most men peeled off their armour and gave it to slaves to carry,
but I wouldn’t alow my epilektoi out of theirs – I was deeply
shaken by the speed with which the Persian cavalry had
appeared from behind the olive grove. No one grumbled this
time. But it was a long walk back to camp, looking over our
shoulders al the way, and blessing every hil, every stream, every
rocky field that covered us.
Greece is treacherous ground for horses. Praise the gods.
The rescue of the Euboeans may have been ful of arete, and it
may have pleased the gods, but it cost us in several ways and it
may have pleased the gods, but it cost us in several ways and it
had disastrous consequences.
First, the Euboeans were spent. Of almost two thousand men
who came down off that hil, fewer than two hundred stayed with
the army. The rest simply went home. This is another part of
being Greek that needs explaining. Even the Athenian-Euboeans
felt that they had done their duty, and more. They had faced
weeks of danger and survived, and they went to Athens or
returned to their farms without anyone’s permission – and no one
suggested otherwise. The actual Euboeans, about a hundred of
them, remained, mostly because their city was gone and their
wives were enslaved and they had no further reason to live. They
were a silent lot.
Second, the Euboeans saw the Persians as invincible. It is no
fault of their own, but when men have been harried and driven
for weeks, beaten and beaten again, they magnify the danger and
the power of the foe to increase their own sense of worth. I am
an old man of war, and I have seen it many times. When they sat
in our camp and told their story to crowds of Athenians – many
of whom had been against this fight from the first – they spread
fear like a palpable thing. They didn’t mean to do it, but they did.
The day after we rescued them, our army was ready to fal apart.
Third, al the Persian cavalry had been sent to dog the
Euboeans. Datis, like any good commander, had sent his best
troops to prevent the Euboeans from linking up with us. Now
that we’d ‘gained’ them, the Persian cavalry – mostly Sakai, to
be honest – were no longer distracted.
The morning after we ‘rescued’ the Euboeans, I combed my
The morning after we ‘rescued’ the Euboeans, I combed my
hair on the summit of the precinct of Heracles, sitting on a rock.
When I had combed it out, Gelon braided it quickly – two thick
braids which he wrapped around the crown of my head as
padding for my helmet. He did it better than any of my other
servants or hypaspist had done – tighter and faster, too. I
remember that we had just seen a raven off in the left of the sky
– a poor omen – and we were wondering aloud why the gods
bothered to send a bad omen.
Down at the base of the hil, a big group of Athenians –
mostly poor men with no armour – were cutting brush for
bedding. They were in a long field, and at the far end was a
stand of brush and ferns, and twenty or so men were cutting the
brush and gathering bags of fern. They sang as they worked, and
I remember being content – even happy – as I listened to them.
The Sakai fel on them like the Eagle of Zeus faling from the
heavens on a rabbit. They came on horses, and they leaped the
stone wals at either end of the field, cutting the men off from the
camp as easily as if they were children caught stealing apples in
an orchard. One brave man tried to run, and three of them
chased him down, laughing. They were so close that we could
see them laugh. The leader took a rope off his quiver, whirled it
around his head like a performer and tossed it neatly over the
runner. Then he turned his horse and dragged the man,
screaming, over the rough ground.
At my side, Teucer drew his bow. It was a long shot, even
for my master archer, but he drew the feathers al the way to his
mouth and loosed, and the arrow seemed to linger in the air for
mouth and loosed, and the arrow seemed to linger in the air for
ever – flying and faling. The Sakai man was riding paralel to our
hil and he didn’t see the arrow, and it fel into him as if Apolo
guided it. He tumbled from his horse and screamed.
I hoped the man caught in the rope would rise and run. But
The other Sakai let up a thin cry, and as one, they turned and
butchered the Greeks they had caught. They kiled them al –
twenty men lost in a few heartbeats. They ripped skin from their
victims’ heads and their backs the way men skin a rabbit, and
they rode across our front, flourishing their ghastly prizes and
screaming their thin war cries. Then they rode away.
A day later, our servants were afraid even to get water from
the stream.
The meetings of the strategoi were demoralizing, too. We met
every morning and every evening – and some days more often. If
two strategoi began to talk and a third saw them together, he
would wander over, and before you knew it, al eleven would be
there.
They seemed to love to talk, and they would discuss the most
trivial things as seriously as they discussed – endlessly – the
strategic options of the campaign. Firewood? Worth an hour of
discussion. A general pool of sentries? Worth an hour of
discussion. A new type of sandal for fighting? An hour.
By the fourth day, I was ready to scream. Because what we
needed to discuss was the war. The Persians. The enemy. But
like the proverbial corpse at a symposium, we never seemed to
discuss the options fuly. I had come to the conclusion that the
polemarch liked al the talk because each day of talk made him
feel useful, while postponing the moment of decision for yet
another day.
