Sunset of the Gods

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





No one got much sleep that night, under the light of the full moon that meant the Spartans were starting to march. The slaves were kept busy burnishing the shields and armor, the generals went over the plan repeatedly as they moved among their tribes with whatever pre-battle encouragement they could give . . . and everyone could hear the distant tramping of tens of thousands of feet as the Persians moved forward onto the plain, and the more distant sounds of the embarking cavalry.

The Greeks were not great breakfast eaters—a crust of bread dipped in honey or wine, at most—but before the afternoon battles that were customary in their interminable internecine wars they were wont to take a midmorning “combat brunch” including enough wine to dull fear. Not this time. This army mustered before dawn, sorting itself out into the tribal groupings. There was surprisingly little confusion, given that the light was limited now that the full moon had passed.

“At least we won’t have to fight in the heat,” old Callicles philosophized grumpily.

Jason, standing beside the elderly hoplite with the rest of the Leontis tribe, saw Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus, hurrying to the right flank to join the Aiantis. The playwright waved to Callicles—he must, Jason thought, have a good memory for faces. Then, with the help of slaves and each other, they began the task of donning the panoply that was never put on any earlier than necessary before battle, such was its miserable discomfort.

The greaves were the least bad: rather elegant bronze sheaths that protected the legs from kneecap to ankle, so thin as to be flexible and so well shaped that they needed no straps—they were simply “snapped on,” with the edges nearly meeting behind the calves. But despite their felt inner linings they were apt to chafe with the movement of the legs and lose their snug fit. They were put on first, while the hoplite could still stoop over.

Next, over his chiton, came that which prevented him from stooping: a bronze corselet of front and back segments, laced at the sides and connected over the shoulders by curved plates. Jason had been given a choice from Themeistocles’ stock and had found one that seemed to fit him reasonably well—an absolute necessity. But the weight and inflexibility of the thing, and its efficiency as a heat-collector in the August sun, made him understand why later generations of hoplites in the Peloponnesian Wars would abandon it in favor of a cuirass made from layers of linen. Feeling his chiton already begin to grow sweat-soaked even before sunrise, he decided he didn’t need to worry about the Persians; heat prostration would get him first. The skirt of leather strips hanging from the lower edge was the only protection the groin had.

Even more uncomfortable was the bronze “Corinthian” helmet, covering the neck and with cheek pieces and nose guard, practically encasing the entire head and face. It had no interior webbing or other suspension, only a soft leather lining; its five-pound weight rested on the neck and head. Jason now understood why hoplites grew their hair as long and thick as possible, despite the problem of lice, and he wondered what it must be like for older, balding men. With no real cushion between helmet and cranium, blows to the head—such as those dealt by the axes favored by the Persians’ Saka troops—were often fatal. And, of course, the heat and stuffiness inside such a bronze pot were stifling. Given all this, it was easy to understand why Classical Greek art usually showed the helmet propped back on the head; it was worn this way until the last possible moment before battle, at which time it was finally lowered over the face. At this point, the hoplite became semi-deaf (there were no ear-holes) and able to see only directly ahead. But, Jason reflected, in a phalanx that was really the only direction you needed to see. And it occurred to him that this was one more bit of cement for a phalanx’s unique degree of unit cohesion. A hoplite need not worry about his blind zones as long as the formation held; but alone, he was locked into a world of terrifying isolation.

At least, Jason consoled himself, his helmet was not one of those with a horsehair crest, intended to make the wearer look taller and more fearsome but adding to the helmet’s weight and awkwardness. He had made sure to draw one of the plain, crestless versions, whose smooth curved surface would have a better chance of deflecting a Saka axe.

Then the slave handed Jason his most important piece of defensive equipment: the shield, or hoplon, that gave the hoplite his name. It was circular, three feet in diameter, made of hardwood covered with a thin sheet of bronze that didn’t add much to its protective strength but which, when highly polished as it was now, could dazzle the enemy. Its handgrip (antilabe) and arm grip (porpax) distributed its weight along the entire left forearm, making it usable. But there was no getting around the fact that the thing weighed sixteen pounds, and was damned awkward. Fortunately, its radical concavity made it possible to rest most of its weight on the left shoulder. Of course, carried that way, the hoplon couldn’t possibly protect the right side of the man carrying it. For that, he was utterly dependent on the man to his right in the formation keeping his sixteen-pound shield up. Again, solidarity was survival.

