\nWe approached Xuthos, me carrying Bacenor on my back.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat is that place?\u201d said Bacenor, pulling at my ears. \u201cSpeak, you wretched slave!\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThat is Xuthos,\u201d I said, \u201cThe City of Sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSleep? Sleep?\u201d He dug his knees excitedly into my sides. \u201cDo they have sleep contests, dream races? I\u2019m no good at sleeping, you know!\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI know.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThen why are we going there, slave? Do you think you will humiliate me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou asked me to bring you, sir. Maybe they can cure you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cCure what?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou haven\u2019t slept for a thousand days.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nWe hoped to cure his sleeping problem. But his addled memory might be beyond the healing arts. I served to help him remember. That was my function as his servant.\n<\/p>\n
\nXuthos sat like a traveler’s trunk on a mesa above the Arcadian Plain. It had three gates: one of iron, one of tin, and one of bronze. Iron for blood, tin for commerce, bronze for health.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe followed heavy foot traffic, up the switchback road carved out of the side of the mesa, then leading to the gate of iron. Carts pulled by work hounds carried produce for the markets or sometimes the very rich, who lay hopelessly awake in beds of useless comfort; mothers pushed carriages with infants or toddlers who could not sleep; men and women, of any age but with a distribution toward the oldest, shuffled and stumbled and sometimes conversed with the gods that only they could see, and a few other slave-master pairs like us approached the gate. Of note, one black-shrouded crone, fastened by a leather harness to a female, the girl tall but her chiton short and her thighs muscular and tanned bronze. They paid the entrance tax and disappeared through the gate before I could get a better look.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAre you afraid, you wretch?\u201d demanded Bacenor. \u201cYour heart is beating harder.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNo, sir. I just saw a girl.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cKeep hiking, slave. I don\u2019t pay you to be moonstruck.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou don\u2019t pay me at all.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nWe reached the gate of iron. Four hoplites stood guard, two each side the portcullis, their breastplates flashy and their helmets crested with blue peacock feathers. The guards looked green but their spears were sharp and while I could have taken out one or two, all four would have proved a problem. They eyed me nervously as I stooped before the metal-barred window in the wall. Bacenor pulled a coin from his purse and gave it to the tiller.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe were in.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn the city there were sleepers, the carved sleepers in the friezes on building walls, in one square the great marble sculpture of Athena on her divan, supine in a nightdress, yellow-painted hair let down, her armor shed beside her and her smiling face suggesting she had found bliss in dreams. Below her, ten or twelve sleepless men and women mimicked her posture, lying on the paved street of red brick, resting their heads on bedrolls or cushions. Mimicking her but poorly, for they fidgeted and groaned and did not smile. One man opened his eyes: eyes blue as the sky flashed hatred at us.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d Bacenor asked. \u201cYou resent your betters?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI moved away before the man responded.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhy did he look so angry?\u201d Bacenor asked me. \u201cIs it because I am a rich man?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNo doubt,\u201d I said, though in truth I doubted it very much.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHow rich am<\/em> I?\u201d he asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRich enough to buy this town,\u201d I lied.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGood. But we are here for sleeping. Over there\u2014Zeus!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe meant another plaza with another statue, this one of iron, thrice life size and with a bed to match, so big there were at least four sleepless on it, nestled against the metal god as if he might consent to cuddle.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019ve got a better idea.\u201d I could smell lamb roasting in the distance. \u201cWe need to eat.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor grumbled but let me take him to the city agora a few blocks away. Here a press of sleepless people, red-eyed, unkempt, and rank of odor, haggled with vendors for the accouterments of sleep\u2014pillows, candle wax for ears, elephant bladders which inflated could serve as mattresses, music boxes which when opened featured tiny puppets singing lullabies. I pushed beyond them to the food vendors. From a barrel-chested Nubian with a golden earring I bought grapes and olives and a plate of cubed lamb that had been roasted with onions on a skewer. For Bacenor I bought chicken on pita bread and a flagon of white grape juice.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat is this child’s drink?\u201d Bacenor groused. \u201cGet me wine, you ingrate.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey don\u2019t sell it here,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnything can be bought.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot wine in Xuthos,\u201d I said. \u201cIt won\u2019t help your sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut it will!\u201d Bacenor whined.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt will push you to the edge of sleep, but not over. And then you will be more awake and hungover.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLies! Cruel beast, why do you torture me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe twisted my ear till it hurt.\n<\/p>\n \nI grunted to give him satisfaction, and he let go.\n<\/p>\n \nAt the center of the agora there was a fountain encircled by a granite bench. We sat there to eat our lunch. Bacenor beside me looked worse for our five days of travel. The hunch of his crooked back looked larger. Sun-reddened flesh hung loosely at his throat and around his eyes, as if he had climbed into the skin of a much larger man. Brown age spots on his scalp showed through his thin white hair. He scratched his jaw; he had a five-day growth of bristly white whiskers. \u201cWhat happened to my beard? Didn\u2019t I have a beard?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou had me shave it off,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou cur! Why do such a thing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou thought that you would sleep like a youth, if you had no beard like a youth.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFoolishness!\u201d He busied himself eating, his gnarled arthritic fingers dropping clumps of meat onto his knobby sunburned knees. I turned my attention toward the crowd. He asked: \u201cWhat are you looking at?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI saw the tall girl again: her bronzed thighs, her breasts which filled her chiton, her uncovered sun-bleached hair, in contrast to the silver hair, mostly covered by a black shroud, of the crone upon her back. The girl was buying fruit\u2014a mango and a pear\u2014from a produce stand. I wished she would look my way.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat are you staring at?\u201d Bacenor asked. \u201cTell me!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI ate another olive, chasing it down with a swallow of water, then said, \u201cBeyond the red building\u2014the Temple of Ares\u2014is the Temple of Hypnos. The god of sleep. Let\u2019s go there.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHypnos? Do I know him? Do I pray to him?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou pray to Ploutos, the god of wealth.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAh. He favors me, for I am a rich man.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA very rich man,\u201d I agreed.\n<\/p>\n \nI carried him past the Temple of Ares, ochre-painted and poorly maintained, for what man makes offerings to the God of War for sleep? Next to it the Temple of Hypnos gleamed, polished white marble of its exterior contrasting with the dark within. I lugged Bacenor up the staircase and past the blue-painted Doric columns into the cool shadowed space of the interior. Hypnos, carved from unpainted obsidian, reclined on his side atop a bed of ebony shot through with veins of gold. Unlike the other gods in Xuthos he seemed awake, not sleeping, the strange little wings coming out of his brow like the erect ears of a dog. \u201cCan he fly with those?\u201d Bacenor asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA little,\u201d I said. \u201cWhen he flaps them it makes a soporific breeze.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe snorted at my little joke, and a middle-aged woman in a knee-length hair shirt regarded him judgmentally. No one else paid us attention, except for a guard in leather armor and a red chiton, who told us that slaves were not permitted to carry masters inside because it was not respectful to the god Hypnos. \u201cThe god Hypnos,\u201d Bacenor sneered when the guard was out of earshot. \u201cWho has even heard of such a god?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDespite his sneers he climbed down and stood beside me, bow-legged and pigeon-toed, clutching my elbow for balance. We stood in a queue of fifteen or so sleepless. Unshaven, hollow-eyed, smelling of musty unwashed bedclothes. Grooming and cleanliness are the handmaids of good sleep. \u201cWhat are we waiting for?\u201d Bacenor said. There was a green door, before which stood a priest or clerk in a blue himation. Presently the door opened, and the first man in the queue was motioned in. \u201cWhat\u2019s in there?\u201d Bacenor asked me. \u201cA sanctum? Do they make an offering, slice open a sheep\u2019s liver?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere\u2019s a physician in there,\u201d I said. \u201cHe treats insomnia with the latest in the healing arts.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cArt? He plays the music of the spheres?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe performs medical techniques so as to make you amenable to messages from Hypnos.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPshaw! Pshaw and poppycock!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe poppy, incidentally, is his flower.\u201d I waved toward the jet-black planters set in sconces in the walls, orange petals vivid even in the gloom. \u201cNarcotics come from the unripe fruit of the poppy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAh, yes, Nepenthes, the stuff is called.\u201d Bacenor grinned triumphantly. \u201cI remember the name! Buy me some.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou were addicted to it, master. After a fortnight of use it works badly and it gives you awful dreams. It gives you constipation, also. And it made your memory far worse.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou scoundrel!\u201d He pinched me, digging his long yellow fingernails into my forearm. If I could get him to sleep I would cut those nails short. \u201cWhy torture me with these tales?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOnly to caution you, that you might make better choices.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI pay you good money for this impertinence?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI am your slave, not your employee. Sometimes on festival days, you give me a drachma for a gift.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes. How likely.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe waited in the queue, a few more went in to see the Physician, one came out. Bacenor asked me why so many went in without coming out. I told him that the building had a level beneath us and that the rooms down there had walls so thick that a battle could be fought in the streets without you hearing anything inside. Each room had a bed for a patient to sleep in and for the Physician to observe the patient and to try his treatments. It might take a few days to find the correct treatment.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHah! Thus to milk us poor insomniacs for as much money as he can!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI do not know if he charges for anything but results.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe fell asleep momentarily, literally fell, <\/em> collapsing but waking even as I caught him. \u201cWhere am I? Who am I?\u201d Panic-stricken, bulging frightened eyes.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou are Bacenor, a rich man. You are at the Temple of Hypnos to\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201c\u2014to get my insomnia cured,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cExactly.\u201d I was relieved. Sometimes his memory could be very bad after he had these little sleeps.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho is she?\u201d he asked about the woman in the hair shirt. \u201cIs she Cybele?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nCybele was his wife. Or she had been, <\/em> for she was long dead, having perished with their son Timotheus when Bacenor\u2019s ship, carrying a cargo of ninety amphora of tawny wine, sunk off the coast of Rhodes. Bacenor and I were the only survivors.\n<\/p>\n \nThis woman turned. She did have Cybele\u2019s long aquiline nose, but her face was broader, her hair was white where Cybele\u2019s had been silver, and her hair shirt\u2014of stiff brindle horse-hair that left the skin of her throat raw\u2014was nothing like the soft purple and white robes Cybele had loved to wear. \u201cI\u2019m not your goddess,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m a barren old woman.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nCybele is also the goddess of fertility.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSee?\u201d I asked him. \u201cShe\u2019s not your wife.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen Cybele\u2014\u201d He remembered, lips drooping, eyes downcast, forehead furrowing with anguish. \u201cThe water\u2014the storm\u2014the cold night\u2014my wife\u2014my boy. He was only eighteen. My boy\u2014why did he drown?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe stayed on the ship too long,\u201d I said. \u201cHe tried to unlock the chains of the rowers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRowers? Slaves?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere were forty of them. The ship was already half-sunken. As the slaves screamed he dived down with the key so that he could unlock their chain. But the ship sank so quickly that it sucked him down and he could not save a single man.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy son died to save slaves? Say rather that the slaves killed him! Monsters, beasts! They lured him to his death!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe woman ahead of us looked appalled, whether at the story or Bacenor\u2019s lamentation I could not tell.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe died a hero\u2019s death,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy wife\u2014why did she die?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe could not swim. I had to let her go.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou were there? You let her go? A huge strong man like you? You let<\/em> her drown?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI whispered to Bacenor. \u201cI was just a boy of ten. I was strong enough to carry only you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI can swim!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou were drunk, and half-passed out.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t lie, slave.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI breathed deeply. The woman was not looking at us but had the erect posture of someone who was listening with intent. \u201cYou would get seasick on your trading voyages, and would break into the trading stock to find wine to calm your stomach. But wine is a poor medicine for nausea. It would roil your stomach, not soothe it, and you would drink more to compensate. You drank seven bowls the night of the shipwreck.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHis eyes rolled back in his head and he gripped my elbow as though he meant to pull me down or climb me. But he was not having an epileptic fit. He was merely thinking hard. He said, \u201cHypnos is the brother of Death?