Lysis

The Spartan Demaratus came for me at dawn.  He had me cleaned and treated, and marched me off to an audience with Xerxes.  Walking along the beach, I could barely discern through the morning mist Cape Artemisium to my right.  The fleet was there, of course, still holding the line.  I couldn't see them, but I knew they were there.  I felt my heart swell with longing to be amongst them once again, though it certainly didn't look like that would ever happen.

 

The walk to Xerxes took a long time, it seemed to me.  Their army was huge.  Not an army of hoplites but a mass of men armed with lance and bow and caparisoned in bright colors and odd dress, unfamiliar to my eyes.  They wore long trousers that covered their legs from hip to ankle.  Their feet were covered in variegated footwear, boots and shoes of all shapes and sizes.  Their tunics were also sleeved and multicolored.  There were Greeks also, however, or perhaps Ionians, I saw.  Sandaled and robed in short tunics, they stood out more for their armor, similar in nearly every way to my own.  Seeing this was more discouraging than anything else.  Hadn't we gone to war nearly two decades ago to protect these very Ionians from the depredations of the Persians?  Could they have so quickly forgotten?  I could make out no sensible order in the throng, but they stretched along the shore and spread out over the plain to the mountains as far as the eye could see.

 

Demaratus strode in front of me.  He walked with a kingly air, yet even I could see he was not happy in his place.  I had detected his melancholia even through my own fear the night before. Though most in Athens paid little attention to the goings on in Sparta, I knew of him.  He had been deposed by King Cleomones over a question of legitimacy.  The details were hazy, but it was shortly after the event that he left for Persia.  It was hard to believe that a Spartan king could find himself serving the Medes.  His slights must have been enormous.

 

At the camp of the Persian king, hundreds of guards ringed the mass of tents that made up his traveling court.  They were dressed sumptuously, in purple tunics trimmed in red, and wore high red conical felt caps.  Their weapons shone in the sun. 

 

The rising morning breeze stirred a host of brightly woven pennons that fluttered from a mass of tent poles making up the king's quarters.  Messengers were purposefully hurrying in and out of the large awning that covered a group of richly dressed barbarians directly to our front.  We were admitted to the camp without question and walked directly towards the awning.  The group parted to reveal a low-lying table full of documents and maps, behind which was seated the king.  He was indeed an imposing sight.  His long hair hung in braided ringlets on both sides of his head, and his beard was thick, dark, and tightly wound.  He wore a gold and purple box-like crown that he carried lightly on his thick neck and powerful shoulders.  He was robed and trousered, and the folds of his lavish golden outfit hung to his toes.  All this appeared to make very little allowance for the fact that his court was in the field.  Nevertheless, he had the look of a warrior, and one who was used to getting his way.