A Lesson on Messenia - An Excerpt from A Peerless Peer

When it became completely dark, they had no choice but to find a relatively sheltered fold in the mountains and settle in for the night. They tethered and fed the horses, and then dug themselves into the leaves to set up a tent. They cooked a meal over a fire they built at the entrance to the tent, then crawled inside and lay down with Beggar between them.

After a moment Leonidas asked, “Is this safe?”

“The fire will keep away the wild beasts,” Mantiklos assured him.

“I was thinking of your countrymen,” Leonidas answered, remembering with unwanted vividness all the childhood stories of Messenians slitting the throats of unsuspecting Spartans. It even occurred to him that Mantiklos, up to now kept in check by the fact that they had

been with the Spartan army where Leonidas was surrounded by his comrades, might have been awaiting this opportunity.

“You are well armed and well trained. It is unlikely that the kind of men who live in the wilderness could kill you. And there is Beggar, too.”

The bitch lifted her head at the sound of her name, looked over at Mantiklos, then yawned and flopped her head back down, obviously intent on sleep after the long, hard journey.

“Do you regret your decision [to seek employment with me]?” Leonidas asked abruptly, the cold keeping him from sleep.

“No. But sometimes I wish I were not so alone.”

 “Alone?” Leonidas turned on his side and propped himself on one elbow to look at his attendant. They were never alone. They lived in barracks, drilled in units, went to the baths and gymnasia in groups, and sang in chorus. The rarest thing in the life of a young Spartiate

and his attendant was solitude.

“The others, the attendants, they’re all Laconian. They look on me with as much suspicion as you do. Not to mention your comrades! Sometimes I get very tired of all that suspicion and hostility.”

“It’s hard to forget two hundred years of warfare.”

“Especially when you declare war on us every year!” Mantiklos snapped back.

“That does not seem to bother the Laconian helots,” Leonidas pointed out. “And we only declare war on you because you are so hostile. We live in peace with the perioikoi, and Tegea, and all the cities of the League, which were our enemies once,” Leonidas pointed out.

“But not with Argos!” Mantiklos reminded him. “You only make peace with people who submit to you. Like hounds, the others have to lie down and offer you their jugular. Then you accept them as long as they run in your pack. But if men are as proud as you, then you cannot abide them, and you fight until one or the other of you is destroyed.”

“Then all Messenia needs do to have peace is to submit—truly submit—to us.”

“But that doesn’t make sense! You admire courage above all else. You should respect us more for not being submissive! You should admire our spirit.”

“But you would never be satisfied with our admiration. You want control of your country back. You want independence for Messenia.”

“Of course we do!”

“But we can’t afford to give it to you. We can’t support the Spartan army—not in today’s world where other armies are so well equipped—without the riches of Messenia.”

“Then you will always live in fear of us.”

They were silent for a few moments, each following his own thoughts. After a while Leonidas asked in a low, earnest voice, “Why did you want to serve me?”

“I wanted to learn what the Spartan army was really like, from the inside. I wanted to understand what made it so good, so I would know how to fight it.”

Leonidas held his breath for a moment, registering that this was more dangerous than the murder he had feared. He should have thought of this earlier. “And now you will stay here and start training rebels?”

Mantiklos laughed. “If only it were that easy!”

“What do you mean?”

The other shrugged, then sat up to readjust the sheepskins he had spread over himself to help keep warm before asking, “Do you think there are many Messenians like me?”

“I have no idea.”

“You will see. Most of my countrymen are craven. They want their freedom only if others are willing to fight and die for it. They want independence only if it does not cost them anything. The bulk of my countrymen are whiners—always complaining and moaning about their fate, but unwilling to take any risks to change it.” With these words, Mantiklos lay down again and turned his back to Leonidas.

The following day they kept to the coastal road following the shore of the Gulf, and at last Mantiklos seemed to lose his inhibitions and began to talk. He started hesitantly, but when he realized that Leonidas was interested, he talked more and more expansively. He told Leonidas about the battles that had taken place in the surrounding countryside during the First and Second Messenian Wars.

