The Isle of Stone

11

As difficult as Damatria’s younger years had been, her maturity was a succession of personal triumphs. In business she was indomitable: when she set her sights on acquiring or altering a piece of property, nothing could stop her. The Equals were as innocent as children about matters of finance, caring only about keeping score in the ways Lacedaemonians had for centuries. They had no conception of how the world had changed-of how the pressures of population and political unrest were filling Greece with thousands of unemployed mercenaries. Power in the very near future would not be measured in terms of who could mobilize the most citizens, but of who spent most wisely within the rising empire of money. The small sack of foreign staters she had once begrudged herself had now grown into a treasure chest bursting with cash.

Her greatest competition in this came not from among the men, but from their wives. With the helots employed in the tasks left to wives of other cities, the good women of Sparta were free to sample many of the delights abjured by their dutiful husbands. As their spouses dined on bitter bread and pork blood, the wives grew plump on delicacies imported from the islands, Sicily, and beyond; while the men made do with tunics of crimson sackcloth, their women went around the markets in Egyptian linen and Persian silk. In their fortunate idleness, the wives had opportunity to learn much about the value of wealth.

Damatria managed to enlarge her holdings at the expense of her neighbors, as well as acquire other estates in Messenia and on the island of Cythera. Her moneylending interests at the port attracted applicants from as far as Samos, until she owned a piece of virtually every ship plying the Aegean from Gytheion to Asia. Her gamble on the production of wheat had paid off so handsomely that she was providing bread for half the messes in the city. She even tried her hand, in partnership with Isidas, at bankrolling a four-horse chariot team for the games of the 85th Olympiad; in a suspicious decision, her team was awarded second place after crossing the line dead even with a chariot sponsored by none other than one of the Olympic judges. Barring scandal, whatever she put her mind to seemed destined for success.

Yet as she grew wealthier Damatria grew less happy. With her husband under her strict control and his lover grown ugly under her burden, she had no enemies left to defeat. In the void that was left she had much time to consider the errors of her past ways-particularly the injustice she had done to her eldest son. For what had Antalcidas done to deserve the resentment she had heaped on him? With what, except the love of a devoted son, had he ever repaid her? Indeed, what was her rape next to the pain of a mother like poor Gyrtias, who had lost four sons not in glorious battle, but to disease? In the pit of the night, when she thought with fondness of the times when a small voice called out to her, she was filled with regret at how she had behaved. “If only you could come to me now, my dear baby!” she would say to her empty bedroom, her arms extended in the dark. But Antalcidas was gone then, on campaign beyond the mountains in Thyreatis, Doris, the Megarid, and the time when her self-reproach could mean anything to him was long past.

Epitadas broke her heart in his own way. The fact that she had showered him with advantages had the effect of teaching him to expect her devotion. In those times when she was of no use to him-which were increasingly frequent-he seemed to regard her with the respect due to a used napkin. When she spoke to him, his face showed his impatience; when she sent him gifts of food he was known to give them away to helots and dogs. Salvaging her pride, she came to him and demanded the deference befitting a mother of Spartiates. Epitadas laughed, embraced her in a way that was faintly mocking, and asked what gifts she had brought him.

And so, for different reasons, she could only rejoice at a distance at the success of her two sons. Thanks to her patronage, Epitadas was welcomed into the Spit Companions, and in the ensuing years became one of the most sought-after bachelors in the city. Antalcidas emerged as an able field commander in small engagements with Arcadians, Argives, and Phocians. He then surprised her by making a fine marriage with a Heraclid heiress named Andreia. This girl was too precious for her taste-all blond hair and girlish calves and a supercilious attitude-but Damatria cultivated her strenuously since their marriage in the hopes of another chance with Antalcidas. Iris oil from Ionia was a particular favorite of the girl’s. Damatria had just received another shipment of the stuff from Caria, packed in a darling little alabaster flask, when news reached the city that joined her to Andreia in a way she had not anticipated.

Under normal circumstances, measures were taken to assure that brothers did not serve in the same units of the Spartan army. They had lately ended up together, though, when soldiers were chosen by lot for a special garrison duty. Now it appeared that the brothers were on an island, and furthermore that their garrison would be there for some time. Damatria turned to Dorcis’ old shipping maps to check the location. Was it a big island like Zacynthus or Leukas? A mere rock like little Prote? She sent her chamberlain back to the agora for more details. He returned an hour later with bad news: the Lacedaemonians were blockaded by a large Athenian fleet, with no supplies or reinforcements getting through. The sound of the island’s name, Sphacteria, suggested to Damatria the course of a blunt knife tearing a throat.