I liked the mathematics. I came from a family of craftsmen, and I already knew how to make a triangle with a compass, how to divide it exactly in two parts, and a hundred other tricks that any draughtsman needs to know to copy figures or even just to make a nice circle on a cup.
I lacked the language to be comfortable – they were Ionians and they spoke a different dialect – but from the first, Heraclitus put me at ease. When I sat on the steps of the Temple of Artemis, I was the equal of every other boy. That made me love the lessons more than anything.
But I soon learned the language, and I drank in the ideas and words of rhetoric and philosophy the way a thirsty man drinks water. I learned to stand properly and to speak from low in the chest so that other men could hear me. I learned some tricks with words – phrases that would draw a laugh, and other phrases that were serious. I learned that the repetition of any line from Homer would make men take an argument more seriously.
We learned to sing from another teacher and to play the lyre. Calchas had played the instrument well and I was determined to emulate him. You may judge the results yourself when I play some Sappho later.
It was a game, but a great game. A complex game – as was the game of how to craft an argument.
Heraclitus was severe on the difference between disputation and assertion. You know it, young man? They teach that in Halicarnassus, do they? Hmm. Honey, it is like this. When I say that the moon is made of cheese, that is an assertion. If I say it louder, does that make it more true? If I quote Homer that the moon is made of cheese, does that make it more true? What if I threaten to beat you if you don't agree – does that make it true?
No. All mere assertion. Yes?
But, if I bring you a piece of cheese – better, if I take you to the moon and show you it is cheese – then I have offered proof. If I cannot prove it, perhaps I can offer theories as to why it must be cheese, offering testimonies from other men who have been to the moon, or scientific evidence based on experiment – you see? And you can offer me the same sort of evidence to prove that the moon is, in fact, not made of cheese at all.
If you laugh so hard, you will certainly spoil your looks. Hah! That was an assertion! There's no proof whatsoever that laughter hurts your looks.
Where was I? I must have been speaking of Heraclitus. Yes. He made us learn the difference, and if you rose to speak and he was displeased, that ash staff with the bronze ferrule would whistle through the air and crack you in the side or prod you in the ribs. Very conducive to learning in the young.
Weeks passed. It was a glorious time. I was learning things every day, I was exercised like a healthy young animal, I was in something like love for the first time with Penelope, and Archilogos was a fine companion in every way. We read together, ran together, fought with staves, wrestled, boxed and disputed.
Artaphernes stayed with us for all that summer and autumn while he kept watch over his tyrants and his lords. He was building half a dozen triremes to the latest design down in the harbour, and we would run all the way there to watch the ships, and then run back – twenty stades or so.
I haven't mentioned that Hipponax's household ran on the profits from his ships, not his poetry. Indeed, everyone called him 'The Poet', and we still sing his songs in this house, but he was a captain and an investor, running cargoes all the way to Phoenicia and Africa when the mood was on him, and buying and selling other men's cargoes, too. Archilogos and I went on short trips – once across the water to Mytilene, a pretty town on Lesbos, and once to Troy to walk the mound and camp where the Greeks had camped – a perfect trip in early autumn when the sea is the friend of every man and dolphins dance by the bow of your ship. It was odd, looking across the water at the Chersonese – where Miltiades held sway. If I swam the Hellespont, I'd have been able to get home. Later, we went on longer voyages – to Syracuse and the Spartan colony at Taras in southern Italy. But we went far south, along the coast of Africa – not along the Greek coast, where I would have been close to home.
I didn't want to go home. Home had Mater and poverty and death. I was in Ephesus with lovely people, a friend, a teacher and a woman. How deaf I must have been to the wing-beats of the furies! Later we made the run to Lesbos many times. Hipponax owned property in Eresus, where Sappho came from, and we would beach our ship there under the great rock, or inside the mole that the old people built before the siege of Troy, and Hipponax would climb to the citadel and pay his respects to Sappho's daughter, who was very old, but still kept her school. Briseis had gone to that school for three years, and had all Sappho's nine books by heart.
