Diplomacy in the Grass

I.

Agis watched his troops exercise under the hot Attic sun which beat down on the darkly bronzed backs of the Spartan soldiers. Below the unwavering gaze of the drill sargent, the men ran from one end of the field to the other, progressively increasing their speed with each successive lap. The sargent stood poised with a cat-o-nine-tails, ready to strike the soldiers if they showed signs of slowing down or appearing fatigued. As every man valued his back, they all sprinted like any Olympic runner seeking the palm, kicking up a cloud of dust behind their tracks. In the distance was the Spartan camp marked by numerous, low-lying tents made from a cheap, coarse material which kept out neither the cold, heat, nor rain.

To his east, Agis heard a muffled rumble of an approaching caravan. He could not make out the nature of the party, whether ally or not, but he could discern an ornate palanquin surrounded by a troop of Arabian mounts. He wondered if it were the long expected Megarian diplomatic contingent which Corinth should have sent some few days past. In the moments that followed, his second lieutenant materialized to his right and stiffly saluted him. Agis gave him a questioning look with slightly raised eyebrows.

"Palaemon?" he inquired, shifting his weight from one side to the other.

"My lord," the lieutenant began, "the Phrygians come." He pointed to the distant caravan. Agis inclined his head in acknowledgement. The Spartan king and his second stood at attention, following the progress of the Phrygian company. It presently stopped a few stadia away and was greeted by the centry at the watch.

"Do the guards know to let the Phrygians pass?" Agis asked, his eyes on the detained caravan.

"Yes, Xenophon has seen to it," Palaemon answered. "Shall I meet up with him and welcome the Phrygians?"

"No need," Agis replied. He took up his sword and walked toward the centry's post. He came level to the head of the Arabian bay that stood at the front of the troop. The other bays drew rein and stopped around the Caryan slaves who bore a palanquin with silken curtains.

"Agis, King of Sparta," the head horseman declared, "we present Pharnabazus of Phrygia." The slaves lowered the palanquin, and the Phrygian lord stepped into the Attic sun.

"I hope you journeyed well," Agis stated, nearing the splendidly dressed official.

"Fine, thank you," Pharnabazus replied, letting the damask of his red tunic flutter.

"I have fortified Decelea," Agis stated.

"So I have experienced. We encountered a bit of inconvenience getting through the bulwarks. They are very solid defenses, the best I've seen," Pharnabazus answered.

"But Athens still stands, Pharnabazus," Agis observed. "We have not been able to breach their citadel."

Pharnabazus sighed, the Attic heat going to his head. "I'm sure the oligarchs have ordered the use of every piece of timber, stone, and iron for the fortress. Who knows that they didn't demolish the Parthenon and use the marble for extra reinforcement. Those Athenians are a tenacious bunch to destroy their temples during war time." He laughed in a way of an icebreaker.

Agis was not amused. The king stood before the sweating lord in an attitude of haughty stoicism. "The sun is getting to you," Agis said unequivocally.

"Oh, certainly not," Pharnabazus declined.

"Come into my tent. We have the gravest matters to discuss," Agis suggested. The king led the Phrygian governor to the humble Spartan camp. When they arrived at the gray triangle of the tent, Agis raised the flap and coaxed Pharnabazus to crawl in first. He sat on the grassy floor and offered Pharnabazus a seat opposite him.

Agis steepled his fingers and began, "Now, I have fortified Decelea, and the Athenians, tenacious as they are, fight back. I remain uninformed as to where the Megarians are, but the situation demands we have extra forces. Can you offer any troops? Any services? Athens is willful but wealthy. There will be much in spoils and booty, if that interests you or your men"

"Willful but wealthy ..." Pharnabazus mused, delicately sitting on folded knees so as to bring as little of his red tunic in contact with the grassy ground. "I may be able to spare two regiments, but the problem is getting them here."

"Never mind that. We'll use the Spartan and Corinthian navy," Agis speculated. "My triremes are all over the Aegean. Transportation is of no concern."

"Very well then. I'll send word to my captains," Pharnabazus answered. "They shall be here in a few days."

"Excellent," Agis concluded. Pharnabazus smiled wanly as he feebly fanned his face against the oppressive heat.

