[Hegemonia City-States Spartan AAR/Story] They Will Never See Our Blood [Updated 01/01/2014]

[McScottish]

Introduction - They Will Never See Our Blood









A thing that met with especial approval among them was their so‑called black broth, so much so that the older men did not require a bit of meat, but gave up all of it to the young men. It is said that Dionysus, the despot of Sicily, for the sake of this bought a slave who had been a Spartan cook, and ordered him to prepared the broth for him, sparing no expense; but when the king tasted it he spat it out in disgust; whereupon the cook said, "Your Majesty, it is necessary to have exercised in the Spartan manner, and to have bathed in the Eurotas, in order to relish this broth." - Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans

Game 'Specs' and The Like

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Mod: Hegemonia City-States

Faction: Sparta (And her allies!)

Campaign/Battle difficulty: Hard/Hard

Unit size: Huge

Graphics settings: Of the very highest quality...

AAR name: They Will Never See Our Blood

It has been very often that I have had two AAR's running, almost in a pair, at the same time throughout my time here.

This is one such other time.

Along with my newly started What's In A Name?, and somewhat of a sequel to Sikelia; Island of Ares .

What is rather aggravating about the Spartans, as a writer, is the fact that this is the very thing preventing me from concocting a decent plot-line and so on. For example, they never really got outside their homeland until quite far into their history, they fought barely any wars because of the fear of losing too many men and therefore their 'walls' and so on. Then there are the Laws of Lycurgus, everything about avoiding contact with foreigners, no money and no going outside Lacedaemonia unless strictly allowed. These are however things that I wish to challenge and change in, what I hope, shall be a decent telling.

The afore mentioned Roman AAR, and this one, are my two new 'projects', moving through differing time-periods and eras and even familial lines, that I intend to work on until completion. That, my dear readers, is a blood-oath.

As for my choice of mod, well, its Hegemonia City-States, and I have not found a better mod to represent the state of the fifth-century Greek world. Next is my choice of person, and this tale shall be in the third, or near-enough third person, therefore a change from my usual first-person tales. Lastly, like my Roman AAR, I intend to extend this one with possibly shorter updates but of a higher quality than earlier attempts.

Few pictures (if any) and more words! That's the way I like it and that's the way it shall be.

- McScottish

[McScottish]

Mutterings of the Dispossessed, Part I – Spring, 1st year of the 67th Olympiad (512 BC)

Somewhere off the coast of south-western Sikelia...



Somewhere off the south-western coast of the island of Sikelia, not too far from the shore, but not so close that a bobbing vessel would run aground, if you were to cup a hand to your ear and listen carefully on the warm spring evening, just as the sun was setting over the horizon, you may have been able to pick up a wholly unnatural sound above the chirping of grasshoppers, and the warbled noises of night-time birds as they swooped through the trees above.

This was not just any sound, such as you may here just about anywhere in the known world, but a song. Neither was it just any song, but a song that contained within its melody and essence the precise sound of a culture and people relatively unknown to the Greek and Sikelian inhabitants of that fractured isle, something almost sonorous and mournful about it matched in equal measure by a stirring of the blood and an increased pounding of the heart. Few people would be able to understand or even translate much of what was said, the series of clipped and short verses inter-spaced between chorus' of bass voices that echoed over the calmly flowing waters of the North African sea which coursed all around. They were the voices of not one, not two, or even three men – for the voices left no doubt that they were masculine in nature – but of many times that number out on the waves, as the light drifted away and the evening became ever darker.

“Thump, thump, thump and the crimson cloaks are flying,
The only sounds we hear are the groans of our foes dying,
Kick up the dust, and make your helmet gleam,
For the Spartans tread the warpath, and your Gods are fast asleep.”

“For Sparta, for Sparta, you hot-blooded sons,
The enemy break but we never run,
Face to the front, grip hard to your spear,
We fight, and we kill, and we shed our blood here.”