Finally, Jason was handed his primary offensive weapon, far more important than the short leaf-shaped sword at his side: a seven-and-a-half-foot thrusting spear, carried shouldered while the phalanx was advancing, then held underhand for the final change, but afterwards generally gripped overhand for stabbing. It was made of ash with an iron spearhead and, at the other end, a bronze butt spike. The latter was useful because the spear, only an inch thick, often shattered against hardwood shields and bronze armor in the thunderous clash of two phalanxes; a man deprived of his spearhead could reverse what was left of the spear and stab with the spike. Also, the ranks behind, still carrying their spears upright, could jab downward into any enemy wounded lying at their feet as the phalanx advanced.

Speaking of feet, there was one thing Jason could not understand, and never would. The human foot, as he knew from painful experience on his last extratemporal expedition, was a vulnerable thing composed of numerous small and easily-broken bones. Hoplites went into brutal, stamping, stomping battles with nothing on their feet but sandals. Why men already wearing and carrying fifty to seventy pounds of bronze, wood, iron, and leather didn’t go one step further and avail themselves of the fairly sturdy boots their society was quite capable of producing was a mystery he was never to solve. He had, with careful casualness, put the question to Callicles, and had gotten a blank look for his pains. Evidently, it was just the way things were done—which, as Jason already knew, was more often than not the answer to questions about the seemingly irrational practices of preindustrial societies.

Finally the outfitting was done. Jason looked at Callicles and knew that what he saw mirrored how he himself looked. Dressed to kill, he thought.

Themistocles moved among the Leontis, telling dirty jokes, calling men by name and asking how their children were, recalling various men’s former heroisms, and generally being Themistocles. The fact that he was here told Jason that the customary sacrifices had been offered to the gods by the generals, and that the omens had proven favorable. Now the order was given, and in the first glimmerings of dawn the hoplites moved through gaps in the defensive earthworks and took up their positions in accordance with the plan on which everyone had been repeatedly briefed over the past few days. There was little talk, and most of that was in whispers, as older men offered advice and encouragement to newbies.

Themistoicles positioned himself in the front line, of course, as Aristides was doing in the Antiochis front rank to their immediate right. There, they and the other tribes’ strategoi would fight as ordinary hoplites, which was precisely what they would revert to being after their tenures in office expired. Very few Classical Greek generals who held repeated commands died in bed; when phalanxes clashed, the commander of the defeated side was almost invariably killed, as were not a few victorious commanders. The idea of a general standing safely on a hill in the rear and issuing commands was utterly foreign to these men. The concept of “leading from the front” went without saying, and it was one more layer of psychic cement for the phalanx. Jason knew that Callimachus was taking up a similar position on the right flank, the traditional place for the war archon, among his own Aiantis tribe. The Plataeans were on the left. Only Miltiades, in his capacity of “chief of staff,” was somewhere around the center, overseeing the big picture.

According to Herodotus, Jason told himself, a hundred and ninety-two Athenians and eleven Plataeans get killed today, out of a total of ten thousand. Pretty good odds against being one of those two hundred and three.

The sun cleared the hills of Euboea, visible in the distance across the water to the east, and for the first time the panorama on the plain was visible, with the dense masses of the enemy, and, beyond that, their camp, which must be mostly broken down by now. Along the curving beach, it could be seen that the Persians had gotten most of their ships into the water during the night, but the activity swirling around them suggested that the loading of the horses—obviously in progress, since very few cavalry were visible in the Persian formation—was still incomplete.

Jason stared at the Persian line, just under a mile away. Then he looked left and right at their own formation. Let’s see, ran his automatic thought processes, ten thousand hoplites, of whom two thousand in the center are arrayed four ranks deep and the rest eight ranks deep. . . . That makes a front line of fifteen hundred. Assuming each man has a total of three feet of space, that’s a front forty-five hundred feet long, plus a little more to allow for spaces between the tribes. It looks like the Persian front is very little longer than that, and, our right is sheltered by the Grove of Heracles. But their formation is a hell of a lot deeper, with maybe thirty thousand men packed into it.

