Caputorus pushed past me, tousling Eco's hair on his way, leaving us to ponder the broken Eros and the empty pool where Cleon had died.
I managed that day to speak to every boy in the gymnasium. Most of them had been there the previous day, either to take part in the athletic games or to watch. Most of them were cooperative, but only to a point. I had the feeling that they had already talked among themselves and decided as a group to say as little as possible concerning Cleon's death to outsiders like myself, no matter that I came as the representative of Cleon's father.
Nevertheless, from uncomfortable looks, wistful sighs, and unfin-ished sentences, I gathered that what Caputorus had told me was true: Cleon had broken hearts all over the gymnasium, and in the process had made more than a few enemies. He was by universal consensus the brightest and most beautiful boy in the group, and yesterday's games had proven conclusively that he was the best ath-lete as well. He was also vain, arrogant, selfish, and aloof; easy to fall in love with and incapable of loving in return. The boys who had not fallen under his spell at one time or another disliked him out of pure envy.
I managed to learn all this as much from what was left unsaid as from what each boy said, but when it came to obtaining more con-crete details, I struck a wall of silence. Had anyone ever been heard uttering a serious threat to Cleon? Had anyone ever said anything, even in jest, about the potentially hazardous placement of the statue of Eros beside the pool? Were any of the boys especially upset about Cleon's victories that day? Had any of them slipped away from the baths at the time Cleon was killed? And what of the gymnasiarchus? Had Caputorus's behavior toward Cleon always been above reproach, as he claimed?
To these questions, no matter how directly or indirectly I posed them, I received no clear answers, only a series of equivocations and evasions.
I was beginning to despair of uncovering anything significant, when finally I interviewed Hippolytus, the wrestler whose backside Caputorus had playfully snapped with his towel. He was preparing for a plunge in the hot pool when I came to him. He untied his leather headband, letting a shock of jet-black hair fall into his eyes, and began to unwrap his wrists. Eco seemed a bit awed by the fellow's brawniness; to me, with his babyish face and apple-red cheeks, Hip-polytus seemed a hugely overgrown child.
I had gathered from the others that Hippolytus was close, or as close as anyone, to Cleon. I began the conversation by saying as much, hoping to catch him off his guard. He looked at me, unfazed, and nodded.
'I suppose that's right. I liked him. He wasn't as bad as some made out.'
'What do you mean?'
'Wasn't Cleon's fault if everybody swooned over him. Wasn't his fault if he didn't swoon back. I don't think he had it in him to feel that way about another boy.' He frowned and wrinkled his brow. 'Some say that's not natural, but there you are. The gods make us all different.'
'I'm told he was arrogant and vain.'
'Wasn't his fault he was better than everybody else at wrestling and running and throwing. Wasn't his fault he was smarter than his tutors. But he shouldn't have crowed so much, I suppose. Hubris- you know what that is?'
'Vanity that offends the gods,' I said.
'Right, like in the plays. Acquiring a swollen head, becoming too cocksure, until a fellow's just begging to be struck down by a lightning bolt or swallowed by an earthquake. What the gods give they can take away. They gave Cleon everything. Then they took it all away.'
'The gods?'
Hippolytus sighed. 'Cleon deserved to be brought down a notch, but he didn't deserve that punishment.' 'Punishment? From whom? For what?'
I watched his eyes and saw the to and fro of some internal debate. If I prodded too hard, he might shut up tight; if I prodded not at all, he might keep answering in pious generalities. I started to speak, then saw something settle inside him, and held my tongue.
'You've seen the statue that fell on him?' Hippolytus said.
'Yes. Eros with his bow and arrows.'
'Do you think that was just a coincidence?'
'I don't understand.'
'You've talked to everyone in the gymnasium, and nobody's told you? They're all thinking it; they're just too superstitious to say it aloud. It was Eros that killed Cleon, for spurning him.'
'You think the god himself did it? Using his own statue?'
'Love flowed to Cleon from all directions, like rivers to the sea- but he turned back the rivers and lived in his own rocky desert. Eros chose Cleon to be his favorite, but Cleon refused him. He laughed in the god's face once too often.'
'How? What had Cleon done to finally push the god too far?'
Again I saw the internal debate behind his eyes. Clearly, he wanted to tell me everything. I had only to be patient. At last, he sighed and spoke. 'Lately, some of us thought that Cleon might finally be softening. He had a new tutor, a young philosopher named Mulciber, who came from Alexandria about six months ago. Cleon and his sister Cleio went to Mulciber's little house off the forum every morning to talk about Plato and read poetry.'
'Cleio as well?'
'Sosistrides believed in educating both his children, no matter that Cleio's a girl. Anyway, pretty soon word got around that Mulciber was courting Cleon. Why not? He was smitten, like everybody else. The surprise was that Cleon seemed to respond to his advances. Mulciber would send him chaste little love poems, and Cleon would send poems back to him. Cleon actually showed me some of Mul-ciber's poems, and asked me to read the ones he was sending back. They were beautiful! He was good at that, too, of course.' Hippolytus shook his head ruefully.
'But it was all a cruel hoax. Cleon was just leading Mulciber on, making a fool of him. Only the day before yesterday, right in front of some of Mulciber's other students, Cleon made a public show of returning all the poems Mulciber had sent him, and asking for his own poems back. He said he'd written them merely as exercises, to teach his own tutor the proper way to write a love poem. Mulciber was dumbstruck! Everyone in the gymnasium heard about it. People said Cleon had finally gone too far. To have spurned his tutor's advances was one thing, but to do so in such a cruel, deliberately humiliating manner-that was hubris, people said, and the gods would take vengeance. And now they have.'
1 nodded. 'But quite often the gods use human vessels to achieve their ends. Do you really think the statue tumbled into the pool of its own accord, without a hand to push it?'
Hippolytus frowned, and seemed to debate revealing yet another secret. 'Yesterday, not long before Cleon drowned, some of us saw a stranger in the gymnasium.'
At last, I thought, a concrete bit of evidence, something solid to grapple with! I took a deep breath. 'No one else mentioned seeing a stranger.'
'I told you, they're all too superstitious. If the boy we saw was some emissary of the god, they don't want to speak of it.'
'A boy?'
'Perhaps it was Eros himself, in human form-though you'd think a god would be better groomed and wear clothes that fit!' 'You saw this stranger clearly?'
'Not that clearly; neither did anybody else, as far as I can tell. I only caught a glimpse of him loitering in the outer vestibule, but I could tell he wasn't one of the regular boys.'
'How so?'
'By the fact that he was dressed at all. This was just after the games, and everyone was still naked. And most of the gymnasium crowd are pretty well off; this fellow had a wretched haircut and his tunic looked like a patched hand-me-down from a big brother. I fig-ured he was some stranger who wandered in off the street, or maybe a messenger slave too shy to come into the changing room.'
'And his face?'
Hippolytus shook his head. 'I didn't see his face. He had dark hair, though.'
'Did you speak to him, or hear him speak?'
'No. I headed for the hot plunge and forgot all about him. Then Caputorus found Cleon's body, and everything was crazy after that. I didn't make any connection to the stranger until this morning, when I found out that some of the others had seen him, too.'
