I wish only to impress upon you, for your own preserva-tion, gentlemen, Ptammitechus addressed the Spartans through his interpreter, the scale of His Majesty's Empire and the resources he commands to bring against you, that you may make your decision to resist or not, based upon fact and not fancy.

He unrolled the papyrus eastward. Beneath the lamplight arose the islands of the Aegean, Macedonia, Illyria, Thrace and Scythia, the Hellespont, Lydia, Karia, Cilicia, Phoenicia and the Ionic cities of Asia Minor. All these nations the Great King controls. AH these he has compelled into his service. All these are coming against you. But is this Persia? Have we reached yet the seat of Empire…

Out rolled more leagues of landmass. The Egyptian's hand swept over the outlines of Ethiopia, Libya, Arabia, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumeria, Cappadocia, Armenia and the transCaucasus. The fame of each of these kingdoms he recited, quoting the numbers of their warriors and the arms and armaments they carried.

A man traveling fast may traverse all the Peloponnese in four days. Look here, my friends.

Merely to get from Tyre to Susa, the Great King's capital, is three months' march. And all that land, all its men and wealth, belong to Xerxes. Nor do his nations contend one against the other as you Hellenes love so to do, nor disunite into squabbling alliances. When the King says assemble, his armies assemble. When he says march, they march. And still, he said, we have not reached PersepoHs and the heart of Persia. He rolled the map out farther.

Into sight arose yet more lands covering yet more leagues and called by yet more curious names.

The Egyptian reeled off more numbers. Two hundred thousand from this satrapy, 300,000 from that. Greece, in the West, was looking punier and punier. She seemed to be shriveling into a microcosm in contrast to the endless mass of the Persian Empire. The Egyptian spoke now of outlandish beasts and chimera. Camels and elephants, wild asses the size of draught horses. He sketched the lands of Persia herself, then Media, Bactria, Partrua, Cas-pia, Aria, Sogdiana and India, nations of whose names and existence his listeners had never even heard.

From these vast lands His Majesty draws more myriads of warriors, men raised under the blistering sun of the East, inured to hardships beyond your imagining, armed with weapons you have no experience in combating and financed by gold and treasure beyond counting. Every article of produce, every fruit, grain, pig, sheep, cow, horse, the yield of every mine, farm, forest and vineyard belongs to His Majesty. And all of it he has poured into the mounting of this army which marches now to enslave you.

Listen to me, brothers. The race of Egyptians is an ancient one, numbering the generations of its fathers by the hundreds into antiquity. We have seen empires come and go. We have ruled and been ruled. Even now we are technically a conquered people, we serve the Persians. Yet regard my station, friends. Do I look poor? Is my demeanor dishonored? Peer here within my purse.

With all respect, brothers, I could buy and sell you and all you own with only that which I bear upon my person.

At that point Olympieus called the Egyptian short and demanded that he speak to his point.

My point is this, friends: His Majesty will honor you Spartans no less than us Egyptians, or any other great warrior people, should you see wisdom and enlist yourselves voluntarily beneath his banner. In the East we have learned that which you Greeks have not. The wheel turns, and man must turn with it. To resist is not mere folly, but madness.

I watched my master's eyes then. Clearly he perceived the Egyptian's intent as genuine and his words proffered out of friendship and regard. Yet he could not stop anger from flushing his countenance.

You have never tasted freedom, friend, Dienekes spoke, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel. He contained his anger swiftly, reaching to rap the Egyptian's shoulder like a friend and to meet his eyes with a smile.

And as for the wheel you speak of, my master finished, like every other, it turns both ways.

We arrived at Olympia on the afternoon of the second day from Pellana. The Olympic Games, sacred to Zeus, are the holiest of all Hellenic festivals; during the weeks of their celebration no Greek may take up arms against another, or even against an alien invader. The Games would be held this very year, within weeks; in fact the Olympic grounds and dormitories were already teeming with athletes and trainers from all the Greek cities, preparing on-site as prescribed by heaven's law. These competitors, in their youthful prime and peerless in speed and prowess, surrounded my master on the instant of his arrival, clamorous for intelligence of the Persian advance and torn by the Olympic proscription from bearing arms. It was not my place to inquire of my master's mission; one could only surmise, however, that it entailed a request for dispensation from the priests.

I waited outside the precinct while Dienekes conducted his business within. Several hours of daylight remained when he finished; our two-man party, unescorted as it was, should have turned about and pushed on for Sparta at once. But my master's troubled mood continued; he seemed to be working something out in his mind. Come on, he said, leading toward the Avenue of the Champions, west of the Olympic stadium, I'll show you something for your education.

We detoured to the steles of honor, where the names and nations of champions of the Games were recorded. There my own eye located the name of Polynikes, one of my master's fellow envoys to Rhodes, graven twice for successive Olympiads, victor in the armored stadion race.

Dienekes pointed out the names of other Lakedaemonian champions, men now in their thirties and forties whom I knew by sight from the city, and others who had fallen in battle decades and even centuries past. Then he indicated a final name, four Olympiads previous, in the victors' lists for the pentathlon.

Iatrokles Son of Nikodiades Lakedaemonian This was my brother, Dienekes said.

That night my master took shelter at the Spartan dormitory, a cot being vacated for him within and space set aside for me beneath the porticoes. But his mood of disquiet had not abated. Before I had even settled on the cool stones, he appeared from within fully dressed and motioned me to follow. We traversed the deserted avenues to the Olympic stadium, entering via the competitors' tunnel and emerging into the vast and silent expanse of the agonists' arena, purple and brooding now in the starlight. Dienekes mounted the slope above the judges' station, those seats upon the grass reserved during the Games for the Spartans. He selected a sheltered site beneath the pines at the crest of the slope overlooking the stadium, and there he settled. I have heard it said that for the lover the seasons are marked in memory by those mistresses whose beauty has en-flamed his heart. He recalls this year as the one when, moonstruck, he pursued a certain beloved about the city, and that year, when another favorite yielded at last to his charms.

For the mother and father, on the other hand, the seasons are numbered by the births of their children – this one's first step, that one's initial word. By these homely ticks is the calendar of the loving parent's life demarcated and set within the book of remembrance.

But for the warrior, the seasons are marked not by these sweet measures nor by the calendared years themselves, but by battles. Campaigns fought and comrades lost; trials of death survived.

Clashes and conflicts from which time effaces all superficial recall, leaving only the fields themselves and their names, which achieve in the warrior's memory a stature ennobled beyond all other modes of commemoration, purchased with the holy coin of blood and paid for with the lives of beloved brothers- in-arms. As the priest with his graphis and tablet of wax, the infantryman, too, has his scription. His history is carved upon his person with the stylus of steel, his alphabet engraved with spear and sword indelibly upon the flesh.