Of Merchants & Heros

by Paul Waters

  He was not wholly unknown to me. I had seen him once or twice at the Lykeion, passing through with friends. But I had never seen him training there, and supposed he must have used one of the other gymnasions in the city. But when I mentioned this to Menexenos he said, ‘No, he spends all his time out in the country – or he used to, before he lost his farm along with the rest of us. Now I don’t know what he does.’

  The wrestling was next day. We had not spoken of it, but now I asked Menexenos what his chances were.

  He shrugged.

  ‘He is strong, and determined – but, then, so am I.’

  On the morning of the contest, I went early with Kleinias to the open ground beside the stadium, where the contest was to take place.

  All along the bank of the Ilissos the crowds were starting to gather, and already the air buzzed with excitement and expectation.

  Food-sellers and wine-sellers had set up their stalls; there were touts taking bets, there were dice games and knucklebone-players; there were quacks full of portentous mystery, with cures for every illness; there were sophists promising quick riches to the improvident; there were well-dressed courtesans, bright and stylish in costly Asiatic silks, standing under parasols held up by their slaves, laughing and talking with their friends; there were rough grim-faced whores from the city taverns, sprawled splay-legged beside the stream, cursing at the boys who splashed them from the water; there was a troop of dancers from Ionia; there were acrobats, jugglers, fire-eaters and rhapsodists.

  I found Menexenos’s friends waiting at the wrestling-ground.

  They greeted Kleinias respectfully, and made way for him at the front. Though it was early still, the sun was hot, and would soon be hotter still. The air smelled of trampled grass, and men’s bodies, and athletes’ oil.

  In due course the judges arrived in procession and took their places under the striped canopy. The signal was given; the pipes sounded; and the competitors, naked and oiled, filed out before them. Menexenos’s friends cheered, and so did I.

  Beside me, Kleinias was quiet. He peered at the bulky youth from Acharnai, as if he were there in the sand-strewn ring himself, about to fight him. He had his walking staff in his hand. His fingers had clenched hard around it; and now and then, unconsciously, he jabbed it into the dusty earth.

  I, too, had been appraising Menexenos’s opponent. I had decided, with little evidence to justify it, that he must be some sort of brute.

  But now, close up, and viewing him at his best, I could see intelligence in his stolid face. He had bound up his hair with a fillet.

  The broad muscles in his back and legs glistened in the sunlight. I had to admit there was a big-boned rustic beauty to him.

  The umpire gave the order to prepare. Menexenos, his bronze hair bleached by the sun, and with a band around his forehead, planted his feet and waited. The umpire’s hand descended, and the contest began.

  Straight away the youth from Acharnai caught Menexenos, throwing him off his guard with a clever feint. They locked, twisting and struggling; then Menexenos fell. The youth sprang forward, about to leap upon him, but Menexenos rolled with the fall, bunched himself up, and jumped to his feet again, all in one movement.

  At this the youth paused and waited, gauging him, watching carefully, his body tense and ready. They locked again, and struggled, and parted, and locked, in a series of inconclusive bouts.

  As I looked on, I saw where his strength lay. No one could doubt that he was physically powerful, and at first glance it was easy to take him as brutish and stupid. But his appearance was misleading, and, knowing this, he used it to his advantage, allowing others to misjudge him as a fighter, as I had done. I began to realize that he had thought carefully about the structure and tactics of his fight, and for all he tried to conceal this from his opponent, yet he fought with an almost poetic skill.

  Menexenos fell again; then a third time. The last was hard, and for a moment the youth had him pinned.

  All around me the crowd were shouting out with cheers of encouragement or advice. But Kleinias was silent, his face set in a deep frown that looked almost like anger.

  Menexenos went limp. Then, with a sudden twist and curl, like a snake under a stone, he was free once more. He sprang to his feet, and the fight continued. But, round by round, the Acharnaian was wearing him down, getting the better of him. At one time he played by physical force; at another, just when Menexenos was getting the feel of his tactics, he changed, and fought like someone else: darting, ducking, wheeling, pausing and appraising.

