The Strategos Read online

  An hour later he was well enough to walk, if still a little light headed, but they wound Parmenion’s wet exomis around his head before they set off again at a steady pace. Although this left the other boy naked it wasn’t an uncommon sight, especially for runners, and Parmenion was far from ashamed of his body. Demetrius, the strongest of the four, volunteered to take the empty water skins back and to catch them up later. However, he carefully scanned the olive groves for any sign of movement before he left them.

  Parmenion and Orestes kept quiet about their close call. Some would have boasted about it and even embroidered the story to appear as heroes, but the two weren’t like that. They were both modest boys and hated those who appeared vainglorious.

  Kionos had had a very close call in a different way, and he knew it. After that incident he changed. He had been the ebullient one, always finding some new activity to go overboard about. Now he became more serious and behaved more maturely. It was a necessary part of growing up, but Parmenion found that he missed the mischievous, effervescent boy that Kionos used to be.

  In the event, hostilities broke out again in less than a year when Amyntas, with the aid of a small Spartan army, invaded Chalkidike, the province in the south of Macedon which was now composed of a loose federation of independent city sates. By that time the boys had just finished their training as recruits. Instead of continuing as students in the military academy, and despite the fact that they were not yet fifteen, the boys suddenly found themselves posted to units as the city mobilized for war. The city wasn’t yet involved, but it lay near to both Macedon and Chalkidike and it was a sensible precaution.

  -o0o-

  Parmenion and Kionos were put in a file of ten men with two more ephebes, both senior to them, and six elderly men who had long since retired from active service. They were to be part of the force left to defend the city when the rest of the army deployed to fight Amyntas in the field. Their phylearch was the eldest of the ephebes, a seventeen-year-old bully named Criton. Because the year groups lived and trained separately at the academy, Parmenion hadn’t come across Criton before but he knew of his reputation. Both he and Kionos groaned when they heard that he was to be in charge of them, as did the third ephebe, a sixteen year old called Leon.

  On their first watch on sentry duty on the city walls Criton paraded his file and inspected them before marching them to their post. The six veterans said nothing but they exchanged glances when told to line up. Between them they had over a hundred and fifty years’ experience and were all well aware of the need to keep their weapons and armour in pristine condition without being told to do so by a seventeen year old boy.

  When Criton reached Parmenion he could find no fault, so he moved on looking annoyed. Kionos had one slightly worn strap on his left shoulder. The leather straps held the two halves of his bronze cuirass together and so Criton was correct to point out that it needed replacing, but he went over the top and told the boy that he would be sentenced to ten lashes to teach him a lesson.

  At this the veterans shuffled uncomfortably and one opened his mouth to say something, but his Companion shook his head and he shut it again. However, Parmenion wasn’t going to let it pass.

  ‘That’s unfair and in any case you have no authority to order a whipping, Criton. You’re our phylearch, not the lochagos. A nasty smile crossed Criton’s face and he stalked back to Parmenion and thrust his helmeted face close to that of the younger boy. A lochagos commanded a unit of two hundred and fifty men, called a lochus, and was the most junior officer who could award punishments.

  ‘No, but my father is our lochagos and I know he will back me up. You’ve just earned yourself ten lashes so that you can keep your friend company.’

  This time the veteran who had warned his Companion not to speak earlier decided it was time to intervene.

  ‘You had better learn, phylearch, that you don’t command men by beating them into submission. You do it by being a leader that men want to follow, not a martinet.’

  ‘What would you know, old man? Just because you’ve been a hoplite in the days of your youth doesn’t mean you can teach me how to command.’

  ‘No, but having been a chiliarch does.’ The veteran beside him spoke up.

  A chiliarch was a commander of a thousand hoplites; one hundred files of ten men in each file. Criton looked uncertain for a moment, then his bravado reasserted itself.

  ‘You’re trying to fool me. Why would a former chiliarch be happy to serve as a common soldier?’

