by Mary Renault
Alone among those at Pella, he had seen Olympias’ childhood. But she would have flown in straight away with her nails; her nurse’s face had been scored with them. This containment was another thing. One even dreaded lest it break.
His first instinct was to take the boy by his scruff, and thrash the defiance out of him. But though a narrow man he was by his lights a just one, with an exacting self-esteem. Moreover, he had been brought here to rear a fighting King of Macedon, not to break in a slave. The boy had at least controlled himself.
“The silence of a soldier. I approve a man who can bear his wounds. No further work today.”
He received in exchange the look which accords grudging respect to a mortal enemy. As the boy went out, Leonidas saw a bloodstain on the back of his homespun chiton. It would have been nothing in Sparta; yet he found himself wishing he had not hit quite so hard.
The boy said nothing to his mother; but she found the weals. In the room where they had shared many secrets, she clasped him weeping, and presently they wept together. He stopped first; went to the loose stone under the hearth, pulled out a wax mammet he had seen there, and urged her to bewitch Leonidas. She took it quickly away, saying he must not touch, and besides it was not for that. It had a long thorn stuck through its phallos, but had failed to work on Philip, though often tried. She had not known the child was watching.
For him, the comfort of tears had been brief and false. He felt betrayed, when he met Herakles in the garden. He had not cried for the pain, but for his lost happiness; he could have held back if she had not softened him. Next time she must not know.
They shared a plot, however. She had never been reconciled to the Spartan clothes; she had loved to dress him. Reared in a house where ladies sat in Hall like the queens of Homer, to hear the ancestral heroes sung by bards, she was contemptuous of Spartans, a race of faceless obedient infantry, and unwashed women half soldier, half brood mare. That her son should be forced into the likeness of this grey and plebeian race would have enraged her, had she thought it could be done. Resenting even the attempt, she brought him a new chiton worked in blue and scarlet, saying, as she tucked it into his clothes chest, that there was no harm in his looking like a gentleman when his uncle was away. Later she added Corinthian sandals, a chlamys of Milesian wool, and a gold brooch for its shoulder.
Good clothes made him feel himself again. Discreet at first, he grew careless with success. Leonidas, knowing where to lay the blame, said nothing. He merely went to the chest and took the new clothes away, along with an extra blanket he found hidden there.
He had challenged the gods at last, thought Alexander; this must be the end of him. But she only smiled ruefully, and asked how he could have let himself be found out. Leonidas must not be defied; he might be offended and go home. “And then, my darling, we might find our troubles only starting.”
Toys were toys, power was power. Nothing to be had for nothing. Later she smuggled him other gifts. He was more wary, but Leonidas was more vigilant, and took to searching the chest every so often, as a matter of course.
More manly gifts, he was allowed to keep. A friend had made him a quiver, a perfect miniature with a shoulder sling. Finding it hang too low on him, he sat in the Palace forecourt to undo the buckle. The tongue was awkward, the leather stiff. He was about to go in and find an awl to prize it, when a bigger child walked up and stood in the light. He was handsome and sturdy, with bronze-gold hair and dark grey eyes. Holding out his hand he said, “I’ll try, let me.” He spoke with confidence, in a Greek which had got beyond the schoolroom.
“It’s new, that’s why it’s stiff.” He had had his day’s work of Greek, and answered in Macedonian.
The stranger squatted beside him. “It’s like a real one, like a man’s. Did your father make it?”
“Of course not. Doreios the Cretan did. He can’t make me a Cretan bow, those are horn, only men can pull them. Koragos will make a bow for me.”
“Why do you want to undo it?”
“It’s too long.”
“It looks right to me. No, but you’re smaller. Here, I’ll do it.”
“I’ve measured it. It wants taking in two holes.”
“You can let it out when you’re bigger. It’s stiff, but I’ll do it. My father’s seeing the King.”
“What does he want?”
“I don’t know, he said to wait for him.”
