The Kisses of Ares Wes Hartley

The Kisses of Ares by Wes Hartley

Many 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 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

eighty-eight citations, a blaze for every year but one of my eighty-nine. My chronicler tells me he’s determined to badger me until I tell him the particulars of every one of my battle scars.

It’s true that there are no defensive ramparts protecting Sparta. Our deme has always depended on the skill and tenacity of its home guard fighters to answer any attack on our borders. Nowadays it’s the Thebans and their leader Epaminondas who would like to impose one thing or another. I usually don’t know what things exactly since I mostly steer clear of politics.

The talk these days is about the new alliance of five demes against the hegemony of Thebes and the fact that both Sparta and the Arcadians are allies in the fivefold coalition. The Thebans consider this alliance and the political manoeuverings that accompany it to be a marital affront and a provocation. Militant Epaminondas is determined to bring us unruly Peloponnesians back under Theban jurisdiction. He intends to break up the Arcadian confederation and appoint military governors to rule under his aegis. Epaminondas has marched his troops across to Tegea and is idling his army there until he can determine where the combined forces of the alliance are intending to meet him to settle the issue.

Our venerable King Agesilaus led us Spartans north toward Mantinia in Arcadia where the allied armies are mustering. At Pellene a Cretan runner bringing news from Tegea overtook our expedition. He informed Agesilaus that Epaminondas had concluded that the combined forces waiting for him at Mantinia were too strong to match his own. When the Theban general learned that we Spartans were en route to Mantinia and had left behind us only a few home guard battalions made up of oldsters and stripling youths to defend the city, he decided to march on Sparta at double time and despoil it like a viper does when he finds an unattended nest of fledgling birds.

We jogged back to Sparta at Marathon speed. We arrived just ahead of the Theban vanguard. All our cavalry and mercenaries were absent in another part of Arcadia along with three full battalions of hoplites. We had no time to prepare elaborate defenses because the Thebans had already crossed the river Eurotas.

Theban forerunners in the van arrived at the outskirts on the north side of the city where the quarters of our military officers are situated on high ground. There they encountered the king’s son Archidamus with his hundred young partisans and the fracas in the narrow streets was furious.

Our old king and his troop of guardsmen joined the defenders with yours truly Strymon in the midst of the hoplite veterans alongside the king. During the skirmishing I received a slight wound on my forearm.

As we were contending mightily, an astonishing spectacle dazzled our eyes and rallied our spirits. Glorious Isidas fresh from the bathhouse his naked body glistening with oil forced his way into the crush of combatants brandishing his father’s spear and sword in either hand. He threw himself at the ranks of the enemy and struck down and laid low all who opposed him. He raged like mighty Ares himself, and we who saw him in action both enemy and fellow soldiers were awestruck by his godlike appearance and audacity.

Fighting naked, no armor or helmet to protect him, he received not a single scratch on his vulnerable body. Everyone is certain that one of the Olympians most likely Ares God of War was safe-guarding hotheaded Isidas son of Phoebidas.

After the Thebans were routed and pushed beyond the boundary posts of Laconia, Archidamus the king’s son erected a trophy alongside the officer’s quarters where the fighting had been heaviest, and the king and the euphors crowned impetuous Isidas with a wreath of gold for his Spartan valor.

Later, the euphors voted to fine Isidas one thousand drachmas for his foolhardy rashness fighting naked without helmet, shield, or armor. The same euphors had prosecuted Isidas’ father Phoebidas twenty years ago when he captured the Theban citadel during the Feast of Demeter without shedding a single drop of blood. Phoebidas was fined one hundred thousand drachmas and censured by the euphors for his indiscretion, for conducting a campaign on a religious holy day and for seizing the Cadmea at Thebes without orders from headquarters. Our grateful king paid the fines of both father and son.

Agesilaus promised celebrated Isidas that should there be anything he desires that is in keeping with the longstanding traditions of us Spartans he need only mention it and the king would grant his request.

Isidas had two requests. He asked to be permitted to fight alongside the adult men in the forefront of the vanguard and to be allowed to quit the boy’s barracks and move into private quarters where he and his new lover could sleep together and engage in masculine pursuits. Our generous king awarded Isidas both honors.

Now at night when my enthusiastic bunkmate is sprawled naked beside me, his fragrant red curls spilled across my chest and his impetuous erection thrust hard against my thigh, my solicitous boon companion lightly traces his forefinger over one or another of my eighty-nine battle scars and kisses my snowy white whiskers and coos like a turtledove.