The Ten Thousand (3 page)

Gryllus talked ceaselessly about the war, and his hatred for the Spartans and their destruction of Athens' prosperity was unfathomably deep. He despised their crudeness and lack of culture, and their swaggering, domineering attitude toward other Greek cities, allies and enemies alike. He ridiculed their blind devotion to their pathetic little mud-hut city, and their willingness to expend unimaginable effort to impose their overbearing system of police control on the grand cities they conquered. I vividly recall the time Gryllus used the Spartans as a lesson to Aedon, Proxenus and me, when he felt us to be lacking in diligence in some task or another.

"Aedon," he snapped after roughly lining up the three of us before him, "do Spartan boys shirk their duties? Do they argue with their parents?"

"No, Father," the boy automatically replied, but his voice lacked sincerity and his eyes were merry. Gryllus looked in disgust from Aedon's face, to Proxenus', to mine and back again, and his own expression took on a hard cast.

"Proxenus, what's that in your hand?"

"Honey cake, Uncle," Proxenus mumbled, his mouth full. Proxenus had chosen an inopportune time for his snack.

"Honey cake? Open your hand." Proxenus did, and Gryllus slapped the contents roughly to the floor and ground it underfoot. Proxenus flushed crimson, and his eyes welled up with hot tears, but he remained silent.

Gryllus looked at the boys sternly, his voice low and heavy with disdain for our pitiful softness. The sinews in his neck stood out in his tension. "Spartan boys your age get one meal a day. Watery black broth, not with their families, but on the ground outside, with their classmates. Spartans believe that a well-fed soldier is a poor soldier, so as children they are starved. If their classmates are caught stealing food, the entire class is beaten—not because of the stealing, but because they were clumsy enough to be caught. If they survive the beatings, they are taught to beat their comrades in turn. Do you understand?"

We all nodded, our eyes wide.

Gryllus again searched our faces, his one eye staring intently. After a moment he raised his gaze and stared off into the middle distance. We still stood at attention in front of him, expectantly, and as he looked back down at us he sighed. Then his face resumed its hard expression.

"They tell of a Spartan boy who once stole a fox cub," Gryllus said, "for to the Spartans even a fox is food. He was seen running away, and the owner caught him. Before the boy was seized, however, he had just enough time to stuff the cub into the front of his tunic. When the cub's owner demanded to know where the beast was, the boy denied any knowledge. That is what he was trained to do. The interrogation went on for some time, until the boy suddenly fell down dead where he had been standing. When his body was examined, it was found that the hungry fox had chewed his way directly into the boy's intestines, but the lad, in his mindless Spartan way, had remained quiet at the cost of his life."

Proxenus stood his ground, but Aedon's lower lip began trembling. As Gryllus coolly watched, he blanched, and suddenly whirling, ran out of the room. We could hear the sounds of his retching as he made his way outside. Proxenus and I stood silently watching Gryllus, who stared back at us impassively for a moment, then calmly strolled out, leaving us alone. For nights afterwards, I was wakened in the darkness by a trembling Aedon as he crawled into bed with me, terrified at nightmares of Herculean Spartans overpowering his house. Proxenus, however, remained in his own bed, tossing and turning, gamely taking on the attackers single-handedly.

AEDON RACED THROUGH the crowded streets, dodging porters and carts as he ran, merrily snatching samples of fruit and sweets from the baskets carried by the women and girls on their way to their market stalls. Racing up the hill of the Acropolis and through the Propylaean Gates, he stopped, panting and perspiring, at the newly completed Parthenon to inspect the progress being made on construction of the garishly painted marble temples in the vicinity. He came here almost every day, to converse with the stonemasons and builders, who knew him by name, and to ask endless questions of the chief architect, Callicrates, who only half jokingly would sometimes ask him to check a calculation or two.

