The Corn King and the Spring Queen (9 page)

Tarrik leant against the wall, with his thumbs hooked into his belt. ‘You're going to stay with me all this winter,' he said, ‘and teach me.'

‘But I must go to King Kleomenes as soon as I can,' said Sphaeros. ‘There will be small ships sailing from harbour to harbour still; I can work my way south.'

It suddenly occurred to the Chief that he really had someone to deal with this time. ‘You won't go till I let you,' he said. ‘I have the power here, my philosopher.'

‘Yes, King of Marob,' said Sphaeros, ‘but you cannot make me teach.'

‘I can kill you the moment I choose—and I will if you don't do what I want.'

‘Yes, and how well I shall teach then!'

But Eurydice came between them, distressed at this scene between her Charmantides and a real Hellene philosopher. ‘This is all nonsense, of course! Charmantides, you mustn't be rough. This delightful Sphaeros is
my
guest.' And she smiled at him, feeling that there was something to be said for being a respectable age—though not, of course, old!—at the moment.

But Sphaeros did not respond properly; he had a hand on Tarrik's arm, and was looking up at him earnestly. ‘King!' he said, ‘I will tell you why Kleomenes of Sparta needs me, and then you will let me go to him. I do not think you are truly the sort of king who kills people without reason.'

Tarrik, unused to this particular form of flattery, blushed and said: ‘Well, we shall see. Tell me, anyhow.'

‘It's a long story, it begins before you were born, King.'

‘At supper, then. Oh, I shall get Berris!'

At first Berris refused to come to supper, with all sorts of excuses; but in the end, of course, there he was, with his eyes fixed on the Hellene. They sat round, more or less Greek fashion, Eurydice in a high-backed chair, waited on by her own maids; Tarrik half lying, half sitting, always very restless, on a big throne with red cushions; Erif Der beside him with her proper crown, five spikes of
silver, lightly engraved with stags and lions that had star sapphires for eyes, and a heavy patterned dress that fell over her feet. Sphaeros was on Tarrik's other side, head propped in hands, lying along a couch of cedar lattice, with small cushions, and Berris beyond him on another couch, but sitting half up, clasping his knees, eating by fits and starts. They had a long and large supper, with quantities of meat, stewed and boiled and roasted, and fish, and raisin pies, some good wine and much bad, wheaten cakes and run honey and cream.

Eurydice only spoke when she had something to say which appeared to her to be really noble—or witty—or revealing a heart which yearned for Hellas; this made her conversation rather fitful. Tarrik kept on thinking, quite rightly, that she was at her best when alone with him. He talked rather little, because he was hungry and at the same time happier than he had been for months. Sphaeros was naturally rather silent, and tonight he was tired too, but knew he must tell his story well enough to convince the Chief. So, during supper, Erif and Berris Der talked at one another most of the time, across the others, sparring like two pretty game-cocks. They talked Greek out of politeness, and hers was bad, but fluent and very funny, whether on purpose or not. They ended by throwing bread balls at one another and Eurydice disapproved; but Tarrik joined in, and then Sphaeros, not out of any sense of compliment to his barbarian hosts, but in all pleasantness and seriousness. Only then in the middle of it, Tarrik suddenly took up a half-loaf and threw it at his cup-bearer and shouted to them to clear the food and bring more wine. He pledged them all in a skull cup, one of the chiefs of the Red Riders that he had shot himself as a boy ten years before. ‘And now the story,' said Erif.

Sphaeros sat up on his couch, so as to be able to face them all, and shifted his head bandage where the edge was catching his ear. ‘The beginning of the story is away back,' he said, ‘in the time when the Spartans did something that no one else had ever done with their eyes open—or ever will, I think. They turned their backs on the beauty that was ripening in Hellas, in their own hearts too. They said: “We will not build temples, nor make statues or paintings or music, we will have no poets here. We will make life
hard and bitter so that only the strongest can bear it, and these shall be our citizens.”'

He stopped for a moment, just long enough for Berris to ask ‘Why?' The others were all quiet.

