The Ten Thousand (8 page)

"Zeus."

She continued staring at him as the curtains were drawn back together by the slaves, hiding the leering Pythia from our sight, her empty sockets remaining focused on him until she finally disappeared behind the folds. The attendants stepped forward and took our arms, leading us out from the cool, silent dankness of the temple to the blinding sunlight and raucous shouts of the street vendors setting up their stalls for the festival.

SEATED ON A low stool in the semidarkness of Socrates' single room, Xenophon seemed scarcely aware of his surroundings in his agitation. "I wasted my chance," he groaned, his shoulders slumped, his back curved like that of a whipped dog. I had not seen Xenophon this wretched in twenty years. "My one chance to ask the god to guide me in the most important decision of my life, and I asked the wrong question. I can't even tell my father what the oracle said, much less what I am now to do with my life."

Socrates was silent for a moment, puttering about the room, arranging papers and scrolls here and there. As always, there was nothing of reproach in his silence; only thoughtfulness and comfort, like the presence of a beloved grandfather. Xenophon did not stir, nor did I from the corner to which I had retreated, trying to remain as unobtrusive as my large frame would allow.

"You attempted to deceive the god," Socrates said finally, his old satyr's face expressionless. "You asked the question that most closely suited your desires."

"But Socrates," he interrupted, standing up and pacing, "I tried to ask the question you told me to ask. The Pythia stopped me and wouldn't let me proceed! As the gods are my witness, I tried!" He glanced at me, and I nodded slowly, but Socrates did not even bother to look up from his chores.

"Do you know what true wisdom is?" Socrates finally asked, and this time he stood squarely in front of Xenophon, demanding with his posture that the younger man pay complete attention to his words. "Do you truly understand what it is to obey the dictum carved on the temple wall at Delphi,
Know Thyself.
Listen to me now, and do not interrupt. For once this is not a dialogue. Men call me wise, and you apparently believe I am, or you would not be here now, before even speaking to your father. I will give you advice, as far as I can, and you may do with it what you will.

"Wisdom is far more," Socrates continued, "and what is most important, far less, than you might think, and to that extent men are right—I am indeed wise. But you need not take my word for it. You could, if you wished, look to your friend the god at Delphi as witness to my wisdom, such as it is."

Xenophon looked up in interest, for none of us who had accompanied Socrates in the agora were aware that he had ever consulted the Pythia.

"It was not I who consulted her," he said, as if reading our thoughts, "but rather my boyhood friend, Chaerophon, who many years ago asked the oracle if there was anyone wiser than Socrates. To this the Pythia had replied that there was no one."

I could see in Xenophon's eyes that the same thought had flashed into his mind as into mine:
He of wisdom unsurpassed..
. What was the rest?..
. whose words with venom must compete...
That had nothing to do with Socrates; the Pythia's words remained obscure. The old man continued, instructing his fools:

"When Chaerophon told me the oracle's answer, I asked myself, 'Why does the god not use plain language? I realize I have no claim to wisdom, great or small; so what might he mean by saying no one is wiser than I? He cannot be telling a lie; that would not be proper for a god.' After turning this about in my head for some time, I finally resolved to check the truth of it in the following way: I went to speak with a man famous for being wise, because I felt I would then succeed in disproving the oracle and demonstrating to the deity that here was a man wiser than I. Well, I gave this man a thorough examination—I will not tell you his name, but he was one of our politicians at the time—and in speaking with him I concluded that even though in the view of many people, and especially in his own, he appeared to be wise, in fact he was not.

"Xenophon, real wisdom is the property of the gods alone, and the oracle tells us that human wisdom has little or no value. I finally decided that the oracle was not referring literally to me, to this man Socrates, but had rather taken my name as an example, as if to say 'the wisest man is he who, like Socrates, realizes that he truly knows nothing.'

"You know, I once attempted to study the writings of Heraditus the Obscure. What I did understand of them was excellent. I believe also to be excellent that which I did not understand." Socrates smiled at his little joke. "Heraclitus," he went on, "once said that you cannot step into the same river of time twice, and in this he was correct. You cannot have a decision both ways.

