 
This is a work of fiction. The incidents, dialogue and characters are products of the author's imagination. Situations and conversations involving historical figures are not intended to depict actual events. Any resemblance to other persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Archer McCormick at Smashwords

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Prologue:

THE SCHOOL OF ELEA

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The battle does not end well for the Army of Scribes.

Fresh corpses with ink-stained fingers litter the marketplace, warm blood slowly clotting into pools of mud, piss and shit below the bodies. Feral dogs fill the square and gnaw on the carcasses as the sun slips below the horizon, first concealing the grisly scene in shadows, then darkness. Buzzards will dine on the untouched cadavers in the morning. The scribes fought bravely, worthy of praise in song, but no one remains to write the history of the conflict or elegies for the dead; and unless the only two survivors of the carnage can escape the city alive the rest of the world will never hear a word of the Battle of Elea.

Melissus kicks open the door to the library, his injured friend and mentor Zeno stretched across his broad shoulders and places the elderly man on the surface of the first table he can find. The snarling baritone of a soldier echoes over the barking of tracking dogs in the distance. "I'll give twenty obols of silver to the bastard that finds those two cunts and forty to the sonofabitch who sticks them with his spear!" the man yells to a chorus of blood-thirsty cheers. Melissus scurries back to the door and closes it quietly, slowly lowering a wooden plank across the width of the entrance to prevent the door from opening.

"They're all dead, aren't they?" Zeno asks through a pained grimace.

"Most likely," Melissus replies, moving a lantern next to his friend's leg to inspect the large wound running clear across Zeno's hamstring. "And if we don't keep moving, so will we soon be."

The library is dark, but so familiar to Melissus that he only needs the faintest glow to efficiently maneuver through the labyrinth of tables and chairs that make up the building's main reading room. The soft flicker of the flame illuminates tall cabinets with diagonal shelves lining the walls, each one bursting with more scrolls than they were designed to hold. From across the room Melissus sees Zeno's show projected against the scrolls, almost dancing to the arrhythmic movements of the lantern's lights.

"I knew it was him!" Zeno says, shaking his head.

"Knew what about whom?" Melissus asks, returning to the table with a panel of cotton cloth and crudely dressing his friend's wound. The cut is deep and continues to bleed profusely. There's little hope of Zeno regaining the use of his leg any time soon. "Can you walk? I don't know if I can carry you across the other half town."

"I knew it was him from the begin—" Zeno says, as he slides off the table and gingerly shifts the weight of his thin frame onto his injured leg before his knee buckles, only Melissus' agile reflexes sparing him from collapsing to the ground.

"What are you talking about?" Melissus asks, lifting Zeno up and throwing his friend's arm around his shoulder. "We have to get out of here before—"

Pounding at the door cuts Melissus off. "Open the door!" orders a deep voice on the other side. "Open the door and King Demylus will grant you clemency."

Melissus turns his head away from the door and back to Zeno, who shakes his head doubtfully. The door jerks violently, individual planks slowly splintering with each new strike. "Upstairs!" Zeno whispers. Melissus nods, throws Zeno back over his shoulders, and sprints up the stairs to the scriptorium on the second floor, skipping every other step along the way, just as the entire library fills with the loud snap of the front door bursting open.

At the top of the stairs Melissus slams the scriptorium door shut and blockades it with every last piece of furniture in the room. "This will only buy us a few more minutes. There's got to be some kind of weapon in here!" Melissus says, sifting through the ink wells and desks in hopes of finding something—a hammer, a crowbar, a fireplace tool, anything—to help him ward off his predators.

A heavy thump shakes the door to the scriptorium, followed by another, then another. There are no voices offering absolution this time, just brute force and blind rage. Zeno hobbles over to an unused chair and watches the hypnotic heave and warp of the door. "I knew it was him!" he says again. "I knew it was him all along!"

Melissus abandons his search for a weapon and starts looking for an escape route. He glances out room's rear window and finds the alley below completely empty. The soldiers have forgotten to secure the library's perimeter. "We can make it!" he says, waving Zeno over to the window, the thumping at the door growing louder and louder.

Zeno ignores him. "I just knew it!" he says.

"C'mon, you old fucking fool!" he flares, marching across the room and pulling his friend from the chair by the collar of Zeno's tunic. "We can make it!"

"No," Zeno says, "we can't, but you can."

"What are you talking about?" Melissus demands, just as he finds the answer in the vacant stare of Zeno's glassy eyes. "No! They'll kill you if stay!" Melissus pleads.

"I shouldn't have led those boys into battle," Zeno says, shaking his head mournfully.

"They were doing their what needed to be done!" Melissus protests.

"They were scribes, not soldiers!" whispers Zeno.

"They were doing their duty as Eleans and men!"

"It was the griffin," Zeno says in a daze. "I should have ordered the retreat the instant I saw the Griffin." His words trail off into silence just before his shoulders shutter and he turns his head back to Melissus. "Carry me and they'll catch up to us, but I can delay them if I stay."

"No! I won't let you!" Melissus objects.

The thumping grows louder. "No," Zeno insists. "Don't you understand? They're here for me—they're here for the books!"

Melissus feels the blood leave his face instantly as he slowly releases his grip on Zeno's robe and drops to his knees. Zeno pats him on the cheek, leans forward and whispers into his ear.

When he finishes, Zeno sinks back into his chair while a stream of tears runs down Melissus' face. "Go," the old man says quietly, giving one last instruction to his friend. "You know what needs to be done."

Melissus only nods his head and silently mouths the word yes in response. He rises to his feet, kisses Zeno on the forehead and embraces him one final time, letting go only as the hinges of the door finally fail and soldiers spill into the room, violently tossing aside the furniture blocking the doorway. The soldiers swarm Zeno and pin him to the floor beneath a flurry of thrashing arms and stomping feet, as Melissus leaps out the window and escapes into the empty alley below.

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Only a day earlier the city of Elea was little more than a small coastal colony like most others in Magna Graecia: a quiet hamlet of little importance or fame nestled on the Tyrrhenian Sea just a few hundred leagues north of Sicily. Elea was not a trading city of any commercial significance, nor did it have any military value. The village hosted no religious festivals, dramatic contests or athletic competitions of any renown. Outsiders were greeted with warm hospitality and treated with fairness at market, but no more so than in the thousands of other towns scattered throughout the Mediterranean. Since its founding over a century earlier Elea's principle commodity had been solitude and few of her native sons appreciated this resource more than a pair of itinerant philosophers named Parmenides and Zeno.

Parmenides, son of Pyres, was a tall man, athletic, handsome and, above all else, outgoing. He was a whirlwind of conversation that practiced his philosophy through discussion, defending his ideas adamantly, eloquently and tirelessly. He was so fond of discourse that he was known to travel clear across the breath of the known world simply for the sake of finding a robust debate. Parmenides was also a natural politician who came from a noble and wealthy Eleatic family, which put him in a perfect position to influence and write the city's laws during the years following Elea's founding.

Consequently, he was greeted with skepticism among many of his colleagues who worried that creating such a dialogue would poison philosophical argument by conducting it like a political debate. Philosophy was practiced much differently in Parmenides' day when the profession was still only separated by a few decades from the man considered the first philosopher, Thales of Miletus. Men shared their ideas through long uninterrupted lectures and speeches, often given in secret to evade public scrutiny. Students were expected to accept whatever claim their teachers made as inerrant truth. Philosophers often cloistered themselves in secret societies to both protect adherents from the harmful influences of the outside world and their own teachings from clever adversaries. The most celebrated of these was the Pythagorean Brotherhood, followers of the late mathematician who interpreted the universe through the application of numbers and mysticism.

Parmenides sought to change all of this. He believed Truth was eternal and immutable and existed beyond the human senses, which changed with age, health and even the weather. One single person relying on limited perceptions would never find answers, but perhaps two people could come closer, he believed.

Thus, the old Elean thought an ongoing dialogue better suited philosophy than a disconnected series of lectures. Parmenides used his family's fortune to build a humble library in the center of Elea and opened its door to any student with the desire to learn. Many of the young men he taught later took work in the scriptorium that evolved on the building's second story. This is how Parmenides discovered Zeno, son of Teleutagoras, a lean and frequently gaunt young man with a proclivity for mathematics.

Unlike his master, Zeno was introverted, congenitally lame and oblivious to social graces. He was also broad-minded, combative and exceedingly precocious. Parmenides singled the boy out for special instruction and in no time the two developed a unique report that they subsequently shared with others in cities around the Mediterranean basin during frequent travels abroad.

When they returned to Elea, and when he was not conversing with his mentor, Zeno could be found sequestered in his study puzzling over various mathematical questions. He had a knack for disproving suspiciously clever propositions by accepting a claim, then extending its consequences out until the entire arguments collapsed in on themselves. This led him to ask a question whose answer was seemingly so obvious the very question itself seemed absurd: How is it possible for an object to move through a finite space, say an arrow between an archer to his target, when that object must first pass through infinitely many midpoints before it reaches its destination?

This small observation, so easy to describe and yet so difficult to explain, shook mathematicians and philosophers to their very cores. It was a perfectly logical construction entirely contrary to the universal perception of an event. The paradox suggested that human minds were able to apprehend phenomenon in ways human senses could not. This led to the distinct possibility that what was thought to be reality was, in fact, nothing more than an interpretation corrupted by our senses.

The ensuing controversy kept philosophers occupied for decades, but it also instigated a bloodletting among lesser thinkers. Zeno challenged the principles of the absolutist cults, most of which could not adapt there tenants and dissolved completely. Others, like the Pythagoreans, maintained an uneasy truce with Zeno and the Eleatics. Some secret societies fled even further underground and only spoke to the outside world through rumors and gossip.

Worst of all these detractors were the stragglers, the former followers of now disbanded cults who had devoted so much of their previous lives to now dead faiths that they simply could not adopt a new one. These men were angry, vengeful and, worst of all, literate. Zeno received countless letters from spiteful souls cursing him and his paradox for shattering their beliefs. Some even threatened his life, but the mathematician paid them all little care.

Many men, on the other hand, were delighted by the endless possibilities Zeno's paradox created. They traveled to Elea from all quarters to learn from Zeno and argued passionately, sometimes letting their tempers get the best of them. Voices rose, insults were hurled and sometimes even fists; but each nightfall Zeno and his guests retired to his hearth with wine as friends. Over time Zeno's reputation among his fellow philosophers grew to stand without peer, even surpassing that of his proud mentor.

When Parmenides died Zeno inherited the library and scriptorium. By this point his fame had grown beyond the small diaspora of philosophers and he was now well-regarded by wealthy and powerful men who saw practical value in Zeno's otherwise abstract adventures. These men wanted Zeno to teach their sons and heirs to make that which appeared true to be not true, and vice versa, and they were willing to pay handsomely for the privilege. Each potential disciple came bearing gifts of treasure, land, connections and even women—gifts no reasonable man would decline—without knowing that Zeno was, at heart, a completely unreasonable man. He refused them all.

Zeno was never as open as Parmenides, nor did he ever pretend to be. He did, however, feel an obligation to take on some students who might some day take his lessons abroad and even hoped to find his own apprentice. Most of the students he did take in were poor and hungry and many of them worked hard and displayed great promise, but the now aging mathematician could never manage to bond with this younger generation of philosophers in the same way that Parmenides did with him. He was almost fifty years old when he buried his master. Zeno had given Parmenides every last measure of his patience and had nothing left for a novice of his own. He needed an equal, not a protégé.

Then one day a peculiar character arrived at Zeno's door. He was portly, but still strong and athletic; cleanly-shaven with the kind of weathered face that belonged carved onto the bow of a ship. He spoke with a loud, commanding voice, but was jovial and good-natured. His tunic was worn thin and smelled of fish. "My name is Melissus, son Ithagenes," he said by way of introduction, "and Parmenides was wrong about everything." It was the beginning of a conversation, and friendship, which lasted the next ten years.

Melissus arrived in Elea that very morning, having traveled all the way from Samos. Just a few years younger than Zeno, Melissus had recently resigned his commission as commander of the Samian navy. He had fought in many wars, won many battles, and killed many men; and yet earlier that year he had returned to Samos to a hero's triumph following a victory to find two philosophers arguing an esoteric point in the agora with more passion than he had felt fighting for his very life at sea. The admiral was captivated by the scene, and even though the nuances of the argument completely escaped him, the energy and intensity of the participants appealed to his combative nature. He resolved right then and there to become a philosopher.

The two men were perfect complements to each other. Melissus learned mathematics, logic and law from Zeno, while Zeno learned politics, strategy and poetry from Melissus. They wrote books and keep correspondences with colleagues abroad in the mornings. Their afternoons were spent taking long walks through Elea, debating matters incomprehensible to eavesdroppers. At night they retired with a cask of wine by a warm fireplace to trade stories of the cities they visited and people they had each known.

It was an idyllic, and well-deserved, existence for both men, but one that could not last forever.

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One day, Zeno receives a letter from an acquaintance in Libya asking if the scriptorium would copy a well-known text, recently discovered missing from the Cytheran library, by the late Hippasus of Metapontium. Zeno agrees, in exchange for a copy an obscure manuscript he remembers reading during his days traveling in North Africa with Parmenides. A few weeks later the new scrolls arrive at their respective destinations and Zeno would have never thought any further of the matter if a similar request does not arrive shortly thereafter, this time from a colleague in Tyre. Then another, followed by another, and on and on—each request coming from a librarian in a new city missing a copy of Hippasus' work. The requests become so numerous that Zeno orders copies of the scroll to be made in anticipation of future inquiries and several scribes became capable of transcribing the entire work from memory.

It's a phenomenon that troubles the mathematician profoundly. It appears to Zeno that someone is trying to remove copies of Hippasus' works from every library in Greece and enjoying a certain measure of success in so doing. At first he dismisses this conclusion as absurd, but the absurd is something of Zeno specialty and the more he thinks about the matter the more he simply cannot completely reject his hypothesis. Finally, he explains his concerns to Melissus one night as the two men drink wine by the library hearth.

"You think they're being stolen?" Melissus responds. "Why would anyone bother?"

"I think someone doesn't want Hippasus' book read," says Zeno.

"I wasn't aware anyone was still reading them in the first place," Melissus jests.

"Fewer today than yesterday, at any rate," Zeno says. "But what would anyone have against Hippasus? He's been dead for seventy-five years."

"Perhaps, whoever is responsible for these disappearances is angry at someone else?" Melissus suggests.

"Like whom?" Zeno asks.

"Like you."

Zeno laughs. "And what, by the gods, makes you say such a thing?"

Melissus takes a long look into the fireplace and rubs his furrowed brow. "I'm no stranger to messages and codes and people trying to kill me, Zeno. Those were all just part of everyday life in the navy."

"Don't be ridiculous, Melissus. I haven't received any messages, to say nothing of coded ones."

"Of course, you have!" Melissus booms. "You've received dozens of letters from all over the world telling you that the works of Hippasus have slowly gone missing."

"But that doesn't mean—"

"Don't be so dismissive, Zeno."

"Good gods, Melissus! Hippasus was a renegade member of the Pythagoreans who was excommunicated for heresy—what does that have to do with me?"

"He was also a mathematician, not unlike you."

"And a very good one, at that," Zeno appends.

"And a mathematician that was drowned to death by the Brotherhood."

"An apocracphyl story!"

"Not in Samos, it's not; and I shouldn't have to remind you that Pythagoras was from Samos."

"Since when does sharing a birthpalce make you an authority on another man's life?"

"It—" Melissus begins before swallowing his thought. "Never mind, I'll concede your point, but for the sake of argument, let's say Hippasus was drowned to death by the Brotherhood: would that make you any more concerned for your safety?"

"It would seem inappropriate to be so," Zeno declares. The thought, however, visibly troubles him. He nods silently and stares into the fire, chewing nervously on his thumbnail for a moment before speaking again. "Who would want to murder an elderly philosopher?"

"The fathers whose useless seeds you denied instruction, for one," Melissus answers. "I'd include the useless bastards themselves, if I felt for a moment they possessed a fraction of the motivation required. Then there are the Pythagoreans—"

"Wait—you think another philosopher might want to kill me?"

"Were we not just speaking of poor Hippasus?"

"That was a crime of passion," Zeno says, "if it was even a crime at all. What you're suggesting would be something different, something methodical that requires planning, travel, money and considerable resources."

"Which would seem to rule out another philosopher," Melissus declares.

"What makes you say that?"

"Because the only thing philosophers have in considerable quantities is poverty!" Melissus replies through deep basso laughter. The jest brings a smile to Zeno's face.

Once the admiral finally stops laughing, Melissus pats his belly and takes another sip of wine. The room falls silent with only the snapping of the fire to break the quiet. Zeno takes a deep breath and exhales into the hearth. "How did he die?" he asks, a hint of trepidation in each syllable of his words.

"How did who die?" Melissus asks.

"Pythagoras—what do the Samians say of his death?"

"I thought a common birthpla—"

"Just answer the question."

"He offended people he shouldn't have offended," Melissus replies.

"Then what?"

"Those people chased Pythagoras from his city, burned the barn he sought refuge in, and then slit his throat when he tried to escape the fire."

Zeno's eyebrows rise as his lips curl into an uncomfortable grimace. "Who knew philosophy was more suited for the fleet of foot than the faint of heart?"

Melissus laughs. "It could all just be a coincidence," he says, hoping to ease his friend's distress. "I wouldn't bother yourself too much over it."

Simply ignoring a mystery, however, goes against the very nature of a philosopher. Zeno begins an informal inquiry into the matter. At first he treats the investigation as little more than a hobby, sending letters to friends and colleagues across Greek, but as replies slowly trickle back to Elea a strange and, at times, sinister picture emerges that Zeno cannot ignore.

"It's not just Hipassus," he tells Melissus by the fireside a few months later.

"Who else is missing?"

"Epimenedes, Anaximander, Theagenes, Cleostratus—"

"All of them?"

"And dozens more—all just disappearing from what must be every library in Greece."

Melissus sits silently for a moment, unsure how to respond. "Well," he finally says with a shrug, "at least you know that no one's trying to kill you."

"Be serious for moment," Zeno orders.

Melissus nods apologetically.

"I want the scribes to start making copies of every volume we keep at the library," Zeno says, the words flipping off his tongue amid a gale of spittle as he paces furiously around the room. "No one is to have access to the master copies unless we discover a volume to be missing. And we'll need to find a safe pl—"

"Ease yourself, old friend! I'll take care of it first thing in the morning." Melissus advises, as he waits for Zeno to retake his seat. "Have you found out who's been stealing the scrolls?"

"Not definitively, but I have my guesses."

"Then I suggest you keep your assumptions to yourself until you know better," Melissus advises. "Besides, there are more pressing concerns to worry about these days."

"Like the exorbitant price of papyrus these days?" Zeno smirks.

"Something like that," says Melissus, finishing the remaining wine in his cup.

The spike in the cost of scrolls certainly vexes Melissus, but not nearly as deeply as the concurrent rise in the price of timber, iron and bronze. As a young purser aboard a Samian cargo ship, Melissus discovered the relationship between increases in the price of certain commodities to specific events. An increase in the cost of wine usually preceded the Bacchanalia. Spices, like cinnamon, became more expensive just before winter when mountain snows closed off the highways to the Orient. Timber, iron and bronze, however, were so ubiquitous that not even the largest mercantile cartels could horde enough raw resources to cause a surge in price. Only cities had treasuries large enough to significantly raise the price of all three commodities at once and they only did so when they needed to build ships, cast swords and forge armor.

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Fifty years has passed since the Persian invasion under King Xerxes was repelled by the united armies of Greece. To be sure, there has always been some in-fighting between a few nations, but for most cities the era is marked by an uncommonly long period of peace and prosperity. It is an age of diplomacy when alliances are built to facilitate the free flow of trade between states; and with it the wealth, people and ideas that make possible the lives of the Eleatic philosophers.

Now this Golden Age, as many newly rich merchants called it, is coming to an end. Five decades of affluence has tilted the balance of power in favor of some states and inspired fear in the others. Cities no longer sign treaties for the sake of commercial benefits, but for military advantage. Relations between almost every state in Greece is needlessly entangled and complicated. Cities with no reasonable interest in one another are now sworn to defend each other and nations who share ancient animosities are now begrudging allies. All of this is done in the name of strengthening a delicate peace, but it only accomplishes to make it more fragile.

Melissus sees the peace about to break, not that this matters to anyone else in Elea. The city is situated over a thousand leagues west of the Aegean Sea. Eleans have grown to distrust news from the eastern corners of the Mediterranean as outdated upon arrival or corrupted by the succession of messengers. One of the simple pleasures of living in Elea is the peace of mind that comes with its remote locale, which offers security from even the most horrifying news abroad. If reports of dragons laying waste to the city of Byzantium ever arrived in the Eleatic agora, they would sure to be greeted with little more than a shrug.

And with good reason. While it is not beyond the realm of possibility that fighting will extend as far west as Syracuse, Melissus sees few reasons for the conflict to reach further north than Sicily. Yes, some men from the city would be conscripted into one army or another, but there was little reason to covet Elea as a military prize.

Physical security, however, is only a small part of a much larger problem. Melissus understands that life in Greece is about to change dramatically, even in the quarters fortunate enough to escape the coming violence, prolonged sieges, mass illnesses, and starvation. Communication with the rest of the world will soon slow. Letters will be delayed, censored or "lost" altogether. Travel will be restricted, foreigners turned away at the gates of cities leery of spies roaming their streets unrestrained. The longer hostilities wear on, the worse conditions will get. Philosophy will become an even more solitary and isolated venture, especially for elderly men practicing it at the edge of civilization—which was why, the thought eventually occurs to Melissus, Elea is the perfect place to preserve the collective work of 150 years of philosophy until the war's end.

Since he began replacing the missing works of Hippasus in libraries across the world, Zeno's library has nearly tripled the number of items in its collection. Almost 900 scrolls line the shelves of the first floor, but there's still plenty room for more. Melissus suggests he and Zeno write to their colleagues abroad and ask them to send copies of rare manuscripts to Elea for safe-keeping, lest they become casualties of the imminent war. It's an idea that Zeno embraces with an enthusiasm he has never displayed for anything before.

During the six months that follow, Melissus helps Zeno transform his once humble library into the great Archive at Elea, the largest repository of knowledge in the known world. Scribes work day and night to copy philosophical, mathematical and scientific treatises; poetry; tragedies and comedies; histories; legal documents and political speeches from throughout the world. Even the letters that accompanied the manuscripts were treated with the same solemnity and reverence the curators give to the works of Homer.

The Archive transforms Elea from a tiny backwater at the end of the world to a center of learning, an outpost where students could unburden themselves of earthly cares. The city's reputation slowly spreads across the Mediterranean as men and women come seeking educations. In fact, so many of the young students stay in the city and complete the mandatory military training required of all citizens that the local militia is affectionately dubbed the stratean bibliografoi—the Army of Scribes—by neighboring villages.

Elea adopts the ink well and reed pen as its standard, painting the symbol of the shields of the young men responsible for protecting the city. It's a fighting force that looks and drills like an army, but there isn't a true soldier among them. So when 500 heavily armed and armored mercenaries carrying black standards storm the gates of the city, the battle ends quickly and King Demylus is installed as the first tyrant of Elea.