He became aware that all the muttering and whispering in the ranks had ceased. Everyone was staring fixedly at the outlandishly costumed horde a mile across the plain, and especially at the center, directly ahead of them—the core, or spada, of the enemy array, ethnic Iranians all, and veteran soldiers. This was the army that had, in a mere two generations, conquered all the known world to the east, and beyond into the fabulous reaches of India. The army that had crushed the Lydians, the Babylonians, the Elamites, the Egyptians, and all the rest of the seemingly eternal ancient civilizations and ground their rubble into a new universal empire. The army that no Greeks had ever defeated in pitched battle.

It was, Jason thought, understandable that he could feel a kind of collective shudder run through the tight formation. He also caught a whiff of an unmistakable aroma. From his expression, Callicles also recognized it.

“Always some who do it about now,” he chuckled. “I’ve never done that, but I’ve occasionally been known to let the water run down my legs.” The old hoplite’s voice held no embarrassment, and no condemnation of the men who were voiding themselves. Fear was nothing to be ashamed of. The only shame was in failing to hold the all-important line. A hoplite could feel as much natural fear as he wanted, as long as he overcame it enough to keep formation.

Themistocles took a few steps forward and turned to face his men. He didn’t shout, or even seem to speak loudly, but his voice carried. He pointed with his spear at the Persian multitude.

“Men of Leontis! These barbarians stand on Attic soil, where they do not belong—the soil from which you are sprung.” A murmur of agreement ran through the ranks, for as Jason knew, this was no mere figure of speech to these men, with their literal belief that they were the autochthonous race of this land, unconquered for all time. “They are here to carry out their Great King’s command: after killing you they are to castrate your sons and scatter your daughters in slavery all across his vast mongrel empire, as they have scattered so many conquered peoples. Thus your bloodlines are to be extirpated and Athens itself forgotten.”

A paralyzing silence held the phalanx. But Themistocles knew what he was doing. He allowed the silence to hold for only a couple of heartbeats before resuming.

“Yes, this is the most terrible fear that any Greek can imagine. But by being here, you have chosen to come face to face with that fear, and defy it, and thereby conquer it. You have chosen to prevent the obliteration of your families and your polis. You can make these choices because you are free men, not slaves. That freedom to choose gives you a power that the Persians will never know, for there are no free men among them, only slaves and slavemasters. It is a power that is new in the world—a power that you are going to unleash here, today, on this plain. And after you do, the world will never be the same again.”

Themistocles fell abruptly silent and resumed his place in the line. There was no cheering or boisterousness, just a grim, steady determination which settled over the formation like a cloak.

Orders were passed. The Corinthian helmets were lowered into position, and the hoplites ceased to be individuals and became faceless automata. Rutherford will bitch about the limited input my recorder implant has to work with, Jason thought, looking through his tiny eye-slits. To hell with him. With a shuffling of feet and a clanging together of shield rims, the phalanx locked itself into rigidity.

In unison, ten thousand voices began to sing the holy paean.

Greek music—all ancient music, really—had rhythm and melodies, but no harmonies. That was true even of the instrumental music, and still more so of the singing. This was more of a chant. It sounded eerie inside Jason’s helmet. He followed along as best he could, not that anyone could make out any individual voice.

Trumpets sounded, reverberating inside the bronze helmets. In accordance with the plan they all knew, the phalanx advanced, at a walk at first. Then, after just a few steps, double time. The air began to fill with dust as all those thousands of feet pounded the dry ground of summer, and the bronze-against-bronze clatter of jostling armor rose to a clanging roar.

Jason, peering through his helmet’s eye-holes, became aware of something. Unable to see more than a small range of vision, barely able to hear at all, he was dependent on the feel of the shoulder-to-shoulder phalanx around him: the pressure and the pushing and the shoving. It became clear why every man drew courage from all the others, and why all were caught up in an irresistible compulsion to advance, ever forward.

He was also beginning to understand why men in their forties, fifties, and occasionally even sixties were to be found in the phalanx alongside those in their twenties. They weren’t expected to hold up under the kind of endless campaigning endured in the trenches of World War I or the jungles of Southeast Asia or the high desert of Iota Persei II. Hoplite warfare wasn’t like that. The whole point was to avoid ruinous protracted war between city-states by deciding matters in one brutal afternoon. The toil and the fighting and the bloodshed were concentrated and distilled into a single decisive clash of appalling violence but short duration. Callicles and his ilk could handle that. It also explained why men were able and willing to endure the awkwardness and discomfort of the hoplite panoply: they didn’t have to do so for long.

