Epictetus put me in the fourth rank because, in his opinion, I was more fit for combat than the eight men behind me. He was right. But at the time I thought him a monster for putting me so close to the front.
I was one file from the far right. Bion was my file-leader, and Pater was about a spear's length away when we closed our ranks and files in the synaspismos.
Then we sang the Paean. Usually men sing it before they charge, but not always. I don't know what happened to the Paean at Oinoe – whether I have forgotten it, or whether we didn't sing it. But I was in the phalanx at Parnes, and I remember singing, roaring my fear out inside the bronze helmet that my brother had died wearing.
In the closed ranks, you are three feet from the men on either side, so that the rim of your shield can just touch if you move to tap them – something men do all the time as they wait. You start a few feet from the men in front and behind, but as a fight goes on, everything closes in. Well, that's what usually happens. You end up in a tight-packed mob that pushes together and sees only with the eyes of the front rank. In that fight, I had no idea what was happening in front of us from the moment that our files closed up. I could see Dionysius's leather-clad back, and I could see Pater's plumes and the rim of my own aspis.
We pushed forward.
We marched together to the sound of the Paean. We had a slight hill behind us and we went down the hill and then our front slammed into the fight. Friends? Enemies? The front of a phalanx has no allies. We went down into the fight, and the only sign I had that Pater was facing death was an increased pressure on my shield.
But they melted in front of us. I stepped over a man who was down. I looked down – hard enough in a helmet – and saw his eyes peeking over the rim of his shield, and the black blood on his legs. I let him live, and so did everyone else.
We started to plough through the maelstrom. Dust rose with the sun, and the battle was not ending. We pushed forward a step at a time, and I was hot and miserable, my spear held point-up so that it wouldn't foul the men ahead of me. Sometimes the man behind me – a middle-aged farmer from two farms beyond us, a bitter man named Zotikos – pushed too hard, and I was sandwiched between the curved front of his aspis and the curved back of my own. I was too small for this, and it hurt.
Zotikos always apologized to me every time he slammed in. 'Sorry, kid!' he'd grunt. 'No good at this shit!' He was pale with fear – but he pushed.
I know – now – what happened in the front rank, but at the time I knew nothing except that Pater was alive, because I could see his plumes and hear his voice. And we should have been winning an easy victory – we were the only formed troops on the field, and the Thebans were outnumbered.
Maybe they were stubborn Boeotians, just like us.
Maybe the phalanx isn't as important as men think. To be honest, I've seen unformed mobs stop a phalanx several times. Only Ares knows. We pushed forward and our front-rankers stabbed with their spears, Athenians rallied on our right and Thebans melted away, and then, suddenly, we stopped.
Calchas was right – it is the killers who are dangerous. The rest of war is very like a sport. Like pushing and pulling and spear-fencing all together. But when the killers come, it is nothing like a sport.
I don't know who they were. A brotherhood? Some men who had trained together as boys? Or more likely, a band of aristocrats. They had good armour and they knew their business. Perhaps they were mercenaries. At any rate, they hit our phalanx when we were tired and lazy and confident that nothing would stand against us. Epictetus went down and, as I raised my head to look, Dionysius took a blow to the helmet and down he went.
And just like that, I was in the front rank, facing a killer. I had all the time it took him to push past Dionysius to see that he was clad from head to foot in bronze, with thigh guards and arm guards and knuckle guards like a professional, and he had a bronze-faced shield and a heavy spear and a double plume of red.
You must lock your shield with your neighbour's, put your head down and refuse to take chances. That's what Calchas said.
When you are faced with a killer in the bronze storm, there are two things that tempt you. One is to run. That way lies instant death. The time to run has long passed when the man in bronze is at the end of your spear. The other temptation is to attack. This is a twin child born of the same parent – fear. You attack to prove to yourself that you are not afraid, and because you have no real hope. Or to get it over with. I have seen lesser men kill greater, but it doesn't happen often, so the second is as hopeless as the first, although it makes a better story for your mother. Because you'll be dead.
Calchas's way is the way that takes care, and time, and discipline. But as Dionysius fell, his aspis fouled the killer's spear and I got a breath to think.
I backed one step and shoved my aspis high and hard against the man next to me. He was Eutykos, a young man from a good family. Later on we were friends, and I loved his sister. I'd met her, of course, at festivals, and she was pretty – but at thirteen you don't look at girls as much as you should. Hah!
So I locked my shield with Eutykos and the killer's doru crashed into my aspis – high. He was going for my helmet, but I had tucked my head so that only the top of the helmet came above the rim of my aspis. He swung again and his doru glanced off my helmet, but I had no crest to catch the point and he lost his balance and crashed against me, breast to breast.
Old Zotikos stood his ground. He threw his shoulder against my back and held me against the killer's shove, bless him. And he went one better. While the killer rained blows of his spear on my head and aspis, Zotikos rammed his spear into the killer's shield, full force.
I got to breathe.
Eutykos poked at him, too.
On my left, Straton, Myron's older son, locked his aspis against mine.
Only then did I realize that the voice shrieking 'Lock up!' was mine.
Now the killer was facing three men – six, really, because none of our followers flinched – and the spear points were coming for him.
Locked up and secure, we began to kill him. I have no idea who got him. Later, my spear point was bloody and the blood dripped down the shaft and over my hand. But Zotikos also had blood on his and so did Straton. Perhaps we all took him. It doesn't matter. No man – no man born of women – can face six steady hoplites, even if they are so scared that shit runs down their legs.
That one fight was the battle, for me. I'm sure that other men did great deeds, and I am sure that the prize of honour went to Miltiades the Younger, who cut a red swath through the Thebans and broke their centre. His sword was like a thunderbolt, so men said.
I never saw him. By Ares, I didn't even see Pater, and I could have touched him with my spear point.
But I saw the killer, and I held my ground.
Still makes me smile, honey.
And then the Thebans broke and we ran them down.
I killed some poor exhausted sod who begged me to spare him. But he didn't drop his sword and I was too tired to take a chance. Hard to tell what was in my head. I asked his shade for pardon the next day. I think that if he'd let the sword go, or stopped waving it, I'd have let him live. When the pursuit starts, the shield wall collapses, winner or loser, and every man fights on his own. Eutykos stuck by me, but none of the rest of my file-mates were anywhere to be seen, and we picked up prisoners and fought our last fight in the middle of a thousand screaming Attic farmers. Some brightly armoured aristocrat knocked me flat and another yelled 'Can't you see the yokel is a Plataean?' and they ran off elsewhere. We had no dead. Dionysius was deeply unconscious, and he slurred his words for ten days and missed the third fight, but he lived to thank me for covering his body. That's what his father thought I did, and it saved my life later.