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Following his arrest, Zeno is carried down from the scriptorium to the library on the first floor of the Archive building. A tall, sturdy young man wearing a long black robe and golden diadem rifles though the scrolls kept in shelf reserved for engineering manuscripts. Each one he opens roughly, devotes little more than a cursory glances, then discards on the ground like table scraps of food left for a pet. The inconsiderate way in which he treats the scrolls causes Zeno as much pain as the injury to his leg.

"Let him sit," the man tells the soldiers, who immediately situate Zeno at a nearby table. "There's a recipe I'm looking for and was hoping you could help me find it.

"We keep the scrolls on food preparation are in another building," Zeno replies, getting out of his seat. "I'd be happy to fetch it for you, if you'd like." The soldiers standing behind him each apply a hand to his shoulders and push Zeno back into his chair.

"Oh, I'm not interested in a cook book," the man says, tossing another scroll to the ground. He reaches into the cabinet and withdraws another scroll and unrolls it carelessly. Suddenly, his eyes grow wide and a devious grin curls in the corner of his mouth. "Here it is!" he says walking toward the table, still closely looking at the content of the scroll. "A History of the Uses and Applications of the Polemikon Pur; Complete with Accounts of the Necessary Elements and Proportions therein Required for Production by one Timon of Abydus, son of Acessemenus—not a very catchy title now, is it?" he asks.

"Then I'm sure you'll also be disappointed in the book," Zeno notes.

The man shakes his head as he rolls the scroll into a tight cylinder and slips it into an interior pocket of his cape. "I think I'll enjoy it very much!" he replies. The man takes a seat at the table and looks up at the soldiers standing over Zeno. "Where is the other one?"

The soldiers look at each other with confusion. "He was the only one in the room when we entered, sire," one answers hesitantly, nodding in Zeno's direction.

"Only one?' the man repeats, briefly burying his head in his hands. "Are you fucking ingrates too stupid to realize you were tracking two men?" the he yells, slamming his hand against the surface of the table. "His name is Melissus! I want the gates to the city closed, the harbor sealed and every last soldier not already standing a post searching for that sonofabitch!"

The soldiers in the room rush for the door. "But, sir, what about the prisoner?" asks one private lingering behind.

"This one's not going anywhere, not with that injury," the man says. He leans back in his chair and waits for the room to clear until all is quiet except for the faint sound of horses galloping off into the distance. "Do you know who I am?" he asks Zeno.

"I can only assume you're the one they call Demylus," Zeno replies.

"Then you must also know why I'm here," Demylus replies, the expression on his face growing more stern. "Unfortunately, I wasn't anticipating having this discussion without your friend Melissus, so why don't you tell me where he's run off to and perhaps we will both be able to walk out of this library will all of our limbs still attached to our bodies."

Zeno laughs politely. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

Demylus smiles and shakes his head. "I didn't expect you would, but it's not important," he says, throwing his hands up over his head and looking around the library. "All of these books and letters must have come from some place and Melissus is probably on his way there as we speak. I'll find him sooner or later."

"Then you have come for the library," Zeno says.

"In a manner of speaking," Demylus replies. He rises from his chair, walks around the table and sits on the surface next to Zeno. "The only volume in this building that is of any value to me is the one I already have," he says, patting the exterior of his cape just above his breast. "The rest means more to my clients."

"And how is that?"

"Why, they want to know who else to kill?" Demylus smirks. "For a group of people so revered for your intelligence and wisdom, you philosophers can be an astonishing stupid lot! So let's try this one more time: where is your friend Melissus going?"

Zeno remains silently motionless in his chair.

Demylus smiles, pats Zeno on the shoulder and slides off the surface of the table. "Pity, and I hoped we would become such good friends too!" he says, as he makes his way to the door. "There are men in my command who read, Zeno, enough men to catalogue the authors of all of these books in a day or so. I'll find him, though you shouldn't expect to be alive long enough to be there when I do."

Zeno glares at Demylus over his shoulder. "So it was you holding the shield with the griffin painted on it, wasn't it?"

"You mean this afternoon? My shield has always been black, old man—blacker than the depths of Death's cunt!" Demylus says with a laugh. "There are a dozen soldiers guarding the library and they all have orders to kill if you so much as step outside," his voices echoes as the door slams closed behind him.

Zeno sits quietly at the table for some time after Demylus leaves, staring at his own shadow spread across the cabinets of scrolls, quaking in the flicking light of the lantern. Demylus is right: even though Zeno has no idea where Melissus is running to, the answer was almost certainly found in the scrolls kept in the Archive. He sighs, lets his head fall to the table and closes his eyes.

Parmenides would have never dreamed his library would serve as a prison, let alone one confining his finest pupil. He built it to bring the light of knowledge into the world and now it will be by this very light that wicked, cruel and avaricious men will hunt down Melissus. Even to the man who understands paradoxes more profoundly than any other person on earth, the irony is tormenting.

Zeno rises from his chair and hobbles across the room. He picks up the lantern from the table with one hand and glides his other hands across the scrolls protruding from the cabinets, the sum of the world's knowledge at his fingertips. Many of the books are the only copies that remain of works by authors long since dead.

His arrogance had blinded him. Privately, Zeno had always nurtured the hope that the Archive would one day rival the gardens in Babylon or the temple in Ephesus as one of the crowning monuments of human achievement. Instead, he has given the enemies of philosophy a convenient target through which to destroy the profession before it ever gets started.

He now knows what he has to do. Zeno pulls a scroll from one of the shelves and dips it into the lantern. There is still hope, he thinks, but not without a significant cost. Zeno watches intently as the orange and crimson blaze slowly dance across the volume, transforming it into a crumbling cylinder of ash. Zeno unleashes a quiet sigh, tosses the burning scroll into a cabinet and feels the searing heat on his skin as a wall of fire rapidly consumes the Archive of Elea.

₪₪₪₪₪

Melissus' escape has been impeded by patrols of soldiers, a poor knowledge of Elea's alleys and the kind of impenetrable darkness only found on moonless nights.

Since his leap from the scriptorium window an impenetrable darkness has served Melissus well by covering him from patrols of soldiers, but the midnight pitch is now complicating an already poor knowledge of Elea's backstreets. He knows he's close, the salty air of the Tyrrhenian Sea fills his nostrils, but the closer he gets to the water the more he worries that the dusk now shrouds his pursuers from him. Finally, he reaches the courtyard of an old friend's villa that sits atop a bluff not far from the harbor. He hears the waves crashing against the shore mingle with the galloping of horses and the barking of tracking dogs in the distance as he frantically rustles through the bushes, struggling to find the concealed path which leads to the strand below.

Suddenly, a dim glow from behind reveals a narrow gap in the thicket. He glances over his should just long enough to discover a towering bonfire flittering across the city's skyline. Melissus recoils into the divide in the shrubs and slips on a layer of loose gravel, sliding down the footpath on his tailbone until he arrives on the soggy sand of the beach.

Melissus pulls the razor-sharp stones and craggy debris embedded in his hips, waist and thighs; then places a small branch between his teeth and bites down as he rises to his feet and stumbles across the beach and dives into the sea, screaming under the incoming tide as the salt water fills his fresh wounds. He swims out to the harbor and finds a small fishing boat with a single mast tied by a lonely rope to a pier. The admiral uncoils the rope from the dock, pulls an oar from the craft's hull and quietly paddles out to open water unseen from shore. There are still a few hours of darkness left in the night, which is all an experienced sailor needs to create an insurmountable lead between himself and his trackers.

Once the jib is hoisted and rigging tied, Melissus looks over his shoulder for signs of pursuit, but only finds a large pillar of thick, black smoke billowing to the heavens. By dawn Elea will have vanished below the horizon. The admiral finds the pole star in the clear night sky and makes his way south with the current. The boat's gentle oscillating between the waves starts to rock him to sleep like an infant. Melissus fights off a yawn so large it threatens to turn his head inside just as a warm breeze skips across the surface of the waters, filling his sails of the small fishing boat taking the last student of the School of Elea to the great city of Athens.

SCHOOL OF ATHENS

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ATHENS

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Euripides, the son of Mnesarchus and a playwright of enough renown that he can claim it as a profession, scales the final steps leading to the top of the Acropolis and gazes on the Parthenon for what feels like the first time.

"Psshh! Opulence for the sake of opulence should not impress the gods. They can craft finer marble in the time it takes most men to have a shit," he concludes aloud, a curious habit he's developed after years of writing soliloquies and asides for the stage. He shakes his head and carries his bitterness through the construction site, dismissing the magnificence of the Parthenon with every step.

Nothing along the way impresses Euripides. Not the ivory statute of the goddess Athena standing taller than eight men stacked head to toe. Not the exquisite detail of the interior friezes. Not the thousands of talents of stone suspended precariously overhead as if solely by an act of mercy from the goddess herself. Not even the magisterial view of the city of Athens, home to a quarter of a million souls and illuminated by the radiance of the midday sun, from atop the Old City's citadel moves him. He is a poet immune to beauty.

Euripides' sour disposition is notorious among Athenian artists who regularly see him brooding on sullen constitutionals through the city. He is forty-nine years old and unaccomplished in all aspects of his life, according to his own very high standards. This has not always been the case. When he was only twenty-two, Euripides placed third in the Dionysian drama competition, an impressive achievement that occurred just before Aeschylus' death at a time when the old master of tragedies monopolized the victor's laurels of every festival he entered. At the time the young playwright appeared to have a promising career ahead of him.

Yet almost thirty years later he has little to show for it. His colleagues attribute his melancholy to a pair of failed marriages, both of which ended in humiliating cuckoldings, but thier interpretation is backwards: Euripides' muse has always been his mistress. He has written well over sixty plays, forty of which have been produced, a prodigious output that enables him to maintain a busy playhouse in a tony neighborhood of Athens. Between long hours writing in solitude and even longer hours tending to the capricious needs of actors, there remained precious few moments during the day to devote to his wives and all the time in the world for them to seek companionship elsewhere.

Financially, Euripides is quite successful, but the rabble's coins cannot buy him the esteem of the drama competition judges he do desperately craves. He has won the Dionysian exactly once, ten years earlier. In his mind, his promise has been squandered and his time has passed. All that Euripides expects from the rest of his life is a slow, miserable decline toward the inevitable fate that awaits all men.

"Gleenos," he utters in his native tongue as he glances at the bright colors of the Parthenon's interior frieze, the quartz embedded in the tiny pieces of fractured pottery glimmering in the midday sun. "That's what this temple is: gaudy, like the jewels Priam brings Achilles in exchange for Hector's body. Homer would not have approved of such ostentaciousness."

Being a poet, Homer's opinion on all matters, and particularly those of an aesthetic nature, was very important to Euripides and, not coincidently, frequently mirrored his own.

From the moment the cornerstone was first laid the playwright has been suspicious of the Parthenon. He quietly believes that the architects designed a structure to rest atop the city's brow as a laurel wreath to distinguish the city as preeminent among its Greek peers. Yet from a window in his home across Athens, the temple looks like little more than a single pearl about to be swallowed by the brick and stone homes rolling over the suburban hills in the distance. To Euripides the building evokes perilousness, not prestige.

Most Athenians, however, disagree. The city is in awe of the Parthenon and is eager to finally see it completed after sixteen years of construction. All that remains is painstaking detail work to the interior frieze, exterior façade and statues of the Olympian gods scattered throughout the complex. On most afternoons dozens of master artisans and their assistants work diligently throughout the building with remarkable skill, concentration and industry that creates a hum to their movements, a rhythm to the hammers hitting chisels and picks cracking stone. A strong breeze might even spit out enough dust through the columns to give a visitor the impression that the temple is even breathing.

But today is different. The craftsmen have been given the afternoon off and the only sound that can be heard at the site is a single lonely chisel tapping against a marble column off in the distance. "That must be him," Euripides says, still addressing his imaginary audience as he clumsily tip-toes and skips around abandoned tools, discarded stone and other assorted jetsam haphazardly left behind by the laborers.

Euripides follows the sound through the colonnade, a shifting labyrinth of scaffolding, ladders and lode-bearing columns and immediately regrets not simply walking around the building. After a frustrating series of attempts to escape, he finally emerges at the southwestern corner and looks down the length of the edifice to find a solitary mason, worshipfully down on his hands and knees tending to the feet of a statue of the goddess Hera.

The playwright grins and begins a stealthy approach toward the man and his statue, which is conspicuously uglier than the others. In fact, the closer Euripides comes to it the more he realizes he has never seen the goddess look so hideous. He creeps closer, careful not to give himself away as the mason carefully evaluates where to strike the marble next. Then, just as the hammer is about to fall on the chisel, Euripides speaks: "Have you been commissioned to create a self-portrait, Socrates?"

The mason's concentration is broken and his hammer falls squarely on the right foot of the poor goddess, breaking it into a dozen pieces.

Socrates tosses away his chisel in frustration and rolls over onto his back to get a glimpse of the offender. "I thought you wrote tragedies, Euripides, not comedies," he says, motioning for his friend to help him from the ground. "That is, when you're actually writing these days. Any luck this morning?"

"About as much as you seem to have with that statue," Euripides replies.

The mason gets to his feet and brushes the day's worth of dirt and dust from his robes. Socrates is a handsome man and, even at the age of thirty-seven, still reflects a youthful light through a mischievous smile. He has an athlete's body more suited for carrying stone instead of carving it. His hair is dark and unkempt, peppered with a few gray strands behind his ears.

The statute, on the other hand, looks ancient and leprous. Hera's face is pock-marked and coarse, her hands plump and varicose. Unlike the regal robes that flow down from the stout shoulders of the neighboring deities, Socrates' Hera seems sclerotic and dressed in a wine barrel. Euripides nods his head slowly as he scrutinizes his friend's handiwork. "I wonder if the priests at Delphi would consider such a rendering sacrilegious?"

Socrates smirks. "Have you come here to talk theology or to get me drunk?" he asks.

"I don't see any reason why we can't do both," Euripides replies. "Shall we?"

"I thought you'd never ask!"

The two men begin the dangerous trek back through the construction site. "Did you hear about Zeno?" Euripides asks.

"I did," Socrates answers. "The poor bastard. I never imagined he would conspire to assassinate anyone, even a usurper."

"Then you two were close?"

"Close enough to say that he knew better than to aim for a king and miss."

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ATHENS

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All of Athens seems to be ending the day early. The agora, not far from the base of the Acropolis, is almost empty by the time Socrates and Euripides arrive. Most vendors have already packed up their wares and wait to join a long procession of merchants pulling carts in opposite directions down the Panathenian Way, the main road bisecting both the city and the market.

Only a few stragglers intent on unloading the last of their goods stubbornly remain, announcing discounts to anyone in earshot. Euripides watches with a smile as an older merchant, clearly the victim of a rudimentary extortion scheme, gives one date each to a gang of five small children as a reward for not stealing any of his stock during the day. The playwright's eager to point the scene out to Socrates by tugging at his friend's tunic, only to discover the mason has disappeared.

Euripides scans the shrinking market and finds Socrates discretely picking up several fruits and a few tomatoes that have fallen to the ground over the course of the day. He shakes his head just as Socrates takes a large bite out of a plump nectarine. "What?" the mason asks defensively, juice dripping down his chin.

"Shall we stay a little longer or have you had enough to eat?" Euripides asks.

Socrates takes another bite from the nectarine and throws the core over his shoulder. He rubs his belly and flashes Euripides a sated smile. "That'll do quite nicely, thank you very much," he says, watching the last of the vendors push a cart down a side street, leaving the agora a quiet and almost desolate place. Suddenly, Socrates stops walking. "Do you hear that?" he asks Euripides.

"Hear what?" the playwright replies.

"It's coming from the Strategeion. The war council must be meeting today," Socrates surmises.

"They've been doing that a lot lately," Euripides observes. "Come on: I've had quite enough sobriety for one day."

The two friends continue their stroll along the Panathenian Way as the shadows in the agora begin to lean to the east and a heavy rumble from the Strategeion causes the shutters in neighboring buildings to tremble faintly.

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Tucked away along a side street perpendicular to the market, the Strategeion is a large and forbidding building that serves as the headquarters of the Athenian military command. It houses the offices of the Strategos, a group of ten officials elected by the people of the city to serve as generals. In recent weeks the building has become a hive of activity, bustling with a discomforting urgency that leaves even messenger boys with an impending sense of dread.

Today is no different. Inside the building, a large meeting room is filled with young soldiers, aides-de-camp from wealthy and noble families attending to their much older superiors. The Strategos sit around an impressively large rectangular wooden table littered with maps and charts and numerical tables. Nine of them shout at the tops of their lungs in a vain attempt to attract the valuable attention of the most powerful man in Greece: Pericles, the archon of Athens.

Pericles is a tall man with a full shock of curling hair and a doughy face. Were it not for his white beard he would seem decades younger than his seventy years. He sits in his chair trying to separate each speaker's words from the others, but all meaning is squeezed from the words under the crushing weight of the generals' volume. He shakes his head, massages his temples, and then sighs.

"Gentlemen, Gentlemen!" Pericles says, rising from his seat and leaning over the table to inspect a map of Greece. The room falls silent. "Now, someone please explain to me the current situation as if I were a child. Tolmides, you've been quiet this evening. Why don't you do the honors?"

The room shakes softly with the sound of laughter. Tolmides, a gray-haired nobleman well-known among his colleagues for his loquaciousness, smiles and rises from his chair to address Pericles. "Our informants have told us that the Spartans have made entreaties to no less than a dozen of our allies trying to entice them to break their respective alliances with us," the general says. He begins shuffling through a stack of papers scattered on the table in front of him. "These cities include—"

"There's no need to list them, Tolmides, I already know of whom you speak," Pericles informs him. "But tell me this: who do you think is most likely to take Sparta up on her offer?"

"Potidaea, sir," the general answers without hesitation.

"Potidaea?" Pericles repeats, slowly nodding. "That's in Thrace. How do the Spartans plan on defending their new ally when they first have to march through Attica?"

"They don't plan on defending Potidaea at all," Lacedaemonius answers, speaking out of turn. Suddenly the room fills with knowing glances covertly exchanged between neighbors as a slender, middle-aged general seated on the table's side stands to speak. The comment isn't just a breach of Strategeion etiquette, but it's also a brazen attempt to curry favor with Pericles and undermine Tolmides—and every last soldier in the room is acutely aware of this subtext. "Sparta will rely on her ally Corinth to do so," the younger general continues.

"And how do you know this, Lacedaemonius?" Pericles asked.

"Because I received word today that Corinth has asked for volunteers for an expedition to Potidaea within the month."

The room erupts into a minor frenzy. Suddenly the internal politics of the Athenian high command is overshadowed by a legitimate foreign threat. The Strategos turn around in their chairs and huddle with their entourages, breaking away only to shout questions or recriminations at colleagues across the table. Pericles sighs again and involuntarily glances at the ceiling. He gives his commanders a moment to digest the news, during which only shattered sentence fragments seem audible:

—been unhappy for years!

—told you the tax levy was too high!

—city in Thrace will revolt!

—end of the empire!

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Pericles yells, slightly louder than before, but in a tone that continues to demonstrate a supernatural patience with his generals. "We've maintained a peace with Sparta for the last fifteen years and I have no plans to end the prosperity that has accompanied that peace. How many triremes are currently being built?" he asks.

"Thirteen, sir," replies Callias, a handsome commander who steps out from the crowd of attaches standing against the walls of the room. He's also the son of Hipponicus, the general seated to the immediate right of Pericles, and whom can't help but smile at the sight of his son.

"Double it," Pericles demands, as if any further explanation would be a waste of time. "I want you to take care of it personally, Callias. Be sure to see Bias at your next convenience."

Callias nods before quietly disappearing back into the horde of attending soldiers.

"Sir, if I may," begins Cleomedes, the oldest general at the table. "Such an order may cause the gossips in the agora to start rumors that war with Sparta is imminent."

"I should hope so!" booms Pericles, wresting any weary heads in the chamber from the temptation to sleep. "May the gods themselves carry the news throughout all of Greece! If our enemies know we are prepared for war, they might think twice about waging one."

The generals laugh heartily and are soon joined by their subordinates. In no time the Strategeion is filled with a deep basso rumble of mirth.

The last two young men to join the merriment sit directly behind Pericles. They are his oldest sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. Both are handsome young men in their mid-20s and have recently become fixtures at every important meeting the archon conducts. Behind them sits Aspasia, Pericles' long-time courtesan and mother to Pericles' youngest son. She watches the boys' reactions and notes their delay intently.

"Besides," Pericles continues once the chamber has quieted, "rumors of war couldn't possibly become any more prevalent. Thank you, gentlemen. I will see you all tomorrow."

The chamber clears quickly. After a long day in the musty air of the Strategeion, most of the generals are eager to conduct their private conversations with colleagues outside in the agora. A few simply elect to go straight home.

As the men depart, Pericles pulls aside Lacedaemonius and whispers quietly into his ear. "You did well today, young man," he sys. "Your ears in Corinth clearly hear better than mine."

"I doubt so, sir," the general replies in the same hushed tone, "but their feet might be faster."

Pericles smiles. "Go home to your wife and family. We will speak more on these things soon."

Hipponicus rises from the table and extends a hand to Paralus. "My daughter sends her regards," the general says to Pericles' son.

Paralus rises politely, accepts the old man's hand with both of his own and shakes it with gratitude. "And I gratefully return them, sir," he beams.

"My wife and I couldn't happier for the engagement. The two of you will make each other very happy," Hipponicus replies.

"I have no more ambition in life than making Hipparete as happy as she makes me, sir."

"It's no harder than keeping a father-in-law happy, Paralus," Hipponicus asserts, "and, clearly, you've already mastered that skill."

Xanthippus rolls his eyes. He watches the conversation unfold before him with an unhidden expression of boredom, the left side of his face crushed into folds against a fist that seems solely responsible for keeping his head upright.

The marriage between Paralus and Hipparete is treated as a happy accident by the couple's fathers. The pair had grown up close, but more friends than lovers. They seemed compatible and raised no objections when the arrangement was suggested to each of them a month earlier. Few in Athens could recall an engagement brokered so smoothly and quickly, so neither father dared tamper with the nuptials by asking frivolous questions about romance. Hipponicus is the wealthiest man in Athens and Pericles is the most powerful: the union of their families will establish the most powerful house in Greece.

This fact is not lost on Xanthippus, who was Pericles' eldest son and, according to custom and law, stands to inherit most of the archon's wealth and power upon his death. Though the position of archon is subject to election, Athenians have a tendency to install the heirs of popular leaders to their father's offices. His brother's marriage, however, puts Xanthippus' inheritance in jeopardy. He treats the union as a direct challenge to his status as firstborn and has grown quietly bitter since first learning the news.

Hipponicus slaps his future son-in-law on the shoulder and looks at Pericles, with a smile that can barely conceal the old general's happiness. The two men briefly embrace and Hipponicus walks Pericles over to a secluded corner to speak with him privately. As he speaks, Hipponicus holds a scroll up to his mouth to conceal his lips.

"You trust Cimon's son, Lacedaemonius?" Hipponicus asks.

"Not especially," Pericles replies, "but I want him to think that I trust him."

"How will you know if he's working against you?" Hipponicus asks.

"I won't," Pericles answers curtly, "I have more pressing concerns to tend to."

"Then who will hold Lacedaemonius in check?"

