Gates of Fire Read online

  You will be a man. You won't be able to help yourself. One night when we had tramped for hours, Bruxieus inquired of Diomache why she had held herself so silent. He was concerned for the dark thoughts that might be poisoning her mind. She refused to speak at first. Then, at last relenting, told us in a sweet sad voice of her wedding, She had been planning it in her head all night. What dress she would wear, what style of garland, which goddess she would dedicate her sacrifice to. She had been thinking for hours, she told us, of her slippers. She had all the strapping and bead-work worked out in her mind. They would be so beautiful, her bridal slippers!

  Then her eyes clouded and she looked away. This shows what a fool I have become. No one will marry me.

  I will, I proffered at once. She laughed. You? A fair chance of that! Foolish as it sounds to recount, to my boy's heart these careless words stung like no others in my life. I vowed that I would marry Diomache one day. I would be man enough and warrior enough to protect her.

  For a time in autumn we tried surviving on the seacoast, sleeping in caves and combing the sloughs and marshes. You could eat there at least. There were shellfish and crabs, mussels and spinebacks to be prised from rocks; we learned how to take gulls on the wing with stakes and nets. But the exposure was brutal as winter came on. Bruxieus began to suffer. He would never let his weakness show to Diomache and me when he thought we were looking, but I would watch his face sometimes when he slept. He looked seventy. The elements were hard on him in his years; all the old wounds ached, but more than that he was donating his substance to preserve ours, Diomache's and mine. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me, studying a tilt to my face or the tone of something I had said. He was making sure I hadn't gone crazy or feral.

  As the cold came on, it became more difficult to find food. We must beg. Bruxieus would pick out an isolated farmstead and approach the gate alone; the hounds would converge in a clamorous pack and the men of the farm would emerge, on guard, from the fields or from some rude falling-down outbuilding; brothers and a father, their callused hands resting on the tools which would become weapons if the need arose. The hills were infested with outlaws then; the farmers never knew who would walk up to their gate and with what duplicitous intent. Bruxieus would doff his cap and wait for the woman of the house, making sure she took note of his milky eyes and beaten posture. He would indicate Diomache and me, shivering miserably in the road, and ask the mistress not for food, which would have made us beggars in the landsmen's eyes and prompted them loosing the dogs on us, but for any broken item of use that she could spare - a rake, a thrashing staff, a worn-out cloak, something we could repair and sell in the next town. He made sure to ask directions and appear eager to be moving on. That way they knew any kindness would not make us linger. Almost always the farm wives volunteered a meal, sometimes inviting us in to hear what news we bore from foreign places and to tell us their own.

  It was during one of those forlorn feedings that I first heard the word Sepeia. This is a place of Argos, a wooded area near Tiryns, where a battle had just been fought between the Argives and the Spartans. The boy who bore this tale was a farmer's visiting nephew, a mute, who communicated through signs and whom even his own family could barely comprehend. The Spartans under King Kleomenes, the boy gave us to understand, had achieved a spectacular victory. Two thousand Argives dead was one figure he had heard, though others had it at four thousand and even six. My heart exploded with joy. How I wished I could have been there! To have been a man grown, advancing in that battle line, mowing down in fair fight the men of Argos, as they had cut down by perfidy my own mother and father.

  The Spartans became for me the equivalent of avenging gods. I couldn't leam enough about these warriors who bad so devastatingly defeated the murderers of my mother and father, the violators of my innocent cousin. No stranger we met escaped my boyish grilling. Tell me about Sparta.

  Her double kings. The three hundred Knights who protected them. The agoge which trained the city's youth. The syssiria, the warriors' messes. We heard a tale of Kleomenes. Someone had asked the king why he did not raze Argos once and for all when his army had stood at the gates and the city lay prostate before him. We need the Argives, Kleomenes responded. Who else will our young men train on?

  In the winter hills we were starving. Bruxieus was getting weaker. I took to stealing. Diomache and I would raid a shepherd's fold at night, fighting off the dogs with sticks and snatching a kid if we could. Most of the shepherds carried bows; arrows would whiz past us in the dark. We stopped to grab them and soon had quite a cache. Bruxieus hated to see us turning into thieves.

  We got a bow one time, snagging it right out from under a sleeping goatherd's nose. It was a man's weapon, a Thessalian cavalry bow, so stout that neither Diomache nor I could draw it.

  Then came the event which changed my life and set it on the course that reached its terminus at the Hot Gates.

  I got caught stealing a goose. She was a fat prize, her wings pegged for market, and I got careless going over a wall. The dogs got me. The men of the farm dragged me into the mud of the livestock pen and nailed me to a hide boatd the size of a door, driving tanning spikes through both my palms. I was on my back, screaming in agony, while the farm men lashed my kicking, flailing legs to the board, vowing that after lunch they would castrate me like a sheep and hang my testicles upon the gate as a warning to other thieves. Diomache and Bruxieus crouched, hidden, up the hillside; they could hear everything… ere the captive drew up in his narration. Fatigue and the I ordeal of his wounds had taken severe toll of the man, or perhaps, his listeners imagined, it was memory of the instance he was recounting. His Majesty, through the captain Orontes, inquired of the prisoner if he required attention. The man declined. The hesitation in the tale, he declared, arose not from any incapacity of its narrator, but at the prompting of the god by whose inner direction the order of events was being dictated, and who now commanded a momentary alteration of tack. The man Xe-ones resettled himself and, granted permission to wet his throat with wine, resumed.