“Does he make you speak Greek all day?”
“It’s what we all speak at home. My father’s a guest-friend of the King. When I’m older, I’ll have to go to court.”
“Don’t you want to come?”
“Not much; I like it at home. Look, up on that hill; no, not the first one, the second; all that land’s ours. Can’t you speak Greek at all?”
“Yes, I can if I want. I stop when I get sick of it.”
“Why, you speak it nearly as well as I do. Why did you talk like that, then? People will think you’re a farm boy.”
“My tutor makes me wear these clothes to be like the Spartans. I do have good ones; I wear them at the feasts.”
“They beat all the boys in Sparta.”
“Oh, he drew blood on me once. But I didn’t cry.”
“He’s no right to beat you, he should only tell your father. How much did he cost?”
“He’s my mother’s uncle.”
“Mm, I see. My father bought my pedagogue, just for me.”
“Well, it teaches you to bear your wounds when you go to war.”
“War? But you’re only six.”
“Of course not, I’m eight next Lion Month. You can see that.”
“So am I. But you don’t look it, you look six.”
“Oh, let me do that, you’re too slow.”
He snatched away the sling-strap. The leather slipped back into the buckle. The stranger grabbed it angrily. “Silly fool, I’d nearly done it.”
Alexander swore at him in barrack Macedonian. The other boy opened his mouth and eyes, and listened riveted. Alexander, who could keep it up for some time, became aware of respect and did so. With the quiver between them, they crouched in the pose of their forgotten strife.
“Hephaistion!” came a roar from the columned stoa. The boys sat like scuffling dogs over whom a bucket has been emptied.
The lord Amyntor, his audience over, had seen with concern that his son had left the porch where he had been told to wait, invaded the Prince’s playground and snatched his toy. At that age they were not safe a moment out of one’s sight. Amyntor blamed his own vanity; he liked to show the boy off, but to have brought him here was stupid. Angry with himself, he strode over, grabbed him by the back of his clothes, and gave him a clout on the ear.
Alexander jumped to his feet. He had already forgotten why he had been angry. “Don’t hit him. I don’t mind him. He came to help me.”
“You are good to say so, Alexander. But he disobeyed.”
For a moment the boys exchanged looks, confusedly sharing their sense of human mutability, as the culprit was dragged away.
It was six years before they met again.
“He lacks application and discipline,” said Timanthes the grammarian.
Most of the teachers Leonidas had engaged found the drinking in Hall too much for them, and would escape, with excuses which amused the Macedonians, to bed, or to talk in each other’s rooms.
“Maybe,” said the music-master, Epikrates. “But one values the horse above the bridle.”
“He applies when it suits him,” said Naukles the mathematician. “At first he could not have enough. He can work out the height of the Palace from its noon shadow, and if you ask him how many men in fifteen phalanxes, he hardly has to pause. But I have never brought him to perceive the beauty of numbers. Have you, Epikrates?”
The musician, a thin dark Ephesian Greek, shook his head smiling. “With you he makes them serve the use; with me, the feeling. Still, as we know, music is ethical; and I’ve a king to train, not a concert artist.�
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“He will get no further with me,” said the mathematician. “I would say I don’t know why I stay, if I thought I should be believed.”
A roar of bawdy laughter sounded from the hall, where someone with talent was improving a traditional skolion. For the seventh time they bawled the chorus.
“Yes, we are well paid,” said Epikrates. “But I could earn as much in Ephesos, between teaching and concert work; and earn it as a musician. Here I am a conjurer, I call up dreams. It’s not what I came to do. Yet it holds me. Does it never hold you, Timanthes?”
Timanthes sniffed. He thought Epikrates’ compositions too modern and emotional. He himself was an Athenian, pre-eminent for the purity of his style; he had in fact been the teacher of Leonidas. He had closed his school to come, finding at his age the work grow burdensome, and glad to provide for his last years. He had read everything worth reading, and when young had once known what the poets meant.