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDeath is called Thanatos.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe I should pray to Hypnos? Does he talk to Thanatos? Would he be able to get a message to my wife and my boy, asking them to forgive me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cForgive you for what?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFor bringing them on that fateful journey.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI can talk to the priest about that while you see the Physician. Maybe he can make a sacrifice.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe let me go so he could pull out a ten drachma coin for the priest.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIsn\u2019t that too much?\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI am a rich man, am I not? Take it!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI put the coin in the leather pouch that I kept tied around my neck.\n<\/p>\n \nNot much later the silver-haired woman was admitted to the sleeping ward and then it was our turn to be interviewed. The clerk, in a blue himation, bald, black-bearded, and officious, stood behind a high desk with a goose-feather pen in his hand. He wrote into a vellum ledger as he asked us questions. Who are you? Where are you from? How long since you last slept? He asked Bacenor at first but as I was the one who answered. He directed the balance of his questions to me. \u201cDoes he take stimulants or sedatives?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo longer,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd do you ferry him everywhere, or does he walk on his own?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAlmost always I carry\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI am a rich man!\u201d Bacenor cried out. \u201cOnly hoi polloi walk!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe clerk nodded and entered a mark into his ledger. \u201cBut he can walk if necessary?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI affirmed he could.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou can go through that door,\u201d the clerk said. Bacenor gestured at me to stoop so I could carry him, but the clerk said, \u201cNo, you must go in alone.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut my slave is my memory,\u201d Bacenor said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYour memory will improve once Dr. Phobetor has treated you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAhh,\u201d he said uncertainly. He stared at me, his face twisted by confusion and fear, then found some remnant of dignity, and stood up straight as he could given his hunchback, and walked through the doorway.\n<\/p>\n \nThe clerk told me the name of a cheap inn I could go to where slaves could sleep. Bacenor\u2019s treatment, he said, would take at least one full day and night.\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \nI left the temple and found the agora where merchants sell sacrificial animals. I passed the pens of bulls and sheep, for such large animals are meant for the Olympian gods, not for lesser deities like Hypnos. There were fish in baskets but also caged birds and I chose a snow finch. Even without haggling the vendor could not make change for the ten drachma coin. \u201cGive me what you can,\u201d I said, and she gave me three silver drachmas and an assortment of small change. She handed me the bird. It was white-breasted and yellow-billed. Its brown wings were cinched to its torso with a leather binding.\n<\/p>\n \nI walked back toward the temple of Hypnos, holding the bird in my hand, feeling its rapid heartbeat and the fragile bones of its breast and thinking how I could crush it simply by squeezing. It stared at me with its golden eye, and though the philosopher says animals have no souls I thought it was speaking to me with as much animation as Bacenor had earlier. So when I reached the steps of the temple I untied the binding.\n<\/p>\n \nThe snow finch perched on my knuckle for a moment, stretching its wings experimentally, then it flew off.\n<\/p>\n \nWithout an offering for sacrifice I could not involve the temple priest so I went to the statue of the reposing Hypnos. There were two others there, one man of middle years and one white-haired woman even older than Bacenor, and they were praying in a way I have seen worshipers of Hades do before, that is on their hands and knees and slapping the floor as they mumbled their prayers. Because my mother was Persian, I learned to pray to Mitra, so I stooped down and mimicked those two but used one of the prayers for Mitra, the one which praises Mitra\u2019s wisdom, strength, and forbearance, and asks that the pastures be kept green and the livestock well-fed. But I prayed to Hypnos instead, and asked that Bacenor\u2019s mind be cooled and his staring eyes be touched closed by the god\u2019s hovering wings. Then I requested that Hypnos relay a message to his brother Thanatos that Bacenor be forgiven for letting his son and wife die. And then I slapped the floor, too loudly, for the other two both turned to look at me.\n<\/p>\n \nEmbarrassed, I stood up.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHello, stranger,\u201d she said. It was the slave girl. Tanned dark, sun-streaked brown hair, eyes green as the Aegean Sea, well-muscled and strong. A leather collar around her throat, wooden steering handles hanging past her shoulders. \u201cI am Doulus,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \nShe was almost as tall as me.\n<\/p>\n \nI told her my name.\n<\/p>\n \nWe touched hands: hers were rough and callused. But there was something soft about them anyway. \u201cWho are you?\u201d she asked. \u201cWhy did you free the bird?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t believe in sacrifice. Many birds and rabbits have died and my master has slept no better.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou are a strange man. What do you believe in?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI pray to Aphrodite,\u201d I said. Most Greeks don\u2019t know Mitra. Fewer know the philosophers. \u201cWho do you pray to?”\n<\/p>\n \nShe didn\u2019t answer that question; perhaps she was too shy to immediately address such a personal matter, but she did tell me something about herself. She was from Massalia, on the coast of Galatia, and she had the Galatian accent, which my ears found pleasing. \u201cBut I am of the tribes of the Soucanne River,\u201d she said. River sounded like riv-ah. <\/em> \u201cMy mistress is called Chrysanthe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe does not sleep well?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe does not sleep at all. She stays up at night conversing with Artemis and Apollo.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe gods?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOf course. Did you think I meant slaves?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe sleepless sometimes are gifted with visions of the gods,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s no gift,\u201d she said. \u201cShe\u2019s tormented. She wants me to kill her if she can\u2019t find sleep here in Xuthos.\u201d She said Xuth-oh, <\/em>not Xuth-ose. <\/em> Her voice was clear and her accent was like music.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAh. Can you do that? Kill your master?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve never killed anyone.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou should get her to sign a release.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA release?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA contract. Releasing you from bondage, showing that she requested you kill her, absolving you from the crime.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe frowned, chewed on a length of sun-bleached hair. \u201cWho can write me such a release?\u201d she asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA scribe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt would cost money, wouldn\u2019t it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI shook my coin purse. \u201cI have money.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut why? Why do such a thing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI take joy in helping those in need.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI did not say the obvious, that maybe she would let me pull loose the strings that kept her chiton closed so I could free her breasts and suckle on her nipples.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCur!\u201d I heard from behind me. Bacenor had just come out from the green door. Hurriedly I drew three drachma coins from the purse and pushed them at her. She was too startled to thank me. \u201cWe\u2019ll talk later,\u201d I said, then I took my leave.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor was coming toward me, enraged. His face was red, his lips were twisted, his hump seemed to have grown. He pushed past people as he waddled along, nearly knocking over an old man with a cane. \u201cOver here chatting with that big girl?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI prayed for you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust don\u2019t stand there, you fool. Get me out!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe signaled for me to stoop.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m not supposed to carry you in this temple.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDamn this temple. We\u2019re leaving.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut your treatment\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIs poppycock! Their beds are horribly uncomfortable anyway!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI stooped down and he climbed onto my back. \u201cThat Dr. Phobetor knows nothing!\u201d he growled. \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t bleed me. Not with a cup. Not with a leech!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBleeding only dulls you. It doesn\u2019t make you sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe asked me impertinent questions!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSuch as?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf I had heart problems. If I pass blood in my urine or stools. If my parents slept badly, or died young. If I walk. I am a rich man. What rich man walks?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI carried him outside. The sun was near setting, a fat tangerine seeming to rest on the city wall to the west. Heat radiated from the stone steps. \u201cWhy did you bring me to that Dr. Phobetor? The man reeked of cardamom. He had shifty eyes. He chewed on his beard. What a quack! He didn\u2019t even have a bed for me!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor\u2019s stories can shift and alter, old details forgotten and new ones elaborated. \u201cWhere shall we go now?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe gods are calling me,\u201d Bacenor said, twisting my ear.\n<\/p>\n \nIn some matters he has the delicacy of a maiden. He needed to piss. I took him to the public baths, a long low building in the shadow of the city wall. I am lucky in that in his discretion, he does not demand that I accompany him to the latrine and assist him in his business. While he was in the latrine\u2014he seldom hurries\u2014I dashed back to the temple of Hypnos. I wanted to find the tall girl, Doulus. I looked for her in the cool interior. There were fewer people inside, and the queue was breaking up as the clerk in blue was closing his ledger. A slave boy was scrubbing the statue of reclining Hypnos with a vinegar-soaked sponge. I did not see Doulus nor her master, and, after hesitating, I hurried back to the baths.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor was outside the building, leaning against a marble caryatid with plum-painted nipples, and fuming. \u201cThere you are, you cur! Were you out, gambling with the boys? Or talking to that philosopher again?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cWe aren\u2019t at home. We\u2019re in Xuthos, the City of Sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t lie to me, you dog! Don\u2019t try to pull any philosophical pranks! Why, I ought to beat you like a woman! I ought to sell you to Philip the Achaean; he knows better than I you shouldn\u2019t coddle slaves!\u201d His eyes sparkled with madness. \u201cStoop down and take me to Philip\u2014he owes me a dinner anyway!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019re here in Xuthos, not Elis,\u201d said I. \u201cAnd Philip is dead.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLies! Ungrateful cur! Ignoble barbarian from the East!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI spoke softly to him. \u201cWe are in Xuthos, to treat your sleeplessness. We left home and took a ship to Nauplia and walked here in three days. Here, look at my sandals.\u201d I showed him my right foot. \u201cThese sandals were new, but I\u2019ve already worn a hole through the heel.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor touched the thin spot. \u201cHuh. You\u2019ve walked a lot.\u201d The madness in his eyes dulled, maybe a memory came back. \u201cXuthos, you say. I should maybe buy you new sandals, before we start the journey back.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut I have an idea.\u201d He clasped my shoulder. \u201cPick me up, and let\u2019s go find dinner.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSometimes he was like this. He would rage like Achilles, then something would burn out in him, and he would become placid and turn generous. \u201cTake me to a symposium,\u201d he said, knowing that I would rather listen to philosophy than watch wrestling. There was a merchant named Dionysus whom Bacenor had once traded with and who hosted lavish and educational dinners. We found his house and were welcomed by Dionysus, despite Bacenor\u2019s awkward boasting of my talents as a scribe and thinker, as well as his waving another ten drachma coin in the air as if he were purchasing a bull in the market. \u201cPut your silver away, Bacenor,\u201d Dionysus said. \u201cYou will be my guest.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor remembered his manners enough to not insist I carry him in. Dionysus, gray-haired and trim, Bacenor\u2019s age though he looked a decade younger, led us to the andron. Here there were eleven other men reclining on low couches with soft pillows and ironwood frames. Dionysus directed us to an empty couch. I helped Bacenor lie down on his side and then went to stand behind the couch. \u201cNo, no,\u201d Bacenor said, \u201cyou must sit with me, you are my memory.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLet the slave dine with us!\u201d shouted a man who waved a cup of red wine. The men, most dressed in gold-embroidered robes of Egyptian linen, all seemed amused by the idea of a brawny slave in wool chiton partaking of their meal. I joined Bacenor on the sofa, reclining on my left elbow. A minute later a slave girl came in to rub olive oil into our hair and put a laurel wreath upon each of our heads. I could see her breasts through the sheer fabric of her tunic and the men laughed as I became obviously aroused. But it was less enjoyable than frustrating, for I wanted to see Doulus, not this girl, who because she was slight seemed hardly more than a child. And I would not see Doulus in this room, for symposia are for men only.\n<\/p>\n \nThe slave girl brought food\u2014honey cakes, sauces of lentil porridge into which you dipped poppy seed bread, saucers with figs, grapes, and chestnuts. I felt ill-at-ease until I drank the cup of wine that the girl had poured me. It was a strong resinous wine only watered-down a little. It warmed my stomach and face and made me less aware that I was lying on my side with Bacenor\u2019s feet inches from my face. (I needed to trim his yellow toenails.) Having relaxed I took in what was happening.\n<\/p>\n \nThe diners were playing the game of kottabos, where you throw wine to knock a statue off a lamp stand. If you knocked it off you could sing a ditty, or make an argument, or pick someone else to try to knock it down. If you didn\u2019t knock it down you had to say what the man who picked you had requested. The figurine was a little plaster statue of Pan on a brass lamp stand in the center of the room.\n<\/p>\n \nThe man who had been challenged to make up a bawdy rhyme on the subject of sleep was a big man with a balding head and a curly red beard. He slurped his wine down to the dregs, then with a flick of his hairy wrist sent the dregs flying from the cup, missing the statue entirely. The group roared with laughter, then there were calls of, \u201cRecite, recite!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nStill reclining, Red Beard said:\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere once was a man from Selinus\n<\/p>\n \nWho had an argumentative penis\n<\/p>\n \nWhen he couldn\u2019t sleep\n<\/p>\n \nAfter counting some sheep\n<\/p>\n \nHis dick said try a new thesis!