Pericles smiles and nods in the direction of Tolmides, still sitting at the table leering at Lacedaemonius with a silent rage as his rival exits the chamber. "I believe Tolmides will be keeping a sharp eye on Lacedaemonius for the foreseeable future."

Hipponicus grins. "I see," he says with a reverential nod. "Then what will be done about Potidaea?"

"For the moment, nothing," Pericles says, "but when the time comes we will know what to do."

"And when will the time come," Hipponicus asks.

"Soon, old friend. Very soon," says the archon.

Hipponicus nods and exits the chamber. Pericles returns to his seat at the head of the table. Only a handful of petitioners and servants remain. Unlike the Strategos, whose faint laughter can still be heard echoing from the agora outside, they keep deathly quiet and wait patiently for permission to speak.

"Is there any more business to attend to today, Heron?" Pericles asks his chief aide once the commotion ends.

"Just a small matter concerning Megara, sir," Heron responds.

Pericles closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. "Would that all matters regarding Megara were small ones," he says to himself. It's the only time that day the archon looks tired. He takes a deep breath and sighs, making a gesture for Heron to continue.

Heron nods in the direction of a priest standing quietly along the back wall of the chambers for most of the day. The priest and a pair of associates come forward and bow before Pericles. "Your highness," the priest begins, "we have recently learned that the Megarians are cultivating land consecrated to the goddess Demeter outside their city walls. Naturally, we would prefer the goddess provide us a bountiful harvest, so we have come to ask—"

"That we kindly ask them to desist, correct?" interrupts Pericles.

"Yes, sire," the priest confirms.

"Very well," Pericles continues, "I wi—"

But here he stops and looks over his shoulder at his sons, both of whose minds appear occupied with other matters. Pericles instantly recognizes the opportunity to educate his boys on matters of state. With his generals now gone, there will be no pressure to perform and, more importantly, no witnesses to failure. He turns to his boys and inquires:

"Xanthippus, tell me: what should I do in this situation?"

Xanthippus' head nearly rolls off his fist at the question. Pericles has never asked him for his opinion in public before. "Excuse me, father?" he says, unsure if he had heard his father correctly.

"If you were me, how would you respond to the good priest's request?"

Xanthippus rises excitedly. "I would send cavalry to Megara, burn the crops and kill the farmers. They have sinned against the gods, after all."

Pericles and Heron exchange awkward glances. "And you, Paralus?" he asks, his back now turned to the boys.

"I, I don't know what I would do, father," Paralus manages to finally say. "Megara is an ally of Sparta, is it not?"

Pericles turns his head, hopeful that his son's thoughts will evolve in the right direction. Paralus' question is in many respects silly, but it is at least a sign of intellectual engagement. "Not by treaty, but they certainly are in practice. Go on," the archon urges.

But Paralus becomes discouraged and devolves into a fit of nervous laughter, as if the sum of his knowledge of Athens' allies and enemies has passed by him like gossip about a long since forgotten acquaintance. "Well, if they're not really Spartan allies, then I guess that's all I can say at the moment," he says meekly.

The answers are crushing disappointments to Pericles. He could justify such responses from any other young men in Athens, perhaps, but not from his own sons. The expression of failure on his face is damning and painful to the few souls left in the Strategeion chambers to witness it. Pericles himself shields his face from his boys and looks to Aspasia to rescue him.

Aspasia needs nothing more than a glance. "I heard your brother Alcibiades has recently returned from his travels abroad," she says.

But Xanthippus is quick to cut her off with a bitter rebuke: "He's no more a brother of mine than you are my mother and there remain important matters for the men to—"

"Enough!" Pericles demands, looking Xanthippus directly in the eyes. The archon sighs and turns away before continuing: "Your cousin Alcibiades is as a son to me, no less so than Aspasia is as my wife. You may not honor those bonds, but you will respect your father's decision to do so, is that understood?"

Even Xanthippus knows the answer to this question. "Yes, father," he manages to say contritely.

Like all leaders who put state before family, Pericles' home suffers from years of neglect. He divorced Xanthippus and Paralus' mother ages ago, when his sons were still young boys, and took up with Aspasia not long after. Pericles and Aspasia have remained together ever since. Though they were never formally married, she bore him a son, Pericles the Younger, who is still too young to do more than climb fig trees and horseplay with friends.

Alcibiades, on the other hand, is another story entirely.

Undaunted by her step-son's perpetual discontent, Aspasia continues speaking to Xanthippus. "Why don't you and Paralus go find Alcibiades and invite him to dinner one of these nights?" she recommends. "I'm sure he'll have many wonderful stories to tell us of his journeys."

Pericles nods to both of his sons to approve the request. The young men rise, bow to their father and exit the chamber. Xanthippus walks with a quicker gait than his brother, who, trying to catch up to his brother asks, "Where will we find Alcibiades?"

"We'll start in the brothels, of course," Xanthippus replies, unwilling to slow down for Paralus. "Then move on to the chamber maids' quarters, if necessary."

When the doors to the Strategeion close behind the brothers, Pericles returns his attention to the priests, who continue to wait patiently as if the whole episode had never even happened.

"I will consider the matter and send you word when I have reached a decision," Pericles informs the priest.

"Thank you, sir," the priest says with a bow and leaves the chamber with his colleagues.

"That will be all for the evening, gentlemen," Pericles says to the handful of aides who remain. He collapses in his chair and massages his forehead. It's a rare public display of exhaustion from a man who prides himself on his boundless stamina. The sight sends his servants scurrying quickly for the door. Even Heron, sensing the archon's mood, seems anxious to leave, doing so without barraging Pericles with any of the numerous further matters that urgently require his attention.

When she is confident that they are alone, Aspasia quietly creeps up behind Pericles and wraps her arms around his neck, gently letting her check fall on the top of his head.

"I've heard them called 'cabbage-eaters' in the streets," Pericles confesses. "My own sons, considered no smarter than livestock!"

"It's merely satire from your enemies, dear," Aspasia says.

"It is kindness from my allies."

"The boys will learn to rise above the taunts."

"But their father never will," Pericles admits, turning his head to Aspasia. He sighs then once more buries his head in his hand. "And largely because the taunts are true."

"Pericles, please—"

"I have given them the finest tutors in Greece and they have learned nothing! Xanthippus is quick to start wars, but has no desire to fight them."

"But Paralus—"

"His mind is sharper, but he lacks the courage to reach conclusions, to say nothing of fighting for them."

"Perhaps Hipparete will help him discover his courage when they marry," Aspasia suggests, tilting Pericles' head back to kiss him on his forehead. "Women have been known to have that effect on men," she says with a guilty smile.

"One can only hope," Pericles concedes.

Aspasia walks around the chair and surrenders both of her hands to Pericles. He takes them and is instantly pulled from his seat. The two walk arm-in-arm out of the Strategeion.

"What about Alcibiades?" Aspasia asks.

Pericles laughs. "Alcibiades! He's a very worthy cause that will require a great deal of patience."

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ATHENS

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Paralus walks through the hallway of the brothel doing his best to ignore the ridiculous noises spilling out from under the compartment doors and trying not to breathe through his nose. The pungent sent of incense and perfume is strong enough to make his eyes water and the thought of just what kind of odor those fragrances are masking makes Paralus nauseous. He covers his nose and mouth with the collar of his tunic. The naked whores passing him in the hallway don't seem to take offense and assume he's merely trying to hide his identity.

It's the sixth brothel Paralus has visited this afternoon. Growing up, Paralus cared little for brothels. They were loud and filthy, two qualities that never appealed to him. He has ventured into several during the course of his life, usually to recover friends who had drunkenly drifted off to sleep, but never to avail himself of their services. This was also not the first time he had entered one looking for his brother Alcibiades, nor, did he assume, would it likely be the last.

Nevertheless, when Paralus reaches his destination, Room Nineteen, he pauses before knocking and allows his curiosity to get the best of him. He holds his breath and slowly places an ear up against the door to listen to what's occurring on the other side. A smile grows wider with each passing moment as Paralus bites the knuckle of an index finger to contain a giggle gestating just below the bottom of his rib cage.

On the other side of the door he can distinctly hear the sounds of his brother and no less than three other women enjoying vigorous carnal exercise. Paralus may not be as sexually experienced as most of his peers, but he is fairly certain that many of the ancillary noises he hears through the door are not conventionally associated with the deed. This only seems fitting to Paralus, as nothing about Alcibiades is ever conventional.

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When Paralus was just six years old his father welcomed Alcibiades, then only a year old himself, into his home and became the infant's guardian. Alcibiades' father, a close cousin of Pericles, died at the Battle of Coronea suppressing a revolt from the Boeotian states. Alcibiades' mother was so distraught that she succumbed to grief shortly thereafter.

Among most Athenian families this is where the story would end, but not among the Alcmaeonids. The family was the most powerful in Athens and had asserted its influence in governing the city for generations. Curiously enough, the Alcmaeonids were almost dynastically responsible for the evolution of Athenian democracy. A succession of leaders from the family dating back 100 years used the archonship to strip power from institutions and governing bodies run by the noble families of the city and invest it among common citizens.

It did not take long for Alcibiades to prove himself to be a unique child, even among a family of leaders. When he was only six years old he began wrestling much older boys at the gymnasium. On one such occasion his opponent kicked young Alcibiades in the mouth in an attempt to dislodge the young boy's hold on his other leg. This managed to leave an indentation of Alcibiades teeth on the older boy's skin. "You bite like a woman, Alcibiades!" he taunted, to the laughter of a large crowd of children watching the match.

Most children would cower as the jests of an older child, but Alcibiades would have none of it. He beat his chest, then charged the older boy yelling "I bite like a lion!" as loudly as he possibly could and set about proving the claim right then and there. The older boy was told that the ensuing scar would most likely be permanent. From an early age it was clear that a fire burned in Alcibiades absent in other men; and when it was properly harnessed the young boy would throw every last measure of his being into the task at hand.

As he grew up Alcibiades proved to be just as intelligent, resourceful, charming, industrious and competitive as he was mischievous, lascivious, lazy, handsome, and devious. He was also very popular. People naturally gravitated toward his charisma and wonton disregard for social conventions or others' expectations of him. He seemed to effortlessly rise above such nuisances, leaving that burden to lesser men.

To be sure, it was much easier to live life free of constraints when the archon of Athens provided him with a layer of immunity from both the law and the ill will of others. Other children of such privilege were dismissed as spoiled. Not Alcibiades. Even if he without the backing of his powerful guardian there was little doubt in most Athenians minds that he could talk his way out of any mischief, a talent which made his misadventures popular fodder for gossip. To curb the rumors inspired by their adopted son, Pericles and Aspasia thought it best for him to spend several months traveling Greece and see for himself what kind of misbehavior was tolerated abroad.

Now Alcibiades was back in Athens and eager to reacquaint himself with a few old friends.

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Paralus takes a moment to regain control of himself and when he's ready to proceed with a straight face he tentatively knocks on the door. From the other side of the door he hears Alcibiades' crisp baritone bellowing over the orgasmic groans of the women: "In another hour!" followed by much softer words that were clearly not meant for his ears: "If you kind ladies can last so long!"

Paralus almost loses his composure, but manages to suppress the unique awkwardness of the moment with a much harder series of knocks at the door.

"I said return later!" Alcibiades yells. Clearly knocking will not be enough.

"It's your brother, Paralus," he announces. "I bring an invitation from father."

Inside the room Alcibiades reluctantly pulls himself away from the trio of women he has been entertaining for much of the afternoon. He takes a seat at the foot of the bed and sighs as three pairs of feet temptingly coax him back to bed, pushing them away tenderly. Alcibiades rises from the bed and, without dressing, goes to answer the door.

"Yes, dear brother?" he says as the door opens.

Paralus is at once startled by Alcibiades' nakedness and the chorus of giggling coming from inside the room. "Um, welcome back, brother!" he begins, forgetting himself and his purpose for an instant. "I, ugh, hope your travels were uneventful?"

"Hardly, good Paralus!" Alcibiades replies with a bombastic confidence that diminishes Paralus' own. "My travels were hardly uneventful!"

Paralus tries to prevent himself from looking below Alcibiades waist, but his eyes betray him. "I see that," he lets slip before stuttering to correct himself. "I mean, father has hard—heard!—heard of your return and wishes to dine with you next week."

"Wonderful!" exclaims Alcibiades, oblivious to Paralus' wandering eyes. "I accept—humbly, of course. I planned on seeing the old man shortly after my arrival, but have been detained by some old friends."

His words are punctuated by more giggling and pleas to return to bed from inside the room. Paralus tries to peer around the door, desperate to discover what kind of creatures could tempt men with such sweet voices, but Alcibiades leans in toward him and whispers, "I'd invite you to join, brother, but I'm afraid there just isn't enough for the both of us!" Alcibiades slaps Paralus on the shoulder and turns back into the room with a flourish. "Ladies, where were we?" he yells as the door closes behind him.

For a brief moment, Paralus almost resumes listening at the doorway only to shake off the temptation. His message delivered, Paralus smiles and continues on his way. He doesn't manage to get far when he finds Xanthippus lounging on a bench just around a corner of the hallway. "Thank you for dispensing with that chore," Xanthippus says.

"He's not as bad as you pretend him to be," Paralus replies.

"No, he's far worse!"

Paralus simply ignores his brother and continues walking down the hallway, but Xanthippus leaps from his seat, catches up to his brother and slaps Paralus across the face. "Listen!" he orders, grabbing his younger brother by the collar. "This isn't a time for games! War is coming, Paralus. War with Sparta! Every fool knows that it's only a matter of when it happens, because when it does Athens will need strong men. Not wise men like father or charismatic men like Alcibiades or even rich men like your finance's father, but strong men."

Paralus rubs his cheek and tries to shake off the sting of his brother's slap. He wants none of Xanthippus' grandiose sermons. "Strong men who are afraid to deliver messages to their own brothers?" he asks.

The very word brother makes Xanthippus' face flush with rage. "Alcibiades is not my brother!" he growls through gritted teeth, before storming off down the hallway. Just as he reaches the exit, Xanthippus turns one last time to Paralus, still standing in a minor state of shock, and gives him one last piece of advice. "You'll see soon enough," he says. "Strength is the only language understood in Sparta."

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SPARTA

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On a normal day Lysander is an imposing physical creature—a twenty year old man with taut muscles incapable of being contained by most tunics—but as he circles his friend Gyllipus in the wrestling ring he looks malnourished, brittle and destined for imminent defeat. "C'mon!" he shouts at Gyllipus through the corner of his mouth. "What are you waiting for? Just be done with it!"

Gyllipus does not respond. He's much taller than Lysander, much heavier, much faster and much, much stronger. Gyllipus stands in the center of the ring waiting for Lysander to make his move. Lysander reaches for a grip around Gyllipus' legs, but the giant merely swats his hands away like overgrown flies. Lysander attempts another hold, this time around his opponent's waist, only to be pushed face first into the dusty ground at the edge of the ring. The crowd laughs and hollers as Lysander quickly springs back into an attack stance.

Overseeing the bout is Agis, son of King Archidamus, a leaner man who somehow manages to keep a regal bearing even as he pushes the encroaching crowd back to give the combatants room to maneuver. Lysander keeps his distance, side-stepping around the perimeter of the ring until he bumps into Agis, knocking him away with a stiff shove from a single arm without concerning himself with whom he is pushing. The poor prince falls and sits on the ground for a moment, his legs fully extended as he tosses his hands behind his head. "He's on his own, now!" Agis says, abdicating his official position and sending a ripple of laughter through the crowd.

Gyllipus, still holding the center of the ring, lowers his guard when he sees an attractive girl named Timaea walk through the surrounding mob. Not even sixteen years old yet, she's the daughter of a former ephor and a member of one of the most prominent families in the city, one that claims a lineage that extends all the way back to Helen of Troy herself. Timaea's all the proof that claim ever needs.

She quickly swallowed by crowd. Instinctually, Gyllipus leaves his position in the center and take a few steps toward the edge of the ring, blissfully ignoring his opponent. Lysander immediately notices the distraction and dives for Gyllipus, wrapping one arm around his waist and punching the back of his right knee with the other, sending him to the ground and rolling him on his back. Still seated at the edge of the ring Agis scrambles to center ready to end the match in the event of injury. The crowd gasps at the sudden change in fortunes, certain that a victory is in Lysander's clutches.

Yet all Lysander accomplishes is winning the undivided attention of the much stronger Gyllipus. With the force of pack mule, Gyllipus kicks Lysander off and sends him tripping backwards into the crowd. With a taunting roar the audience spits him back into the ring, right into Gyllipus' waiting arms. Gyllipus picks Lysander up with a bear hug only to fall to a knee and roll him over until Lysander lays immobile on his back, Gyllipus' enormous arm pushing down against his chest and slowly squeezing the air from his lungs.

"Nikeh!" Agis yells, waving his arms over his head and signaling the end of the match. The two wrestlers slowly break away from each other. Gyllipus pats Lysander on the back, a gesture of support for his defeated friend. He rises to his feet and takes in the audience's cheers before the crowd scatters around the hippodrome in search of other matches to watch.

Gyllipus hopes to catch another glimpse of Timaea, but before he can he feels Lysander's arm fall around his neck; only his friend isn't congratulating him: Lysander is leaning on him for support. "I don't know if I should hate you for beating me or thank you for letting me last as long as you did," he says. "Humor me while I rest for a while."

Lysander pushes Gyllipus with what little strength he can muster to a wooden bench adjacent to a well where the two take seats and began cupping handfuls of water from an idle bucket. Lysander is exhausted. Gyllipus is well-known among his fellow wrestlers for slowly wearing his opponents out while he methodically conserves his own energy, waiting to seize the perfect moment to catch the other wrestler off guard. Gyllipus ignores the water and continues to scan the crowd in search of Timaea.

"How many matches have you wrestled today?" Lysander asks. "Five? Six? How is it possible you can't be thirsty?" Gyllipus doesn't reply. "Gyllipus?" Lysander asks after another drink. "Gyllipus!" he yells again, this time snapping his fingers in front of his friend's face.

Gyllipus shakes his head involuntarily. "I'm sorry, you were saying something?"

"That's exactly what I mean!" Lysander says, tossing his hands in the air. "You had no focus until the very end of the match. A herd of elephants could have stampeded through the agora and you wouldn't have noticed until you stepped in mammoth shit."

"My apologies," Gyllipus offers, "my mind has been elsewhere."

Lysander shakes his head, disgusted with the ease by which he was dispatched, when a drunken farmer walks by carrying a skin of wine. "You there," Lysander bellows. The man turns to Lysander and points at his own chest. "Yes, you: come, and bring that wine here with you." The man does as he's told, his punch-drunk grin slowly inverting as he hands over the skin to Lysander. "Now off you go," Lysander says, dismissing the peasant with a wave of his hand.

Gyllipus glares at his friend.

"What?" Lysander says defensively. "Look at the poor bastard! He's had more than his fill tonight!"

"Leave him to his reward," Gyllipus advises. "It's all he has."

"Well, it's all I have now!" Lysander snickers as he puts the skin to his lips for another drink. Yet just as anticipates feeling the wine hit his lips, an arm reaches from behind him and grabs the flagon. "Hey!" Lysander yells, wine dribbling from the corners of his mouth. He rises from the bench and turns to investigate, ready to inflict a harsh justice on the thief, only to discover Agis guzzling the rest of the wine.

"You should be kinder to the helots, Lysander," the prince scolds, taking a seat on the end of the bench. "After all, they know where you sleep."

"I'm no more worried of their drunken retribution than Gyllipus is of losing to me in wrestling," Lysander replies.

"Then you both sleep well, I'm sure!" Agis laughs. The prince slaps Gyllipus on the shoulder. "Congratulations, old friend: You will do Sparta proud at the next Olympiad."

Gyllipus and Lysander exchange befuddled glances. "But only true Spartans can participate in the games, Agis," Gyllipus notes.

"And that's what I've come to talk to you about," Agis says, taking one last swig before throwing the empty skin over his shoulder. The prince examines the hippodrome conspiratorially. "But we can't speak here. Come: join me in the alley."

Agis stands up and walks through a crowd of dancing revelers, making his way to an alley adjacent to the far end of the hippodrome and disappears into its shadows. Lysander and Gyllipus shrug their shoulders and follow, carefully negotiating their way through the maze of wrestling matches, bonfires and drunken peasants until they too slip into the alley.

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The scene at the agora across town is much more solemn as the helots make the final preparations for the Festival of the Naked Youth. The Gymnopadeia, as it is known locally, is a festival unique to Sparta, one that does not honor a specific god's cult, but celebrates an ancient military defeat at the hands of the city of Argos through the spectacle a war dancing.

Each year the oldest students in the agoge, the compulsory military school every Spartan boy enters when he is seven years old, performs an elaborate choreographed routine that to demonstrate the virtues of Sparta: strength, organization, precision, and sacrifice. It's a notably martial affair, held under torch-light to the primal rhythm of drums, flickering shadows moving with a graceful agility that obscures the suggestion of murder on a mass scale. There is chest-pounding and stutter-stepping, balletic pirouettes that erupt into violent flailing of arms in every possible direction, charges into spectral enemy lines only seen vividly in the memories and imaginations of a perfectly silent audience of aging warriors.

By ancient custom, only married men are allowed to attend the festival and in Sparta no man can marry before he is thirty years old. Since the performers were still training in the agoge, which included almost all boys under the age of eighteen, the Gymnopadeia left hundreds of young Spartan men with little to occupy their attention for several days each year and over the years an unsanctioned wresting tournament organized by young Spartan men evolved as an alternative to the festival.

The city elders tolerated the tournament under several tacit conditions. The first was that only Spartans could compete. Helots and the perioikoi, free occupants of Spartan territory who did not enjoy the legal privileges or responsibilities of full Spartan citizens, were allowed to attend, but not to participate. The second condition was that the tournament never be named, nor trophies given to the champions, nor records kept of the winners. Lastly, the competition was in no way to interfere with the Gymnopadeia.

The Tournament Without a Name was an event that Gyllipus had always found curious. Nearly every aspect of its existence was an exception to the rule of Spartan law. Women are segregated from men during the typical course of any Spartan's day, but during the Tournament both sexes mingle freely; consuming alcohol is condoned and the strictly observed caste system of the city disappears in the revelry. Even the terms by which the elders permitted the event contained exceptions, as only the third condition was considered obligatory.

These were just several of many contradictions of Spartan society that frequently troubled Gyllipus. His ethical logic was very clear on the matter: Exceptions to rules lead to contradictions. Contradictions create hypocrisies. Hypocrisies are a weakness, and weakness leads to defeat. Yet at the same time, the Tournament seemed to bring out the very best in the city, almost as if the Sparta of myth and legend in a foreign land had sprang from the ground in a single afternoon. At no other time of the year did the city embrace youth, strength, equality and moderation so exemplary.

It was too much for Gyllipus to wrap his head around, especially after a long day of wrestling. Some of his contemporaries were quick to judge him to be as mentally weak as he was physically strong, but those who knew him best understood better. Gyllipus took his time contemplating ideas because he wanted to understand them on a deeper level than others, and he was about to be given a great deal to think about as he followed Agis' lead into the grim alley adjacent to the hippodrome.

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"I've spoken to the Ephori and they've agreed to allow you both to participate in the Crypteia," Agis says once his friends join him.

"How can that be?" Lysander asks.

"But we're not—" Gyllipus begins.