“Thump, thump, thump and the ragged cloaks are flying,
The only sounds we hear are the crows among the dying,
Pick up the march, and make your shield gleam,
For the Spartans tread the warpath, and your Gods are fast asleep.”

Some could say it was a martial song for a martial people, for all knew the sons of Lakedaimōn by their fearsome repute alone if nothing else. There are others that would no doubt add, mostly effeminate Athenians and Theban cowards, that whatever 'power' the warriors of Sparta had granted themselves among the other poleis of Hellas, whatever lofty position of majesty, was gained solely by their reputation alone and with little evidence to the contrary.

Those however that knew Sparta, that knew her history, laws and customs, as well as those that did not, need only have looked to those human beasts of burden which the Spartiates keep to till their land and then argue that such a notoriety was based on nothing but crumbling sand instead of foundations of marble. All one need do was look on the downtrodden heílotes, their situation of subservience to a conquering people, and realise that these Messenians had once been as free and lively as any, and although stronger in numbers were nonetheless defeated by those that now ruled them.

Where our tale begins though is not in Sparta, nor Lakonia, nor even within the confines of mother-Greece herself, but far across the ocean to the island of Sikelia. Here, after consulting the oracle at Delphi, and refusing to be ruled by a sovereign as mad as his half-brother Kleomenes, Prince Dorieus of Sparta had sailed with a force of colonists and a number of lochoi of loyal homoioi to found his colony of Heraklea Minoa. That emigration of men left because they no longer wished to remain in Sparta, some having been shamed, others near-exiled, and many because they had become disillusioned with what they saw. There were even those who admitted to a wanderlust inside of them which such an expedition may curb. As for the 'colonists', they were nearly two-thousand enfranchised helots armed and trained as the citizen-hoplites of other city-states, eight-hundred helots still consigned to bondage and, perhaps the gravest wound to Sparta itself, nearly five-hundred equals who were by Tyches cruel curse now dispossessed.

It was the second expedition that had been launched by this prince, and also the more successful, Heraklea Minoa built by the colonists and therefore founded in very little time. Once more the Fates intervened, and the polis of Selinunte called to Dorieus for aid, a call which was answered by his loyal friend and homoioi Euryleon.

By the first year of the sixty-seventh Olympiad, with the bravest of his peers, Euryleon entered Selinunte to expel the tyrant present there and was praised by the liberated citizens. In a cruel irony, some might say punishment on the people of Selinunte, of all the Spartiates present it was Euryleon that had been most corrupted and warped by his leaving of the mother-city. Though once the most accomplished of warriors and most austere, with the 'liberation' of Selinunte he was descending in a downward spiral that was the beginning of so many tyrants before...and only the strength and will of Dorieus held him in check. Should anything happen to the prince, there would be no-one among his peers to stop him.

Not only this, but on every side the enemy was closing in - Carthaginians, native Sikels, and disgruntled Hellenes of the eastern poleis all. None, not even the Dorian state of Syracusae, would join with the Lakedaimonians and most resented their presence on the island. Yet Dorieus would not give in and instead gathered all forces to him, leaving the island on a darkening evening with but a handful of men to contemplate his next move in the game of polis he was playing with men’s lives.

All around were his men, his children, lifting their voices to the star-lit sky and somewhere in among them sat one to whom this tale applies more than any other. His name was Kapaneus, son of Polypemon, and a descendant of Herakles, a man that was both a Spartan and a Spartan no longer but who, in time, was sure to see just what the Fates had in store.

[Aenima]

I can see what you mean regarding Sparta not being the greatest thing to write about, since they weren't the most adventurous of Greeks. Still, RTW and its mods let us change all that, and AARs let us share the stories we make with others, so I'm definitely looking forward to where this will go!