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThere were claps and catcalls, boos and hisses. Greedy ringed fingers grabbed figs and dates. Dionysus called for the slave girl to bring more wine and she topped our bowls, me watching Bacenor to make sure he didn\u2019t drink too quickly. Red Beard scooped up a handful of almonds, then, as was his right, picked a new subject for gameplay. \u201cArgue for slavery. Why is it good.\u201d He gestured toward us. \u201cKottabos. Drink and throw.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSlavery? Me?\u201d Bacenor asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, not you. Your man.\u201d He made the \u201cyoke\u201d gesture towards me. \u201cKottabos.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAll looked at me. I was suddenly conscious of my collar, of the tattoos that branded me on my arms, of my sunburned face and my untrimmed beard, of my wool chiton which itched, of my dust-streaked legs. The signs of my bondage. I a slave and these men all greater than me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cKottabos!\u201d someone else said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDrink and throw!\u201d shouted another.\n<\/p>\n \nI looked for Bacenor for direction. The man looked befuddled; no direction there. But I saw he wore the laurel and I was reminded that I too wore the laurel and was therefore equal to the others for a moment.\n<\/p>\n \nI drank my wine quickly then, even as the gods warmed me, I tossed the dregs at the statue.\n<\/p>\n \nMy aim was better than Red Beard\u2019s: true but low, splashing the lamp stand. Pan tottered but did not fall.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRecite!\u201d the men shouted.\n<\/p>\n \nThe wine quickened my tongue. \u201cWhy is slavery good? Why is it good to be a slave? I will tell you. There are a thousand reasons. Isn\u2019t it better to live the carefree life of a slave, rather than to be worn down by the responsibilities of a free man? Isn\u2019t it better to be slave than free, so if you commit a capital crime the collar used to strangle you is hardly different from the collar you wear daily? Isn\u2019t it better to be a slave than to starve to death, as my grandparents did during the siege of Sardis? Isn\u2019t it better to be born a slave than not be born at all? Consider the child of my mother\u2019s cousin, cut out of her pregnant belly after she had been raped by a brave Athenian warrior, then its head smashed upon a paving stone. How much luckier my mother to be raped then brought home as booty so that I might be born as a secondary spoil of war!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI delivered this in a light, joking tone and most of the men were amused. But Bacenor reddened and held his wine bowl before his face as if to hide from the others\u2019 gaze.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t be embarrassed, Bacenor,\u201d Dionysus said. \u201cNot every slave can produce rhyming verses on demand.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe other men laughed and Bacenor drank from his bowl, his wizened throat enlarging then shrinking like a blacksmith\u2019s bellows as he finished his wine. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He smiled, but his eyes were still bright with anger. \u201cI am a rich man. He produces what I want at my pleasure.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes, yes, of course,\u201d Dionysus said. \u201cHe made a fine extemporaneous argument.\u201d He turned to me. \u201cNow, choose\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe slave girl came close to me with the salver of almonds. I grabbed a handful then introduced the topic of beauty which was conventional and safe. I picked a man named Gelos who was large and bearded with a ready smile. The slave girl filled all our bowls but when she moved the jug of wine toward Bacenor\u2019s bowl, I raised my hand to stop her.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d Bacenor asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019ve had too much.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor twisted his lips in an obvious effort to hold back a retort.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cEat some figs,\u201d I told him. \u201cYou like figs.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nGelos laughed at me then the men shouted \u201cKottabos!\u201d and Gelos threw his dregs knocking over the little Pan onto the floor with a thump.\n<\/p>\n \nThere was much cheering, especially when Gelos chose not to continue the game, but bring on the next part of the evening, which was dancing and music. Two more slave girls, sisters evidently, came into the room. They were dressed like Egyptians, in flowing sheer gowns one green and the other purple, their heavy breasts unbound and pubic hair visible. They may have been <\/em>Egyptians, their skin tawny, their long straight hair black, their eyes dark. One had a castanet, the other a tambourine. A young male slave played a double-piped aulos. The girls danced to several bright tunes, one I recognized as the song about a shepherd youth who meets Artemis in the guise of a doe. One dancer, the one in purple, pretended to play with me, catching my eye, smiling, running her hands up and down her hips as she shook her tambourine in front of my face. Her dark eyes were lined with kohl and her eyelids were painted magenta to match her gown. She smelled of musk and summer dew. When she danced so close to me that the fabric of her gown touched my face, I became aroused, but it was not a state I welcomed. Not only was there no means by which that arousal could be satisfied, but it served to remind me that I was separated from Doulus.\n<\/p>\n \nThe girl moved off, and Bacenor said, \u201cGood looking girl. Reminds me how your mother looked.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe looked nothing like that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou remember her when she was older, and life had begun to beat her down. I remember when she was a peach, like that one. The big tits, the Assyrian cheekbones.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI filled my mouth with figs instead of replying. The evening wore on. We ate lamb, pita bread with honey, chestnuts, dates, and drank more wine. I let Bacenor drink occasionally, weighing the possibility that he would whine now against the probability that he would rage on the morrow with a hangover. The symposium evolved into a discussion about the merits of slavery, some arguing it was better to have slaves than hired laborers, for laborers must be paid, and money cannot buy loyalty. Others maintained that free laborers were preferable, for slaves ultimately cost more, given that it is the owner\u2019s burden to feed, clothe, and house his slaves, as well as provide medical help for the sick slave, and pay for funerary rites when he dies. \u201cThis big guy\u2019s a drachma drain!\u201d Bacenor said, in reference to me, his only contribution of the discussion.\n<\/p>\n \nAs is typical of symposia where the wine flows freely, the discussion degraded into an exchange of veiled insults, Dionysus through his good humor able to keep tempers from blowing over. At last, as if coordinated by a secret process mediated by the gods, the men began to sit up on the couches, stretch, yawn. The symposium was over. \u201cWe have a bedroom for you,\u201d Dionysus told Bacenor when he made as if to leave. \u201cBe our guest; stay the night.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat about my slave?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe can sleep on the floor of your room.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo,\u201d Bacenor growled, his mouth still twisted. \u201cHe can sleep outside somewhere.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe was still angry with me for embarrassing him. He could more easily retain moods than facts. But I did not want to lie on the floor anyway, with my chiton rolled beneath me as a pillow, listening to him rant about the sinking of the ship or argue with the ghosts of his family members. I did not want to spend my night sponging his sweaty face and armpits, or sometimes singing soft lullabies to bring him back from Stygian depths.\n<\/p>\n \nI wanted to see Doulus.\n<\/p>\n \nI went outside in the evening. It was warm and pleasant, Xuthos being far inland from the sea and therefore not subject to Poseidon\u2019s chilly breath. The streets were busy, the sleepless walking, conversing, eating, exulting in the spirit that animates insomniacs in the night when there is no sun to remind them how fatigued they are. Some of them wore costumes: I saw one man wearing a ram\u2019s head, another the head of a lion. A man wearing the head of a bull and with shoulders and chest thick with muscle led a procession, five girls in white, three young men playing musical instruments, and a group, twenty at least, of others, mostly sleepless, following.\n<\/p>\n \nI joined the group to see where they were going.\n<\/p>\n \nThey went to the city necropolis, which is in the southwest quarter of Xuthos on a hill. At the top of the hill was a grassy clearing surrounded by tombs. There were a couple of torches providing light attached to a large tomb at the far end of the clearing. Near that great structure was a bench on which a young man strummed a lyre and a girl beat a tympanum. A hidden performer with a stentorian voice was chanting verse in rhyme. There were a handful of people sitting in the grass listening to the performance. Our group filed in to join them, the musicians and the girls in white and the man with the head of the bull joining the performers, the rest of us sitting on the grass.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHey, you!\u201d said someone, grabbing my arm. \u201cDidn\u2019t you see me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nIt was Doulus. She had painted her face white with chalk and darkened her brows with charcoal. She wore white like the girls, but her gown left her shoulder bare and she had wound golden thread or filigree around her leather collar so it looked like she wore a rich woman’s necklace. I could see that her untanned skin was almost as fair as her painted face. I was acutely aware of the curve of her breasts. I wanted to heft her breasts, lick her throat. She smelled of honey and ripe olives.\n<\/p>\n \nI invited her to sit.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI didn\u2019t recognize you, without\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe weight on my shoulders?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWithout Chrysanthe,\u201d I said, \u201cof Massalia. Though you are of the tribes of the Soucanne River.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe smiled. \u201cYou remembered.\u201d She held something in her hand. It was a scroll. \u201cI found a scribe to write the message, the release, like you said. That wasn\u2019t so hard.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI could feel her warmth against me. I leaned toward her so I could feel her hair brush my cheek.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou did good,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt was harder to get Chrysanthe to sign it. I gave the guard at Hypnos\u2019s temple a gift so he would let me into the sleeping ward. Chrysanthe was awake and playing cards.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat\u2019s her treatment for sleep?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe was bathing in warm saltwater. She was playing cards to tire her mind. She did not want to sign it. She has a soothsayer at home in Massalia who she likes to consult for such things. But I said it is a twelve days\u2019 journey by ship back home. Does she want to suffer insomnia all the way back? Does she not remember how seasick she gets on boats? Does she forget how the gods berate her even as she vomits? She sighed and said a loyal slave would kill herself after killing her master. Life would be too unbearable otherwise. But then she signed it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cExcellent!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI moved to put my arm around her but she pushed the scroll into my hand. \u201cWould you read it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRead it?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWould you read it for me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI cannot read, and I thought you could.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGladly,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll need to get closer to the torchlight; it\u2019s too dark here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBut then she kissed me on the lips\u2014a quick kiss, such as one gives a friend upon parting, though promising so much more\u2014and a woman wearing the head of a gazelle passed us a cup of ceremonial wine, bidding us, \u201cDrink the ichor of Thanatos,\u201d and we drank, each of us in turn, the wine sweet as honeyed grape juice and also containing bits of solid food\u2014barley, fragments of cheese. The wine affected me immediately, but not in the way wine does usually\u2014the warmth in my gut, the heat in my face. What it did was make everything brighter<\/em>\u2014the grass, the sky, the gravestones, the people sitting in front of me. Could it be sunrise already? Then where was the sun? Doulus laughed when I asked that. Her face was brighter too. She had a glow of a fertile woman, as if Demeter had taken residence in her. Now I was being invited in too. I reached for her\u2014\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then the music\u2014the lute, the tympanum, the pipes\u2014grew louder\u2014and though we held each other our attention was on the musicians sitting on their bench, and on the tomb behind them, a great tomb as one would expect of Macedonians or Persians, not Greeks, with four marble columns and a triangular pediment as on a temple though the structure was not free standing but seemed emergent from the crest of the hill. And this temple had a door of iron bars that had just swung open. From inside the temple, someone climbed up a staircase, holding a lit torch. It was the bull-headed man. A gold loop pierced his flaring black nostrils. And behind him there came a handsome young man with a strange flapping clump of hair. No, not hair: little wings sprouting from his temples. It was Hypnos. And then Thanatos, his twin brother, with feathered wings\u2014on his shoulders not head, for they are fraternal not identical twins. Thanatos held a torch, but upside-down and extinguished. For he smothers life’s fire.\n<\/p>\n \nDoulus pulled away from me. \u201cI want to talk to Hypnos,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \nShe stood up and I stood up too.\n<\/p>\n \nThe bull-headed man was leading the demi-gods and the musicians around the periphery of the grass area, past the other tombs and grave stones. Doulus pushed past some others who were approaching the gods and I followed her. My legs seemed long, my feet far beneath me, and my upper arms seemed thick as tree trunks. The strumming of the flute and the blowing of the pipes seemed a sage\u2019s commentary on my newly godlike limbs. Doulus spoke with Hypnos; I could not hear them over the rush of the music, but the wing on his temple cocked toward her face as if he were giving her careful consideration.\n<\/p>\n \nIt occurred to me that I could make up for not sacrificing the bird for Bacenor earlier.\n<\/p>\n \nI went up to Thanatos. \u201cExcuse me, Lord,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nHe did not turn to look at me as he spoke. \u201cIt is bad luck to ask favors of Death.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s not for me,\u201d I said. \u201cIt is for my master, Bacenor of Elis.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCareful to wish ill on others. It may reflect on you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m not wishing him ill. I wish to convey a message from Bacenor to his wife and son, in the Underworld. That he is sorry for being drunk and allowing them to drown.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe thinks Death delivers letters?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf you can help\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe Oracle of Sleep is who Bacenor needs. It is not your place to worry about Cybele and Timotheus.\u201d He touched my shoulder with a hand cold as a witch\u2019s heart. \u201cYou need to look to your own affairs.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe nodded at the scroll in my hand then let go.\n<\/p>\n \nAs I rubbed my shoulder, which was numb from cold, it occurred to me that I had not mentioned the names of Bacenor\u2019s wife and son.\n<\/p>\n \nThe musicians slowly walked past me, their gowns a radiant white, and I opened the scroll to read what was written there.\n<\/p>\n \nTo Potentates, Magistrates, and Judges,\n<\/p>\n \nBe advised that the bearer of this note was employed to end my life upon the failure of the Physician Phobetor to cure my insomnia, and such person is made protected from any punitive consequences, civil, criminal, or religious, that normally attend the event of murder or manslaughter. In the City of Xuthos, in the good name of Zeus, in the third year of the hundred-and-fourth Olympiad. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nIt had the stamp of Chrysanthe of Massalia.\n<\/p>\n \nI thought it peculiar that it did not have Doulus\u2019s name. Nor did it release Doulus from bondage.\n<\/p>\n \nI went to her. She had just parted from Hypnos and was smiling at me. \u201cWhy no name?\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nShe put her arms around me and kissed me. It was a kiss to set my blood afire. And a long kiss, so that the gods and musicians and most of the sleepless were gone from the clearing by the time we broke off for air. There were still a group of four or five sitting and watching the open tomb as if expecting another god to emerge. \u201cLet\u2019s go somewhere private,\u201d I suggested, taking her hand.\n<\/p>\n \nShe didn\u2019t move, but was still smiling: a strange smile, for her eyes were tearing.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI couldn\u2019t,\u201d she started. Then took a breath and began again. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have my name put to the scroll.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe wiped an eye, still smiling. \u201cBecause I can\u2019t do it. I can\u2019t kill Chrysanthe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou can\u2019t? Why not?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe looked down at her feet. \u201cIn Massalia they hang slaves who murder their masters.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd in Elis they strangle them. But so what? This is assisted suicide, not murder.\u201d I raised the scroll and held it like a torch. \u201cThis document attests to that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI can\u2019t. I\u2019m afraid.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI sighed. \u201cThen why even pay for the letter?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe looked at me shyly. \u201cMaybe someone else could do it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe stepped close to me, and whispered in my ear. \u201cMaybe you could, silly.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou could kill her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy me?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBecause you are strong and fearless.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMany men are strong and fearless.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut most men don\u2019t like me,\u201d she said, touching my cheek. \u201cThey think I\u2019m too big.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThose men are fools, then,\u201d I said. \u201cYou\u2019re perfect.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe smiled, but said, \u201cDon\u2019t you see what I\u2019m asking? I must know that you really like me. I must have proof of your affections.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou want me to kill Chrysanthe to prove that I like you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t just give myself to any man who asks.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut what if she falls asleep?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe can bargain anew when that happens.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe shook hands to agree to the bargain.\n<\/p>\n \n \nSo we would lie together only if I killed Chrysanthe. But that did not mean we could meet only with a chaperone present; we went to a far part of the necropolis, where the roots of olive trees dug into the city wall, and the twisted trunks with their gnarled branches grew in enough profusion to provide privacy, and she let me kiss her neck and stroke her thighs and touch her breasts. My blood boiled with excitement, my engorged member hurt as she lay pressed against it. Though there was no consummation there was still the smell of sex along with the musky scent of her body and the dry smell of olive trees that had not tasted water in many months. It seemed my pulse would never slow. But finally we fell asleep together.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I woke she was gone.\n<\/p>\n \nIt was overcast, and a white mist hugged the ground. I imagined she had gone back to Chrysanthe at the temple. I could find her later. I needed to go back to Bacenor.\n<\/p>\n \nAt Dionysus\u2019s house I knocked. Dionysus himself let me in and told me to wait in the kitchen where his slaves were eating breakfast. They gave me warm bread, and water in a bowl. The two \u201cEgyptian Dancers\u201d were kneading dough in a big pot on the table. They kept whispering to each other and laughing at me. They did not look as pretty this morning as last night\u2014the forehead of one girl was pitted with smallpox scars, the other girl seemed to have no chin\u2014and they were clearly Greeks, not exotics.\n<\/p>\n \nFinally Dionysus told me that Bacenor was awake and ready for me. He directed me to Bacenor\u2019s room. When I got there my master was sitting on the bed dressed already.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere have you been? Who was that girl who dressed me? What is that on your face?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI wiped my cheek and my hand came away white.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s chalk, or something.\u201d Doulus\u2019s makeup must have rubbed off on me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou look like a ghost,\u201d Bacenor said. \u201cDid you go to the Underworld?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere was a ceremony in the city graveyard. I talked to Thanatos\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOff cavorting with philosophers while I am in hell! How could you leave me alone last night?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou told me to\u2014\u201d I started, but broke off because Bacenor began fulminating about the events of his long night\u2014the young men singing drunkenly in the courtyard of the house, the pitched battle he heard at one point on the roof, the actors he heard in the adjoining room putting on one of Aristophanes\u2019 plays, the jugglers and acrobats who broke into his room in order to tumble over his bed.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd someone\u2014probably the girl who dressed me\u2014poured chunks of ice on my feet!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere could she get ice in summer?\u201d I asked. His bed and blankets were dry to the touch. \u201cMaybe you did fall asleep, and only dreamed those things?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust like you! To abandon me, then mock me when I tell you of my suffering!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, my master. Truly it sounds like you endured an awful night. Maybe you could talk to Dr. Phobetor again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo doctors! No charlatans!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen someone else\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHelp me up,\u201d Bacenor ordered. \u201cI want to go home!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut there is something else. There is the Oracle of Sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe are in Delphi?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo. Xuthos. It\u2019s a different oracle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat use is an oracle? I need sleep, not prophecies.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe she can ease your mind about Cybele and Timotheus.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYour wife and son, and your grief about their deaths.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI thought he did not remember. But then he grabbed his grizzled chin as if he intended to twist it off his face. \u201cIt was the storm. Everyone says you don’t cross the Great Sea in winter. But I did it for wine, my greed for the wine, to sell the wine and drink the wine. The wine! I should have gone down in the sea with the ship.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe you can speak to them, through the Oracle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re a fool,\u201d he said. Then he looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. \u201cWhy not? Take me to this Oracle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nAfter making inquiries, I found that The Oracle only spoke on Zeus\u2019s Day, so we had a day before we could see her. So that morning when we left Dionysus\u2019s house, Bacenor had me carry him to the herbalists\u2019 section of the agora, presumably to buy some plant remedy to help himself to sleep. But it turned out that he just wanted wine. \u201cHim! He\u2019ll have wine! I recognize him! Who is he?\u201d Bacenor pointed at a man who wore his beard in the Etruscan style, long, combed to a point, without a mustache. \u201cTake me to him!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe\u2019s nobody you know,\u201d I said. Bacenor\u2019s business partner fifteen years ago had been Etruscan, but this was a much younger man.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTake me there, you big oaf!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI took him to the merchant who, indeed, was Etruscan, and who had a variety of herbs both medicinal and soporific, but no wine. \u201cCome now,\u201d Bacenor said, \u201cdon\u2019t you have a vineyard of twelve acres in sunny Latium?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is all I have, kind master,\u201d the Etruscan said, making a sweeping gesture toward his trays of herbs, his cloves of garlic and roots of ginger.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNothing to quench a rich man\u2019s sleepless thirst?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo one sells wine here in this market,\u201d the man said. He fidgeted with his beard as though ruminating. \u201cOh, good master! I may have something for you!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat?\u201d asked Bacenor.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSomething from the desert wilderness south of Persia!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo grapes grow in the desert,\u201d grumbled Bacenor.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo. But other fruits do.\u201d The Etruscan brought out a red amphora with a picture in black glaze of two naked men wrestling, and a clay cup. He opened the amphora and poured a dark viscous fluid into the cup. \u201cThis will wake you up,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut I want sleep,\u201d Bacenor said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSleep comes to the man at night who is most awake in daytime,\u201d the Etruscan said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow much?\u201d Bacenor asked him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe smallest coin you have,\u201d the Etruscan said.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor was pleased by this. He gave the man a silver obal and took the cup, but instead of drinking, passed it to me. \u201cYou try a little first.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe had me test his food sometimes, as though he were an Oriental despot afraid he might be poisoned by a challenger. I drank. It was a bitter drink that reminded me of the medicine my mother used to make brewed from chicory and pine needles. It had an immediate effect: it lifted the mental fog left by last night\u2019s wine.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor looked at me as if expecting I would fall over. \u201cHow is it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t taste good. Burns my throat a little. But it\u2019s cleared my head.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLet me try it,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \nI gave him the cup and he drank it down. He frowned, smacked his lips, and then passed the cup back to the Etruscan. He took a few steps away from the merchant, summoning me to follow him. He whispered to me, \u201cDon\u2019t look, but I know who he is. Velthur the Etruscan. I had business dealings with him once.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, sir, that is not Velthur.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t contradict me. Velthur stole my vineyard.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo master, that is not Velthur,\u201d I said. \u201cVelthur was about your age. I do not think this man is more than twenty-five.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI did not correct the other part, for it was close enough to being true. The two men had been business partners, investing in a vineyard, but Velthur took advantage of my master\u2019s failing memory to trick him into signing over his share of the vineyard as a gift.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re right,\u201d Bacenor said, to my surprise. \u201cVelthur\u2019s beard was shot through with white.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nI fantasized about Doulus, daydreaming about seducing her, as I walked through the agora with Bacenor on my back. About staring into her eyes and running my fingers through her hair and brushing her lips with mine. If the bitter drink stimulated thoughts of Eros for me (it also burned my throat anew if I belched), it made Bacenor want to shop. Because his memory was poor he had always liked to buy trinkets as reminders. That day he considered oil lamps, shiny brass dinner plates with inscribed prayers or sayings, golden figurines of Hypnos and Apollo, having me pick up the items then pass them to him so he could examine them closely. \u201cFactory-produced, probably in Rhodes,\u201d he groused about the plates. \u201cIt\u2019s too light for solid gold,\u201d he grumbled about a winged Hypnos-head. \u201cIf you scratched it you would find clay.\u201d He was interested in a set of playing cards with erotic pictures: huge-phallused men ravishing women, old men kissing boys, girls fellating athletic youths. \u201cYou would like these cards,\u201d he said to me. \u201cThey would help you do philosophy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes, master,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, really, should I buy it for you? Look at the sausage on that satyr! Look at him ramming the maiden like a trireme! Couldn\u2019t you learn its lessons tonight when you sneak off? Don\u2019t you want to do some advanced philosophizing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t play cards,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat rot! Your drink, you roll dice, you bugger little boys, you contemplate the cosmos. You steal my money and gamble it away. Buy the cards. I insist.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSo I took the drachma he gave me and I bought the cards I did not want. He bought for himself a parody of the wooden toy children play with, of Apollo standing proudly in his chariot, pulling an orange-painted ball representing the Sun, only this Apollo looked put-upon and harried, as his chariot pulled not the Sun but a little bed on wheels, a tiny Hypnos asleep upon it.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then the bitter drink seemed to wear off. Bacenor\u2019s face got long, his eyelids grew heavy. He pulled my ear. \u201cEnough of this. I need the baths.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFor the toilet?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, you bastard. He, the guy last night\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDionysus?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat\u2019s the one. Dionysus told me I could sleep if I was relaxed. And the best way to relax is a hot bath and massage.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSo I carried him back to the Xuthos baths. \u201cWait here,\u201d he told me. I could tell he didn\u2019t remember that I had left him yesterday. He went inside. I stood by the marble caryatid with plum-painted nipples long enough to say the harvest prayer to Mitra. Then I went looking for Doulus.\n<\/p>\n \nI walked the temple district, glancing in at the temples to Hypnos, Ares, Athena, Zeus, and Hermes, and then I found myself in the Garden of the Lotus Eaters. It was green and pleasant, with flagstone pathways running past many kinds of trees\u2014pomegranate, pear, and apple, as well as fig and olive. On some the fruit was ripe; I plucked a fig and ate it. There were bushes, too, many laden with flowers and fruits I did not recognize. And there were stone benches, but all were occupied, by people, sleeping in the middle of the day. Not shamming sleep as the ones by the statues but sleeping the sleep of the dead. Indeed I worried one young man actually was<\/em> dead\u2014he lay on his back with his arm dangling to the ground, and did not rouse when I shook him\u2014but when I held my hand over his nose and mouth I could feel his breath.\n<\/p>\n \nNear the young man there grew a shrub with bunches of dark-yellow, sweet-smelling fruit. I picked one of the fruits.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo!\u201d Someone grabbed the fruit from my hand. \u201cDon\u2019t eat that!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nIt was Doulus. She threw the fruit into the bushes.