Of course, Leonidas had already heard about these battles. They were an essential component of agoge curriculum. But he pretended otherwise, responding rather with wonder and pressing Mantiklos for details, because Mantiklos’ version of what had happened was very different from what was taught in the agoge.

Mantiklos stressed again and again that his forefathers had been heroic freedom fighters, while Leonidas’ forefathers represented brutal and corrupt power. Mantiklos’ ancestors had been crushed by greater numbers, greater wealth, superior weapons—never by the cleverness or courage of their adversaries. Yet when Leonidas looked around him, he saw that Messenia was richer and more prosperous than Laconia. Messenia should have had numbers and wealth on her

side. As for weapons, it does not take long to imitate the weapons and tactics of one’s adversaries. They taught that at the agoge, too: if the enemy has something that you find hard to defeat, then learn what it is and how to counter it—fast.

So Leonidas did not discard what he had learned in the agoge. He thought that the agoge version could not be so far from the truth, or he would be Mantiklos’ attendant and Mantiklos the wealthy hoplite—not the other way around. But he realized that the way one was told about the deeds of one’s ancestors had a huge impact on one’s perception of oneself.

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"Leonidas of Sparta -- A Peerless Peer" -- An Excerpt from Chapter 1

Cleombrotus was Leonidas twin brother. The news that Leonidas had killed a wild-boar reached him in his tent, where he was dicing with his seven mess-mates. Hearing that Leonidas had broken an arm in the encounter, Cleombrotus snorted and remarked contemptuously, “Lucky someone was around to rescue him from worse harm!”

When they had been little, Cleombrotus had been significantly bigger and stronger than Leonidas and had used both advantages to bully his brother. In the agoge they had been separated and rarely met, but Cleombrotus continued to excel, particularly at boxing, eventually winning in the youth competitions at Olympia. He had won the honours at the Feast of Artemis Orthea as well, and carried the title and trophy for life. Throughout these early years he had looked down on his smaller twin, sneering at him for failing to be elected herd-leader, for failing to win honours or Olympic laurels. But last year everything had turned upside down and bitter when both youth were 20 year old instructors at the agoge called eirenes. Cleombrotus’ lost his command after a case of unprecedented insubordination by his unit resulted in it being turned over to his twin brother.

 “That’s not what Alkander is saying,” the man who had brought Brotus the news noted.

“Alkander?! That trembler! He p-p-probably shit at the sight of the b-b-boar and didn’t notice what was g-g-going on.” Cleombrotus imitated the stutter that Alkander had had as a boy to the amusement of his companions.

When they stopped laughing, however, the messenger put him right. “You better come see the carcass first, Brotus. It’s huge! It took four men to carry it and the tusks are at least two-feet long. Alkander held it down with his spear, while Leonidas stabbed it with his sword ― they weren’t hunting and didn’t have a proper boar-spear with teeth  ― just their standard-issue war spears, which were still in it when Demaratus got there.”

“Demaratus?! What the hell was Leonidas doing hunting with the Eurypontids?” Cleombrotus made it sound like treason.

No one bothered to answer because everyone knew that Leonidas and Alkander had been friends since boyhood, long before Alkander’s sister married Demaratus. “Come and see for yourself.” Brotus’ comrade suggested sensibly, and they all tumbled out of the tent to have a look.

Torches were forbidden in a Spartan camp no less than in the city of Sparta, but they didn’t have much trouble finding the source of commotion. It was, after all, not yet late and most men had not gone to sleep. The arrival of Demaratus with this immense trophy had brought many men out of their tents, and word had rapidly spread that Leonidas had killed it.

Despite himself, Cleombrotus was impressed. The boar was the largest specimen of the species he had ever seen. Nor could he comfort himself that the beast was old, decrepit or lame. Not a hair was grey and there was not another injury upon its body but the ones sticky with fresh blood. The boar was muscular with bristling black hair and eyes that ― even in death ― were full of power and contempt for lesser creatures. How could Little Leo have vanquished such a beast? For the first time in his life, it occurred to Brotus that Leonidas might have qualities that he had failed to notice up to now. Leonidas, he registered, might be more than he appeared to be.

