Kevin's Watch

“’The city speculates and guesses’, Leonidas resumed, ‘as to why I elected those I did to the Three Hundred. Was it for their prowess as individual men-at-arms? How could this be, when among champions such as Polynikes, Dienekes, Alpheus and Maron I nominated as well unblooded youths such as Ariston and your own Alexandros? Perhaps, the city supposes, I divined some subtle alchemy of this unique aggregation. Maybe I was bribed, or paying back favors. I will never tell the city why I appointed these three hundred. I will never tell the Three Hundred themselves. But I now tell you.

“’I chose them not for their own valor, lady, but for that of their women.’

“At these words of the king a cry of anguish escaped my breast, as I understood before he spoke what further he would now say. I felt his hand about my shoulder, comforting me.

“’Greece stands now upon her most perilous hour. If she saves herself, it will not be at the Gates (death alone awaits us and our allies there) but later, in battles yet to come, by land and sea. Then Greece, if the gods will it, will preserve herself. Do you understand this, lady? Well. Now listen.

“’When the battle is over, when the Three Hundred have gone down to death, then will all Greece look to the Spartans, to see how they bear it.

“’But who, lady, who will the Spartans look to? To you. To you and the other wives and mothers, sisters and daughters of the fallen.

“’If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief, they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing it as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand. And all Hellas will stand behind her.

“’Why have I nominated you, lady, to bear up beneath this most terrible of trials, you and your sisters of the Three Hundred? Because you can.’

The men called for Dienekes. They wanted a quip, a wisecrack, something short and pithy as he was known for. He resisted. You could see he did not wish to speak.

‘Brothers, I am not a king or a general. I’ve never held rank beyond that of a platoon commander. So I say to you now only what I would say to my own men, knowing the fear that stands unspoken in each heart – not of death, but worse, of faltering or failing, of somehow proving unworthy in this, the ultimate hour.”

These words had struck the mark; one could read it plain on the faces of the silent, raptly attending men.

“Here is what you do, friends. Forget country. Forget king. Forget wife and children and freedom. Forget every concept, however noble, that you imagine you fight for here today. Act for this alone: for the man who stands at your shoulder. He is everything and everything is contained within him. That’s all I know. That’s all I can tell you.”