Mythos & Kallos · Part 01-03
Mythos & Kallos · Part 1
A: According to the myths handed down through our tribe, the Gods once passed through this mortal world and hid manifold beauties within all things.
B: Myths may sound lovely — as a child I too wished them true. But growing up, I discovered that those ancient myths are no different from the tales told to children: mere products of fantasy and conjecture.
A: I can see that you are a modern man, deeply shaped by the myths of modernity.
B: I simply have a deeper understanding of myths. After all, the times progress; modern people necessarily understand the past more deeply than the ancients did.
A: Is everything you say true? Let us set aside myth (μῦθος) for now and speak only of beauty (τὸ κάλλος) — do you believe you can see beautiful things?
B: Of course. It is only that beautiful things are not universal; this world is not woven purely of beauty.
A: How do you know that the beauty you see is beautiful?
B: Beautiful things are beautiful because of their beauty. Such matters of the senses admit of no further explanation.
A: Then let me ask a different question: how do you know that beauty is beauty?
B: That is an easy question to answer — I need only my senses to perceive beauty.
A: Is it truly such an easy question? You say you perceive beauty through the senses; could you offer some examples?
B: With my eyes I behold beautiful landscapes; with my ears I hear beautiful music. I need only open my eyes and I may chance upon beautiful people and things. So long as I am awake and not sunk in slumber, I shall not miss the beauty that appears before me.
A: Is there any beauty not perceived by your senses? For instance, you might say: that person's conduct is exceedingly ugly.
B: Sometimes we do indeed speak this way — we use beauty and ugliness as a metaphor (μεταφορά) for a person's virtue.
A: And you would feel revulsion toward such ugliness not perceived by the senses, and delight in such beauty not perceived by the senses.
B: Of course.
A: There is a question that puzzles me: concerning a person's beauty or ugliness in mere outward appearance, most of us can reach at least a minimal consensus. Even when we come from different races and bear different cultural backgrounds, consensus on the beauty or ugliness of appearance seems easier to reach than consensus on the beauty or ugliness of conduct. Why should this be so?
B: How should I know? Perhaps it is not even an important question. Perhaps, biologically, we share a greater commonality? Yet I am no biologist, and I have no way of knowing what is truly at work here. Genes? Hormones? Brain waves? But this much I can assert: the beauty or ugliness of human conduct is far more a matter of culture. Different cultures define the beauty and ugliness of conduct differently, and their customs, laws, and orders are all subordinate to this.
A: What you say reminds me of another myth of our tribe.
B: What myth is that?
A: Long, long ago, a group of young men and women were playing by a river. By chance they wandered into a cave filled with radiance, and discovered hidden within it the gemstones the Gods had left behind in the mortal world.
B: A fairy tale.
A: My friend, perhaps it is merely a fairy tale — and perhaps not. Would you care to hear it?
B: I am only passing the time chatting with you; there is no harm in listening.
A: As the myth tells it, the sacred gemstones in that cave shone in many colors, and stones of different colors drew different people to them. Though each gem was small, its weight was astonishingly great — so great that anyone wishing to carry a stone away could choose only the single one that attracted them most.
B: The ancients were not very good at physics. No gemstone in this world weighs that much.
A: Perhaps the ancients too were only drawing an analogy (ἀναλογία). They did not truly believe such heavy gems existed in the world; rather, they used the word "weight" to figure something unrelated to weight yet possessing a kindred nature.
B: Rather than analogy, I would say the ancients possessed boundless imagination. They imagined dragons, phoenixes, all manner of miraculous creatures, and angels with wings. But why must flight require wings? Modern airplanes fly without flapping wings. Those were all beautiful imaginings born of the ancients' era-bound understanding — after all, the ancients had no science.
A: Your view is not without reasonable grounds.
B: Go on then; I shall interrupt you no more.
A: The young men and women carried away from that luminous cave the gemstone that drew them most. Each stone seemed to work upon its bearer differently: some gems made their possessors richly charming, some made them mighty and martial, some deepened their possessors' knowledge, and some enabled their bearers to write enchanting verses with ease.
B: Forgive me, I cannot help interrupting once more. I recall a myth I heard as a child, which told how the ancestors of a certain civilization received divine grace, obtained sacred gemstones, and, guided by heaven, founded the primordial polis in a certain land — and thus a great civilization sprang forth.
A: I too have heard similar myths.
B: Such myths are mostly cut from the same cloth. To secure the legitimacy of their rule, the ancients all needed to trace the source of power back to heaven's will, divine decree, and sacred grace. Might your myth not be of this same kind?