It was on the fourth day that Aristides exploded.
‘If the Medes could be destroyed with talk, we would
certainly triumph!’ he shouted. It came from nowhere, and his
orator’s voice carried across the summit of the camp, and al the
strategoi fel silent. Gods, half the camp fel silent.
The Athenian polemarch glared at him. ‘It is not your turn to
speak,’ he said.
Aristides, the Just Man, stood his ground. ‘This is al drivel,’
he said. ‘If no one else wil say it, I wil. The Persians are peeling
our army apart. There is dissension and fear. Our numbers are
even – they have a few more men, perhaps. We must attack
them and defeat them before our men folow the Euboeans
home.’
Cleitus – the unlikeliest aly – agreed. ‘We must do something
about their cavalry,’ he said. ‘Our men fear the horses like
nothing else.’
‘Why don’t we simply return to Athens and show them the
strength of our wals?’ Leontus asked. He was the most brazen
of the anti-war strategoi, a handsome man who had the
reputation of being a servant of the Alcmaeonids. ‘I hear so
mu
ch about how we should fight a battle. Are you fools?’ He
grinned. ‘Datis has a few thousand men more than we have, and
grinned. ‘Datis has a few thousand men more than we have, and
a force of cavalry we can never hope to match. If we pack and
march away in the night, he’l burn some olive groves and go
home. He hasn’t the time to lay siege to Athens.’
He looked around. Many of the strategoi agreed with him. I
had to admit that he had a point – and I loathed him, politicaly.
‘Miltiades brought us here to save the Euboeans,’ he went
on. ‘And look what we saved! A few beaten men. The assembly
never meant for us to fight Persia. Let’s gather the army and
have a vote. I’l wager gold against silver that they vote to go
home and defend the wals. And who can blame them?’
But arrogant men often over-reach. I’ve done it a few times
myself, and I know. He carried on when he ought to have been
silent.
‘You think you have an army? We have nothing. There aren’t
enough gentlemen to fight any one of their regiments, and the
rest of these men are chaff – useless mouths. The Plataeans wil
vanish at the first onset – bumpkins, a political stunt by Miltiades
to make the rest of you credulous fools feel as if we have alies.
The best men of Euboea didn’t stop the Medes for ten days.
And their own lower orders sold the town to the enemy.’
Leontus might have carried the hour if he’d shut up before he
offended every man standing there.
Aristides gave me the slightest of smiles and nodded his head.
He was encouraging me to speak. In fact, he was egging me on.
‘Are you bought and paid for?’ I asked.
Leontus whirled, face red.
‘You lie,’ I added. I wasn’t angry, but I put on a good angry
‘You lie,’ I added. I wasn’t angry, but I put on a good angry
face. I knew what politics required. If I humiliated Leontus –
immediately and publicly – his suggestions would wither and die
on the vine. ‘My men stood and faced the Persian cavalry. You
lie when you say we wil run. But since the Persians have bought
you, you are paid to say such things.’
I walked over to him – deadly Arimnestos, kiler of men.
Leontus was not, in fact, a coward. ‘This is insane,’ he said.
‘I only say what—’
‘How much gold have the Medes paid you?’ I roared.
He flinched. He only flinched from my below, but the men in
the circle thought that he looked guilty, and there was a murmur.
‘We are going to be massacred!’ he shouted, and left the
meeting in a swirl of his cloak.
That helped morale, I can tel you.
The next day, the fifth day since the Persians landed, I sent my
servants down to the stream in the morning to draw water, with
al of Teucer’s men concealed in the rough ground at the foot of
the hil.
But the Sakai had not been the eyes and ears of the Persian
Empire for nothing. A dozen horsemen came up, looked at the
Plataean servants in the stream and rode away. They smeled a
rat.
Such is war.
At the other end of the line, Miltiades tried a similar stunt,
sending a forage party far out into the fields near the beach to
gather hay and cut standing wheat, and laying an ambush with his
gather hay and cut standing wheat, and laying an ambush with his
old soldiers, but the Mede cavalry looked it over and rode
away.
In the centre, emboldened by our success, the city men of
two tribes went down the hil with sickles to gather wheat. Most
men had eaten al the food they had brought, and fear of the
Persian cavalry was keeping supplies from reaching us.
The Sakai fel on them in ful view of the army, kiled or
wounded fifty and dragged twenty of them off into slavery. In an
Athenian tribe of a thousand men, the loss of fifty was
considerable.