“It appears to me,” he said, “that here in Macedon they have enough of the passions. One heard a great deal about the culture of Archelaos, in my student days. With the late wars of succession, it seems chaos returned. I will not say the court is without refinements; but on the whole, we are in the wilds. Do you know youths come of age here when they have killed a boar and a man? One might suppose oneself in the age of Troy.”
“That should lighten your task,” said Epikrates, “when you proceed to Homer.”
“System and application are what we need for that. The boy has a good memory, when he cares to use it. At first he learned his lists quite well. But he cannot keep his mind on system. One explains the construction; one quotes the proper example. But apply it? No. It is ‘Why did they chain Prometheus to the rock?’ or, ‘Who was Hekabe mourning for?’”
“Did you tell him? Kings should learn to pity Hekabe.”
“Kings should learn self-discipline. This morning he brought the lesson to a stop, because, purely for syntax, I gave him some lines from Seven against Thebes. Why, if you please, were there seven generals; which led the cavalry, the phalanx, the light-armed skirmishers? ‘It is not to the purpose,’ I said, ‘not to the purpose; attend to syntax.’ He had the insolence to answer in Macedonian. I had to put my thong across his palm.”
The singing in Hall was broken by quarrelsome drunken shouts. Crockery crashed. The King’s voice roared out; the noise subsided; a different song began.
“Discipline,” said Timanthes meaningly. “Moderation, restraint, respect for law. If we do not ground him in them, who will? His mother?”
There was a pause while Naukles, whose room it was, nervously opened the door and looked outside. Epikrates said, “If you want to compete with her, Timanthes, you had best sweeten your medicine, as I do mine.”
“He must make the effort to apply. It is the root of all education.”
“I don’t know what you are all talking about,” said Derkylos, the gymnastic trainer, suddenly. The others had thought he was asleep. He was reclining on Naukles’ bed; he thought effort should alternate with relaxation. He was in his mid-thirties, with the oval head and short curls admired by sculptors, and a fine body kept painstakingly in shape; as an example to pupils, he used to say, but, thought the envious schoolmasters, no doubt from vanity. He had a list of crowned victors to his credit, and no pretensions to intellect.
“We were wishing,” said Timanthes with patronage, “that the boy would make more effort.”
“I heard you.” The athlete raised himself on one elbow, looking aggressively statuesque. “You have spoken words of ill omen. Spit for luck.”
The grammarian shrugged. Naukles said tartly, “Will you tell us, Derkylos, you don’t know why you stay?”
“It seems I’m the one with the best reason. To keep him, if I can, from killing himself too young. He has no safety-stop. Surely you’ve seen that?”
“I fear,” said Timanthes, “that the terms of the palaestra are to me arcane.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Epikrates, “if you mean what I suppose.”
“I don’t know all your life histories,” said Derkylos. “But if any of you has seen red in battle, or been frightened out of his skin, you may remember putting out strength you had never known was in you. At exercise, even in a contest, you could not find it. There is a lock on it, put there by nature or the gods’ wisdom. It is the reserve against extremity.”
“I remember,” said Naukles presently, “in the earthquake, when the house fell on our mother, I lifted the beams. Yet later I could not move them.”
“Nature wrung it out of you. Few men are born whose own will can do it. This boy will be one.”
Epikrates said, “Yes, you may well be right.”
“And I reckon it something off a man’s life each time. I have to watch him already. He told me once that Achilles chose between glory and length of days.”
“What?” said Timanthes, startled. “But we’ve scarcely begun Book One.”
Derkylos gazed at him in silence, then said mildly, “You forget his maternal ancestry.”
Timanthes clicked his tongue, and bade them good night. Naukles fidgeted; he wanted to get to bed. The musician and the athlete strolled off through the park.
“It’s useless talking to him,” said Derkylos. “But I doubt the boy gets enough to eat.”
“You must be joking. Here?”