  Menexenos fell again. The youth had thrown him with an arm- twist. He held Menexenos prone, pressing his face into the dust, and twisted his arm up behind him. Many men, at such a time, would have switched his arm up just a little too far, tearing the muscles, inflicting pain, and weakening his opponent before the umpire could intervene. But the Acharnaian, to his credit, did not stoop to this.

  Beside me Kleinias said, ‘He must pull himself together, or he will lose.’

  I said, ‘Yes sir,’ and scowled out at the fighting-ground, suddenly full of resentment at him. At first, indeed, I did not understand it; but then the truth came to me. His was not the support of a father for his son. It was no support at all. Rather, he had set upon Menexenos’s shoulders the burden of his every setback and failure and unfulfilled hope; it was the loss of the farm, it was the dead older son who had fallen from his horse and died, it was the victory crown he had never won. Kleinias had forced him to become not one excellent son, but two; and Menexenos was like Atlas, supporting upon his shoulders his father’s dreams. There were too many reasons why he could not permit himself to lose this fight; and Kleinias, standing there grim-faced, silent, judging, directing his will through his eyes like a beam of fire, was the greatest reason of all.

  Kleinias spoke again, breaking into my thoughts, asking me whose son Menexenos’s opponent was. I answered that I did not know, but that he lived outside the city, at Acharnai, on a farm there.

  At this he grunted and nodded, and tapped his stick in the ground. Just then, Menexenos happened to glance my way. I raised my fist and cried out his name, and beside me Kleinias called out, ‘Win, my son, for me, and for Autolykos.’ I saw Menexenos’s face set firm. With his forearm he wiped the sweat from his brow. Then he turned once more to face his opponent.

  I saw, that day, that there can be honour and decency in every act of a man, if he so chooses. Both fought with grace, and style, and skill. When the end came, it was because Menexenos had managed to read the poetry of the youth’s movements and discern the intention behind it. He began to predict whether he was about to play the bout heavily or lightly; he began to match him, meeting strength with strength, feint with feint, and clever twisting holds with clever twisting holds of his own. He brought the Acharnaian down and held him there.

  Sweat ran down his body, forming runnels in the dust that caked his back and chest. The Acharnaian twisted; but Menexenos held him fast, in a lock which, for all its strength, looked as light as a handshake.

  And then, after what had seemed an eternity, it was over, and the youth’s arm went up in the sign of submission.

  I yelled and whistled and stamped the earth with all the rest.

  Menexenos turned, raised his fist, and grinned. From the podium the judge came forward, and proclaimed the winner.

  Then we all surged forward to tie the victory-ribbons on his arms and thighs and around his head.

  Kleinias cried, ‘My son!’ and there were tears streaming down the old man’s face.

  ‘I won, Father. I won.’

  Then he turned to me, smiling into my eyes; and without a thought for my clothes, or what was proper, I embraced and kissed him, covering myself in oil and sweat and dust; and all about us the people cheered.

  Later, I walked with him towards the wash-house. From everywhere people were calling out their congratulations and good wishes. We came to the arch that leads to the baths and changing- rooms. A crowd had gathered th
ere, to see the athletes as they went in.

  As we passed, a man pushed suddenly to the front and jabbing his finger shouted, ‘You would not have won if you were not the son of an aristocrat.’

  Menexenos looked round. The man had a thin, pallid face, and milk-white bandy legs. Seeing himself now singled out, he drew back a step. He looked as if he had just come from a workshop. Stone- dust clung to his sandy untrimmed hair, and the front of his tunic was stained with food.

  ‘And you,’ replied Menexenos after a considering moment, ‘would not have won, even if you were.’

  People laughed, and Menexenos strode off to the wash-house, where the other pentathletes were waiting at the door to congratulate him.

  I let him go.

  The pale-faced man, who had remained silent, now spoke again, addressing whoever would listen.

  ‘People like that make me sick. They want for nothing, and spend their time putting down honest working folk like me.’

  His bitter face was full of hate, and pride in his lowly state. I thought of the years of effort that had brought Menexenos to this day of victory, and saw again in my mind’s eye the burnt-out farm, and Kleinias collapsed in the wreckage of his life.

