The ephor led me inside. His four colleagues were sitting in a row, and he took his place beside them. Opposite the five men were two stools. One was empty. The ephor who had brought me to the council chamber indicated that I should sit on it, and I did as I was told. The other chair was already occupied; I recognized the man sitting there immediately. His name was Demaratus. Just as my father did, he ruled the Spartans as their king.
This, to other peoples, may seem strange. Lands with kings tend to have only one of them at a time. But Sparta is not like other lands. In our city, the glamour of the vanished age of the heroes still lingers. Heracles, cloaked in fire, might have vanished from the world; his descendants, though, still rule our city. Not one Heraclid king sits on the Spartan throne, but two. It is rare for both kings to march to war. One normally leads the army; the other stays and rules the city. In the most recent campaign, however, both kings had gone. So far as I knew, none of the soldiers had returned from the front. My father certainly had not. So why was Demaratus back?
“Lady Gorgo,” said the chief ephor, “you must not look anxious. Your reports are excellent; your teachers praise you; your marks are the best in your year. Therefore we have decided that you are worthy, in the absence of your father, to represent him. Custom requires, when one king has a charge to bring against the other, that neither chair sits empty. Your mother is dead, and you are Cleomenes’ only child. Therefore you sit where you do by right.”
I was so astonished by this announcement that I made no answer. Fortunately silence is admired by the Spartans, and so none of the ephors thought the worse of me for not replying.
“Demaratus,” the chief ephor continued, “has come directly from the front. He brings serious allegations against your father. But before you hear them, it is well that you understand the background. Tell me, Lady Gorgo. Do you know why our army has been at war?”
I shook my head.
“Good,” the chief ephor said. “That is as it should be. Naturally, what I tell you now is for your ears only. Not for your friends; not for anyone. You understand?”
I nodded.
“Tell me – what do you know of Athens?”
“I know that the girls of Athens turn into bears.”
Even as I said this, I worried that the adults would laugh. I did not want to let my father down. But the ephors remained expressionless, and so I carried on.
“I know also that there is a snake which lives on the Acropolis. Girls feed it honey cakes. So long as the snake remains there, and comes out of its hole to eat the cakes, the Acropolis will never fall.”
“Well,” said Demaratus with a snort, “that is true enough, I suppose.”
The chief ephor ignored this interruption. “Clearly, Lady Gorgo, you know enough of Athens to understand that it is a great and famous city. But for many centuries it has been weak. Its people have fought among themselves; the rich have oppressed the poor. As a result, they are useless in battle. It has taken them years and years of fighting just to seize control of Salamis, an island in a bay off Attica, from a city that is a mere fraction of Athens’ size. They have not, as we have done, learned the discipline and the self-control that make for greatness. And so, for many centuries now, we have been content to leave them alone.”
“As we should have continued to do,” said Demaratus.
“Except that the gods willed it otherwise. You know better than anyone, Lord Demaratus, that we in Sparta are the particular favourites of Apollo. We cannot go against his wishes.”
The chief ephor paused, as though daring Demaratus to oppose him; then he turned back to me.
“It was Apollo who gave us our laws, Lady Gorgo. We order our entire lives in obedience to his instructions. This is why the Pythia allows each of our two kings to have his own personal ambassador. The moment one of our kings has a question for Apollo, off his ambassador heads to Delphi. There he can put to the god any question that he pleases.
“Then, four years ago, something strange happened. Spartans who visited Delphi began to report a curious thing. No matter what their business, no matter what their question, the Pythia kept giving them the same answer: ‘Set free the Athenians.’ The news of this reached your father, and he decided to test it himself. First he sent his ambassador to Delphi. The ambassador put a host of questions to Apollo. Sure enough, every time a question was asked, back came the same answer: ‘Set free the Athenians.’ Then, once the ambassador had returned to Sparta and delivered his report, your father himself went to Delphi. He confronted the Pythia; he demanded to know what was going on. Again, though, the same response: ‘Set free the Athenians.’”
“Why,” I asked hesitantly, “did the Athenians need setting free?”
“A very good question, Lady Gorgo. For a long time – many decades, in fact – the people of Athens had been living as the slaves of a single Athenian family. Their most recent master – their ‘tyrant’, the Athenians call him – was a man called Hippias. He had been a good friend of ours. By keeping the Athenians under his thumb, he served to keep them under our thumb as well. We had no reason to turn against him. Quite the opposite. We had absolutely no reason to set the Athenians free.”
“And yet, for all that, your father did set them free.” So said Demaratus, addressing me for the first time. “He did as the oracle commanded.”
“But of course he did!” Young girl though I was, addressing an elder, I could not help a certain tone of indignation. “A king of Sparta cannot risk the anger of Apollo!”
Demaratus scowled. For a moment I thought he would tell me to remember my place and hold my tongue, but instead he put a question to me. “What if Apollo had not given the oracle?”
I looked at him perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“What if someone – an Athenian enemy of Hippias, say – had bribed the Pythia?”
“Bribed?” I was stunned that Demaratus could even suggest it. Never had I heard anything so shocking. “But if someone did that, the god would strike him down and make an example of him to all the world. It is a terrible thing to suggest!”