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd good morning to you, too,\u201d I said. \u201cWhy did you do that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s the lotus. It\u2019s bad. It will make you sleep for days.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s not for me,\u201d I said. Then I kissed her. It was a kiss to launch a thousand ships. Because she was new I was aroused instantly. To be like Bacenor and have everything always new! When we stopped to catch our breaths, I said, \u201cThe famous lotus. Maybe I can give some to Bacenor.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou have to ask the owner of the garden for permission,\u201d Doulus said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho\u2019s the owner?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCome with me,\u201d she said, taking my hand. \u201cI\u2019m going to see him.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOh?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe smiled. \u201cChrysanthe didn\u2019t sleep last night, so I am going to buy something that will kill her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cReally? You\u2019ve decided you can kill her after all?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, silly. I\u2019m buying it for you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nIt was strange talking about killing in such a pastoral setting\u2014birds chirping, insects buzzing, and the babble of a fountain. But even Ares can play the lute.\n<\/p>\n \nWe went into a little house at the edge of the garden. The main room had whitewashed walls and a narrow window facing the garden and a heavy wooden table.\n<\/p>\n \nThanatos was sitting at the table. Black-haired and dark-eyed, fine-featured and beardless. His face was so pretty he could have performed as Lysistrata on stage. I could not see his wings.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy Lord,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nHe frowned, but bade us sit on the two chairs at the table opposite him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s strange,\u201d I said. \u201cI would think your brother<\/em> would own this garden.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d Thanatos asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe Lotus\u2014if it\u2019s for sleep, not death, your brother should be the one\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy brother is very ill. He doesn\u2019t have the strength to tend a garden.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOh.\u201d I realized he was a man, not a god. That is why I couldn\u2019t see his wings. What he had been last night I wasn\u2019t sure, for as the philosopher says, in the right conditions wine can make men see Heaven.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI have money,\u201d Doulus said, \u201cfor the poison.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt is not a poison per se,<\/em>\u201d said the man who looked like Thanatos. He brought out something wrapped in a white muslin cloth. He unrolled the cloth.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMay Zeus defend us!\u201d Doulus cried out, pointing at the revealed object.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat?\u201d I saw a root with several twisted branches.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s a dead baby,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt is the root of a mandrake,\u201d Thanatos said.\n<\/p>\n \nI saw what Doulus meant: it looked like a stillborn infant, grotesquely misshapen, with a head topped with threadlike rooty hairs, a bulbous torso, two long slender arms, and two long slender legs and a tail. It had neither hands nor feet, and you could imagine not one but two faces in the bumps and whorls on its head. \u201cPersian women wear mandrakes as amulets to attract lovers,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nShe cringed, and Thanatos frowned as if in annoyance at me. \u201cAs I was saying, the mandrake is not a poison per se. <\/em> It is a drug, and like all drugs it changes its temper according to its proportions. Small dosages make men slumber. Slightly larger amounts give men visions. And still larger dosages kill.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow much of a dose to kill?\u201d Doulus asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t take a great amount,\u201d Thanatos said. \u201cYou scrape off the hairs and the skin of the root. Cut off the arms. Then cut off about an inch of the body\u2014the smaller the pieces the better\u2014and boil that in four cups of wine for an hour. Add some honey and lemongrass for taste. Then put it into an ampule\u2014I will give one if you need it\u2014and when the time is right, pour it into the drink. Wine or pomegranate juice is best so she won\u2019t know.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cChrysanthe will know,\u201d Doulus said. \u201cIt\u2019s what she wants.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThanatos arched his eyebrow quizzically. \u201cThat’s good then. Any questions?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo I have to buy the whole thing?\u201d Doulus asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI recommend it. The potency of mandrake can vary widely. Just an inch might not be enough. But it builds up in the body, so if the first dose doesn’t work, giving a second dose might do the trick.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy not double the dose at the beginning?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBecause,\u201d said Thanatos, \u201ctoo strong a dose and people vomit it up.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd for sleeping?\u201d I asked. I wondered if I could use mandrake instead of the lotus. \u201cHow big a dose?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA tiny fraction,\u201d he said, \u201cno more than a tenth of an inch. Though that can vary too.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI nodded, and then he asked Doulus for payment, but I brought out my coin purse and gave him the two drachmas he asked for.\n<\/p>\n \nThat it was I who had paid seemed to soften his attitude toward me but when I shook his hand on leaving I noticed his hand was just as cold as the night before.\n<\/p>\n \n \nDoulus and I walked hand-in-hand through the garden. I was sick with longing. The poet is wrong for it gets worse when I am near her. Then a gray rabbit with long ears ran across the path. I took the rabbit as a good omen. I pointed, \u201cOver there, I saw that place earlier.\u201d We went to an area enclosed by a hedgerow made seemingly of grapevines. But these \u201cgrapes\u201d did not cluster in the way I was accustomed to seeing. I did not need Doulus to tell me that they were probably poisonous, but anyway I wanted to taste her not taste fruit. So we kissed, and I tasted the dusky summer and her sweet breath and the wine of Aphrodite. And I wanted more, and I licked her neck, and I rubbed her nipples, and I lifted up her chiton and cupped her buttocks in my hand as I pushed her against a retaining wall. And then she said, \u201cNo, no further right now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy desire was unslaked. \u201cBut I want you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou have to wait. Until you kill Chrysanthe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShould I kill her now?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI have to make the poison drink.\u201d She showed me the ampule: cloudy-green glass, cork stopper; it looked like a perfume jar my mother used to have. She smiled at me ruefully. \u201cOh, don\u2019t look sad.\u201d She grasped my penis through my chiton. \u201cBe patient. You will have your fun later.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe let me go. We kissed. Then we hugged. As we embraced, I studied her head. Her blonde streaks were so many colors\u2014white, golden, copper-red, auburn. She looked a goddess not a slave. I caught my breath and thought more clearly. \u201cWe have to stay another night. Maybe I could help you make the poison drink? My own master could use some for sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAll right,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen tomorrow, we are going to see the Oracle of Xuthos. My master might hear something that will help him sleep. Maybe your master could come too.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cChrysanthe won\u2019t want to come. She has given up.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe you could ask her?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI could try, but she won\u2019t want to come.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI nodded.\n<\/p>\n \nA moment later we passed the young sleeping man I had been afraid for. He had raised his arm and turned onto his side. \u201cHe looks more comfortable now,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nShe examined him closely. \u201cHe looks dead.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nI have said that you cannot buy wine in Xuthos. But Dionysus had served us wine, and the man who looked like Thanatos told us that, yes, you could buy wine, but only in a few places, all dangerous, given that the sale of wine was prohibited by the city council. The least dangerous were the brothels and so we went to a brothel called Poet\u2019s Rest, a two-story white building whose door was painted with a big red rose, as if seen from above.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter we knocked, a huge man, even bigger than me, opened the door. Shirtless and muscular and head shaved save for an oiled topknot. He saw by our collars that we were slaves and sized me up as though he thought I might charge at him. When I told him our desire he nodded but spoke to Doulus, not me, and ushered her in. He closed the door and I did <\/em>think about charging in, and pounding his nose into his contemptuous face.\n<\/p>\n \nJust before Doulus returned with a jar of wine, I recognized that the door was painted not with a rose but with the open red flower of the female sex.\n<\/p>\n \n \nIn the agora we found a stew seller who was willing, for three obal coins, to lend us his stew pot and cook-fire and cutting knives. His name was Sastura and he was a Hittite and like many of his race he seemed gripped by melancholy. \u201cWe Hittites once ruled the world,\u201d he said, \u201cand you Greeks think you will rule the world, too. But I tell you it shall be some other people, maybe the Carthaginians from the West, maybe the Persians from the East, who will destroy these temples\u2014\u201d he gestured toward the ochre-painted temple of Ares, \u201c\u2014and end the Greeks\u2019 day in the sun.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDoulus smirked as she cut tiny bits of flesh off her half of the mandrake.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes, laugh at me,\u201d Sastura said. His voice was lugubrious, his beard long and complexly braided, his heavy eyelids increasing my impression of his melancholy. \u201cYou probably didn\u2019t even know the Hittites had an empire.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI knew of the Hittite Empire,\u201d I said, though the philosopher says it is a myth. \u201cWhat was funny was that you think Greeks want to rule the world. Greeks want to trade, not conquer. Certainly not to build an empire.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHis face darkened and he turned to inspect the stew pot, into which we had already poured wine. The stew was steaming but yet to boil.\n<\/p>\n \nI continued slicing my half of the mandrake. The root was tough, the smell like a storage bin of rotten vegetables. When I finished slicing I joined her in chopping the pieces into little chunks. By the time we were done chopping, the wine was boiling, so we poured the mandrake bits into the stew pot. Sastura said, \u201cLove potions never work.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt will be a sleep potion,\u201d Doulus said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFrom a mandrake?\u201d Sastura asked. \u201cBetter to try knocking them out with a hammer. If they don\u2019t die they can go into a coma, and that means a very long sleep indeed.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nAfter we made the poison drink, and poured it into the green ampule, we kissed some more, and we parted, first promising to meet at midnight by the gate to the Garden of the Lotus Eaters. I took the ampule (now holding poison) with me. I had a song in my heart, a skip in my feet. For a moment I did not care whether my master slept or Chrysanthe died, only that I would get to see Doulus again.\n<\/p>\n \nI went back to the baths. It occurred to me then that I had been gone most of the afternoon. It was hot and the shadows were long. I expected Bacenor to be there, by the statue with the plum-painted nipples. But he was not. On the brick pavement there lay only an ancient bald man, curled up on his side, trying to sleep in the shadow of the statue.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cExcuse me, grandfather,\u201d I said to him. \u201cHave you seen a hunchbacked old man, white-haired and beardless?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy eyes are closed,\u201d said the man. \u201cThat means I\u2019m sleeping. Leave me alone.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe would have been whining like an infant, cursing the gods and his fate.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOh, that one.\u201d The man kept his eyes closed as he spoke, but clutched his long white beard. \u201cHe was here calling out for his slave. Saying no rich man should have to suffer this. Please let me sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo you know where he went?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho am I, Moros The-Omniscient? All I know is a couple of young rakes roughed him up, looking for his riches.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRoughed him up! Is he hurt? Is he dead? What happened to him?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou ask too many questions. You smell of sex. The warden of the baths took him into the building. Now, go away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nI found Bacenor in one of the rooms used for massage. He lay supine upon a table, and was holding a wet cloth over his eyes. One of his sandals was missing: not only were his toenails long, but his calluses needed scraping badly. He was moaning softly. \u201cMaster,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe thieves destroyed me,\u201d he said. He lifted the cloth. One eye was swollen almost shut but otherwise he looked unharmed. \u201cThey took my purse and almost killed me.\u201d He cast his red-rimmed good eye in my direction. \u201cWhere were you? Playing word games with your philosopher? Go get Agathon to arrest the thieves. There were five of them. Boys.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAgathon was head councilman in Elis when I was a boy. He had been dead for years. \u201cWe are in Xuthos, master, and Agathon cannot help us.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOh, Gods,\u201d he groaned, good eye bulging, bad eye opening halfway. \u201cI am doomed. I have no money. I will be a beggar in the streets.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI have some money,\u201d I said, shaking my purse so you could hear the coins clink.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou! Have money? I know why! You were outside rolling the bones with your philosopher while I was being manhandled by a dozen ruffians!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe can stay the night in an inn. I can pay for that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow dishonorable that would be, a once-rich man relying on the charity of a slave!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOr we could go to Dionysus\u2019s house. He is a kind man.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBah,\u201d he grumbled, \u201cI know no Dionysus.\u201d But then he moved as though trying to sit up, and cried out. When I reached down to help him up, he said, \u201cNo! No! My head hurts too much! Leave me be, you scoundrel!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI let him back down on the table.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShould I get a doctor?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo! No doctors! Let me rest!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe warden of the baths let us stay the night without charge and even provided us bread and grapes to eat. He assured me that the captain of the city guard, one Fillimon, had been notified of the assault but doubted that much could be done, as Bacenor\u2019s account of his assailants varied, now \u201ca pair of boys\u201d, a minute later, \u201can army of barbarians.\u201d We broke bread and drank water and Bacenor complained that I had left him defenseless to throw kottabos with the philosopher. He repeated the charge and would not be corrected and gradually listed my other faults, that I carried him too slowly, that I looked at women, that I tried to embarrass him in front of wealthy merchants by showing off my learning, that I had stolen the golden statue of Ploutus he used to have in the altar room of his house. On, and on, with the familiar charges, leading up to \u201cyou let my wife and my son drown.