Writing about Thermopylae: Part II

Last week I talked about my initial reluctance to write about Thermopylae and the reasons for it. Today I want to focus on one particular aspect: the literary challenge.

 

The way I see it, if I were writing about Henry V of England, the historical record might be my guide, but Shakespeare would be my competition. And nothing about the real Battle of Agincourt would be so challenging as Shakespeare’s magnificent depiction of it. Never mind that the words he put into Henry’s mouth were never said by him – indeed, were probably based on the speech Edward of Woodstock made before Poitiers as recorded by Chandos’ Herald. Shakespeare remains the benchmark for any book of fiction about Henry V. Fortunately, I’m not writing about Henry V!

However, Thermopylae too appears in a number of works of fiction, and these have shaped our understanding of it and laid down the literary hurdles that any new book on the subject must successfully clear. I was personally introduced to Thermopylae – and indeed Ancient Sparta – by Caroline Dale Snedeker’s novel The Spartan. I read this book as a teenager, and it impressed me so much that I retained a life-long, if initially latent, interest in Sparta. I remembered it as a book about Thermopylae. But when I purchased and read it in preparation for my own description, I discovered that of the two hundred pages, only thirty-five were devoted to the battle, of which ten were the march north. Even the remaining twenty-five pages shy away from the issue in that they describe the fate of Aristodemos, the hero of the novel, and one of the two Spartiates who survived Thermopylae. Aristodemos, Herodotus tells us, was blind and behind the lines and did not actually fight, at least not on the last day. Snedeker’s account skirts around Thermopylae more than it describes it.

 

The opposite is true of Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire. Pressfield’s book starts and ends at Thermopylae and everything in between is more or less a device for making us identify with and understand what happened there. Rather like Shakespeare, Pressfield is a better story-teller than historian. It was reading Gates of Fire that reawakened the latent interest in Sparta that Snedeker had sparked in me decades earlier, and after reading Gates of Fire, I started doing research on ancient Sparta.  Being a historian, I read history books. My research slowly and painstakingly produced a vision of Sparta markedly different from Pressfield’s. Yet his story-telling is compelling, as the success of his novel proves. Pressfield is therefore the modern bench-mark for any fictional account of Thermopylae.

 

Before attempting my own account, therefore, I re-read Gates of Fire. The issue was not if or how historically accurate his account was, but rather how did he deploy his characters and evoke emotion? How did he make his story-telling so effective? Was there any point in going “toe-to-toe” with an internationally best-selling author? Or should I, like Snedeker, find a way of evading the issue? Most important, was there anything that I could say about Thermopylae that hadn’t already been said?

 

Astonishingly, when I re-read Gates of Fire, I came away feeling that Pressfield had done a magnificant job of describing male bonding on a battlefield and that his Thermopylae was very much about blood and guts and heroes. It uses the language of modern fighting men. It speaks to modern fighting men. It is a tribute to fighting men of all nations and ages.

But is that all that Thermopylae was and is that all it means to us?

Pressfield’s heroes are already crippled by the end of the first day of fighting, yet continue to perform feats of super-human strength and endurance, heedless of pain and physics for another two days. Pressfields heroes are demi-gods – like Achilles and Hektor.

But Leonidas was a real human being, a historical, not a mythical figure. So were the other 300 Spartans and 700 Thespeians. They all had real names, real (not divine) parents, and they felt real pain. They had only the strength of real men. Shouldn’t we honor them for what they were, rather than turn them into supermen?

 

Many people want supermen, cartoon-heroes, supernatural heroes. For them, there are lots of “Leonidases” on the market from films and cartoons to PC-games.

 

But it seems to me there are too few portrayals of Leonidas as a complex, human being, and this, I realized, could be my contribution to the literature on Thermopylae. My Thermopylae, I decided, would be about human beings doing exceptional, but not super-human things. And so at last, I sat down and wrote about Thermopylae.

News and Reviews

Readers of this blog might be interested in a event sponsored by English Heritage. Novelist Laura Wilson will conduct a workshop offering advice on writing historical fiction covering everything from conducting research to character development and negotiating matters of historical licence. The workshop will be held in Wellington Arch, London, on Nov. 29 from 6-9 pm. For more information go to: www.english-heritage.org.uk/events

I will be holding a similar event here in Leipzig on November 18. More on that in later blogs.