[McScottish]

Treaties And Confidants – Spring, 1st year of the 67th Olympiad (512 BC), Greece

Thousands of miles away, over wine-dark seas, through deep glens and vales, and over the jutting tops of rising mountains where only the most daring of avians soared or made their nests, lay the motionless form of a man. Hugging his knees to his chest, as a baby in the womb before the birthing, the identifying marks lacerated onto his broad body and those items that he carried with him being enough to deter any predator, or any human predator at least, from making a foolhardy attempt on him which could end one or both of their lives for nothing but a couple of iron scraps. For this man had taken the precaution of wrapping himself in the only item of any warmth that he possessed, the buffed metal of his muscular bronze thorax too cold for sleeping in the open, and the crimson of that himation, called a tribon by his people, was swallowed just as he was by the darkening evening sky. No fire was lit to warm him, just the sensation of the thorns placed neatly between his bed of grass and the earth below it, the prickling unnoticed but for the heat it oddly provided.

A man he was, but also above all others, a Spartiate and a homoioi and now, at the age of two-and-twenty, an envoy for the ephors and the peoples of Lakedaimonia. Syagros was his name, the prematurely balding Spartan snorting lightly in his sleep, perfectly content that his abilities as a warrior and entirely unafraid at choosing this spot on the border between Boeotia and Thessaly beyond.

Around him lay the accoutrements of his upbringing; a bronze helmet of the style said to have originated among the Korinthians, its horse-hair crest dyed as red as his cloak, his thorax shaped into the form of a muscled torso which neatly mirrored that of the man himself, two sturdy greaves of bronze and the shortened Spartan xiphos around which many tales were formed. As for his aspis, the savage face of a gorgon starring back at any who looked,this most important piece was placed almost as a covering over him while he slept. If anyone wished to take it, then it would be over his dead corpse or theirs.

For weeks now he had been travelling long stades, from Sparta herself and going north, instruction given to him specifically by the ephors with the support of both kings. Instructions to seek allies among the most powerful and influential of the other city-states, for the Spartans must preserve the blood of their warriors and train them for war without engaging in it, as it had always been.

Argolis was of course avoided, for peace would never come between the Argives and the Spartans but at the tip of a spear, a fortress built by King Demaratus at the border between them even now causing rising tensions among the councils and in the agora of the two warrior peoples. Thence he had made his way to Korinthos to speak with a man named Antiphon, well respected among his peers, Korinthos being the first polis to refuse a treaty with Sparta and her growing strength. Thebai, currently under the control of a man named Eurymachos, also refused.

It was what happened in between those poleis in the region of Attike, where Spartans rarely went if they could help it, that seemed to Syagros a portent of what the future might hold. Within a small road-side tavern, not far from Dekelea in northern Attike, the Spartiate had arranged to meet a representative of the Athenian assembly, a man by the name of Charidemos of Kranais.

Spartans do not break their words, and so meet him he did...

************

“You Spartans even seem to sweat differently from all others,” chuckled the bearded Athenian councillor, dabbing his shining forehead with one corner of his chiton but still smiling, “can I offer you a drink, my friend, or some food maybe?”

All around the pair were the trappings of a typical tavern, its wooden walls sturdy enough to hold out most winds and its roof proof against rain. For some reason the proprietor kept a fire burning constantly, even on a sweltering spring day such as this one was, the stench of wood-smoke pervading every sense and causing clothing to stink as well. This eccentric habit had gained him some ridiculous names, but also a reputation which drew in many more patrons than it repelled.

Both the Spartiate and the Athenian sat on either side of a coarsely hewn table, one in a simple tunic and wrapped in his tribon while the other had a chiton of blue bordered with red geometric patterns and a chalmys of white. Then there was the simple observation that the Athenian clutched a baked earthen cup of water-cut wine in one hand, and had a plate of lamb simply falling off of the bone sat before him, while the Spartan on the other hand had neither food nor drink and had no desire for them.

“I will...take your silence as a 'no' then?” Charidemos said, trying to smile but producing a grimace instead, “anyway,” now his tone took a serious tone to it, his blue eyes unblinking as he went on, “you wished to speak to me?”

