Clash of the Titans Read Online Free PDF Page A

created and lost. All these things and more marked the passage of time in Hellas.
    Children rose from infancy to adulthood. Those in Athens or Corinth, in Sparta and the other great cities of the Peloponnesus became schooled in the ways of statesmanship or literature, sculpture or commerce. They were being groomed to become leaders of men.
    On a small island another child was blossoming. His library was the sea; his study, the many manifestations of a bountiful nature; and his mentors, the simple, pastoral people of the isle known as Seriphos.
    From his mother he learned much of statesmanship and of how falsehoods can raise a massive city on shaky foundations. He learned that power supported by corruption is doomed to collapse, and that morality is the difference between strength and tyranny. Surprisingly, from her he also learned compassion.
    He grew up with little knowledge of fear, living closely with the most violent storms the Aegean could raise. He swam like a dolphin and ran like the horses he mastered at an extraordinarily young age.
    Once he broke both legs attempting to fly after a thieving gull. More than the pain, there was simple astonishment at failure, for having so successfully emulated runners and swimmers, he had thought flight simply another skill to master.
    The people of Seriphos, who had taken in the castaways many years earlier, took personal pride in his progress. He had a whole village of mothers and fathers. The island children, who instinctively knew themselves to be less than he, played freely and delightedly with him, for he was open and guileless and free of pride. He was a friend to everyone and everyone was his friend, but for all that he held no false illusions about the nature of man. His mother's instruction was too thorough for him to grow up innocent of evil and duplicity.
    On an island of fishermen it was only natural that when grown he too would practice the skill of coaxing from the sea its finny bounty. He often went out alone, to return with catches twice the size of those brought in by well-crewed, much larger craft.
    Still, the islanders did not envy him, for he shared much of his catch with those whose luck had been bad, and so he was praised for his generosity as much as he was admired for his skill. It was even whispered by some that he was a favorite of Poseidon, that the sea god assured the boy of a good haul every time his boat set out.
    That was not the case, however. It was simply that the boy was a good fisherman.
    He lay down on the deck of the boat, his eyes closed against the glare of the summer sun. With only a loincloth on his body browned by Apollo's radiance, he was as lean and muscular as the traveling dancers who sometimes visited the island. His hair was thick and curly, dark as the sea on a moonless night. It was a man's body now, though the face still held some of the joy and freshness of adolescence.
    Sweat rolled hotly from his sides and he used an arm to shield his face from the sun. Soon he would have to rise to pull in the net. The salty aroma of seaweed and fish rose from the small hold, already half full of blue-scaled captives.
    He squinted at the sun. For an instant, he had the strange sense of staring into a face—the face of an old man with a thick white beard. But the face quickly vanished, it was only the sweat stinging his eyes.
    He sighed, thinking of the cool wine he would drink in the taverna when he had disposed of the day's catch. He did not know that that small pleasure would elude him tonight. He did not know that his destiny was near.
    His name was Perseus.
    Zeus held the statue of the lithe young man in one hand, eyeing it without expression. He felt oddly ill at ease, as he often did when important events were about to unfold—events which sometimes even he, king of the gods, could not control. It was an awkward sensation for one with an eternity of accomplishment behind him.
    Everything had gone so well, but he was still bound to act