In this moment, I may be the most spoken about figure in all of Greece. In a day, I will be executed and buried in history. I wonder what Socrates would think.

My name is Aristofanes, general of the Spartan army. Born and bred to be the finest warrior, mind sharpened for tactics and strategy.

We rarely used these tactics.

Mostly it was about putting down the slaves. Quite the annoyance to have a dozen slave for every warrior, we have to cull them every now and then.

Often, actually.

But it's in the blood to want for a worthy opponent. I came to hope I would see it before a slave revolt would bring us low. Crazy thought for a spartan, but with only war at home to ponder the future, I came to think that having so few warriors may be our downfall. But then, going against our two kings and rewriting tradition was a surefire way to get me exiled.

Besides.

I had my wish.

They called themselves the Delian league. Smart move, Pericles, smart move. I can think of no other figure as hated as Pericles. Where we built strength, he encouraged philosophy. We culled, he nurtured. We trained, he promoted mathematics. We have kings, he proposed debates.

But the wise lion has sharp fangs.

The Delian league was a coalition of city states to stand against our encroaching presence. Soon the league was forgotten, absorbed by the city state of Athens, to face the city state of Sparta. He had planned it all, centralize power to be certain to stand a chance.

We longed for the fight, and they were rising up to meet our expectations. I am mighty, but I am smart. Athens had underhanded tactics, Sparta needed me to even the odds. And I had the gifts to catch up with accents fast.

So I was sent to spy on Athens. Oh, did I mock them, the bickering ducks on their plazas, disagreeing about the war, Athens, themselves. Weak men, leaves carried by the wind, to be crushed against our iron. I saw Him, at the Parthenon. Did I laugh.

Did I wonder.

Frictions, and the inevitable war broke out. Inevitable, because we wanted it, in our own way.

So I did what I was sent to do, get information, transmit information.

They ached for a great battle. Almost like gentlemen, they agreed on the sea. The first battle of the Peloponnesian war, maybe the last.

Get information, transmit information.

So I gave Athens our ways to fight at sea. I told our enemy how to face us, slaughter us.

We lost the battle because of me. Our fleet reduced to ashes.

Why?

Because I'm engraving this, something I wouldn't have done in Sparta. Because we don't write, we don't create, don't debate for long periods. Oh, the Athenians bicker, but it does something for the mind.

I came back home to await death by Athenian hands... And Athenians became careless, arrived in droves on our shores, our land, our territory. They could have won the war. Instead, they came like brutes, set themselves up to lose.

Captured survivors of the disastrous land battle told my brothers how they won at sea, and their eyes turned on me.

They kept me alive, to see.

The slow erosion of a civilization. Athens, bled dry. Philosophy dying, survivors too busy staying alive.

And me, in a cell, being told how the war went.

Athens, last stone turned to dust.

And yet...

I see it in my captors eyes, the infection spreading. Mathematics and philosophy gaining a solid foot. The stones are broken, but some tablets remain.

So I laugh, at the eve of my execution. In a hundred generations, we will be a footnote in history, with fantasy to fill in the blanks and myself forgotten. But Athens will have an echo, a word in the stone that will prevail, and spread

I laugh.

Tomorrow, I will be no more.

Just a leave carried by the wind.

I laugh.