‘Why?' said Sphaeros, half to himself. ‘Because Sparta is a hot green valley, a garden where flowers blossom too much and die; they had to climb out of it, to live on the peaks in the cold winds. They made themselves the strangest State in the world; strong and free and caring not at all for death, no man for himself but all for the others, for Sparta. By casting out the beauty we know, they made a beauty of their own.'

Tarrik began to fidget and frown. ‘Sparta is not like that. I have been to Hellas—I know for myself: no traveller's tales, my Sphaeros. I tell you, if there was any luxury, anything rare and precious and sought after, they had it in Sparta.'

‘Yes,' said Sphaeros, ‘but that came afterwards. It seems that no man and no State can live on the heights for ever. Sparta became too powerful, and the doom of the conqueror fell on her: gold and silver flowed down into hollow Lacedaemon and rotted the very roots of their greatness. These things, rather than the riches of the spirit, came to be what they cared for in Sparta; men strove for them only. In that moment the Good Life left them and was gone. Now gold follows after gold, and with it land and power, houses and cattle and slaves; more and more of the lands and riches came into the hands of a few men; and those of the citizens who dropped behind in the gold race must needs take to trade or farming to get their bread, and so they lost the good Life, and had no more leisure for the Training, the Eating-together, and all those matters without which no one can have citizenship of Sparta. A time came when all the riches in the State belonged to scarcely more than a hundred families, and of these many were unbelievably rich, though some had mortgaged their land and were deep in debt, and had nothing but the appearance of riches. The rest of the people worked for them, and were humble and slavish through debt and anxiety and poverty, and there was no happiness.'

Tarrik was listening quietly now, and so were the others, more or less. Only Eurydice was bending over a piece of
fine embroidery, and seemed at least as much interested in it as in the story; her hands were Still very white and beautiful, and they moved over the sewing like big moths. It was rather dark in the hall, in spite of the torches all round in rings on the wall, but one of the maids knelt beside Eurydice, holding a lamp just so high that it shone round and softly on those hands of hers. Berris kept on looking at them, and for a little while Sphaeros found them a certain interruption in the thread of his ideas. But by and bye the room faded, and he was away in another country, among the dead that he had known and loved.

‘Well,' he said, ‘the story comes nearer: to fifteen years ago. Sparta has always had two kings, and in the days I am telling you about, one of the kings was called Leonidas. He was an oldish man and he had lived much in Syria with King Seleucus and the great lords there: there was no luxury or pride that he did not know or practise. He had a daughter, called Chilonis, and two young sons; they had only to ask for a thing to get it. I know his house well; it was all plastered with gold. He was the sort of man who could not bear a straight line or a plain wall; everything must be twisted and tangled and gilt and coloured till one's eyes ached. Every corner was crammed with statues and fat gold vases like old men's bellies and life-size pottery peacocks painted and glazed, and goggling black slaves he'd brought from Antioch, smelling of fat and scent; and everywhere there were soft carpets and lamps running over with sweet oil, and food and drink enough for an army. And there he was in the middle, this old Leonidas, always grabbing and hungry for more, never satisfied, never happy, as rough as any peasant with it all. His wife was a tall, proud Spartan, who kept herself away from him, and the daughter was married to her cousin Kleombrotos, a decent enough young man; she, woman-like, hated all this violence and luxury of her father's and would tell her little brothers stories of Sparta in the time of the Good Life; and they listened to her. Leonidas loved her, perhaps because she was so different, and it was she who persuaded her father to ask me to come from Athens and teach the two young boys, Kleomenes and Eukleidas. So for a time I went and lived in his house, among all those vain riches.

‘But the other king of Sparta was called Agis. He was
not wise, and never free from desire. And yet—if I could have loved any man—' He stopped again, with a little gasp, so vividly had Agis come into his mind. But two of them at once said: ‘Go on.' He moved a little sideways on his couch and went on. ‘Well, it is all a long time ago, and the world goes on still. Agis was young—little older than Berris here—and gentle and kind-hearted as a girl. He had been brought up with all tenderness and no sparing of money or love, by his mother and grandmother, and early married to a wife who was as beautiful as she was good, Agiatis the merry-minded, only daughter of the richest man in Sparta. He had these three women always by him, giving him of their best.

