Chapter 140

“The Crotoniates have insulted us to our very faces! Why don’t our soldiers teach them a lesson?!” Stromboli, who had previously advocated for compromise with Croton, was now red-faced with anger.

“The soldiers all obeyed Lord Davos’s command to defend the city, but every one of them wishes they could tear the flesh from the Crotoniates’ bones!” Amyntas vented his frustration to Davos.

“Lord Archon, are we simply going to stand by and watch the Crotoniates run wild on our land?!” Scombras roared, unwilling to accept the humiliation.

“Of course not!” Davos’s voice boomed in response, his eyes flashing with a strange light. “A fist is pulled back only so that it may strike out with greater force. The army of Croton is stronger than ours; that is a fact. And so, we must wait. Just as in boxing, a skilled fighter will first defend, waiting for his opponent to reveal an opening, and then deliver a single, fatal blow!”

The men in the hall were shaken by his words.

***

By the time Archytas landed in Thurii, Melanthius had already returned to the city.

On behalf of Tarentum, Archytas lodged a severe protest. Melanthius was dismissive. “Croton has no ill will toward Amendolara,” he said with a shrug. “I merely wished to go and say hello to this young archon who is supposedly capable of winning with inferior numbers. I didn’t expect him to be so timid as to not even dare to meet me.”

Archytas felt a momentary sense of relief, but he followed up with a stern warning. “If Croton goes to war with Amendolara, Tarentum, along with Metapontum and Heraclea, will not hesitate to go to war with Croton!”

He also tried to reason with him. “Now that Croton has occupied Thurii, you have washed away your past shame and won tremendous glory. The next step should be to lead your army back to Croton and allow this land to return to peace. I am certain that Locri would be as pleased as Tarentum to see you do so.”

Melanthius, of course, understood the threat embedded in Archytas’s words. His face darkened, but he gave no reply.

Having completed his diplomatic mission, Archytas hurried on to Amendolara.

At the foot of the mountain, he saw the smoldering ruins of the warehouses and inns, now nothing but ash, and his heart grew tense once more.

As he entered the city, the anger on the faces of the citizens was impossible to miss. The moment he saw Davos, he offered his condolences for what Amendolara had suffered, then said frankly, “Davos, Tarentum has no intention of going to war with Croton at this time. I hope you can understand.”

“Rest assured, we are furious at what Croton has done, but we are capable of restraint,” Davos said calmly. “If a man is bitten by a dog, does he get on all fours and bite the dog back?”

Archytas did not smile. The calmer Davos appeared, the more uneasy he felt. He remembered how, after the annihilation of the Lucanian army, the Tarentine soldiers had all been celebrating their victory. But Davos and his men had simply returned to their camp to sleep, claiming they needed to recover their strength. The very next day, they had recaptured Amendolara.

***

When the Tarentine envoy reached the capital of Croton, the city council was in the midst of a heated debate regarding the “post-occupation handling of Thurii.”

The conservatives, such as General Lysias, suggested that after looting Thurii of its wealth, they should install a pro-Croton puppet government and then withdraw, so as to avoid antagonizing the neighboring city-states.

The radicals, led by the strategos protos Milon (who shared a name with the legendary Crotoniate athlete of a century prior, a hero so famous that many parents still named their sons after him), argued that the enmity between Thurii and Croton was now too deep for a puppet government to ever be stable. Furthermore, Thurii was too close to Tarentum. Leaving a garrison there would not only stretch Croton’s own forces thin, but over time it would only deepen the hatred of the locals and of Tarentum. The best solution, he declared, was to burn the city to the ground.

“Burn the city?!” The other generals and councillors were aghast.

“Yes, burn the city!” Milon proclaimed, his voice ringing with passion. “Our ancestors defeated Sybaris and destroyed their city twice! The last time, they diverted the Crati River to wash the very foundations of Sybaris away, establishing their fearsome reputation, stunning all of Magna Graecia, and winning for Croton an era of prosperity and hegemony! But ever since our defeat at the hands of the combined armies of Locri and Rhegium decades ago, some city-states no longer respect us. They scheme against us in the shadows. We must re-establish the authority of Croton! Now, a golden opportunity, a gift from the gods, lies before us! If we miss it, we will surely face their punishment!

“Moreover, if we destroy Thurii, the Sybarite Plain will become, for a time, a no-man’s-land. We can seize the chance to bring in colonists from friendly city-states in Greece or elsewhere, establish a new city, and then send our own landless citizens to become its new inhabitants. No neighboring city-state would be able to find fault with us, and we would extend Croton’s power northward, greatly increasing our strength!”