First, here are the most recent reviews of Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer.

Excellent description of difficult period...

by Brenda Miller (North Carolina), September 30, 2011
4.0 out of 5 stars

Helena Schrader has done it again, amazingly. In this, her second volume in the Leonidas trilogy, she has brought an admittedly difficult period in Leonidas' life to a level of sustained reader interest. The earlier volume covering the agoge period had an easily identifiable theme and historical framework, and the last volume, which will emphasize Thermopylae, also has an identifiable historical framework to build on. It is this interim period, about which very little is actually known, where Ms Schrader shows her skills as an historical novelist. It bears repeating here that Ms Schrader does and has done, her "homework" on ancient Sparta in this period. Her research is beyond reproach and although she embellishes (as she must),she does not make up her own facts. Although my own field of Greek historical interest is a much earlier period, I know enough about 5th Century Sparta to recognize the accuracy of her descriptions. I can also state that based on my 23 years as an Infantry officer in the US Army, Ms Schrader has clearly done a significant amount of research on armies, soldiers, and what motivates them and makes them cohesive winners.

As she states in her prefaces, Ms Schrader aims to correct general opinion of Sparta as being some sort of brutal producer of robot-like ironmen. She succeeds, to the point where I and I suspect other, at least male, readers, might say that she has gone a bit too far in describing Sparta as a "touchy-feely", sensitive, place where a straight-arrow, incorruptible, nice guy, like Leonidas could even survive, much less become a King and army commander. But there is no arguing with Ms Schrader's research and if such is the Sparta she has uncovered, then so be it.My only disappointment is that I have to wait now for a seemingly interminable period for the final volume of this trilogy!

Ms Schrader has done a superb job here putting flesh on the few historical bones that we have of Leonidas. She has written an absolutely excellent historical novel which should have widespread appeal and which, with the other two volumes, would make a fascinating movie. I would not hesitate to buy the completed trilogy as a gift for members of my own family of very different ages.

AND

 An extremely readable historical/biography
by M. Lignor (New York, NY), October 7, 2011 4.0 out of 5 stars

A good start for a review concerning Sparta might be for the layman to know just where Sparta is located. Sparta is on a plain, completely surrounded by mountain ranges. It was a Greek city/state but not fortified as most of the cities of Greece were at that time. Sparta was a collection of small villages built over a large rural area and six very low hills. The highest served as the acropolis and location of the Temple of Athena. Sadly, there's not much of it left to see.

Now on to Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer. The Administrators of the Spartan government tried to get the King of Sparta to set aside his wife and take another as she had not produced a child. The King refused and in an attempt to get an heir, the Administrators agreed to allow the King to take a second wife without putting aside his first. The new wife soon had a son, Cleomenes.

A year after the birth of Cleomenes, the King's first wife gave birth to a son, Dorieus, followed by twin sons, Leonidas and Cleombrotus. As Leonidas was considered to be her third son, he didn't have a chance to become King so he had to go to the agoge (a public school that all Spartan sons had to complete in order to qualify for citizenship).

King Cleomenes has to deal with a co-monarch, King Demaratus, and this King is a fighter while Cleomenes is more interested in sticking his nose into the affairs of Athens. Demaratus is against this move and soon the kings are at odds. Trading on this conflict, the Corinthians are challenging the Spartan's control of the area. At the same time, other Greek cities are asking for aid from Sparta in a rebellion against Persia.

Leonidas, if you remember, is the youngest half-brother of Cleomenes and is not really interested in politics. He has just obtained his citizenship from the school and doesn't think that this revolt by his countrymen will affect him in the slightest. He is an ordinary soldier in the Spartan army and a lot more interested in taking care of his own life. His biggest concerns are to find people to take care of his ruined estate and looking around for a suitable woman to become his bride.