The soldiers were still at their drills when Agis and Pharnabazus emerged from the stuffy tent. The sargent still grasped his whip and kept a sharp eye on the sprinting infantry men. "See my army," Agis commanded, pointing to the field exercises. Pharnabazus watched the men with grim admiration. The governor's attention was soon arrested when he saw an adolescent soldier singled out from the line. The martinet of a sargent raised his whip and soundly scourged the back of the youth, who crouched degraded over the ground, for slowing his pace. With each flagellation, the youth's body writhed in pain, a purely physiological response to the abuse on his back, but he did not show his misery on his pallid face as a thin stream of blood coursed down his frame.

"That's how we reward laggards," Agis remarked, inclining his head toward the scene before them. Pharnabazus stared in mute astonishment as he and the king traipsed over to the drill sargent. He could see the young soldier was a boy in his late teens while the sargent was an older, battle-hardened veteran who had probably spent his adolescence being scourged by some earlier disciplinarian of the Lacedaemonians stock. His punishment finished, the youth crumpled to the ground from exhaustion and pain.

"Get up," Agis commanded. "We are Spartans." He scornfully looked down with reproach in his eyes at the bruised and bleeding body before him. For a brief moment, there was a silent appeal in the boy's mien, but he struggled to his feet and joined the exercises without further delay.

That evening, Pharnabazus supped with Agis and his first lieutenant Xenophon, discussing military strategy and tactics. They talked over a meager repast of bread dipped in olive oil and wine. Palaemon had gone to confer with the admiral Lysander, taking stock of the galleys in the bay and sending word to the captain of each vessel about the transportation of the two Phrygian regiments pledged by Pharnabazus. In the next few days, Agis surveyed the defenses of Decelea and sent a courier to Athens where the ecclesia was called into special session over the news of renewing fighting. The Megarians soon arrived with several Corinthian reinforcements who mingled with the Spartan camp. Palaemon daily watched for Phrygian ships while the Athenians mobilized their own triremes.

The decisive day which ended the Attic War began early in the morning when Athens rammed one of its galleys into a Spartan vessel. Lysander quickly retaliated by commanding his galley to aim for the hull of the Athenian trireme. The Corinthian and Megarian fleets then engaged the remainder of the Athenian argosy, each side pulverizing the other's galleys with mighty battering rams made from the hardwoods of Grecian timber. On land, the Athenian hoplites made attacks on the fortifications of Decelea, driving huge stones into the walls. Phrygian archers, stationed on the ramparts, shot at the bronze-clad hoplites with ignited arrows. Meanwhile, the Spartan infantry advanced on the citadel but was repelled by a Plataean contingent. The fierce Spartans, however, had all been trained by strict sargents and eventually broke through the Plataean lines and stormed the fortress, killing their general. They met the right flank of the Athenian army on the plane of Decelea. Two of their columns engaged the Athenian phalanx, spears and rapiers clanging.

By early evening, splintered galleys, broken ores, and snapped battering rams littered the Aegean. The captains of the triremes, mostly Athenian men, clung to the sturdy remaining pieces of wood until they could be transported to the shore. Galley slaves, many of them weak from years of a meager diet and hard labor, swam listlessly to land, hoping for a chance of freedom, or drowned from fatigue in the warm water tinged a bloody red by the setting sun. Real gore stained the Decelean plane, coloring sanguine the dried grass on which the king of the Spartans and the governor of Phrygia formed their alliance. The Athenians had indeed penetrated Decelea's fortifications, but that was a little victory to the Spartans' masterful maneuvering about the acropolis on whose steps laid the mangled bodies of the Plataeans and hoplites, their armor stripped from them and their fine cavalry chargers claimed by Spartan officers. Anyone left was sold into slavery or taken for ransom. In short, the Spartans fought like their ancestors of old under Menelaus when they battled at the plane of Troy for the return of their queen.

The tender-fleshed and delicate Pharnabazus had been far removed from the fighting, tucked safely away in a fortress constructed in upper Attica. Palaemon and Xenophon rounded up their troops and retreated back to Decelea from the Athenian acropolis while Lysander, with the magnanimity of the victor, rescued the Athenian commanders from the water and sailed back to Peiraeus where the bedraggled captains reported grievous news to the admiral. Agis, still clad in his bronze armor and wielding his sword in case of surprise, traversed the plane outside Athens' outer limit, surveying the rubble of what used to be the citadel, the dead bodies, and the cavalry horses expiring next to their masters. He stopped at the body of one of his own men and could hear that the man was still breathing. He quickly removed the soldier's helmet to give him some air. Agis then recognized the face of the youth who had been whipped a few days prior.

