arrogance of those years that Athens’ citizenry disdained accommodation of other states as her tradesmen and even her whores scorned to vacate for their betters the public way. Why should they? They who had defeated the mightiest army and navy on earth, who had made the Aegean their millpond, by what dereliction should they leave their city vulnerable for fear of offending Spartan delicacy? Does not the husbandman secure his garden with a palisade of stone? Do not the Spartans themselves ring their camps with pickets and sentries at arms? Let them live with the navy and the Long Walls. And if they could not, then let come what may.
And come, war did. I served the first seasons as a sail lieutenant but was reassigned with the second winter to the northern siege, the same described by our client, of Potidaea. The hardship, if anything, was greater than he told. Plague had begun; fully a fourth of the infantry were carried off. We bore their ashes home in clay pots beneath the benches of our oarsmen and nested their shields and armor beneath weather-cover on our decks.
With the third spring Potidaea fell. The wider war was now two years old. Clearly it would not soon end. The Greek states had been split between Athens and Sparta, each compelled to side with one or the other.
Corcyra with her fleet had entered the lists, allied with Athens. Argos held aloof. Save Plataea, Acarnania, Thessaly, and Messenian Naupactus, every state of the mainland stood with Sparta—Corinth with her wealth and navy; Sicyon and the cities of the Argolid; Elis and Mantinea, the great democracies of the Peloponnese; north of the Isthmus, Ambracia, Leucas, Anactoria; Megara, Thebes, and all Boeotia with her mighty armies; and Phocis and Locris with their matchless horse.
The islands of the Aegean and all Ionia stood within Athens’ hegemony; our warships still ruled the sea. But revolts flared in Thrace and Chalcidice, vital to Athens for her timber, copper, and cattle, and the indispensable Hellespont, the city’s lifeline for barley and wheat.
Attica had become a Spartan playground. The foe rolled across the frontier at Eleusis, laying the Thriasian plain waste for the second time, then doubled Mount Aegaleus to scorch again the districts of Acharnae, Cephisia, Leuconoe, and Colonus. Spartan troops devastated the Paralian district as far as Laurium, ravaging first the side that looks toward the Peloponnese, then that facing Euboea and Andros. From atop their Long Walls the citizens of Athens peered toward the shoulders of Mounts Parnes and Brilessus, beyond which rose the smoke of our last estates succumbing to the torch. At the city’s threshold the invaders broke apart the shops and tenements of the suburbs, tearing up even the paving stones of the Academy.
Polemides served under Phormio in the Corinthian Gulf, first at Naupactus, then in Amphilochian Argos. In Aetolia he suffered among other wounds one of the skull, which rendered him sightless for an interval and required confinement at home for most of a year. This my bloodhounds reported, produce of their scourings. No member of Polemides’ family could be located. His brother Lion’s two daughters, now grown, had married and vanished into the sequestration of their husbands’ households. Polemides had a son and daughter of his own, though my ferrets could discover no more than their names. These were the issue of an apparent second marriage, to one Eunice of Samothrace; though no registration of this union could be found.
Polemides had been married once, for certain, during the interval of his recuperation after Aetolia, to the daughter of a colleague of his father’s. The bride was named Phoebe, “Bright.” As many in that reign of war, Polemides married young, just twenty-two. The maiden was fifteen.
When I attempted during our next visitation to query him on this subject, he demurred, politely but with emphasis. I respected this and forswore further interrogation. My
And come, war did. I served the first seasons as a sail lieutenant but was reassigned with the second winter to the northern siege, the same described by our client, of Potidaea. The hardship, if anything, was greater than he told. Plague had begun; fully a fourth of the infantry were carried off. We bore their ashes home in clay pots beneath the benches of our oarsmen and nested their shields and armor beneath weather-cover on our decks.
With the third spring Potidaea fell. The wider war was now two years old. Clearly it would not soon end. The Greek states had been split between Athens and Sparta, each compelled to side with one or the other.
Corcyra with her fleet had entered the lists, allied with Athens. Argos held aloof. Save Plataea, Acarnania, Thessaly, and Messenian Naupactus, every state of the mainland stood with Sparta—Corinth with her wealth and navy; Sicyon and the cities of the Argolid; Elis and Mantinea, the great democracies of the Peloponnese; north of the Isthmus, Ambracia, Leucas, Anactoria; Megara, Thebes, and all Boeotia with her mighty armies; and Phocis and Locris with their matchless horse.
The islands of the Aegean and all Ionia stood within Athens’ hegemony; our warships still ruled the sea. But revolts flared in Thrace and Chalcidice, vital to Athens for her timber, copper, and cattle, and the indispensable Hellespont, the city’s lifeline for barley and wheat.
Attica had become a Spartan playground. The foe rolled across the frontier at Eleusis, laying the Thriasian plain waste for the second time, then doubled Mount Aegaleus to scorch again the districts of Acharnae, Cephisia, Leuconoe, and Colonus. Spartan troops devastated the Paralian district as far as Laurium, ravaging first the side that looks toward the Peloponnese, then that facing Euboea and Andros. From atop their Long Walls the citizens of Athens peered toward the shoulders of Mounts Parnes and Brilessus, beyond which rose the smoke of our last estates succumbing to the torch. At the city’s threshold the invaders broke apart the shops and tenements of the suburbs, tearing up even the paving stones of the Academy.
Polemides served under Phormio in the Corinthian Gulf, first at Naupactus, then in Amphilochian Argos. In Aetolia he suffered among other wounds one of the skull, which rendered him sightless for an interval and required confinement at home for most of a year. This my bloodhounds reported, produce of their scourings. No member of Polemides’ family could be located. His brother Lion’s two daughters, now grown, had married and vanished into the sequestration of their husbands’ households. Polemides had a son and daughter of his own, though my ferrets could discover no more than their names. These were the issue of an apparent second marriage, to one Eunice of Samothrace; though no registration of this union could be found.
Polemides had been married once, for certain, during the interval of his recuperation after Aetolia, to the daughter of a colleague of his father’s. The bride was named Phoebe, “Bright.” As many in that reign of war, Polemides married young, just twenty-two. The maiden was fifteen.
When I attempted during our next visitation to query him on this subject, he demurred, politely but with emphasis. I respected this and forswore further interrogation. My
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