Long after the moon had set over Eurotas and Sparta’s spears lay stacked in frustration, word rode south that the Arcadians of Tegea were laughing again—another Spartan expedition broken on their stony fields. Kings grew grim; elders clutched their cloaks as if war-rent cloth could hide the taste of failure. At last the two royal houses agreed on a single act that cost them neither drachma nor blood: they would climb Parnassus and ask Apollo why Sparta faltered.
Beneath the gold-scaled roof of Delphi the Pythia inhaled laurel smoke and sang an answer half clearer than dream:
“Seek the bones of Orestes, son of the doomed king,
Where the plain is level, and twin winds breathe unceasing.
Blow strikes on blow, grief upon grief;
There earth keeps the giant in silence.
Bear him home, and Tegea will bow.”
The answer fell like winter hail—loud, sharp, and useless. Sparta’s best trackers swept Arcadia as wolves sweep sheepfolds, overturning turf and tumuli, but no mound confessed to holding Mycenae’s exile. Years passed; Tegea’s ploughs cut deeper into Spartan pride.
Lichas, the Restless
Enter Lichas, a tall ephor famous for both prudence and an inconvenient habit of thinking for himself. Exiled to Tegea for a quarrel with one of the kings, he chose not to brood. Each dawn he roamed the foreign town, reading faces, counting temple columns, tasting the air for omens.
One heat-hazed afternoon a metallic rhythm caught his ear—thwong-hiss, thwong-hiss—like paired thunderclaps caged in stone. He followed it to a low workshop where a blacksmith laboured over a ploughshare. Two bellows, hung like leathern lungs, gulped and exhaled in turn; each breath sent sparks leaping around the anvil. Hammer after hammer fell. Sweat and ember, blow after blow, grief upon grief…
Lichas’s heart knocked against his ribs. Twin winds. Blow on blow. The riddle’s words rose before him like soldiers answering muster.
The Well and the Secret
Feigning idle curiosity, he hailed the smith. “Friend, your forge sings loud enough to wake Hephaestus himself. But tell me—what marvel lies beneath your floor to make the ground so hollow in sound?”
The craftsman laughed, wiping soot on his arm. “A marvel indeed. When I dug my well last spring, the pick struck wood, though no tree ever rooted here. We pried up a plank and found a coffer longer than three men, and inside—by the Dog of Egypt!—the bones of a giant. I sealed it again; the well’s water tasted sweeter for it.”
Coins changed hands with the quiet clink of conspiracy. That night Lichas returned alone, bearing oil, saw, and silent vows. By lantern glow he lifted the lid. Moon-bleached ribs arched like the rafters of a palace hall; a skull big as a child’s cradle regarded him with emptiness and accusation. Orestes, grim robber of mother and king, had slept here while states bled for his absence.
Lichas wrapped each bone in linen, packed them into stout amphorae, and smuggled them across Arcadian hills under sacks of barley. When the convoy crossed Taygetus, dawn spilled red over Sparta’s rooftops like wine on a shield.
The Turning of Fortune
They buried Orestes beside the temple of Athena Chalkioikos, sealing the grave with bronze and prayer. That same season Sparta marched once more against Tegea. Veterans later swore the sun felt lighter on their backs, the enemy’s spears duller at the point. Tegea fell; its hoplites stacked shields before Spartan generals, and the long shadow of Lacedaemon stretched a league wider.
In the agoras of Greece storytellers argued over whether bones alone could charter victory. Yet every youth who lifted a shield on the Eurotas learned two lessons: that riddles guard power as surely as walls, and that sometimes the quiet mind of an exile can do what ten thousand swords cannot.
As for Lichas, he walked Sparta’s streets unburdened by exile, but heavy with the secret clang of iron and prophecy—the memory of twin winds and a coffin beneath the forge, where destiny once slept waiting for a thief brave enough to steal it home.
Leave a Reply