The moment I had said this, of course, I went bright red. I clasped my hand to my mouth. There was silence.
Then one of the five ephors laughed. “You are your father’s daughter, Lady Gorgo. Cleomenes said almost exactly the same.”
Demaratus nodded. “Indeed he did.” And he too laughed – but in a mirthless way. “I do not blame you, Lady Gorgo, for defending your father. Nevertheless, it is important, since you are here to represent him, that you properly understand the full scale of his folly. So listen to me as I explain just why I have returned ahead of our army, and why I am here to demand justice of the ephors. Yes, like you, Cleomenes viewed the idea that anyone might bribe the Pythia as an outrage against Apollo. This is why – as I have already told you – he insisted on leading an army against Athens.
“Naturally, he defeated Hippias, much as a boy might swat a bluebottle. Crushed on the battlefield, the tyrant retreated to the Acropolis, and there he was put under siege. Hippias was desperate to get his family to safety. He sent his children under cover of darkness down the side of the Acropolis. The rocks, however, were very steep, and their descent sent pebbles scattering down onto the Spartan guards below. The children were taken prisoner. The despairing tyrant, rather than risk their lives, sued for terms. Your father ordered him into exile; Hippias, stunned by how abruptly and unexpectedly he had been brought low, and by a man he had thought his ally too, had no choice but to obey. His tyranny was over.
“Your father now set to putting Athens in order. He took for granted that the Athenians should accept Spartan leadership. He was the man who had forced Hippias into exile, after all. Who else but him, then, should decide the fate of Athens? So decide its fate he did. The city was never to do anything contrary to our wishes. Athenians friendly to us were to wield power; Athenians unfriendly to us were not. Anyone who kicked up too much of a fuss was forced into exile. Only when everything had been completed to your father’s satisfaction did he finally withdraw. Back to Sparta he returned. His triumph seemed complete; he was the hero of the hour.
“But soon things went wrong.” Demaratus smiled grimly. “Very wrong. News reached us that our allies in Athens were losing their grip. New leaders had emerged in the city. I pointed out to your father that this was exactly what I had warned would happen, and I urged him to accept his mistake. But he would not. Instead he summoned his bodyguard of three hundred men and set off for Athens. Ahead of him he sent a herald. The warning the herald gave was very blunt: ‘Enemies of Sparta, beware. King Cleomenes is coming.’
“Athenian leaders hostile to your father got the message. By the time he arrived in Athens, they had all fled. No one opposed him as he marched into the city. Sullen huddles of people watched in silence as he headed straight for the Acropolis. There he made his base. He issued decrees, summons, orders, taking for granted that the Athenians would obey him. Why should he not? He was a king of Sparta, after all.
“But then, even as he sat on the Acropolis, drawing up his plans for Athens, something unexpected happened. Your father heard the noise of chanting rising from the streets below. Looking down, he saw a huge crowd massed at the entranceway to the Acropolis. At the sight of him the demonstrators began to chant even louder, and to howl, and to catcall. Your father summoned his bodyguard; but when the Spartans marched down the ramp to try to clear the crowd, they were pelted with stones and forced to retreat. Then abruptly the whole city was engulfed in smoke. Fires seemed to be burning all over Athens. The smoke rose in dense black plumes that twisted and twined around one another. High into the sky they billowed. Your father, watching them, saw how they were merging to fashion the image of a giant. Massive over Athens, the giant towered, massive over Attica.
“Your father knew at once what he was seeing – for he had heard the Athenians talk about it often enough. He was seeing, black against the sky, the image of everyone who had ever lived in Attica, and who was destined to live there in times to come. Demos, the Athenians call this giant. ‘The People.’
“Now, your father, I grant, is a brave man. Nevertheless, the spectacle of Demos towering over Athens filled him with dread. He told me so himself. That same day, he opened negotiations with the crowd below. Terms were agreed, and your father and his bodyguards were offered safe passage to the border. They took it. When they returned to Sparta, they explained what they had seen. All of us agreed that they had made the right decision. Attica was a strange and foreign land, and it was clear that spirits roamed there whom it was foolish to offend. Most of us in Sparta had never been very interested in Athens in the first place. So we put the whole matter from our minds.
“But not your father. Oh no. He – being the man he was – brooded and sulked. In his arrogance, he thought he knew better than the rest of us. He would not accept that he had been wrong. And so he returned to plotting war against the Athenians. I tried to stop him. He ignored me. Silenced me. Laughed at my objections. Mustered the army. Persuaded you” – he pointed at the ephors – “to support him. Insisted I accompany him. And all for what? Failure. Total, abject failure.”
Rising to his feet, Demaratus breathed in deeply. He was shaking with anger. He jabbed again with his finger at the ephors. “It is not to be tolerated. Something must be done. I demand that Cleomenes be—”
“BE THANKED FOR DOING THE WILL OF THE GODS!”
We all looked round. There, framed by the doorway of the council chamber, stood the silhouette of a man. He was barrel-chested, broad-shouldered. I recognized him immediately.
“Papa!”
I rose to my feet in excitement.
My father had returned.