How could Menekleidas with his two-pointed shoes prance around the hall as if he could stop what already was started? As the rhetoricians had been warning that very morning, thousands below were sharpening their blades and oiling their shield blazons a stone’s throw from Iphikrates and his thugs in the assembly-and all this at the onset of winter. They looked more like mercenaries than liberationists, scarred with blade nicks, lame from spear jabs, clad in leather and bronze, eager for pay, more eager still for Spartan booty, with not a worry about their icy breath and sleeping on snow. These islanders and northerners cared little whether the Boiotarchs voted for their war, only whether Epaminondas was to be at their head with plunder promised. All had their grudges with Spartans. All could claim that a harmost or a Spartan admiral had ravaged their land or killed a cousin or friend in battle.
The law of Boiotia or the freedom of the helots meant not so much to them; the hatred and loot of Sparta everything. Melon saw tents and midday smoke rising all the way to Kithairon to the south and then even more camps northward up to the spurs of Parnassos and even toward the gap at Chaironeia. As he left his lookout point, the Thespian fought his way through the crowd. Then Melissos finally caught him on the back of his cloak. The boy had just tied Xiphos nearby to a plane tree. He was in high spirits due to the wild eyes of the delegates that had filed into the assembly-and what he had heard from the grove above the theater, where the poor and slaves listened in.
For all Melissos’s bad sight, the boy was counting tents below and already numbering loudly the size of the army to be. “Two myriads,” he gasped, “maybe more still if we could see all on the foothills to the south. Even our armies to the north are not this size.” Suddenly the two were called over by Pelopidas. The general had a bright green cloak on, and a heavy leather tunic beneath. He was allotting scrolls in leather pouches to a group of young ephebes. By prearranged signals, well before the actual voting, the Theban already had sent out runners throughout Boiotia. The general was ordering more messengers to the marshes to ensure that the tardy and stubborn Boiotians of Orchomenos and Helikon showed up in the morning as they had promised. The eleven districts had had less than two days to send in their allotted lochoi-five hundred hoplites each and as many light-armed were the orders. The tribes in all the districts were to fill their quotas by daybreak, as the army would be on the passes outward within two days.
Pelopidas turned to Melon. “If we can get even a half-myriad of those Boiotians who stood firm at Leuktra, we will be doing well enough. That would give us altogether on the morrow almost two ten-thousands, with these volunteers from Euboia, Thessaly, Lokris, the islands, and even the men of Phokis who are still trailing in. And, of course, there are mobs in the south that will join us. So your Thespiai will send troops this time, even if they are not like those of the Malgidai or Chion?”
“Yes, some Thespians may march in. I am a Thespian, and pledge I will go south with you, and then over to Messenia to find my servant girl, whether alone or once again at the van of the army of Epaminondas. The fame of Chion and the big talk after Leuktra count. But mostly they will be the hill folk on Helikon, those in the backcountry all the way to Parnassos. Together with all these foreigners, I reckon that we may set out from Boiotia with more than Kleombrotos had when he came up here, at least.”
Then Pelopidas continued. “You know that the larger the army is, the larger it will become. That’s why you see out there wagons pulling in from over the pass. The mob has decided it is a fine thing to march southward. But that’s not the half of it. We will need more than even these two myriads. If Proxenos and Ainias have done their work, if they keep that slippery Mantineian Lykomedes in line, maybe more than two ten-thousands are already mustering to the south at Arkadia.” He paused and spoke slowly, as if Pelopidas himself could not quite believe the numbers of Hellenes on the move toward Sparta. “Altogether I’d wager sixty thousand and more will pour into Lakedaimon, with us and them combined. Don’t forget the firebrand Epiteles and his Argives. There is no better friend of the demos. He will bring Dorian hoplites with him. These are the sorts that will continue over Taygetos into Messenia if they have to. King Agesilaos can’t thwart us. We know Alkidamas with his Neto has stirred up the helots. So the Spartans will have enemies in every direction.”
Pelopidas waved at the throng below. “Ainias promised me that thousands of Arkadians will join us in the south, all with the club of our Herakles-the ropalon of Thebes-painted on their shields. I think before we’re through, all of Hellas will be on the road. Ten myriads, and from every polis in Hellas.”
Melon wondered how many Spartans would meet them. Maybe a myriad red-capes, from the allies and the Spartiates who had survived Leuktra, together with some more in the south and the home guard. Some Lakonian helots who wouldn’t bolt over-be sure to count on those. Then there were the loyal perioikoi and the other half-citizens of Lakedaimon. Put them all together and Agesilaos might have thirty thousand with spears to guard his acropolis. If Epaminondas and his invaders had twice that number, or three times the army, the odds still were with the Spartan defenders, who only need not lose, not ford the icy waters of the Eurotas and break into the city.
Melon thought that even if they did not storm into the streets of Sparta, at least they could claim this horde might make it alive into the borders of Lakonia. That would make them the first invaders to have done so in nearly twenty generations of the Hellenes-not since the sons of Herakles of the myths and stories depicted on the pots and temple stones. Then Melon quit his dreaming and checked his pack. If the army were to leave in less than two days, he would have to send Melissos over to the farm for provisions. As an afterthought Melon had roped his own battle gear on Xiphos for the trip from the farm to Thebes, so it was just a question of food, not armor, and to let Damo know that he was marching south.
Melissos came up closer. “Master, I’ve already fetched Xiphos, fed from the stables. There’s food right now. On the back of our stallion I’ve got dried fish, cheese, and wine-and our bronze breastplates and helmets. Last night Alkidamas had me empty his house of provisions. He has already left.”
Melon laughed, “Our armor?”
“That’s right. I have my breastplate, and the shield of Kalliphon, that dead son of Alkidamas. I fetched that with the food from the house of Alkidamas. So we are ready to march? I’m eager to see what you Hellenes can do in a day.”
“So we will, boy, first to Sparta with Epaminondas and then on to Messenia, alone, if need be, to find my Neto.” With that, Melon patted the northerner’s head, as he led Xiphos behind them.
The two of them walked the horse out through the gate to find the field camps of Epaminondas, a half-morning march to the south, where they would spend the first night. As they walked, Melon repeated what his father Malgis had once taught him before his own first outing at Haliartos. “There is an art, Melissos, to a muster. It’s not like a pack of dogs that snarl and sprint out after the first hare that crosses their paths. Epaminondas is already forming up the columns, right over there under the clouds of Kithairon. The first thousands will leave in the morning, over the pass with us at the van. Then the hamlets from the eleven districts drift into Thebes. Their officers will have these late-coming regiments fall into line by companies, six men wide along the road-all the baggage in the middle of their column. We at the head will be over the mountain and halfway to Megara by nightfall tomorrow.”