Only now did Syagros stir, lifting his bearded face and running a hand over it, returning the stare in kind. As with all Spartan equals he carried about him a serious air, his hair worn long and kept well, combed regularly, and his words not wasted.

“The people of Lakedaimōn wish to form a treaty with their Athenian cousins - a treaty of mutual military support, trade and a period of peace for ten years. This is what I and my people desire.”

Charidemos, a man used to the complexities of Athenian politics and so much verbal chasing that it heard, found the manner of the brutish warrior before him almost comedic. Wine, a good deal of which he had been in the process of imbibing, almost snorted from his nose in a most undignified way and he hacked up a fine cough. The very fact that Syagros had not even moved during his small fit of laughter simply urged him to laugh some more.

“My Lakonian friend, you cut to the heart of the matter...” He saw the look on the Spartans face and waved a hand through the air, “that was not a jest on my part, friend, merely an expression.” Another small gulp of wine and he smacked his lips satisfactorily, the wine not as good as some he had tasted but also not half bad, “I have been instructed, like yourself, and I think such a proposal would be...agreeable.”

“Then it is settled.”

“Not so quick, Spartan.”

Both now stood, Charidemos oddly muscular for someone who claimed to be a politician, his frame and even the way he stood suggesting he was something more. Each stared at the other, the Spartan slowly reaching out a clenched hand. In that hand was a scroll made of Egyptian papyrus , on it the terms of the treaty. This was taken with a nod and a few choice words.

“Hear me now. If Sparta or her allies break this treaty, then nothing will be able to stop the wrath of the Athenians from crushing your great city.”

Syagros did not respond, but gave a nonchalant shrug of indifference instead, scooping up his helmet and placing it neatly atop his head with the front pulled back.

“We shall see.”

************

Those exiles in Sikelia could not have known of a moment that, although short and without incident, was nonetheless a momentous one. Nor could the Lakedaimonians have known that at the very moment, in the neighbourhood of Motye, a Carthaginian colony in the eastern part of the island, Prince Dorieus had routed a North African army and was conspiring to either take the subdue more of the or make his way home.

[McScottish]

Mutterings of the Dispossessed, Part II – Spring, 1st year of the 67th Olympiad (512 BC), Eastern Sikelia

Heraklea Minoa, small as it was and as ramshackle as a Hellenic colony could be, was in many ways much, much, more than a simple expeditions end. Though no larger than any colony when it first began, with a population vastly smaller than most, it had one specific detail that made it stand out from all others. A rather unique symbolism. Not what it was, the buildings and the people, but what the colony represented. To many outsiders, especially other Greeks, its founding would seem like the desperate actions of a wretched Spartiate prince and his exiled followers. To any Lakedaimonian, from the lowest Helot to the highest-born equal, it could not have been more opposite and like a world turned completely on its head than the little colony near Selinunte had become.

In this self-contained world of new ideas the laws of Lykurgus, which so rigidly defined the Spartan people as a whole, became less the words of ultimate law and more words by which the people of the colony should be guided. Here the Helots were freemen, tilling their own patches of earth and building on their own plots of land, hundreds of them taught by the Spartiate expatriates (although these crimson-cloaked killers of men remained the 'head' of the colonial body, as it were) that they were more than mere serfs and could become fighters and protectors of their own families and homes. True, they would never match their former masters in combat, nor would they be taught all that the homoioi knew, but here they were referred to as neodamōdeis or 'new-territory' and treated if not as equals t least as free men and women. Among the ranks of the usually 'pure' Spartiates came not a few of the status of trophimoi, men and young boys that in Sparta would have been adopted by a mess and sent through the maelstrom of the agoge as any other citizen. Megarans, Korinthians, Arkadians and now even some Selinuntians. Here they would have the same treatment, distorted as it may be in this new and wild land, but this was the new land and here the will of Dorieus reigned.

************

“You miss him, don't you?”