  I ought to have ignored him. He was a mean, petty man who was below contempt. But suddenly my heart filled with anger.

  ‘Have I seen you at the Lykeion, sir?’ I said, rounding on him. ‘Or perhaps at Kynosarges’ gymnasion, or the Akademy?’

  He laughed harshly, catching the eyes of those who stood around.

  ‘What, me? I am Mikkos the stonecutter, a working man. I don’t have money to waste at the gymnasion, like the haughty oligarchs and mincing pretty-boys.’

  ‘And yet,’ I said, ‘the entrance is free to all, is it not?’

  At this he narrowed his eyes and looked suspicious.

  ‘What if it is? I do as I please. I am a free citizen.’

  ‘And in your freedom,’ I flared back at him, ‘you have pleased to make yourself what you are. So do not complain of it when a better man wins.’

  I had said enough, and made to go. But he cried, ‘Better? No man is better than me! In this city we are all equal!’

  ‘Oh?’ I said, raising my brow. ‘Is that what you think? Little wonder, then, that you are content to be no more than you are. My friend is right. Even if you had the wealth of Kroisos, you would still be standing here, complaining about another man’s excellence, instead of striving for it yourself.’

  The bystanders laughed. I turned and walked away.

  When I had gone a few paces I heard him shout, ‘Roman dog!’

  I paused in my step and glanced round. At this he let out a yelp and fled, pushing his way into the depth of the crowd.

  The Panathenaia ended with the torch-race, and later Menexenos’s friends held a party to celebrate.

  He wore, that night, a simple white chiton bordered with a pattern of meandering squares, and on his head a wreath of oak leaves. It was an evening charged with all the power of youthful victory.

  Everyone discussed the games – who had run or thrown well, who had been noticed; the successes of friends. But later, when the tables had been cleared, the talk turned to other matters.

  The company that night were only athletes and their guests, but the range of their conversation was not limited to the diskos, the long jump, or the javelin-throw. They could speak with knowledge about husbandry, warfare, history or philosophy; and when the lyre was brought out, everyone could play, and sing a skolion.

  One of the party, a friend of Menexenos’s I knew from the Lykeion, began talking of beauty, asking whether, as he had heard some sophist say recently, all beauty was no more than an illusion, an empty fancy of each man’s taste.

  He was lately in love, and when he brought the subject up everyone laughed.

  ‘Really, Ismenios,’ said one, ‘you have been turning the conversation to Theodoros all night, and now you think you can get us all to praise him again by talking of his beauty.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ismenios, laughing with the rest, ‘you can talk about Theodoros if you wish. I shan’t stop you.’

  There was a good deal of joking at this. But presently, when the laughter had died down, one of the others said, ‘Then let us hear it from you first, Ismenios. Is your Theodoros beautiful to one, and ugly to another? And would both be right in thinking so?’

  At this there was more laughter, but afterwards Ismenios said, ‘Actually it is meeting Theodoros that made me consider all this properly for the first time. I am sure I have never been in love before. But now is different, and when I heard the sophist’s words, I knew in my bones he was wrong, but could not tell why. And so I thought about it.’

  ‘And what did you decide?’ asked Menexenos, smiling.

  ‘It seems to me now that truly there is beauty, or something beyond beauty, that is the same for all. I did not see it until now, not for myself; and because I did not see it myself, I did not think it was there. But now I understand. A man must look, and look in the right place, and, most of all, he must look with the eye of love.’

  ‘All this,’ said another, ‘just from loving Theodoros?’

  ‘How not? It is as though, for the first time, my eyes are opened .

  . . Well Marcus agrees anyway; see, he is nodding.’

  At this the friend who had come with Ismenios, a thickset pankratiast called Pandion, declared grinning, ‘He says Theodoros is the first; let us hope he is the last as well. I don’t think I can bear another month like this one, Theodoros-this and Theodoros-that, all while I’m trying to concentrate on my training.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Ismenios. ‘Well you wouldn’t understand; everyone knows you care only for girls.’