“It’s the regime of that stiff-necked old fool Leonidas. I check his height each month; he’s not growing fast enough. Of course you can’t call him starved; but he burns it all up, he could take as much again. He’s very quick-thinking, and his body has to keep pace, he won’t take a no from it. Do you know he can hit the mark with a javelin while he’s running?”
“You let him handle edged weapons? At his age?”
“I wish grown men were all as neat with them. It keeps him quiet…What is it drives him like this?”
Epikrates looked round. They were in the open, no one near. “His mother has made a good many enemies. She’s a foreigner from Epiros; she has the name of a witch. Have you never heard whispers about his birth?”
“I remember once—But who’d dare let him hear word of it?”
“He seems to me to have a burden of proof upon him. Well, he enjoys his music for itself, he finds release in it. I have studied that side of the art a little.”
“I must speak to Leonidas again about his diet. Last time, I was told that in Sparta it would be one spare meal a day, and find the rest off the land. Don’t tell it abroad, but I feed him myself sometimes. I used to do it now and then at Argos, for some good boy from a poor home…These tales—do you believe them?”
“Not with my reason. He has Philip’s capacity, if not his face or his soul. No, no, I don’t believe them…Do you know that old song about Orpheus, how he played his lyre on the mountainside, and found a lion had crouched at his feet to listen? I’m no Orpheus, I know; but sometimes I see the lion’s eyes. Where did it go, after the music, what became of it? The story doesn’t say.”
“Today,” said Timanthes, “you have made better progress. For the next lesson, you may memorize eight lines. Here they are. Copy them on the wax, on the right side of the diptych. On the left, list the archaic word-forms. See you have them correctly; I shall expect you to repeat those first.” He handed over the tablet, and put away the roll, his stiff blue-veined hands shaking as he worked it into its leather case. “Yes, that is all. You may go.”
“Please, may I borrow the book?”
Timanthes looked up, amazed and outraged.
“The book? Most certainly you may not, it is a valuable recension. What do you want with the book?”
“I want to see what happened. I’ll keep it in my casket, and wash my hands each time.”
“We should all like, no doubt, to run before we can walk. Learn your passage, and pay attention to the Ionic forms. Your accent is still too Doric. This, Alexander, is not some suppertime diversion. This is Homer. Master his language, then you may talk
of reading him.” He tied the strings of the case.
The lines were those in which vengeful Apollo comes striding down the peaks of Olympos with his arrows rattling at his back. Worked over in the schoolroom, hammered out piecemeal like some store-list being inventoried by kitchen slaves, once the boy was alone they came together: a great landscape of clanging gloom lit by funereal fires. He knew Olympos. He pictured the dead light of an eclipse; the tall striding darkness, and round it a faint rim of fire, such as they said the hidden sun had, able to strike men blind. He came down like the fall of night.
He walked in the grove above Pella, hearing the deep shuddering note of the bowstring, the hiss of the shafts, and thinking it into Macedonian. It found its way, next day, into his repetition. Timanthes rebuked at length his idleness, inattention, and lack of interest in his work, and set him at once to copy the passage twenty times, with the mistakes again by themselves.
He dug away at the wax, the vision dispersed and faded. Timanthes, whom something had caused to look up, found the grey eyes considering him with a cold distant stare.
“Do not daydream, Alexander. What are you thinking of?”
“Nothing.” He bent again over his writing-stick. He had been wondering if there was any way of getting Timanthes killed. He supposed not; it would be unfair to ask his friends, who might be punished, and would feel it a disgrace to kill such an ancient man. It would make trouble, too, for his mother.
He went missing next day.
After huntsmen had been out after him with dogs, he was brought back at evening by a woodcutter on his lean old donkey; bruised black, covered with bloody grazes from a tumble down some rocks, and with a swollen foot which would not bear him. He had been trying, said the man, to get along on hands and knees; at night the forest was full of wolves, no place for the young lord alone.