"The god saw inside your heart, Xenophon, and the wisdom you thought you had, by trying to second-guess him, was worthless. You had already made up your mind what to do, regardless of the oracle's answer to your intended question. Do not be ignorant of yourself, nor make the same mistakes as other men, who are so busy looking into the affairs of their rivals that they never turn to examine themselves. Go now. You received your answer from the oracle, and you have talked it over with me. The die is cast, and there is nothing I can advise you to do, except the god's bidding, now and always."

At this Xenophon, who had been staring morosely at the floor, looked up at Socrates and saw the old man gently smiling at him, without a hint of sadness or reproach. There were no tears, not a trace of hesitation on his face, and he clasped Xenophon to him for an instant like a son, and then released him, swatting him on the arm as if to shoo him out the door. He then fixed his gaze upon me—the first time I believe he had ever even noticed me—and clasped me as well, but upon releasing me looked me straight in the eye with a twinkle and said softly, "You, Theo, I perceive as being among the wisest of men. May the Fates be on your side." Given Socrates' definition of wisdom I wasn't sure whether to take this as a compliment or an insult, but I gladly accepted his blessing and followed Xenophon out the low door.

The sky was darkening early and the wind blew bitingly cold. Athens was still recovering from the poverty into which the recent war, and the subsequent peace with Sparta, had thrown it, and there was little activity in the streets after dark. Few boarding houses were open, and the noises of any activity issuing from the windows of the inns were rare. Xenophon stood in the street a long time, watching the dry dust blow cold along the gutters, seeing the windows of the houses grow dark and turn black, as few people in Socrates' quarter could even afford oil for lamps. The squalor and filth that are part of any large city had never been readily apparent in Athens, perhaps disguised by the beauty of the buildings and monuments on every street corner, masked by the natural vivacity of its citizens bustling about their daily activities. On that evening, however, the stench and the rot gathering in the gutters and against the sides of once-pristine public buildings were overwhelming. It was the dominant sensation in a city that was otherwise practically abandoned to its ghosts until the dawn's light returned to rid it of its specters. Xenophon stood and watched the darkness descend, and saw his future in this city to be as black as the shadows that were relentlessly invading it. Several weeks before, he had ordered me to mark with red ink on his chest the position of his heart, in case, he said, he had to take recourse to it with his dagger to avoid falling into his enemies' hands. I had laughed it off at the time, though somewhat uneasily I admit, dismissing it as nothing more than excessive dramatics on the part of an overwrought young man. Nevertheless, I had resolved to keep a close eye on him, and his mood tonight made me wish I had misapplied my red brush.

That evening Xenophon sacrificed an ox to Zeus in the main temple, and early the next morning we boarded a merchant ship carrying heavy-fleeced Attic sheep, bound for Ephesus. As we pulled away in the tender, we looked back and saw that old one-eyed Gryllus had appeared on the rain-soaked beach, pushing his way through the fishmongers and loincloth-clad porters in a belated effort to intercept his son before departure. We sat in the boat, frozen at the sight of Gryllus standing knee-deep in the receding surf, shaking his fists in rage and howling curses that were mercifully dissolved in the wind by the gods before reaching our ears. In one final, futile gesture of fury at Xenophon's betrayal, Gryllus hurled stone after stone at us, which splashed harmlessly into the water far short of our vessel. It was for no man's sake, least of all Proxenus' or Cyrus', that Xenophon had embarked on his journey toward the Persians, but rather in search of a road that led to Zeus. In seeking out one immortal, however, he left others behind, for he never saw Socrates, or his father, again.

BOOK THREE

Hoards of wealth have I, left behind when I departed

On this ill-starred journey, and yet more shall I bear home from hence,

Gold and ruddy bronze, and lovely, fair-sashed women,

And gleaming gray iron, all that fell to me as spoils...