\u201d I wanted to be with Doulus and not listening to Bacenor so later on when he complained that he had water not wine, I told him I would get some wine for him.\n<\/p>\n \nI went again to the brothel called Poet\u2019s Rest. Without Doulus I was treated differently, invited inside, allowed to sit in a room with a harpist while waiting for the wine, propositioned by three different women, one slender and boy-like, one hourglass shaped and voluptuous, one a little heavy and with breasts big as melons, all of them sweet faced and flowery smelling and dressed in gowns like see-through drapery. Each of them touched my arms and chest with their painted nails and pretended disappointment when I said I had come only to buy wine.\n<\/p>\n \nFinally the Madame of the house herself came out, a handsome middle-aged woman in gold-trimmed black, and gave me a flagon of wine. She would not take money for the wine. It was not an act of pity, I believed, but rather one of business acumen.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I returned to the bath house, Bacenor was his usual combative self. He had covered his face with the cold cloth so only his mouth showed; when he realized I was there, he pushed back a corner to expose his good eye. \u201cWhy did you leave me alone, you craven dog? Did you know a crowd attacked me in the street?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI brought wine,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGive it!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI placed the flagon on the rickety wooden table, beside the bowl of cold water used to wet the cloth, and I took out the ampule of poison. I found a cup and poured wine in.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s taking so long, you giant oaf?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust a moment.\u201d I poured a little poison in, no more than a tenth of the ampule as Thanatos had instructed. I turned to him. \u201cCan you raise your head?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo!\u201d he snapped, but he let me lift his head up with my hand and pour some wine into his mouth. He puckered and made fish-lips and swished the wine in his mouth before swallowing. He pulled the cloth off his face and sat up. \u201cSomething odd about the taste. Did you put poison in it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, a sleep drug.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWell, that\u2019s all right.\u201d He took the cup from me then drank the entire cup down, spilling a little down the corners of his mouth. He stared at the black dregs at the bottom of the white cup as though taking a divination. \u201cI thought you hated me taking drugs.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey work, then they don\u2019t work and you\u2019re worse off.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m sleepy.\u201d He dropped the cup and it shattered. \u201cOops.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI helped him lie down. I put the cloth back over his eye; he raised his hand as if to pull it off, but then his hand dropped to his side. He squirmed for a moment, then relaxed, and his breathing slowed.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor was asleep.\n<\/p>\n \nAt midnight I went to the Gate at the Garden of the Lotus Eaters. The gate was closed and Doulus was not there. I waited long enough for the air to go from warm to chilly. I waited long enough that my thoughts went from anticipation for her arrival to the fear like that I used to feel as a child at night when I woke to find my mother gone because Bacenor or Cybele had called for her. The black terrors of the late night. I was about to leave when Doulus ran up to me. Her chest heaved and I could see her breath. \u201cSorry, I\u2019m so late,\u201d she said. \u201cYou must be angry with me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy? What did Achilles accomplish, brooding in his tent? My teacher taught me that patience is a virtue.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe said, \u201cYou must be patient, with a master like what you have.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI said: \u201cI recite the annals of the Gods to pass the time.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDoulus said, \u201cYou are<\/em> angry.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBut I was not. I kissed her, and she kissed me back, but she felt that she had to keep talking. \u201cChrysanthe was angry at me for being late.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy master was angry at me too.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDoulus said, \u201cShe didn\u2019t want me to see you again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut if I am to kill her, it will be easier if you are with me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWell, yes. But you see it was Artemis and Apollo that have the argument.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cChrysanthe sees them?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes! You remember! But it is more, they speak through her!\u201d Doulus summarized Apollo and Artemis\u2019s conversation, apparently made manifest through Chrysanthe\u2019s person. Apollo thought that love was good. Artemis thought it was bad, that there should be no carnal relations outside of marriage, if even then. Apollo said that Doulus should see her young man. Artemis said no. Apollo said it was strange that Doulus could not see her young man when he would be the one to kill Chrysanthe. Artemis said the young man was a barbarian and could not be trusted. \u201cThen I interrupted,\u201d Doulus said. \u201cI told them\u2014I told Chrysanthe\u2014come meet him at the Oracle of Xuthos tomorrow, and you\u2019ll see he\u2019s Greek, and trustworthy!\u201d Apollo liked that idea but Artemis was not convinced. So the two decided to have an arrow-shooting contest in Chrysanthe\u2019s bedroom; while they were shooting and Chrysanthe was paying attention to that, Doulus sneaked out.\n<\/p>\n \nSince the gate to the garden was locked, we decided to take a stroll together. We saw a fire near the statue of Hephaestus, and went to investigate. \u201cWe are the Laborers of Hades,\u201d said the fat bare-chested man with hairy shoulders who presided over the fire. It was a bonfire, and it burned smoky and olive-smelling from masses of olive branches. There were about a dozen of them (men not branches), all naked from the waist-up, artisans or bricklayers or workers of similar ilk, their bodies once decently muscled but now running to fat. Their oiled flesh gleamed in the firelight. They passed cups of mulled wine around while Hairy Shoulders spoke. \u201cPixodarus the slave trader cut down his olive grove today. Without sacrifice or even a prayer. Isn\u2019t that just like a rich slaver, to ignore the wood nymphs that way?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe other men shouted, \u201cYes!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWould rich men in our father\u2019s time have ignored the Gods that way?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe sat with them in their circle, drinking their wine, listening to them talk. I had thought they were a cult of Dionysus (the god, not the merchant) but they were just drinking friends or maybe a parody of a philosopher\u2019s symposium, for the leader Hairy Shoulders talked about the Various Ages of Man, with the current age being the Age of the Slave, but the next age would be The Age of the Artisan, and in this new utopian age artisans could unite to wrest power from the masters and the kings. It was a peculiar philosophy and Hairy Shoulder\u2019s eyes gleamed with intellectual madness as he spoke but as he drank more wine his speech slurred and his argument lost force.\n<\/p>\n \nThe other men threw more branches on the fire. The flames rose high, warming our faces, making our skin golden-red and throwing my tattoos into relief. \u201cWhat is this house-tattoo?\u201d Doulus asked me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHouse?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThese three lines,\u201d she said, tracing the pattern on my shoulder.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat is the letter Pi. In Elis, that means I am a slave from Persia.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut you talk like a Greek,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m half-Greek,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nShe looked worried. \u201cI have told Chrysanthe that you are all Greek.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI thought for a moment. \u201cI can wear my cloak, to cover up the tattoos.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIs that safe?\u201d She meant, Won\u2019t people think you are trying to pretend you are a free man?\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere is no danger, as long as I am with Bacenor,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nIt was only a little reckless; it was easy to be far more reckless when I was near Doulus.\n<\/p>\n \nI kissed her, licking her teeth, sucking her lips, but she broke off the kiss too soon: \u201cIt\u2019s time to plan tomorrow.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe decided that I would kill Chrysanthe when we all went to see the Oracle.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter we had made our plan, after we had kissed so hard my lips swelled up, I returned to the bath house. A candle was burning in the room I thought was Bacenor\u2019s, casting light beneath the blanket into the dark hallway, and I almost passed it, thinking I had been mistaken about which room was his. But I heard a familiar grumbling and I pushed in.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere you are!\u201d Bacenor was almost naked, wearing only his loincloth as he waddled a slow circle around the massage table, holding the table for support. \u201cWhere is my chamber pot?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou couldn\u2019t stay asleep?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSleep? Are you joking? Are you cruel?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou were asleep when I left you,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere is my chamber pot?\u201d He kept moving around the table, his chest sunken and hairless, his skin pale as a fish\u2019s belly, his back seemingly burnished where his knobby spine pressed against his skin. \u201cWhere is Hypatia? She helps me at night while you\u2019re out cavorting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou sold Hypatia five years ago. You could only afford one slave.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCur! Scoundrel! I am a rich man! I have seven slaves! I have a closet full of fifty drachma coins! I could buy this town!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo. You lost half your riches when your ship sank near Rhodes. And the other half when you invested in the winery with Velthur the Etruscan.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHis eyes rolled back in his head and his knees buckled and as he collapsed, I moved in and caught him.\n<\/p>\n \nSometimes making him angry brings him back to the present.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere are we?\u201d he asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe are in Xuthos, the City of Sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy did you leave me alone?\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI gave you something to sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat explains the strange taste in my mouth.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut it must have only kept you asleep a few minutes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI had a dream\u2014an awful dream. Ploutus invited me into his house of gold, and he showed me my bedroom. It was full of gold and silver and jewels piled on the floor and Ploutus poured out even more treasure all for me from his cornucopia. He told me I was the richest man on Earth! I told him yes, but where is my bed, all I see is treasure. And he told me I don’t need a bed because I will never sleep again!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI was still supporting him, hugging his fragile form. \u201cTomorrow we see the Oracle, and she shall ease your mind.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe pushed away from me. \u201cHelp me find the toilet\u2014the gods are calling me!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe Oracle of Sleep resided in a limestone cave at the base of the necropolis hill. My master and I arrived at dawn but already there was a queue outside the entrance, a score of insomniacs at least, many looking especially haggard, as if the Oracle were a common last resort for the sleepless. Riding me, Bacenor was impatient, cursing, pulling my hair, digging into my ribs, twisting my ears, saying, \u201cWho are these horrible people? Why do we have to wait for them?\u201d He vexed me so much that I finally said, \u201cMay I let you down, Master? I have a bad cramp in my thigh.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor, unaccustomed to my making such a request, said, \u201cFine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nChrysanthe and Doulus arrived a few minutes later. I nodded at them, pretending cool, but Bacenor said, \u201cYou have finally found someone your size. Good-looking Amazon warrior. A big bulky princess. Did you bed her?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI didn\u2019t.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf she\u2019s pregnant I should have first pick of the litter.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat won\u2019t happen,\u201d I murmured.\n<\/p>\n \nMoments later the guard raised the iron gate and the queue moved into the cave. We lost our place in line because Bacenor insisted that I pick him up, but the good part of that was we went in with Doulus and Chrysanthe. Chrysanthe, perhaps of sturdier stock than Bacenor, walked rather than making Doulus carry her. As we entered the cave the old woman squeezed my forearm, and said, \u201cWhat a strong young man! Of what lineage are you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI am a son of Athens,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd so fluent in Greek, too!\u201d Chrysanthe said, obviously pleased.\n<\/p>\n \nInside we got to sit beside each other on the floor of the cave, as the Oracle required that no one, not even slaves, stand. I sat next to Doulus, her proximity seeming to kindle the air as in the presence of a god. To my right sat Bacenor, to Doulus\u2019s left Chrysanthe.\n<\/p>\n \nThe cave was chilly, hewn by man from the soft stone, lit by candles atop small skulls, monkey skulls perhaps, placed in sconces carved from the rock. There were the smells that places of ritual often acquire, of burnt flesh and candle wax, but also of brimstone and something faint and wild, as if a beast had made its lair here sometime long ago. The cave was smaller than its more famous counterpart at Delphi, but appeared to operate according to similar principles. Opposite the semi-circle of supplicants, water in a great iron cauldron half-buried in the ground bubbled and steamed, as if heated by a fire I could not see. To each side of the steaming cauldron there stood one priest; two older men with full gray beards. They wore white robes with pomegranates hanging from the hems. The priests looked like twins and beneath those beards they seemed to have the fine almost feminine features I had found striking in the man\u2014the one like Thanatos\u2014who had sold us the poison in the garden. I wondered briefly if these men were indeed Hypnos and Thanatos, but costumed to look older. Or perhaps even minor gods can age themselves at whim. I whispered my suspicions to Doulus but she smirked, and said, \u201cWhere are their wings? They are just old men.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBehind the cauldron was a stone tripod like the one the Oracle at Delphi sat on. But there was no sign of the Oracle this morning.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor grumbled. \u201cWhy are we here?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019re here to see the Oracle of Sleep so you can learn to sleep.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe scowled. \u201cI am a rich man. Why am I sitting on the ground?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe all sit,\u201d I whispered. \u201cAnd they suggest we speak softly, to make it easier for the Oracle to hear the gods.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPoppycock,\u201d Bacenor muttered. He groped in his purse, then brought out a half-chewed apple, pungent and well-browned. \u201cHera\u2019s tits! That’s all I have? Where are my coins? Do you have a drachma, slave?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI showed him my coin purse but kept it at arm\u2019s length.