In Leaving Street he saw two elderly men sitting close to the palace of Agisaleus. He walked over to them and bowed. One of the men looked up after a while, acknowledging his presence. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Sir,’ said Parmenion, ‘what was the lesson of Plataea?’
‘Lesson?’ answered the man. ‘What lesson? The only lesson handed out was to the Persians and the world. You don’t take on a Spartan army and expect to win. What a foolish question to ask!’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Parmenion, bowing and moving away.
What kind of a riddle had Xenophon set him? Was the answer so obvious? If so, why did the Athenian put it in the first place? Parmenion ran to the acropolis, where he ate his pies and stared out over the Taygetus mountains.
‘Examine the evidence,’ Xenophon had said. What evidence? Five thousand Spartan warriors had met with Xerxes’ great army on the field of Plataea. The Persians were crushed, the war won. Pausanius had been the Spartan general.
What lesson?
Parmenion rose and loped down the hill to the
monument. There he read the description of the battle engraved on the marble, but it told him nothing he did not know. Where then was the evidence?
He began to get angry. The Athenian did not want to train him and had found this clever excuse. Set him a problem that had no answer, then turn him away. But even through his rage Parmenion dismissed the thought. Xenophon needed no excuses. A simple ‘No’ would have been sufficient.
The monument to Pausanius and Leonidas. . . .
It loomed above him, its secret hidden in stone. He stared up at the hoplite statue. The warrior’s long spear was broken, yet still he looked mighty.
Was he Leonidas or Pausanius, Parmenion wondered, or just a soldier?
Leonidas? Why did the King slain at Thermopylae appear on the monument to Plataea? He was killed months before. The Greeks had asked the Spartans to spearhead their army against .the coming Persian invasion, but the Spartans were celebrating a religious festival and the priests refused to sanction such a move. However the Spartan King, Leonidas, was allowed to take his personal bodyguard of 300 men to the Pass of Thermopylae. There they had fought the Persian horde to a standstill, and even when betrayed and surrounded the Spartan line still held. The Persians, too frightened to attack, finished off the defenders with arrows and javelins.
Like the sun coming through cloud, the answer to Xenophon’s question shone in Parmenion’s mind. What was the lesson of Plataea? Even in defeat there is victory. The Persians, too frightened to tackle even the remnants of the 300, had finally come face to face with 5,000 Spartan warriors. They had watched the line advance, spears levelled – and they had run. That was why the Monument was shared. Plataea was also a victory for Leonidas the King, a victory won by courage and defiance and a hero’s death.
He gazed up at the marble hoplite. ‘I salute you, Leonidas,’ he said.
*
Xenophon’s servants moved back as the old woman entered the gates of his home. None dared to approach her. She could see their fear and smiled mirthlessly as she stood leaning on her staff, waiting for the lord of the house.
She felt the pressure of many eyes upon her. Once, those eyes would have glowed with lust – once, the mere sight of Tamis would have inflamed passions and had men willing to kill their brothers merely for the right to hold her hand. The old woman hawked and spat. Once upon a time. . . . Who cared any longer about once upon a time? Her first husband had died in a war against Athens, her second in a battle in Thrace. The third had contracted a fever during a hot summer when the water went bad, and died in agony while Tamis was visiting Delphi. The last she could have saved -had she known of his illness. Could have? Might have? What did it matter now? The past was dead.
She heard a door open and the confident steps of the Athenian general approaching her. She watched him with the eyes of her body and her Talent, seeing both the handsome general and the glow of his soul-fire.