—HOMER

TO THE ACCOMPANIMENT of the groans and rattling chains of the sweat-drenched slaves wielding the oars, the ship bumped to the wharf at Ephesus, the closest port to Sardis though still more than fifty miles distant. I seized our gear, and Xenophon and I leaped onto the quay, not even bothering to take leave of the ship's brutish captain. We quickly wolfed down a few hunks of steaming flat bread slathered with a spicy lentil sauce that I purchased from a nearby vendor, and after a bit of haggling, I bought two healthy Cappadocian asses to carry ourselves and our baggage. In the echo of our journey to Delphi, we spent three days traveling the "King's Highway," the road that ultimately led to the royal city of Susa, on which Sardis was the most important way station. Climbing up from the coastal route, the road passed over bleak, desiccated hills as barren as Aphrodite's marriage to lame Hephaestus. It descended finally into the Cryon valley before taking up the left bank of the Hermus River, which led us directly into the city. Our original plans had been to inquire immediately into the whereabouts of Cyrus' army, but the sights and sounds of this oriental metropolis, the largest city we had ever seen, were so beguiling that we decided to find an appropriate inn and spend a day or two touring before leaving to visit Proxenus.

Sardis did not disappoint. Surrounded by the fertile vineyards and farms through which Xenophon and I had passed while riding into town, the ancient city rose towering from the flat plain, a massive, rock-walled fortress with battered turrets soaring into the sky. Its clamorous markets, the overwhelming odors of the spices and herbal potions sold on every street corner, and the exuberant, thronging citizens from every nation of the world reminded me of Athens in my childhood, before its devastation and impoverishment. It was so long since I had enjoyed the pleasures of a prosperous, optimistic city that even when alone in our rooms, listening to the muffled street sounds outside, I was exhilarated at the prospects waiting just outside my door.

Some three hundred years earlier Sardis, even then a great city, had been overwhelmed by hordes of pale-skinned barbarians who had swept down from the north in endless numbers like packs of ravenous wolves, devouring all its riches and mingling their wild barbarian blood with that of the refined and delicate natives. It was said that so many men and women were killed during the barbarians' brutal sweep through the city that when the carnage was over, thousands of children were left wandering the streets, homeless and wailing. The offspring of royalty mingled with those of the lowest cowherds, and the children's identities were obliterated through the effacement of their outward customs and manners as they scrounged for scraps in the gutters. It was finally decided that no one could determine their origins with certainty, for every child claimed to have been sired by the king, and so they were simply lined up in the market like so much chattel and auctioned to the highest bidder, as slaves of the barbarians or for adoption by surviving Sardesian adults. Since that time, each baby has been imprinted with a tiny, discreet tattoo shortly after birth, usually along the hairline on the nape of the neck, depicting an identifiable family symbol such as an animal or a letter. When walking through the streets, I enjoyed noticing these small signs on young babies riding in slings on their nurses' backs, with their soft, hairless heads slumped forward in sleep.

Under King Croesus, who was said to own as much gold as Midas but who had been cursed by the gods, Sardis was restored and became even more wealthy than in the past. In the last century Sardis, like the rest of Asia Minor, passed over to Persian control, and despite sometimes heavy-handed governance by the king's satraps and descendants, the most recent of whom was the young Cyrus, the city had over the years continued to prosper.

It was from Sardis that Darius and Xerxes had launched their expeditions against the Greeks almost a hundred years earlier, the former's culminating in his defeat at Marathon, the latter's being fatally delayed by the Spartans at Thermopylae. From here, battles famous in Greek history had been commanded and planned, and soldiers in all three Ionian wars had been drawn chiefly from the region of Sardis and had made their last stand here against Athens' retaliatory raids. We wandered the city's libraries and monuments by day, its taverns and theaters by night, and before I realized how fast time was passing, Xenophon noted that we had spent three weeks, and a considerable quantity of our dwindling supply of silver.

