The Three Sons of Euphorion Chapter 4

Under the patient tutelage of Cynegiros, Aeschylos mounted his father's horse for the first time. He threw off his cloak. He grasped his javelin with one hand and pole vaulted onto the horse as Cynegiros had demonstrated. He grasped the reins and leaned back. The horse seemed to sense he had a fearful rider. His nostrils flared, his ears stretched back, and he shot away like a bow arrow.

Aeschylos, crying Whoa! Whoa! to the hard bounces of the steed and pulling back the reins as fiercely as he could, saw the earth flying under him and the olive trees rushing towards him. His bum was being made sorely blue. His legs swung up and down, catching the horse's eye and startling him again. Neither saddle nor stirrups had been yet invented. They reached the stone wall at the grove and the horse stopped as suddenly as he began. The horse stood still trembling. Cynegiros' hand grasped the reins.

Get off! he snapped.

He was panting and his face was red and angry. Aeschylos slid off. He now could see three old slaves standing together in the grove, looking on and laughing.

Cynegiros hissed at him.
Those old cow hides have seen you make a fool of yourself. By tomorrow they will have forgotten. But today they have learnt to despise their masters.

He shouted a curse at them and they disappeared into the grove.

He turned to the tear filled Aeschylos.
You will never make a good horseman because you fear your horse and he always knows it. You will learn to ride but no better than a peasant on a mule. Leave us. Diomedes must forget your folly as quickly as the cowhides.

Aeschylos ran away so his brother would not see his brimming tears. He put his cloak back on. He saw Cynegiros lead Diomedes back to the stable. It was dusk. He dared not go indoors and face an angry disappointed Euphorion and a smirking Aminias.

He walked past the estate's boundary stones and climbed the hill that overlooked the sanctuary of temples hallowed to Demeter. On the top of the hill he glanced over two army camps settling in for the night. The Peloponnesian army guarded the walls of Eleusis behind him. On the other side of Eleusis behind trees and hillocks, Aeschylos could make out the advance posts of the Athenian army. The bandit Cleisthenes with an army of motley Athenian tradesmen and sailors had marched into Eleusis to challenge the sacred rights of King Cleomenes and Chief Archon Isagoras.

Aeschylos had learnt some time ago that Cleisthenes and all his kin were accursed by the Gods. He had now discovered that Cleisthenes was also a demagogue and therefore a mad mongrel dog, his corpse not fit to clean aristocratic swords. Aeschylos did not doubt that all Athenians now barked and fornicated like dogs and would slit his throat at once should they come upon him. They had turned into that because they had offended the Gods by their overthrowing the natural order of Kings and aristocrats. Therefore such mad dogs did not concern him. The Gods would see it right.

He looked down upon the now deserted grove of temples. He ached from the horse ride. He lay down on his stomach and rubbed his face into the cool and fragrant earth. A hawk hovered in the sky above him. Might that now be Zeos on an evening flight over his Kingdom?

A delicious thought filled Aeschylos' heart. The world was a beautiful place and the Gods looked over and judged all men and beasts. Even the trees and fountains had their guardian spirits. Tomorrow Cynegiros would forgive him. He recalled the story of Demeter and Persephone. Demeter had long ago wandered into Eleusis looking for her long lost daughter. She must have looked no different from any bent black robed crone wandering a dusty road of Eleusis. Therefore every crone in Eleusis might be Demeter. Every young woman in a meadow picking flowers might be Persephone.

Demeter had been pitied and befriended by the daughters of Celeos King of Eleueis at the Maiden well. She became nurse to King Celeos' son. She fed him with ambrosia, the nectar of the Gods. At night she would hide him like a brand in the hearth fire. She would have made him deathless and unageing had not his mother spied upon him. When his mother cried out, she snatched him from the fire and cast him to the ground.

Now your son can in no way escape death and the fates, said Demeter.
The sons of the Eleusinians shall now ever wage war with one another. But now let all the people build me a great temple and an altar below it and beneath the city and its sheer wall upon a rising hillock above Callichoros.

The sisters rescued their brother and told King Celeos. The King called the people to an assembly and ordered them make a beautiful temple and an altar. Aeschylos recalled the words of his former tutor that as Zeus conquered Chronos so one day he too would be conquered by a strange God. Shivering in his treacherous thoughts, Aeschylos imagined that new chief God. He might come from the East like Dionysios. Maybe from Syria Palestine. Therefore his skin would be dark. His hair would be woolly and his nose hooked. He would initiate his devotees into a mystery wiser even than the mysteries of Eleusis. His devotees would at first kill him and he would rise from Hades like grapes and corn ears. He would bring a longing for peace and justice. He would free Aristotle. But the laughter and gaiety of the old Gods would be no more..

The boy wondered where the old Gods would live now. He imagined Demeter skulking like an old tramp in her derelict and abandoned temple. Ares and Aphrodite might crawl down the black hole of the house latrine where he and his father and brothers pissed and shitted. Their last devotees banished by the new high God would practise their secret rites inside these last sanctuaries of their Gods.

In the gloom Aeschylos heard slaves shouting his name. After his ill horse ride, his loins and groin had ached dully. Now these aches came in agonising spasms. He pulled himself to his feet and groaned. He must come down from the hill and face his destiny.