The Persian civilization in the 6th
and 5th century BC was extremely sophisticated and produced
wonderful works of art and literature. Persia was also an aggressive power and
crushed the Ionian revolt brutally. In the following excerpt, the impact of
that defeat is illustrated through the eyes of a youth.
Danei
was a harem eunuch serving Zopyrus’ newest wife, Phaidime, the only wife the
Persian interpreter had brought on this voyage. Danei had been captured at the
age of thirteen, and castrated because he was one of those beautiful, golden
youths that the Greeks occasionally produced. Persian noblemen liked to
surround themselves with things of beauty, both animate and inanimate, and
Danei fit that category. So for five years Danei had looked after Phaidime, going
as part of her dowry to Zopyrus’ household when she married at the age of
twelve. Phaidime’s dependence on Danei had compensated him a little for his
fate.
But Danei had never expected to find himself back in Greece. When he was
ordered to prepare his mistress for a long voyage, no one bothered to tell him
where they were headed. The Persian Empire was so vast that a “long voyage”
need not take one beyond its borders. Even when slave gossip suggested Zopyrus
had been given an important “diplomatic mission,” there was no reason to assume
the mission was to the Greeks. It could just as well have been to the Egyptians
or the Nubians or the wild peoples to the east. It was only after their ship
put in at a Greek port after a frightful voyage that Danei learned where he had
landed. The realization that he was in Lacedaemon had filled him with amazement―but not joy. Rather, he felt confused and ashamed. In fact,
he wanted to hide, but slaves soon learn to accept everything ….
Because
Danei could speak Greek, the other slaves insisted he accompany them on their
errands. At first Danei was terrified that someone would realize he was Greek
and recognize that he was a slave and a eunuch. In Persia there were tens of
thousands of eunuchs, many in powerful positions, so it didn’t seem so bad.
Here, among his own people, Danei felt mutilated and unnatural. So far,
however, no one appeared to have taken particular note of him at all.
Today
he was alone. He was dressed in the clothes of a Persian slave: unbleached raw
linen trousers bound at the waist with a drawstring, and a long-sleeved shirt.
He wore a floppy cotton hat to cover his blond hair, and straw sandals that
rasped (rather than clicked) on the paving stones. He hobbled around the edge
of the agora, clinging to the shadows as best he could, with his head down to
avoid catching anyone’s eye. As he moved, he cast furtive glances in the
direction of the produce stands being set up. Danei was more comfortable with
women, so he hobbled over to the women’s stands.
The
first was laden with baked goods: flaky crusts oozing honey, tarts with raisins
and crushed walnuts, sweet bread pockets stuffed with apples, and other
delicacies that made Danei’s mouth water. What a wonderful surprise for
Phaidime, he thought at once, his eyes widening.
The
woman at the next stall burst out laughing. “Looks like you’ve got a new
customer, Laodice!”
The
woman behind the sweets stand smiled at Danei with an expression that reminded
him so sharply of his mother, it made his heart miss a beat. When the Persians
came, he and his mother had been separated almost at once. He had never seen
her again. She was not young even then, and she had raised four children almost
to adulthood. Danei hoped they had spared her the indignity of rape. There had
been so many young girls to satisfy their lust …. He preferred to think of his
mother like the slaves in the harem, looking after the children of Persian
wives and concubines, cooking and cleaning for the privileged women of the
rich. But sometimes, when he saw a slave woman bent under a load of firewood,
or struggling with an amphora of water, he pictured his mother’s face―lined and worn and hopeless.
“What
can I sell you today, young sir?” said the woman behind the sweets stand,
bringing him back to the present.
“Oh,
I’m just a slave,” he hastened to correct her, ever conscious of his status.
“But―but I do have money to buy―for my mistress. I’m sure she’d like some of these.” He
pointed to the honey squares.
“Only
those?” the saleswoman asked,
astonished. “What about some of the raisin and walnut tarts? Or my lemon
squares? Do you want to test my wares to be sure they are good enough?” she
suggested with a little wink.
Danei
understood her gesture as one of kindness, a woman showing sympathy for a
boy in bondage. Her kindness lured a smile from him as he glanced up and asked,
“May I try the lemon squares and the almond tarts, please?”
She
smiled back and bent to retrieve a knife from under the counter to start
cutting into her wares. His eyes focused hungrily on the sweets, Danei did not
realize someone had come up behind him until a deep male voice asked, “Where
are you from, young man?”
Danei
nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned to look over his shoulder at the owner
of the voice and felt his heart in his throat. It was one of the Spartiates―tall, muscular, tanned, and wearing bronze armor including a
helmet tipped on the back of his neck, the nose piece resting on his forehead.
