The wives and maidens of my native Astakos, and those of every other city in Hellas, routinely employ cosmetics and facial paint to enhance their comeliness. These ladies are keenly aware of the effect the artificial sheen of their curls or the pink of their lips produces upon any male within range of their charms.

None of this entered into the scheme of the lady Paraleia, nor Arete either. Her peplos robe was split up the side in the Spartan style, revealing her bare leg to the thigh. This in any other city would have been lewd to the point of scandalous. Yet here in Lakedaemon it was unremarkable in the extreme. This is a leg. We women possess them just like you men. For Spartan males to leer at or ogle a lady in this dress would have been unthinkable. They had beheld their mothers and sisters and daughters naked since they were old enough to open their eyes, both in the girls' and women's athletic training and in the festivals and the other women's processions.

Still these ladies, both of them, were not unaware of their personal magnetism and the effect it produced, even upon a boy in service drawn up before them. After all, wasn't Helen herself a Spartan? The wife of Menelaus, she whom Paris had carried off to Troy, the cause of endless suffering among Trojans and Greeks, and for whose peerless beauty's sake so many brave Achaeans lost their lives in Troy far from their native country.

Spartan women surpass for beauty all others in Hellas, and not the least of their charms is that they make so little play upon it. Aphrodite is not their goddess, but Artemis Huntress. Look at the loveliness of our hair, their bearing seems to say, which reflects the lamplight not by the artifice of the cosmetician's art, but by the sheen of health and the luster of virtue. Look in our eyes which embrace a man's, neither lowering in contrived modesty nor fluttering behind dyed lashes like Corinthian whores. Our legs we groom not in the boudoir with wax and myrtle, but under the sun in the race and upon the Ring.

They were dams, these ladies, wives and mothers whose primary calling was to produce boys who would grow to be warriors and heroes, defenders of the city. Spartan women were brood mares, the pampered damsels of other cities might scoff, but if they were mares, they were racers, Olympic champions. The athletic glow and vigor which the gynaikagoge, the women's training discipline, produced in them was powerful stuff and they knew it.

Standing before these women now, my thoughts despite all efforts were wrung back into the past, to Diomache and to my mother. I saw in memory my cousin's bare legs flashing strong and well made when we raced after some hare or doe with our dogs sprinting ahead up some rock-strewn slope. I saw the smooth glowing flesh of her arm when she drew the bow, her eyes that shrank before nothing and the flush of youth and freedom that suffused the skin of her face when she smiled. I saw again my mother, who was only twenty-six at her death, and whose memory to my eyes was of surpassing gentleness and nobility.

These thoughts were like a room in the house of the mind that Dienekes spoke of, a room I had sworn since the Three-Cornered Way never to permit myself to enter.

But now, finding myself here in this real room of this real house, before these womanly rustles and scents, the feminine auroras of these wives and mothers and daughters and sisters, six of them, so much female presence concentrated in so close a space, I was driven back in mind against my will. It took all my self-composure to conceal the effect of these memories and to answer the lady's continuing questions in good order. At last it seemed the inquisition was approaching its conclusion.

Answer now one final question. Speak with candor. If you lie, I will know. Does my son possess courage? Evaluate his andreia, his manly virtue, as a youth who must soon take his place as a warrior.

It took no brains to see I was treading the thinnest of ice. How could one answer a question like that? I straightened and addressed the lady directly.

There are fourteen hundred boys in the training platoons of the agoge. Only one displayed the temerity to follow the army, and that in knowing defiance of his own mother's wishes, not to say full awareness of what punishment he must endure upon his return.

The lady considered this. It is a politic answer, but a good one. I accept it.

She rose and thanked the lady Arete for arranging this interview and for providing for its confidentiality. I was told to wait outside in the courtyard. The lady Paraleia's maidservant stood there still, smirking; no doubt she had overheard every word and would blab it to all the Eurotas valley by sunrise tomorrow. In a moment the lady herself emerged, deigning neither to look at nor speak to me, and accompanied by her maid, strode off without torchlight down the dark lane.

Are you old enough to take wine?

The lady Arete addressed me directly, speaking from the doorway and motioning me back within the dwelling. All four daughters slept now. The lady herself prepared a bowl for me, cut six to one as for a boy. I took a grateful swallow. Clearly this night of interviews was not over.

The lady invited me to sit. She herself settled at the mistress's station beside the hearth. She placed a chunk of alphita barley bread on a plate before me and brought a relish of oil, cheese and onion.

Be patient, this night among women will soon be over. You'll be back with the men, with whom you clearly feel more comfortable.

I am at ease, lady. Truly. It's a relief to be away from barrack life for an hour, even if it means dancing barefoot on the hot steel of the skillet.

The lady smiled at this, but it was apparent that her mind was held by a more sober subject. She drew my eyes to hers.

Have you ever heard the name Idotychides?

I had.

He was a Spartiate stain in battle at Mantinea. I have seen his stone before the mess of Winged Nike on the Amyklaian Way.

What else do you know of this man? the lady asked. I muttered something. What else? she insisted.

They say that Dekton, the helot boy called Rooster, is his bastard. By a Messenian mother, who died giving birth.

And do you believe this?

I do, lady.

Why?

I had stuck myself in a corner now; I could see the lady perceive it. Is it because, she answered for me, this boy Rooster hates the Spartans so much?

I was struck with dread that she knew this and for long moments could not find my tongue.

Have you noticed, the lady continued in a voice that to my surprise displayed neither outrage nor anger, that among slaves the meanest seem to bear their lot without excessive distress, while the noblest, those at the brink of freedom, chafe most bitterly? It's as if the more one in service feels himself worthy of honor, yet denied the means to achieve it, the more excruciating is the experience of subjection.

This was Rooster in a nutshell. I had never thought about it that way but, now that the lady had expressed it thus, I saw it was true.

Your friend Rooster talks too much. And what his tongue withholds, his demeanor announces only too plainly. She quoted, virtually verbatim, several seditious statements that Dekton had spoken, in my hearing alone, I thought, on the march back from Antirhion.

I was speechless and could feel myself breaking into a sweat. The lady Arete maintained her expression inscrutable. Do you know what the krypteia is? she asked.

I did. It is a secret society among the Peers. No one knows who its members are, just that they are of the youngest and strongest, and they do their work at night.

And what work is that?

They make men disappear. Helots, I meant. Treasonous helots.

Now answer this, and consider before you speak. The lady Arete paused, as if to reinforce the importance of the question she was about to put. If you were a member of the krypteia and you knew what I have just told you about this helot, Rooster, that he had expressed sentiments treasonous to the city and further declared his intention of taking action based upon them, what would you do?