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Two weeks in which I must have interfered with his ploughing and his sowing, too. I all but lived in his hovel, and his wife – another freed slave – feared me. But teaching Polystratus to be a swordsman did more for my own fighting skills than anything I’d learned in the last year. In fact, I think it was those two weeks that put me on the path I’m still on. Somewhere in the teaching of Polystratus I realised – that there was a theory, a philosophy, to combat. That each motion of an attack, a defence, could be analysed like a problem of philosophy.
I was not the first Hellene to understand this. I may not have been the first seventeen-year-old to understand this. But it was like a key to unlock a trunk full of knowledge. Many, many things that I had learned by rote – steps, hip movements, overhand cuts, thrusts – came together in two weeks to form a sort of Thalian singularity, and if you don’t know who Thales was, young man, you will have to ask your tutor and report to me tomorrow.
I admit, it was easier with my former slave – easier to risk a contest against him, and unimportant to lose. Why? Because he was a man of no consequence, that’s why. What did I care if a former slave could best me?
Except that in those two weeks, Polystratus became a manto me. Since that time, I have seen this happen again and again – worthy men develop a kinship with their opponents, just as unworthy men come to loathe them. The worthiness resides in the competitor – if he brings with him an ability to emulate and admire his enemy, then he is a better man for it. Or so I think.
At any rate, after a fortnight of daily struggle in the mud of spring, Polystratus was a passable pankrationist, and probably the best swordsman in the foot companions – not that they ever fought with swords. But still.
All this time, every morning that I was paired with another man in a contest, I lay down – if not literally, then in effect.
Aristotle shook his head, and then, after another week, didn’t even bother with that.
But Alexander began to look at me curiously.
Cleomenes ceased to come and sit with me, or to flirt with my bed-warmer. I should put in here that Philip had become deeply concerned by Alexander’s little ways – with sex. It was known to every one of us that Philip thought that his son was soft – possibly effeminate. A gy
She was outrageously beautiful, with the sort of body – high, perfectly round breasts, a tiny waist, a long, sculpted face with small, thick lips for kissing and enormous eyes – the sort of body that drives men mad.
All of us – even the prince – lived in the Macedonian version of a Spartan barracks, in messes of ten boys – five oldsters and five youngsters. Some oldsters slept alone, some with each other, some with the younger boys. Some were just sharing cloaks for warmth. Eh? And some weren’t. Until Calixei
The poor thing was appalled to be the only woman in what must have seemed like an armed camp with academics. She was quite intelligent – she could recite great swathes of the Iliad– but the idea that she had no room of her own, that she had to dress and undress with forty boys, made her angry. She threatened to leave.
Alexander refused to live outside the barracks.
Aristotle bit his lips, cursed and found women for us all, or, if not all, at least a few per mess. Country girls – not prostitutes, no one’s father would have allowed that. The king offered them all dowries and regular pay, and I suspect there was no shortage of volunteers – we were good-looking, clean and noble.
Of course, this was also the occasion for his famous lecture on the life of hedonism versus the life of restraint and self-control, too.
The truth is that our barracks life improved immeasurably when the women moved in. The clothes were cleaner, the conversation was better, and the youngsters began to laugh and play – the women wouldn’t allow them to be abused. Women exert a subtle influence – not so subtle, sometimes. They will say things without fear that even a warrior might fear to say.
At any rate, I had a regular bed-warmer from the first. She was named Iphegenia – some parents need a better classical education – and she was pretty enough, with large hips and smooth muscles and breasts. She was scared the first time we were naked together, and after that, not – and she was never put off by my scars. I can’t say I loved her – she was the most selfish woman I’ve ever known well – but she took good care of me, bore my first bastard and my pater put her on a farm for me. I hope she lives yet.
Oh, I’m an old man. I love to think of Ge
But Alexander appeared to want nothing to do with his courtesan. She was in his sleeping roll most nights, and a few times I saw her under his cloak, once even wrapped in his arms. He was gracious to her. But that was the limit, and Aristotle openly admonished him against her.
Olympias sent notes explaining how men and women had sex, and how much better sex with a woman was than sex with a man. Just picture getting this lecture from your mother, herself a famous beauty, a veritable avatar of Aphrodite. Zeus, god of kings, what a horror that woman could be, and how much of Alexander can be laid at her door. Sober, she was brilliant and scary, and drunk, she was a lascivious predator with no scruples and a poisonous memory. And her power to manipulate – she was quite brilliant . . .
She was very beautiful, with sparkling eyes and curly brown hair, tall, elegantly limbed – please don’t imagine her as somebody’s mother. She bore Alexander at the age of fourteen, and when I first met her – not first saw her at court at a distance, but actually stood in her presence – she was twenty-five years old, in the prime of her beauty. Her skin glowed, and she herself had a sort of radiant vitality that she passed unmarred to her son. I’ve known men who hated her, and I’ve heard magnificent tales of her debauchery, and I know some of them to be true, but let it be said – Macedonian men disliked powerful women, and she was a powerful woman who added to beauty and charm an indomitable will and an almost unbreakable bond with the king that allowed her to call the tune at court. She had many enemies.
She was fiercely protective of Alexander and her protection extended to his friends and companions, and despite having several skirmishes with her myself, as you will hear, I have to admit that she was often our ally against Philip and his companions – the older men who saw us first as children and later as dangerous rivals.
But I digress. That winter, she had got it into her head that Alexander needed a woman, and she decided that the woman of his dreams would also be a useful tool to manipulate him – this is a fine example of how her mind worked.
Anyway, she and Aristotle were adversaries. These days, it has become popular to suggest that Olympias and Philip were the enemies, but I never saw that. It seemed to me that Olympias and Philip were united in wanting their boy to grow up to be a good, solid, dependable Macedonian nobleman – something, I’d like to note, that Philip never was – and Aristotle wanted something more – a great king, an Athenian-style philosopher who had the mettle of Achilles and the mind of Socrates.
Calixei