  ‘Because I’m too old and tired to want to command anymore, boy. I thought I’d be happy in the ranks, but I didn’t realise that that would mean serving under an arrogant young fool. Now, are you going to give me ten lashes too? No, I thought not.’

  A slow smile slowly grew on his wrinkled face as he saw an angry officer approaching.

  ‘Now, it’s you who are in trouble. We should have been on watch already, and it’s your fault that we’re late.’

  Criton remained a blustering bully but he didn’t threaten anyone with the lash after that. He did make the lives of Parmenion and Kionos hell though. If a dirty job needed doing then Criton volunteered the two boys to do it. The constant harassment, belittling comments and unjustified punishments began to wear down the spirits of both boys and at one stage Parmenion had to stop Kionos from setting off with his dagger to kill Criton.

  To keep the garrison fit the phrourarch, who commanded the troops manning the city’s defences, decreed that each lochus should take it in turns to carry out a forced march of ten miles. As the boundary of the training ground outside the city was a mile long, the march in full armour and carrying weapons of ten circuits was just about all the older members of the garrison could manage.

  The lochus in which Parmenion and Kionos served had just returned from the march and most were exhausted, the older members especially so. The two ephebes were used to running and marching longer distances at the academy but they were still tired. However, whilst the rest got out of their armour and lay down for a rest, Criton ordered Kionos to do another ten laps of the training ground for supposedly slacking on the march.

  The maximum distance that hoplites were expected to march was fifteen miles and that always included at least two rest breaks. To expect an ephebe to cover twenty miles in full armour and carrying his heavy shield and spear without a proper rest or a chance to drink some water was not only stupid, it was dangerous. The march had started at dawn and so most of it had been made in the cool of the early morning. Now the sun was climbing towards its zenith and there was no possibility of Kionos completing the punishment without collapsing from exhaustion.

  The other members of the file thought of complaining, but they had learnt from bitter experience that this would just enrage Criton. As a result, he would make life even more difficult for Kionos and Parmenion.

  The latter went out to watch his friend and when, as expected, he collapsed after another six circuits he rushed to his aid. The rest of the file joined him and they carried the unconscious boy back into the barracks. Kionos was still comatose when it was time for his file to parade for sentry duty so Criton gave him a week’s duty cleaning out the latrines for being absent. It was when Kionos recovered the next day and was told what had happened that he had drawn his dagger and started towards Criton, who was standing just outside the room they all shared.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Kionos. He’ll have you flogged to within an inch of death for even thinking about it, and if you did succeed in killing him you’d die painfully and your family would be disgraced.’

  Kionos nodded miserably and put his dagger away. His head still throbbed with pain when he set off to start his punishment but suddenly he found the rest of his file walking beside him. They also joined him for the rest of the week cleaning out the trench used by the lochus, shoveling it onto dung carts to be taken away and dumped. Criton must have known from the way that his men all stank that they were helping Kionos, but he didn’t say anything.r />
  Parmenion himself began to lose confidence in himself after a month of repeated persecution and at one stage he even contemplated suicide, but he managed to shake himself out of his deep depression by telling himself that one day the degradation would end.

  As the weeks turned into months with no sign of an attack on Amphipolis, the ruling council began to relax. After Amyntas had withdrawn from Chalkidike without having taken the main city of Olynthus, the field army returned to the city, the veterans were stood down, and the ephebes returned to the military academy.

  Both Parmenion and Kionos had been shaken by their encounter with Criton and it took them several months before they could put the experience behind them. Parmenion knew that it was the mental aspects of the humiliating treatment that Criton had dished out, rather than the physical side, that had really got to him.