We packed the next day, reclaiming our mules from the stockyard where they had been kept, and within two hours of leaving the city saw the first stockades of the army, fencing thousands of pack animals and their forage, and after that mile after mile of neat rows of military tents, most of leather, some of the cheaper yet more durable canvas now becoming more common among armies. The numbers of troops that had assembled on the plain were astonishing. Proxenus had said in his letter that Cyrus was raising a force to be led by Greek mercenaries to put down an uprising of the Pisidians; but the Pisidians were a backward, barbarian race, and surely their defeat did not require the massive army we saw gathered here before us. This was not the ragtag bunch of worn Spartan mercenaries and hangdog Persian slave soldiers we had expected to see. An indefinable feeling, one of tension and unease, sat low and heavy in the pit of my stomach as we rode through the camp, surrounded on all sides by heavily armed, bearded Persian soldiers who did not even bother to disguise the hostile glances they shot our way.

Xenophon asked the first officer he saw where we might find Proxenus of Boeotia. He looked at our dusty garments in frank appraisal of our intentions, and cautiously directed us toward the center of camp, to general staff headquarters. We wound for an hour through the narrow alleys of tents and thronging soldiers, a camp that was no less an independent and wealthy city than Sardis itself, with its own markets, taverns, baths, and residential sections. We were finally stopped by two enormous Ethiopian guards, wearing leopard skin tunics and carrying eight-foot spears, who informed us in camp Greek that we could not pass into Cyrus' compound without his permission.

Xenophon inquired after Proxenus, and they pointed us to a tent alley nearby, which I found later to be the Greek quarters, and the first officer we encountered, in the first tent we passed, was Proxenus.

Had I simply passed him in the streets I would never have recognized him, but when he locked Xenophon in that familiar bear hug and flashed his old grin at me, I knew that he was still, at heart, the Proxenus we had known years before.

"Xenophon!" he shouted heartily, and gestured to some of his captains to come meet us. "Are you shaving yet? By the gods, look at those shoulders! Gentlemen," he said to his gathering mates, "this handsome young devil is the cousin I've been telling you about. I babysat him in Athens years ago when he still needed his nose wiped, and now look at him—he's on the verge of growing up!"

The men laughed heartily, for Xenophon had indeed grown since Proxenus had last seen him—he now stood half a head taller and twenty pounds heavier than his boyhood friend. Proxenus himself seemed much smaller than I remembered, or perhaps his own growing reputation in my mind had simply not kept pace with his physical stature; but his years fighting with the Spartans had made him into a wary, hardened soldier, tanned and scarred. Much to my amazement, he was also the general of a battle-tested troop of two thousand utterly devoted men whom he had recruited primarily from among his former brigade in the war with Sparta—fifteen hundred hoplites with their attendants, and an additional five hundred light infantry, all of whom looked to him unquestioningly as their leader.

Xenophon grinned happily, slipped the strap supporting his luggage on the mule, and tossed the heavy bundle to Proxenus, who mock-staggered under its weight. "Thank you for the warm welcome, cousin," he said, glancing around at the tents surrounding him. "Conditions are a mite shabby, but I'm sure you'll correct that. Meanwhile, my quarters, please."

Proxenus feigned an expression of insult and ostentatiously dropped the bags on the ground, but then laughed heartily and clapped Xenophon on the back again. "You are truly welcome, cousin, and you too, Theo the Giant," he said, addressing me. "I thought Xenophon had grown, but by the gods, I'd hate to face an army of Syracusans if they're all built like you!" Then speaking seriously to his friends, "I've known Xenophon since he was a boy, and have followed his military career for years. I'm proud to say he is one of the finest cavalry officers ever to be dismissed from Athens' service, and in this day, it is a compliment to have been dismissed by those rump-humpers now in charge over there. Welcome to our campaign, Xenophon; the prince will be pleased."

At this, the men laughed even harder, to Proxenus' consternation, since he was trying to provide a formal introduction to his friend. The irony soon became apparent, however, when he looked away from Xenophon, whom he had just presented as a fine cavalry officer, to the animal on which he had just ridden in—the dusty, swaybacked mule who just at that moment was attempting to uproot a tent peg. Proxenus grinned. "Come with me," he said. "You can wash up and rest from your journey. I have to see to some affairs with my troops tonight, but we'll catch up on old times tomorrow." He led us to the officers' baths, a serious affair befitting the army of the satrap of Sardis, where we spent the rest of the afternoon washing and dozing until one of Proxenus' orderlies arrived to take us to the tent to which we had been assigned.