"Courage, my child. It takes more than one battle to slay a Spartan," the king said with a stoic's compassion. The boy dared not smile, but he closed his dark eyes in grateful understanding.

"What is your name?" Agis asked the youth lying below him.

"Callicrates," he responded before drifting into the oblivion caused by the pang of his shoulder wound.

II.

It was many years later when Agis died. After his death followed a nasty power struggle in which Lysander, the victorious general who won the Attic War, highjacked the government for a time. A new king, Agesilaus, emerged when he challenged Lysander's control and exiled him from Ephesus where the Spartan seat had been moved temporarily. Along with a new king was a new enemy: Persia had designs on Sparta's navy and had made overtures to topple its maritime supremacy.

Agesilaus stood now in the Ephesian agora, watching the slave auction with mocking eyes. The prisoners of war came from Phrygia which the Spartans had invaded to frustrate the schemes of the local satrap, Tisafernes who believed the Spartans had headed for nearby Carya. The slavers stripped the Phrygians bear and exposed their white, soft-skinned bodies to the public. The Spartans, expecting bronzed and muscular physiques used to the strike of a whip or slash of a sword, bought the Phrygians' fine linen tunics and silken chitons instead of the people who wore them.

"See, my Greeks, the men you fight. And what of it? You buy their clothes," Agesilaus announced, taking up the hand of one of the Phrygian youths for sale. "We need have no fear of the Persians." The agora erupted into laughter from the Spartan officers.

"Only infants have such delicate flesh," quipped Agesilaus' second lieutenant Xenophon.

"Ah, but these Phrygians would make excellent cupbearers. Who wouldn't like to receive his wine from such dainty hands?" the slaver joked. A second bout of laughter followed as the men and boys for sale looked uneasy.

That night, a messenger trudged into the Spartan camp. Agesilaus stood to one side, shouting orders to his men. The soldiers, some with angry, half-healed gashes from a recent attack, set about erecting the tent poles which supported the shabby gray coverings of the low canopies. Others searched for wood and dried leaves on the littered ground of a nearby forest. Lurid orange light lit up the morose faces of the officers who tended the few camp fires. A small scouting party, which had been released from duty, went hunting for game in the woods.

The evening was unseasonably cold for early winter, yet the Spartans only wore simple chitons which exposed the arms and legs. They did not seem to notice the visible vapor of their breaths which issued from their thirsty throats. Their eyes, bright with fatigue and hunger, keenly stared into the fire or surrounding darkness. The courier, shivering in the autumnal air, made his way to Agesilaus and handed him a crumpled scroll. The Spartan king read the document and gave a curt reply to the messenger who committed his response to memory before leaving the camp grounds and the stench of ash, festering wounds, and decaying leather.

On the morning of the next day, Agesilaus, in a drab military chiton and tattered himation, lay in the dewy grass under an olive tree awaiting the Phrygian governor. In the distance stood a few of his officers. He did not have to wait long. From his east he espied a satrap dressed in vermilion damask advancing toward him and carrying a Persian carpet of silk brocade. He gave the stranger a half-amused look but no smile. The satrap, after catching sight of the king in coarse gray garments, grew ashamed of his luxuries and flung himself down beside the monarch, letting the fine Persian rug roll away with the leopard skin.

"Your clothes?" Agesilaus observed.

"It makes no difference. This kind of diplomacy in the grass cares not what you wear," the Phrygian lord responded. "Besides, I have done this before, though I am not used to it."

"Ah, with Agis," Agesilaus mused. "You are Pharnabazus?"

"I am indeed, your Majesty. You are his son?" Pharnabazus asked.

"His brother," Agesilaus answered, propping himself up on his elbows. "Why have you called me here?"

"King of Sparta, is it not ill recompense that you ravage Phrygia, sell the people into slavery, and plunder the cities when I served you so faithfully during the Attic War. May I remind you the Athenians lost that war, and yet here are your men spoiling my country when they owe me so much," Pharnabazus said, casting his eyes to the officers standing beyond the olive's shade. In turn, they hung their heads, guilty of the wrong they had done against an ally.