The son of Polypemon, an Arkadian from Tegea by birth but adopted into Spartan society - as his own father had been - looked up from where he sat on the solid-baked earth of the Sikelian battlefield and stared straight into the worried face of the man that he considered to be his one-and-only rightful monarch, no matter what others said of Kleomenes the Mad or Demaratos the Untrustworthy. Behind Dorieus stood the silent and somewhat chilling spectre of Menares of Megara, the so-called 'oracle' that had attached himself to the king like some form of parasite and went almost everywhere with him, the Spartan princeling nothing if not a reverent and pious man.

All around them was a scene of death and destruction, the landscape of Dorieus' latest victory over a cowardly North African adversary named Sakarbal. It had been a short but bloody conflict, the bronze-armoured hoplitai of Heraklea Minoa, supported by a few hundred of the 'colonial' heílotes, driving their one-and-a-half-thousand or so adversaries from the field in a matter of hours. Behind the traditional phalanxes had stood Dorieus and his Spartiates, an elite reserve prepared to throw themselves into the conflict at a moments notice. The battle had flowed in such a way that they had been little needed, not one of the liberated helot warriors wavering under the steely gaze of their betters, and even those that continued to wear the dog-skin cap and cloak showing a bravery far beyond those found among their downtrodden kindred in Messenia and Lakonia.

“Yes,” came the reply from the half-squatting trophimoi, his words always carefully chosen when watched by those deep brown orbs, “I know that it is not a Spartans place to feel such a sense of loss...but I do. Young Skiron should be entering the agoge, his mother now sitting alone by her window and gazing across the small patch of ground that is my families kleros now.”

Slowly, with a touch like that of a personal confidante, though he was neither very personal nor a confidante, Dorieus hunched over next to a man he at least considered as an asset and a fine warrior among those that he commanded. Both men were muscularly built, shoulders broad and limbs clean and toughened by the same system of Spartan education, and each now stunk of sweat, blood caking their forearms and hands. Over to their left lay the prone forms of Numidian horsemen that had been drawn into this fight by the plentiful gold of Carthage and her mercantile empire, men bought to fight against foot-slogging Hellenes and yet beaten all the same, their horses and nimble throwing of javelins had done nothing to stop them meeting a slaughterous end on the points of dory thrust into their guts, chests and any other vulnerable or exposed part of their bodies. Some citizens, scavengers for the most part – dirt-trodden poor, armed with long butchering knives or gnarled wooden clubs for dispatching the wounded – now moved among them and took what they wanted for themselves.

“What now?” Asked the ever-curious peer, rubbing a hand across the small beard he had grown in the Spartan style, holding back his emotions for one moment to hear his princes command.

“Euryleon has placed himself as tyrant of Selinunte,” spat the prince with a grimace, his handsome face becoming distorted and a look of indecision clearly visible within his usually calm eyes, “this is not the man I knew back in Sparta, it is a daimon corrupted by greed and power. If there was ever an example why we Lakedaimonians live as we do, he would be an apotheosis. Yet...” those eyes now drifted across the field momentarily, taking in the cloaked guards standing all around the conversing pair, the Carthaginian dead, and the soon-to-be as well, “...yet he still has not forsaken his allegiance to me, though it is within his power. So it is possible that we may use him to stave off our foes here...that we may go home.”

The breath of his listener caught in his throat, a slow wind that cut to his bone causing him to grip the hem of his cloak to him, his tongue feeling dry in his mouth and the words coming uneasily, even for a Spartan.

“Your highness...is this wise? We are all of us here for a reason, and the Gods know what would happen to the heílotes if any chose to go with us. For the rest of us, it would be as if we admit the charges of our exiles and disgraces. Would it not be more prudent to remain here where we are safe?”

“Kapaneus,” sighed Dorieus with a slight venting of annoyance, “you do not see the larger picture but, if you wish, I shall change my course but slightly. You, not being of pure Spartan blood, and with knowledge of life within and without our city without walls, have the wisdom and conceptions to sway the ephors and councillors into allowing yourself back into the fold. I would not be so lucky, after all.”