A: What you describe does indeed appear in the myths I know. Yet as I understand it, the purpose of this myth is not to rationalize the primordial legitimacy of any city or kingdom's rule.
B: Continue.
A: Although the gemstones carried out of the cave conferred all manner of enhancements upon their bearers' abilities and gifts, not all who held them lived to adulthood; some among them met with various misfortunes and perished young.
B: Perished young?
A: Yes. Some of those young men and women fell into madness (μανία = mania, madness); the health of others, for reasons unknown, declined day by day until they passed away in sickness and pain; and some, walking the roads in a trance, failed to see the path clearly, fell into the river, and drowned.
B: I must admit this is no fairy tale in the modern sense; nor should this myth be lightly told to children.
A: My friend, do you believe children require a certain measure of protection?
B: Is that not perfectly reasonable? We do not show children content that is excessively bloody, violent, or sexual.
A: Yet in works of art, violence and eroticism are hardly rare; indeed, some works of art deliberately include such content, their creators claiming it renders the work more profound.
B: Why do you ask me such commonsense questions? What is art to an adult may inflict psychological trauma upon a child.
A: But why should it be so? Why is it art to the adult, yet a wound upon the soul of the child? Does not all art concern beautiful things? How can beauty inflict a wound?
B: I find you especially fond of asking strange questions. Regrettably, I am neither psychologist nor artist, and cannot answer them. I can only surmise it is because the adult psyche is more mature, possessing greater strength of mind and spirit to bear such things than a child does. And as for your claim that all art concerns beauty — I think that is wrong.
A: Wrong in what way?
B: Art is merely the expression of culture internalized by the individual. What is beautiful to some is not so to others. I expect you will next ask, "Then what is art?" — so to spare you the trouble, I shall answer in advance: "I do not know."
A: You are truly a clever man, to anticipate the question I meant to ask. Please forgive my curiosity; it is only that these questions do not seem simple to me, and I truly do not know their deeper answers.
B: The fault is mine — I should not have interrupted you. Go on with your myth that is fit only for adult ears.
A: Among that company of young people who possessed the gemstones, only some lived to adulthood; and even those who reached it did not sail through life on smooth waters. Among them, some became poets, some became generals, some became lawgivers of the polis, and some became raving, wandering madmen.
B: And here I thought this was a pious myth.
A: What do you mean by pious?
B: A myth that hymns the mighty power of the gods — those blessed by the gods ought to live better than everyone else.
A: Forgive me once again: why, in your eyes, is this not a myth hymning the might of the gods?
B: Is it not obvious? If the gods' gemstones cast people into misfortune and madness, how could anyone feel reverence toward the gods? People would deem them the gemstones of demons and evil spirits, not the gemstones of the gods. Were I to write these myths, I would say that all who possessed the stones became, in the end, great lawgivers, sages, and prophets.
A: And yet in our history there is no shortage of myths in which things touched by the divine bring madness.
B: Truly? Perhaps that is a stereotype of mine — after all, you, the lover of myths, surely know far more of them than I do.
A: Yes. I can find similar accounts in the myths of many different cultures.
B: I have interrupted you yet again; do continue. I spoke only offhandedly, and I am not necessarily right — pay me no mind.
A: Among those raving wanderers, there was one whose dying words were recorded by a stranger from a foreign land. The wanderer's last testament went thus:
O my brothers and sisters, my brothers and sisters! I am in pain — I am in pain beyond all measure! I have seen that we, who were once bound by blood, closer than kin born of the same womb, shall inevitably fall upon one another in slaughter.
I have seen war and flame; our descendants shall destroy one another, and the killing shall not cease until the last one falls.
But my surviving brothers and sisters did not believe me. I walked from polis to polis, crying out my warning to them, yet they only looked upon me with pity — as though I, like our brothers and sisters who had died, had been unluckily born into flesh too frail, a mortal frame powerless to bear the vastness of Divine Grace (Θεία Χάρις).
Each of them offered to let me stay and live among them, promising to care for me until my life's end. They asked nothing else of me — only one condition: that I not tell the children of their polis what I had seen.
But my soul is burning, and I cannot stop! I must go on to the next polis; I must find those who can understand my warning — even if there be but one soul, even if there be none at all. For so long as one person records the words I have spoken, there remains a chance to avert a greater calamity.
