Melon tapped Ainias on his breastplate with the tip of his sword. “You will see the snout of Lykomedes shaking. Even his Phryne could not warn him that his neighbors down here were massing to strike Sparta. His little boyfriend Ariston is in tears. The boar-mouth walks around the camps with water running down his leg, mumbling, How to feed these? Where the wine? Like the tree caterpillars they’ll strip our chora of even the leaves of the olives.”
“Lykomedes is nothing.” It was Proxenos who came up with an enormous pack on his back with his scrolls sticking out the side. “No worry. Our Arkadians already have three-day rations in our packs. They plan to march out at noon tomorrow to the south, if only Epaminondas promises to lead. We have plenty of food to get us into Lakonia. Once there the king will have to set our tables.”
Pelopidas broke in. “Well, then, you and your Arkadians will have to fight us for the road. We and the Argives claim the first right of way and leave earlier at daybreak. Why not? On our way we herded cattle and sheep and goats from the Nemeans and Korinthians and have eaten beef, no less-beef. And the whole way from Argos, with more on the hoof as we speak.”
Epaminondas stopped them. “No need for a stasis. Plenty of Spartans for all. There are many roads into Lakonia and we will use all of them. The generals meet tonight to debate the way in. They are angry that the Spartans left the plain of Mantineia in the fall and scampered back home across their river, Eurotas out of our reach. But nonetheless they will all vote to go south to follow them rather than disband. Ainias knows that. The Argives go in head-on through Sellasia, the narrow direct route. That honor of the first army goes to Epiteles. His Argives will have a flat walk on the plain of the Tegeans and keep Parnon and Taygetos on either side with a good view of the Eurotas. But from the west, these men of Elis and Megalopolis will swarm behind you. Yes, the second army of the Peloponnesians will hug the foothills of Taygetos, close to the river Nedon. You Arkadians here in Mantineia will join them. We Boiotians, the third fist, will march on the west side of Parnon, with the tributaries of the Eurotas, and meet down around Sellasia. The gods will decide who gets into Lakonia first. The best plunder goes to the fastest foot. We will never be more than sixty stadia distant from each other.”
Ainias seconded that. “May the quickest army win.”
Melon kept quiet. The generals had already voted to enter Lakonia, and sent messengers home to their poleis that Agesilaos was no longer at Mantineia, so the armies would soon invade. Melon could not yet leave to the west to find Neto when they all must fight in the plain of Lakonia, before they could do anything for the helots of Messenia. For now the best he could do was to kill Spartans in hopes the guards of Messenia to the west would flee back home to help their king and empty the prisons as they left-and, of course, hope that Chion and Alkidamas were already in Messenia.
In the morning, almost seventy thousand set out on the march in the bright winter sun of the Peloponnesos. It took past noon for the armies just to leave the plain of Tegea and hit the passes. Not until the dark of the next day were they above Lakonia. At early sunset on this second day from Mantineia, the Boiotians looked down from the last rocky outcroppings past Sellasia and readied themselves for a morning war with the men of Sparta. The Boiotians had come a thousand stadia from Helikon. Pelopidas climbed up a boulder along the road and looked down to Epaminondas. “Look. Look at Lakonia-Aporthetos, aporthetos-unplundered, untouched, for five hundred years and more. Free from attack, not a foreigner, not a stranger buried in their fatherland, never a Spartan killed in battle in all Lakonia. But not now, not now. These plains will be their cemeteries tomorrow. The Argives below are already coming down on the plain. Look, it is already burning.”
Then Epaminondas in response lifted his helmet off and turned to the officers of the lochoi: “It’s yours, Boiotians-farmers of Hellas. The valley of the Spartan overseer is all ours. Idete, stratiotai mou, idete. Look-there is no phalanx, there are no pipes to meet us. The villagers, the half-helots, the neighbors have all fled or joined us. We will kill as many of the red-shirts as the number of their farms you torch. No Spartan, no Athenian-no Hellene-has ever seen the like of this army, and none will ever see such a thing again.” Epaminondas mounted his small red pony and rode among the ranks. He ordered his commanders to column his Boiotians four abreast as his third and last army headed down the final pass. It was easy following the lead army of the Argives under Epiteles, who was a master of taxis and showed all how to squeeze columns over the narrow road and out of bowshot of the Spartan garrisons.
Below, the advanced columns poured out onto the green winter fields of the Eurotas, like a herd of sheep that makes not even a grunt as it stuffs its mouth-and leaves behind stubble, and holes, and vomit and dung where there was once fresh tall grass. Soon smoke covered the vale. Later that day, the last of the Boiotians to descend saw nothing but a cloud of haze drifting toward the acropolis, the smoke of a thousand fires and more, as the army of Epaminondas did their work, tearing apart the farms and sheds in the plain to fuel their winter bonfires.
Where were the Spartans, Epaminondas wondered? Where was the dreaded Lichas? Where the lame Agesilaos? None was at the head of a phalanx on the field of battle. His great fight with the tall hoplites of Lichas was now a fantasy. What followed, Epaminondas shouted to his generals, was the greatest surprise in all the stories of the Hellenes. The invaders walked in unopposed to the supposedly impregnable vale of Lakonia. The perioikoi, the villagers who lived in subservience around the city of Spartans, either had drifted into the army of Epaminondas or had fled into the hills of Parnon. Either way, more than half the helots of Lakonia had left their farms. The rest ran to safety of the city across the Eurotas with their masters, all to the cries of the Spartan women in town.
Lichas had chosen not to send out his phalanx-not with the memory of the piles of dead at Leuktra still fresh. Myriads of these invaders, without fear of a Spartan spear or a sword, were burning even more houses and fencing, rounding up stock, killing-and always lapping up to the banks on the icy river. Finally King Agesilaos hobbled out to the banks of his side of the Eurotas and sent his guards to line the river and bar the way into the city for any of his latecomer refugees. Helot-lovers he called them-better to let them die than to let them slink as spies into the city. No more Spartans were to come across the river into the city. The peers were to kill anyone who neared the Eurotas once the bridges had been torched.
When the Boiotians at last reached flat ground a day after the allies of the Peloponnesos, Epaminondas pointed out to Melon the hillock, just six stadia from the the high shrines of the Menalaion, where the generals would camp. “We sleep there on that rise, not far from the Eurotas-there in the middle of this new sea of ravagers. Look, Melon, look how we cover the spurs of Taygetos to the west. We’re already lapping on Parnon far eastward.”
Melon could see that the countryside of Sparta was scarcely big enough for the thousands of men in the three armies. The next day they were plundering again, without the fog or even much dew to dampen their fires. Epaminondas came up with Proxenos, all in heavy woolen cloaks against the cold wind. Melon and Melissos fell in at the van with Epaminondas to head toward the city proper and the Eurotas, to scout the fords and plan the final assault. Melon shouted to Melissos above the yelling, “Epaminondas, dear boy, is an artist, you see, one better than Exekias himself; but his work is not to be found in painting clay, but in the wholesale destruction of his enemies-and the end of Sparta is his masterpiece, his ariston ergon.”