Read Online The End of Sparta: A Novel by Victor Davis Hanson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Victor Davis Hanson
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Historical fiction, General, Historical, Generals, History, Ancient, Europe, Thebes, greece, Sparta (Greece) - History, Sparta (Greece), Thebes (Greece), Epaminondas, Generals - Greece - Thebes, Thebes (Greece) - History
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have jumped up with those panther thighs to get there. Without much prompting, Nêto threw off her cloak and hood. As if possessed by the Pythia’s vapors, she slowly sang out a few more phrases as she pointed to Mêlon. “Him. Him. The Spartans must kill or lose tomorrow morn. Keep him safe. Do that and the king will die. The Thebans are mightier in war.”
Even the glum ones such as Philliadas were stunned silent once they heard that the violated virgin ghosts of Leuktra were to be in the skies floating above them in battle, tearing at the red-capes. They would keep away the winged demons of death from the Thebans. These were the Kêres, the blood-sucking goddesses who appeared, at one time or another, at all the battles of the Hellenes, drawn from afar by the shouts of battle and the smell of gore—with their craws full of man-flesh and sharp claws plucking up any who were tottering—assured that the life-threads of these victims were already spun by Klôthô, measured by deathless Lachêsis, and then cut by their partner Atropos, and that all three of the divine Moirai had nodded to their flying henchwomen that the doomed could now be stripped, their carcasses feasted upon, their souls whisked off to Hades.
In battle, the untouched hoplites saw none of the Kêres of this netherworld. Only the blood-spattered and dying were given the sudden vision of these feathered vultures, who grew fat from the carnage. When sated, the women of the night landed in weariness among the flies and dung to walk off their meal, and vomit and crap out tooth and bone, and then fly up for more. They flapped off cackling and farted out the fumes of human blood. Yes, on oaks around the battlefield the Kêres perched and fouled the ground with their red pus dung. They stank, as they always dove back, eye-level over the battlefield, with their pale breasts, bloody tunics, and long white fangs—eyeing any falling hoplites that could be grabbed and torn apart before the souls went down into Hades. The foolish among the dying saw their female full-white breasts and long red nipples, and paused—only to find fangs in their necks and talons under their arms as they were snatched up. All these would fly above the battle tomorrow—and yet the hoplites were encouraged that perhaps the good ghosts of the virgins of Leuktra might keep the black daughters of night away from them.
Nêto quickly covered up and looked around for Mêlon. Then she jumped down and took her place with the servant girls who scurried about the tent to clean up the mess of eating and loud men. Finally she went over to Proxenos, and amid the commanders, Nêto whispered despite the din of the tent. “I had a shudder. The Olympians speak through me, even if I damn them and instead worship Pythagoras. Yes, you and I claim we understood these signs, but not all of them. If there is truth to the prophecy of the mêlon —there is also truth to another warning that Proxenos, son of Proxenos, lord of Plataia, shall not cross south of the Isthmos.”
He laughed. But she only grabbed harder on the arm of the Plataian. “The gods on Olympos hate our arrogant Pythagoras, who has stopped so many of their sacrifices and the burnt meats men offer up to their greedy tastes. I hear these old ones, petty, spiteful, and full of envy, at night. Yet they do not always lie to me, especially when I sleep. They hate him and his logos. ” She was weeping in this, the moment of her joy that the army was about to fight and would win, she knew—and then would go south and free her Messenian kin after all, even if thousands of helots down south as yet knew nothing of Thebes, of Pythagoras, or the idea of democracy.
But then Nêto frowned and grabbed the cloak of Proxenos. “Listen, again. Do not go south after our victory tomorrow. We will win. But you lose if you do not stay north of the Isthmos. You are no Mêlon, who even in his age is stronger than you, and is the god-loved. Nor are you an
Even the glum ones such as Philliadas were stunned silent once they heard that the violated virgin ghosts of Leuktra were to be in the skies floating above them in battle, tearing at the red-capes. They would keep away the winged demons of death from the Thebans. These were the Kêres, the blood-sucking goddesses who appeared, at one time or another, at all the battles of the Hellenes, drawn from afar by the shouts of battle and the smell of gore—with their craws full of man-flesh and sharp claws plucking up any who were tottering—assured that the life-threads of these victims were already spun by Klôthô, measured by deathless Lachêsis, and then cut by their partner Atropos, and that all three of the divine Moirai had nodded to their flying henchwomen that the doomed could now be stripped, their carcasses feasted upon, their souls whisked off to Hades.
In battle, the untouched hoplites saw none of the Kêres of this netherworld. Only the blood-spattered and dying were given the sudden vision of these feathered vultures, who grew fat from the carnage. When sated, the women of the night landed in weariness among the flies and dung to walk off their meal, and vomit and crap out tooth and bone, and then fly up for more. They flapped off cackling and farted out the fumes of human blood. Yes, on oaks around the battlefield the Kêres perched and fouled the ground with their red pus dung. They stank, as they always dove back, eye-level over the battlefield, with their pale breasts, bloody tunics, and long white fangs—eyeing any falling hoplites that could be grabbed and torn apart before the souls went down into Hades. The foolish among the dying saw their female full-white breasts and long red nipples, and paused—only to find fangs in their necks and talons under their arms as they were snatched up. All these would fly above the battle tomorrow—and yet the hoplites were encouraged that perhaps the good ghosts of the virgins of Leuktra might keep the black daughters of night away from them.
Nêto quickly covered up and looked around for Mêlon. Then she jumped down and took her place with the servant girls who scurried about the tent to clean up the mess of eating and loud men. Finally she went over to Proxenos, and amid the commanders, Nêto whispered despite the din of the tent. “I had a shudder. The Olympians speak through me, even if I damn them and instead worship Pythagoras. Yes, you and I claim we understood these signs, but not all of them. If there is truth to the prophecy of the mêlon —there is also truth to another warning that Proxenos, son of Proxenos, lord of Plataia, shall not cross south of the Isthmos.”
He laughed. But she only grabbed harder on the arm of the Plataian. “The gods on Olympos hate our arrogant Pythagoras, who has stopped so many of their sacrifices and the burnt meats men offer up to their greedy tastes. I hear these old ones, petty, spiteful, and full of envy, at night. Yet they do not always lie to me, especially when I sleep. They hate him and his logos. ” She was weeping in this, the moment of her joy that the army was about to fight and would win, she knew—and then would go south and free her Messenian kin after all, even if thousands of helots down south as yet knew nothing of Thebes, of Pythagoras, or the idea of democracy.
But then Nêto frowned and grabbed the cloak of Proxenos. “Listen, again. Do not go south after our victory tomorrow. We will win. But you lose if you do not stay north of the Isthmos. You are no Mêlon, who even in his age is stronger than you, and is the god-loved. Nor are you an
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