Why such reticence to accept glory? During those months lying in bed recovering from his wound, and particularly after Gryllus returned to his duties a few days later, Aedon had all too much time to reflect on the fact that the intruder he had killed was not, in fact, a vicious murderer. The thief, as it happened, was Boy, who in a moment of greater stupidity than usual, or at Antinous' urging, had sought to take advantage of his knowledge of the house to expropriate a few trifles for his own use, and who had died still wearing his habitual foolish grin. Though Aedon bore no love for his wrestling opponent, still the lad was an acquaintance of sorts, one whose skin and hair he had gripped with his own hands, and a messy death had never been a consideration. Aedon had at first been in despair at this revelation. His only recourse was to harden his heart, telling himself that the simpleton had received fair sanction, convincing himself of the wisdom of placing glory and his family's safety over mere sentiment.
I, too, had occasion during those months to reflect deeply on the event, and came to the conclusion that not one boy, but two had died by the knife that night; for in fact, young Aedon had not been revived by the splashing of cold water on his face after the stabbing. His cheerful soprano was never heard again in the courtyard after dinner, nor was his joking and flirting with the slave girls as they went about their tasks. His childhood toys and books were put safely away in a box. For in killing Boy, my master had also killed something in himself, something precious and innocent, a boy who in some ways was more orphan than myself. That boy was the only person my master ever killed who did not truly deserve to die, and for whose life of art and music he never ceased to despair in his moments of regret. Even his name was discarded by everyone, seemingly unanimously and simultaneously, as if a blood oath had been sworn, as if the deceased were not to be mentioned.
Aedon was dead, and Xenophon was born.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FIRE BURNED hot and bright, enough to make those closest to it wince when they faced it directly. A hundred pairs of young eyes gleamed from the darkness around it, some still blinking from the sleep from which they had just been roughly roused. Around us the light of the flames reflected blood red on the roughly cut stone walls against which we had been lined up, in a small amphitheater on the edge of camp that was used for harangues or weapons demonstrations. The flickering shadows cast by the squadron of newly inducted ephebes against the wall were strangely distorted-a black row of round heads and narrow, squared shoulders. They resembled nothing so much as a line of pegs on which to hang clothing, or a row of pins in a children's game, oddly swaying or jerking now and then as one looked to the side to gaze questioningly at his neighbor.
We stood in silence. The day before, Xenophon, as a boy of eighteen who was now of age to serve in the military, and I as his designated battle squire, had marched under Gryllus' stern, proud gaze to the barracks built hard by the city walls. Now we had been awakened in the middle of the night. Xenophon and the other ephebes had been made to put on their newly issued chlamydes, the knee-length black cloaks that signified their status. We had been led here in silence by a burly instructor, his own face obscured in a full-faced hoplite battle helmet, his bushy beard emerging from beneath the cheek plates like some nocturnal mammal peering from its burrow. Only his eyes, gleaming from deep within the blackness of the visor, distinguished him from a shade risen from the underworld. For perhaps an hour we stood motionless and silent before the fire, watching as it burned down to glowing red coals. Our faces around it slowly faded into darkness until the only being wholly visible to us was the hoplite, who stood frozen in an erect, spread-footed guard stance, his eight-foot spear placed butt-end to the flagstones and held straight out in a ready position. Since arriving here, the man had not moved a single, hard muscle, and after the first few minutes before the fire, all our own rustling and movement had ceased as well. We trained our eyes expectantly and wonderingly at him, his armor glittering strangely in the firelight as if it were the living skin of some enormous reptile.
Without warning, we were startled by a sudden blast of a salpinx, a war trumpet, directly behind us, and twelve more hoplites in full panoply, each bearing a flaming, spitting torch, marched in precision to line up before us at the glowing fire. They, too, stood motionless for a moment, as if surveying us, and we them. Then, as if on cue, they turned to the side, stepping away and stationing themselves at equal distances against the perimeter walls, surrounding us and bathing our faces in the lights of their sputtering torches. We eyed them nervously and unconsciously shuffled closer to each other in the middle, herdlike. Again we waited, in utter silence but for the low sizzling of the flames surrounding us. The ceremony, if that indeed is what it could be called, was one of tension and suppression, of silence and waiting. Despite the open sky over our heads, I felt smothered and claustrophobic. Finally, one of the bronze-clad hoplites, taller and broader than the others and apparently their leader, stepped forward. His bearing and the tone of his voice indicated that he was a seasoned warrior.
"Ephebes!" he bellowed in a gravelly voice, so loudly I could almost feel his hot breath, though I myself stood several rows back. "You have been called to commence your training as defenders of the polis. You are about to embark on a sacred mission which, after the requisite period of time, will have hardened you into hoplites worthy of the name, and of the black cloaks you now bear." I could almost feel the wave of excitement and anticipation as it rolled through the mass of boys now warily inching closer to the speaker.
"Over the next two years you will train until your muscles ache and your body screams for rest. You will learn to march in phalanx, shoulder to shoulder with your comrades, straight into the teeth of the enemy, though fear gnaws at your gut and urges you to sidle into the shadow of your brother's shield. You will learn to stand firm, javelin in hand, though threatened by enemy spears and assaulted by Spartan curses, because you have taken a sacred oath to abide by the hoplite ethic, to not abandon the man standing next to you in the battle lines. This you will swear on your life!"
The boys rustled and murmured in anticipation at the glory that awaited them.
"But you are not yet worthy to call yourself hoplites! Before you can be trusted to fight alongside a man whose life depends upon your skills, you must prove yourself alone. As ephebes, you will be stationed to defend the outermost frontiers of the polis. You will skulk in the night and prowl through the woods at the very edge of civilization, to engage lone thieves and solitary attackers before you are allowed to fight in open combat on the broad plains with the phalanx. You have a sacred duty to learn to protect yourself and your comrades from the enemy! Does that mean being the strongest?"
We stared at him in eager silence.
"I said, does that mean being the strongest, you piss-ants!?"
"Yes!" we called, though with some hesitation. The instructor stood in the shadows, seeming to glare at us with disgust, until he pointed to one of the larger ephebes standing in the front row. I had unconsciously flexed my knees in an attempt to make myself appear shorter in case he should look in my direction. The chosen boy walked uncertainly into the firelight.
The instructor nodded to the smallest of the several hoplites who had been standing motionless to the side. The soldier whipped off his helmet and stepped forward, slowly and stolidly, until he stood directly before the boy and crouched in a wrestling stance. The boy smiled faintly and he too crouched, as if eager to demonstrate his skills against his much shorter opponent. At the instructor's clap the hoplite shot forward and in a move that was barely visible to us in the semidarkness, he tripped the ephebe onto his belly in the dirt. The boy's arm stretched straight out behind him with the soldier's foot planted squarely on the shoulder joint. The man paused for a second before leaning back slightly against the arm, eliciting a loud "pop" as the joint pulled out of its socket, and the boy screamed. An audible shudder ran through the crowd and we all took a half step back in horror, as the hoplite roughly assisted the sobbing boy to his feet, his arm hanging limply, and gestured for him to step back into his place in the darkness.