He sets his cap for Gorgo; she is intelligent and tough - qualities that were not the norm for marriageable women in Ancient Sparta. They get married, and they are a good team. Gorgo is extremely clever and this helps Leonidas to take care of his people and the pair become very well thought of monarchs. But, that is for the next book in this very readable series to cover. This book is book two in the Leonidas saga. The first volume: Leonidas of Sparta, A Boy of the Agoge, deals with Leonidas' birth, growing up in Sparta and his schooling at the Agoge. This second volume is about his citizenship before he became ruler, his marriage, the battles (which were frequent) that he fought, and the politics that he learned to handle.

Readers will enjoy this book even if they have not read the first in the series. A Peerless Peer will definitely stand alone and is also a good lead-in to the final book in the series. When readers finish this story they will be anxious to see what happens to Leonidas and Gorgo when his fortunes change for the better.

The author is a superb writer of Historical/Fiction/Biography. The story was very readable and Ancient History buffs will be able to put themselves in the middle of these great battles and the politics that brought them to the attention of the author.

Next week I will be starting a ten part series on the "Birth of a Novel" from Idea to Marketing.

First Reviews of Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer

Just ten days after the release of Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer two reviews have already been posted on amazon.com. That's exciting -- especially when both are from people I do not know and to whom I did not send review copies. I hope this is a good omen and the book will continue to attract positive attention.

5.0 out of 5 stars

So Good It Will Make You Stay Up Past Your Bedtime..., September 8, 2011

By

Kathleen Ann Langley "Lucky 7 Tattoo Kings Beach" (Lake Tahoe, California)

(REAL NAME), Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is for: Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer (Paperback)

Yes, once again Ms Schrader has kept me up WAY past my bedtime for "just one more chapter." Rarely in historical fiction does this happen for me. I will hit a boring spot in a book and easily put it down until next time. Not so with the second book of this Leonidas trilogy "Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer." She had a tough job to outshine herself after the first part of this 3 part series, " A Boy of the Agoge" yet the author met the challenge with gusto.

All the main players of ancient Sparta are back, and some new ones add to the story without becoming confusing. Gorgo comes into her teenage years with timeless problems we can relate to. Leonidas becomes a man we would all desire to have in our lives as the ultimate compassionate alpha male. And the folks who surround these 2 ancient royal players have their own stories told too. Not a boring one in the bunch either. It's like a soap opera set in antiquity!

Now that I have plowed my way through this second book I once again cannot wait until the 3rd and final book comes out next year! If you even have a vague interest in what life may have been like for Leonidas, or the Spartan people at this time and place in history, you will dig this book.

AND

5.0 out of 5 stars

Thin rations, September 4, 2011,

BY

Jessica Allan Schmidt (People's Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States)

(REAL NAME)

This review is for: Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer (Paperback)

William Styron, author of The Confessions of Nat Turner once commented that a historical novelist did best when given "thin rations". This book takes those scant rations available from the historical record and extrapolates them, using common sense as well as classical sources, to construct what life may have been like for Leonidas I. There are some interesting inconsistencies with the historical records -- for instance, it is not known if Cleombrotus was Leonidas' twin or younger brother, yet the series paints him quite convincingly as Leonidas' elder twin -- but on the whole, it provides a very interesting look at the dynamics of an unusual society.

Sparta is often treated by modern scholars as a nation of simple brutes, but records do not hold with this -- if the training of youths was simply a matter of testing them until they broke, Greek leaders from all over the peninsula would not have competed to send their sons to the agoge for whatever periods they could. Like military schools of today, Sparta's educational programme was much more clearly devoted to military *and* practical learning, but the relative dearth of universal military training during this period means that its military nature is over-emphasised. Moreover, the fact that attendance at the Spartan agoge meant for some préstige among other Greeks strongly implies that it was seen as a specialist school that was a great honour for youths inclined to eventually rise to rôles of command in their own city-state's military.

The examination of what Spartan adult life was like is an interesting view of comparison and contrast. In the era before supertankers and jet aircraft, military engagements were by necessity no more than half the year, before mud and rain made it impossible to manoeuvre effectively, and, even more importantly, avoid disease decimating the ranks (a killer that was more likely than death by battle wound up through the Second World War), and therefore, even though Spartans were certainly careful to keep themselves in training year round and maintain constant operational readiness, they also had personal, civilian lives that were just as important to them, if not more so. As any tactician can tell you, the most motivated fighter is one who fights to defend a society he feels is integral to his life. Were Sparta a brutal place dedicated to warfare and only warfare, there would be no society to defend.

