder of each hoplite followed his personal attendant in a white tunic edged with red, packing his master’s helmet, shield, and camp equipment. It was widely understood among the boys, thanks to rumors deliberately spread by Endius, that Lacedaemonian servants marched better than the elite infantry of other Greek cities. Beyond the facade of well-heeled gentlemen-soldiers, much of the rank and file in the Athenian or Theban or Argive armies bore inferior panoplies and were almost random in their footwork. Among the Lacedaemonians, however, everyone had the bearing of a gentleman, and no man was ever on the wrong foot.

And then, abruptly, Antalcidas saw his father in the line. Molobrus marched with his cap pushed back on his head, his face open and smiling as he sang the praises of Apollo. Antalcidas could feel the warmth of his humor like the heat of a bonfire as he stood nearby. His father was relaxed, good-humored, kidding with his comrades in a way he never did at home. Antalcidas only saw his father for a moment. But that brief glimpse froze him, because he recognized nothing about the man. It was as if the person he had once known was a mere ghost of this, the true Molobrus, who existed only in a place where Antalcidas must be absent. Molobrus’ eyes swept over the crowd as the paean reached its climax; his eyes passed over his son without a flicker of recognition.

Some time later he saw Zeuxippos again. The old man was approaching the grove where the Gerousia would meet that morning, while Antalcidas’ pack was on its way into Mesoa to take instruction in the chorus. Zeuxippos called to him, “O Stone, what did your father advise?”

Antalcidas presented himself without shyness or shame.

“You and my father are wise men, so you should know what he said.”

“Just as I thought,” Zeuxippos replied. Placing two fingers under Antalcidas’ chin, he raised the boy’s face to the light. “Your features are coarse, but in spirit and body you have promise. I accept the burden. You will be instructed in tactics, government, diplomacy, how to resist the temptations of gold, women, and foreigners. Above all, you will learn the two skills essential to our life: how to take orders, and how to give them to other men. With your trust-do I have your trust?-I will make your mind worthy of your magnificence.”

Antalcidas allowed himself to be inspected a bit longer than modesty dictated, gazing off into the dying mist until he became aware of his packmates whispering furiously behind him. In truth, he had as much reason to trust Zeuxippos as he did any prospective patron. Yet, in a way he could not have understood, his mother’s wounds had done their part in shaping his fears. He returned to the pack as the other boys regarded him with ill-concealed envy.

“Maybe if we ask him nicely, Stone will let us play with his knucklebones!” shouted Frog. This was the worst kind of insult, because only girls played with knucklebones in Sparta. But by the same token only girls were too proud to take a joke. Men of virtue were supposed to accept the ridicule of their fellows with equanimity. Antalcidas might have expected better from Frog, having saved him from a worse beating at the hands of the older boys, but he showed nothing but a smile. After all, was he not magnificent?