"Shhh!" Agis interrupts. "Save your breath! It no longer matters that you're a bastard, Lysander; or, Gyllipus, that your father disgraced his position in the king's court. Now you will both have a chance to reclaim your families' names."

"When do we begin?" Lysander asks anxiously.

"Patience, my friend!" Agis urges. "The Ephori are set to declare war on the helots shortly after the Gymnopadeia and when they do you will each have one week to kill a helot and bring back his ears."

"Agis," Gyllipus starts, "I don't understand: the law says that we're too old for the Crypteia."

"And there can always be exceptions made to the law," Agis replies, "even in Sparta."

"Thank you, Agis!" Lysander says, hugging the prince. "I never doubted you!"

"Of course, you did, you miserable bastard!" Agis says through a knowing grin as he returns the embrace. "I must attend to the rest of the tournament. Go! The both of you celebrate your victories tonight! The gods be with you!" the prince says, just before he scurries from the alley.

"And with you as well!" Lysander echoes.

The friendship shared between the three young men would have only been possible in Sparta, where all men were famously equal in the eyes of the law. They had entered the agoge fifteen years earlier marked by stigmas in the eyes of the other boys: Lysander was a mothrax, a bastard born of a Spartan father and helot mother. Gyllipus' father, Cleandridas, had been an advisor to the King, but exiled from Sparta for accepting a bribe from Pericles on the very day Gyllipus began his training. Agis was seen as receiving special treatment from the instructors by virtue of being the prince, so his peers took it upon themselves to mete out harsh treatment of their own. Over time, those stigmas vanished, but their early alliance persisted.

Lysander could not be more thrilled at the news. It's the moment he's waited for his entire life, the moment when he finally receives the acceptance into Spartan society he craves. "He actually did it, Gyllipus! Agis actually got us positions in the Crypteia!" Lysander says, embracing Gyllipus.

"He is the heir to the throne, Lysander," Gyllipus replies, patting his friend on the back with a stoic measure of reserve. "Such a position carries great influence."

"But he's been promising us the Crypteia since we were children," Lysander notes jubilantly.

"I must confess: my doubts were as frequent as they appear to be unjustified," Gyllipus says.

The two men start walking back to the hippodrome just as the sun starts its passage through the horizon, illuminating the wrestling matches and igniting Lysander's blue eyes the way sunlight reflects off the surface of calm waters. "Do you know what this means? No more hungry nights! No more stealing food! We will finally be able to leave the barracks and take up in a real home. We may never have to set foot in another filthy brothel ever again!"

Gyllipus stops walking and looks at his friend from the tops of his eyes. "And you know whores who make house calls?"

"Not yet!" Lysander quips. Gyllipus smiles at the joke and continues walking morosely through the alley. "What's the matter, Gyllipus? Why are you so glum? I thought you would welcome the news?"

Indeed, Gyllipus expected as much from himself, as well; but the moment Agis told him the news, Gyllipus suddenly felt empty. His journey is different from Lysander's: he is not climbing Sparta's social strata, but seeking to return to what he believes was his rightful place among the elite. His friendship with Agis and Lysander may have sustained him during the most trying portions of the agoge, but it's the resentment and bitterness he feels for being punished for the sins of his father that motivates him.

Such introspection is rare among Spartans, who regard it as selfishness. It's a quality Gyllipus exposes to others selectively, refusing to reveal it to even Agis or Lysander. "You would happily exchange the life of a helot for the comfort of a traveling whore?" Gyllipus asks, hoping to change the subject.

Lysander scoffs. "Is that what this is all about? The precious lives of the helots? It's been this way for 200 years, Gyllipus. The law is the law." Gyllipus remains silent. "They're little more than slaves, Gyllipus! Serfs, really. They're lucky we don't dash them against the rocks like we do feeble and weak newborns."

"They?" Gyllipus stresses for his friend. "Haven't you always been one yourself? Don't you still call many of them friends? And you would still kill one for personal gain?"

"Not for personal gain," Lysander says, "but because the law requires it. The law is what makes us Spartans, Gyllipus. Without it, we're just Greeks. Besides, you will be doing the helot you kill a favor."

"And how is that?" Gyllipus begs.

"By sparing him the monotony of toiling in the fields day after day until his hands are only good for counting," Lysander answers.

Lysander's animosity for his origins is nothing new. He has never made any secret of his loathing for the helots, even at a very young age. Years ago, most who knew him believed these expressions were merely his way of compensating for his low birth, a way of demonstrating to others that he belonged in the upper echelons, but as he grew older his opinions only hardened and left no doubt to any one ins Sparta that Lysander genuinely despised the helots.

Gyllipus shakes his head at his friend's answer as the two men reach the end of the alley and the hippodrome sprawls out before them. He scans through the crowd and once more finds Timaea ignoring a near-by wrestling match to dance with her helot servant, a beautiful girl just a few years older named Ismene. Gyllipus can almost hear her laughter as she spins around, the folds of her chiton whirling above her thighs.

Lysander unwittingly enjoys the same sight, concentrating his steely leer on Ismene as her body moves along side Timaea's. She is, without question, a beautiful woman in her own right. In Lysander's eyes she stands taller than the other helot women. Her muscles are leaner and tauter, as if she were the descendent of a fugitive Amazon.

"Besides," Lysander continues, his gaze still fixed on Ismene, "the Crypteia also has its unmentioned benefits, old friend."

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SPARTA

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"Sire?" asks Autocrates, an Ephor sitting across the table. "Do you have any thoughts on the matter?"

King Archidamus sits at a table in the meeting room of the Gerousia, the gathering place of the city legislature, surrounded by the Ephori, the five man council responsible for day-to-day governance of Sparta. His whiskers turned white ages ago, long before he had fought his last battle and he appears much older than his seventy years. Beneath his tunic is a body vandalized by scars, cuts, bruises and welts acquired over decades of leading men into battle. Yet despite his injuries the king's body is spry and his mind remains sharp, even when his attention is held captive for hours on end by the Ephori and the obligations of his office.

He strokes his chin contemplatively and shakes his head.

"Good," Autocrates says, "that leaves us with only one final matter on the agenda."

"That would be the Crypteia," Sthenelaidas growls. The other Ephori fidget nervously in their seats, expecting the worse. Though not a man of exceptional physical stature, Sthenelaidas casts an intimidating shadow over the others. He's the eldest of the Ephori, the most prickly personality and, most problematically, the most politically cunning of any of the men seated at the table. Sthenelaidas' reputation is as a man who gets his way eventually, even if it means slowly and methodically grinding his opposition into submission. Even his principle ally, Aristeus, visibly braces himself for a bureaucratic slog. "I recommend we declare war on the helots immediately after the Gymnopadeia."

"This is a discussion that can wait until next week," suggests Echemenes, a plump man of almost sixty years still blessed with a shock of white hair. "We don't want the festivities to last until dawn as they did last year." The King and Ephori groan at the memory of the previous year's interminable festivities.

Sthenelaidas, however, is not given to the fit of nostalgia. "Do you think they would start the festival without us?" he asks Echemenes.

"Of course, not!" Echemenes replies.

"Though they are certainly welcome to do so!" interjects Daiochos, an Ephor known for moderating his otherwise blunt opinions with humor to make them more palatable. The room briefly trembles with laughter.

"I only wish to see the Gymnopadeia end at a reasonable hour," appends Echemenes.

"Then grant me just a few moments to give the Ephori something to consider before our next meeting," Sthenelaidas asks.

King Archidamus and the Ephori all glance at Echemenes, tacitly giving him their approval to make the decision on his own. It's an inherently risky proposition: Sthenelaidas has a reputation for rapidly changing men's opinions through the sheer force of his will alone, but Echemenes determines that the king and rest of the Ephori are just as anxious to leave as he and sees little danger in extending the meeting by a few minutes. "Very well, Sthenelaidas: you have the floor," Echemenes says.

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All Spartan citizens are professional soldiers, and just like members of any other trade they spend their days honing their craft training and drilling and perfecting their skills. It's a way of life that leaves little time to pursue other interests, even those essential to the basic maintanence of human life: there are no farmers, no bakers, and no carpenters in Sparta. Only soldiers.

Nevertheless, every city needs farmers and bakers and carpenters, even Sparta. Since ancient times the solution to this shortage of labor have been the helots, a slave class of peasants scattered throughout the Peloponnesian countryside principally responsible for supporting the city. The helots are not unlike other slaves in Greece: they possess no legal protections and are considered the property of their masters; in this case, the city of Sparta. Their lives are cruel, repetitious and typically short.

But in one respect the helots were considerably different from other slaves: they maintained a unique point of leverage against their masters in that their numbers were vastly superior to those of the legal Spartan citizens to whom they serve.

The city of Sparta proper, where most of the 10,000 Spartans reside, is located in the Euratos River valley and alone cities in Greece has no walls. One explanation for this peculiarity is that the valley and adjacent slopes of Mount Taygetus provide the city with a series of natural defenses against invasion. (The more frequently shared reason, however, is that Spartan shields and spears serve as the city's walls—a concept which should demonstrate that the Lacedaemonians were as gifted in the art of propaganda as they were in the art of combat.) Consequently, the city sprawled across the countryside throughout most of the Peloponnesian peninsula, its limits never really being defined concretely. This was home to well over 100,000 helots.

In other words, Lacedaemonia was a region in a state of perpetual occupation and under constant threat of rebellion. It was a living condition unthinkable anywhere else in the known world, but one relished in Sparta as a way to keep the city's warriors vigilant and disciplined.

The Spartans use a variety of measures to prevent insurrections and keep the population pacified. Helots are banned from keeping or training with weapons. Large gatherings are prohibited, save only during religious festivals. Men work long hours, every day of the week and are left with little desire or energy to revolt. The only compensation helots ever receive for a day's labor is a nightly serving of alcohol large enough to make them forget about any grievances. Even young boys still training in the agoge are sent out to steal helot food and spy on their movements from time to time.

The harshest strategy Spartans use to keep the helots in line is the Crypteia. Since the helots are considered property of the state, killing one is considered a crime against the city. Nevertheless, every autumn, after the Gymnopadeia, the Ephori declare war on the helots and send the most promising graduating students of the agoge out into the fields under the cover of night with orders to kill. Completing the mission is a prerequisite for consideration to every political and military leadership position in Sparta. Those who fail are flogged mercilessly in the agora. The Ephori's declaration is little more than a legal distinction immunizing each young Spartan from charges of murder.

The Crypteia serves two distinct purposes. The first is to harden young Spartan soldiers for a lifetime of combat. If a young man is willing to kill for his city, then he will also be willing to die for it. The second was to create the illusion among the helots that they were constantly being watched and the possibility that any agitation against their masters would be met with immediate retribution.

As a safeguard against rebellion, the Crypteia had worked for hundreds of years. The last slave revolt had been thirty years earlier, and only after an earthquake leveled most of Sparta. By Sthenelaidas judgment, a revolt was due.

₪₪₪₪₪

"I've been receiving reports from patrols and hunting parties who have found evidence of large helot meetings in the woods to the north," Sthenelaidas informs the king and Ephori.

"This is the first I've heard of any such gatherings," Autocrates admits.

"That's because they never use the same place twice," Sthenelaidas continues. "These rendezvous points have become easier to find as they've become more numerous and larger."

"Larger?" Daiochos asks.

"Yes, larger," Sthenelaidas confirms. "They also appear to be developing a crude form of organization and leadership structure."

King Archidamus leans back into his chair and strokes the whiskers of his beard. "Is this why you want to begin the Crypteia so early this year, Sthenelaidas?"

"Yes, your highness."

"Are you not worried about how such a move will be interpreted by the Athenians?" asks Archidamus

"The thought had occurred to me, your majesty, yes; but I believe Sparta's internal security is a higher priority."

"What does everyone else think?" the king asks.

"It's possible to mitigate any negative reaction abroad," Aristeus begins, "especially if our ambassadors are in positions to respond quickly to any inquiries..."

The Ephori continue to comment and ask questions, but Archidamus does not listen. The king looks across the table at the Sthenelaidas attentively nodding his head to the rhythms of each speaker. Archidamus has known him long enough to detect he is concealing an ulterior motive.

The doors to the Gerousia chamber open quietly. Agis slips through them and enters the room with polite nods to each of the Ephors before resting a hand on his father's shoulder. Archidamus looks up and smiles at the sight of the prince. Agis finds an unoccupied chair resting against the wall and moves it right next to the king before whispering into his father's ear: "Another late meeting?"

"Why should this one be any different?" Archidamus whispers back.

"What are you discussing today?"

"When to declare war on the helots," the king replies. "Sthenelaidas wants to do it soon."

"And is he wrong? I don't see anything wrong with doing so."

"That may not be the point."

"How so?"

"I'll explain la—"

"Is there something you'd like to share, your highness?" Sthenelaidas asks from across the table.

Archidamus smirks at the condescending tone used by the Ephor. "My son was just telling me that he agrees with you."

"I always thought he was a smart boy," Sthenelaidas replies to light laughter from the others in the room.

"Well, he must know more about the matter than I do, in any event," says Archidamus, "because I'm afraid we will have to wait for at least another month before beginning the Crypteia."

"And why is that?" asks Daiochos.

"The omens say this winter will be long and harsh," says Archidamus.

"We can always buy more grain from Egypt," notes Aristeus.

"Not if war starts before the spring," the king objects. "The first thing the Athenian navy will do is take control of the trade routes."

"There's no question she'll own the Aegean, your majesty, but in the waters south of Crete?" Sthenelaidas objects.

"They'll move their fleets the instant Pericles hears of hunger in Sparta," predicts Echemenes.

"Then we'll go to Sicily for our grain," Sthenelaidas suggests. "The Athenians will be stretched too thin to control both the Aegean and the Ionian Seas."

"Gentlemen," the kings interjects calmly as the discussion's volume begins to increase.

"Have you been to Piraeus lately?" Daiochos asks Sthenelaidas. "The shipyards fill with workers before dawn and remain open well after dusk."

"Gentlemen," the king tries again, this time with a hint of reprimand to his voice.

"Daiochos is right," Autocrates says. "The Athenians just might be foolish enough to try to hold both seas—"

"And if there's any navy capable of doing so it would be—" interrupts Echemenes, only to be himself cut short by the king.

"Gentlemen!" Archidamus yells, finally winning the silence and attention of the Ephori. "This is clearly a discussion that deserves more time than we have tonight. I suggest we all retire to the Gymnopadeia, consider the matter at our own leisure and then return to the matter first thing next week. Does anyone object?"

The entire table turns their heads to Sthenelaidas. He smirks, closes his eyes and shakes his head begrudgingly.

"Then we are adjourned," Autocrates declares, rising from his seat.

Archidamus nods to the rest of the Ephori and leaves the chamber with Agis by his side. Daiochos, Autocrates and Echemenes follow not far behind, already deep into a discussion regarding the merits of a proposed purchase of a dozen wagons from neighboring Mycenae. Aristeus and Sthenelaidas, however, remain seated in their chairs and do not show any sign of leaving.

When the Gerousia falls completely silent, Aristeus shakes his head. "That did not go well," he says.

"No, it did not," Sthenelaidas replies, rising from the table and walking over to a window where he sees Archidamus and Agis walking down the street.

"He doesn't want to go to war."

"No, he doesn't."

"Perhaps we can convince him through Agis?" Aristeus suggests. "He seemed to side with you during the meeting."

"Only because his father hadn't given the prince his opinion first," Sthenelaidas says through a condescending chuckle. "No, that boy is a fortress of misguided filial piety."

"Then Archidamus will need a push."

"He will," Sthenelaidas agrees as he steps away from the window and walks back to the table. "And I think I know just how to give it to him."

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Seven hundred years earlier, four brothers, each the great-great-grandsons of the great hero Heracles, commanded an invasion of the Peloponnesus against Tisamenus, the last Archaean king of the peninsula. Upon victory, the brothers agreed to divide the Peloponnesus into four parts only to learn that one of the brothers, Aristodemus, was killed in battle. The brothers gave Aristodemus' twin sons Sparta. Not knowing which boy should rule the city the twins' mother consulted the Oracle at Delphi, who declared that both sons should be made kings. Those twin boys would sire Sparta's two royal dynasties: the Agaids and the Eurypontids.

By the time of the Persian invasion, Spartan kings had ceded much of their political power to a number of democratically elected bodies, including the Ephori; but retained command of the Spartan military. When the army marched to war, one king led the Spartans abroad while the other remained at home. Most soldiers served under both kings during the course of their service and the competition to win the soldiers' loyalty was often fierce was usually won by the older or more experienced commander.

Archidamus ascended to the Eurypontid throne when he was just twenty years old after his grandfather, Leotychidas, was exiled after being bribed to spare the lives of a prominent family in Thessaly who had collaborated with the Persian invaders. He was young, had no one to trust and was mortified of failure.

But the king learned quickly, largely thanks to a succession of avaricious, yet incompetent, occupiers of the Agiad throne. The first of these was Pausanias, who conspired to betray Sparta to the Persians and was eventually forced to starve to death after being walled inside a temple. His treachery was so brazen and poorly orchestrated that most cities in Greece flocked to Athens in search of post-invasion leadership, a set-back for Spartan influence in the region that lasted nearly a decade. Pausanias was good for very little, but learning from and competing with him made Archidamus a more astute student of politics and better king.

Agis will not have the luxury of a similar foil when he becomes king. His royal education comes from his father alone. To be sure, this has always been a more optimal arrangement in the king's eyes, but as Archidamus enters the twilight of his life he naturally worries about who will continue the job, especially since the most difficult lessons have yet to be taught.

By nearly all accounts, opinions and measures the prince is a popular, genuine, strong and courageous young man. Were he destined for any other occupation he would surely secure for himself a happy and prosperous life; yet because he will someday be king each of those qualities that fathers strive so hard to instill in their sons also become liabilities. Politics is little more than building, maintenance and management of relationships. Agis has proven to be quite adept at creating and keeping friends, but he has yet to learn how to coldly sacrifice them, when self-preservation trumps the greater good and why fear is frequently a better strategy than love—lessons no father should have to teach their son, but which every king must teach their successors if they want them to succeed or, in many cases, simply to survive because the greatest threats to a king's reign and life do not come from abroad, but from within.

The king knows that these lessons will fundamentally change his relationship with his son. He knows that he will be training his son to distrust everyone Agis has ever loved and ever will love, including himself; but it's for the prince's own good. Ever since the current Agiad king, Pleistoanax, was ostracized for bribery fifteen years earlier, the only king in Sparta has been Agis' father—and this is about to change.

₪₪₪₪₪

Archidamus and Agis walk down the street between the Gerousia and the agora in silence, the king's head bowed and holding his hands behind his back. "You know we'll be at war soon, son," Archidamus finally says.

"I do, father, yes," Agis responds.

"This one will be different," the king muses. "I'll be here for it's beginning, but I won't be on this Earth to see its end."

"Father, don't be—"

"And I'll one of the lucky ones, son. There will be thousands of men who will be born and will die knowing nothing in their short lives but this war."

"Then I'll pray to the gods they are all Spartans," Agis says stoically.

Archidamus looks to the prince with a smile, pats Agis on the shoulder and leans in closer to his ear. "When the war does begin, every man in Sparta will have an opinion how it should be conducted. It won't just be the Ephori or the Gerousia—everyone will tell us where to send soldiers, which cities to ally ourselves with, when to stop for meals during a march and on and on and on. Most such advice you can ignore, some you will have to pretend to consider; but there are a few men's words you will have to take seriously, even if you disagree with them."

"You're talking about Sthenelaidas, aren't you?" the prince asks.

"I am."

"So he was right about holding the Crypteia early this year?"

"Not necessarily, though I may back him in the end."

"But what's the point of supporting him if he's wrong?"

"Sthenelaidas believes that Athenian spies are living among the helots and training them to fight so that when the war does start they will rebel against us. If Sthenelaidas is correct, then we will be telling the Athenians we are aware of their presence among in the Peloponnesus by holding the Crypteia early this year. They might become more eager to start the war before their influence with the helots is broken."

"Is he correct?"

"The only evidence he has are the remains of a few campfires in caves, and that hardly qualifies as proof."

"So he's wrong?"

"The gods help us if he is," Archidamus says somberly. "The helots are organizing, that much we know for a fact. The only question is if they are doing so alone or with help from abroad. The Athenians will help them only so far and so long as they are useful to them, but if the helots are organizing themselves we will have a committed enemy in our midst for some time to come."

Agis continues to walk down the street in silence, visibly trying to absorb the weight of his father's words.

"Sthenelaidas is shrewder than the other Ephors, Agis. As soon as he feels that I am of no use to him he will find someone who will be. You will have to give way to men like him on insignificant issues to remind them that you are useful to them. This will allow you to deny them on much more important matters without them abandoning you entirely."

The prince turns to his father with a confused expression on his face. "But you the king, father! None of the Ephori are going to abandon you," Agis says.

"My spies in Argos tell me Sthenelaidas has met with Pleistoanax several times in the last few months. The only possible reason he would do so is to help arrange a return to Sparta." Archidamus sighs. "It's been fifteen years since I've spoken to the man, Agis. That's fifteen years he's probably spent laying on soft lounges in Argos, growing fat from his hosts' feasts, passing the days with wine and whores. He'll be weak. He'll have forgotten to be a Spartan. Pleistoanax won't be back for the sake of the city."

"What will he be back for?" Agis asks.

"Himself. He'll be back for power," Archidamus says scornfully. "Do you remember why he was exiled in the first place?"

The prince shakes his head.

"He took a bribe from Pericles, and any man who takes a bribe once is likely to do it again. We can not allow Pleistoanax to return to the Agiad throne. His mere presence in Sparta diminishes my power, and eventually yours, in this city."

"But the law says—"

Archidamus stops walking, places both hands on his son's shoulders and looks Agis directly in the eyes. "I know what they law says. I also know what it's like to command men when another king spends his every waking hour lurking in the shadows trying to undermine my authority. There's no need for two kings of Sparta any longer, Agis, and we have a brief window of opportunity to consolidate the power of both dynasties into one. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Agis nods, but his wide eyes suggest otherwise.

"You must never cede power to another man, Agis. If you do, others will swarm you and strip you of the rest like vultures peel putrid flesh from corpses. It doesn't matter how you came about power in the first place. No ones care if you earned it or inherited it, but people will care if you lose it." The king removes his hands from his son's shoulders and continues walking to the agora. "The sooner this war begins, the sooner Pleistoanax is likely to return," Archidamus says, "and we have to do everything in our power to make sure that doesn't happen."

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ATHENS

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Callias never thinks twice about entering the Bouleuterion through the rear door, which by custom is reserved strictly for elected members of the Athenian Council.

More importantly, no one ever dares question his ability to do so.

At only twenty-nine years of age, Callias has already carved himself an impressive military career from the prestigious name his father Hipponicus gave him. He was the youngest division commander in the army and when his advancement was stymied by a lack of conflict his father convinced Pericles to appoint him as the archon's personal liaison to the legislature. It was a duty Callias had grown quite fond of and good at over the years; so good, in fact, that he thought about abandoning his military career for one in politics each time he entered the building.