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGive me that! I need to pay them! A rich man does not wait!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaster, please, soft. This isn\u2019t Delphi. You can\u2019t buy a place in the queue.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nOr maybe you could. Bacenor was waving the rotten apple at the priest I thought looked like Thanatos, gesturing at him to come over. And now the man came. His face was stern and he wielded the upside-down torch as though it were a cudgel.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor asked him, \u201cHow much to be first to see the Oracle?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe priest pointed his torch at the apple. \u201cYou bring rotten fruit as your offering for the Lords?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2014\u201d Bacenor started.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t answer. Don\u2019t speak. If I hear your voice again before you go before the Oracle I shall expel you from this temple.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor\u2019s eyes goggled and his mouth opened but he stifled the words he thought of saying.\n<\/p>\n \nI tried to apologize for Bacenor but the priest had moved to Chrysanthe. \u201cPlease bare your head in this temple, mother,\u201d he requested of her in a more kindly manner. Doulus reached up and pulled the gold band off Chrysanthe\u2019s head then untied the kerchief that had been hiding her hair.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor made a sighing sound and I flashed him a look, covering my mouth with my hand.\n<\/p>\n \nHe nodded he understood but his eyes were still wide with fear or amazement.\n<\/p>\n \nThen I stopped paying him or even Doulus attention for the priest had returned to his position beside the cauldron. Together the priests both chanted something in the Arcadian dialect which I do not speak well. One tossed bright blue powder into the cauldron making a tall red flame that danced for a moment then vanished, the other tossed a dark powder in the cauldron making a great white cloud which made the cauldron seemingly vanish and which filled the cave with a sweet flowery smell.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then there were sighs and exclamations for the mist dissolved to show the Oracle sitting there upon the stone tripod behind the cauldron.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe Gods,\u201d Doulus cried out.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Oracle was a young woman no more than twenty, dressed in a white garb of Oriental silk, with a cloak of royal purple over her head and shoulders. Her raven-black hair was very long, a braid of it appearing from beneath the cloak to rest on her lap. Her features were fine, suggesting that she might be a daughter of one of the priests, and her dark eyes were big, as if the better to read the prescriptions of the Fates. Unlike her priests her expression was contemplative, not stern. She was young enough that I braced myself for Bacenor to complain that she should be bearing babies, not casting divinations, but he held back that comment.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho is that?\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe Oracle of Sleep,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nShe spoke: \u201cI stare across the River Charon, for a glimpse of tomorrow, and I see nothing, for a veil of impurity covers my eyes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThen the priest who looked like Hypnos dipped a golden bowl into the bubbling cauldron of water and gave it to the Oracle. She sipped from it. \u201cBut then I drink the pure waters of the spring of Xuthos, and the veil is lifted.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe last of the steam disappeared.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow who seeks answers of me?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI thought that Bacenor would shout but he was strangely silent, as were the rest of the supplicants.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNone are brave enough,\u201d said Thanatos. \u201cThey are weak and craven.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Hypnos. \u201cThey are impure as was our Lady; and they need the veil lifted likewise.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSo be it,\u201d said the Oracle, and then she chanted something in Arcadian to the priest I thought of as Hypnos.\n<\/p>\n \nHypnos filled his bowl from the cauldron, took it to the first supplicant, said something, and stood hovering over the first supplicant as he took a sip and swallowed. Then Hypnos took the bowl and passed it to the second supplicant.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOh, no,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nDoulus tensed. \u201cYou said we\u2019d go up there,\u201d <\/em> she spat out.\n<\/p>\n \nI had. It had been our plan, that I, not Doulus, would accompany Chrysanthe when she was called forth to the Oracle, and then, as the priest handed her the cup I would help her drink, for her hands are shaky. And I would put the poison in the cup even as I helped her drink. Yes, I planned to accompany Chrysanthe and help her drink. For that is how it was done at Delphi. That is how I’d helped Bacenor when we had visited the Oracle there. But we were not at Delphi.\n<\/p>\n \nHere at Xuthos the slave did not help the master drink.\n<\/p>\n \nHere we would drink sitting down under the watchful gaze of Hypnos.\n<\/p>\n \nI felt the ampule in my coin purse, whispered, \u201cYou\u2019re sitting by her. Do you want to pour?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe said, \u201cNo.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNo. Maybe there would be no poisoning.\n<\/p>\n \nMaybe there would be no death, and I would be no killer.\n<\/p>\n \nI felt relief more than disappointment.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho is she?\u201d asked Bacenor. \u201cShe looks like someone.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe meant Chrysanthe. I had not seen her without a head covering before. Her silver hair was loose and straight and, as it was cut shoulder-length, it looked much like Cybele\u2019s had. Otherwise she looked nothing like Cybele. \u201cShe is Chrysanthe, of Galatia,\u201d I said. \u201cShe is no one that you know.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhile Bacenor pondered, I noticed that Thanatos was bringing the first supplicant, a pot-bellied bald man, up to the Oracle for his consultation. The man stumbled once as he walked. I leaned close to Bacenor. \u201cYou need to prepare your question for the Oracle. You need to get the question right, because you can only ask her one.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBy Zeus, I swear I have seen her before.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cForget her,\u201d I implored him. \u201cPlease concentrate. You could say something like, \u2018What should I do that would help me sleep?\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe looked at me, twisting his mouth sardonically. \u201cMaybe I should grab a woman like you have?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI shrugged. \u201cMaybe you should. Ask the Oracle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor twisted his mouth and squirmed like a small child at a dinner party. He began whispering, rapidly and too softly for me to understand, as old people often do when they are speaking to gods. But Bacenor was speaking to Cybele, and to his own mother and father, and answering back in their voices. Though really he was just speaking to himself because as his memory has degraded, his sense that the ghosts of his family members are the ones he is conversing with has eroded likewise. At least this is what I think from having listened to him every day for years.\n<\/p>\n \nWe sat like that while several other supplicants went up to the Oracle, each going round the cauldron to kneel beside her, asking his question, then waiting calmly (perhaps sedated by the drink) for an answer while the Oracle consulted with Hypnos (the god not the man), a strange thing happening as she consulted for it seemed her face distorted or warped for a moment, as though viewed through the bottom of a glass jar, then the distortion went away and she spoke, to the supplicant only for we could not hear her words. Then, looking dazed, the supplicant returned to sit. The older ones walked back with a pronounced wobble and one man would have fallen had Thanatos not been there to support him.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then it was almost Bacenor\u2019s turn to drink. \u201cI\u2019m going to ask her if Cybele and the boy\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201c\u2014Timotheus.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf Cybele and Timotheus will forgive me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFor drowning them?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDrowning?\u201d He looked puzzled. \u201cI\u2019m going to ask her if Cybele and the boy will forgive me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cExcellent,\u201d I said. Maybe, I thought, it would be better if wife and son would forgive him in general, rather than for any one particular act.\n<\/p>\n \nNow Hypnos brought the golden bowl to Bacenor. \u201cTake and drink, mortal man.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat is this?\u201d Bacenor asked. \u201cWine?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThy vision is cloudy so drink that thou might see.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIs it poison?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHypnos frowned.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust drink it,\u201d I said to Bacenor.\n<\/p>\n \nAt the word poison, I had brought the ampule out of my coin purse. Bacenor finally took the bowl of the Oracle\u2019s water and took a dainty sip.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDrink more,\u201d Hypnos said.\n<\/p>\n \nWhile Bacenor was taking a more substantial swallow, I tried to pass the ampule to Doulus.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTake it,\u201d I whispered to her.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPlease take it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t want to use it,\u201d she said with finality.\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor had passed the bowl back to Hypnos. Now the priest presented it to me. \u201cTake and drink, mortal man.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI explained that I was Bacenor\u2019s slave, not a supplicant.\n<\/p>\n \nHypnos was insistent. \u201cThy vision is cloudy so drink that thou might see.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI shook my head and Bacenor laughed at me. So I took the bowl. As I drank from it\u2014the fluid sweet but the sweetness not concealing a bitter medicinal taste like the infusion made from the bark of ash trees\u2014Doulus groaned and bent over, holding her stomach. And as Hypnos turned to look at her, I emptied the ampule into the bowl\u2014and only then did I feel the cauldron water hot in my stomach. Its heat suffused through my body, into my limbs, into my extremities, and suddenly again I was fervent in my desire for Doulus, willing to do anything, do even what I had just done, for the Oracle\u2019s water it seems to me now reversed cause and effect, among other wondrous things.\n<\/p>\n \nI passed the bowl back to Hypnos, the bowl of Oracle\u2019s water now poisoned by my hand. \u201cTake and drink, mortal woman,\u201d he said to Doulus, but she was down on all fours, moaning, shamming (I think) illness. \u201cThy vision is cloudy so drink that thou might see,\u201d he said, but she waved him off.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then Hypnos stepped down to Chrysanthe. \u201cTake and drink, mortal woman.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe took the bowl and raised it to her lips with her shaking palsied hands.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo!\u201d cried out Bacenor, jumping up and moving faster than he had in years. He grabbed the bowl from Chrysanthe and brought it up to his own lips and, Adam\u2019s apple like a fist flexing and unflexing, drank the contents down. \u201cHow dare thou try to poison Cybele, slave!\u201d he shouted at me.\n<\/p>\n \nThen he dropped the bowl and fell over, dead.\n<\/p>\n \n \nI did not act wisely. But I was drugged, and how many men act wisely in their hour of desperation? Especially as my doom seemed evident; I could see my threads of Fate, and how soon they would be cut.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd who is to say what wisdom is, if the gods will poison us in pursuit of their mysterious agendas?\n<\/p>\n \nAs the others\u2014Hypnos and Chrysanthe, and Doulus no longer feigning illness, and some of the other supplicants\u2014crowded around Bacenor, I edged toward the entrance of the cave, and then I pushed the gate up a little so I could slide under it. The trident-wielding entrance guard was flirting with a young woman, and did not notice me. I walked hurriedly, as if I were a merchant late for an appointment. Then when I had reached the statue of Zeus, four sleepless clutching its base, another sprawled uncomfortably on the sculpted bed, I heard someone ring the city alarm bell. I ran for the Iron Gate\u2014but even as I neared it I saw that three of the hoplites that were posted there had come inside. They had their spears in position and were letting out no one. I stopped running, turned, and walked the other way.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I reached Zeus again I ran. I had forgotten that I could run so fast without Bacenor to carry. I ran to the Garden of the Lotus Eaters and once through its gates I walked slowly, for a fast pace would be an affront to the spirit of the place and to those sleeping on the benches. I went to the hidden area, enclosed by the hedgerow of vines with poisonous black fruit, where Doulus and I had kissed before. There I sat in the dirt, wedged into a gap in the hedge which hid me further, catching my breath, letting my mind clear, though it was hard to think for I saw my master\u2019s lips turn blue as he lay there on the cave floor; and I saw the slave Gregorios, my best friend in Elis who killed his own master, and whose face swelled big and purple after they tightened a leather collar around his neck; and I saw the Fates cutting both Bacenor\u2019s and my life threads. When I breathed easy and smelled the garden, the lotus and honeysuckle and syrup-sweet fenugreek, the oleander and lavender, and I examined the small black fruit which grew on brambles in clusters of six and which smelled like milk gone sour, and I observed the pollen hanging in the warm air, and listened to the buzzing of honeybees and the faint murmur of distant voices, my body relaxed and I made a plan. I would wait here until night and then long after dark I would leave and go back to the necropolis to the other place where Doulus and I had kissed. There I would climb the olive trees growing against the wall and pull myself over. I would jump down and run, staying on the fields not roads. I would make my way not to Elis and not even to Nauplia but to some other port city. To the South. To Gythium by way of Sparta. There I would hire on to a merchant ship and work my passage to Massalia, where I could meet Doulus again.\n<\/p>\n \nThis was my plan. I fell asleep during the heat of the day, and when I awoke it was dusk. I was not thirsty, I was not hungry, my mind was clear. It occurred to me I could shave off my mustache and pass myself off as an Etruscan, for I had learned some of their language from Velthur, my master\u2019s business partner. I took out my knife and was starting to cut the hairs above my lips when I heard someone call my name.\n<\/p>\n \nI did not respond.\n<\/p>\n \nThe voice again, my name, and \u201cAre you here?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nDoulus. The sweet music of her accent. I could see her now, or at least her feet, her ankles, her bronzed muscular thighs. I pushed back the vines that hid me and I could see her, at the edge of the entrance to our lair. She could see me and I could see her and she did not have Chrysanthe on her back. At dusk her eyes were dark green like smoky emeralds. She smiled at me. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to hide.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo.\u201d I jumped up and hurried over to her and as I was about to kiss her I saw one of her green eyes was bruised black and blue and that a man behind her was pulling her collar by a rope. Like a dog on a leash. Then someone shouted \u201cHe has a knife!\u201d and something hit me hard on the right side of my head and there was nothing more\n<\/p>\n \n \nI sit in my cell. Today was the day of my trial. In Xuthos, the head juryman runs the court session. The head juryman was Fillimon who was also the Captain of the Guard who arrested and interrogated me yesterday. Or he arrested me two days ago. I may have been only partly conscious for most of a day. They tell me it is rare but not extraordinarily so for the Captain of the Guard to be head juryman. The Fate can drop her thimble for any man, as the philosopher says. It made for occasional levity when Fillimon as the head juryman asked for something and Fillimon as Captain of the Guard responded.