  Two summers subsequent to this incident, in Lakedaemon, I witnessed a different kind of ordeal: a Spartan boy beaten to death by his drill instructors.

  The lad's name was Teriander, he was fourteen; they called him Tripod because no one of his age-class could take him down in wrestling. Over the succeeding years I looked on in attendance as two dozen other boys succumbed beneath this same trial, each like Tripod disdaining so much as a whimper in pain, but he, this lad, was the first.

  The whippings are a ritual of the boys' training in Lakedaemon, not in punishment for stealing food (at which exploit the boys are encouraged to excel, to develop resourcefulness in war), but for the crime of getting caught. The beatings take place alongside the Temple of Artemis Orthia in a narrow alley called the Runway. The site is beneath plane trees, a shaded and quite pleasant space in less grisly circumstances.

  Tripod was the eleventh boy whipped that day. The two eirenes, drill instructors, who administered the beatings, had already been replaced by a fresh pair, twenty-year-olds just out of the agoge and as powerfully built as any youths in the city. It worked like this: the boy whose turn it was grasped a horizontal iron bar secured to the bases of two trees (the bar had been worn smooth by decades, some said centuries, of the ritual) and was flogged with birch rods, as big around as a man's thumb, by the eirenes taking turns. A priestess of Artemis stood at the boy's shoulder, presenting an ancient wooden image which must, tradition dictated, receive the spray of human blood.

  Two of the boy's mates from his training platoon kneel at each shoulder to catch the lad when he falls. At any time the boy may terminate the ordeal by releasing the bar and pitching forward to the dirt. Theoretically a boy would only do this when thrashed to unconsciousness, but many pitched simply when they could no longer bear the pain. Between a hundred and two hundred looked on this day: boys of other platoons, fathers, brothers and mentors and even some of the boys' mothers, keeping discree
tly to the rear.

  Tripod kept taking it and taking it. The flesh of his back had been torn through in a dozen places; you could see tissue and fascia, rib cage and muscle and even the spine. He would not go down.

  Pitch! his two comrades kept urging between blows, meaning let go of the bar and fall. Tripod refused.

  Even the drill instructors began hissing this between their teeth. One look in the boy's face and you could see he had passed beyond reason. He had made up his mind to die rather than raise the hand for quarter. The eirenes did as they were instructed in such cases: they prepared to wallop Tripod so hard in four rapid successive blows that the impact would knock him unconscious and thus preserve his life. I will never forget the sound those four blows made upon the boy's back.

  Tripod dropped; the drill instructors immediately declared the ordeal terminated and summoned the next boy.

  Tripod managed to lift himself upon all fours. Blood was sheeting from his mouth, nose and ears.

  He could not see or speak. He managed somehow to turn about and almost stand, then he sank slowly to his seat, held there a moment and then dropped, hard, into the dirt. It was clear at once that he would never rise.

  Later that evening when it was over (the ritual was not suspended on account of Tripod's death but continued for another three hours), Dienekes, who had been present, walked apart with his protege, the boy Alexandras whom I mentioned earlier. I served Alexandros at this time. He was twelve but looked no older than ten; already he was a won' derful runner, but extremely slight and of a sensitive disposition. Moreover he had shared a bond of affection with Tripod; the older boy had been a sort of guardian or protector; Alexandros was devastated by his death.

  Dienekes walked with Alexandras, alone except for his own squire and myself, to a spot beneath the temple of Athena Protectress of the City, immediately below the slope from the statue of Phobos, the god of fear. At that time Dienekes' age was, I would estimate, thirty-five years. He had already won two prizes of valor, at Erythrae against the Thebans and at Achillieon against the Corinthians and their Arkadian allies. As nearly as I can recall, this is how the older man instructed his protege: First, in a gentle and loving tone, he recalled his own first sight, when he was a lad in years younger even than Alexandros, of a boy comrade whipped to death. He recounted several of his own ordeals in the Runway, beneath the rod.

  Then he began the sequence of query and response which comprises the Lakedaemonian syllabus of instruction.

  Answer this, Alexandros. When our countrymen triumph in battle, what is it that defeats the foe?

  The boy responded in the terse Spartan style, Our steel and our skill.

  These, yes, Dienekes corrected him gently, but something more. It is that. His gesture led up the slope to the image of Phobos.

  Fear.

  Their own fear defeats our enemies.

  Now answer. What is the source of fear?

  When Alexandros I reply faltered, Dienekes reached with his hand and touched his own chest and shoulder.

  Fear arises from this: the flesh. This, he declared, is the factory of fear.

