The instructor stepped forward again.
"You were wrong!" he growled. "There will always be an opponent stronger than you. Even great Hector fell to one who was stronger. He who relies on strength alone endangers himself and his polis. Does that mean, therefore, being the most skilled with a weapon?"
Silence.
"Sons of whores. I said, does that mean being the most skilled with…"
"No!" a hundred voices shouted.
"Need I demonstrate?" he asked in an evil tone as he drew a sword and began scanning the faces of the ephebes peering fearfully at him from the darkness.
"No!" we shouted again, in rising panic.
"You learn your lessons quickly," he said dryly. "Tell me then, does it mean having the fastest reflexes?"
"No!" came the automatic response.
He chuckled hollowly. "I believe I will demonstrate this one," he said.
The crowd of boys shrank back away from him as he began peering at their faces. Unaccountably, his gaze rested directly on me. "You," he said, "the big one. Let us test your speed."
I stepped forward warily, memories of the training bouts with Antinous still fresh in my mind though they had occurred over six years before. The instructor looked me over, with what seemed almost an expression of disappointment behind the shadows of his visor.
"A squire," he said in disdain, noting my lack of a chlamys. Hawking his throat he spat an enormous, glistening gob on the ground at my feet. "Blindfold me, squire." He took off his helmet and breastplate and stood before me, massive, his bare chest and shoulders dark in the torchlight under a layer of curly hair. I hastened to obey, using a black linen cloth one of the other hoplites handed me. I then stepped back, and the man faced the boys, though unable to see any of them from behind the fabric.
"Now, squire, attack me, from any direction, however you see fit."
At this, the other hoplites began clanging their spears rhythmically, in unison, against their shields, setting up a racket that would obscure any sound that my feet might make as I circled around him seeking the optimal angle of attack. The beat was taken up immediately by the ephebes, who clapped their hands and stomped their feet in the same rhythm. As I looked around, however, I saw only fear on the faces of those around me. I stood motionless for a moment, gazing at the instructor and summoning my courage, listening to the rhythm of the beating hands and clanking spears. I then began moving slowly around him in concentric circles, drawing ever nearer, fixing my eyes steadily on him, wary of any trickery. The man stood erect and immobile, not a muscle twitching, his jaw thrust forward in utter concentration.
As I moved closer I made several feints toward his body, once almost touching him, to test his senses, experimenting as to whether he was able to see my moves from under the blindfold. All these maneuvers were met with a rising volume of din from the ephebes, who in their excitement increased the speed of their stomping, losing the sense of the steady beat until the noise was no longer a distinct thumping but rather a prolonged roar. Again and again I dove in, stopping just before committing to a full-fledged attack, while the man stood as if frozen.
Suddenly, sensing that his concentration must have flagged, I leaped forward, plunging my fist with all my strength directly into his exposed belly. Scarcely had my knuckles met the hair on his skin, however, than he whirled, catlike, stepping to the side and throwing me into an off-balance stumble, augmented by an iron fist clubbing down across the back of my neck. I slammed jaw-first onto the flagstones, half senseless, and heard vaguely, as if from a distance, the sound of metal sliding on leather as he drew his sword and pressed the tip against the middle of my back almost before I had even hit the pavement. I opened my eyes and peered through the semidarkness into the crowd of now silent ephebes. I could make out Xenophon's face staring straight at me, his eyes wide in surprise and terror.
"You were wrong again, shitworms," the instructor said in a low, menacing voice. "It does indeed mean having the fastest reflexes."
We endured two years of training in hoplite weaponry, archery, javelin-throwing and maneuvering of the catapult, I performing the same drills as Xenophon, as well as serving as his foil and weapons bearer. For two years we were roused from bed before sunrise to submit to conditioning exercises that surpassed anything Antinous had put us through, and to suffer the relentless reflex drills designed to make our defensive responses unthinking and automatic. We dined in the common mess with the officers and men and practiced parade drills before the entire city. In those two years we became men. Upon successful completion of the regimen, Xenophon was awarded a fine shield and spear and formally inducted into the Athenian army. Through Gryllus' manipulations, however, young Xenophon would not serve as a mere foot soldier. His father, now retired from the military but maintaining a heavy presence in the city's political life, fitted him out with a fine horse and all the cavalry equipment needed by a young nobleman. He presented him with a commission as squad leader, the same position in which Gryllus himself had started his illustrious career many years before.
In this role, Xenophon cut a fine figure. He had grown to a man of medium height, but quite muscular, his broad chest tapering to a slender waist and well-defined thighs. Gryllus even had to order a special cuirass made for him, to be more comfortable around his collar and shoulders. His glossy black hair was cut short and left curly, military style, and unlike many heavily bearded officers, he kept a clean jaw. His eyes were still as round and limpid as they had been when he was a boy, but since his recovery from the chest wound years earlier, they had lost their sweetness and innocence, and instead glinted with a hardness that belied the boyishness of the rest of his face. When introduced for the first time to his men or to other officers, his features often gave the initial impression of a young man promoted too quickly to a level beyond his experience. This view was corrected as soon as he issued his first orders in a deep and commanding voice, and fixed his eyes on their recipient with an expression that brooked no dissent.
I regularly attended morning gymnasium with Xenophon and cared for his animal, reporting to Gryllus on his son's whereabouts and traveling with him as his squire to his postings at Athens' dwindling garrisons. He was a model officer, possessing not an ounce of frivolity, the ideal of his father's virtue. Yet during his infrequent leaves he would disappear for days on end, spurning both his fellow officers in the barracks and the comforts of Gryllus' house, where his father vainly awaited his arrival, eager to trade camp stories and discuss military tactics. Only I know the hours he spent in drab civilian clothes, quietly accompanying Socrates as he made his rounds throughout the city, and how Xenophon would discreetly scratch cryptic notes of the philosopher's words on a small travel tablet and transcribe them at night. Only I know the days he spent with a bitter, discredited old general named Thucydides, who was busy writing a history of the war, and who occasionally used Xenophon as an aide to check his calculations and organize his notes. Only I know these things because Xenophon told them to me, and swore me to secrecy. Gryllus considered Socrates a frivolous charlatan, and Thucydides a revisionist madman, and though he would have raged at Xenophon for frequenting the former, he would have disinherited him for assisting the latter.