  ‘Not true,’ replied Pandion, winking, ‘I would be Menexenos’s lover any day, if only he asked me. But he never asks.’

  There was more joking at this. Then Ismenios turned to me. ‘You have been quiet, Marcus. What do you say?’

  I shrugged. I had been hoping he would not ask.

  But now, gathering my thoughts, I said, ‘It seems to me there are many paths to the same summit. Some men take one path, some another. The paths seem different, but from the top, the view is the same. I think if every man could see clearly, he would see that what is most perfect is what is most beautiful.’

  ‘Well said!’ cried Ismenios, slapping his thigh, ‘and that, surely, is Theodoros . . . or perhaps’ – drawing down his brow – ‘it is Menexenos?’

  ‘You see?’ said Pandion, laughing and filling my cup, ‘Ismenios is very confused. Now come, bring more wine, and let us sing another song.’

  At length the party ended and the guests began to drift off. When Menexenos had bidden the last of them goodbye he returned to the room, and sat down beside me on the edge of the couch.

  I saw him stifle a yawn.

  ‘It is late,’ I said, ‘and you are tired. I shall go to bed.’

  I made to move. But smiling he put his hand out, saying, ‘But I am not tired. Are you?’

  I was going to reply that he had been up since the dawn, and I know not what else. But then I met his eyes.

  Eros gives men understanding at such times. I nodded and smiled; and after that there was no more need for words.

  I woke to the dappled morning sun, filtering through the broad leaves of the fig tree outside his bedroom window. The light moved in dancing filigrees across the wooden floor and tousled sheets, and on Menexenos’s arm where it lay across my chest.

  He stirred, but did not wake, and I turned to look at his sleeping face beautiful in repose, and his naked body sprawled out across the bed.

  His ribs and back moved gently with his steady breathing. He was bruised and grazed still from the wrestling. I might have kissed those wounds of his; but it would have woken him.

  I thought of the long night, of how I had shared his body, drunk from the well of his being, locked my mouth hard on his; how I had been closer to him than any other, striving, as
far as two men can, to make one body out of two.

  Now, as he lay dozing, I knew with an aching sadness that his deepest being, his truest beauty, lay somewhere for ever beyond, for ever unreachable.

  My heart filled with love and longing; and, with it, a deep soul- grief, like loneliness, like loss.

  Later, when we were up and dressed, we went out in the city, and as we walked, we talked tenderly of love and friendship, and I realized with a little jolt of private surprise that, for all his self- assurance, this had been something new for him as well.

  He was reticent and thoughtful, even bashful. ‘A true friend,’ he said at one point, ‘is the greatest good a man can find in another.’

  He shyly explained that he had had many admirers, but had tired of their insincere flattery and silly gifts, and in the end had decided it best to offer up to the gods what he yearned for, thinking it was not to be found among men. He caught my eye, and gave a small, self- conscious shrug. ‘I used to think all that was for the poets, just well-sounding empty words.’

  ‘And now?’ I said smiling.

  ‘You know more than anyone.’

  Just then, we happened to be passing behind the theatre, where we had been sitting on the hillside. He was not one for displays of emotion any more than his father. But now, as if to seal his words, he drew me to the wall, took my shoulders and kissed me hard on the mouth.

  ‘There,’ he said, his cool grey eyes kindling with passion. ‘That is my answer.’

  Pomponius sent a message asking me to call on him.

  When I arrived, I found Titus’s friend Villius there, in the cool high-ceilinged study beyond the courtyard.

  We greeted each other warmly, not having seen each other since Tarentum. Then Pomponius, never one for easy informality or lack of conceit, cleared his throat.

  ‘Villius is here on a commission from the consuls and the Senate.

  We wish to discuss a matter of some gravity with you.’

  He sat down behind the huge barrier of his desk and continued, ‘A few days ago news came of Philip. He is in Thrace, it seems, causing havoc all over the Hellespont. Maroneia has fallen; and Ainos, Kypsela, Doriskos . . . Well, I shan’t go on; I don’t suppose you know these places anyway.’