self?”
“Go to war. Fight out front. Win. Bring victories home to Athens. Let your enemies speak against that if they dare.”
We parted at dawn, Alcibiades fresh as if he’d slept all night. He was on his way to the marketplace, to hunt up other friends and continue his investigation. He thanked me for my candor. “Do you need anything, Pommo? Money? A commission at arms?”
“I’d like my cousin back, if you can spare him.”
“He goes his own way, as you or I.”
I thanked him for the thought. What I needed most was sleep.
Before my door a man was waiting. He was past thirty, brown as leather and packing arms like a mercenary. He grinned at me. “You’re putting me out of business, you know?” He had made his seat upon the stones, taking his breakfast of bread dipped in wine. I asked his name.
“Telamon. Of Arcadia.”
I had heard of him; he was an assassin. Curious, I invited him in. “If you’re going to slice veins for a living,” he chided, “at least have the decency to charge for it. Else how may a poor man compete?”
I told him I was giving it up for the Prometheia. A penance.
“A noble gesture,” he observed. I liked him. I gave him what bread I had and he took it, stowing it in his pack alongside a brace of wrapped onions. He was shipping out in ten days, a brigade under Lamachus to raid the Peloponnese. He could get me on if I wanted. “Your work lacks subtlety, I hear. Post with me, I’ll instruct you.”
“Another time perhaps.”
Rising, he left a coin upon the chest. He would not hear my protests. “I expect pay, and I offer it.”
From the doorway I watched him trek off bearing his ninety pounds of kit, then turned back to the denuded interior of my own house of death.
Perhaps something had changed. At least, I told myself, I was being offered work.
Book III
THE FIRS MODERN WAR
X
THE JOYS OF SOLDIERING
I did not take up Alcibiades’ offer of a commission or follow Telamon into mercenary service. I did heed the Arcadian’s advice, however, and shipped out as an armored infantryman under Eucles to the Thracian Chersonese. That campaign concluded, discovering myself yet among the living, I enlisted upon another, equally gloryless, and another after that.
It was a new kind of war we were fighting, or so we bucks of the heavy infantry were enlightened by our elders of the Old Corps. In their day men fought battles. They armed and contended line against line, victory determined in honorable trial of arms. This was not how we did it. Our war was not just state against state, but faction against faction within states—the Few against the Many, those who had versus those who lacked.
As Athenians we sided with the democrats, or more accurately compelled all who sought our aid to become democrats, with the understanding that their democracy would be only so democratic as we permitted. Assaulting a city in this new kind of war, one contended not against heroes united in defense of their homeland, but that gang of partisans which chanced to possess the state at the moment, while one’s allies were those of the exiled faction, aligned with us, the invaders, to effect their restoration.
At Mytilene I saw my first list. Our company had been assigned its exiles, those democrats of the city who had been deposed in the oligarchic revolt and now constituted a species of political auxiliary to the Athenian troops of the assault. I had never seen such men. They were neither warriors nor patriots but zealots. The one with us was named Thersander. We called him Quill. I was a sergeant then; our captain called us in to receive the list.
The list was a death warrant. It enrostered those of Quill’s countrymen whom, the city taken, it would be our company’s chore to arrest and execute. Quill had made up the list; he would accompany us in the
syllepsis,
the roundup, to identify those upon it. You have seen
“Go to war. Fight out front. Win. Bring victories home to Athens. Let your enemies speak against that if they dare.”
We parted at dawn, Alcibiades fresh as if he’d slept all night. He was on his way to the marketplace, to hunt up other friends and continue his investigation. He thanked me for my candor. “Do you need anything, Pommo? Money? A commission at arms?”
“I’d like my cousin back, if you can spare him.”
“He goes his own way, as you or I.”
I thanked him for the thought. What I needed most was sleep.
Before my door a man was waiting. He was past thirty, brown as leather and packing arms like a mercenary. He grinned at me. “You’re putting me out of business, you know?” He had made his seat upon the stones, taking his breakfast of bread dipped in wine. I asked his name.
“Telamon. Of Arcadia.”
I had heard of him; he was an assassin. Curious, I invited him in. “If you’re going to slice veins for a living,” he chided, “at least have the decency to charge for it. Else how may a poor man compete?”
I told him I was giving it up for the Prometheia. A penance.
“A noble gesture,” he observed. I liked him. I gave him what bread I had and he took it, stowing it in his pack alongside a brace of wrapped onions. He was shipping out in ten days, a brigade under Lamachus to raid the Peloponnese. He could get me on if I wanted. “Your work lacks subtlety, I hear. Post with me, I’ll instruct you.”
“Another time perhaps.”
Rising, he left a coin upon the chest. He would not hear my protests. “I expect pay, and I offer it.”
From the doorway I watched him trek off bearing his ninety pounds of kit, then turned back to the denuded interior of my own house of death.
Perhaps something had changed. At least, I told myself, I was being offered work.
Book III
THE FIRS MODERN WAR
X
THE JOYS OF SOLDIERING
I did not take up Alcibiades’ offer of a commission or follow Telamon into mercenary service. I did heed the Arcadian’s advice, however, and shipped out as an armored infantryman under Eucles to the Thracian Chersonese. That campaign concluded, discovering myself yet among the living, I enlisted upon another, equally gloryless, and another after that.
It was a new kind of war we were fighting, or so we bucks of the heavy infantry were enlightened by our elders of the Old Corps. In their day men fought battles. They armed and contended line against line, victory determined in honorable trial of arms. This was not how we did it. Our war was not just state against state, but faction against faction within states—the Few against the Many, those who had versus those who lacked.
As Athenians we sided with the democrats, or more accurately compelled all who sought our aid to become democrats, with the understanding that their democracy would be only so democratic as we permitted. Assaulting a city in this new kind of war, one contended not against heroes united in defense of their homeland, but that gang of partisans which chanced to possess the state at the moment, while one’s allies were those of the exiled faction, aligned with us, the invaders, to effect their restoration.
At Mytilene I saw my first list. Our company had been assigned its exiles, those democrats of the city who had been deposed in the oligarchic revolt and now constituted a species of political auxiliary to the Athenian troops of the assault. I had never seen such men. They were neither warriors nor patriots but zealots. The one with us was named Thersander. We called him Quill. I was a sergeant then; our captain called us in to receive the list.
The list was a death warrant. It enrostered those of Quill’s countrymen whom, the city taken, it would be our company’s chore to arrest and execute. Quill had made up the list; he would accompany us in the
syllepsis,
the roundup, to identify those upon it. You have seen
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