Walking into the Bouleuterion, Callias realizes immediately that he's chosen the perfect day to conduct his business. Standing in the well of the chamber is a councilman of no significance from a neighborhood no one cares about droning on monotonously about a matter that will be forgotten by dinner time. His audience reflects the stature of the poor speaker: only a sparse showing of councilmen scattered throughout the seats of the chambers, each engaging in more pressing matters like private correspondence or leisure reading. The emptiness of the chamber reminds Callias that he could easily maintain both a military career and one in politics.

No sooner does he set foot in the building then Callias recognizes the reason for his visit. Standing in the wing of the well of the chambers was a portly parliamentarian named Bias carefully scrutinizing a scroll as the councilman spoke. Legally, Bias was responsible for setting and maintaining the Council's agenda without prejudice, but in practice he was no more impartial than any other man.

"Orders from the Archon," Callias whispers, taking care to hand Bias a small roll of paper in a manner that none of the councilmen could see.

Bias sets the scroll down on his podium and backs into the shadows to review his instructions. "More warships?" he says. "I suppose I could find a place on the agenda for this request, but as you can see the docket is quiet full at the moment and time for debate may not free up until after the Game lion at the very earliest."

Callias sighs: the Gamelion was not for another six months. He reaches into the folds of his robes, pulls out a small bag of coins and hands it to Bias.

"Tell Pericles he'll have the funds by the end of the week!"

The two step out of the shadows to observe the machinations of the Council from the wing of the well. Callias quickly takes stock of the councilmen in attendance and shakes his head with exaggerated disappointment. They are a sorry lot: not a nobleman among them, mostly minor aristocrats and self-made men from the burgeoning Athenian merchant class, seizing a rare opportunity to speak before their colleagues while the most powerful members of the body were elsewhere. A hundred years earlier and the seats of the Bouleterion would have been filled by the most powerful men in Athens, every last one of them clawing and scraping at one another in hopes of becoming Archon. Now those same seats are occupied by pliant men who support Pericles largely because they owe their offices and entre into Athenian high society, to him.

"I don't think I recognize any of these councilmen," Callias observes.

"Nor would the people who elected them, I'm sure," Bias rejoins, his attention now focused back on the scroll at the lectern. "None of the men here today wield much power, if any."

"Then what are they doing here?"

Bias shrugs and peers at Callias through the corners of his eyes. "Escaping their wives, perhaps?"

Callias grins as he continues to inspect the motley assortment of legislators strewn across the seats until he arrives at a thin man with graying hair furiously shuffling through papers in the very last row. Callias leans in closer and squints hoping a change of perspective might help him recall the man's name. It does not. (Despite his position, and much to his own secret shame, Callias has a difficult time identifying many of even the most consequential councilmen.)

"Is that one also a new member of the council?" he asks, subtly nodding in the man's direction for Bias' benefit.

"Who, Cleon? Good gods, no! He's been on the council for four, five years now."

"I've never seen him before. Is he one of ours?"

"If he is, then I have forgotten if Pericles' coins pay for his vote or for his silence. Regardless, I do know his silver mines in Thrace keep him well-fed and away from most of the Boule's business." Bias pauses and scratches his scalp as if troubled by thought. "Come to think of it, I haven't the slightest idea what he's doing here now."

Callias slaps the paunchy parliamentarian on the shoulder and exits down the corridor. "The work of the people, old friend!"

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ATHENS

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"But enough about my husband Cleon," Theresa said to her companions, pausing only briefly for another sip of wine. "I didn't bring you here to talk politics!"

"And why not?" objected Ianessa. "It's so much nicer to do so when our husbands aren't around to dismiss our opinions out of hand."

The two women both glanced at Dorothea, herself in the middle of taking a sip from her chalice, but she waved off their concerns. "Don't stop on my account, Theresa. I've only been in Athens for two months now and still have so much to learn. It should be quite easy to do so from women with husbands on the council."

"You taught your cousin to flatter well, Ianessa!" Theresa complemented.

"I know! Won't she go far?"

The women giggle as servant girls refresh their drinks and melts away into the ornate decor of the portico. Theresa takes a moment to inspect Dorothea: she's young, no older than twenty-five judging by the fullness of her hair and smoothness of her skin, and the way she reclines comfortably in her chaise lounge suggests a woman with experience sitting for sculptors or painters, which Theresa determines is a sign of confidence. Dorothea mentioned a husband when she was introduced by Ianessa at the door, but Theresa has already forgotten his name, a rare lapse in etiquette for one of Athens' premier hostesses.

Theresa's portico is an essential stop along the socialite circuit for any new arrival wishing to bask in the good graces of the city's aristocracy. As a younger woman, Theresa had been a hetaerae, a courtesan who accompanies the unmarried men of the ruling class to public events. The women were famous for their beauty, wit and charm; but Theresa stood out among her colleagues for her unique cunning and ambition.

At first, her reputation only made her more desirable among the city's political class. Powerful men, men who commanded legions of soldiers, fleets of ships and ruled over their respective districts like their own personal fiefdoms, sought her companionship. Any man in Athens could bring a pretty young woman capable of reciting amusing anecdotes to a party for the right price; but a confidant, an ally and a partner in the pursuit of power was rare.

Then, like a style of dress that had fallen out of favor, Theresa disappeared from the Athenian social scene. She re-emerged shortly thereafter as the wife of a successful, albeit unknown, businessman. Many of her old associates were puzzled by the decision, viewing the marriage as a step down in social status, but Theresa knew better. She used her time spent hanging on the arms of the city's elite to observe their customs, learn the rules of their games, and discover their vulnerabilities.

In Athens the only way for women to attain power is through a male proxy, and men who spend their entire lives practicing politics know better than to surrender so much as a hint of power to anyone, especially to a woman. In the past, women had only their brothers or fathers to advance their causes, but after the recent influx of affluence Athens is teeming with self-made men who care little for traditions designed to impede their own social mobility. Theresa needed a husband she could manipulate without him being conscious of her influence and the burgeoning Athenian merchant class was full of unwitting men whose new-found prosperity demanded an equally extravagant mate.

Theresa and Dorothea could swap stories of their respective pasts, as custom dictates guests and hosts should do upon meeting for the first time, but she looks at Dorothea and sees only a younger version of herself. She can tell just by looking at her guest that they have traveled similar paths, want the same things and have learned many of the same lessons to such an extent that Theresa can feel Dorothea measuring her at precisely the same moment Theresa takes stock of Dorothea. Yet while idle small talk was perhaps not necessary, a certain charade was until Theresa knew more about her mysterious guest from abroad.

"My husband Cleon may serve on the council but he has no more power than a vendor in the agora," she admits with false modesty.

"Is that because all Athenians cast lots of equal worth?" Dorothea asks.

"If only we did!" groans Ianessa, playfully raising her wrist to her forehead to mimic a swoon as the others giggle.

"No, my dear," Theresa continues, setting her cup down on the ground. "It's because Athens is no more a democracy than I am Helen of Troy. The only power in this city belongs to Pericles."

"Really?" Dorothea exclaims. "The man is a tyrant?"

"Strictly speaking, he's not a tyrant. Archons have been elected in Athens for—my, what is it now, two hundred years?" Ianessa asks, turning her head to Theresa, who nods silently as she swallows her wine. "But no matter what anyone else tells you, Pericles wields the power of a tyrant."

Dorothea sits silently with a puzzled expression on her face. Theresa leans back in her chair and examines the contours of her face from the corner of her eye, but can't determine if Dorothea is genuinely confused, merely thinking or is acting as such.

"It's all about appearances, dear," Theresa says with a hint of condescension. "Pericles spent his entire tenure as archon reforming the laws, taking power away from the city's elite and giving it to ordinary citizens."

"What's wrong with that?" Dorothea asked.

"What's wrong is that the people have been so thankful to be thrown the scraps from the aristocracy's table that they don't even realize that what they have been given is worthless," Theresa explains. "They simply nod their heads each time Pericles asks for their approval."

"You'll have to forgive her, cousin," Ianessa begs, gently draping her hand on Dorothea's elbow. "Poor Theresa's spent all of her life trying to enter the aristocracy only to discover it was vanishing once she finally made it."

"Ianessa, you saucy bitch!" Theresa says through a laughs.

Ianessa stares listlessly into her cup and swirls the wine around the sides. "It's a shame, really. The aristocracy builds this magnificent city only to have it handed over to the rabble—where's the justice in that?"

Dorothea smiles, but remains serious. "But I am curious: why does it mean so much to you? Clearly Pericles' reign has served your husband well, what grievances could you possibly have?"

"Who said anything about grievances? Is it not natural to simply want more?" Theresa asks with a grin. "The aristocracy simply wants more than the people. Money and power doesn't make us the aristocracy, but ambition does.

Ianessa lens forward in her chair and opens her mouth, but closes it and shrinks back into her seat once Theresa a glares at her from the corner of her eye.

Dorothea smiles again. "I sense you two share knowledge of a long story?"

"Then you sense correctly," Theresa confirms.

"Theresa here doesn't get along with Pericles'—um, what do we call her, again?"

"His mistress, his concubine, his courtesan... that scabrous whore who pulls the archon's strings like a marionette," Theresa says, matter-of-factly.

"Her name is Aspasia," Ianessa clarifies. "Most of the women in Athens don't care for her, but Theresa has a unique disdain for the woman."

"And why is that?" Dorothea asks, taking conspicuous pains not to appear to intrusive.

"As you just said," Theresa explains, "it's a long story, and a trifle compared to the disagreements I have with her husbands vision for Athens."

"And what are those?" Dorothea asks, taking a sip of wine. "Do you think the aristocracy would serve the city better?"

"The aristocracy would never waste money on trinkets for the people like temples and festivals and roads—"

"Now Theresa, you must admit that even the Parthenon is a stunning sight behold," Ianessa interrupts.

"No, I don't," Theresa replies. "I think one a dozen Parthenons is a stunning sight, but a single Parthenon is waste of money."

"I don't understand?" Dorothea leads.

"Imagine how much wealthier we would all be if we spent the all the money Pericles allocated to statues and fountains and maintaining the long walls and spent it on ships? Imagine how fear Athens would be if our navy was twice the size she is today. There wouldn't be a city in Greece that would deny us tribute."

"Even Sparta?" Dorothea asks coyly.

"Especially Sparta!" Theresa bellows. "I don't know why Greeks are so afraid of the Spartans. They gods gave them one talent: death. They die willingly and courageously, but they still die and as long as they remain mortals they can still be defeated."

Ianessa turns to her cousin. "Theresa likes to say that if her husband were archon, we would not be going to war tomorrow, but concluding the war today," she says.

"Then your husband should lead the opposition," Dorothea says.

"What opposition?" Ianessa asks sarcastically before finishing the rest of her drink.

"Is there none?" Dorothea asks.

"There hasn't been opposition to Pericles since Cimon and that was—what, fifteen years ago?" Theresa asks.

"I find that very hard to believe," Ianessa says. "No one has tried to rally the aristocracy together in opposition."

"That's exactly what Cimon tried to do," Ianessa explains.

"And what happened to him?"

"He died in exile," Theresa answers.

"Well, of course, he did!" Dorothea laughs. "He was wasting his time talking to noblemen when he should have been winning the hearts of the people, convincing them it was in their best interest to hand over their power to an aristocracy."

"And what makes you think the citizenry would renounce their own power and authority?" asks Theresa.

"Because it's worthless, you said so yourself," replies Dorothea.

"Not to them, it isn't," Ianessa insists. "They'd keep their lots just to spite the rich."

"Perhaps," Dorothea muses, "but not when their lives are at stake."

"But, cousin, I don't see when—" Ianessa begins, only to be cut off by her host.

"I do," Theresa interrupts, staring directly at Dorothea and finally seeing her for the first time that evening. "Pericles has never been fond of war—"

"Nor very good at it, for that matter," Ianessa interjects. "Remember that fellow from Samos? Melissus, I think his name was? The man defeats Pericles twice at sea then promptly runs off to Sicily to become a vintner or a shepherd or something of negligible conseque—"

Theresa and Dorothea roll their eyes simultaneously at Ianessa's interruption. "But the people are fond of war," Theresa resumes, "and they always want more. Yesterday they wanted power and Pericles gave it to them, so they follow him today; but tomorrow they will want victory and thereafter they will follow whoever gives it to them."

"See?" Dorothea says, taking another sip of wine. "The people aren't so different from you and I after all—they might even be a little more ambitious."

Theresa grins at Dorothea then turns to her friend. "Well, Ianessa, it looks like I should be the one learning from your cousin!" she says. "Tell me, Dorothea, how long will you be staying in Athens?"

"As long as my husband Thrasymachus is able to find work," she replies.

"And what did you say was your husband's profession?"

"My dear, Theresa," Ianessa says, "Thrasymachus is one of the most famous sophists in Greece! I'm surprised you've never heard of him before."

"Oh, Thrasymachus may be well-known in small villages abroad, but he has yet to make a name for himself in Athens," Dorothea says modestly.

"Don't be so bashful, cousin!" Ianessa says proudly. "Thrasymachus is well-esteemed by the kings of Sinope and Halicarnassus and many other cities abroad."

"Sinope?" Theresa echoes. "Wasn't the archon there deposed about a year or so ago?"

"That sounds about right to me," Ianessa recalls. "When were you and your husband last in Sinope, Dorothea?"

"About a year or so ago," Dorothea replies coyly.

"And wasn't the archon at Halicarnassus exiled following a recent coup?" Theresa asks. "You haven't been to Ionia lately, as well, have you?"

"Just before we arrived in Athens," she replies.

"I see," Theresa mutters quietly. "Dorothea, I suspect my husband could use an experienced counselor like Thrasymachus. We should conspire to introduce them some day soon."

Ianessa sets her wine glass down and claps her hands together. "What a splendid idea!" she cries. "Cleon will simply love Thrasymachus—there isn't a wiser man in all of Greece!"

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ATHENS

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Socrates senses slowly fail him. His left eye socket is already so bruised that he's rendered half-blind from the swelling. He wraps his forearms around his face in a vain effort to protect his skull, but his opponent finds more than enough exposed territory to bludgeon Socrates freely. For a brief moment the crowd's cheers evaporate into the night's slight chill, replaced by the searing pain of the boxer's fist repeatedly pounding Socrates' ear drum like a hammer onto an anvil. Even though the referee is standing right next to Socrates, it is only when the beating finally stops that the old mason discerns the faint sound of a ringing cowbell signaling the end of the round.

"Back to your corners!" the referee instructs both fighters.

Socrates opponent struts back to his trainer, his arms raised victoriously over his head and takes a seat on a short milking stool. There his attendants dab balms and oils on the few cuts and bruises Socrates has managed to inflict during earlier rounds. He listens patiently as his coaches advised him, nodding his head obediently between the shallow breathes of his panting.

Among the crowd there is little question that the fight would last any longer than the next round. As his opponent calmly takes his seat in the corner, Socrates still wobbles around the periphery of the ring, his arms extended into the adjoining audience in hopes that his trainers would pull him to safety and mend his wounds. An onlooker reaches out and grabs Socrates linen-wrapped hand and shakes it in a sarcastic display of support, a gesture Socrates initially believes his coaches pulling him into his corner. The audience erupts with laughter when the old mason tries to take a seat and falls over onto the ground when his ass falls through a phantom milk stool. Gamblers concede bets and pay off debts.

"Over here, you fucking idiot!" Euripides yells after shaking his head at the sight of Socrates rolling around in the dust. The playwright takes a large pull from his skin of wine as Socrates gets back on his feet. "Follow the sound of my voice!"

Socrates staggers over to Euripides. A young man, no older than eighteen, scurries into the ring from behind Euripides to help guide Socrates back to his stool. Once Socrates is finally seated in his corner, the boy wipes away the sweat and lightly chops at the fighter's shoulders to prevent the muscles from stiffening in the damp night air. The boy tears pieces of linen from an old cloth, dips them into a bucket filled with putrid water nearby and cleans the wounds as quickly as he can.

"Listen to me!" the boy says to Socrates as he tends to the mason's wounds. "Every time he leads with his left hand he lifts his elbow slightly and starts to exhale. Hit him in the abdomen and you'll knock the wind out of him long enough to finish him off, got it?"

"More wine!" Socrates managed to say, his lips painfully lumbering through the words.

The boy shakes his head as he continues to wipe away dirt from the open cuts littering Socrates' face. "There'll be plenty of wine after the fight," he said.

But Euripides will have none of it. He pulls a second skin of wine from his belt and uncorks the top. "Oh, give the son of a bitch some more wine!" he says, pouring the flagon directly into Socrates' mouth. "He's the one doing the fighting!"

By this point in the evening Euripides is quite drunk and his aim proves to be grossly inaccurate. More wine spills onto Socrates face and body, mingling with the streaks of blood running from his cuts, than arrives into his mouth. At first the young boy does what he can to mop up the wine with the linens, but the mess proves to be too much for him. He throws his dirty cloths into the bucket in frustration, but just as the boy is about to slip back into the crowd he notices the wine coursing through Socrates' wounds like melted snow cutting a path down a mountain in spring, washing away the filth and pustules that have accumulated in the open tissue. "The gods be damned," he says to himself, grabbing a candle from a nearby drunk and holding it close to Socrates' cut. "The wine is cleaning the wound."

Before the boy can inspect the phenomenon any further, the cowbell rings again. The boy blows out the flame, returns the candle to its puzzled owner and ducks back behind Euripides, who hands him the unfinished portion of Socrates' wine. The boy grabs the skin, nods with thanks and takes a long pull.

"I hear he's a better mason than a fighter," the boy says to Euripides.

"Wait," the playwright begins, revealing an expression of confusion to the boy. "How long have you known Socrates?"

"We met just the other week," the boy replies.

Euripides snatches the skin from the young man's hands and immediately guzzles what wine remains, throwing the empty flagon over his shoulder.

"Hey! Won't Socrates need that next round?" the boy asks.

"There's not going to be a next round," Euripides grumbles.

The referee silences his cowbell and Socrates immediately sets to work throwing quick, surgical punches to his opponent's abdomen, most of which land to the surprise of the crowd. The momentum of the fight quickly shifts. Slowly, Socrates begins to push the fighter away from the center of the ring out into the periphery, where the jeering mob taunts and goads Socrates' opponent until he pushes the scrappy mason away from him with a jerk of his elbow, then jabbing at Socrates with his blindingly swings with his right hand.

Suddenly Socrates' opponent start to raise his left arm to unleash a flurry of jabs, but the old mason sees an opening and land a vicious hook to the man's abdomen. The punch stuns the boxer. He grabs his gut with both hands and keels over ever so slightly. The crowd gasps and pushes closer in anticipation of the last flurry of punches that will end the bout.

Socrates cocks a fist back behind his back and unloads a brutal hook into the fighter's face, connecting perfectly just below the man's cheek with such force that his opponent's head spins around his neck beyond his shoulder.

For the briefest of moments, Socrates stands in the ring admiring his work, waiting patiently for the boxer to fall to the ground as the rest of the audience leans in closer. At first the boxer wobbles, his equilibrium teetering precariously, but slowly he recovers his balance and turns his head back to Socrates. The boxer stands upright, grins and winks at Socrates before releasing a single, tremendous punch directly between the mason's eyes. For a moment, Socrates' body is parallel to the ground before he falls on his back, mercifully knocked out cold and unable to hear the cheers of the surrounding crowd celebrating his opponent.

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An hour later, Socrates sits on the top of a table inside a tavern called the Argonaut, the fight's principle sponsor and second home to many of those in attendance. He pressed a raw cut of meat to the bruises circling his eye while the young trainer in his corner during the match meticulously stitches his cuts with a needle and thread. Euripides, now so drunk he has difficulty standing without the support of a nearby lode-bearing beam, leans in closer to his companions and scrutinizes the boy's handiwork.

"Do you mind?" the boy asks Euripides. "I need the light to see what I'm doing."

The playwright looks offended. He turns an aggrieved scowl to Socrates and arches a single eyebrow, but the defeated fighter waves him off. "Leave him be, Euripides."

"You should have done as much during the fight," Euripides says, shaking a bony finger at his friend. "That boy nearly got you killed."

Socrates takes a deep breath and appears ready to argue the contrary when he suddenly pauses. "Do you two even know each other?"

The boy sets down his needle and thread and turns to Euripides. Both men glance at each other and shrug their shoulders, as if the very question itself means nothing to either of them, before returning to their prior business.

Before the boy can resume stitching Socrates' face, the old mason pulls away and points to his friend the poet. "That dour old man is my friend Euripides, the fifth most decorated playwright in all of Athens," he informs the boy.

Again, the young man peers over his shoulder at Euripides, who bows gracelessly as a drunken actor would during a curtain call. The boy shakes his head. "Never heard of him," he confesses tactlessly.

Euripides rises from his bow and almost chokes on his own breath. "You must have seen Telephus?" he asks, but the boy shakes his head and continues to concentrate further on his stitching. "What about The Cretans?" Again, nothing. "My Alcestis won second prize at the Dionysian!" Euripides throws his hands up in despair. "It's that bloody Sophocles!" he continues. "As long as he's alive no one will ever know I exist!"

"Sophocles?" the boy echoes. "I like him! I must have seen Ajax a dozen times and it doesn't get much better than Antigone. Do you know him? Can you introduce me to him?"

Euripides stares at the boy for a moment before silently taking a seat, his back turned to the young man, and burying his face in his hands.

The boy shrugs and returns his attention to Socrates' face. He pulls a small knife from his belt and uses it to shorten a line of thread dangling from Socrates' chin. "There!" he says, pulling the string from the stubble of Socrates' nascent beard. "All done."

The boy rises from his seat and walks backwards several steps, examining his work from various angles, searching for the best light. Euripides rises from his own seat and examines the stitching. The playwright is impressed: the large gashes that dug deep into Socrates' face just an hour earlier are now barely noticeable at a distance of a five paces.

Socrates hops off the table and slaps the boy on the shoulders. "And this is Hippocrates," he says to Euripides.

The playwright and the boy shake hands. "At your service," Hippocrates says with a reverent bow.

"His parents want him to peruse a career in government," Socrates continues.

"A noble profession! May the gods be with you on your journey," Euripides tells the boy before taking a sip of wine.

"But he's more interested in medicine," Socrates adds.

Euripides chortles, nearly chocking on his drink. "Good luck earning a drachma in that scoundrel's trade!"

Socrates scowls at Euripides's rudeness before digging into his coin bag and flipping the young doctor a drachma. "Why don't you get us another round of wine, Hippocrates?" The young man catches the coin with both hands and walks off across the crowded tavern on his way to the bar.

"Where did you find him?" Euripides asks, once Hippocrates is out of earshot.

"He actually found me unconscious in the necropolis in middle of the night," Socrates replies.

"What was he doing in the graveyard in the middle of the night?"

"He dissects human corpses to teach himself anatomy. At first he thought I was a fresh corpse, but—"

"Just as long as dissecting is the only thing he's doing to them," the playwright interrupts. He pauses for a moment and watches Hippocrates pay for next round of wine at the far end of the tavern. "What were you doing in the graveyard?" Euripides asks his friend.

"I was passed out drunk," Socrates replies nonchalantly.

"Yes, of course you were," Euripides nods. "How silly of me to ask."

Across the pub Hippocrates carefully tries to juggle three cups of wine in both hands and navigate his way back to Euripides and Socrates with a minimal degree of spillage. He carefully avoids ruckus pockets of revelers and shimmies by drunken Athenians of all shapes and sizes. The young doctor almost makes it back without incident when a chair shoots out from under a table, bumping Hippocrates and causing him to spill all three cups of wine on the occupant's head.

