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       Greeks

      Kleomenes iii, King of Sparta

      His wife Agiatis, widow of King Agis iv

      His children, Nikomedes, Nikolaos and Gorgo

      His mother, Kratesikleia

      His stepfather, Megistonous

      His brother, Eukleidas

      His foster-brother, Phoebis

      His friend, Panteus

      Philylla

      Her father, Themisteas

      Her mother, Eupolia

      Her younger sister, Ianthemis

      Her younger brother, Dontas

      Her foster-mother, Tiasa

      Therykion, Hippitas, and other Spartiates

      Deinicha and other Spartiate girls

      Panitas, Leumas, Mikon and other helots or non-citizens, their women and children

      Aratos of Sicyon

      Lydiades of Megalopolis

      Spartans, Argives, Athenians, Megalopolitans, Rhodians and others

       People of Marob

      Kotka, Black Holly and other men of Marob

      CHAPTER ONE

      IN A FIELD NEAR Sparta there were three children with bows and arrows shooting at a stone mark, roughly painted as a man with a shield. It was winter—you could scarcely call it the beginning of spring yet—and the grass had been cropped close by the beasts. At the high end of the field were twenty old olive trees, lifting grey, beautiful heads to any sun there was; through them a goat-path, trodden hard, led down from upland pastures to the city. All round the field there was a stone wall, and beyond, on three sides, the still jagged mountains of Sparta.

      The two younger children, a little girl and a still smaller boy, were looking crossly at their big sister; they wanted to play, and she was making it into work. They were chilly as well; she had made them leave off their warm cloaks, and the cold crept up their bare arms and legs, and under the thin wool of their indoor tunics. ‘A real bowman,’ she had said, ‘mustn’t let anything interfere with his shooting.’ And when they protested that they weren’t real bowmen, she said then they mustn’t shoot with her bows and arrows: so they had to be. But she’d always been like that, and it was worse than ever now she was maid of honour to the Queen.

      They had to shoot in turns, standing a long way from the mark, so that they hardly ever hit it, which was dull, and they had to watch their arrows and find them, and between times they had to stand quite still and not drop their bows. It was unbearable; by and bye the little boy, Dontas, rebelled. ‘You said it was going to be a game!’

      His big sister looked at him scornfully. ‘That was only to get you to come,’ she said, and her nose tilted at him. ‘This is much better than a game.’

      ‘It’s not!’ said the others, both together, and the small girl suddenly began to cry: ‘You’ve cheated us, Philylla! You said we were going to like it and we don’t!’

      ‘It’s better than any game,’ said Philylla in an excitement which somehow disregarded them. ‘It’s real! We’re all real Spartans now. I’m teaching you.’

      ‘We don’t want you to teach us, do we, Dontas?’ She appealed to the boy, who nodded, frowning as hard as he could. ‘You aren’t grown up any more than me, and besides we’re Spartans already!’

      The big one tossed her head and made a comprehensive face at them. ‘That sort of Spartan—very likely! That pay other people to do their fighting for them!’

      ‘Well, you can’t fight anyway,’ said the boy rashly, ‘you’re only a girl, Philylla. I’m tired of playing with girls.’

      Then he bolted, but not in time. Philylla suddenly losing the temper she had so admirably kept till then, jumped at him, and caught him almost at once, and shook him and hit him with her fists. ‘I’m not a girl!’ she said; ‘you shan’t call me that! I’m a soldier! I’m a Spartan! I shan’t ever let you touch my bows and arrows again!’

      The boy squealed and kicked, ineffectively, because his feet were bare; the little girl encouraged him shrilly from behind, but was too cautious to let her hair come within grab of Philylla’s long arm. This went on for a minute or two, till Philylla suddenly felt she was being a bully, and let go.

      Dontas broke away a yard or two, then stood, with his face red. ‘Keep your silly bow!’ he said. ‘When I’m a man you’ll be married and you won’t be allowed to do anything!’

      ‘Baby!’ said Philylla bitterly; ‘cry-baby, go home and play!’

      The small girl, afraid it would start again, pulled Dontas back, whispering to him; elaborately not saying good-bye, they took their cloaks and went trotting off towards the town.

      Philylla picked up her bow, talking to herself out loud. ‘I won’t marry,’ she said; ‘the Queen won’t want me to. I’ll be a soldier.’ And she began to shoot again, from still further off. She stood solidly with her white tunic pulled up through the belt to clear her knees; she had grey eyes and a small, obstinate mouth and chin, and her hair was tied up tight on the top of her head in a knot that overflowed into jumping, yellow curls. When she hit the mark, which was not always, she would suddenly boil over with a terrific, secret excitement; she sprang straight up into the air and yelled: she had killed an enemy! The headless arrows made a little click against the stone; she wanted a louder noise and thought she would ask the Queen to tell her father she could have a spear. A spear and a horse … and never get married, never want men making love to her like all the other sillies of maids of honour! She was nearly the youngest, but she knew the Queen liked her better than almost any of them; and she—she wished that stone was one of the Queen’s enemies, one of the people who said horrid things about her. There!—she’d hit him full in the heart.

      After a time the King and Panteus came down the goat-path out of the hills; it was a safe place to talk secrets in, and Kleomenes had plans in his head enough to set all Sparta by the ears. Even now, Panteus was only just understanding; but he was excited, so wildly excited that he kept on stumbling over stones and olive roots and talking in jerks, not finishing his sentences. The King was excited too, but he showed it less, hardly at all unless to a person who knew him very well, who could see that queer, blind, blazing look behind his eyes, and the corners of his mouth twitching a very little with the force of the images that were tearing through his mind. They both stopped at the edge of the olives, suddenly aware of the child below them, shooting and shouting all by herself in the field.

      Each smiled at the other, secretly, a moment’s check to the unbearable torrent of their excitement. The King put his hand up to his mouth and gave a hunter’s call down to the child. She jumped round to face it, still and startled, the bow held tight to her breast. Then with her free hand she swept up the loose arrows from the grass beside her and ran towards the olives, her eyes on the King, wondering what was happening now. He looked tired, she thought, leaning one way on his long spear, with the other arm round his friend’s neck. Both had tunics of fine wool, deep red, wine-coloured almost. She remembered the stuff being dipped by the Queen’s women, the first day she came to the house; the bitter smell of the dye, the maids of honour making faces at it behind the Queen’s back, and Agiatis herself with the red dripping off her arms, down from the elbows, a tiny smear on her neck. …

      ‘Well,’ said the King, smiling at her, ‘what are you doing that for?’

      She looked down, fingering the bow, not wanting to answer.

      Panteus helped her out, asking gravely: ‘Are you a soldier?’

      She nodded. ‘The Queen lets me. And—I do really try!’

      ‘I

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