“So thank my shield for your lives, you wretched men of Phocaea,” he said. “I myself would have sacrificed it to the sea goddess Thetis, who is well disposed toward me. I have had strange experiences the while you have thought that I lay in the hold. But I will not speak of -them.”
His eyes were the color of gray salt as he turned to Dionysius and tested the edge of his sword. “I should kill you, Dionysius of Phocaea, but seeing your foolish head finally bowed before me, I forgive you. I will even admit that the oarstroke which I received at Lade still troubles me at times.” He laughed and nudged Dionysius with his elbow. “Yes, oarstroke, not swordstroke. I don’t understand why I should have been ashamed to call it an oarstroke. Only when the goddess Thetis and I met as equals in the depths of the sea did I come to realize that nothing shameful can happen to me, but that everything I experience is godly in its way. For that reason, Dionysius, I thank you for what you did to me.”
Suddenly he straightened himself and shouted, “But enough of foolish prattle! To arms, men! We will go ashore and conquer Panormos as was intended.”
The men ran for their spears, arrows and shields. When we had numbered our ranks we found that, in addition to Arsinoe and the cat, one hundred and fifty of us had survived. Three hundred had sailed from Himera, and the fact that exactly one half remained was considered by the men to be a good omen.
But Dorieus commanded them to be silent about things of which they knew nothing. “Three hundred we were, three hundred we still are, and three hundred we shall always be no matter how many fall. But you will not fall, for from now on you are Dorieus’ three hundred. Let three hundred be our battle cry, and three hundred years from now people will still talk of our exploits.”
“Three hundred, three hundred!” shouted the men and beat their shields with their swords. Light-headed from hunger and thirst, we forgot our past miseries and impatiently ran to and fro on the deck.
The water murmured under our leaking prow and when we had passed the hump-necked mountain, there before us lay the harbor of Panormos with a few galleys and boats, a miserable wall and beyond, a fertile plain with fields and woods. But behind the plain rose the mountains of Eryx, steep and of a wondrous blue.
Book Six
Dorieus
1.
Surprise is the mother of victory. I doubt whether a single Carthaginian in Panormos could have believed it possible that the battered galley entering the harbor in bright daylight was the pirate ship which had fled Himera a month earlier. Lars Tular’s silver Gorgon head which dangled from our prow misled the patrols into believing us Etruscan, while the peaceful gestures of our men and the meaningless jargon they shouted in greeting contributed to the uncertainty. And so the patrols merely stared at us in wonder without sounding an alarm on their brass drums.
From a large round cargo vessel tied to the shore we heard cries of warning and injunctions not to row so rapidly. And when the men, peacefully dangling their feet over the water, saw our split sides and sagging rails they laughed heartily. Curious townspeople began to gather at the shore.
Even after our ram had crashed into their vessel with such force as to thrust it onto land, snap its mast and send the men toppling backward onto the deck, the sailors thought it all an accident. Their commander ran toward us, shaking his fist, cursing loudly and demanding compensation for the damage wrought by our carelessness.
But the men of Phocaea, led by Dorieus, leaped onto the vessel with their weapons, struck down everyone in their path and raced to shore. Cutting through the throng that hastened toward them, they climbed the hill and pushed through the gate into the city before the guards quite realized what had happened. While the vanguard was overcoming the resistance in the puny city and killing the’ fear-stunned men, Dionysius with his rearguard was seizing the ships on shore merely by lashing out with his rope. Having seen what happened to the first ship, the crews of the remaining cargo vessels did not even attempt to resist but begged on their knees for mercy. Only a few sought escape, but when Dionysius ordered his men to stone them, they halted in their flight and returned.
Dionysius opened the large shed on the shore in which the residents of Panormos housed the slaves used in unloading the ships. Into it he thrust the prisoners he had just seized, while the liberated slaves, among them a number of Greeks, prostrated themselves before us, hailing us as saviors. Dionysius asked them to prepare food, which they did gladly, lighting fires on the shore and slaughtering some of the neighborhood cattle. But before the meat was roasted, most of us satisfied our deepest pangs of hunger with raw flour mixed with oil.
So sudden and successful was the conquest of Panormos that a wave of audacity swept over the men of Phocaea and they recklessly swore to follow Dorieus wherever he led them. Naturally, some of this courage was born of the wine they had stolen from the houses after killing the able-bodied men of the city.
In truth, the entire garrison in the city and harbor consisted of barely fifty armed men, for the people of Panormos, with their long history of peace, did not consider weapons necessary. Since the only men in that seafaring city were artisans and hence not difficult to kill, the ease of Dorieus’ victory was not surprising. The men of Phocaea, however, considered it a miracle that none of them had received even the smallest wound and, heady from the wine, began to consider themselves invulnerable. In the evening, when they again counted their ranks and numbered three hundred-but only because they saw double-they considered that also a miracle.
To the credit of the Phocaean men be it said that, having overcome their own fear, they did not unnecessarily annoy the peaceful residents of the city. True, they went from house to house in search of loot, but they seized nothing by violence, merely pointing to that which they desired. Beholding their sea-lined faces and bloody hands, the trembling occupants willingly relinquished whatever was wanted. If someone demurred, the men laughingly moved on to the next house. That is how pleased they were with their victory, the food and the wine, and the future which Dorieus held out to them as the rulers of Eryx.
Having set up a watch, Dorieus installed himself in the timbered building occupied by the city council. When he saw that the only treasures it contained were the city charter and the sacred reeds of the river god, he angrily summoned the council before him. The quivering patriarchs in their long Carthaginian robes, their hair bound with colored bands, swore that Panormos was a wretched, poverty-stricken city whose available funds all went to Segesta as taxes. Indeed, they lamented, whenever they held feasts for the gods or welcomed state visitors, each lent his own dishes for the occasion.
Dorieus inquired ominously whether they did not consider him, a descendant of Herakles, worthy of a banquet. After shrill consultation, the old men assured him with one voice that their wives and servants had already undertaken the necessary preparations and that slaves were polishing the scanty silverware in his honor. But a satisfactory banquet could not be arranged without security of person and property.
Dorieus smiled sadly. “Have you scales over your eyes, old men, that you do not recognize me? At least feel the hot wind of my presence. My power is not founded solely on my incontestable hereditary rights or on the weapons of my men, but on the sanctification bestowed on my sovereignty by the sea goddess Thetis. Perhaps you do not recognize her by her Greek name, but you must worship her in one form or another since you engage in fishing and trading by sea.”