School of Athens
Page 10
PARTA
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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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