At the next meeting, Miltiades finaly spoke. Many men
disliked him and feared his pretensions – he made little secret of
his intention to make himself tyrant. Generaly, he did best for the
cause of the war by saying little. But that evening, he had had
enough.
‘War is not a game for children,’ he said bitterly. He had their
attention, right enough. ‘Demostocles, your men went down the
hil like fools.’
‘We only did what you did!’ Demostocles shouted.
Aristides shook his head. ‘You don’t have a clue, do you?
You don’t understand, because you’ve never made war.’ He
crossed his arms. ‘This is not a day of battle with Aegina. This is
not a war of Greeks with Greeks. The Plataeans and Miltiades’
men laid ambushes and had reinforcements ready. We cal this
“covering” our foragers. And the Sakai and the Medes and the
Persians – they have made war, too. They saw little things – a
broken bush, a line of footprints in tal grass – and they knew
that the men were covered. And let them be. But in the centre,
you took no precautions—’
‘Leontus is right!’ Demostocles said. ‘They are better men
than us, and we wil al be kiled. I am not afraid of your Plataean
thug, Miltiades! No one can accuse me of taking Persian gold!
They are better at this skulking manner of war than we are. I
want to demand a vote – right now – to go back to the city.’
Aristides’ voice was calm – and strong. ‘You are afraid.
And like a schoolboy caught in a lie, you don’t wish to admit that
you made an error. So, better that we abandon the campaign
and retreat to the city than face the Medes, eh? Or is it that
you’d rather abandon the campaign than admit that you need to
ask the rest of us how to make war?’
‘Vote,’ Demostocles demanded. ‘And fuck you, you
pompous prig. I was kiling men with my spear when you were
shitting green.’
‘Too bad,’ I said. ‘If you’d learned anything about war,
you’d be a better strategos.’ I held up my hand to silence him.
‘Listen – I’m not pissing on you. When we went after the
Euboeans, I almost lost my whole phalanx. Why? Because I had
no idea how fast the cavalry could come at me. Our servants stil
had our shields – Ares, it could have been a disaster.’ I
shrugged. ‘And I’ve been at war since I was seventeen. Fighting
the Persians is not like any other war. We have to rol with the
punches and learn from mistakes, the way a good pankrationist
does when he fights a bigger man. Eh?’
does when he fights a bigger man. Eh?’
It was always rewarding to say something sensible and have
men like Aristides give me that look, the look that indicated that
in the main they thought me a mindless brute.
Demostocles looked stunned that I’d admitted to failing. It
took the wind out of his sails and left him speechless. Concession
and apology can be like that.
‘We need a concerted foraging strategy,’ I said. ‘Every taxis
cannot go on its own. And I think we need to contest the plain
with them – even if it costs us. We need to go down there and
show them who owns those fields, man to man. If we let their
cavalry ride where they please, eventualy they wil beat us. Or
that’s how it seems to me.’
The polemarch gave me a long look, as if up until then he’d
thought me a fool. Perhaps he had. I was, after al, Arimnestos
the kiler of men, not Arimnestos the tactician.
Miltiades came forward again. ‘I have a plan,’ he said. ‘I
think we need to attack their cavalry, and put it out of the war.’
Many voices spoke up then, and not al of them were
strategoi. The problem of the Greeks is that we al like to talk,
and al the famous men came to the meetings of the strategoi,
whether they held rank or not. Themistocles was a strategos but
Sophanes was not, and he attended anyway. Cimon, Miltiades’
eldest, held no rank, and he was always there, and seemed to
feel freer to speak than his father – on and on. So we had closer
to a hundred men than eleven.
The many voices shouted Miltiades down. Leontus began
urging a vote on returning to Athens. Of the hundred men
urging a vote on returning to Athens. Of the hundred men
standing there by the altar, the vast majority were with Leontus.
What I couldn’t tel was how many of the strategoi were with
Leontus and Demostocles.
But the voices caling for the vote were loudest.
Calimachus stepped forward and blew the horn at his hip,
and the Athenians grew quieter.
‘We wil vote on the idea of returning to the city,’ he said.
Uproar.
‘We wil vote in the morning,’ he said. ‘This meeting is
adjourned.’
Miltiades folowed him as he walked away to his tent. A dozen
other men went to folow them, and Aristides and I tried to stop
them by forcing them to face us and debate the whole issue – we
kept them there several minutes, and Miltiades was gone.
Somewhere in there, I caught Aristides’ eye. He gave a smal
shake of his head.
He thought we’d had it.
So did I.
I went straight back to my camp and found my brother-in-
law and Idomeneus, and I took them off into our little stand of
cypress trees.
‘If the army breaks up, we need to plan our own retreat,’ I
said.
‘Ares’ dick!’ Idomeneus said. ‘You must be joking, lord. Or