Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [65]
He marched me to the steps of the great temple itself. There were dozens of young men there and in the cool space under the columns. Most sat around tutors, but the biggest crowd gathered around a white-haired man who was so thin that his bones threatened to burst from his skin. He wore a chlamys without a chiton, like the young men, but he had an ugly, bony body – except that his muscles stood out like a Boeotian farmer’s. He seemed very old to me.
He watched us come, although there were a dozen boys around him on the steps.
‘You are late,’ he said to my new master.
Archilogos smiled. ‘Pardon, master,’ he said. ‘I should not have waited so long to dip my toe.’
This comment made the other boys giggle. I had no idea why.
The teacher glared at him. ‘If you understood what I said,’ he commented, ‘you would know how foolish that last sally sounded. Why do I teach the young?’
‘We pay well?’ another wag said.
Boys began to laugh, but he old man had a stick and it smacked into the jokester’s shins before he could move.
‘I neither accept pay nor do I ask for it,’ the teacher said. ‘Who are you, boy?’
That last was directed at me. I was not the only companion present. ‘I belong to Archilogos,’ I said meekly.
He grunted. ‘Not in my class, boy. Here, you are your own man. Your own mind. For me to mould as I see fit.’ He coughed into his hand. ‘What do you know? Anything?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’
He smiled. ‘You have a nice combination of humility and arrogance, young man. Sit down right here. We are talking about the logos. Do you know of the logos, young man?’
‘No, teacher,’ I answered.
And so I met Heraclitus, my true master, the teacher of my soul. But for him, I would be nothing but a hollow vessel filled with rage and blood.
At the time, I was enraptured to find another thinker like the priest of Hephaestus from Thebes. This one was even deeper, I thought, and I sat in the shade, my back against a warm marble pillar, and let him fill me with wisdom.
In fact, much of it sounded like gibberish, and it was up to every boy to take what he could from the well, or so Heraclitus told us. On that first day, though, he turned to me, of all those boys. ‘So – you know nothing. Are you a hollow vessel? May I fill you?’
I remember nodding and blushing, because other boys giggled and too late I saw the double entendre.
‘Bah,’ Heraclitus said, and his stick struck a shin. The owner squeaked. ‘Sex is for animals, boy. Talking about sex is for miserable ephebes.’ He prodded me with the bronze-shot tip of his staff. ‘So? Ready to learn?’
‘Yes, master,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Here is all the wisdom I have, boy. There is a formula, a binding and a loosing, a single, coherent thought that makes the universe as it is, and we who sit on these steps call it the logos.’ He prodded me again. ‘Understand?’
I looked at him. His eyes were dark and full of mischief, like a boy’s. ‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Brilliant!’ Heraclitus laughed. ‘You may yet be a sage, boy.’ He looked around and then back at me. ‘Have you heard the phrase “common sense”?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘Is it, in fact, common?’
I laughed. ‘No,’ I said.
‘Superb!’ the old man said. ‘By all the gods, you are the pupil I’ve dreamed about.’ He leaned close and poked me with his stick again. ‘Which has the truer understanding, lad? Your ears and nose, or your soul?’
I looked around, but all the boys were watching me. ‘What’s a soul?’ I asked. I had heard the word, but seldom as something that could sense.
He stopped poking me. He turned to Archilogos. ‘Young Logos,’ he said, and suddenly I knew where my young master had got his name, ‘how much did your father pay for this slave?’
Archilogos raised his hands. ‘No idea, master. But not much.’
Heraclitus laughed. ‘Now I know that wisdom can, indeed, be purchased.’ He turned back to me and the stick pushed into my ribs. ‘Listen, boy,’ he said, ‘the soul is the truest form of you. It can sense the logos in the same way it can sense when another