After Aedon had closely scrutinized the footings for the new pillars to be erected in the Temple to Nike, I reminded him that it would soon be time for his afternoon lessons, which I attended with him at home. He nodded grudgingly and offered to race me back to our house. I declined, as always, but he ignored my refusal and sped off down the hill.

He was in his twelfth year of life, on the verge of manhood, and his vast ability was beginning to become apparent. Aedon was not only musical, but quick of wit besides—though of boys like this there were plenty, for Athens cultivated them like herbs in a kitchen garden. Even in the city's hothouse intellectual environment, however, he was a prodigy, a privileged child who could calculate sums in his head long before meeting his tutor and being whipped by him for the first time, whose speaking and reading skills surpassed those of boys much older. He could recite lengthy passages of Homer, Hesiod and Stesichorus from beginning to end, or from any point at which he was asked to start. He could identify the authors of every book and play for the past four hundred years, or cheerfully improvise a dozen lines of dactylic hexameter on any suggested theme. He could discuss Pythagoras' technique for measuring the hypotenuse and his ratio of musical consonances, interpret Hippocrates' theorem on the quadrature of lunes, and debate the obscurities of the basic identity of individuation,
X = T.
He admired Pindar, though he had to hide those scrolls from his father, who did not approve of Boeotian authors. And simply by wandering through Athens the boy found himself surrounded by matchless models on every side. Painting and sculpture had already scaled a height which no subsequent artist could ever surpass. The names of Zeuxis, Polycleitus and Praxiteles were on everyone's lips. Architecture was a matter of pride and beauty, and well-known architects collected as many fervent admirers and hangers-on as did famous actors. Mathematics was taught everywhere, and lessons in grammar and rhetoric had been freely given and studied in the city's
agorai
and plazas for a hundred years by itinerant scholars.

Just prior to this time, Aunt Leda had decided to return to Boeotia, to salvage what she could of her husband's estate from the grasp of greedy relatives. Proxenus had returned with her. Aedon was crushed at his cousin's departure, and all the more dependent upon me for companionship. Gryllus decided that the means of filling the hole in Aedon's heart was to keep him physically and intellectually active the entire day. With Gryllus absent in Athens' service and the boy's mother busy with household affairs, this task had been charged to me, and to the series of tutors that Gryllus had carefully selected and hired. Despite their strictness and my best efforts, however, when Proxenus left Aedon began exhibiting an uncharacteristic wild streak, intent upon demonstrating his independence. He was impatient with my efforts to rein him in, and my defense of Gryllus' strictures and demands left him angry and exasperated. His tutors and I gamely tried to fill his day with constructive activities, but at the least hint of drudgery or boredom he would sweep his scrolls and tablets aside and stride out of the house with scarcely a moment's preparation. On this particular day, as he sprinted and dodged his way through the crowded city, I, his irritated
paidagogos,
twice his size and half his speed, barely managed to keep up.

Racing through a narrow, jointed alley at breakneck speed, I stumbled over some loose cobbles and became separated from him. He continued on out of sight, much to my terror. This had happened once before, three years earlier, and the story is worth a brief digression. I had lost sight of him during a festival, when the streets were teeming with performers, vendors, and spectators. Gryllus was departing with the fleet the next day, and had brought Aedon to the festival with him that evening to take in the excitement. It was a rare treat for the youngster to accompany his father in public, but Gryllus had taken the precaution of bringing me with them, sternly charging me to watch the boy so that Gryllus could be free to greet his peers without hindrance. Aedon walked proudly by his father's side, politely responding to the queries and compliments of Gryllus' colleagues. Somehow, though, the careless boy slipped my watch, and we became separated in the throng.

Gryllus was deeply engrossed in a discussion with some politicians about the war's progress, and it was I who first noticed that the boy was missing. Gryllus saw me standing on tiptoes to peer over the crowds, and immediately realized what had happened. Scarcely breaking the rhythm of his conversation or the jovial smile on his face, he squeezed my upper arm so hard it made me wince, and bent down to my ear.