Danei wanted to flee. He started to shrink back, away from this man who smelled
of sweat and bronze and freedom. “I―I’m―no one,” Danei told him. “I’m sorry.” He turned
to run, but the woman stopped him.
“There’s
nothing to be afraid of, young sir. That’s just the master come to snatch a
slice of cheesecake for himself. Here.” Still poised to flee, Danei turned to
look at her. She was smiling at
him, an almond tart on the palm of her hand. “You need it more than he does,”
she noted with a little nod in the direction of her master―who, incomprehensibly, laughed at her impudence. Danei
gaped. No Persian’s slave would risk using such a tone of voice with his
master, and if they did, they would probably have their tongue torn out. “It’s
all right,” she assured him gently, “the master won’t hurt you.”
“She’s
right. I won’t.”
Danei
still hesitated, but now it was in shame rather than fear. The man was the
embodiment of masculinity, and Danei felt the scar between his legs as if he
were naked. He looked down at the pavement beneath his feet, rooted to it from
sheer humiliation. He was remembering how they had been lined up and castrated
on a bloody block, one after the other, without so much as a glass of wine. Two
men held the boys down backward over the block. The surgeon made
a few expert cuts with his knife. The removed genitals landed in a bucket that
had to be emptied several times before the day was over, and then each new
eunuch was pushed off the block to make room for the next victim. Danei had
struggled too much at the wrong moment. The surgeon’s knife slipped and the man
cursed in professional annoyance. Another man grabbed Danei and crushed a cloth
down into his wound with all his might, ignoring Danei’s screams. Danei passed
out. When he came to again, a crude bandage was made fast to his crotch
with tarred twine and the bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but he would never
again walk without a limp. He was yanked from his memories by the saleswoman.
She reached out and took his hand, pressing her pastry into it. As he looked up
and met her eyes, he saw only his mother looking back at him, not just pitying
him but encouraging him, too. He closed his
eyes,
unable to bear it.
“You
speak with the accent of the islands,” the terrifying Spartan hoplite insisted.
“Which island are you from?”
Danei
looked up at him and mouthed the word. When was the last time he’d dared utter
it? “Chios, master,” he whispered, and then he dropped his eyelids over his
eyes to hide his tears. The word, said at last, instantly conjured up images:
the sun coming up over the Aegean, the smell of the soil when his father turned
it with a plow, the humming of the bees in their little orchard, his mother
singing ….
“Chios?”
the Spartan inquired, unsure if he had read the youth’s lips correctly.
Danei
nodded, his eyes still down and staring, unintentionally, at the Spartan’s
sandaled feet while his free hand tugged unconsciously at the hem of his shirt,
pulling it down to cover his crotch more completely.
There
was a pause. Then the deep voice said softly, “A man’s heart―not his extremities―make
him a man. My life was once saved by a squadron of Chian triremes. I know the
Chians did not go crawling on their bellies to the Persians, but died upright,
as free men. I believe the sons of such men have the hearts of lions―no matter what the Persians have done to their bodies.”
Danei
gasped and looked up. Their eyes met only for an instant, and then the Spartan
turned and was gone. Danei stood rooted to the pavement and watched the Spartan
continue down the street. He was filled with a strange sensation of lightness. Danei’s
father had been boatswain on one of Chios’ proud triremes, and he had been
killed at sea in the great sea battle. More than half of Chios’ ships had been
crushed and sunk in that battle, but the remainder, with shattered rams and
crushed sides, limping and listing, had been dragged to Chios by the triumphant
Persians. There the captive men had been hog-tied and run up the halyards of their
own ships like bunting. There they had been left to die slowly of thirst as the
sun burned them like rotting grapes. Danei had recognized some of the men, the
fathers and brothers of friends, his cousins, a maternal uncle. While the men
died overhead, the Persians had herded the boys onto the open decks and divided
them into categories: the galleys, the mines, whores, eunuchs …. Danei stared
after the Spartan until he turned a corner and was lost from sight, and still
he stared after him, trying to remember with every nerve of his body what he
had said. A man’s heart, not his extremities…. The image of his father, dressed
as he had been the day he sailed away for the last time…. His father had died a
free man….The sons of such men…. He turned and looked at the saleswoman in
wonder.
She
was no longer alone. The exchange had attracted two other Spartiates. They were
younger than the man who had spoken to Danei. The first, wearing a striped
chiton and hair braided at a rakish angle, remarked, “You can take his word for
it, young man. He knows what he’s talking about.”
“But―who was he, master?”
“That
was Leonidas, the man who should be king of Sparta.”
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