In this book, it is interesting to see the evolution of Queen Gorgo from girlhood to womanhood, even though most of it is conjecture based on what *is* known of the training of Spartan women. This book is also surprisingly engaging for the middle part of a trilogy, traditionally a time when *any* storytelling lags. The agoge is notorious, and Leonidas' death is equally well-known, but this period could have been fairly dull, yet it is as engaging as the first book in this series. I recommend it strongly.

Thank You! and now "A Peerless Peer..."

Dear Followers,

Thank you for participating in my three surveys on the title, subtitle and cover image for the Kindle Edition of Chasing the Wind. There was considerable concensus that the best title is "Where Eagles Never Flew" -- although one or two of you confided in me well-founded reservations. After consulting with the publisher, however, the decision was made to go ahead with Where Eagles Never Flew as the title for the Kindle book.

Although the largest number of readers preferred the longest suggested subtitle, the publisher and cover designer vetoed this for practical reasons. The cover of a Kindle book never appears as anything more than a "thumbnail" and space is therefore at a premium. The publisher felt that we couldn't afford to spend so much "real estate" on the sub-title -- which would probably be almost illegible on a thumbnail anyway. So we opted for the shortest of all sub-titles: "A Battle of Britain Novel."

The cover was also a close call, with a slight plurality in favor of Cover 1. I have asked the designer to look at ways of combining the key features of these two covers and come up with a new design that meets the publisher's preferences but includes some of the features of Cover 1 that (from talking to some of you) was the main appeal of this design. 

Otherwise, all is on track for the release of Where Eagles Never Flew in about 3 weeks time. I will be sure to post information about the release on this blog. 

Meanwhile, the second book in the Leonidas Trilogy, Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer is available for purchase on amazon.com in both trade paperback and Kindle formats. For more information about the Leonidas Trilogy you can also go to the dedicated website: http://sparta-leonidas-gorgo.com/

Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer -- Chapter 1, Scene 2

“Master! Master! A catastrophe!” The slave burst into the symposium, at which his master was hosting a dozen important guests. “A horrible accident!” the slave gasped out.

Archilochos’ symposia were famous for the quality of their food, entertainment, and conversation. Wealthy, well-traveled, and active in politics, Archilochos prided himself on employing the best cook and serving the most coveted wines in all Corinth, because he found both useful bait to pull men into his circle. He was, at the moment, exceedingly pleased to have snared one of the Spartan kings, Demaratus.

King Demaratus was not a handsome man. He was short and bowlegged and had a very large nose. Aware of this, he was not vain about his person, and he dressed in the practical clothes of a common ranker in the Spartan army, without any hint of his royal status. He braided his hair from the roots, as was custom, and bound the tips with tarred twine like marines did. Despite this almost defiant refusal to dress like a king, however, he was very conscious of his royal dignity and sensitive to slights to his status.

Despite the superficial differences between Demaratus and the elegant and cultured Archilochos, they found common ground in their opposition to the other Spartan king’s plans to make war on Athens. They met tonight to discuss ways of putting an end to the ill-advised adventure; and Archilochos deplored the unprecedented interruption of a slave, who had no business in the symposium for any reason.

“Stop babbling!” Archilochos snapped at the hysterical old slave.

But the slave was Lychos’ tutor, the man who had watched over him when he was growing up, and he was far too distressed to calm down. “Lychos has been gored by a wild boar. They say he was tossed around in the air, speared on the tusks of the boar, and his guts were spilling out of him!”

“Who says? What are you talking about?” Archilochos started to focus on what the man was saying.

“Master Lychos is bleeding to death! He―”

“Calm down and give me a coherent report!” Archilochos ordered, alarm rather than outraged propriety lending his voice an edge now.

Except for Demaratus, Archilochos’ guests were all Corinthian aristocrats who knew their host’s son personally; they exchanged horrified glances. Even Demaratus knew that his host had lost one son at sea, and guessed that this youth was Archilochos’ heir.