"If the boy is not back at my side in five minutes," he hissed, "you will be sold." Just that. Four words that even now, decades later, make my throat constrict in fear. I had five minutes or my life would be over, scarcely before it had begun. Gryllus had that power over me, and he stood back up and smilingly resumed his conversation with his oblivious colleagues.

Aedon had not meant to become separated, and when he realized what had happened, he panicked. Standing in the street crying, he was almost knocked down by an enormous, half-drunk, somewhat simian-looking actor, a street performer really, in full regalia: embroidered robe with bared chest, tragic mask, braided hair. Aedon was an extraordinarily handsome young boy—smooth olive skin, enormous round eyes so dark they were almost black, even white teeth—and he would not long go unnoticed wandering alone in the city. It was fortunate that the actor was not, like many in his profession, seeking a catamite, but was, rather, an honest soul. He no sooner saw the youngster than he squatted down and asked him his name. When he discovered through the boy's tearful sobs that he was Aedon, whose musical reputation was well known in dramatic circles, the man swaggeringly introduced himself as "Otus, renowned interpreter of the greatest Athenian playwrights," and swept him up joyfully onto his shoulders. Otus then pushed and careened through the jostling crowd, bellowing, "Gryllus! Lord Gryllus! I have a package for you."

Gryllus' colleagues heard the commotion first, and peering through the crowd one of them asked dryly, "Gryllus, isn't that your boy riding that ape's shoulders?" Gryllus looked up in dismay at his son's noisy arrival, accompanied by the tittering of the surrounding onlookers. The tear tracks still shone on Aedon's dusty cheeks as he smiled down at us in relief, his eyes glistening. Gryllus' expression, however, remained as stony as I had ever seen it. He gingerly reclaimed his offspring from Otus and tossed a piece of silver to the hirsute, malodorous giant, who ostentatiously waved it in the air like a victor's spear, bellowing out his thanks. Gryllus graciously took his leave from his peers and walked us straight home, nodding and smiling at passersby, but keeping a death grip on the backs of our necks. "Aedon!" I hissed. "Your father told me to watch out for you. Now look what you've done!"—but neither of us was able to pursue the argument further because Gryllus tightened his grasp on our necks. I received a sound thrashing from him that night, though the punishment was mild compared to Aedon's. To him, Gryllus offered not a word. Not a touch, not a gesture. Only a brief glance of disdain and disappointment, and in the morning he was gone, back to the war. Though it was my buttocks that burned, it was Aedon who cried himself to sleep for many nights afterward, despite my many attempts to convince him of his father's true concern for him.

But to return to the alley where I had tripped: My later questioning of Aedon told me precisely what happened after he had sped on ahead of me. When rounding a corner, he was suddenly brought up short by a cane held horizontally across his path. He tried merrily to dive under it, but the cane's owner deftly parried his move, and gave him a swat across the chest for good measure. Aedon tried to squirm around the tip of the cane, but the owner merely projected it further, impaling its tip in a crack in the crumbling mortar of the narrow alley's opposite wall. Having trapped the boy's forward progress, the cane was then used like a shepherd's rod to nudge him from side to side until his back was against the wall with the cane pressing him from the side against his belly. At his size and age Aedon could have easily pushed the tip away from his body and broken free, but suddenly, with a deft movement, the canes-man slipped the rod behind his knees in such a way—I still wonder at the speed—that with a slight upward jerk of his wrist both the boy's legs slipped out from under him and he landed with a grunt, flat on his buttocks. Aedon looked with astonishment at the cane as it disentangled itself from his legs, and slowly followed its length up to the junction with its owner, who possessed a knotted, gnarled old hand like that of an ancient soothsayer. This in turn was attached to a burly wrist and a hairy, scarred arm—an arm that, in its day, must have seen a good deal of fighting, though with a sword rather than a thin wooden stick, and against Spartans and Thebans rather than cocksure young boys.

