The Etruscan Read Free Page B

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