Milon’s speech was both inspiring and practical, and it won the approval of the majority of the council.

A messenger was quickly dispatched to Thurii. Melanthius, who had been growing bored, was ecstatic when he received the order from the city hall. “As the third general to destroy a city on the Sybarite Plain,” he danced about, exulting, “my name will surely be recorded in the annals of history!”

He acted swiftly. First, he commanded the freemen who had defected to him to immediately construct a pontoon bridge across the Crati River (the original having been burned by the Thurians).

Then, on the pretext of punishing the instigators behind the murder of the Crotoniate envoy, he rounded up all of Thurii’s wealthy merchants, subjecting them to torture, imprisonment, and even execution, and confiscating all their wealth for the state.

Growing impatient with this slow method, he soon cast aside all pretense and issued a direct order: loot the entire city of all its grain and valuables.

Instantly, the city of Thurii was filled with the sound of weeping. The citizens, wailing on the ground, had no idea that a far more terrible catastrophe was about to befall them.

***

From their positions outside the city, the Amendolaran scouts watched from a distance as the Crotoniate soldiers marched the entire population of Thurii out of the gates.

Not long after, thick plumes of smoke began to rise from all over the city, and soon it was engulfed in a great fire.

The scouts immediately reported back to their captain, Laedes.

Laedes was horrified by the news. He quickly mounted his horse and galloped across the Saraceno River to see for himself.

By then, Thurii had become a city of fire. Outside its walls, the air was filled with the heart-wrenching cries of its displaced people.

The urgent message soon reached Davos. He was stunned. Croton is destroying the city! They’re planning to withdraw?!

Axistes stood by his side, cursing Croton’s brutality, but Davos sat down, stroking his chin, his mind racing as he considered the significance of this momentous event for Amendolara.

Axistes then watched as Davos shot back to his feet and began to pace back and forth in the hall, a strange, intense expression on his face.

Just as Axistes was starting to feel dizzy from watching him, Davos’s voice, trembling slightly, cut through the air. “If the Crotoniate army were to leave now, where would they likely be by dusk?”

Axistes thought for a moment. “They are burdened with a great deal of plunder, so they won’t be able to move quickly. By dusk, they would probably only reach Castellum.”

“And would Castellum let their army enter the city?” Davos asked urgently.

“Impossible! The bastards just looted and burned Thurii!”

Davos nodded; Axistes’s assessment matched his own. He paced a few more times, and then, his mind made up, he issued his commands. “Have Laedes keep a close watch on the pontoon bridge over the Crati River and see if it is burned! At the same time, send Izam’s mountain scout team to shadow the Crotoniate army. I want to know their marching route, the location of their camp, its layout… every detail. But they must remain hidden. The Crotoniates must not discover them! I want his men reporting back to me at all times!”

“Yes, my lord!” Axistes replied, his own excitement building. After serving Davos for so long, he knew this meant his lord was planning a major operation. He couldn’t help but ask, “My lord, are you preparing to attack the Crotoniate army?”

“Whether we attack depends on whether the Crotoniates give us an opportunity,” Davos said with a cold sneer. “That vicious wolf Croton has accrued a massive blood debt. They won’t be allowed to simply return home unscathed. I believe that the just and impartial Hades will favor us! It is time for us to bare our fangs!”

Davos spoke with righteous indignation, but there was another reason that had solidified his decision. In the destruction of Thurii, he had glimpsed an opportunity far greater than the invasion of Lucania—a chance to make Amendolara powerful, and quickly. But it would require him to make another enormous gamble.

An emergency session of the Senate was called. When Davos announced that Thurii had been burned to the ground, the senators were not surprised; they had already had time to digest the shocking news. The old citizens, however, had complex feelings. They had once hated Thurii for its selfishness, which had brought disaster upon Amendolara. But now that a far more terrible fate had befallen their neighbor, they found little satisfaction in it. Instead, pity had overwhelmed their hatred.

But then Davos spoke, his voice filled with fury. “Croton’s crimes must be punished! As Thurii’s ally, we, Amendolara, have a duty to seek revenge for its people! And more than that, we have a duty to show Croton that the Sybarite Plain is not a place they can come and go as they please! I hereby declare a general mobilization of Amendolara. We will prepare to attack the army of Croton!”

The moment his words fell, the hall erupted.

“Excellent! It’s about time we taught those damned Crotoniates a lesson!” Amyntas roared in approval.