Aedon's eyes continued to travel up the cane-wielder's arm until he came to a most remarkable visage, that of a man he had often seen in the agora, talking to groups of young men. The face was the exact image of Marsyas the satyr, whose bronze image on the Acropolis I had often laughed at and pointed out to Aedon. The man's eyes were bulbous and protruding, his nose broken like that of a boxer, and his thick lips split his deeply creased face across the middle like one of those overripe Ephesian plums you sometimes find in the marketplace on festival days. His cranium was completely smooth and bald on top, with greasy wisps of white hair hanging down the sides and back in long strings. His tattered, ill-fitting tunic, the stains of which clearly showed the contents of his breakfast that morning and for the past several days, did little to hide the enormous belly that protruded over two spindly legs which were completely hairless, like those of some enormous, ungainly bird.

Like the old soldier that he was, the man paused to critically survey his catch, and his eyes, for all the homely aspect of the rest of him, twinkled merrily as he spoke. "Begging your pardon, lad," he chuckled, as if apologizing for having accidentally trapped Aedon in a narrow alley and tripped him flat onto his back with a wooden rod. "But I was wondering if you could tell me where I might purchase some turnips?"

The boy stared, astonished at this odd question. He considered the man's query carefully, looked around to see if there was any immediate escape, and resigning himself to the fact that there was none, he piped up in his sing-song voice, "Yes, sir. The first stalls as you enter the market from the south end sell all manner of fruits and vegetables. Surely you will find turnips there."

The man grunted in assent, but remained standing where he was, the cane hovering menacingly over the boy's head as he assimilated this response, slowly and somewhat densely. It was at this point that I came running up, panting and sweating, and stopped in astonishment at the sight of this fat, odd-looking gentleman standing over my ward. He looked deeply into my face, and I averted his gaze with a scowl, but then saw the man's eyes again turn to Aedon, who held his stare unblinkingly. A trace of a smile was beginning to form on the boy's lips.

"And where," the man continued, "might I find some of that good Attic peasant bread, the flat round kind, still warm from the hearth?"

This response was easy, for Aedon had just swiped some of the very same bread that morning, a crust of which, I saw, was still tucked into his belt for an afternoon snack. It was no doubt the view of this crust that had prompted the old man's query.

"Why, on the street of the bakers, of course," he replied. "Not all the shops sell the Attic flat bread you want, but the third shop on the left most certainly does, and you can be sure of its quality." He grinned, and this time the man openly returned it, ignoring me completely, and gazing in frank, almost fatherly admiration at Aedon for his quick and articulate reply. I saw passersby out of the corner of my eye, squeezing between the wall and the old man, glancing at us briefly and then smiling as they continued on their way, shaking their heads, in what? Exasperation? Pity? For the old satyr or for us? The man lowered his cane to its normal position, standing it upright next to him, and Aedon scrambled to his feet, though not without some degree of caution lest he again end up flat in the dust. I seized his forearm and spoke to him harshly.

"Aedon, let's go! Your father expects us to be at our lessons now..." and I began tugging him back out of the alley in the direction whence we had come. He started to turn, but at the mention of his father he impatiently shook off my hand and stood looking at the old man, his face open and full of expectation.

"One more question for you, youngster, if you have the time to spare," said the strange man. Aedon was already planning his response, prepared to show off his gift of speech as he so often did for his father's friends when they tossed him easy questions that he knew he could answer. "Where might men go to become good and honorable?"

Aedon's face clouded in confusion and then in disappointment, as he found himself at a complete loss for words.

"You don't know?" said the man. "Pity, a smart lad like you. Come with me, and I will show you."

That afternoon, the old tutor sat fuming in Gryllus' house, waiting in the gathering darkness for a student who did not arrive. Aedon and I had trudged to the agora with the strange old man, and spent the rest of the day there with him and his followers. The boy's education as a disciple of Socrates had begun.