Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War

XLVII

I was with the Spartan colonel Philoteles at Teas

[Polemides resumed] when reports came from Athens of the execution of Pericles and the generals. The Spartans could not believe it. First Alcibiades deposed, now their best men put to death. Had Athens gone mad? There was a ditty then.

Two-eyed the Owl-men

Once polled sound as brass.

Now they ballot with one eye,

The one in their ass.

Heaven had severed Athens from her senses for the excesses of her empire. Such was the Deity's requital, the street-corner prophets proclaimed, for the hubris of imperial pride.

Spartan morale soared. Desertions from Athens redoubled. I passed along Lysander's quays that autumn; one saw the same faces as at Samos, so many were the oarsmen, islanders, who had come over. Even the ships were the same. Cormorant, Lysias' squadron leader, was now Orthia. Vigilant and Sea Swallow, captured at Arginousai from the Cat's Eyes, were Polias and Andreia. Already in the taverns one heard shorttimers' jabber; sailors and marines spooked of some fluke demise before war's end and discharge.

Athens had cobbled together her final fleet. Every jack who could piss standing up had been conscripted, even the Knights.

The generals were so shaky they didn't even plunder. One defeat would finish them, while the Spartans, floated by Persian gold, could absorb loss after loss, simply making each good and continuing to fight.

I had put back to Ephesus after Samos. Where else could I go, with homicide appended to treason on my proscript? Not that anyone noticed amid the flocks of deserters, turncoats, and renegades lining up at the recruiting desks beneath the red rag. I refound Telamon. A new generation of officers had come out from Sparta, many mates of my youth. They had won their colonelcies or come East to try.

Philoteles, under whom I now took service, was the lad of my agoge platoon, twenty-six years past, who had with such empathy informed me of the burning of my father's farm. Now a division commander, he vowed to make good that long-ago injustice.

“When we take Athens I'll set the title in your fist, Pommo, and see him racked who dares cry foul.”

Here is how I became an assassin. We were training marines, Telamon and I, trying to stay out of trouble. Lysander, who had been recalled to Sparta on expiry of his commission as navarch, was back. The ephors had appointed him vice-admiral under Aracus, since no Spartan may hold supreme command twice.

Lysander was chief, however, in all but name. Not hintermost among his directives was the elimination of political resistance within the cities. The Spartans are past masters at this, having acquired the practice from the subjugation of their own helots.

Now Lysander recruited these themselves, the neodamodeis, the freed Spartan serfs, to carry out his campaign of terror.

These helots make able troops in units under Spartan officers.

On their own, however, they are notorious. Atrocities began coming to light. Philoteles approached Telamon and others, myself among them, who could be entrusted to act with restraint.

We were called “summoners.” It worked like this. We were issued warrants, called “writs of remission.” The names upon these were of officials and magistrates, naval and army officers, any who had held positions of responsibility under Athenian rule and whose sympathies might lie opposed to “freedom.” In Spartan eyes these were traitors, plain and simple. The bills were death warrants. Arrest was followed by execution, at once and on the spot.

We endeavored to be clement. A man was granted time to shrive himself or scribble his testament. If he'd fled to the interior and we'd had to chase him, we brought him back. The flesh was spared, as much as possible, and bodies released for burial to kin.

There was a science to it, this state-sanctioned homicide. It was best to take a man in the street or the marketplace, where dignity enjoined him from putting up a fuss. A good arrest was civilized.

No weapons were drawn or even exposed. The man himself, recognizing his position, sought decorum. The bravest summoned quips. One could not but admire them.

You ask, how did one feel about this? Was he shamed, schooled in the honorable profession of arms, to discover himself a butcher?

Telamon for his part lost not a wink and scorned all who did. To him this work, though distasteful, was as legitimate an aspect of the warrior's trade as siege operations or the erection of ramparts.

As for the victims, their graves were dug. If not us to speed their luckless passage, others would perform it and with far less craft.

Athens' grave was dug too. For my children and my brother's, my aunt and sister-in-law and Eunice if she cared, I must be there when the city fell, and possessed of sufficient station to manage their preservation. Of such self-exoneration is participation in terror comprised. I knew. I didn't care.

One day Telamon and our party were on a spree, with women, on the coast, when a man-of-war beating north hailed us to put ashore prisoners. When the longboat came in, I noted the warrant officer's red hair and hazel eyes.

It was Forehand, Endius' man.

There was gray in the fellow's beard and a cloak of scarlet about his shoulders. No longer a youth in service, he had been freed and enfranchised. I congratulated him with all my heart. “And where bound, beating north this time of year?”

“To Endius, on the Hellespont. He is there now, treating with Alcibiades.”