Killer of Men

'Men attacked him,' Darkar said. 'He sent Kylix for me.'

Hipponax loomed over me and his cool hands, which smelled of beeswax, touched my cheek. 'Gods – get him a doctor.' Darkar was silent. 'What is it, Darkar?'

'He killed them,' Darkar said. 'Both of them. Free men, I think. Their bodies are in the fountain house.'

Hipponax knelt beside me. 'They attacked you, boy?'

I nodded. I could barely breathe. I had a broken nose and at least two broken ribs, too.

Hipponax rose. 'Take him to the Temple of Asclepius, then. And dispose of the dead men. Pay the other slaves for their silence. I take it these are not men of property?'

Darkar spat. 'Scum, lord. Thugs.'

Archi came at a run. He looked at me and he took my hand. 'Artemis! Doru – what happened?'

I was silent, but Archi figured it out. 'Diomedes!' he said.

Hipponax ignored his son and turned to his steward. 'The fountain is now off-limits to our people. Dispose of the bodies. You may use a cart and a mule.'

'Thank you, lord,' I said.

Hipponax ignored me. To his son, he said, 'Diomedes will soon be a son of this house. Are you accusing him of attacking your slave?'

Archi shrugged – which, as I have mentioned, is not the way to placate a parent. You might take note of that yourself, thugater. My mind whirled. Son of this house? That meant that Diomedes was to marry Briseis.

I vomited on the flagstones.

After that, I was in debt to every slave in the house. It took a conspiracy of the whole neighbourhood to keep me safe. Yes – slaves are never friends. Or perhaps I should say that desperate slaves are never friends. Happy, prosperous slaves in a good house have the time and safety to be friends – selfish, backbiting friends, but friends nonetheless. But they hate the masters in their own way. Someone might have blabbed, if anyone had made it worth their while, but those two men – slave or free – they were scum. No one came looking for them.

I began to live with fear. In fact, I began to think like a slave – really think like a slave. I began to be very careful about what I said. I began to swallow insults. Those two killings taught me another lesson – and I was lucky to get off so cheaply. A week in the temple, and a year of carrying water and emptying chamber pots and fetching yarn and running errands – and minding my words. And a twinge in my chest when the rain is coming, every time – those broken ribs are still with me, honey.

A month later I was back at my lessons. Diomedes caught me on the steps. 'Your nose looks bad,' he said. 'How could that have happened? '

I didn't even meet his eye. I consoled myself that I had killed his thugs. I told myself that I would have my revenge.

But I crawled like a slave and didn't meet his eyes.

And that hurt more than the beating. Heraclitus understood something of what had passed. He became more careful of his praise for me and at the same time more acerbic in his dealings with Diomedes. I kept my head down until one day, as we rose to leave the steps, I found his bronze-shot staff resting against my sternum.

'Stay,' he said. He nodded to Archi. 'You, too.'

When the other boys were gone, he looked around. 'What's going on?' he asked.

We were both silent, as young men ever are in the face of authority.

His staff pointed at my nose. 'Who did that?'

I shrugged.

Heraclitus nodded. 'Strife makes change, and change is the way of the logos,' he said. A statement I'd heard a hundred times, actually, except there and then, I think that I understood.

'Change is not always good,' I said, rubbing my nose.

'Change merely is,' the philosopher said. 'Why are you so good at geometry, boy?'

I bowed my head at his praise. 'My father was a bronze-smith,' I said. 'We use a compass, a straight edge and a scribe to lay out our work. I knew how to make a right-angled triangle before I came here.' I shrugged. 'Any potter or leather-worker could do as well, I expect.'

He shook his head. 'Somehow I doubt it. So – you know how to work bronze?'

I nodded. 'I'm no master,' I said. 'But I could make a cup.'

He shrugged. 'Hmm,' he said. 'I am more interested in the properties of fire than in having a cup made.'

I have to say that at some point I had learned that, far from being the penniless beggar he seemed, Heraclitus had been offered the tyranny of the city and his father and brother were lords. He was a very rich man.

He went on, 'Fire hardens and softens, isn't that true, bronze-smith? '

I nodded. 'Fire and water to anneal make bronze soft,' I said, 'but iron hard.'

He nodded. 'So with all strife and all change,' he said. 'Strife is the fire, the very heart of the logos. Some men are made free, and others are made slaves.'

'I am a slave,' I said bitterly.

Archi turned and looked at me. 'I never treat you as a slave,' he said.

What could I say? He treated me as an object every day, but I knew that he treated me better than other slaves and a hundred times better than men like Hippias treated their slaves.

But Heraclitus was looking out to sea, or into the heart of the logos, or nowhere. 'Most men are slaves,' he said. 'Slaves to fear, slaves to greed, slaves to the walls of their cities or the possession of a lover. Most men seek to ignore the truth, and the truth is that everything is in flux and there is no constant except change.' He looked at me. 'It is ironic, is it not, that you understand my words, and you are free inside your head, while standing here as a chattel, property of this other boy who cannot fathom what we are talking about?'

Archilogos frowned. 'I'm not as stupid as you claim,' he said hotly.

Heraclitus shrugged. 'What is the logos?' he asked, and Archi shook his head.

'Change?' he asked. He looked at me.

Heraclitus swatted him. 'Best be going home.'

I thought that I understood his message. 'You think that I should not give up hope,' I said.

Now the master looked mystified. 'What have I to do with hope?' he asked, but he had a twinkle in his eye. Another winter passed. I could calculate inside my head without using my fingers and I could draw a man with charcoal. I could put my spear into a target ten horse-lengths distant, no more than a finger's width from the instructor's cane pointing where he wanted to see the throw. And I was growing to be the swordsman I wanted to be. I was strong. After all, I was getting the exercise of a rich man, and for nothing. Every day I could lift a larger weight stone. I could raise it behind my head and over my chest, I could lift my body off the floor of the temple with my hands alone. I was tall, and taller every day, and my chest began to grow broad. I was strong.

Archi grew, too. He grew as quickly as I did, or perhaps faster. Suddenly he was as tall and as wide, and when we wrestled, we could hurt each other, and we no longer dared to use oak swords to fight, because we could break bones. Instead, we fought as the ephebes fought, a spear's length apart, as if dancing, so that each blow was parried without sword and shield ever coming together.

Archilogos loved competition and he never liked to lose, so he began to apply himself to his studies, and he could suddenly do the geometry I could do and he could solve sums in his head, too.

I hated being a slave but, all the same, it was a good time. Adolescents are good at these divisions, and indeed, Heraclitus was full of such pairs of strife-riven opposites. So – at Ephesus, I was a slave, but in many ways, I was freer than I ever was again. I was poor and had nothing but my coins in the jar in the garden – although they were beginning to pile up. And yet, in just the way Heraclitus described, I was rich beyond imagining, with a young, strong body and an agile mind and the company of others like me. What young man – or woman – wants more?