I know that I am a madman; my reason has been wholly devoured by the sacred gemstone. But I have seen a greater madness, and I cannot stop! Stranger, I feel that I am dying. Please, record these raving words of mine — it is only the dying plea of a pitiable man.
Mythos & Kallos · Part 2
B listened quietly as A finished his long discourse, watching A take a sip of water — yet A did not continue.
B: Is that the end of the story?
A: My friend, I was only pondering how to carry on.
B: Is that not an easy matter? You need only speak what you remember.
A: It has much to do, I suppose, with the manner in which this myth itself was composed. It is not a linear story, but a mosaic pieced together from many scattered fragments. Our scholars spent long years gathering the mythic fragments from different sources: in the east they sought the oral traditions that still endure; in the west they sought the fragments set down in writing; they journeyed to distant lands in search of translated portions, and cross-examined the renderings in different tongues. Even so, the myth thus assembled is still no linear tale — it is divergent, without any evident thread of narrative, and the collated content holds many passages hard to fathom, and even places that contradict one another.
B: That sounds rather chaotic. Why not simply pick out some parts that left a deep impression upon you?
A: Then let me recount that dialogue between the Poet and the King.
B: What Poet and King? Have they anything to do with that raving wanderer you spoke of before?
A: They do. Among the collated fragments of the myth, within that company who received the gemstones the Gods had left behind in the mortal world, some became poets (ποιητής = poet), and some became kings of the polis (βασιλεύς = king, sovereign). As I recall, one fragment concerns a dialogue between one such Poet and one such King.
B: Then tell me what you remember. I hope I shall not interrupt you again — though at times I cannot restrain the impulse. After all, I have been trained in modern rational logic, and that makes it difficult for me to sit quietly through fanciful mythic tales without comment.
A: In the fragment as I remember it, on a certain night, the aged King of the polis departed from his city. The King brought no attendants, and alone, on the outskirts of the city, he met with an old friend from long ago.
King: Old friend, how long has it been since we last met? How many decades have passed?
Poet: I never imagined you too would grow so old. Looking at this head of white hair, you hardly seem the same man as that youth in my memory, brimming with vigor and life.
King: We have both grown old.
Poet: If a prophet is by definition one who foreknows the future — though not all of us who received the gemstones became prophets (προφήτης = prophet) — still, even in our youth we knew that all men must die. So in some sense, are we not prophets too?
King: You are unchanged as ever, forever fond of saying such things. No wonder you walked the poet's road without once looking back — you could have become a lawgiver (νομοθέτης = lawgiver, lawmaker, legislator), a ruler (ἄρχων = archon, ruler), a king.
Poet: Look at you — we have scarcely met again, and are you not also unchanged? No wonder you walked the ruler's road without once looking back. In other city-states (πόλις = polis, city-state) I have heard your renown: the people sing of how wise you are, how splendid your palace is built, and call you a child beloved of the Gods.
King: You cannot resist mocking me again.
Poet: I would not dare. You are His Majesty the King, the child beloved of the Gods.
King: In some measure, you and I are both children beloved of the Gods.
Poet: Will you write that into the history (ἱστορία = history, inquiry, account) of your polis? Oh no — the scholars of your polis are already at work upon it. I once conversed with one of your scholars on this very matter.
King: As a lawgiver and ruler, it is my duty. Not wholly because I wish it so, but because the people require it — you know how it is, the people need their order to possess a Divine origin. Can you understand me? And my conscience is clear: the historical tradition I have woven has its own truth and its own beauty.
Poet: How amusing. If we continue down this road, I fear we shall quarrel again.
King: You are right; I have no wish to quarrel with you. It is only that I know my appointed end draws near, and I wished to see an old friend of former days — and there are questions I would ask you.
Poet: Ask, then.
King: Have you seen those old friends of ours who wander?
Poet: I have. Their minds are more disordered than mine — I, a poet — more unfathomable, more devoid of logic.
King: What did they say to you?
Poet: After speaking many words I cannot understand to this day, they counseled me to write fewer poems, not to linger too long in any one polis, and to bid my students keep themselves unnoticed. And what did they say to you?
King: Many things; I no longer remember them all. I remember only that they said our descendants shall slaughter one another, and that my splendid palace shall in the end be a splendid tomb of common burial.
Poet: How unpleasant to hear.
King: Why do I sense a trace of delight in your voice at my misfortune? I doubt they had kind words for you either.
Poet: And how did you treat them?
King: I told them I hoped they would stay, and that I would care well for their lives.
Poet: But you set conditions — just like every ruler.
