Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [66]
I considered this. ‘What does it sense? If my eyes sense light and my ears sense noise, what does my soul sense?’
Heraclitus stepped back. ‘Excellent question.’ He walked away a few steps and came back. ‘Work on it, and you will be a philosopher. Now we will examine some mathematics. What’s your name, boy?’
‘I am Doru,’ I said.
‘The spear that cuts to the truth, I see. Very well. On the feast of Artemis, have prepared an oration on what the soul senses, and how. You may present it to the other boys.’ Then he turned away. ‘Now. This is a triangle.’
That was our first encounter.
He was always a challenge. If you said nothing, he would hit you. If you spoke up, he would sometimes praise and sometimes deride and always force you to compose an oration to defend your views. I came to know that most classes began with one poor boy or another rising like a politician in the assembly to deliver a quavering oration in defence of some indefensible subject.
I liked the mathematics. I came from a family of craftsmen, and I already knew how to make a triangle with a compass, how to divide it exactly in two parts, and a hundred other tricks that any draughtsman needs to know to copy figures or even just to make a nice circle on a cup.
I lacked the language to be comfortable – they were Ionians and they spoke a different dialect – but from the first, Heraclitus put me at ease. When I sat on the steps of the Temple of Artemis, I was the equal of every other boy. That made me love the lessons more than anything.
But I soon learned the language, and I drank in the ideas and words of rhetoric and philosophy the way a thirsty man drinks water. I learned to stand properly and to speak from low in the chest so that other men could hear me. I learned some tricks with words – phrases that would draw a laugh, and other phrases that were serious. I learned that the repetition of any line from Homer would make men take an argument more seriously.
We learned to sing from another teacher and to play the lyre. Calchas had played the instrument well and I was determined to emulate him. You may judge the results yourself when I play some Sappho later.
It was a game, but a great game. A complex game – as was the game of how to craft an argument.
Heraclitus was severe on the difference between disputation and assertion. You know it, young man? They teach that in Halicarnassus, do they? Hmm. Honey, it is like this. When I say that the moon is made of cheese, that is an assertion. If I say it louder, does that make it more true? If I quote Homer that the moon is made of cheese, does that make it more true? What if I threaten to beat you if you don’t agree – does that make it true?
No. All mere assertion. Yes?
But, if I bring you a piece of cheese – better, if I take you to the moon and show you it is cheese – then I have offered proof. If I cannot prove it, perhaps I can offer theories as to why it must be cheese, offering testimonies from other men who have been to the moon, or scientific evidence based on experiment – you see? And you can offer me the same sort of evidence to prove that the moon is, in fact, not made of cheese at all.
If you laugh so hard, you will certainly spoil your looks. Hah! That was an assertion! There’s no proof whatsoever that laughter hurts your looks.
Where was I? I must have been speaking of Heraclitus. Yes. He made us learn the difference, and if you rose to speak and he was displeased, that ash staff with the bronze ferrule would whistle through the air and crack you in the side or prod you in the ribs. Very conducive to learning in the young.
Weeks passed. It was a glorious time. I was learning things every day, I was exercised like a healthy young animal, I was in something like love for the first time with Penelope, and Archilogos was a fine companion in every way. We read together, ran together, fought with staves, wrestled, boxed and disputed.
Artaphernes stayed with us for all that summer and autumn while he kept watch over his tyrants and his lords. He was building half a