"Pharnabazus, when I was on good relations with your king in Persia, we were friends. Now that I am at war with him, we are enemies. And you, as his satrap, are thus part of his dominion. I attacked Phrygia, not intending to harm you, understand, but to harm the Persian king through the wounds I give you. The day you decide to renounce this king of yours and join the Grecians will be the day when my army and navy will be at your command, ready to defend your country and your liberties," Agesilaus explained, his officers listening with rapt attention.

"If the king should replace me, then I would come to you in an instant, but as he trusts me, I will continue to serve him loyally. It goes without fail that I will do everything I can to oppose you," Pharnabazus replied.

The two men rose to their feet. "If only I had such a brave man as my friend than as my enemy," Agesilaus deplored, extending his hand to shake with Pharnabazus'.

"Good men are hard to find," Pharnabazus remarked.

"Loyal ones are harder," Agesilaus answered, presenting the Phrygian lord with his leopard skin and Persian rug.

Pharnabazus did not go back on his word. Although Agesilaus brought peace and order to many of the Asian cities and could make great Persian lords grovel before him in his threadbare cloak, he was recalled back to Sparta. The Persians, fearful of a direct invasion of the capital Susa, bribed the Athenian and Theban demagogues who advocated making hostile overtures on Spartan frontiers. Faced with a homeland threat, Agesilaus ceased his activity in Asia, marched through Macedon, and arrived in Laconia only to hear that his new admiral Pisander had lost both his life and his galleys to Pharnabazus.

Now in Coronea, Agesilaus told his soldiers that the Spartans had actually won the naval battle to allay any discouragement. Before engaging with the Thebans, he even made a sacrifice of thanksgiving, parts of which he distributed to his friends. The Spartans and the Orchomenians met the Thebans and their allies, the Argives, on open field. Agesilaus fell on the Argives with a vengeance, thrusting his sword into bronze breast plates which broke apart on contact and hurling his javelin so as to throw a man off his horse. He stabbed and slashed, always keeping his round shield before him. The Argives fought as fiercely, cleaving the Spartan armor and lacerating arms and legs with deep strokes. The Theban archers shot at the necks and eyes of the Orchomenians who in turn released stones from slingshots or hacked with their rapiers.

The Spartans then came to the assistance of their left flank while the Thebans turned their attention to their Argive allies. Moved by anger, Agesilaus rode into the middle of the Theban line, his fifty-man guard committing themselves to killing as many enemy forces as possible. That cleared the way for the Thebans to send a barrage of arrows right into the midst of the Spartans. The Orchomenians tackled the Argives head on in their chariots or on the ground. Then, on orders from the lieutenants, the Spartans split ranks, allowing the Thebans to defile past. Egged on by their false security, the Thebans progressed onwards when the Spartans enclosed them in a tight ring and enacted a second Iliad, rapiers flashing in the sunlight and javelins gleaming with blood.

The fighting continued until the late evening. Those who remained panted with relief and let fall their guilty weapons slick with blood. Both Spartan and Theban, Orchomenian and Argive looked at the moon, almost expecting to see a sanguine stream across its pearly surface, before casting their eyes to their comrades whose bodies were stripped of armor and mutilated. The Theban general, Diomedes, lay dead in the grass still holding his sword with his shattered shield next to his wounded horse who vomited gore and foam. A Spartan lieutenant sheaved his blade and took off his helmet, the reek of sweat and iron meeting his nose. He walked among his soldiers, lingering over his friends or watching a particularly valiant man take in his last breath.

He came to Agesilaus who was lying supine on the ground. Crouching next to his king, he whispered, "My liege?"

Agesilaus slowly opened his eyes and stared at his officer. "Callicrates?" he replied. The lieutenant nodded.

"You're wounded," Callicrates remarked, supporting his king with one arm. He then slid another arm under Agesilaus' shoulders and carefully picked him up, wincing slightly from the pain of a shallow wound on the small of his back.

"You were always soft," Agesilaus teased, seeing his lieutenant's expression.

"But I'm not so weak that I cannot carry my king away from all this," Callicrates responded. "Spartans don't die after one battle." Agesilaus smiled, remembering the words of the king before him.