The Isle of Stone

16.

The 292 Lacedaemonian survivors, including 120 Spartiates, marched down the hill between the divided halves of Demosthenes’ army. Epitadas, who had been unconscious through the final assault, was carried to the shore on a litter rigged out of two spears and some sailcloth. Antalcidas went by his side, not looking at the Athenians around him. Since he had been the recalcitrant face of the Lacedaemonians earlier that day, the Athenians focused their scorn on him, staring with smug grins, whistling and hissing at him as they would to some down-at-heels tart in the street. In their shame, the Spartans marched with their shields reversed, crimson lambdas hidden.

Frog, who went behind, was still not satisfied with his day’s work. It struck him as unfair that Antalcidas would receive all the notoriety for leading the Spartans; the decision to surrender, after all, was his. His only gratification came late in the day, when he was about to join Altalcidas and Epitadas in the hold of the fleet’s fastest ship, the Terror. Just before he ducked into his new prison, Patronices, the deck man, shouted out an impertinent question to him.

“Capitulators! Shall we suppose your dead comrades are the real Spartans?”

Frog stopped, and with barely a moment to consider an answer, replied, “Athenian arrows would be wiser than the Athenians, if they could choose to fall on good men instead of cowards.”

Frog and six others were shackled to separate posts in the bowels of the ship. The holds of Athenian triremes were not capacious, with the most clearance available atop the keel, between the rows of the bottommost oarsmen. If there was a place on a ship more disagreeable than the seats of the hold men, it was where the Lacedaemonians were imprisoned: a mere crawl space, with no more than three feet of headroom, among stinking blocks of cobble ballast and the unkempt feet of sixty exhausted, sweating men. Nor were their miseries private ones, with those in the lowest stratum of Athenian society able to peep down between the thwarts at the conceited Spartans, free to try out all the insults their frustration had inspired over seven years of war.

The hold rode well below the waterline, so Antalcidas could see nothing of the outside world but the glow of reflected daylight from between the oarsmen’s seats. A scratching sound along the keel told him when the ship reached ground at Koryphasion. The Athenian oarsmen, who never seemed to shut their mouths, complained about the miserable meal they were about to eat, as they disembarked by sections.

From his vantage in the semidarkness, Antalcidas watched as an Athenian doctor came down the ladder. When they learned that the original commander of the Spartans was not dead but only wounded, the Athenians spared no effort in making certain their adversary reached Athens alive. Cleon’s personal doctor had extracted the arrow and cleaned the wound before they left the island. When he came down to inspect Epitadas’ dressings, Antalcidas addressed him, saying, “You would be better off letting him die, friend.”

Scratching his bearded neck, the doctor spared him barely a glance before vanishing up the ladder. His charge, apparently, did not include tending the wounds of the other Lacedaemonians.

The Athenians seemed to be in a hurry. After only a few hours the hull was refloated and the oarsmen, only half-rested, filed back to their seats. There was much noise on the deck as the masts were stepped and sails bent on them. Soon they set off again; the ship adopted a rocking motion that suggested they had entered open water. It was then that Stilbiades, the bosun, served the prisoners their first meal in days: a husk of bread and one half-blackened onion for each man, and a sip of water from a common canteen. As Frog’s lips touched the water before Antalcidas’, the latter refused to touch it, though he was cotton-mouthed with thirst.

Frog produced a bitter smile. “So I see we should add spitefulness to Stone’s list of faults.”

Antalcidas ignored him. He had nothing to offer tremblers but his scorn.

Epitadas roused sometime during the first day at sea. He tested his shackles, then took a long look at his new surroundings.

“Is this Hades?” he asked.

“Not yet, Brother.”

He stared in Antalcidas’ direction, his expression blank, as if he could not recognize the figure sitting there. “You sound like my brother,” he said. “But that can’t be true. Antalcidas affirmed his loyalty to his family upon his honor as a Spartiate, and so must be among the virtuous dead in battle, not chained like a dog.”

The words cut deep into Antalcidas. Closing his eyes, he replied, “By the gods, I swear that I kept my word. It is not my choice that we are here.”