The man sitting in the chair slowly rises from his seat, his shoulders growing larger even as they start to tower over Hippocrates' head. The wine seeps into the patron's tunic and clings to his skin. The young doctor sees his muscles clench in anger. Hippocrates hears a huff flare from the man's nostrils that reminds him of the sound a recalcitrant oxen makes when being fitted with a yoke.

The patron slowly turns to Hippocrates, grabs him by the throat and pushes him against a nearby wall. "You stupid fuck!" the patron screams, immediately bringing all other business in the tavern to a halt. "I'm going rip off your limbs and beat you senseless with your arms!" Hippocrates cringes and recoils at the wine-soaked vapors spilling from the drunken patron's mouth.

"Leave the boy alone!" Socrates yells back, calmly cleaning his fingernails with his teeth.

"Stay out of this, old man!" the drunken patron responds.

"He meant no harm," Socrates continues.

"I don't care what he meant to do!" the drunken patron declares. "I prefer to drink my wine, not wear it!"

"I'm surprised a Theban bastard like you is smart enough to know the difference," Socrates snaps back.

The drunken patron drops Hippocrates and slowly walks toward Socrates. The entire tavern collectively braces itself like an impish child awaiting lashes from his father's switch. Seconds later, Socrates' body sails through the Argonaut's front doors and tumbles out into the empty street until it comes to a sudden stop in the middle of the intersection.

The tavern's clientele streams out into the streets. Gamblers take bets as curious on-lookers jockey for positions close to the action. One of the last men to leave the bar is the drunken patron himself, grinding the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other, his shoulders stretching from one vertical beam of the doorframe to the other. Euripides and Hippocrates follow immediately behind him only to scratch and slither through the crowd.

"I thought you might have had enough abuse earlier in the evening, old man," the drunken patron taunts, "but I'd be happy to give you some more!"

The crowd cheers and coaxes the fighters on as Socrates slowly rises to his feet and dusts off his robes.

Hippocrates turns to Euripides, his face on the verge of complete panic. "I don't know how much more of a beating those wounds can take!"

But Euripides merely sighs. "You've really never seen any of my plays?" he asks.

"How can you ask me about your fucking plays at a time like this?" the young doctor snaps back. "Your friend is about to have his skull crushed like a, uh, like a gadfly!"

The playwright shakes his head. "I suppose you haven't," he surmises, "otherwise you would have come up with a better simile."

Once on his feet, Socrates plays to the crowd, pumping his arms triumphantly in between displays of shadow boxing, before placing an open hand to his ear hoping to incite the crowd to louder cheers. The drunken patron folds his arms across his chest and snorts at the sight and waits patiently for the mason to finish his exhausting antics. When Socrates is satisfied that the audience is worked up into a sufficient lather he stretches his arms behind his neck and jogs in place to limber up for the imminent fight.

Then, once the crowd can no longer wait a moment longer to sate its bloodlust, Socrates removes his tunic, tosses it contemptibly on the ground and stands completely naked before the assembly, his fists raised in the defensive fighting stance he had learned as a youth.

The crowd's noise ceases instantaneously. Some men wipe their eyes hoping to massage sobriety into their pupils. Others glance away, unsure if view such a spectacle is appropriate in such a setting. Most men simply continue to drink their wine and wait for the actions of their neighbors to guide their own responses.

Alone among the men in the street, the drunk patron laughs loudly and from a deep place within his belly. "My quarrel's with you, not your cock, old man!" he taunts. The crowd joins him in his mirth.

Socrates looks confused. He lowers his guard and waits for the laughing to subside then looks directly at the drunk patron. "We're not fighting naked?" he asks.

"Why would we fight naked?" the patron asks back.

"Two reasons," Socrates begins, grabbing one hand by the wrist of the other behind his back as he walks contemplatively back and forth in the ring. "Since this misunderstanding is over soiled linens, I just assumed you wouldn't want to sully your clothes any further with either your blood or, more likely, mine."

Hippocrates looks to Euripides. "What's he doing?" he asks anxiously.

Euripides quietly calls for silence from the young doctor by placing a finger to his lips. "You'll see," he whispers.

The drunken patron now appears thoroughly confused, but Socrates pushes forward. "See, if this fight ends with the very same result that caused it, namely, me bleeding all over your clothes just as my friend spilled wine all over them, then there really isn't much reason to start the fight in the first place, is there?"

"I suppose not," the patron agrees pensively.

"Of course not!" Socrates erupts. "And you're a smart man, so why, by the gods, would you go through so much effort to mangle my face only to arrive an end no different from the point whence you began? That wouldn't make any sense at all!"

The crowd murmurs in ascent to Socrates reasoning. Even the furrows on the brow of the drunken patron himself shift in a manner that suggests agreement. "What's the second reason?" the man asked.

"Simple," Socrates says, ceasing his pacing and pointing a finger to the sky. "You're just worried that I have the bigger cock!"

The crowd explodes in howls. Men grab themselves and spit on the ground before taking long swigs of wine. The drunken patron's cheeks flush red with the shame of being baited by someone he now realized he should have dispatched before ever allowing to speak. Impatience and anger further turned his complexion a sinister shade of crimson.

Socrates grins. "But have no fear," he advises the drunken patron, "I'm sure everyone here will understand if you want to back out now rather than let your tiny prick wave in the midnight breeze."

The patron takes a deep breath and smirks at Socrates' jest. Slowly, he reaches down to the bottom of his tunic and pulls the it up first over his chest, but at the split second the cloth covers his face, Socrates pounced from across the ring, leaping into the air and landing a savage punch squarely onto the patron's nose. The man falls to the ground, flopping spastically like a fish on the floor of a boat. A scarlet stain growing larger and larger on the tunic still wrapped around the man's head as he screams for someone to heal his broken nose.

The crowd stands frozen in stunned silence, still unsure of what it had just witnessed. Socrates gazes around the audience with a wry smile, the spectators parting as he passes through them to leave. "Good evening, gentlemen!" he says with a nod.

The men watch Socrates walk down the street with nothing but the moonlight covering him in the glory of a conquering hero. Hippocrates and Euripides pushed their way through the crowd just in time to see him disappear into the shadows of an alley off the main road, just a few blocks from the Argonaut. The young doctor stammers for a moment, struggling to collect his thoughts, until Euripides gently places his had on the boy's shoulder. "I've never seen Socrates win a fair fight," the playwright explains, "but he does awfully well in dirty ones."

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SPARTA

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When he finishes, Gyllipus kisses Timaea on the lips and rolls off of her on to the unoccupied side of the bed. He tries to catch his breath as the patina of sweat cools his skin in the still afternoon air. Gyllipus looks up at the ceiling and exhales as Timaea reaches across his chest to pull herself closer to him.

"Can you stay long?" she asks.

"That depends, will you have me long?" Gyllipus answers, words that are followed with a tender embrace and several stolen kisses.

It's the kind of attention Timaea normally craves, but not on this particular afternoon. "A moment's rest, for the love of the gods!" she objects, pushing Gyllipus' lips away. "I can't return to the agora looking like the mess I did last week!"

"Then I will have to try harder to make you forget yourself!" Gyllipus whispers, his hands sliding softly over her skin. For a moment, it seems to him that he had sold Timaea on his wish to prolong his stay in her bed, but as soon as Gyllipus finds himself on top of her again Timaea presses a single finger to his lips and pushes his massive bulk off her with more ease than any wrestler in Sparta.

"I am still due at the agora," she reminds him. Gyllipus relents and flops down on his side of the bed with nothing more than a frustrated sigh.

These afternoon trysts had gone on for over a year, long enough for both parties to grow comfortable, and even complacent, with meeting under an elaborate veil of secrecy. At the time they met, Gyllipus was everything a girl not yet fifteen years old wanted: he was strong, handsome, older and completely forbidden. As the daughter of one of the most prominent families in Sparta, Timaea was expected to marry a Spartan citizen, a status Gyllipus did not yet enjoy at the time.

While her attachment to Gyllipus may have begun as an adolescent attempt to assert her burgeoning independence, it quickly matured. Publicly, Gyllipus was a quiet soldier singularly focused on reclaiming his family's honor, but Timaea soon discovered a kindred spirit who only revealed his layers when he finally removed his armor. Only weeks earlier had it occurred to Timaea she was growing with Gyllipus and not along side him, like so many other Spartan wives seemed to do next to their husbands.

Timaea rises from the bed, walks over to water font at the far side of the room and starts cleaning herself with a sponge. Gyllipus rolls over onto his elbow to watch her skin sparkle under the beam of sunlight shining through the cracks of the closed windows. He smiles before swinging his legs over the side of bed and scanning the floor for his clothes.

"I spoke with Agis after the match the other day," Gyllipus says matter-of-factly.

"Oh? And what news did our good friend Agis have for you?" Timaea replies, as she gently dabbed the sponge on her legs.

"I have been selected to participate in the Crypteia this year."

The word "Crypteia" lingers in the silence that follows. Timaea sets the sponge down in the font and wraps herself in a long cloth. "And you accepted, of course?" she asks hesitantly, walking back to the bed.

"What choice do I have?"

Timaea grabs a pillow from the bed and hits Gyllipus with it while his back was turned. "You can choose me instead!" she cried out, pouting on her way back to the font. Gyllipus, still undressed, rises from the bed and follows her across the room, wrapping his arms around Timaea in a vain effort to comfort her. During the course of their involvement the possibility that Gyllipus might earn acceptance back into Spartan society was a prospect Timaea never took seriously, partly out of naiveté, but primarily out of a fervent desire to keep the circumstances of their relationship unchanged.

Timaea is not typical of Laconian women, even young ones. Even as a much younger girl she could frequently be found asking the foreign traders and merchants in the agora to tell her stories of their travels abroad. She'd sit and listen to tales of the Anthropophagi, the tribe of cannibals in Scythia with faces in their bellies; the giant water horses raised by the Antipodes, far south of Egypt; the giant sea serpents that consumed entire ships in a single bite west of the Pillars of Hercules; and the northern men who live in cities of ice in a land of eternal winter. The stories were as enchanting as they were unlikely, but they ignited in Timaea a fiery desire to explore the world for herself.

Few aspirations are more futile. Though they are envied by women across Greece for the uncommonly equal standing they enjoy among Lacedaemonian men, Spartan women never left the Peloponnesian peninsula. In fact, most native women never left the Euratos Valley and many never set foot outside the city of Sparta itself. The purpose of a Spartan woman is to produce Spartan soldiers and doing so outside such a cloistered community only raises questions about the purity of the seed planted in the womb.

She is from a respected and influential family. Her beauty guarantees her choices of suitors and her warmth and kindness have made her popular with her peers. One way or another, Sparta will someday be hers—and yet it is a prize that fills her with little more than ambivalence.

Quite to the contrary, Gyllipus has devoted much of his life to becoming a Spartan and for no other reason than to absolve his family name. This mission has consumed him from an early age. He trains harder to become a soldier than the rest of his friends. He steadfastly honors the gods and projects a noble piety. He even rejected Timaea's initial advances out of deference to her honor before final succumbing to his own affections. There were few people in Sparta who publically display the city's virtues as proudly as Gyllipus.

Yet, in these private moments, Timaea discovers the toll Gyllipus' quest has taken on him. In many ways his enthusiasm for the Spartan way of life masks a loathing for a city that punishes him for his father's crime. Not long ago, she found this drive in Gyllipus virtuous in so far as it exposed the inherent contradictions and hypocrisies of Spartan life. It was a secret wisdom that only they shared, but one that was predicated on Gyllipus' low expectations for success. Suddenly the magnitude of that secret seemed smaller and less significant.

"I am doing this for you, Timaea!" Gyllipus explains. "The only way I can marry you is to become a full Spartan citizen and the only way to become acceptable in your father's eyes is complete the Crypteia."

Timaea ceases washing herself and puts her hands on Gyllipus' cheeks. "But I don't want you to become a citizen!" she pleads. "You'll spend the rest of your life marching across Greece while I wallow here alone waiting for news of your death in battle."

Gyllipus' face betrays him. It's the tone of voice she uses, a pitch native to spoiled daughters too young to realize the world does not exist solely to accommodate them. "You say that now, but when you're old enough to marry I know I'll hear new words," he replies.

Timaea turns her back to him. "This isn't about me, is it? It's about restoring your family's honor."

"They are one in the same!" Gyllipus asserts, only realizing his mistake when he sees Timaea's shoulders sink. "I'm sorry," he whispers, before withdrawing to a seat on the corner of the bed.

Gyllipus knows better. He knows that Timaea doesn't want to be as important as his family's honor: she wants to be more important. She has little patience for the matters of honor and duty that occupy him. He's confident that eventually she will learn better and love him all the more for his toils, but for the time being it is a foolish equivocation to make.

Watching one of the finest warriors in Sparta retreat, Timaea can not help but to be moved by the vulnerability Gyllipus is willing to display in front of her. She crawls across the bed, takes a seat behind him and wraps her arms around his chest. "Your father dishonored all of Sparta when he took that bribe from Pericles, not just you. Forget him, once and for all, just as I have," she says.

Moved by the gesture, Gyllipus turns to Timaea and kisses her warmly on the lips. "You're the only woman in Sparta who doesn't care about my family's disgrace," he says.

"That's because you're the only man in Sparta who dares to think Sparta is not what she appears to be," she replies.

"And will your father ever allow such a man to marry his daughter?" he asks.

Timaea answers with a sigh. "When the time is right, we'll run away! Like Helen and Paris did when they eloped to Troy!"

"Oh? And did that end well for them?" Gyllipus asks, not expecting an answer. "I must prepare for the Crypteia."

He stands up and takes a step in the direction of his discarded robe, but halts his advances once he feels the tug of Timaea's hand pulling him back to the bed. "Tell me you only want to become a citizen to marry me," she says with a plaintive voice, giving him one last chance to redeem himself.

"And if that is not the case?"

"Then lie to me," Timaea orders, pulling him onto the bed and back under the covers.

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SPARTA

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Gyllipus sits alone at a table in the large mess hall bordering the agora, slowly nursing a familiar meal: the butt of a loaf of barely bread, a half dozen olives, three figs, a small chunk of cheese and a glass of watery wine. At the far end of the hall a small army of cooks labor over large boiling cauldrons and barrels of fruits. A bowl of black soup—a notably unsavory concoction of pig's blood, pork, salt and vinegar with the color and texture of tar—sits untouched an arm's length away from the rest of the meal. A helot servant approaches the table and offers to refresh Gyllipus' cup, but he places his hand over the rim and shakes his head.

Dinners in Sparta are communal and mandatory. Each individual Spartan is free to eat what he wants, with whom he wants, where he wants for breakfast and lunch; but suppers are spent in the company of other soldiers in the mess halls eating food they would expect to find in a bivouac. It's an aggressively bland meal said to be flavored with only sweat from a day's training and conversation with one's comrades, but one that can be supplemented with the a more palatable second course of game or livestock from time to time.

"What's the matter?" a voice from behind Gyllipus asks. "Is the pig's anus not cooked well enough for you, Gyllipus?" A thin, young boy with a face covered in soot and ash takes a seat on the other side of the table from Gyllipus and wipes his hands with the help of the apron tied around his waist. His name is Scylax and he's one of the small clique of cooks that feed almost 5,000 Spartans night after night. "I could bring out some cock-flavored soup, if you'd prefer?" he asks, reaching under the bottom of his tunic to pull out his member.

Gyllipus puts a hand over the bowl. "There's already enough cock flavoring in tonight's soup as it is—I must be eating a pig you've fucked on an earlier occasion."

Scylax bends over until his torso is perpendicular to his legs and inspects the soup with one eye closed. "That you in there, dear?" he asks to soup, much to Gyllipus' amusement. "No, no: that's not her."

"Take a seat, if you can a stay a while," Gyllipus invites.

Scylax sits down, careful to position Gyllipus between himself and the other cooks toiling at the cauldrons. "Where are the rest of the boys?" he asks, with one eye on the head chef.

"On a ride back from Gythium."

"Gythium?" Scylax says, stroking his chin. "I hope that bastard Lysander's smart enough to bring some fresh tuna back with him."

"It was the last thing I mentioned to him before he left this morning."

"And I don't suppose you gentlemen have a cook what knows how to clean, gut and cook the scaly little fuckers, do you?

"I had one in mind," Gyllipus says coyly.

"And is his price better than three dinner portions?" Scylax asks.

"As a matter of fact, he's only asking for one," Gyllipus notes.

"Then he must only be cooking for six people," the cook replies, "and doing a shitty job at that. You should probably ask me to cook the meal before you cunts choke on so many fish bones tonight that you're unable to call my name."

"Two portions," Gyllipus offers.

"Done," Scylax says. He rises from the table, stretches his arms, and looks out at the sparsely populated tables of Spartan soldiers. The head chef leers at Scylax from across the mess hall, his arms crossed and left foot tapping impatiently. The cook grabs his crotch and extends his middle finger out in return.

Cooks occupy an odd place in Spartan society. They are full Spartan citizens, but do not attend the agoge or become soldiers and are frequently looked down upon by their neighbors. Within the confines of the mess halls, however, the cooks are treated with a respect usually reserved for kings, which is the only other profession in Sparta determined by birth. By law the cooks are limited only to the use of salt and vinegar seasonings, but nothing prohibits diners from discretely flavoring their own meals and over the centuries the craftiest of cooks have been known to provide ancillary ingredients like anise, Herb-of-Grace, cumin, onions and even black pepper to their patrons in exchange for friendship and favors.

Scylax has perfected the art of exchanging small comforts for the goodwill of people of higher birth, and as a consequence he has a unique glimpse into the tastes and appetitive desires of every last person in Sparta. He knows the king has a fondness for coriander; Echemenes, the Ephor, is known to have problems breathing after eating crabs; Lysander relishes eating hare poached on helot farms; and Gyllipus suffers from an inexplicable and occasional craving for mint, one of the very few extravagances to an otherwise austere demeanor. It's a peculiar insight Scylax is only just beginning to learn how to use to his advantage.

The cook glances down at Gyllipus untouched bowl of black soup. "I may have a phial of dill back in the kitchen, if you're interested?" he recommends.

Gyllipus smiles at the suggestion. "That won't be necessary," he says, "but thank you for the offer."

"You're right, only a clove of garlic would make that that bowl of shit any more appetizing," says Scylax. He delays his return to the hot cauldrons by scanning the mess in search of another distraction and sees Agis darting around the hall, whispering brief messages into the ears of young soldiers. "Did Agis not ride down to Gythium with others?" Scylax asks.

"I believe he had business at the Gerousia this afternoon," Gyllipus replies.

"Is that why he moves so swiftly today? Politicking for his old man, the king?" Scylax supposes.

Gyllipus turns his head to watch Agis scurry from table to table. "Most likely, though if we could read the minds of politicians we'd probably have no need for them."

Scylax grins and peers over at his colleagues tending the to the meal. The head chef is not pleased with Scylax and appears ready to march across the mess to reprimand the young cook. "Come get me when Lysander arrives with the fish and Scylax will make sure you eunuchs eat well," he says as he departs.

Gyllipus nods silently and continues pecking at his food alone until Agis takes a seat across the table without saying a word. "You seem quiet busy this evening," he notes of the prince.

"Not as busy as you're going to be, old friend," Agis replies. "Be sure to eat up, Gyllipus, the Crypteia begins tonight!"

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ATHENS

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Alcibiades uses the week following his return to Athens as any young man would: he reunites with old friends, rediscovers bad habits and remains as idle as possible only when there are responsibilities to evade. It's a seven day test of endurance with a high attrition rate. One by one his companions fall by the wayside—not that Alcibiades minds: old friends who can't keep the pace can always be replaced by new ones eager to share wine from a stranger with a story to tell.

So it did not take long for Alcibiades to find a captive audience in a brothel known to cater to a clientele of thieves, gamblers and playwrights—men who were widely regarded to be one in the same when endowed with the gift of literacy. The establishment is in a district of Athens Alcibiades rarely frequents, a quality which only makes the tavern all the more enticing for a young man freshly home from abroad. He's welcomed by the many patrons who take advantage of the women and wine he generously supplies them. The gifts win him a great deal of goodwill from some of the customers and staff, but also earn Alcibiades the resentment of a few malcontents.

Two such souls, playwrights named Eupolis and Aristophanes, nurse drinks on a bench at the far end of the bar opposite the constellation of new friends orbiting Alcibiades. They're young men, no older than fifteen, each aspiring comedians still learning the craft, but advanced enough to know that any instance of wit or humor left behind by a pub's drunks can be claimed as their own. On most nights they can be found at a table in the brothel's tavern listening intently and scribbling onto parchment.

Tonight, however, their tools are nowhere to be seen, replaced by a furious scowl on the face of young Aristophanes. The young playwright looks on enviously as the pair of painted whores sitting on Alcibiades' lap run their hands through his hair and cackle at every clever word that leaves his mouth. "Those laughs are unearned," he judges.

"I don't know, maybe he's on to something," Eupolis considers. "Perhaps if we paid the audience they'd be more amused by our plays?"

"That cunt must own the place," Aristophanes declares, ignoring Eupolis. "It's the only possible explanation."

"He must be someone important," Eupolis replies.

"What makes you say that?"

"I've never seen the tavern-keeper open a line of credit for anyone before and I haven't seen that lad reach for his coin bag all evening,"

Aristophanes quickly turns to his friend. "Then you've seen it? Is it substantial?"

"It's either quite substantial or he is concealing a massive cock," Eupolis laughs.

Aristophanes sneers. He hates laughing at Eupolis' jests, which he finds all too often to be prurient and trite. "What's his name?"

"Alcibiades, I think," Eupolis answers. "Or maybe that was the name of one of the new girls. He's looks as pretty as some of the new pussy."

"Never heard of him," Aristophanes replies dismissively, "but he clearly comes from money. Not too bright carrying on like this, is he? Drinking and gambling so much at once."

"How else would you have him spend his father's money?" asks Eupolis.

"My dear, simple Eupolis," Aristophanes says. "This is what separates you and me: where you see the ordinary, I see opportunity."

"What are you saying?" Eupolis asks, his expression looking as lost as his words.

Alcibiades rises from his table and walks across the tavern to a corner where the chamber pots are kept and relieves himself.

"I'm saying we should liberate the coin from this young fool before someone else does," Aristophanes clarifies for his friend.

Eupolis smiles. He stands up and finishes off the rest of the wine in his cup before slapping Aristophanes on the back. "Say no more," he says as he makes his way to the tavern-keeper just as Alcibiades finishes his piss. The two young men cross paths in the middle of the tavern and in the confusion over who has the right of way, Eupolis bumps into Alcibiades and discreetly picks his pocket before apologizing profusely for his clumsiness. Eupolis arrives at the counter and orders more wine for himself and Aristophanes, tipping the keeper well for his trouble.

Back at the table Aristophanes wears a sinister grin when Eupolis returns. They toast to a job well done and each drinks his wine in a single pull. With their backs turned to Alcibiades and his party, the open the newly acquired coin purse and take inventory of the contents. "By the gods, Aristophanes!" Eupolis hoarsely explains. "There must be over 300 drachma in here!"