  As the end of the year approached rumours began to circulate that Amyntas’ army was moving westwards to deal with an attack by the Illyrians on Epirus - the neighbouring state to the west of Macedon - and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  Criton left the academy at the end of the year and was posted to the cavalry. The word that filtered back was that he was no more popular there and someone had punched him during their monthly training session after he had pushed him too far. The soldier was whipped for striking a superior and had nearly died, but Criton’s father was a fair minded man and one who wasn’t blind to his son’s faults. He knew that the blame really lay with Criton and he therefore sent him to Athens to further his education in the hope that he might learn some sense from the philosophers there, however forlorn a hope that seemed to be. That was the last that Parmenion or his friends heard of him for some time.

  -o0o-

  When Parmenion graduated from the academy in 382 he was posted to join the infantry as a phylearch. He had hoped for the cavalry but his family didn’t have either the status or contacts in the right places for that. What was even more galling was watching the delight on the faces of Demetrius and Kionos as they went off to the cavalry. At least Orestes would be joining the same Tagma as he was.

  Tension in the area was growing once more. After his successful intervention in Epirus, Amyntas had turned his attention back to Chalkidike. Having secured Spartan assistance, he bought off the Athenians by promising them he wouldn’t interfere if they wanted to attack Amphipolis. They were bound to take advantage of the offer to recover it as a colony. Quite apart from the valuable gold and silver mines in the hills surrounding Mount Pangaion, which would have been motive enough, it controlled the coastal road between Macedon and Thrace and it was a useful naval base on the Aegean Sea. However, the city was strongly fortified and was defended on three sides by the River Strymon. It wouldn’t be an easy place to capture.

  Athens decided to attack on both land and sea. Their fleet was far larger than that of Amphipolis but, as the latter refused to leave the mouth of the River Strymon, the waters were too confined for the enemy to make use of their superior numbers. All they could do was to sit off the estuary and blockade the city from the sea.

  When the Athenian army arrived they ignored the city itself initially and headed for the Pangaion Hills and its mines. The Amphipolitan strategos, Deimos, had expected it and he had deployed his field army in the hills to ambush the Athenians.

  Parmenion stood in front of his file of ten men and grinned at Orestes, who was standing in front of his own file next to him. It didn’t make a lot of sense to either of them to place the most inexperienced soldiers in the front rank but their chiliarch explained that it was important for officers to lead by example.

  Their chiliarchy stood on the left of three others stretched across the broad valley on the forward facing slope just ahead of the crest of a saddle. Behind them on the reverse slope stood a further chiliarchy with orders to hold the crest in case any of the Athenians managed to get through the first line of defence.

  Men and boys with slings were positioned on the hillside on each flank of the army together with the other peltasts: the archers and those armed with javelins. The latter used throwing straps to increase their range. They didn’t help with accuracy but that didn’t matter when the target was densely packed infantry. What the Athenians couldn’t see, and what Deimos prayed they were unaware of, was a further chiliarchy of light infantry, divided into its two tagmas five hundred strong, hidden in the rocks on either side of the valley in advance of the main army. The light infantrymen were made up of citizens who couldn’t afford armour. They carried a spear, a lighter circular shield and most also had a sword or dagger, but their only protection was a helmet. Because they were lighter, they could move more quickly and were mainly used for skirmishing.

  Deimos only had five hundred cavalry and he kept those in reserve. This wasn’t cavalry country and, as the Athenians were reported to have two thousand horsemen, he didn’t want to risk his own mounted units until he had to.

  When the Athenian army eventually appeared most of it was hidden in a cloud of dust. They halted whilst their strategos, Zoilus, assessed the situation and, as the dust settled, Deimos could see that they had perhaps ten thousand heavy infantry against his five. He tried to convince himself that, as he had chosen the ground and he had a good plan, he could win, but he was far from certain of it. If he failed, Athens would be able to seize the mines and all the wealth that they produced and the city would be left with just four thousand old men and ephebes to defend it.

  Parmenion swallowed nervously and tried to smile encouragingly at Orestes. The older phylearch on his other side tried to reassure him, but all that did was make him even more apprehensive. He just wished that the Athenians would get on with it. He was certain that, once the fighting started, he would be too busy to be afraid.