The next day, Proxenus gave us a tour of the enormous encampment and explained his role in the army. He had served Boeotia energetically during the war, and was especially well known for his expertise in the construction and use of the Boeotian engine. This consisted of a long, straight log, split in two lengthwise, with the two halves carefully hollowed out, lined with iron or tin and then fitted back together into a hollow tube. An enormous bellows was attached to the nether end, and a large iron cauldron containing a blazing mixture of sulfur and pitch hung from the front. The entire contraption was mounted on a cart covered with a heavy plank roof to protect its drivers from enemy arrows and missiles, and when it had been brought sufficiently near the opposing army or its palisades, the bellows were worked, forcing a stream of air through the long tube over the flaming cauldron at the other end, throwing a murderous, sticky flame over its target. Xenophon and I glanced at each other knowingly. This, then, was the "dragon" that Thrasybulus had applied to such murderous effect against us at Phyle. Since its initial use during the war, Proxenus had managed to make numerous improvements to the engine's design, increasing its efficiency, and had even developed portable models that could be taken on campaign, a formal demonstration of which he was eager to give us.

We rode several miles out of camp to a barren place Proxenus used as a testing ground for his engines, far from the stares and comments of the other troops and the city's onlookers. There, a handpicked group of thirty men were responsible for maintaining and firing the engines, the latest version of which consisted of a barrel about twenty feet long and one foot in diameter. They rolled it to the edge of camp, where a training palisades had been set up in imitation of an enemy fortress or barricade. At Proxenus' count, the bellows were expertly inserted and the cauldron hung. While a wooden cap was placed on the front end, the bellows crew pumped a dozen puffs or so into the log to build air pressure. When the pressure had built up sufficiently, it blew the cap off, and as the forced air rushed out, a terrifying stream of flame shot forty feet across the field to the barricade, setting it on fire and scorching the grass along the way, to the bare earth.

Proxenus grinned. "What do you think?"

I was as amazed as I had been the first time, at Phyle. With three or four properly trained and armored troops handling it in close combat, the engine had the destructive force of thirty men.

Xenophon, however, remained skeptical. "But the war is over. What do you intend to do with it—and with your two thousand men? Cyrus surely doesn't need all your Greeks, along with a hundred thousand of his native troops, simply to put down a local uprising?"

"This is just the beginning," Proxenus replied, evading the question. "With a half dozen of these dragon machines, no enemy force will be able to hide from my hoplites behind shields or palisades, especially after they've been softened up a bit by the targeteers. As for the war—you don't think I brought you all this way just for a demonstration, do you?"

As we watched the maneuvers, Xenophon pressed him for more details.

"Prince Cyrus engaged my troops to take on the Pisidians, who are wreaking havoc in the western regions of his province. And we aren't the only Greeks he's recruited. Xenias is already here with another four thousand men-at-arms, and Sophainetos, Socrates the Achaian and Pasion are coming soon with a few thousand more. The 'war with Sparta,' as you call it, did nothing but impoverish us and destroy our morale—and our alliance won! I can't imagine the effect it had on you Athenians. By marching on the Pisidians, with Cyrus and his Persians at our side, we Greeks will have a chance to put aside our past enmity and regain our honor—and we'll fill our pockets besides." Proxenus winked at us, and eyed our mules. "What do you say? Looks like you could stand to capture a new horse, and Theo the Giant here probably wouldn't mind snatching a Syrian dancing girl or two. And you can be sure of getting a proper introduction to Cyrus if you stick close to me."

Xenophon pursed his lips thoughtfully and watched Proxenus' grim, tight-muscled Boeotians maneuvering their engines. He gazed at the hillside in the far distance whence we had ridden that morning, the upper slopes hidden in the dust raised by a hundred thousand head of cattle, horses, goats and sheep, the gently undulating foreslope black with the tens of thousands of the army's massed tents. The destructive potential of the vast array of troops was overwhelming. Cyrus had assembled an enormous mercenary force of battle-hardened and war-hungry veterans, and he was preparing for glory.