\n<\/p>\n \nIn Xuthos a slave is not allowed to plead his case, though he can ask for witnesses to attest to his character. I could not ask Doulus and Chrysanthe because they have left the city, apparently expelled. Of those I asked to attest in my favor only the Madame of the Poet\u2019s Rest came forward. Holding a parasol to shade her white-painted face, she was generous in her description of me. I asked for Dionysus but not only did he not come forward when I asked for him, he came forward when Fillimon asked for statements against me; Dionysus said I could fool people into thinking I was charming and good-natured but my true motives were base and malignant: he had observed how hungrily I had watched the dancing girls, and he had heard me in my own words mock the institution of slavery and even talk approvingly of slaves who murdered masters.\n<\/p>\n \nAs I could not plead to the jury I could not tell them about the release letter. I could not show it to Fillimon as when I awoke my coin purse was empty. I told Fillimon about the release and he said, \u201cYou are in Xuthos, not Athens, not Elis, and no scribe here would consent to write such a spurious document.\u201d I insisted and then he said, angrily, \u201cWhat scribe wrote this document that does not exist?\u201d But this was my interrogation, not my trial. At my trial I was silent.\n<\/p>\n \nWhere was the trial? I should tell you. It was in the plaza between the statue of Zeus and the Temple of Apollo. A crowd of respectable size, two or three hundred, came to watch. Insomnia can drive men to desperate acts so murder trials are not unknown in Xuthos and they make good theater. A trio of callow young men pushed the sleepless off the statue of Zeus so they could climb up and get a better look at me. There were sixteen jurists, in addition to Fillimon, and they sat under a canvas tarp for shade. I sat in the hot sun behind a heavy wooden table. A rope secured me by my collar to a leg of the table. Iron manacles bound my wrists together behind my back so I could not untie the rope. Fillimon read the charges against me, which were of the murder of Bacenor, the attempted murder of Chrysanthe, the violation of the sanctity of the Oracle\u2019s Temple, and impersonating a free man (because I wore a cloak covering my tattoo and hiding the collar.) The jury discussed between them the charges while I sat in the hot afternoon sun. There was a small bowl of water before me which I drank from, without my hands, like a dog or barbarian. By the time the jurists finally reached their verdict, most of the crowd had drifted off, and Fillimon as he walked across the dusty flagstone seemed to shimmer in my vision.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRise, slave of Bacenor of Elis,\u201d he told me.\n<\/p>\n \nThe guards came up behind me as if expecting me to be too weak to stand, but I stood on my own. They led me to the front of the table just far enough that the rope pulled tight.\n<\/p>\n \nFillimon sat down on the tall chair he used for his office. He unrolled a scroll and read. \u201cIn the matter of impersonating a free man, the jury finds you innocent. In the matter of violating the sanctity of the temple, the jury finds you innocent. In the matter of the attempted murder of Chrysanthe, the jury wishes to abandon the charge. And in the matter of the murder of Bacenor, the jury finds you guilty.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI tried to say something but the collar was too tight for me to speak.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBy the ancient laws of Xuthos you are condemned to die by strangulation at noon tomorrow.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThere were voices and a great roaring and I felt my soul flee my body for an instant.\n<\/p>\n \nBut it returned.\n<\/p>\n \n \nAnd now I sit in my cell. The prison guards have given me a wooden bench but no bedroll, just a scattering of straw. I lay down for a long time but I could not sleep. It is late at night and chilly. I have eaten the round loaf of bread they fed me and feel revived at least physically. I smell the stench of my chamber pot for they have not emptied it after two days. Outside my cell, the torch in the stone corridor has burned out. I test the iron bars; they are well-forged and I cannot break them. I hear the snoring of the drunk man in another cell. Earlier I heard shouts and music of a procession, maybe the same group as from the other night, but now it is quiet. I find shards of broken tile, and I wonder if they have been left, as a mercy, so I might cut my throat. That would be faster than the collar, twisted around my neck. I remember how Gregorios\u2019s eyes bulged to almost bursting. I remember the executioner trembling with exertion, the veins throbbing in his forearms.\n<\/p>\n \nI pray to Mitra, that He might offer solace.\n<\/p>\n \nA hundred breaths later, I pray to Athena, for wisdom and strength. I rarely pray, as the philosopher told me that the gods have no more control over the Fates than mortals do, but he agreed prayer could be useful if it calmed the distraught mind.\n<\/p>\n \nA hundred breaths after that, Bacenor appears.\n<\/p>\n \nHe is in the cell with me. He is gray-skinned and faintly luminescent, as though moonlit. \u201cWhere am I?\u201d he asks. His eye is swollen closed and his lips are blue. \u201cHave they torn out your tongue? Speak, you wretched slave! Where am I?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe jail in Xuthos,\u201d I say. This is his ghost, I decide; I can see the vertical lines of the iron bars through him like a strange tattoo. \u201cYou are dead, master. You should be in Hades, not here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe ponders this. Then he says, \u201cAnd why are you<\/em> here?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBecause you died after drinking the poison I intended for Chrysanthe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe seems confused by this.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey thought I killed you intentionally. They did not believe me that I wanted to kill her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou wanted to kill her? Why\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBecause I loved the slave-girl, Doulus.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLove. I understand love. I once loved… someone.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCybele,\u201d I say. \u201cYour wife.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis Doulus\u2014where is she?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGone,\u201d I say. \u201cExpelled.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cForget her then,\u201d Bacenor says. \u201cShe does not love you or she would be here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, she\u2019s gone. Expelled from the city.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd you know this how?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFillimon told me. He said he would spare her from a trial if she left.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSo that\u2019s how little she cares for you. She probably took the release from the coin purse, too. And she probably led the men to your love nest.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFillimon beat her,\u201d I tell my master\u2019s ghost.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy do you say that? Because she had bruising around one eye? She knows the old trick of smearing kohl and blackberry pulp around an eye, to make it look like a man socked her in the face.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy heart seems to fall into my stomach. \u201cHow could you know any of this?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI bet she gave Fillimon a piece of her ass for her freedom.\u201d Bacenor chuckles grimly. \u201cI bet she set you up from the beginning. With the release and then the charade of being sick in the oracle’s cave. You\u2019re such a trusting soul.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow could you know this? Did you talk to the god Hermes? Did he tell you these things while leading you to Hades?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNever mind that.\u201d Bacenor\u2019s ghost points at the ceiling. \u201cI need your help.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy help?\u201d <\/em>\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes, help me! Get yourself out of this cell so I can be on my way!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAs a ghost Bacenor cannot speak with much authority, but I see what he means. A hole in the ceiling has been patched over with mud and straw. I drag the chair beneath the patch, then climb upon the chair. Then I reach up and punch through the dried mud and pull a handful of material down. Through a hole the size of a votive saucer I see a scattering of bright stars. A cloud of debris and moonlit dust passes glittering through Bacenor. I tear down more material, sections of wooden boards and pieces of clay roof tiles, engaging my muscles as if I were Hercules completing one of his labors. Within moments, my palms are bloody, but I have cleared a space wide enough for my shoulders to pass through. I pull myself up by grasping the edges of the hole, then\u2014my shoulders burning and my joints creaking\u2014I push myself up onto the roof.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I have caught my breath, I reach down into the hole to give Bacenor a hand up.\n<\/p>\n \nBut he is not there; the ghost is gone.\n<\/p>\n \nI hurry across the roof and clamber to the ground, pulling down another roof tile with me. On the streets I run. I have not devised a new plan for escape so I use the old one. Strike that. A man about to die does not spend time ruminating about choices that he made. Nor pondering new possibilities. He moves one foot in front of the other in the direction already determined. Thus I reach the city necropolis.\n<\/p>\n \nI keep to the edge of the necropolis, in the shadows of the trees, a little below the top of the hill where the big tombs are and the ceremony with Hypnos took place. I see no lights and hear no voices, but I smell smoke and wax, as of candles not long ago extinguished. A dog barks in the distance. As I creep along, twigs snap beneath my feet.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSlow down, ingrate!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBacenor is beside me, goggle-eyed and wheezing. Obedient by habit, I slow, but I do not stop.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWill you stoop down and let me climb aboard?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m your slave no longer,\u201d I say. \u201cYou will have to walk.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cInsolent cur!\u201d Even shouting his voice is barely louder than my footsteps. \u201cRich men do not walk!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDead men are not rich,\u201d I say. I hurry again.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou would leave me behind?\u201d he wheezes. \u201cAn old and sickly man?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI mean to harden my heart, but cannot do that even now. So when we reach the big olive tree against the city wall, I stoop. \u201cGet on,\u201d I say, impatiently.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cUm, it\u2019s\u2014\u201d Bacenor says, then I feel something painfully cold pass through me, as if an icy blade has been sliced through my torso, from chin to groin. Then Bacenor is before me prone as if praying to Hades. \u201cThat didn\u2019t work.\u201d He stands up. \u201cLet\u2019s try that again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou passed right through me!\u201d I say. I start climbing the tree.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere are you going? Come back, you dog! I need you to carry me!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then I climb over the wall and drop down. The wall is twice the height of a man, and a drop from such a height can cause injury, but the gods favor me and I land on a juniper bush which cushions the force of my fall. It does leave me scratched and bruised and I see that my knee has been cut open, by a branch in the juniper or maybe by the sharp edge of a tile in the jail roof. Blood from the cut trickles down my shin.\n<\/p>\n \nI bind my knee with a strip of cloth torn from my chiton. Then I follow a tree-lined ditch across the mesa, avoiding the clusters of peasants\u2019 houses that constitute suburban Xuthos. I follow a steep trail down the side of the mesa then set off across the fields staying away from the road. I decide to head north, not south, toward Corinth, because that is the port town that Doulus and Chrysanthe had docked at. Also because to the south is Sparta and Spartans, I realize upon reflection, are not likely to give safe haven to a fugitive. At best they would conscript me in their army, at worst they would kill me as a foreigner or enslave me and sell me back to Xuthos. I jog through brush and fields and soggy marshland until I am out of the Arcadian Plain and into the first hills. Then I hike and keep a good pace stopping well after dawn because I am beginning to stumble. I drink from a creek. Willows grow densely beside it, providing ample coverage, and I decide to sleep there and travel again at night. But I can only rest not sleep, and am fearful and impatient, so I start hiking again as soon as the worst heat of the day has passed.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I am famished I kill a farmer\u2019s chicken. I carry it until dusk staying at the edge of a forest in sight of the road to Corinth. Then I go deeper into the forest so no one from the road can see the flames if I start a fire. The kindling I gather proves too damp to catch flame, so, frustrated, I pluck the chicken then eat it raw, tearing its flesh off with my teeth and fingers, tasting the iron in its blood.\n<\/p>\n \nThen Bacenor joins me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re gory. You look like a Celt warrior, his face painted red.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI wipe my face and hands with a clump of chicken feathers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou still look ghastly. No matter. Stoop, so you can carry me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI can\u2019t carry you,\u201d I say. \u201cYou are dead. You should be in Hades.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen carry me there! No rich man walks!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m going to Corinth, not Hades. You need Hermes to guide you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut Hermes isn\u2019t here! Am I dead? Did you bury me properly? Did you put a coin in my mouth for that ferryman\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201c\u2014Charon to ferry you across the Styx? Talk to Fillimon. He made the burial arrangements.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut you are my slave!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo longer,\u201d I say.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then I start off, Bacenor following me. Sometimes he falls behind, sometimes he catches up, sometimes he is silent, more often he is talkative. He threatens, wheedles, pleads, whines. I ignore him mostly, though I can be drawn into argument, and I correct him more than I used to. I will answer his questions, to forestall an argument rooted in ignorance. I am patient. He walks beside me corpse-gray and bathed in moonlight. I am patient. The hills are steep so I walk on the road ready to hide in the bushes if others approach. I am patient and though wide awake I know Bacenor will leave me finally when I sleep. I will sleep at dawn, or I will sleep when I reach Corinth, or I will sleep aboard the ship that will take me to Massalia and to Doulus, with the blessings of Hypnos and of Mitra, and the lulling of the great sea under the vast dome of the night sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We approached Xuthos, me carrying Bacenor on my back. \u201cWhat is that place?\u201d said Bacenor, pulling at my ears. \u201cSpeak, you wretched slave!\u201d \u201cThat is Xuthos,\u201d I said, \u201cThe City of Sleep.\u201d \u201cSleep? Sleep?\u201d He dug his knees excitedly into my sides. \u201cDo they have sleep contests, dream races? I\u2019m no good at sleeping, you …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106728,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19941],"tags":[19942],"class_list":["post-137526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-33-autumn-2019","tag-the-colored-lens-33-autumn-2019","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106728"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137527,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137526\/revisions\/137527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n