They were getting closer, and up ahead Jason saw that the Persians were starting, rather belatedly, to firm up their formation. At first they must have been unable to believe what they were seeing: the Greeks, with no archers, were actually coming out onto the plain and attacking three times their number. And then the rapid Greek advance had left them with less time than they had thought they had. But there was no panic. These were veterans. Now the spear-bearing infantry were forming up in front and grounding their wicker shields to form a palisade, while thousands and thousands of archers massed behind them, ready to release a sky-darkening sleet of arrows that would decimate the crazy Greeks, after which the infantry (and the few horsemen in the formation) would advance and slaughter the disorganized remnant. Such were the standard Persian tactics, and no army in the known world had ever stood before them.

Then the trumpets gave another signal. At what Jason estimated was a distance of six hundred yards from the Persian front, the double-time became a fast trot.

Herodotus had said the Athenian hoplites had run the entire distance of almost a mile, a unique event. Historians had hooted at that, flatly denying that men so equipped could have done it and been fit to fight afterwards. But, in the surge of adrenaline now singing through their veins, Jason didn’t doubt that for the rest of their lives these men would remember what they were doing as a run. And those skeptical historians had overlooked one thing: hoplites trained, in the task-specific way of all successful exercise programs, to run in armor. In fact, one Olympic event was a foot-race whose contestants wore armor and carried shields. No, these men couldn’t sprint a mile. But they could cover ground at a pace that few athletes of any other era, however well-conditioned, could have matched carrying the particular burden they carried. Jason only hoped he’d be able to keep up.

At the same time they began to trot, they began to scream their war-cry: a terrifying alleeee! calculated to fray the nerves of any who heard it. The ululation rose even above the clattering of shields. Jason recalled what a colleague who had observed the American Civil War had once told him about the “Rebel yell.” Between that and the cacophony of moving armor, the noise reverberating inside Jason’s bronze helmet was deafening.

The air was filling with the dust kicked up by ten thousand pairs of trotting feet, the August sun was getting hotter, and breath was coming in painful gasps. No one cared. They were all half-crazed now, and their trot covered the ground much faster than Persian tactical calculations allowed for. Blinking the sweat out of his eyes, Jason thought he could see frantic movement in the Persian formation up ahead.

Then, at a distance of two hundred yards, the war-cry rose to a collective nerve-shattering scream . . . and the trot became a run.

It was more than a run. It became, in the insanity of the moment, almost a race, as the phalanx thundered down on the now visibly rattled Persians.

Now the Persian archers let fly, and thousands upon thousands of arrows arched overhead with a whoosh like a rushing of wind and plunged downward. But most of them missed entirely, for the speed of the running attack had thrown the archers’ timing off. And of those that hit, most were ineffective. Jason heard and felt them clattering off his shield and helmet. The advance did not slow, and the formation did not waver. If anything, it picked up speed. Exhaustion didn’t matter anymore; adrenaline was irrelevant. These ten thousand screaming madmen were carried forward on a tide of sheer impatience to start killing these barbarians who had come to destroy their world and everything that gave their lives meaning.

Now, with a collective crash, the spears of the first two ranks were brought down into an overhand position and leveled.

The Persian archers scrambled to reload. But there was no longer any time for that.

Even through his helmet, Jason could hear new screams. They came from up ahead, and they were screams of panic, for the Persians now knew that these bronze killing machines in human form were not going to stop. Jason could see that horrified realization in the faces of the infantry just ahead. They were instinctively flinching backward, their shield-palisade dissolving.

Now, then, let’s see, thought Jason in the calm, detached corner of his mind that was still running calculations even in these final seconds. Ten thousand men, weighing an average of maybe a hundred and fifty pounds and carrying an average of maybe sixty pounds of weapons and armor. That comes to. . . .

Over a thousand tons of bronze and hardwood and bone and muscle, bristling with iron spearpoints and moving at the velocity of a sprint, smashed into the Persian army.