‘Agis grew restless in the heat of summer and went up into the mountains of Sparta, and he stayed there alone for two nights. Then he came down and looked with new eyes at his country, and he saw how evil the times were, and he knew so clearly that there was no doubting it that he must bring Sparta back to the Good Life. So he cast away all pleasures and softness, all the graces and sweetness of his young life, and followed the old rules. The three women loved him so much that they did not try to hinder him. And gradually the rich young men of Sparta began to give up their pleasures too, and do as he did. But King Leonidas thought him a fool and said so to me; I kept my thoughts to myself, for I wished to go on teaching Kleomenes.

‘Now Agis, having seen that he himself could lead the Good Life, planned to make it possible for all Sparta. In this State, the power lies not with the kings, but with their counsellors, the ephors, and in these days the ephors were rich men ruling in the interests of the rich. But Agis procured matters so that his own friends should be the ephors, among them his uncle, Agesilaus, whom he trusted: for he was young and without experience of men and their foolish and evil wills. Then, through these ephors, he proposed his new laws—the freeing of the poor from debt—the dividing up of all the lands into equal lots for all the citizens—and the granting of citizenship to those not Spartiate who yet had free minds and strong bodies and a will to serve the State. All the people were gathered together to hear these new laws, utterly surprised for the most part, and dumb and fearful as men are of any new thing. Then
Agis stood up among the ephors, with downcast eyes and wearing the rough Spartan dress. He spoke very shortly and simply, saying that his life was not his own but theirs, and if they would have the new laws, so would he. And with that he gave them all his own lands, which were very large and fertile, to be divided up, and six hundred talents of coined gold, which was almost all he had, and told them that his mother and grandmother and all his friends would do the same.

‘Then, as it came real to them, the people went mad with excitement and admiration and love for their king. And suddenly Leonidas saw that it was no mere boy's game and that if it went on all his lands and riches would go too, and then and there he turned on Agis with bitter blame and anger. After that the State was divided into two, the poor and young following Agis, and the old and rich, Leonidas, who bribed and persuaded the Council of Elders to reject the new laws. But Leonidas was not the winner for long; the ephors attacked him, and his son-in-law Kleombrotos, eager to do as Agis had done, claimed the kingship, and he had to fly from Sparta. Some would have killed him on his way over the pass, but Agis heard of this and forbade it. The boys went with him, and so did Chilonis, for she was one of those who would rather be unhappy than happy. And I went north to Athens to Be with my teacher Zeno, for I was sick of rich men and their ways. Only I promised Kleomenes to come back one day.

‘Now Agis had all the deeds of money-lending burnt in the market-place of Sparta, and so far freed his people. He would have gone on at once to the division of land, but Agesilaus his uncle had other plans: he was a man with many debts and much land; now he was free of the debts, but hoped to keep the land. Agis did not understand this; he was too young to believe the worst of people. So he went marching to the wars, leaving half his work undone. Still all would have been well, but that the general of the Achaean League, whom he went to help, was jealous of him, and would not let him win a battle. These things happen and there is reason in them if one could see it. His army was all under the old discipline and he himself was the youngest there; they loved him, he was a flame to them, he would have led them to victory. But in the
end there was nothing for them to do, and he had to bring them back ingloriously, and found that all was in disorder in Sparta, because of Agesilaus, who was still ephor and was using his power to oppress the people and get everything for himself. He treated his nephew Agis and the other young king as foolish boys, and gave out that there was to be no dividing of the land.

‘Then the people turned fiercely on those who they thought had tricked them, and sent to Tegea and brought Leonidas back in triumph. Agis knew that his army was utterly his and would fight for him, even against the rest of Sparta. But he would not let the army save him because that would have meant killing others of his fellow-citizens. Kleombrotos agreed. The two young kings fled for safety to the most sacred temples, yet I think most likely Agis knew that he was choosing death. Kleombrotos was saved by this same Chilonis, his wife, who stood between him and her father, and went with him to banishment, just as she had gone before with Leonidas. But Agis was not to be forgiven.