  Sweat trickled down his face and into his eyes, stinging them. He wiped it away with his neck cloth but it soon became a problem again. The heavy bronze helmet with its showy horsehair crest didn’t help. His circular shield was three feet across and made of heavy wood with a bronze rim. As it weighed twenty pounds his arm muscles started to tire after a while, until he noticed that everyone except the newest recruits had put it down and were resting it against their against their legs.

  Every hoplite had to be wealthy enough to purchase his own armour and weapons. This led to a certain variety and it was sometimes a problem telling friend from foe. Deimos had therefore sensibly decreed that all his men were to wear a crimson exomis under their cuirasses to distinguish them from the Athenians, who mainly, though not invariably, wore white. Every shield was also painted with a special device denoting its owner’s tribe, which also helped to identify which side a soldier was on.

  Most hoplites who could afford them wore bronze greaves and a bronze cuirass, though some only purchased the breastplate and made do with leather straps at the back. Whilst this sounded sensible the breastplate dragged down unless the straps were really tight and that wasn’t as comfortable as the full cuirass. Parmenion didn’t like the weight of the bronze armour and it was expensive. Instead he had opted for a linothrax: a type of body armour made from laminated linen. It was lighter and permitted more flexible movement than its bronze equivalent. It wasn’t as good at offering protecting from direct thrusts but Parmenion reckoned that’s what his shield was for.

  He might have been happy with a linothrax but his body slave, who had to polish his armour and weapons, hated it. As the linen was white, it had to be kept stain and dirt free and that took far longer than polishing a bronze cuirass.

  Like most of his men, Parmenion wore greaves to protect his lower legs and heavy leather sandals. Some wore strips of leather to protect the groin and upper thighs but Parmenion had opted for wide strips of padded linen studded with scales. Like his men, he was equipped with an eight foot long spear tipped with iron at both ends, a short sword, also made of iron, and a bronze dagger.

  From the rank smell, those around him were also sweating profusely under the hot sun and he was glad
when boys appeared with water skins to quench their thirst. Suddenly the Athenians started to advance and the water boys scuttled to the rear. Parmenion gripped his spear tighter and picked up his shield. He was standing so close to Orestes and the phylearch on his other side that edges of their shields overlapped. He held his spear under his arm and resting on the top of the junction between his shield and Orestes’ so that it was at chest level to an attacker. The man behind thrust his under their shields aiming at the groin or the thighs and the man who was third in the file held his spear over the top of Parmenion’s aiming for the head.

  The Athenian formation sweated up the slope towards them as the Amphipolitans waited stoically for them. The peltasts on the hillside took their toll of the enemy and several hundred, mainly on the two flanks, fell as they advanced. Parmenion was finding both his shield and his spear growing heavier and heavier with every minute he waited, but then the first rank of the Athenians reached him and adrenalin gave him renewed strength.

  His first opponent was a man with a bushy black beard streaked with grey. He batted Parmenion’s spear tip away with his shield but the man in the rank behind Parmenion sunk his spear into the man’s right thigh and he went down on one knee, grimacing with pain. The soldier in the third rank struck his helmet, tipping it backwards and exposing his face. Parmenion pushed his spear forward again and he felt the point enter the man’s left eye.

  Before he could pull it out of the dead man’s face the Athenian behind him took his place, but this time the man two ranks behind Parmenion managed to thrust the tip of his spear between the top of the man’s shield and his helmet, catching him in the throat. He too fell to the ground, impeding the men behind him.

  The Athenians were trying to force the line back in places by locking shields and pushing but the men behind the front ranks, who were weren’t engaged in the actual fighting, shoved hard at their backs and the line held firm. In places the soldier in the front rank was killed or badly wounded and the one in the second rank replaced him, the man in the fourth rank then bringing his spear into play.