Kapaneus did not wish to leave his king, or at least the man he had sworn his life to, nor to desert his friends and peers among those that he had journeyed with from Libya to Sikelia. He could not however refuse a direct order, even if phrased by way of a suggestion, from the lips of his chosen monarch. He would have to leave Sikelia.

“I will take but what and who I need; my two Helots, my arms and armour, and some food. Your will will be done, my king.”

“Go then my friend, take word back to the assembly, the ephors and the kings. Tell them that Dorieus sends his greets and assures them of his fidelity to his motherland. As a token of assurance I have sent a representative in the form of you, Kapaneus. You will receive messages of the goings on at Heraklea Minoa, of that I promise, but you must be my eyes and ears in Sparta. If there is any chance of my return, a return with disgrace or opposition, then you must make sure I am aware of it as early as possible.”

He was no spy, that brave outsider who had been taken in by the Spartan way of life, its culture, and even its terrible and foul black broth. Yet he would do as his king commanded to the very letter, and with these thoughts firmly in his mind he stood from the ground, hefted his shield to his waist and, with a final farewell to Dorieus and friends he had made, marched back toward the colony and from there to the port of Selinunte.

[McScottish]

So, I cannae hack it. I'm going to change to first-person writing, which seems to be my calling in writing life. Sorry to anyone who loves third-person tales, but that ain't me. Expect an update soon.

[Paraipan]

This story is very good, just like your other AARs. And your third person writing flows nice, it isn't forced or anything. I know writing in third person can be annoying at times, but it adds much more to a story than first person in my opinion.

[McScottish]

This story is very good, just like your other AARs. And your third person writing flows nice, it isn't forced or anything. I know writing in third person can be annoying at times, but it adds much more to a story than first person in my opinion.

You are right...alright, I shall continue in third person for a couple more posts and then see.

[Derbiean]

:sparta:

Sorry, i can resist anything but temptation

Third person narrative with Sparta, i feel you step up to the challenge, the Athenian politician meeting the Spartan was amusing however you wish to continue it is fine with me i shall read on

[McScottish]

[All rights and permissions for this picture go to Shane Solow here.]



Homeward Bound, Part I – Summer, 1st year of the 67th Olympiad (512 BC), Elis & Northern Boeotia

Poseidon Epoptês, lord of the seas and brother to the greatest of the Gods, had never favoured him nor have he favoured him above others. Six days he was stuck aboard a merchants ship sailing from Sikelia to the north-eastern regions of Elis, landing after what seemed a lifetime on the sandy shores of that country and kissing the ground that lay beneath bare feet.

During the voyage Kapaneus had barely slept, his eyes surely blackened and bloodshot when beheld, thoughts and visions swiftly moving through his mind of the family and the child that he had left behind in Sparta. Had he left them safe and protected? Or had he left them imprisoned and surrounded by potential rivals for the warm and handsome body of his wife?

In Sparta the law of 'adultery' was unheard of, men sharing their wives if they were incapable of producing strong children or believed another to be a better man, and Kapaneus had been exiled for taking the side of the 'rogue prince' Dorieus and his 'insane' ideals of a less hidebound Sparta, the ideas of a polis that must adapt and change as time passed or be left behind in ruins and nothingness.

As an Arkadian by birth, and a Tegean by the grace of the Gods such ideals impressed him, even if it had caused him to fall from the heights of a well respected foreigner to sink to the depths of an exile and therefore a common criminal in the eyes of the ephors and the kings. Nonetheless his son, a boy of three years when he was forced to leave, was now seven and had just entered the Spartan agoge in spite of the infraction of his sire. Worry about his wife mingled with worry as to how he would be received, no doubt news of his arrival already having reached Sparta, and if he would simply treated with disdain or put to death for disobeying the terms of his exile and returning too soon.