“He was riding beyond Acrocorinth when his horse shied at the sight of a boar, and he was thrown to the ground, and the boar gored him!” The slave was trying desperately to get his master to do more than stare at him in horror.

“Where is he?” Archilochos demanded.

“In the forest on the far side of Acrocorinth!”

“He’s still out there? But how did you hear of this?” Archilochos demanded, rearing up from his couch.

“A Spartan! A Spartan found him and killed the boar, but he could not bring him back. He only just managed to capture his horse and ride to Pytheas for help.”

“Pytheas?”

“Of course!” The slave was impatient with his master’s slowness. “Lychos was riding out with Chambias, and Chambias gave instructions to his own house.”

“Why didn’t he come himself?” Archilochos demanded in terrified outrage, his anger an expression of his unfathomable fear. He could not lose this son, too!

“Chambias broke his knee falling from his horse. Lychos―”

“They left him out there? Bleeding to death?” Archilochos grabbed for his himation, fumbling for his sandals.

Demaratus had never seen a grown man look so lost and helpless.

“The other Spartan and Chambias stayed with him, but we must get help to him! Master, we must get the surgeon!”

“Don’t give me orders, slave!” Archilochos snarled back, and only then remembered his guests. He turned to them, unseeing, muttered “excuse me,” and was gone, the old slave in his wake.

The other men collected their himations and slipped their feet into their sandals. The owner of the flute girls shooed them away while they chattered excitedly like a flock of chickens. Demaratus, however, took his time. While the other guests departed, he tied his own sandals and deliberately wrapped his thick red himation around him. Then he set his cross-crested helmet on the back of his head, the nosepiece on his forehead, and followed the others out.

Just as he had expected, he found his host in the outer courtyard. By now Archilochos had sent for a surgeon and ordered his horse tacked up, while a crowd of slaves collected in the courtyard carrying stretchers and torches. Demaratus moved calmly into the maelstrom of activity swirling around Archilochos.

Archilochos was in no mood for any distraction, and he scowled in annoyance at the Spartan king. “Forgive me, but this must take precedence—”

Demaratus waved him silent. “Of course. I merely wanted to reassure you. If two Spartiates were at the scene of the accident, then you can be sure they did all that could be done to save your son.”

“You don’t even know who they were! How can you be so sure? Ordinary soldiers are no surgeons!”

“Spartiates have gone through the agoge, and they are huntsmen. They know how to treat wounds caused by sword and spear, claws, teeth, and tusks, as well as how to handle other common injuries from sprains to broken bones. They will have done all that is possible for your son until a surgeon can see him.”

Archilochos was in no mood to listen, so Demaratus stepped back and let him go, but he called for his own horse. His helot attendant came forward at once, having anticipated the order and having already tacked both their horses. Demaratus swung himself easily onto the animal’s back and followed in the wake of Archilochos’ noisy party with their many torches.

They did not have far to ride. Just behind the huge Doric temple to Apollo, they stopped beside a house ablaze with torchlight. All the neighbors had lit torches, too, and slaves filled the street; the women crowded the balconies, shrouded in their shawls so that only their eyes showed.

Archilochos was met at the door by a man with long white hair and a flowing beard, who assured Archilochos that his own rescue party had set out a quarter of an hour earlier. Archilochos, however, was not calmed, and insisted on following them. Proceeding at a jogging pace along the long avenue leading out of the city to the west, they overtook the priest’s rescue party before it had passed out of the city walls.

Demaratus tagged along, unseen by the others, until he suddenly cantered past the rest of the party to the young man who was leading them. He drew up sharply, his horse’s hooves skidding on the paving stones. “Alkander! You? You killed this boar?”

“It was Leonidas who killed him. I merely pinned him down.”

They gazed at one another while the Corinthians came to a halt in confusion.

“What is this? We must hurry!” Archilochos demanded, riding up beside Demaratus.

“Indeed. And so we shall. Let me introduce my wife’s brother, Alkander.” Demaratus hesitated, but then he decided it would eventually come to light anyway. “And you need not fear that your son’s rescuers were ‘ordinary soldiers.’ The young man who killed the boar is none other than Leonidas, son of Anaxandridas and brother to King Cleomenes.”