The Etruscan by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 10th, 2022 in Stories

As I ascended to the deserted stadium of Delphi I saw the flash of a javelin, although the shadow of the mountain already lay heavy across the field. Again it flashed, rising into the air like an omen. Then I saw a youth, no older than myself but sturdier, running lightly to retrieve it.

I watched him as I ran around the track. His face was sullen, his body bore an ugly scar, and his muscles were knotty. Yet he exuded such an air of confidence and strength that I thought him to be the handsomest youth I had ever seen.

“Run with me!” I shouted. “I am tired of competing against myself.”

He thrust the javelin into the ground and ran to join me. “Now!” he cried, and we set forth. Being lighter than he, I thought that I would win easily, but he ran effortlessly and it was all I could do to win by a hand.

We were both breathless and panting, although we tried to conceal it. “You run well,” he conceded. “Now let us throw the javelin.”

He had a Spartan javelin, and as I balanced it in my hand I strove not to show that I was unaccustomed to its weight. I gathered momentum and threw the javelin better than I had ever thrown before. It flew even farther than I had hoped, and as I ran to retrieve it and mark the throw I could not restrain a smile. I was still smiling when I extended the javelin to the youth, but he threw it effortlessly many lengths beyond my mark.

“What a throw that was!” I said admiringly. “But you are probably too heavy for the broad jump. Will you try?”

Even in the broad jump I surpassed him by only a hair’s breadth. Silently he held out a discus. Again his toss swooped far beyond my mark like a hawk in flight. This time he smiled and said, “Wrestling will decide it.”

Looking at him, I felt an odd reluctance to wrestle with him, not because I knew that his would be an easy victory, but because I had no desire to let him encircle me with his arms.

“You are better than I,” I conceded. “The victory is yours.”

After that we said nothing, but each pursued his own games in the empty stadium until he was sweating. When I went to the edge of the swollen brook he followed me hesitantly, and when I began washing and scouring myself with sand he did likewise.

“Will you rub my back with sand?” he asked.

I did so and he did the same for me, rubbing so hard that I pulled away and splashed water in his eyes. He smiled but did not stoop to indulge in such childish sport.

I pointed to the scar on his chest. “Are you a soldier?”

“I am a Spartan,” he said proudly.

I looked at him with renewed curiosity, for he was the first Lacedaemonian I had ever seen. He did not seem brutal and unfeeling as Spartans were said to be. I knew that his city had no wall, boasting instead that the Spartan men were the only wall needed. But I also knew that they were not permitted to leave the city except in troops on their way to battle.

He read the question in my eyes and explained, “I also am a prisoner of the oracle. My uncle. King Cleomenes, had bad dreams about me and sent me away. I am a descendant of Herakles.”

It was in my mind to say that, knowing the character of Herakles and his wanderings throughout the world, there were undoubtedly thousands of his descendants in various lands. But I looked at his rippling muscles and stifled the impulse.

Unasked, he began tracing his descent, then said in conclusion, “My father was Dorieus, recognized as the fairest man of his day. He likewise was disliked in his homeland and set out across the sea to win a new homeland for himself in Italy or Sicily. He fell there many years ago.”

Frowning deeply, he suddenly demanded, “Why are you staring at me? Dorieus was my real father and now that I have left Sparta I have the right to use his name if I so choose. My mother used to tell me about him before I was seven and she had to give me up to the state. Because my legal father was unable to produce children, he sent Dorieus in secret to my mother, as in Sparta even husbands may meet their wives only by stealth and in secret. All this is true, and were it not for the fact that my real father was Dorieus, I would not have been banished from Sparta.”

I could have told him that, since the Trojan War, Spartans had had good reason to suspect men and women of excessive beauty. But this was undoubtedly a matter of great sensitivity to him which I understood well because the circumstances of my own birth were even stranger.

We clothed ourselves in silence by the brook. The oval valley of Delphi darkened below us, the mountains gleamed violet. I was purified, I was alive, I was strong. In my heart was a glow of friendship for this stranger who had consented to compete with me without asking who or what I was.

Walking down the mountain path toward the buildings of Delphi, he glanced at me frequently from the corner of his eye and finally said, “I like you, although we Spartans usually shun strangers. But I am alone, and it is difficult to be without a companion when one has always been with other youths. Although I am no longer tied to the customs of my people, they bind me more strongly than fetters. And so I would rather be dead with my name inscribed on a gravestone than here.”

“I also am alone,” I said. “I came to Delphi of my own will either to be purified or to die. Life has no purpose if I am to be but a curse to my city and to all lonia.”

He looked at me skeptically under his damp, curly forelock. “Don’t judge me before hearing,” I pleaded. “The Pythia pronounced me innocent even though she was not chewing on the sacred bay leaf or sitting on the sacred tripod or breathing the noxious vapors from the gorge. The very sight of me sent her into a trance.” Ionic skepticism made me smile and glance around cautiously. “She seemed to be a woman who is rather fond of men. Undoubtedly she is a holy person, but the priests must have great difficulties in interpreting her ravings to their satisfaction.”

Dorieus raised a hand in alarm. “Don’t you believe the oracle?” he demanded. “If you are blaspheming the deity I will have nothing to do with you.”

“Don’t be alarmed,” I reassured him. “Everything has two sides, that which we see and that which we don’t see. I doubt the earthly aspect of the oracle, true, but that does not mean that I do not recognize her and submit to her judgment though it cost me my life. A man must believe in something.”

“I don’t understand you,” he said in amazement.

We went our separate ways that night, but on the next day, or perhaps it was the one following, he came to me and demanded, “Was it you, man of Ephesus, who set fire to the temple of the Lydian earth goddess at Sardis and thus burned the entire city?”

“That is my crime,” I confessed. “I, Turms of Ephesus, alone am guilty of the burning of Sardis.”

To my surprise Dorieus’ eyes began to twinkle and he clapped me on the shoulders with both hands. “How can you consider yourself a criminal, you who are the hero of the Hellenes? Don’t you know that the burning of Sardis has lit the flames of revolt all over lonia from the Hellespont to Cyprus?”

His words filled me with horror. “In that case the men of lonia arc mad! It is true that, with the arrival of the Athenian ships, we ran into Sardis in three days like a flock of sheep after a ram. But we were unable to conquer the city and its fortifications and ran right out again even faster than we had gone in. The Persian auxiliaries slaughtered many of us, and in the darkness and confusion we even killed one another. No,” I said, “our expedition to Sardis was not a heroic one. To make matters worse, we became involved with some women who were holding a midnight festival outside the gates of Ephesus. The Ephesians ran out and killed even more of us. So purposeless was our expedition and so disgraceful our flight.”

Dorieus shook his head. “You do not speak like a true Greek. War is war and whatever occurs must be made to reflect glory to the fatherland and honor to the dead, regardless of how they fell. I don’t understand you.”

“I am not a Hellene,” I told him, “but a foreigner. Many years ago, near Ephesus, I found myself at the foot of an oak which had been split by lightning. When I came to my senses a ram was bucking me and dead sheep lay all around me. A thunderbolt had torn off my clothes and left a black streak on my loins. But Zeus did not succeed in killing me even though he tried.”