Calgary, June 2024
“There is nothing new under the sun,” said the wise king Solomon about 3,000 years ago, and he was right. All through history empires rose and fell, and we know the names and lives of the ambitious men with huge egos who ruled them. But history seldom mentions the ordinary people who had to suffer for those ambitions. However, sometimes there are exceptions. One such exception is a Spartan soldier named Aristodemus, the only survivor of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
Aristodemus, like all male citizens of Sparta, spent his life in military barracks training as a soldier. At the age of 7, he was taken from his parents and put into a military academy to live with the boys of his age. The school taught them to be physically fit, endure hardship, and above all, obey orders. Then, at 21, Aristodemus became a regular soldier, and his true military training began. Together with others, he was daily practicing the art of combat, and Spartan women, who had a fair deal of freedom, found it interesting to watch them. I can imagine Aristodemus impressing one of them with his skills, she smiled and waved at him, he smiled back and eventually, she became his wife. But the duty of Sparta man was to be a soldier, not a husband, and the marriage customs of Sparta reflected it. On his wedding day, the soldier had to escape from the barracks, kidnap his bride, bring her to the dark room and have sex with her. History doesn’t explain how he knew what to do because by living in a military camp, Spartan soldiers never saw or touched a naked woman. But all of that was to pretend, it was arranged beforehand, and the bride knew very well what to expect. To make it easier for her husband, she would dress in men’s clothes to make his new experience less intimidating. Then, right after having sex, he had to sneak back to the barracks and wasn’t allowed to see his wife anymore. They could only meet in secret during the night. In a way, this was also part of his military training, because men were taught to perform secret missions. Then, at 30, the soldier was released from the army and could live with his wife and children, if he had any.
If Aristodemus lived in a time of peace, this would be his life, and we would never hear of him. But the year 480 BC wasn't a time of peace. An ambitious man called Xerxes, the king of Persia, wanted to add the small Greek peninsula to his empire and send a huge army of 150,000 men to occupy it. Spartans decided to stop them at the narrow mountain pass called Thermopylae. They sent a small garrison of 300 soldiers under the command of Spartan king Leonidas, supported by seven thousand men from other parts of Greece, to block the pass. It would be interesting to know what the soldiers thought when they saw the huge enemy army below. But they were Spartans, ordered to defend the pass, and that's what they did. But a Greek traitor called Ephialtes showed the Persians the way around the mountain, and to avoid being trapped from behind, King Leonidas ordered the supporting troops to retreat. But he and his three hundred men stayed to cover the withdrawal, and all died fighting. For Spartans, surrender wasn't an option. Now at Thermopylae, there is a sign, carved in a rock which, translated to English, says:
Go, wanderer passing by, and tell the Spartans that here we lie, obedient to the laws.
Aristodemus was one of the soldiers selected to defend the pass and was expected to die there. But during the battle, his eyes got infected, and the king sent him home. However, on his return to Sparta, his reception was far from welcoming. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at Thermopylae?” asked his compatriots. They knew from the retreating troops what happened there. Aristodemus tried to explain that the king ordered him to return because of his eye infection, but they didn't believe it. For them, he was a coward who ran away from the battle. No man would give him a light for his fire or speak to him; he was called Aristodemus the Coward, wrote the Greek historian Herodotus. To be branded as a coward was the worst that could happen to a Spartan soldier, and Aristodemus was desperate to redeem his reputation. His chance came a year later, in the Battle of Plataea, where he fought bravely and died.
Aristodemus is an example of a life ruined by the ambitions of a powerful man, in this case, the king of Persia. How many more Aristodemus there have been? How many lives have been ruined by the ambitions of powerful men? How many are being destroyed right now? I don’t know, but I do know that the wise King Salomon was right. There is nothing new under the sun.