King: My condition was that they must not spread abroad the words they had spoken to me.
Poet: Even you can feel fear?
King: I am braver than most men; I am willing to die for my polis. Precisely because I do not fear death, some have called me a hero. Even one of your students once wrote verses for me, praising how my fearlessness would forge an eternal order.
Poet: Which of my students wrote such rubbish? Oh — now I remember. I believe it was my daughter. I shall have to dock her allowance when I return.
King: Your daughter's verses were rather fine. She is an excellent poet.
Poet: You actually find leisure to read the negligible verses of these younger folk?
King: I too write poetry. I merely lack the time.
Poet: You will always lack time. But to return to my question — even you can feel fear?
King: I do fear. Yet to speak precisely, it is not I who fear, but the order of my polis that fears. Can you understand? Just as you, being a poet, have poetry as your creation, so I, being a lawgiver, have the order of the polis as mine. I have felt the terror trembling within the order of my city — can you feel the terror within the melodies of your poems?
The Poet fell silent for a long while, and made no reply.
King: When we were still young and strong, we dismissed the warnings of our wandering old friends as madness, believing those poor souls could not bear the grace of the Gods — that their fragile spirits had been crushed beneath the vastness of Divine Grace. But as the years accumulated, as I watched my children grow, as I watched our creations take shape step by step, I came dimly to feel that those wandering friends were not wholly mad. They too were children blessed by the Gods, and they saw things that we, in our youth, had never perceived.
Poet: You never believed in the existence of prophets. You once even attacked my verses depicting prophets, saying I had beautified a host of charlatans who cheat the world and steal renown. Is this your confession now?
King: No — to this day I still do not believe in the existence of prophets. I do not know how to explain it clearly, but you need no explanation from me, for you plainly understand what I mean. Or let us not speak of prophets, but only of those endowed with foresight.
Poet: You bid your historians write you down as a child of the Gods, while declaring you do not believe in prophets. In our youth, everyone thought your mind clearer than most of ours; now, grown old in years, you utter such confusions.
King: There you go again, savoring my misfortune. At our age, could you not restrain your wicked humor a little?
Poet: I am a comic poet. What else could His Majesty the King expect of me? This is, after all, my proper trade.
King: But you too received the warnings. Do you believe them? I ask you to answer me in earnest.
The Poet fell silent for a long while, and made no reply.
King: Do you still remember, among us all, the one who was maddest?
Poet: The one who cut out their own tongue?
King: Yes — those who cut out their own tongues. In the first moments when we received the gemstones of the Gods, most of us were drowned in intoxication and ecstasy; but a very few went mad, and severed their own tongues.
Poet: That bloody and uncanny scene sobered no small number of us, did it not?
King: Not long ago, I met one of those who had cut out their tongue.
The Poet remained silent, making no reply.
King: Unlike other kings, I need no guards to escort me when I make my rounds through the realm, for most of my subjects revere and love me — perhaps this is Heaven's consolation for my years of toil. One day, sunk in troubled meditation upon the fate and growth of my polis, I was walking along the river. At that hour the banks are usually empty of all people; but on that very night, I met an old friend from those days — one who had severed her tongue.
The Poet gazed quietly at the King.
King: She was smiling at me, as if to say: "Hello, old friend — we meet again." In the moonlight I could faintly see the sincerity of her smile. That vision was so beautiful — and this beauty was so ill-matched with that bloody scene of her severing her tongue long ago, and yet so uncannily harmonious with it. What a contradiction! I could not comprehend it at all. Even one as gifted as you, I fear, could scarcely find fitting verses to describe all that was held within it.
The King turned his gaze toward the moonlight then hanging in the heavens.
King: Can you guess what she did? She slowly bent down, cupped her two hands together, scooped up a handful of water at the river's edge, and then laughed with joy — she was trying to scoop up the moon's reflection from the river!
The Poet, as if seized by some immense terror, began to tremble uncontrollably, no longer able to hold the cane and the book of poems in his hands. That book of poems was the gift he had intended to bestow upon his old friend at this their final meeting.
King: I cannot understand! I truly cannot understand! Can you? That gesture of hers, so full of goodwill, shocked and terrified me to my depths, and I know not why! My whole body shook beyond my will. She bore me no malice whatsoever, yet she struck terror into the very depths of my Soul!
The Poet crouched upon the ground, his head white with age, yet clutching his head like a frightened child.
