Gates of Fire Read Free Page B

since he insisted on watching over me, slumbering always on a sheepskin at the foot of my little bed.
    In those days it seemed there was a war every summer. I remember the city’s drills each spring when the planting was done. My father’s armor would be brought down from the hearth and Bruxieus would oil each rim and joint, rewarp and reshaft the “two spears and two spares” and replace the cord and leather gripware within the
hoplon
’s oak and bronze sphere. The drills took place on a broad plain west of the potters’ quarter, just below the city walls. We boys and girls brought sunshades and fig cakes, scrapped over the best viewing positions on the wall and watched our fathers drill below us to the trumpeters’ calls and the beat of the battle drummers.
    This year of which I speak, the dispute of note was over a proposal made by that session’s
prytaniarch,
an estate owner named Onaximandros. He wanted each man to efface the clan or individual crest on his shield and replace it with a uniform
alpha,
for our city Astakos. He argued that Spartan shields all bore a proud
lambda,
for their country, Lakedaemon. Fine, came the derisive response, but we’re no Lakedaemonians. Someone told the story of the Spartiate whose shield bore no crest at all, but only a common housefly painted life-size. When his rankmates made sport of him for this, the Spartan declared that in line of battle he would get so close to his enemy that the housefly would look as big as a lion.
    Every year the military drills followed the same pattern. For two days enthusiasm reigned. Every man was so relieved to be free of farm or shop chores, and so delighted to be reunited with his comrades (and away from the children and women around the house), that the event took on the flavor of a festival. There were sacrifices morning and evening. The rich smells of spitted meat floated over everything; there were wheaten buns and honey candies, fresh-rolled fig cakes, and bowls of rice and barley grilled in sweet new-pressed sesame oil.
    By the third day the militiamen’s blisters started. Forearms and shoulders were rubbed raw by the heavy
hoplon
shields. The warriors, though most were farmers or grovers and supposedly of stout seasoned limb, had in fact passed the bulk of their agricultural labor in the cool of the counting room and not out behind a plough. They were getting tired of sweating. It was hot under those helmets. By the fourth day the sunshine warriors were presenting excuses in earnest. The farm needed this, the shop needed that, the slaves were robbing them blind, the hands were screwing each other silly. “Look at how straight the line advances now, on the practice field,” Bruxieus would chuckle, squinting past me and the other boys. “They won’t step so smartly when heaven starts to rain arrows and javelins. Each man will be edging to the right to get into his rankmate’s shadow.” Meaning the shelter of the shield of the man on his right. “By the time they hit the enemy line, the right wing will be overlapped half a
stade
and have to be chased back into place by its own cavalry!”
    Nonetheless our citizen army (we could put four hundred heavy-armored hoplites into the field on a full call-up), despite the potbellies and wobbly shins, had acquitted itself more than honorably, at least in my short lifetime. That same
prytaniarch,
Onaximandros, had two fine span of oxen, got from the Kerionians, whose countryside our forces allied with the Argives and Eleuthrians had plundered ruthlessly three years running, burning a hundred farms and killing over seventy men. My uncle Tenagros had a stout mule and a full set of armor got in those seasons. Nearly every man had something.
    But back to our militia’s maneuvers. By the fifth day, the city fathers were thoroughly exhausted, bored and disgusted. Sacrifices to the gods redoubled, in the hope that the immortals’ favor