Happy as he may have been to return to mother Greece and her embrace, there were nevertheless two who travelled with him that were not so joyous. Both had been slaves of the Spartans and not one or the other wished to return to the bonds of servitude which they had left behind. The first was Deon, the younger of the two, for the years of exile he had volunteered to accompany Kapaneus and even earned himself a place in the phalanx. The second was older and more resentful.

One night, as all young Spartans are asked to do, Kapaneus had been told to go and slay one of the heílotes that may disrupt the careful balance of things. Being young, drunk on the praise of other men for his physical bearing and skill at arms, he took the knife that was offered to him and rushed off into the night with the death of another human on his mind. When he did finally come across a helot he stood no chance, the knife plunging into flesh and snuffing his life as one extinguishes the flame of an oil lamp.

Old Stesanor had been the boys father and was 'gifted' to the killer on the death of his son as a living trophy to the Tegeates achievement, a resentful and bitter old man who had done as he was told all his life. Even when Kapaneus took him to Sikelia, freeing him from any obligation he had toward his sons killer, he would not leave and continued to serve as if Kapaneus were still his master and he a slave.

Each time Kapaneus looked at him was like a carving out of his own heart, those blue eyes, once so bright and full of youth, now dulled and disinterested from decades of abusive lashings and rough beatings but his aged body still strong yet without proper direction except to serve. It never mattered how many times his overlord repeated to him that he was free, he would simply spit, shake his head, and return to whatever task he was completing.

Once the trio had headed inland they altered their route, where once it had been straight to Sparta it now lead past Kapaneus' home of Tegea, his helmet pushed back against his forehead and the only cloak he owned wrapping itself around him like some crimson cocoon around a caterpillar. Before him went Deon, his senses undiluted by age and as keen as ever, while at the rear came Stesanor who acted as the Tegeates skeuophoroi, carrying his aspis and spear. Travelling through the landscape of Elis he was heard to complain often and loud enough for both others to hear, yet never once, during the dark of night or the brightness of the day, did the grey-haired squawker ever attempt to make good an escape.

[Paraipan]

Excellent update. Loved the description of Stesanor and the insight into his state of mind.

On a side note, may I ask why do you think writing in third person is not your calling, you seem very good at it.

[McScottish]

Excellent update. Loved the description of Stesanor and the insight into his state of mind.

On a side note, may I ask why do you think writing in third person is not your calling, you seem very good at it.

I'm glad you liked it Paraipan.

As for your question, well I've never really liked third-person. I have no real idea why but its always been as if I have some sort of phobia toward third-person writing, my personal like being first-person (as you may well know...or not...I dunno) even though I'm quite happy to read stories written in third-person. I'd like to suggest that its because in third-person I don't believe you can get as 'inside' the character as you can in first-person; motivations, actions, emotions and so forth being considerably less easy to write in my opinion.

I've more to write, but I'll save it for another time.

[McScottish]

Homeward Bound, Part II – Summer, 1st year of the 67th Olympiad (512 BC), Sparta

“Will he come, do you think?” Asked the first figure, two men clothed only in a red himation each staring idly out over the Eurotas valley, the second figure giving a small nod of his head, “he will come, his Prince had sent him here, and therefore he shall not disobey.”

Both men were advanced in years, hardened from the soles of their feet to the tips of their fingers, their ageing bodies kept at the peak of fitness and health even though one was nearly fifty and the other was in his sixtieth year at least. Trimmed beards covered their chins, their long hair beautifully braided and placed over their shoulders, and both pairs of eyes were narrowed as the two ephors set firm their jaws and continued to wait in silence.

It had been weeks since a herald arrived from Sikelia, a herald bearing news that the exiled half-brother of the reigning King had sent his one of his own, a Tegean xenoi by all accounts, to bring word of successes and advances on that island of which Sparta was little concerned. Now they waited with practised patience for the arrival of this so-called envoy, waiting outside the precincts of the city itself lest he pollute it with outlandish ideals and suggestions.

“There...three of them, you see?”