King: I do not know how much time passed, nor how I regained my senses. I remember only that upon waking, I reached instinctively for the sacred gemstone I had carried at my side all my life. Old friend, do you know? The stone had vanished — vanished into thin air, as though it had never existed at all.
Mythos & Kallos · Part 3
B watched as A paused, seemingly lost in thought, saying nothing more.
B: It ends here again?
A: It ends. This is all I know of that dialogue. It is itself fragmentary — what I have just recalled is already the product of scholars piecing together different scattered remnants and broken texts.
B: That is far too abrupt, without head or tail. Though I must say, even were it not a fragment, the content of this myth itself is strange enough, incomprehensible enough, without beginning or end. Is there truly no myth in your memory that is relatively complete, relatively logical?
A: My friend, I can recall some relatively complete mythic fragments. What manner of myth might interest you?
B: Why not recall some myths concerning prophets? I come from a cultural tradition in which prophets once held exalted station in ancient times. Though with the progress of the ages we have all received the enlightenment of reason, trusting science and no longer superstition, the stories of the traditional prophets still run deep in our culture. I too wish to know how prophets are described in those mythic tales I have never known.
A: My friend, following your words, I recall a dialogue between a Prophet (προφήτης = prophet) and his second son — a dialogue said to have taken place several hundred years after the people received the sacred gemstones.
Prophet: My child, has everything been handled as I instructed?
Second Son: Father, all has been settled according to your command.
Prophet: But some did not do as I said, did they?
Second Son: Father, you know all things.
Prophet: They told you that their households lost husbands and sons upon the battlefield, sacrificed for the people — and so the disposal of a few captives of war counts for nothing? They said, too, that our prophetic Law supports righteous vengeance?
The Second Son opened his mouth, but in the end said nothing.
Prophet: You feel there is a certain reason in their words, and yet you sense some trouble in them you cannot name — is that so?
The Second Son nodded.
Prophet: My child, you have always felt yourself lesser than your elder brother. Though this is true, in certain weighty matters you possess an intuition keener than that of ordinary men. You should at times have more faith in yourself. You may not equal your brother, nor me your father, yet you already perceive more than most of our people.
Second Son: Yes, Father.
Prophet: Tell those who still refuse to heed my words: in the Law of our ancient tradition, even for the beasts destined for slaughter, it is decreed that a swift death be given, to lessen the animal's suffering. If our traditional Law treats even animals thus, then to treat captives of war as less than animals is a grave offense against the laws established by God, and a grave blasphemy against God Himself. Their husbands and sons who died upon the battlefield have already received the gaze of God — an immense honor; their superfluous and needless deeds only diminish the glory their kin purchased with their lives, and God shall surely be displeased. If they do not cease their offenses against God, then even should I leave them unpunished, God will withdraw the glory of their households and mete out chastisement — for they commit offense in the very name of God's Law.
Second Son: I understand, Father.
Prophet: What has become of that priestess?
Second Son: She did not accept the terms of lifelong imprisonment. She burned herself to death within her temple.
The Prophet gazed at the setting sun of dusk; the smell of blood from the battlefield seemed to carry all the way to him, though the actual distance between them was vast.
His handsome second son, now grown to manhood, said nothing — he knew his father often sank into silent meditation like this.
Only the night before, the son had led their people in battle against the enemy, and he had not yet closed his eyes; yet he forced himself to remain vigilant, for his father had said that victory on the battlefield is only another beginning. He had always obeyed his father, revering and standing in awe of the Prophet beyond measure — in all his memory, his father had never once been wrong.
After a long silence, the Prophet — his hair half black, half white — spoke once more.
Prophet: I met her when she was still a little girl.
Second Son: The enemy's priestess?
Prophet: The same. It was at a council held among several loose alliances that lacked all mutual trust. She was then not yet ten years of age, yet had already been secretly appointed as the next High Priestess. Our enemies of many years could find no fitter candidate at that time, and in the end could only rely upon a thin and distant bloodline to choose their most important priestess (ἱέρεια = priestess).
Prophet: At first I thought: the enemy's long years of injustice had at last drawn down the wrath of the Gods; their destiny was spent, their line without successor — given but a little more time, we would defeat them utterly.
The Prophet's child did not reply. He knew his father's habits well, and knew this pause was meant to let him follow his father's memory in thought.
Prophet: But the moment I first laid eyes upon her, I knew I had thought wrongly. This girl, not yet come of age, would surely one day make our enemies stronger, harder to overcome. Her precocity was never once concealed from us — perhaps that was the first warning she issued to those so many years her elder?
