The Kisses of Ares by Wes Hartley
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any generations ago the olden day lawgiver Lycurgus said two things about us Spartans that are still repeated after all these years. It is certain that a Spartan male who survives past the age of his majority must be loved by one of the gods and An elderly Spartan is a contradiction in terms. All cliches are true. There is an exception to every rule. At present here in Sparta there are two exceptions. The foremost is our great king Agesilus now in his eighty-second year. He is obviously protected by a god. The other is my battered self, Strymon son of Cephalus the hoplite. I’ve outlived all my contemporaries but my king and scattered the ashes of all my relatives. I have no descendants. If I manage to extend my span of days to another summer like this one I’ll be in my ninth decade. Next week I’ll be eighty-nine. I’m a superannuated contradiction in terms. I was born during the eighteenth year of the celebrated reign of Archidamus king of us Spartans. In Athens Pericles son of Xanthippus was chief archon and Artaxerxes son of Xerxes was king in Persia. I was nineteen years old when Athens proclaimed the Megarian Decree and shattered the Thirty Years Peace. During the ten year war between Athens and Sparta I fought in so many battles I lost count. I was never very good at numbers. When I was twenty I caught the plague when I was following Archidamus into Attica. My lover Thrassylus nursed me back to health. When Thrassylus caught the plague I took care of him until he recovered. During these seventy years campaigning for Sparta on the threshing floor of Ares I’ve tramped across all the known world and received countless wounds. I don’t know how many. I’m missing part of one ear, two fingers, and a chunk of my left buttock the size of a crabapple. My most decorative battle scar is the crossways slash above my eyebrow that cuts across my left cheekbone. It was awarded to me by a perfumed Persian outside the walls of Babylon. That was when we Spartans were in the employ of Cyrus the younger brother of the Persian king in the company of the ten thousand Greek mercenaries led by Xenophon the Athenian. We oldtimer hardcore veterans can rattle on non-stop about our battle scars. Here in Sparta we veteran campaigners call our honorable war wounds the kisses of Ares. Every decade or so a rookie Achilles comes along 58 RFD 180 Winter 2019
who enjoys listening to my marital rantings and wants me to show him my battle scars. Nowadays it’s Isidas son of the late general Phoebidas. It was doughty Phoebidas who seized the citadel at Thebes twenty years ago during the women’s festival. His son beautiful Isidas The Wonderkid is going to have to cut a lot of throats to outshine the military splendor of his glorious parent. I think he just might do it. Isidas son of Phoebidas is sixteen years old. In all my eighty-nine years I’ve never seen a youth as handsome and noble and proud as Isidas. His family lineage reaches back to Hercules Guardian of Sparta. He’s so tall that he towers above all the other striplings in the boy’s gymnasium. He’s a full head taller than I am. When Isidas is decked out in the bronze armor of his late sire the general he looks like the war god Ares himself. He has the same ruddy red curls that Ares has. He’s a redhead like Menelaus was as Homer informs us. On the wrestling floor he’s so rock-solid that none of his age mates can topple him. All the young men in the herds of the protiranes and iranes are smitten by the masculine beauty of popular Isidas. Every one of them would be honored to be his boyfriend and lover. Noble Isidas is gentle with his would-be suitors. He tells them his feelings incline toward a certain other. This sounds strange to the hopeful young men since Isidas has given no indication who that lucky person might be. Most days when I trundle my hacked up old carcass to the baths, Isidas The Redhead is there also, strutting his stuff and preening his dazzling red feathers. Sometimes he comes to the veteran’s barracks and accompanies me to the abluting place. My young bath partner is very intrigued by the battlefield momentoes commemorated all over my venerable hide. Alongside me in the cold bath he likes to trace his finger over one of the pale signatures left by some long-dead contestant. I’m obliged to narrate the history of each inscription. He’s asked me about certain ones of my more prominent blazons several times now. My interrogator wants to hear all the details. His eagerness and curiosity are very endearing to an old campaigner like Strymon the hoplite. One morning recently my bold companion-on-thebath wheedled me into holding still while he counted and tallied up all my honorable war wounds. According to his reckoning, my battered hulk is speckled with