For two boys of relative privilege who had met years ago picking pockets and creating other forms of mischief in the agora, a haul so bountiful is unheard-of. The sum is so large that, not long ago, it would have kept a pair of frugal hooligans occupied with enough vice and distraction for a month. But Aristophanes and Eupolis are older now: their aspirations are more ambitious and their tastes more sophisticated.

"Quiet, you indolent fuck!" Aristophanes says through gritted teeth. "You'll give us up. Besides, the prank isn't over yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Now, of course, we have to kill him before he accuses us of theft," Aristophanes says nonchalantly.

Eupolis is beside himself at the suggestion. Their oeuvre as public nuisances has expanded over the years to include vandalism and minor destruction of property, but never murder or anything resembling violence against another human being. Eupolis objects: "You didn't say anything about—"

Aristophanes will hear none of his excuses. "Of course I didn't!" he interrupts. "You wouldn't have stolen it if I did."

Eupolis leans in closer to his friend. "I am not an assassin!" he whispers angrily.

"I'm not asking you to be one, Eupolis," Aristophanes replies in a calm and soothing tone. "We're going to dispatch him right here in front of everyone...with these," he continues, rolling a pair of ivory dice on the table.

Eupolis looks up at his friend, unsure if he's serious. Aristophanes returns the glance with a wry grin and continues rolling the dice over and over again, each time landing on a three and four. "Sevens every time!" he notes.

"I still don't understand," Eupolis admits nervously.

Aristophanes unleashes a frustrated sigh into his companion's face. "It's simple: we'll let him gamble away a large sum in good faith and when it comes time to pay the bill he won't have the coin, then we'll be within our rights to take his life."

Aristophanes stands up from the table and nods his head in Eupolis' direction, but his friend remains seated. He looks up skeptically. "I don't know, Aristophanes... this just seems to be taking things too far."

"Have I ever let you down before?" Aristophanes asks.

"The lashes on my back suggest so, yes," Eupolis replies.

Aristophanes shakes his head. "In that case, if you don't join me, I'll simply tell Alcibiades that you took his coin bag. I'm sure he will reward me generously."

Eupolis rises from the table in anger, his face flush with rage. He lifts his hand as if to strike Aristophanes only to bring it down to the table and swipe the dice off the surface in a fluid motion. Aristophanes bows his head and extends an arm, giving Eupolis the honor of walking ahead of him as the two make their way across the tavern to Alcibiades' table.

They slither through the labyrinth of customers and tables. Aristophanes is never more than a small step behind his friend. He leans in and whispers into Eupolis' ear: "Poor Eupolis! Where would you be today without me to guide you through this complicated world?"

Aristophanes and Eupolis push through a small crowd of hangers-on whom Alcibiades provides with another round of wine while he regaling them with his exploits abroad. He finishes a well-received story when Aristophanes' voice rises above the laughter.

"Are you Alcibiades?"

"I am, sir, and you are?" Alcibiades asks congenially.

"My name is Aristophanes and this is my friend Eupolis."

"It's a pleasure to meet you both!" Alcibiades declares. "I hope you'll feel free to join us, if you'd like."

"You're welcome to enjoy some companionship courtesy of Alcibiades here," one of the women on Alcibiades' lap notes.

"If they're even old enough to know what to do with their cocks!" shouts a voice from behind the playwrights. A chorus of gravelly laughter follows, but instead of their cheeks flushing with shame, Aristophanes and Eupolis simply glance at each other out of the corners of their eyes and shake their heads at the perfectly predictable display of wit.

"I'd sooner pay solely for the pox," Eupolis dryly retorts to the maiden.

The girl's jaw drops at the offense. "Such a mouth this boy!" she observes.

"And if your tits were the size of your own mouth you'd not want for customers!" Aristophanes interjects to the howls and cheers of the crowd. The poor woman runs off from the table adjusting her robe to conceal as much of her body as possible, yet sooner does she depart than do a pair of her colleagues take her place.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Alcibiades says, turning his attention from the crowd to the playwrights. "I can personally vouch for the hygiene of these virtuous women and for their ample bosom."

"Neither is of interest to us," Aristophanes replies, shaking his head. "We were wondering how you planned on paying for this small affair?"

"The owner of this fine establishment has extended me a generous line of credit," Alcibiades answers.

"And what does one need to do to earn such kind hospitality?" asks Eupolis.

The girls surrounding Alcibiades giggle knowingly.

"Let's just say I'm a man of many talents," Alcibiades replies with a wink, "and persuasion is one of them."

"Here, here!" yells a voice from behind the playwrights.

"Is that a fact? Then perhaps you'd join us in a game of dice?" Aristophanes asks. "You'll be happy to know that we also provide generous lines of credit."

"What do you say, girls?" Alcibiades asks, to the squeals and applause of the women. "Well, such support leaves me with little choice in the matter." Alcibiades turns to the boys. "I'll even give you the honor of the first roll. But first, let's drink to friendship and good fortune!" The maids pour wine in the cups of the crowd as Alcibiades drapes his arm around one of the new ladies perched on his lap. "And should Goddess Fortune leave me, will you stay by my side?" he playfully asks the girl. She answers him with a gentle kiss on Alcibiades' cheek. "Then let's begin!"

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SPARTA

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Lysander and Gyllipus crawl through the mud of a barren helot farm just south of Sparta clenching knives between their teeth. When they reach the crest of a small rolling hill Gyllipus looks down on the minor vale, nothing more than a slight depression big enough to contain only a pair of small farms, each with a candle flickering through the windows. Gyllipus spits out his dagger, turns to Lysander and whispers, "Could you not have chosen helots with drier fields?"

Lysander removes his knife from his mouth to answer: "These are the most secluded farms in Lacedaemon. Now take the one to the north while I take the one to the west."

"How many men are inside the house?" Gyllipus asks.

"One, I think. He may have sons."

"While your house is filled with women, I presume?"

"Not yet, my friend!" Lysander sneers. "Go, and when we meet again it will be as true Spartans!"

"The gods be with you!" Gyllipus says before disappearing into the darkness.

It's only as Gyllipus sets foot on the farm of the helot he intends to murder that he suddenly regrets leaving the choice of targets up to Lysander. Gyllipus passed the decision off to his friend as a means of keeping his conscience clean of any guilt that might later trouble him, but the moment his sandals sink into the thick layer of mud at the edge of the farm it suddenly occurs to Gyllipus his own life is in just as much danger as his target's. Once war is declared against the helots, the slaves are within their rights to protect themselves. His heart begins to race and his knees buckle under the weight of his trepidation. He pauses for a moment and recites a brief prayer to the gods before once again falling to his stomach, then making his approach to the farm house by slithering through a recently plowed seed row.

At the end of his crawl, Gyllipus rises from the seed row and finds himself within a spear's throw from the front door of the farm house. He proceeds cautiously, taking care to tip toe around each errant stalk, twig and branch that could snap under his feet and reveal his approach. His breaths are short and measured, his chest so inflated that he can feel his heart in his throat. The door to the house is open and candle light pours into the world outside. Gyllipus removes the knife from his mouth and clasps it tightly in his right hand, the blade pointing to the ground. He creeps closer to the door, holds his breath and pauses for a moment to make sure he can strike unawares.

Then he hears the crying.

The sound disarms Gyllipus. He lets down his guard and comes close enough to the house to peer through a window and sees a family of four huddled around a table reciting the prayer for the dead. The scene is entirely foreign and yet strangely familiar to Gyllipus who is captivated by the stoic resolve the two young boys, each no older than twelve or thirteen, demonstrate before their grieving mother. A third child, a girl of about ten years, stands across the table from her mother and quietly lets tears fall from her eyes without lifting a finger to dry them and seems no less impressive.

Gyllipus steps back and retreats from the house until he bumps into a knee-high pile of kindling on which lays the body of the recently deceased. He kneels down, feels the body to make sure it's cold, and then glances back into the house once more. Gyllipus silently offers the gods a prayer of forgiveness before he slices the ears off the dead body and withdraws into the woods adjacent to the farm.

Just as Gyllipus concludes his hunt, Lysander arrives at his destination. He walks across his helot's farm field with a nonchalance that veers dangerously close to arrogance, almost as if he is looking for a fight. From roughly a league's distance he can distinctly see the woman of the house emerge from the front door and call out into the darkness for her husband to return for the night. It's Ismene, Timaea's maid. Lysander kneels to the ground and waits for the farmer to reveal his location with his response. At the sound of the helot's voice Lysander rises back to his feet and quietly follows the man's lumbering steps back to the barn.

Lysander times his steps perfectly to fall to the earth at the precise moment the farmer's feet do. His legs are longer and the angle he takes to cut off the farmer conceal him from the light emanating from the house, bringing him closer and closer to his victim with each step. From time to time the farmer stops to inspect his crops, giving Lysander the chance to close the distance between them.

Finally, Lysander is within striking distance, yet just far enough away to remain concealed in the night. He removes the knife from his mouth and methodically twirls it between his fingers. The farmer kneels down one last time to inspect the field beneath him. Lysander follows suit, only now he's prepared to spring at the farmer from his crouch in hopes of ending him quickly. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and resolves to pounce on a count of three, just before he begins nodding to a slow, silent rhythm.

One.

Two.

"Dinner!" Ismene yells as she emerges once more from the farmhouse. "It's not like you can see anything out there anyway!"

"Just a moment, dear," the farmer replies.

Lysander leers at Ismene as she lingers in the doorway for the briefest of moments and suddenly finds the courage to finish the task at hand. She ducks back into house right as the farmer stands up from his crouch, but he's only able to take a few steps before Lysander leaps at him from behind and slides his knife across his throat.

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ATHENS

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Alcibiades spends the rest of his evening losing game after game of dice, but does so with a carefree élan that endears him to the rest of the tavern's customers. The prostitutes attending him on a rotating basis throughout the evening display pouting faces to express their sadness at their patron's fortune. Alcibiades plays his role dutifully, consoling the girls with promises of imminent winning streaks and, when victory fails to materialize, more wine. Finally, even a happy warrior like Alcibiades could take no more.

"Girls," he says to the swarm of women hanging on his every word. "My luck cannot possibly be any worse than it is tonight. Aristophanes, what do I owe you good fellows?"

Eupolis finishes making his tally on thin sheet of scrap paper. "382 drachma," he announces with a measure of sadistic glee.

The sum is enough to scare off several of Alcibiades' new friends, but not the young man himself. "Then I should quit while you're ahead," he says cordially.

Alcibiades reaches for his coin bag to no avail. He pats his waist and digs under the folds of his robe in search of it, but it continues to elude him. His face flushes with a shame heretofore unknown to Alcibiades.

"What's the matter?" Aristophanes asks. "Have you been playing with imaginary coin?"

Alcibiades laughs nervously. "I must have lost my bag," he announces. "You gentlemen won't mind if I pay you in the morning, will you?"

The tavern falls silent and the patrons turned their attention to Alcibiades.

Though he had long been fond of gambling, Alcibiades had yet to have much experience laying wages in this district of Athens where the custom is to settle all debts at the end of the evening. Failing to do so is unacceptable. Eupolis slowly rises from his seat, folds his arms across his chest menacingly and looks down angrily at his new debtor.

"I'm afraid you exceeded your line of credit with us some time ago," Aristophanes says, casually inspecting the cleanliness of his finger nails.

"Gentlemen, please, be reasonable!" Alcibiades pleads. "I'm sure these girls can attest to my ability to repay my debts," he continues, pointing behind him to where his gaggle of painted women had eagerly attended to him but who were now missing.

"I'm afraid I wouldn't take a whore at her word even if there was one around to testify on your behalf," Aristophanes notes.

Alcibiades grows nervous as he hears the sound of footsteps slowly walking across the floor toward his table. The clientele of the tavern begins congregating around him. A few regulars are merely curious, but several wear the glowers of men who have been taken by delinquent gamblers before and have a vested in interest in maintaining the honor of their pastime. Alcibiades wipes the dewing beads of sweat from his forehead, his fear sobering his head while the wine settles in his stomach leaves him with a belly heavy with gut rot. The young man nearly collapses to the floor when he feels a strong hand fall on his shoulder.

"Is something wrong here, good friend?" a voice asks. Alcibiades turns his head to find a drinking companion from earlier in the evening. Behind the man gather more familiar faces, men whose friendship Alcibiades had won over with copious servings of women and wine. The pub begins to divide itself among supporters of the dispute. Behind Alcibiades stand a dozen or so men ready to defend their patron, lest they find themselves responsible for his debt. Behind Aristophanes and Eupolis gather twice as many men, each of whom have taken offense at Alcibiades' inability to pay.

"We pay our debts when they are called for in this establishment," says a man across the table from Alcibiades.

"Stay away, stranger! This isn't your fight," replies a voice from behind Alcibiades' shoulder.

"Just pay your debt and leave this place, boy!" orders a man standing behind Eupolis, who lunges at Alcibiades in an attempt to grab his arm.

"You'll regret laying hands on my friend, you dickless pig!" yells another voice to Alcibiades' side as a single arm emerges from the crowd to swat the other away.

The two arms grab each other and pull their respective bodies out from the crowd and next to the table where Alcibiades now rises to propose a solution to the quarrel. One of the men throws a punch at the other, but it misses its mark and strikes Alcibiades squarely in the face, knocking him out instantly.

Before Alcibiades' body can even hit the ground below the table the tavern erupts into an all out brawl. Alcibiades needs a few moments to regain consciousness, but once he does he stays low to the ground and crawls quickly through a gauntlet of flailing legs until he reaches a corner between the back wall and another table. His nose bleeds onto his robes, which are now cut for reasons he can not explain. He thinks briefly about making his escape, but when he rises to do so he feels a spell of dizziness overtake him, sending him right back to the floor. He waits a moment to compose himself and is just about ready to try again when a long shadow falls over him.

Alcibiades looks up and sees a man holding a short knife walking toward him, his back turned to the chaos of the tavern. It's Aristophanes and in his other hand he tosses Alcibiades' coin bag up and down the way a child would a ball.

"You took my bag?" Alcibiades says. "But why?"

"I love a good prank!" Aristophanes replies.

Alcibiades scans the tavern. Fists fly indiscriminately and as rapidly as the insults. Tables are overturned and stools are used by smaller men to keep their assailants at bay. Most of the prostitutes have retreated to the balcony leading to the compartments they keep for their clients, hovering over the tavern hall where they rain down wooden wine glasses and utensils on the melee below.

"You call this a—," Alcibiades starts, looking back up at Aristophanes, but he turns his head only to discover the young comedian has vanished.

Five quick blasts from a whistle pierce through the violence as a stampede of soldiers enter the pub and draw their weapons on the belligerents. "The next man I see raise a fist will be pissing in a prison latrine for a week!" the captain of the guard announces with a haggard growl. One by one, from either fear of the authorities or sheer exhaustion, the fighters bring down their fists and the tavern returned to order.

Alcibiades unleashes a sigh of relief and lets his head droop down to his chest as the sound of soldiers escorting men into the street fills the tavern. He wants nothing more than to fall asleep right where he sits when a large sandal-clasped foot falls into his line of sight. Alcibiades looks up and discovers the captain of the guard standing before him, arms crossed, head shaking and lips pursed—the unmistakable expression of a disappointed father.

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ATHENS

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Myrto rises from a light slumber in early hours before sunrise to the sound of gentle and rhythmic knocking at her door. She lights the candle by her bedside and drapes herself haphazardly in the prior day's robes in hopes of returning to sleep shortly after investigating the noise. The knocking persists even as she leaves her bedroom and walks across the portico to the front door, her head shaking at the thought of her neighbors being roused from their rests just as she had been. When Myrto arrives at the door she calmly lights the lanterns bolted to the walls of the foyer, pauses for a moment to collect herself and then opens the door.

"Evening, my dear," Socrates says, leaning against the door frame.

"Oh, look at you!" Myrto coos at the sight of the jaundiced bruises littering his face. She reaches out and gently lays the tips of her fingers on the larger contusions, as if the touch of her skin alone possesses healing properties still foreign to medicine. "My poor dear's been hurt!" she says sympathetically.

"I have!" Socrates replies, "and as you can see my wounds require attention."

"Oh, and you knew right where to come for that attention, didn't you?" Myrto observes with a giggle. She leans in closer to Socrates and kisses him softly on the lips before turning around and taking a single step back into the house. Socrates interprets this as a sign to follow her, but as soon as he sets foot over the threshold Myrto turns around and slaps him across the face with all the force she can muster.

"Ouch!" Socrates yells, falling backward into the street. "What was that for?"

"Those bruises are five days old!" she hisses, her finger wagging dismissively at each visible injury. "How many whores have you sought sympathy from before you came to me?"

"None, my dear!" Socrates insists as he tries to rub away the sting from the slap. "My physician gave me a strict regimen of wine and rest to dull the pain."

"And after five days of drinking you finally realized your cock required as much attention as your bludgeoned face?" Myrto snaps back. Without waiting for an answer, she spins around, her robes sailing into the air like petals in a stiff wind, and storms back into the house only to stop her furious march in a huff after a few steps.

Socrates gingerly enters the house and approaches Myrto, weary of any sudden movements. He gently lays his hand on her shoulders and slowly moves them down her sides to her waist and embraces her from behind. He begins kissing her shoulder, his lips moving patiently up her neck to her earlobes before he quietly whispers, "Actually, it's been seven days, but who's counting? I was just—"

But before he can continue, Myrto spins around in his arms and silences him by placing a single finger on his lips. "I'm counting, Socrates!" she begins. "You haven't been stumbling drunk through the streets of Athens for seven days; you've been doing it for fifteen years!"

"Myrto—" Socrates tries to interject.

"Stop," she orders with a frustrated sigh. "You broke my heart when you married another woman and I died three more painful deaths for each child she bore you. I've suffered through the women and the wine and watched the beautiful man and indomitable spirit I fell in love with disappear into a waif of his former self, a man who lives only to haunt the streets at night in search of new poisons and perils with which to kill himself and I will not abide it any longer!"

"Myrto, please—" Socrates tries once more.

Myrto's angry finger presses firmly against his chest and pushes him back out the front door. "What?" she asks tauntingly. "Go on! Say something clever! Astonish me with a romantic story or an ingenious argument—I know you'll never run out of those! There's nothing you could possibly say that will make my bed available to you tonight!"

Then, with one final poke from her finger, Socrates trips over backwards through the doorway and into the quiet Athenian night, catching himself just before he losses his balance and falls to the ground. Socrates stammers and holds out his hand defensively, desperate to get Myrto to listen to him, but she simply stands in the doorway, her hands on her hips staring at him with a cold glare that renders him incapable of forming a coherent thought.

"What's the matter, Socrates? Speechless for the first time in your life? Say something!" she demands.

Socrates continues to sputter for a moment before finally laying one hand across his chest and reaching out plaintively to Myrto with other. He takes a deep breath before finally letting the words spill from his mouth: "I love you?"

Myrto unfolds her arms and walks out into the street, reaching out once more for his head with both of her hands. Socrates bows and lets her fingers run through the back of his hair. She smiles and kisses him tenderly on the forehead. "Oh, and I love you too, my dear!" Myrto says, "But come back only when your words have meaning!" She slaps him across the face once more and retires back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

Socrates stands silently in the street as the candles inside Myrto's home are snuffed out one by one. The neighborhood is completely empty, even of the stray animals that scour the streets in search of scraps of food and reliably provide an audience for the occasional lovers' quarrel. Once he's certain that he's seen the last of Myrto for the night, Socrates finally allows his shoulders to slump down and hands to fall below his waist. He slowly shuffles his feet down the dimly lit street, uncertain of where to go next.

There are dozens of women scattered across Athens Socrates can count on to accept him into their beds, but he no longer pines for any of them. He can always return home to his wife Xanthippe, but the emotional toll she will extract from him in the morning would far exceed the value of just a few hours of rest. A soft breeze rushes down the corridor of the street. Socrates continues down the bleak road just as he has on so many nights before: completely alone.

Or so he thinks. Socrates passes an amorphous shadow he dismisses as refuse just as someone rises from the street and smothers Socrates' mouth with a cloth soaked in ether. After a brief struggle, the mason finally surrenders to the fumes. The specter drapes a hood over Socrates' head and drags his body into the adjacent alley.

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ATHENS

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Pericles sits at the large dinning room table of the Tholos, the archon's living quarters just off the agora, nursing a cup of warm milk with Aspasia at his side. An hour earlier a messenger had arrived and told them to anticipate regrettable news within the hour. His anxiety grows with each passing minute, his hands tapping nervously on the surface of the table as if it were a drum. This impatience begins to infect Aspasia.

"Will you make the first move?" she asks, hoping to distract him from his cares.

"I would be a fool to do so," he replies. "Our allies would revolt or nullify our treaties if we are perceived to be the aggressors. No, we'll have to wait for them to make the first move."

"Then how will it happen?"

"Does it matter?" Pericles says, throwing his hands up in the air. "Great wars always begin with minor incidents. I can only assume the Spartans have convinced some city or village to revolt and are just waiting for the right moment—and if they haven't found an accomplice yet, I could easily furnish them with a list of a dozen cities I would just as soon be rid of if it didn't mean losing the entire empire. One way or another, war will begin soon enough."

"Then just make sure it doesn't begin with your assassination," she says, gently squeezing his hand.

Pericles returns the gesture with a smile. The archon enjoys a fleeting moment of tranquility that is cut short by the sound of servants opening the doors. Alcibiades, beaten and defeated, walks into the room flanked by a pair of soldiers on each side.

Both Pericles and Aspasia rise from the table. The archon dismisses the servants and soldiers with nothing more than a slight nod. He walks up to Alcibiades and lays his hands on the boy's shoulders. "It's good to have you back in Athens again, Alcibiades," he says before turning his back to the young man and walking back to the table. "We need to have a little talk."

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SPARTA

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Archidamus and Agis walk their horses down the road leading back to Sparta after a vigorous morning ride through the countryside, as was their daily habit. It's the only hour during the day the King is free of his advisors and solicitors. It's also the only moment he has to speak with his son for any length of time. Today, however, their walk back to the city is silent.

Agis is unbothered by the quiet and this pleases his father. Spartans are not known for sharing words of affection, but this doesn't mean they were incapable of them. Seeing his son, now grown into a man moves Archidamus to speak. "If your mother were still alive she would be very proud of you, Agis," the King says.

"Father, there's no need to—" Agis begins.

But his father cuts him off. "Yes, there is, because your mother is the only person I know who could possibly be any prouder of you than I am."

Agis keeps silent and continues to stoically look down the road ahead. He wants to say something, but he worries that doing so would render the compliment unjustified. The prince squeezes his horse's reigns and continues down the road.

There is more to the King's motives than just praise. He has no interest in spoiling his son with commendations, but to harden him for what's to come. "These next few months, maybe even the next few years, are going to be difficult, son," he continues. "They are going to try Sparta, and our family, in ways no one ever thought possible."

"Then we are going to war?" Agis asks.

"I'm afraid it's inevitable," the king confirms. "I just want you to know that if the gods see it fit to take me on the battlefield, no king who ever knew his successor will die happier."

Agis turns his head to his father and reveals a half-smile. Archidamus sees the gesture out of the corner of his eye and smiles back. It's a rare breach in etiquette among a royal family charged with displaying Spartan virtues at all times in public.

The two continue walking in silence for a moment. The king takes a deep breath of the morning air and exhales as if relieved of a great burden. "Now if we can only find you a queen..." he says.

"Father!" Agis scolds.