  Alexandros listened with the grim concentration of a boy who knows his whole life will be war; that the laws of Lykurgus forbid him and every other Spartan to know or pursue a trade other than war; that his term of obligation extends from age twenty to age sixty, and that no force under heaven will excuse him from soon, very soon, assuming his place in line of battle and clashing shield-to-shield, helmet-to-helmet with the enemy.

  Now answer again, Alexandros. Did you observe today in the manner of the eirenes delivering the beating any sign or indication of malice?

  The boy answered no.

  Would you characterize their demeanor as barbarous? Did they take pleasure in dealing agony to Tripod?

  No.

  Was their intention to crush his will or break his spirit?

  No.

  What was their intention?

  To harden his mind against pain.

  Throughout this conversation the older man maintained a voice tender and solicitous with love.

  Nothing Alexandros could do would ever make this voice love him less or abandon him. Such is the peculiar genius of the Spartan system of pairing each boy in training with a mentor other than his own father. A mentor may say things that a father cannot; a boy can confess to his mentor that which would bring shame to reveal to his father.

  It was bad today, wasn't it, my young friend?

  Dienekes then asked the boy how he imagined battle, real battle, compared with what he had witnessed today. No answer was required or expected.

  Never forget, Alexandros, that this flesh, this body, does not belong to us. Thank God it doesn't.

  If I thought this stuff was mine, I could not advance a pace into the face of the enemy. But it is not ours, my friend. It belongs to the gods and to our children, our fathers and mothers and those of Lakedaemon a hundred, a thousand years yet unborn. It belongs to the city which gives us all we have and demands no less in requital.

  Man and boy moved on, down the slope to the river. They followed the path to that grove of double-boled myrtle called the Twins, sacred to the sons of Tyndareus and to the family to which Alexandros belonged. It would be to this spot, on the night of his final ordeal and initiation, that he would repair, alone save his mother and sisters, to receive the salve and sanction of the gods of his line.

  Dienekes sat upon the earth beneath the Twins. He gestured to Alexandros to take the place beside him.

  Personally I think your friend Tripod was foolish. What he displayed today contained more of recklessness than true courage, andreia. He cost the city his life, which could have been spent more fruitfully in battle.

  Nonetheless it was clear Dienekes respected him.

  But to his credit he showed us something of nobility today. He showed you and every boy watching what it is to pass beyond identification with the body, beyond pain, beyond fear of death. You were horrified to behold his agonisma, but it was awe that struck you truly, wasn't it?

  Awe of that boy or whatever daimon animated him. Your friend Tripod showed us contempt for this. Again Dienekes indicated the flesh. A contempt which approached the stature of the sublime.

  From my spot, above on the bank, I could see the boy's shoulders shudder as the grief and terror of the day at last purged themselves from his heart. Dienekes embraced and comforted him.

  When at last the boy had recomposed himself, his mentor gently released him.

  Have your instructors taught you why the Spartans excuse without penalty the warrior who loses his helmet or breastplate in battle, but punish with loss of all citizenship rights the man who discards his shield?

  They had, Alexandras replied.

  Because a warrior carries helmet and breastplate for his own protection, but his shield for the safety of the whole line.

  Dienekes smiled and placed a hand upon his protege's shoulder.

  Remember this, my young friend. There is a force beyond fear. More powerful than selfpreservation. You glimpsed it today, in a crude and unself-aware form, yes. But it was there and it was genuine. Let us remember your friend Tripod and honor him for this.

  I was screaming upon the hide board. I could hear my cries bounce off the walls of the livestock enclosure and shriek off, multiplied, up the hillsides. I knew it was disgraceful but I could not stop.

  I begged the farm men to release me, to end my agony. I would do anything, and I described it all at the top of my lungs. I cried out to the gods in a shameful little boy's voice piping up the mountainside. I knew Bruxieus could hear me. Would his love for me impel him to dash in and be nailed alongside me? I didn't care. I wanted the pain to end. I begged the men to kill me. I could feel the bones in both hands shattered by the spikes. I would never hold a spear or even a gardening spade. I would be a cripple, a clubfist. My life was over and in the meanest, most dishonorable way.

  A fist shattered my cheek. Shut your pipehole, yo
u sniveling little shitworm! The men set the tanning board upright, angled against a wall, and there I squirmed, impaled, for the sun's endless crawl across the sky. Urchins from the up-valley farms clustered to watch me scream. The girls tore my rags and poked at my privates; the boys pissed on me. Dogs snuffed my bare soles, emboldening themselves to make a meal of me. I only stopped wailing when my throat could cry no longer. I was trying to tear my palms free right through the spikes, but the men lashed my wrists tighter so I couldn't move. How does that feel, you fucking thief? Let's see you pick off another prize, you night'creeping little rat.

  When at last their own growling bellies drove my tormentors indoors for supper, Diomache slipped down from the hill and cut me free. The spikes would not come out of my palms; she had to blade the wood off the frame with her dagger. My hands came away with the tanning nails still through them. Bruxieus carried me off, as he had borne Diomache earlier, after her violation.

  Oh God, my cousin said when she saw my hands.