Steven Pressfield - Gates of Fire - An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

I was reassigned to the goat and kid detail.

I would be a herd boy for the sacrificial animals, minding the train of beasts that serviced the morning and evening ceremonies and followed the army into the field for training exercises.

The head boy was Dekton. He hated me from the first. He saved his most blistering scorn for my tale, imprudently confessed, of receiving counsel directly from Apollo Far Striker. Dekton thought this hilarious. Did I think, did I dream, did I imagine, that an Olympian god, scion of Zeus Thunderer, protector of Sparta and Amyklai, guardian of Delphi and Delos and who knows how many other poleis, would piss away his valuable time swooping down to chat in the snow with a cityless heliokekaumenos like me? In Dekton's eyes I was the dumbest mountain-mad yokel he had ever seen.

He appointed me the herd's Chief Ass Wiper. You think I'm going to get my back striped for handing the king a shit-caked goat? Get in there, make that puckerhole spotless!

Dekton never missed an occasion to humiliate me. I'm educating you, Bung Boy. These assholes are your academy. Today's lesson is the same as yesterday's: in what does the life of a slave consist? It is in being debased and degraded and having no option but to endure it. Tell me, my freeborn friend. How do you like it?

I would make no response, but simply obey. He scorned me the more for that.

You hate me, don't you? You'd like nothing better than to chop me down. What's stopping you?

Give it a try! He stood before me one afternoon when we and the other boys were grazing the animals in the king's pasture. You've lain awake planning it, Dekton taunted me. You know just how you'd do it. With that Thessalian bow of yours, if your masters would let you near it. Or with that dagger you keep hidden between the boards in the barn. But you won't kill me. No matter how much disgrace I heap on your head, no matter how miserably I degrade you.

He picked up a rock and threw it at me, point-blank, striking me so hard in the chest it almost knocked me over. The other helot boys clustered to watch. If it was fear that stopped you, I could respect that. It would at least show sense. Dekton slung another stone that struck me in the neck, drawing blood. But your reason is more senseless than that. You won't harm me for the same reason you won't hurt one of these miserable, stinking beasts. With that, he kicked a goat furiously in the gut, bowling it over and sending it bawling. Because it will offend them. He gestured with bitter contempt across the plain to the gymnastic fields, where three platoons of Spartiates were going through spear drill in the sun. You won't touch me because I'm their property, just like these shit-eating goats. I'm right, aren't I?

My expression answered for me.

He glared at me with contempt. What are they to you, moron? Your city was sacked, they say.

You hate the Argives and think these sons of Herakles – he indicated the drilling Peers, spitting the final phrase with sarcastic loathing – are their enemies. Wake up! What do you think they would have done had they sacked your city? The same and worse! As they did to my country, to Messenia and to me. Look at my face. Look at your own. You've fled slavery only to become lower than a slave yourself.

Dekton was the first person I had ever met, man or boy, who had absolutely no fear of the gods.

He didn't hate them as some do, or mock their antics as I had heard the impious freethinkers did in Athens and Corinth. Dekton didn't grant their existence at all. There were no gods, it was as simple as that. This struck me with a kind of awe. I kept watch, waiting for him to be felled by some hideous blow of heaven.

Now, on the road home from Antirhion, Dekton (I should say Rooster) continued the harangue I had heard from him so many times before. That the Spartans had gulled me like they gull everyone; that they exploit their chattel by permitting them the crumbs off their table, elevating one slave a fraction above another and turning each individual's miserable hunger for station into the invisible bonds which held them in chains and in thrall.

If you hate your masters so much, I asked him, why were you hopping like a flea during the battle, so frantic to get into the fight yourself?

Another factor, I knew, added to Rooster's frustration. He had just got his barnfriend (as the helot boys called their illicit wenches) pregnant. Soon he would be a father. How could he flee then?

He would not abandon a child, nor could he make his getaway lugging a girl and a babe.

He stomped along, cursing one of the other herd boys who had let two goats stray, chasing the urchin back after these stragglers behind the herd. Look at me, he growled as he fell again into step beside me. I can run as fast as any of these Spartan dick-strokers. I'm fourteen but I'll fight any twenty-year-old man-to-man and bring him down. Yet here I trudge, in this fool's nightshirt, holding the leash on a goat.

He vowed he would steal a xyele and cut a Spartan's throat one day.

I told him he must not speak like this in my hearing.

What'll you do? Report me?

I wouldn't and he knew it.

But by the gods, I swore to him, raise your hand once against them, any one of them, and I'll kill you.

Rooster laughed. Pluck a sharp stick from the roadside and drive it into your sockets, my friend.

It couldn't make you any blinder than you are already.

The army reached the frontier at Oion at nightfall of the second day, and Sparta herself twelve hours later. Runners had preceded the troops; the city had known for two days the identities of the wounded and the slain. Funeral games stood already in preparation; they would be celebrated within the fortnight.

That evening and the following day were consumed in decamping the battle train: cleaning and refitting weapons and armor, reshafting spears which had been shivered in combat and rewrighting the oaken hubs of the hoplon shields, disassembling and storing the riggings of the waggons, tending to the pack and draught animals, making sure each beast was properly watered and groomed and dispersed with their helot teamsters to their various kleroi, the farmsteads they worked. That second night, the Peers of the train at last returned to their messes.

This was customarily a solemn evening, in the aftermath of a battle, when fallen comrades were memorialized, acts of valor recognized and dishonorable conduct censured, when errors were reviewed and turned to instruction and the grave capital of battle stored up against future need.

The messes of the Peers are customarily havens of respite and confidentiality, sanctuaries within which all converse is privileged and private. Here after the long day friends may let down their hair among friends, speak as gentlemen the truths of their hearts and even, though never to excess, embrace the mellowing comfort of a bowl or two of wine. This night, however, was not one for ease or conviviality. The souls of the twenty-eight perished hung heavily over the city.

The secret shame of the warrior, the knowledge within his own heart that he could have done better, done more, done it more swiftly or with less self-preserving hesitation; this censure, always most pitiless when directed against oneself, gnawed unspoken and unrelieved at the men's guts. No decoration or prize of valor, not victory itself, could quell it entire.

Well, Polynikes called the youth Alexandras forward and addressed him sternly, how did you like it?

He meant war.

To be there, to see it raw and entire.

The evening stood now well advanced. The hour of the epaikla had expired, that second course of the meal at which game meat and wheaten bread may be contributed, and now the sixteen Peers of the Deukalion mess settled, hunger satisfied, upon their hardwood couches. Now the lads who stood-to the mess for their instruction might be summoned and roasted upon the griddle.