Rage of Ares by Christian Cameron

Author:Christian Cameron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, War & Military, Historical, General
ISBN: 1409114538
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2016-10-20T05:00:00+00:00

An hour later, after passing the ruins of our Temple of Hera, thrown down by the Thebans – Zeus, what kind of people are they, to destroy the temples of their own gods? And, I admit it, after kneeling by the desecrated altar and praying to Hera and my mother, who was a priestess and to whom I never prayed, for revenge, for the goddess’s hand on the scales – I stood at the little cliff where our acropolis used to stand, with the towers added by Myron when I was young. All gone. But still the very best view of the Vale of the Asopus.

The fields of Boeotia are the very best ground for war in all the world. That is why men call them ‘the Dance Floor of Ares’ – because armies come to Boeotia to dance. And, if you look south and a little west from Plataea, you see the Boeotia most men imagine – flat as the floor of a temple, a patchwork of grains: barley, wheat, millet, hay for animals, in four or more colours of gold and brown and green. To me, it is one of the most beautiful sights in all the world.

But turn slightly to the east, and the view changes. The ridge, which reaches forwards from the base of Cithaeron, ends with the acropolis of Plataea above the plain, but to the east is another ridge, and it is like a reaching hand; instead of ending in a single rise like Plataea, the ridge to the east ends in five smaller ridges that spread like fingers. Every one of them is low enough to climb in a matter of moments, but every one of them is high enough to hide men and animals, and the top of the ridge has several small sanctuaries and their attendant groves of old forest; in my youth we called it Sanctuary Ridge. There is the old Sanctuary of Hera, where my mother loved to go alone; there is the Sanctuary of Heracles, where I used to pray when I lacked time to climb Cithaeron. But beyond to the east, I could see nothing, and indeed, I knew that the countryside rolled in folds with relatively steep little ridges running almost parallel all the way east to Hysiae and Erythrae and the Greek camp.

And in front of all this rough ground lies Asopus Ridge, which reaches from the east at almost a right angle to the ridges of Plataea and Sanctuary Ridge. This is as odd as it sounds. In most of the world, we do not have two ridges or three that run at different angles and yet have such steep sides. But Asopus Ridge was somehow formed by the Asopus; it lies between the mountain and the river, and hides the river from Plataea.

So, despite the acropolis of Plataea being the highest point for dozens of stades in all directions, I could see nothing of the ground to my east and south; I couldn’t

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