The Isle of Stone

8.

It was testimony to Lacedaemonian discipline that they could march on Sphacteria at all. They had no pipers that day to govern their pace, and the irregularity of the ground made it impossible for them to keep their ranks straight as they descended the hill. The Athenians, to Epitadas’ contempt, did not even try: Demosthenes had instructed them not to advance, but to stand still and let the archers and peltasts do the killing.

The Spartans came within bow shot. At first, their upturned spears knocked down a few of the arrows, until the archers found their range and the missiles began to drop vertically down on them. Antalcidas watched from the back as noble Spartiates were stuck with arrows straight through the crowns of their helmets. He could see a few of their faces as they twisted and fell-some dropped in their tracks like men struck by lightning; others stood for a long time with faces aghast, disbelieving, as if they had suffered a personal insult.

Peltasts pressed close on the left with their slings. Epitadas barked an order, sending two platoons of under-thirties out of the phalanx and after the peltasts. Antalcidas had seen this maneuver done better and faster elsewhere. The young men moved sluggishly, as if underwater; a good many ran as if bothered by wounds to their feet. The Athenians pulled up short, turned, and ran; being more lightly armed, most got away to slightly higher ground where the archers stood. Retreating, the under-thirties were then exposed to missiles both ahead and behind, from the bowmen shooting from the other side of the island. Half of the Lacedaemonians were wounded as they clambered back to the phalanx. A good many never made it back.

That was all Antalcidas needed to see. The enemy had demonstrated the principle behind his tactics-all that was left now was to let it succeed. With the Athenian hoplites unwilling to engage and their archers free to hit the phalanx from either flank, Epitadas could not grapple with the enemy anywhere. Nor could the Lacedaemonians survive in the open with their inadequate headgear.

Peltasts attacked from the right. Two fresh platoons bolted out to meet them. Same mistake, same result: the peltasts ran away, and the Spartans were plied with arrows. Antalcidas looked to Frog who, to his credit, seemed discomfited to be proven correct.

The stomping of thousands of feet stirred up the freshly burned ground, sending up a curtain of fine, black dust. The Spartans could no longer see where the arrows were coming from. The slingers and peltasts, meanwhile, were growing bolder, appearing out of the gloom no more than a few yards away. On impulse, Antalcidas darted out at one of the attackers, approaching him from the blind side as he turned to use his sling: Antalcidas speared him with such force that the tip passed through the man’s body and pierced his leather corselet from the inside. Stone tried in vain to extract his weapon intact as the enemy peltasts swarmed around him. “Use the cover!” he shouted to his brother as he planted his foot in the dead man’s back and, pulling the spear right and left as blood arched from some torn vessel, snapped the ashwood shaft. “Use the dust to cover a withdrawal…!” Someone came at him through the gloom, swinging a sword. Antalcidas blocked a blow by driving forward with his shield. The assailant fell back, but there was no time to finish him. Antalcidas dropped the broken shaft and retreated back to the phalanx.

The dust had become a noxious cloud, coating their throats and stinging their eyes. The Lacedaemonians kept their silence, but the Athenian hoplites were hooting and shouting, and the peltasts screwing up their courage with wild cries as they pressed the attack. All the while the arrows kept dropping from above, the tumult muffling the snap of the bowstrings, the gloom hiding the volleys until they struck. Under the circumstances, even the Spartans, who credited themselves for their calm in the face of battlefield chaos, turned with worried eyes to Epitadas.

And still he did not concede. Instead, the phalanx was ordered forward at a half march, inching along like a man groping for something in the dark. The enemy hoplites were somewhere ahead-certainly as encumbered as the Lacedaemonians were, perhaps equally as contemptuous of men who fought at a distance. Perhaps they might meet in the center, and give each other someone to kill in the time-honored way. There was still a chance a battle might break out in the middle of the massacre.

But they never saw the Athenians. Though they marched for an eternity, the hoplites seemed to recede from them, as if Demosthenes had somehow compelled the island to serve his purpose by stretching longer. Antalcidas was now stepping on or over his comrades, the finest troops in the world, now reduced to gray lumps on the gray earth. As losses mounted and the men closed ranks, and the phalanx seemed to contract on itself, Antalcidas felt he could no longer keep silent. “Epitadas!” he shouted, packing the magnitude of his despair into the one, desperate word.

Through the haze he saw the shadow of a horsehair crest-the badge of his brother’s office-turn toward him. Somewhere far beneath the unceasing clang of Attic vowels, he felt a Laconian marching command that he did not hear as much as feel in his bones. The order, relayed by the platoon leaders to all the men, reached him just as he saw the forward ranks pivot.

There was no time for fancy countermarches now, no stepping in place to wait for the officers to lead the way back. Everyone just spun on their heels and retreated up the hill. The reversal of direction was missed by the Athenian bowmen, who went on pouring arrows through the cloud to where the Spartans would have been. When the phalanx was spotted it was halfway up the slope and barely in range; as bad as the advance had been, Antalcidas saw no one fall during the retreat.