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ATHENS

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Theresa enters the bathing room and motions for her servants to leave her. When the last girl leaves the room, she lets her robe fall to the tile floor below, walks into the steaming waters and begins washing her skin with a sponge. Normally, this is a task she leaves to her servants, but on this particular day she has a scheme to execute, one that calls for privacy. Theresa slowly dips the back of her head under the water and allows her hair to fan out on the surface of the water.

From just outside the bath chamber Cleon watches his wife dab her body with the sponge. He has just returned home from a long journey to Thrace and had hoped for a lavish meal (which, unbeknownst to him, the servants were preparing at that very moment), but was quite satisfied to find his wife amid her daily bath instead.

Catching his wife in the bath unawares happens rarely and only so often as Theresa wishes to influence her husband in some dramatic fashion. She knows Cleon takes particular joy in watching her from what he believes to be a hidden location, and so the act of bathing on these occasions becomes an intricately-planned seduction for Theresa. She choreographs her movements in the bath as carefully to coincide with her husband's arrival home and after years of practice her routine is almost perfected.

Theresa lifts her head from the pool and pulls her hair over her shoulders, twisting it into a single tail to squeeze the water back into the bath. She turns her back to the entrance and resumes cleaning herself with the sponge. Cleon lurks in the darkened hallway for a moment, watching the contours of his wife's body refract in the rippling waters with as he leans against a pillar in the hallway.

"You missed a spot," he says, appearing from shadows as he walks into the chamber.

Theresa smiles. "I haven't finished yet," she replies without looking over her shoulder.

"But you always miss that same spot," Cleon notes.

"Then why don't do you come in and wash it for me?" Theresa suggests.

Cleon grins as he loosens his robes and steps gingerly into the steaming waters of the bath. He massages Theresa's shoulders for a moment before his wife finally turns around and kisses him hello. "Did you miss me?" she asks.

"Terribly!" he replies. "There was a small slave rebellion at the mines and I had to pay King Teres a small fortune to quell the uprising with his army. And you wouldn't believe the cost of pack mules these days! And now that the—"

Theresa learned long ago that enduring the minutia of business was the price of marrying a successful merchant. Most days she would let Cleon prattle on for hours, if necessary, about one concern or another, most of which were never very interesting. She would nod her head politely, smile at his minor victories and offer solace when he endured small injustices. Occasionally, as a reward for lending him her ear, Cleon would inquire about her well-being. Theresa knew this wasn't an invitation to begin explaining the details of her day so much as it was a token of appreciation for allowing him to vent his frustrations openly. "Not nearly as vexing as your day, my dear," she would always reply.

But today is different.

"Shhhh!" Theresa instructs. "You've had a long journey back home, dear, and now its time to relax. Besides, you weren't the only one tending to business these last few weeks."

Cleon laughs at the thought of his wife laboring for hours by candlelight over the ledgers that occupy even his dreams. "Oh?" he replies, the condescension oozing from his lips. "And how clean did the chambermaids keep the house while I was gone?"

Theresa playfully splashes her husband. "Very funny, my dear," she says, kissing Cleon gently on the neck, "but let's see who's laughing after you answer this question."

"And what question is that?"

"How would you like to be the next archon of Athens?"

Cleon pushes his wife away and gazes into her eyes with a vacant expression of surprise and disbelief. Theresa simply smiles back deviously, turns her shoulder to him and waits for Cleon to finish washing her back.

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ATHENS

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Socrates awakes in the early afternoon to find himself laying in a large bed in a strange room, his head swimming in a delirious haze that make his already foreign surroundings nearly impossible to recognize. He coughs, wheezes and struggles violently with the phlegm that had accumulated in his throat over the course of his slumber. The mason rolls onto his side and heaves over the edge of the bed, every muscle in his body constricting simultaneously to purge a suspected poison, but nothing is expelled. He tried to take in a breath of air and begins to convulse uncontrollably.

"Ease yourself, old friend," a soothing voice councils from across the room. "You'll feel better in no time."

Socrates does as he's told. He turns onto his back and stops fighting his own body's natural tendencies for just long enough for his body to quit seizing and resume functioning normally. The mason opens his eyes only to discover his vision is blurry and unfocused. He sits and leans over the edge of the bed, drooling onto the floor waiting for his sight to return. After a few more spasms and contractions Socrates begins to see the faint glow of a lantern, illuminating the figure of a man seated at a desk across the room. He squints, but it does him no good. "I know that voice," Socrates says. "Where am I?"

"You're at the Inn of Artemis," the voice answers. "Here, drink this." The figure rises from the desk and approaches the bed with a cup of water held out in its hand. The man takes Socrates' hand and wraps his fingers around the cup. The mason immediately swallows the entire contents of the cup in just a single pull.

"Thank you, sir," Socrates says as he wipes his chin with his elbow, his vision slowly returning to him. "To whom do I owe such kind hospitality?"

"Your old friend Melissus, Socrates," the voice replies.

Socrates drops the cup to the floor and turns his head in the direction of the voice. Suddenly the room fills with a soft light seeping in through the cracks of shuttered windows. Shadows recede from the figure and fleshy details slowly emerge until, finally, Socrates discerns the face of his old friend Melissus. "By the gods, Melissus!" he says, lunging forward to embrace his old friend, only to avoid falling off the bed by Melissus' quick reflexes. "You're alive!"

"I am," Melissus replies, heaving Socrates' body back onto the bed. "You, on the other hand—you look like you've been dragged through the underworld only to have Hades himself shit you out the other end."

"My fortunes have been better," Socrates concedes.

"Even a blind man can see that, old friend!" Melissus says. He sighs and takes a seat next to Socrates on the edge of the bed, taking stock of the damage life has inflicted on the man sitting next to him. "What happened, Socrates? You were Zeno's most promising student—he was heart-broken when you decided not to study with him in Elea."

"A rather prescient decision in light of the current circumstances," Socrates notes, a rebuttal Melissus finds hard to dispute. "Besides, I belong here in Athens."

"And what have you done with yourself here in Athens? Drink, carve stone, brawl in the streets and stick your cock in anything moves?"

"Well, not anything—I do have my standards, though they're admittedly far more negotiable these days than they were in the past."

Melissus shakes his head. "We had as much back in Elea, but Zeno and I always dismissed those reports as rumor-mongering or maybe even some kind of jest, given your sense of humor."

"I know what you're trying to do, Melissus," Socrates says, motioning for more water, "and it's not going to work. I am not the accomplished man Zeno once thought I would be. Zeno was well aware of this and knew better than to expect much from me."

Melissus sighs, picks up the cup from the ground and walks across the room to fill it. He returns it to Socrates with a devastating look of despair on his face.

"Then I've come here for nothing," he says with a sigh.

Again, Socrates finishes the contents of the cup in a single swig. "What are you doing here, Melissus?" he asks. "I can't imagine Pericles would be too happy to find you traipsing around the agora of his city. What happened to Zeno? How did you escape Elea? I've heard bits and pieces, but nothing that sounded like the whole story."

"I came here to find you, Socrates." Melissus says. "I need you to help me."

"Me?" Socrates repeats, pointing to his chest. "What could you possibly need me for?"

"I need you to help me find the man who killed Zeno," Melissus says.

Socrates laughs. "Have you come all the way to Athens just to have a go at me? Zeno's killer is back in Elea."

"Demylus might have swung the sword that killed Zeno, Socrates, but he didn't give the order. Someone was using Demylus just to get to Zeno and me."

Socrates laughs again, but now with a hint of nervousness. "Listen to yourself, Melissus! Are you telling me that someone gave this Demylus character a small army of mercenaries to invade and occupy Elea just so kill Zeno? I'll defer to your considerably more vast experience with killing men, but there have to be more effective, less complicated and less expensive ways of assassinating someone! Demylus wanted to rule Elea and Zeno got in his way—why assign alternative motives where there are none? It's not like Demylus is scouring Greece, hunting down an old philosopher like you now, is he?"

"I should imagine not," Melissus replies. "Demylus is dead."

"What?"

"Demylus is dead," he repeats, as the admiral walks across the room to refill Socrates' cup with more water. "The lives of tyrants in Greece are very short, Socrates. You Athenians tend to forget this because it's been so long since you were ruled by one. Demylus was young and stupid and drunk with unearned power—and someone set him loose on the city of Elea knowing what a stubborn, headstrong fool Zeno could be. I heard the news en route to Athens during a stopover at Ithaca. That bastard lasted only a few short weeks as tyrant. The day after he determined I had escaped the city, every last one of his soldiers disappeared into the night and left their weapons and armor behind. The next morning, the Eleans simply picked up the arms and killed Demylus while he still slept."

"I don't understand," Socrates admits as he takes another cup of water from his friend. "If Demylus is dead, why aren't you back in Elea?"

Melissus pulls the desk chair across the floor next to the bed and takes a seat. "Because someone is scouring Greece and hunting down this old philosopher, Socrates." He says, tapping his sternum. "I was in Syracuse hardly three weeks before my room at the inn was ransacked. It was only two weeks in Corcyra and merely days in Ithaca."

"How can you be sure these aren't men you defeated in battle ages ago?" Socrates asks.

"Because these men aren't soldiers. They're assassins, Socrates. They have no plans to take me alive."

Socrates feels a painful throbbing sensation radiate from the core of his skull and massages his temples to soothe himself. "Melissus, this doesn't make any—"

The admiral pushes his chair right in front of Socrates. He takes the mason's head in his hands and tilts it up enough so that he's looking directly into his friend's eyes. "Zeno let himself be arrested by Demylus' soldiers so that I could escape. When I refused to leave him, he whispered something into my ear."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'They're coming, Melissus. They want me dead because they think I'm the leader, that I'm some kind of king of the philosophers, and they'll keep coming until they kill every last one us! Warn the others and find them before they find you!'"

Melissus releases his grasp of Socrates' head and leans back into his chair. The mason shakes his head in disbelief. "Melissus, do you have any idea how strange this all sounds?"

"Of course, I do," he replies calmly.

"Then, do you have any idea whom the 'they' Zeno was talking about is?"

"None at all."

"Have you told anyone else about this?"

"No, you're the first."

"Me? But why me?"

"Because I need your help, Socrates. I need you to come with me and help me warn the others."

"Why don't you just send them all letters?"

"Messengers can't be trusted, Socrates. They'll hand over a delivery at the first sight of a sharp blade or a shiny coin and then they wrong men will know whom to kill and where to find them. We can't even trust the written word unless we see the author himself putting reed to scroll."

"This is complete madness, Melissus! Why, by the gods, would anyone subject themselves to such unnecessary restrictions?" Socrates asks, bowing his head to scratch the top of his scalp.

"Because I suspect the killer is one of us."

Socrates' head shoots up immediately and he stares Melissus directly in the eyes. "What?" he asks, his voice peeling with genuine concern for the first time during the conversation.

"You heard me: I suspect the killer is someone we know well, maybe even a good friend."

"Another philosopher?"

"Another philosopher." Melissus echoes.

"What makes you think th—"

"I'd prefer not to say right now."

"But, you don't think that I'm respon—"

"I wouldn't be here right now if I thought you were the killer Socrates," Melissus says as he rises from his chair and walks over to a closed window. "But I need you to understand the bind I'm in right now." He opens the shutters just enough to catch a narrow glimpse of the world outside the inn.

"So you want me to go with you from city to city across Greece, calling on all of our old friends and find Zeno's killer among them?"

"You don't understand what's going here, do you Socrates?" Melissus asks, removing his finger from the blinds to close the shutter.

"Evidently not."

"The stakes are far greater than—"

"Then will you please explain the stakes to me without being such a cryptic little cunt!" Socrates orders impetuously.

Melissus takes a deep breath, then exhales. He runs a hand through his hair, walks across the room to pour himself a cup of water and drinks it. "War is coming, Socrates," he says, his back still turned to his friend. "War is coming and no one will realize it's even happened before it's all over and humanity is sifting through the rumble of what it's irretrievably lost."

Socrates smirks. "Good gods, Melissus! It doesn't take a retired admiral to know that Athens and Sparta are—"

"Who said anything about Athens and Sparta?" Melissus snaps. He marches back across the room and retakes his seat in front of Socrates, barely the breadth of a man's hand separating their noses. "I'm not looking for a detective. I don't need someone who's just going to help me solve a mystery. I may not know who killed Zeno yet, but I can tell you that it took more planning, money and resources than any one person can ever organize alone—and for good reason, because Zeno's death wasn't just a murder."

"Then what was it?"

"Zeno was the first casualty in the war between philosophers, Socrates. I'm not talking about a battle fought on a field or in ships on the high seas, and I certainly don't mean a debate over wine on a wealthy host's portico—I'm talking about an actual war with real casualties, one that will be fought in the shadows of back alleys of every city in Greece until there's only one side standing over the fallen corpses of the enemy. I came to Athens to find soldiers, Socrates. I came here to raise an army of philosopher-warriors to defend ourselves and this endeavor we've been working on these last two hundred years."

"Do I look like a soldier to you, Melissus?"

"No less so than I resemble a philosopher!" the admiral says. Socrates laughs. "I've always known that no one will ever speak my name in the same breath with Xenophanes or Heraclitus or any of the great thinkers. That's what I've always loved about you, Socrates: you never cared that I came to philosophy as an old man burdened by a lifetime of opinions. I've always been a better soldier than a philosopher. Perhaps this adventure will show you the same."

"Then you'll have to offer me much more than adventure if you want me to become a martyr for philosophy," the mason replies.

"I'm not offering you adventure, Socrates." Melissus says. "I'm offering you redemption. Whatever caused you to abandon philoso—"

"That's not what happened!"

"I don't care what happened, Socrates! I have more important things to worry about, right now. Whatever did happen, it happened before we ever met. No one's ever bothered to explain the situation to me and I've never bothered asking, but I do know you let a lot of good people down these last fifteen years and this is your chance to make up for it."

Socrates' shoulders sink down his sides. His head bows as all the air leaves his lungs in an exasperated huff. He takes a deep breath and gazes up at Melissus, his mouth agape, head shaking slowly from side to side. "I just can't do it, Melissus," he whispers quietly. "I can hardly keep myself alive, let alone others."

Melissus takes the empty cup from Socrates hands and walks back to the pitcher across the room. "I can see that," he says as he rummages through his knapsack and pours two more cups of water. The admiral walks back across the room and hands Socrates another cup of water.

"Besides, belong here in Athens," Socrates says quietly as he sips from the cup. "You're welcome to stay, of course. There's no better city in the world better for hiding in plain sight."

"I can see that, too," Melissus responds, glancing at his friend, "but I need to keep moving. It's only a matter of time before they start looking for me here."

"Where will you go?" Socrates asks.

"Far away from here and I'd suggest you think about doing the same thing, even if it's not with me," Melissus says, walking across the room and stuffing a few stray items along the way into his knapsack. Just as he's about to close the bag, Melissus reaches down and removes Socrates' maul hammer from the very bottom before closing it with the tug of a thin piece of rope. "Don't think for an instant they won't come for you, Socrates, because the moment you do will be your last."

"That's advice that will probably be ignored by a man who's never left the city of Athens before," Socrates says, his eyelids suddenly growing heavy.

Melissus walks back across the room and sit down on the edge of the bed next to his friend. "Then let me put it another way: as I see it, you have three options. First, you can run for your life and live to fight another day. The second is you can stay in Athens and die."

"And what's my third option?"

"You can stay in Athens and fight," Melissus answers. "You make look like hell, but that's just the sign of a man who doesn't turn down a good fight." Melissus hands Socrates' hammer back to him, inspecting the craftsmanship of the tool. "I found this tucked into your belt last night. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before during my days at sea."

"It's called a maul hammer," Socrates informs him. "Masons use it split rock and cut stone."

"It looks like it could also be helpful in a fight," Melissus notes, placing the handle of the hammer in Socrates' open palm. The mason wraps his fingers around it and tries to pull it away, but Melissus still keeps his grip tight. "Never let it leave your side," he instructs before Melissus relinquishes the tool.

"If everything you've told me tonight is true," Socrates posits, "then how do I know I can trust you?"

"You can't," Melissus answers.

"Then how do I know that you didn't kill Zeno?"

"You don't."

Socrates nods solemnly. He takes one final sip of water as he tucks the hammer back into his belt. "There's just one thing I still don't understand," Socrates says, trying to rise to his feet. "Why did you drug me last night?" But before he can push much of his own weight over the side of the bed his legs buckle beneath him and Socrates falls to floor. "My apologies!" he says, crawling on his hands and knees. "I must not have completely recovered yet." Melissus reaches down and pulls Socrates back on to the bed. The admiral tucks his friend back under the covers as the room begins to spin violently to Socrates' eyes. "Melissus, what did you do to m—"

Melissus kisses the mason on each cheek affectionately. "The gods keep you better than they have, Socrates," he says as he rises from the bed and tosses his bag over his shoulder. "But I can't risk being followed, even by an old friend. Trust no one: your life depends on it."

Socrates struggles to speak, but quickly falls back asleep. Melissus places his palm on Socrates forehead and waits just long enough to convince himself that the soporific he added to Socrates' last cup of water hasn't killed his friend. He rises from the bed and splashes a handful of drachmas on the desk, enough to cover another night at the Inn, then walks to the door.

Melissus reaches for the handle, but stops just short of touching it. He turns his head and takes one last, long look his sleeping friend. He had been wrong about Socrates. He had hoped for a soldier, and would have settled for a brawler, but only found a broken soul hell-bent on pissing away the immense gifts given to the man by the gods themselves. All Melissus can do now is warn the others before it's too late. He throws the hood of his cloak over his head, opens the door, and disappears into the crowded agora outside.

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MEGARA

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The horsemen are in surprisingly good spirits by the time they catch sight of the gates of Megara. They have completed their ride through Attica in no time at all and expect to be back in their homes well before the sun sets later in the day. One of the slaves starts to worry that if they do return home so soon their superiors might suspect they didn't carry out their duty at all.

"That doesn't seem likely," the Standard-bearer explains to the slave. "You know how these things work: We arrive with a message. Then we enter with pomp and ceremony—that always take time to arrange. They thank us for our efforts and ask us to dine with them. We accept and pass a few hours with meaningless chit chat."

"Then they wish us a safe journey home," the Herald adds.

"I just wish they would do so shortly after we arrived," the Standard-bearer notes. "If I wanted to spend any more time in Magara then my duty required, than I would live there."

"I promise to make this brief," the Herald says as he dismounted from his horse and turned to the pair of slaves accompanying them. "C'mon, now, all of you! The walk will do us all well."

The Herald has an ulterior motive for arriving at the gates on foot. He alone is privy to the message they are delivering and believes it to be wise to approach the city as a friend and ally and in the least threatening posture possible. He even contemplates removing his helmet only to determine this to be taking his display of good faith too far.

The message the Herald carries is a simple request, made by Pericles himself, to the Megarians to cease cultivating lands consecrated to the goddess Demeter. Such requests are not uncommon, but usually accompanied by a larger retinue of heralds or delivered by a company of soldiers. The Herald, however, doesn't dwell on why the archon sends such a small party on this particular mission and assumes that Pericles wants the job done quickly above all else.

Megara sits adjacent to the great city of Corinth on the southern coast of the isthmus that separates Attica from Peloponnesus. Consequently, she's an important trading post and strategic city, one that enjoys being lavished with the attention and goodwill of her neighbors and powerful interests from all across Greece. The leaders of the city are quite accustomed to having their way in matters of diplomacy, a quality which makes frequent fodder for jests among the Athenian herald corps.

A Sentry stationed above a turret atop the gates sees the Athenians approach and yells down to the Herald as he soon as the party is in earshot. "Who's there?"

"A herald of Athens sent by the archon Pericles."

"No one told me of any heralds arriving today," the Sentry replies.

"Megara has built farms on land sacred to the goddess Demeter," the Herald answers in a calm voice, "and this has displeased the priests in Athens. I have been sent to see that the situation is resolved."

"Very well," notes the Sentry. "I will inform the oligarchs. Safe travels to you."

The Herald looks over his shoulder at the rest of his party and shrugs. A cold reception is not how heralds are typically treated, especially by lowly foot soldiers. "He's probably been curing his boredom with a sip of wine for every traveler what passes through the gate," the Standard-bearer speculates. The slaves each look at him with puzzled expressions. "What?" replies the Standard-bearer. "Don't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing!"

The Herald shakes his head and returns his attention to the Sentry. "Apologies, sir, but as you can see, we carry the Caduceus, the symbol of Hermes," he says, moving a step closer to the gate with each word. "It is my sacred obligation to deliver the message in person to your city's leaders."

"No closer, Athenian!" the Sentry screams as a company of archers emerged from the parapet wall and draw their bows.

The Herald raises his hands to show he is unarmed. "Good friend," he begins, "by law and tradition I am granted safe passage. All heralds are to be treated as guest-friends."

"Stand down, men!" the Sentry yells. The command immediately brings the archers to ease. "Prepare to open the gate!" he shouts, then disappears along with the archers.

The Herald turns and walks back to his horse, urging his men to remain clam with only the slightest movement of his hands. "Everything will be fine," he reassures.

The city gates opens and out pours the Sentry and a company of hoplite soldiers in full armor who immediately draw their swords and surround the Athenians. Instinctively, the Herald and his men reach under their saddles and withdraw swords.

The Sentry laughs. "I thought heralds traveled unarmed?" he asks.

"Thieves and highwaymen neither keep treaties nor honor traditions," the Herald replies. "Just like false friends." The Megarian steps closer. "Whatever your quarrel with Athens, it should be a matter for the priests at Delphi to arbitrate!"

"If only the priests spoke for the gods and not the party with the most coin," the Sentry scoffs.

"Friends, be reasonable!" The Herald pleads. "Killing a herald is an act of war! Let us return to Athens and send ambassadors to negotiate a settlement."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," the Sentry said. "Guards!"

The soldiers strike at the Athenians, quickly killing the two Slaves and bringing the Herald and Standard-bearer to their knees, swords drawn across the backs of their necks.

"You'll get your chance to give our reply to your archon," the Sentry tells the Herald with a quick nod to the soldiers. He pulls the sword from his sheath, walks over to the Herald and raises it high over his head. "You won't be the man who delivers it," he says just before he decapitates the Herald. The lifeless head rolls on the ground before coming to rest underneath the Standard-bearer, who looks into his colleague's vacant eyes and sees the reflection of a sword descending down on his own neck.

The men hover silently over the twitching bodies. The Sentry removes a panel of clothe from one of the dead Slave's tunic and wipes the blood from his shield. "Your shield," one of the soldiers says, pointing to the Sentry.

"What about it?" the Sentry plies, more concerned with cleaning his equipment than answering a subordinate's questions.

"There's an image of a griffin carved into it," the soldier says.

"So what if it does?" the Sentry spits back.

"I've just never noticed it before," the Soldier says. The Sentry shakes his head and without giving an answer. "What do you want us to do with the corpses?" the Soldier asks.

"Bury the bodies or leave them for the dogs, it make no difference to me," the Sentry replies. "Bundles the heads together in standard, tie it to one of the saddles and send the horse back. The Athenians should be able to understand the message,' he asnwers as he walks back to city gate.

"And what message is that?" the Soldier asks.

"That the war has begun."

Coming soon...

SCHOOL OF ATHENS
PART II

For updates, questions or comments, email archermccormick@gmail.com.
