Ainias then waved his hands as he went through the Spartan way of war bit by bit. The entire crowd was hypnotized; those who had just before been punching each other were now pushing to get nearer this curious sand map. “The flutes will start up. The army will walk out on their heavy feet. They stare. They do their slow two-step. The king and his wing slant. They swerve to the right. We will be blinded by the sun at their backs. Or scared by the glare of their polished shields-a thousand and more of the Spartan Similars, all shuffling in the king’s charge. Flute music all the while. These shaved lips come on. On always-like the crab we see on the seashore that can only walk sideways and at an angle. They hope, they expect to break you rustics from the provinces. Their strong right wing faces off against our weak left. Then they get to your rear. Then stab you in the back. Then turn. And they come up behind your best Thebans on your right. Then you all die. And we are burned and float away as ash. I know this. I did just this as an ally alongside them for twenty seasons. I killed many of your fathers at the Nemea and Koroneia.”
He calmed and with almost a murmur finished, “But this they will not do. Not tomorrow. Not ever. I swear to you all that Leuktra will be no Nemea.” Ainias, bathed in sweat under the summer torchlight, tore off his leather tunic and was focused on the captains. Epaminondas then stepped up and yelled to his men, “Watch and learn.”
“Says who, Arkadian?” a loudmouth interrupted the trance of the crowd, and yelled in a high pitch. They nicknamed the barker Backwash. He was some sort of low official of the Confederation, who had borrowed his father’s breastplate and agreed to a safe slot in the back of the phalanx for the price of haranguing the officers before battle and upping the hoplite pay to a full silver drachma. But if he could not talk the army out of battle, then he had some lamb’s blood in his pouch that he would smear on his helmet as he peeled out at the back of the column before the first collisions with the Spartans. His real name was Menekleidas. He was from Aulis, on the narrow strait between Boiotia and Euboia, and thought he could steal the crowd back from the Arkadian. “Tell us something we do not already know, foreigner. My lads from the Euripos can stay put and hide well enough from the Spartans over on the big island of Euboia. Tell us why we need to fight and how we can win. Does this foul bird of Stymphalos think he can wing in here and squawk to us, scratching up a fantasy victory from his fancy drawings in the dirt?”
Laughs and growls arose from behind. “You tell them, Backwash.” Menekleidas turned around to bask in them. Melon had had enough. He pushed away two or three rustics to grab Backwash by the neck, then bent him down and kicked his rear so hard with his good right leg that the would-be orator flew out like an arrow into the goat carcasses outside the tent-and to greater laughs than he had just earned with his smart talk. Backwash was lucky Melon had struck first; Chion had been about to use iron, not a fist or kick. The council was again almost reduced to a brawl. The Stymphalian hadn’t even begun his attack plans. Across the ravine the Spartans were ready to follow Lichas. Here the Boiotians were fighting each other.
Melon raised his voice, “Shut up, all of you. Especially this slimy eel from the Euripos. I know my Homer and this here man is an ugly Thersites. Remember the poet’s words: ‘I swear there is no worse man than you are.’ Yes, this Thersites, this Backwash, knows well enough to charge us jacked-up tolls for those who pass over to Euboia. Like the double current, his men know how to collect coming and going. But so far he won’t fight for his fellow Boiotians.” Then Melon, son of Malgis, gave his own brief speech in the way he did to his pruners on Helikon. “I’ve heard all this before. It leads nowhere-except to a few fistfights and a Spartan army over there at Leuktra already chopping down our olives. They’re trampling our vines while we bicker and moan. You decide, all of you, whether you wish to be the dragon-sown men of Old Thebes, the bronze giants of our grandfathers’ age-or the connivers and trimmers of this new low era of Backwash.” Melon then put his arm around Ainias and raised his voice even louder. “Let this stranger from Stymphalos speak and finish his work in the sand-unless you know the Spartan better than he. But I recognize none of you from the battle at Haliartos. Is there any more than a handful here from the fights at Koroneia? See whether the Stymphalian bird has talons or not. I have fought him and his kind from Pellene before at the river Nemea. I would not wish to again. If you know spear work like he does, go on; if not keep still.”
The crowd grew quiet along with Backwash. Murmurs went around that this fellow was the son of Malgis of myth. Here was Melon of prophecy of the falling apple-and here no less with his brand-faced slave.
Ainias resumed drawing in the sand. “As I said, this they will not do. No, no-tomorrow the best of our army on the right will not kill their worst on their left. Our lesser folk won’t be harvested by the king across the field on his right. Instead Epaminondas and Pelopidas with his Sacred Band will take the harder path. They will veer toward the royal Spartan spears. They and the veterans of Thebes muster on our left, facing Kleombrotos and his royal right. Chion and I, with Melon here, go helmet to helmet with Lichas from Pythagoras’s noble left.”
A louder rustling began at mention of the strange trick. Ainias once again raised both hands to warn them all he would finish. “I said on our left. I promise to you this: The Thebans and their generals will fight on the unlucky side of our battle line, head-to-head against King Kleombrotos to the death. We few will end everything once and for all tomorrow spear-to-spear. Let their royal right hit our choice left-best against best. Let your gods on Olympos at that very spot decide who wins Boiotia. We live or die with one blow.”
A wave of silence struck the crowd, as if the apoplexy of the sight of the lame Melon had not been enough. How could a man with a scarred face and stubble talk like he was a sage of hand-to-hand spearing, the eloquent master of hoplomachia? Officers far better than Backwash pushed and squirmed for a better view of his crazed battle plan in the sand at their feet. The Theban elite was now to be on the bad-omened left side? The dirty side. Spear-to-spear, shield-to-shield set against King Kleombrotos. Melon scanned the tent. The provincials in the past always used to face directly the enemy king and his guard, while their own city grandees of Thebes stationed far to their right were untouched-slaughtering the allies of the Peloponnesos and calling it their victory.
Since the time of Kreon, the nobodies of Hellas in the battles between the city-states had been the fodder to die on the ill-fated left wing. Melon was always told by the Boiotarchs not to lose the battle before their good men could win it over on the easy right. Malgis his father used to joke, “A funny sort of war it is, when the weak fall to the strong-on both sides of the battlefield.” Then Ainias called out some more. He would either convince the Thebans or enjoy bashing the heads of the shouters. “Yes, on the left. It’s been done before in the south and maybe elsewhere as well. Do you hear me, the left-the good-omened Left Hand, the divine Left of Pythagoras, where our strong hits their strong. There it will be for most of us in this council tomorrow. I and this Melon and Epaminondas and Pelopidas over there.”
Ainias went on. “But that is not all the Spartans will see at noon.” The raspy voice of the torn ear had three cups of wine behind it, so he was louder even than before. “We will not stack sixteen men deep. Not like your fathers did at Nemea. We will not crowd even up to twenty-five shields-as your grandfathers fought at Delion. No, no, no. Epaminondas will lead a column of fifty deep. To push over the king from our left. Fifty shields deep, I say.”