The Ten Thousand Read Online Free PDF Page A

So, too, I see a hundred other colorful personages, actors, priests, bear trainers, soldiers, pimps, and midwives, shouting their individual calls, striving to be heard above the rest, contributing to the deafening uproar that was the excitement, the filth, the ambition, and the madness of this city that was the center of the world.
    In my mind's eye I pass from these chaotic streets through a humble, unmarked doorway in the side of a long stone wall, into a dark, cool passageway. Upon closing the stout oaken door I hear the roar of the city muffled into a faint and distant throb. My memory's corridor leads toward a sunlit courtyard at the end, where the dominant sounds are the tinkling of water in the tiny fountain, the soft clinking and scraping of cooking, and servants' gentle laughter from the kitchen adjacent to the main house. Most incongruous of all is the sound of birds—dozens of them, for every corner is furnished with one or more cages filled with tiny, colorful songbirds, chosen for the exquisite designs of their feathers and the sweetness of their warbling. Rising above the household patter are the high-pitched voices of two young boys as they play in the dust at the foot of the fountain with a handful of marbles fashioned out of clay.
    Ever since he had moved to the house, the younger boy, Gryllus' son, had filled the courtyard with his singing, matching the caged birds note for note in beauty and tunefulness. He was never happier than when sitting in the sun at his mother's feet, chanting children's songs and Homeric verses she had taught him by drill, striving to hold to the complex rhythms and sing-song stresses of her training.
    Though not much to look at—he was short in stature and thin-chested for his age—he was talented. This much everyone knew, for he had sung already at a few of the banquets hosted by his father, attended by some of Athens' most renowned citizens and artists. The boy had received the highest of praises from both statesmen and poets for the clear, bell-like quality of his voice, and for his poise. To the boy, however, the compliments of diplomats were as water to a drunkard when compared to the praise of his father, which was rarely and grudgingly bestowed, for exceptionally fine performances only. Even then it was more from gratification at having pleased his guests than from any inherent pleasure he took in the boy's singing.
    The boy had a name, of course, but his mother called him by it only when reprimanding him, and his father rarely addressed him directly at all. He most often answered to his nickname, one that had most naturally developed as a result of his skill. He was called Aedon, the songbird, and the unusual nickname seemed to augur further fortune for his developing talent. Not, of course, that such talent had any long-term prospects: His family was ancient and wealthy, and the life of a singer or poet was not something to which great families aspired for their children. Nevertheless, it was diverting, it garnered him a bit more attention from his father than he might otherwise have received, and it helped keep the boy occupied in the home until his formal education was to begin.
    The older boy, Aedon's second cousin and two years his senior, was Proxenus, a squarely built little ruffian with an irrepressible grin and a swagger. Just as Aedon was a born poet and singer, Proxenus was a soldier from birth, and despite their different inclinations and interests, the two were fast friends, beyond a mere blood relationship. At least daily, Proxenus would startle Aedon out of his frequent reveries in the courtyard by whacking him on the head with his makeshift wooden sword, sending him into a chase that would end with the boys racing through the house, wrestling on the hard tile floors and getting underfoot of the long-suffering elderly servants who attempted to maintain order. Proxenus being the older and stronger of the two, Aedon invariably got the worst of their battles,