Prophet: And yet, in truth, she said little. In the end, what impressed itself most deeply upon me was her question to me: "Honored Prophet, I do not fear death, but I am a little afraid of pain. Do you think it is painful, to die in the blazing fire?"
Suddenly, an unnatural terror seized the Prophet's child. This terror was so alien to him — he had never felt it even while cutting down enemies upon the battlefield.
Prophet: Steady yourself, my good child! You are the future leader of our people. You must not waver — you cannot waver! However great the terror, you must not retreat a single step! Do you understand?
Second Son: Yes, Father.
Prophet: After meeting her, I once entertained the thought of sending someone to poison her, but the thought was quickly dispelled. On the one hand, to kill a priestess of a God — even a false God — demands the utmost caution; such is our tradition of Law. On the other hand, she was, after all, only a little girl, and assassination violates both our traditional customs and the prophetic Law. But what truly made me abandon the thought of poison, in the end, was your elder brother. Your brother… was in no way her inferior. Her people had committed injustice for many years, corrupted and scattered within, while our people were in the midst of flourishing; so long as your brother — equally precocious — remained, she would pose no threat to us. Moreover, her standing and authority among her people were far beneath those of our family; she could never bring her full strength to bear.
Hearing his father speak of the elder brother who had vanished so many years ago, the second son's emotions surged once more beyond his control. For years his brother had been a forbidden subject among the people; he had never imagined his father would speak again, at this moment, of the elder brother he so deeply loved and revered.
Prophet: My child, I know that for many years you have longed to understand why that brother of yours, upon whom I once placed such high hopes, was in the end banished by my own hand, with the decree that he never return for all eternity.
Prophet: This secret I have never revealed to anyone among our people. The priestly families, the many elders, the finest warriors, even your mother and your sister — to none of them have I ever spoken of what truly caused me to banish your brother. I had intended to tell you — you who are to inherit the mantle of Prophet — only before my departure from this world; but the God of Heaven, it seems, has once again altered my plans. The self-immolation of the enemy's priestess has made me see with urgency: child, it is better that you learn this hidden history sooner.
Prophet: Nothing could ever truly be concealed from your precocious brother, just as nothing among our people can be concealed from me. A Prophet, even without direct communion with God, possesses a discernment far keener than that of ordinary men. From my various bearings alone, your brother deduced the truth that the enemy's priestess was in no way his inferior. On this single point, those elders of ours who can only recite the prophetic Law by rote never once perceived the slightest sign. Your brother had surpassed them even in childhood; yet they merely took your brother for another me, wholly ignorant that the gulf between Prophet and Prophet is vaster still than the gulf between Prophet and mortal — your brother stood nearer to God than I, his father.
Prophet: Men know that the bridge exists, yet they understand little of what the different positions upon the bridge signify; nor indeed is that something they need to understand. Different men bear different fates — all this is the arrangement decreed by God.
Prophet: On a certain night, your brother asked me several questions — and it was precisely those questions that moved me to the decision of his banishment.
Eldest Son: Father, that girl — is she truly in no way my inferior?
Prophet: Child, at times even I, your father, feel you are too clever. You have never once seen her — how did you perceive this?
Eldest Son: Father, you never truly concealed her existence from me.
The Prophet remained silent, waiting for his eldest son's next question. He knew there were other doubts within his son's heart.
Eldest Son: Father, there are questions long buried in my heart. Today I gather my courage to ask you.
Prophet: Ask, my child.
Eldest Son: Father, do you believe that the one whom that girl serves is a false God — or a true God?
The Prophet fell silent, greatly astonished that his eldest son should ask this question.
Prophet: Child, this question I cannot answer you at this moment.
Eldest Son: Father, we are the family of Prophets, and we have served the Most High True God for many years. If the one that girl serves is a false God, why then is she in no way my inferior? And if the one that girl serves is a true God, how then shall I face her in the days to come?
Prophet: Child, in the affairs of our people you know no less than I; many things I have never hidden from you. Were it not that you are still young, and that the elders murmur against your deep involvement in the people's affairs, I would have let you take charge of far more. You know well in your heart that between our people and hers there is no possibility of reconciliation — in the future, either we defeat them, or they defeat us; either we are reduced to captives, or they are cast down in chains.
Eldest Son: I understand, Father.
Prophet: Then — what is your thought?
Eldest Son: I do not yet know, Father.
Prophet: Child, you cannot not know! You are the future Prophet of our people — fitter, even, to be Prophet than I, your father! There are questions which, once you have spoken them aloud, you must know the answer to!