Frog perked up at this exchange, anxious once again that his role not be overlooked. “I can barely see you, Epitadas, but your ignorance marks you well enough.”

“I don’t remember leaving Frog in command, but you, Brother,” said Epitadas.

“I was in command.”

“Then the fault is yours. There is nothing more to say.”

“No, keep talking!” interjected Cleinias, the hold man, who was listening the whole time. To hear dissension among Spartans was most entertaining during long, dull days at sea.

Antalcidas tried to appeal to Epitadas through the day and later that night, when the ship was beached southeast of Methone and the prisoners were unshackled for a brief turn on the top deck. Epitadas did not rise when Stilbiades removed his chains; after trying to rouse him with his boot, the bosun said, “Suit yourself,” and shackled him again. In his haste to escape the stench, Stilbiades missed the six-inch long shard of wood Epitadas had torn from the post during the few moments when his hands were free.

The next day his brother’s silence began to weigh on Antalcidas. He spoke to him in monologues, hoping he might stumble on some combination of words that would unstick Epitadas’ tongue. He tried reminiscing about good things, such as the beauties of Laconia, better days on the battlefield, stories from the Rearing, and the joy of festival days. But as time passed, and Epitadas persisted in his silence, Antalcidas’ tone became more bitter. At last, when he thought he could stand it no longer, he flung the rebuke he had longed to make for more than twenty years:

“So this is the thanks you give for the favor I did you!” he cried. When Epitadas’ eyes shifted to him at last, he went on, “Yes, you remember, don’t you? The way you killed that other boy, and how you got away with it because Thibron took the blame. And why was he exiled? It was on my word!”

The other gave nothing but a sour smile and a chuckle, a little contemptuous hack, as he turned his face away.

“As you sit there you may ask yourself how many brothers would take such a risk. And yet here you are, stinking with a murderer’s pollution, presuming to pass judgment on other men! Isn’t it you who should feel shame, Epitadas?”

Frog jerked his chains with his excitement. “Yes, I had always wondered about that story! So Thibron was innocent, was he? Poor fellow!”

The oarsman, Cleinias, stuck his face down below his seat again, declaring, “Betrayal, recriminations, regrets… this stuff is precious! Pure gold!”

Epitadas was dwelling on his shame, to be sure, but not over Thibron. He was mulling instead over the fate of old Cleomenes I, the Agiad king from before the time of the Persian Wars. Cleomenes was one of the great kings in Spartan history-the scourge of the Argives at Tiryns, shrewd manipulator of Lacedaemon’s enemies. When Darius of Persia demanded tokens of earth and water to signal Sparta’s submission, Cleomenes had the Persian emissaries thrown in a pit, bidding them find their earth and water there. The king suffered his downfall shortly after, when he bribed the Delphic oracle to proclaim illegitimate his rival, the Eurypontid king Demaratus. When the sacrilege was uncovered, he fled the country and attempted to organize the Arcadians against Sparta; word of the revolt moved the Gerousia to invite Cleomenes back, but a life of intrigue had already taken a toll on his mind. The king went mad, lashing out with his staff at anyone he could reach. His family was at last compelled to imprison him.

Cleomenes decided he could not live with his shame. He was guarded by a helot with a knife. The king, using his natural talents of command, compelled the weak-minded man to hand it over. After ordering the helot from the room, he used the blade to flay himself alive, cutting the skin from his legs, working his way up his body until he carved bolts of flesh from his abdomen. When he had half disemboweled himself, Cleomenes called the guard back, returned his knife, and died.

Cleomenes’ end was a popular story among the boys of the Rearing, presenting as it did both a gory tale and an implicit challenge: under similar circumstances, would any of them have the courage to make his end just as emphatic? Epitadas had always declared that he had. Branded now by defeat, locked in the bowels of an enemy ship, surrounded by tremblers and low-caste Athenians, his time now seemed at hand.

He grasped the wooden stake in his sweaty palm, cherishing the prospect of his release. Until then, he would refuse every comfort, shut his ears to the words of friend and foe, and wait for the dark to prove his virtue.