Indeed, both men could see quite clearly, three dirtied individuals making their way out of the valley and toward a city that none of them had seen in years.

“You know him, Deiotones. You speak with him.”

The younger of the pair agreed, moving off with a distinctly Spartan symbol, a half-stick half-crutch known as a bakteria, long strides quickly swallowing the distance between the Tegean, his two freed slaves, and the ephor who had once been his closest friend.

“Hail, Kapaneus, son of Polypemon,” greeted the ephor, coming to stand before the Tegean and warily keeping and eye on the two freed helots, “Deiotones...I should have known they would send you to turn me away,” grunted the exile without any ceremony, “so, please, say what you must.”

“You will not be turned away, Kapaneus. The Kings and ephors have decided, with the support of the gerousia, that you are to be welcomed and whatever message you have been given to be heard.”

Kapaneus did not let any expression show on his face, but below the surface he was surprised at the response, what were they up to?

“Very well...and then what? What would Sparta do with me? The Prince sends me as a proxenos of sort, a link between the mother-city and her colony in Sikelia, no matter how much she may disown it. Would Sparta allow me to remain? To own my own kleros once more and act with some authority here, as I did before?”

Some would say that these things were too much to hope for, Kapaneus certainly believed they were, but after a moment of thought the ephor gave a small shrug of his shoulders. A very un-Spartan gesture. When he spoke again his tone was laced with caution, each word chosen carefully and no doubt rehearsed as answer to such questions.

“You will be allowed to remain among us, just as you wish. All you have asked can be your own once more. All Sparta asks is that you become our speaker among your own people, the Tegeates, and keep them from making any foolish decisions.”

No, he could not believe it! This was all they asked in return for his citizenship and a plot of his own land? He would have to be a fool indeed not to accept.

“I accept this offer, and my family?”

“Your son was a promising warrior, even among a group of our own eldest paides, your family may return to Sparta if they so wish.”

There must be something else...there had to be something else. What it could be though he could not see at that moment, nor would he wanted to have seen even if he could. The feeling of returning 'home' after years in exile had already flooded his mind and emotions so much that nearly any deal would have been agreeable to him.

“One last thing, Deiotones. These two men are free men, they may look like helots, but they are no longer for working the land. I do not ask that they be made citizens, such things are beyond even your power, I only ask that they dwell with my family and I and are left alone by others.”

One of them, the younger one, Deiotones had thought of as some Sikelian mercenary or allied warrior from some city unknown to him...but a freed helot? A freed helot given a spear, armour and a shield of all things? This was the sort of pollution they had been trying to avoid, Deiotones not believing in such things before, but now it seemed that his old friend did indeed carry that with him in many forms.

“I shall regret this,” sighed the influential 'supervisor', “but I shall allow it also. That young one will fight alongside the perioikoi though, I shall not have him in our own morai, do you understand?”

“Perfectly, and thank you.”

Deiotones was about to walk away, asking Kapaneus to follow him, when the Tegeate gave a loud cough and waved his older helot forward. “Show him,” the foreigner instructed, Stesanor stepping forward and holding out an aspides. By now the second ephor, curious or simply bored, had come to join his colleague and both stared wide-eyed at the item before them. Upon its face was painted the hydra, a distinctive symbol of just one polis in the Peloponessos, the blood-enemies of the Spartans and their Lakonian allies, the filthy and vile scum of Argos.

“Mere days ago I visited my home, beautiful Tegea. What I found was a battlefield covered in corpses, mostly Argives thank Zeus, and Prince Leonidas. I told him all I have told you, asked him much the same, and though he did not answer for you on those matters he did bid me show you this. It is a sign, friends, a sure sign that the wretched Argives try once more to move against us. He asked that the council be alerted and forces made ready, with the blessing of the Kings and the Gods of course, for Sparta is now surely at war.”

[Ownager]

How do you get the time to write these with such detail? I barely have time to read these, but you can write them so well.....