Eldest Son: Father, but many possible answers have arisen within my heart.
Prophet: You must remember: you are the Prophet of our people, and your answer can only be one.
Eldest Son: Father, what do you believe the answer should be?
Prophet: The enemy's priestess serves a false God; and even if not a false God, then a lesser deity whose rank stands far beneath our True God. Our people, our warriors — this is the only answer they need.
Eldest Son: Father, perhaps our people and our warriors merely wish this answer to be spoken from the mouth of our family.
Prophet: You have crossed the line, child.
Eldest Son: Forgive me, Father.
Prophet: We are the Prophets of our people — this is the creed we must bear in mind at every moment. Have you any further questions?
That handsome eldest son, upon whom such high hopes had been placed, hesitated a moment — and yet asked.
Eldest Son: Father, there is one more question I have likewise pondered long. I wish to know… is there any possibility that the God we serve, and the God she serves, are in truth one and the same God?
Prophet: That is a question you must never ask!
Eldest Son: Forgive me, Father. I know that after tonight I shall lose all your trust. But I have one final question: what, in truth, is God's view of this war between us?
The father seemed in an instant to age ten years.
Prophet: Child… my child… we are only Prophets; we are only the bridge (γέφυρα = pons = bridge). We cannot truly fathom the fullness of God's will, nor can we at every moment catch even a fragment of God's intent. This much you have long understood — have you not?
The eldest son knelt upon both knees before his father, bowed deeply, and left the temple with tears streaming without end.
The second son, listening to his father's recollection, had gone bloodless in the face, pale beyond all measure. He was profoundly shaken by his father's words — unable to imagine that the elder brother he so revered had asked questions he himself dared not even think; and shaken still more by the manner in which his father had answered.
Prophet: Your brother asked questions that should never have been asked at his age; he asked questions that ought to be pondered only when he had truly become the Great Prophet of our people. Your brother… he was simply too clever.
Prophet: When your mother carried her first child, I prayed devoutly to the True God to grant me the wisest child in all the world. Many problems had lain sedimented among our people for years, whose deeper answers even I, the Prophet, could not search out; therefore I prayed that God might grant me a child to resolve those difficulties I was powerless to dissolve. Your brother was born — God truly answered the plea of His faithful servant — and your brother's precocity exceeded even my furthest expectations.
Prophet: Your brother dearly loved arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, and I summoned the most excellent tutors for him. Child, do you remember? There was always at your brother's side a hulking fellow, half servant and half friend — a death-sworn guardian raised from childhood among our people to protect your brother. In his leisure your brother would even teach this closest friend the knowledge he had learned, though alas, the big fellow would at times miswrite even his own name.
Prophet: Your brother's learning — few indeed among our people could ever understand it. He was beloved by all, and yet at the same time boundlessly alone. The humor of the Goddess of Fate lies in this: the priestess of our sworn enemy was very likely the only person in the world capable of conversing with your brother in these studies.
Prophet: Your brother often defied my prohibitions, having the big fellow secretly bring you sweets and snacks — all of this, in truth, I knew.
Prophet: We are born of one of the few priestly families of God that can inherit the prophetic gift; we must never indulge in superfluous pleasures, never drown in the delights of flesh and matter — fine food, beauty, fame, wealth, and unbridled enjoyment: none of these may become our pursuit, for we must be the bridge between God and man.
Prophet: This is the necessary discipline on the path to becoming a Prophet. Your brother carried snacks with him precisely because he was more detached than most of our family; even in early childhood he was beyond captivation by any form of material pleasure. His delight lay in pondering higher and deeper questions; he was forever reasoning through things whose importance others could not even perceive. Any sweet or candy was to him a thing indifferent — no more than a harmless adornment upon life.
Prophet: But you, child — you were far from possessing your brother's restraint. It took great labor, in those days, before you learned not to weep and wail before the snacks.
Prophet: In those years your brother was to inherit everything. He cherished you, and felt that my raising you also as a Prophet was a strangling of your nature and your fate — that was why he bade that half-servant, half-friend giant secretly bring you sweets.
Prophet: But our family, in the end, are only Prophets — and I, as father, can hardly claim to be the one who has walked farthest upon this road. I failed to foresee that your brother would rather forsake everything for the sake of those few questions — he bore guilt for betraying the hopes of me, his father; guilt for the immense shock he brought upon our family; and deeper guilt still, that you should have to carry in his stead a heavy destiny that was never meant to be yours.