They had a warehouse in Methymna, too, another city of Lesbos and a rival to Eresus and Mytilene. Lesbos is the richest of the islands, honey. We have a house in Eresus, though you've never been there.
I fell in love with the sea. Archilogos did, too. He knew that someday he would be a captain – in war and peace – and he stood with the helmsman, learning the ropes, and so did I. We made these trips in the first year, and then there were others. It was part of our studies, and never the worst part, either. But I will return to the sea. Where horses merely annoyed me, the sea charmed, terrified, roused me – like a man's first sight of a woman taking off her clothes for him. I never lost that arousal. Still have it.
Hah – I've made you blush.
In the evenings, when we were at home in Ephesus, I would finish my work, put Archi to bed – he was Archi to his friends and to his companion – grab a quick opson in the kitchens and go out into the night air to explore. I had adventures – such adventures, lass. Oh, it makes me smile. One night a pair of mercenaries sat and told me stories, because they knew me from the shrine at Plataea, and they promised to take news of my plight home. That night I dreamed of ravens, and after that I really began to think of leaving, and of home. Until they came – well, it wasn't real.
Another time I was nearly kidnapped and sold, but I put my stick in the bastard's groin and ran like hell.
Most nights, though, I went out of Master's door and just down our cobbled street to the Fountain of Pollio, where I would meet my Penelope. I call her mine, but she was never quite mine, although we were as far around the rim of love's cup as to kiss.
I remember the night that Hippias came to our house, because Penelope and I had been sent together to the market earlier in the day – she to buy coloured yarn for tapestry, and me to watch that she wasn't molested. My name, Doru, had started to have some meaning in the slave quarters. I could make most men eat my fist if I had to, but I was no bloody tyrant. In any case, Penelope and I had a good afternoon. I was able to show off my knowledge of the agora, and she showed off her practicality in bargaining. Then we agreed to meet that night. Something in the touch of her fingers – oh, I couldn't wait.
Hippias, the former tyrant of Athens, was coming for dinner with Artaphernes. It was an odd arrangement, because Master and Mistress didn't attend – in fact, they were at the temple, sacrificing. I think that they were away on purpose, so that they could avoid Hippias. Archilogos ended up playing the host, despite his youth, and I waited on tables. This must have been towards the end of the summer, because Darkar and I were now allies. I did his bidding without hesitation, and he didn't question my expenses. Darkar knew that Artaphernes liked me, so he had me pouring wine as the Ganymedes. Laugh if you like, thugater. I was a good slave.
Hippias tried to fondle me from the first time my hip was close enough to touch. It was odd, because I had grown past the stage when Spartans liked their boys – smooth. I had hair, and muscles. At any rate, Hippias couldn't keep his hands off me, and so I served him from farther and farther away, and bless them, the other slaves got in his way as well. Slaves in a well-run house will protect each other – up to a point.
If his hands were eager for me, his voice gave nothing away. He harangued poor Artaphernes ceaselessly, from the first libation to the last skewer of deer meat, on how he needed to storm Athens to lance the boil that would otherwise fester.
Let me just say that Hippias was, in fact, correct. Don't be blinded by his enmity, girl. He was a wise man.
'Athens must have her government changed,' he argued.
Artaphernes shook his head. 'Athens is so far west that she could never be part of my province,' he said. 'Some other man would be satrap of the west. And then – Athens is part of another world, another continent, perhaps. Am I to conquer the world to restore you, Hippias?'
Hippias drank wine. His eye had gone from me to Kylix, a smaller boy who carried water and was now serving him. Kylix slipped away from his fingertips with graceful experience, and I passed between them, helping Kylix as he helped me.
'Young Archilogos, all your slaves are beautiful!' he said, and raised his cup.
Archilogos tried to be polite. 'Thank you,' he said into his cup.
Hippias ignored him anyway. 'Artaphernes, if you refuse me, I'll be forced to go to the Great King. This is not a distant threat. I have friends in Athens. Aristagoras will speak before the assembly and they will give him ships. This war is coming. Athens will drive it if you do not. You will not do your duty to the king if you do not launch a