Prophet: Child… to become a Prophet was never your fate; but in our family there remains no one fitter than you — and more dreadful still, among all the other priestly families, no one equal to the charge can be found. Those cleverer than you lack restraint; those more temperate than you lack courage; and those who in certain respects slightly surpass you are, for the most part, crooked of heart, wholly unable to bear the grave and sacred burden of being the Divine bridge.
Prophet: You, like that girl who has just died, bear a destiny that was never originally yours; the difference is that she possessed a greater gift for prophethood than you. Our generation has vanquished them and enslaved their people — but whither shall the next generation of our people go? Child, you must learn beforehand certain secrets that ought not be known at this hour, for your father has no other way left.
Prophet: Why did I banish your brother? Because I clearly foresaw: were your brother to become Prophet according to his own ideals, our people would meet an upheaval without precedent. The letters of our traditional Law might remain unaltered, but the wholly new interpretation he would give them would be enough to drive many of the priestly elders you know so well into madness; and great multitudes of our people would be left without bearings, sunk in a bewilderment from which they could not extricate themselves.
Prophet: Your brother did not even need to make any deliberate move. Merely by existing, merely by breathing, he would silently and imperceptibly reshape everything around him. That big fellow could not even write his letters whole, yet under your brother's influence he was constantly drawn into inexplicable quarrels and fights.
Prophet: Many elders to this day still do not understand what those small conflicts signified, taking them for the impulsiveness of young men with excess vigor, nothing of consequence; but I understood — they were the unmistakable tremors that herald a devastating earthquake to come.
Prophet: O my child! Your brother would have brought upon our people a destruction beyond all reckoning! Those elders and priests who still scheme in the shadows, plotting their intrigues and burrowing after private gain, remain utterly ignorant of this. Your brother treated them ever with courtesy and reverence, yet they never knew what inconceivable overturning he would have brought upon them! So many among our people love your brother beyond measure — yet they likewise know not what your brother would truly have brought them!
Prophet: Among these people are many who were my playmates in childhood. Though with the passing years we drifted ever farther apart — and some even secretly became my adversaries — I could never stand by and watch them be destroyed by my own son, still less abandon our people to wander homeless through the wilderness of the spirit in your brother's wake. I blessed them at their weddings; I watched their children grow to adulthood; I know well which kin each of their households has sacrificed upon the battlefield. They may never have perceived my gaze, but I have watched over them always, silently guarding them.
Prophet: Some elders secretly rejoiced at my banishment of your brother, imagining their own families now held a greater chance of producing the next generation's Prophet; some among them cannot even bear to take off the splendid priestly robes upon their backs.
Prophet: Listen — they are reveling at this very moment. Our people are stirred by their impassioned orations, convinced that this victory proves once more that our Law descends from the True God, that we stand ever under the True God's protection. Yet among them, how many truly understand the Law's real meaning? Even I, the Prophet, must tread with utmost care when interpreting the Law; yet some elders imagine that to recite the Law backwards and forwards is to be a worthy priest.
Prophet: However Fate may arrange things, we are in the end but mortals who must die (βροτός, θνητός = mortal) — Prophets not excepted. A mortal can never wholly know the fullness of God's will.
Prophet: Child, that girl's family was once also a house of Prophets of great renown, and our enemies too once flourished at their zenith. Later they committed many injustices, provoked the wrath of God, and in the end could not prevail against us, who surpassed them in virtue. Yet we, the victors — do we truly stand nearer to Eternity (Αἰών = Aeon, Eternity) than they?
Prophet: There is a myth passed down through long ages, which tells that the ancestors of both our peoples once received the gemstones the Gods had left behind in the mortal world, and thus both rose to greatness. However much truth that myth may hold, today their people are destroyed — but shall our people, in the days to come, retrace the path of their ruin?
Prophet: After your brother departed, he never once sent back a letter by his own hand. The last tidings I received came from that big fellow whom everyone among our people mocked as a dullard who knew only how to brawl. He wrote a letter riddled with errors of grammar (γραμματική = grammar) and diction, saying that they were about to cross the great sea, and that thereafter it would likely be difficult to send back any word; he offered his greetings to us in the homeland, urged us to take good care of ourselves, and prayed that God would bless and keep all things well.
Prophet: At times I truly regret having once said to your brother that "to teach the born-dull is a waste of strength" — so that in the end, I, the father, could receive only such a letter, full of clumsy errors — and that, of all things, was the last tidings your brother left behind.