Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece by Korshak Yvonne

Author:Korshak, Yvonne [Korshak, Yvonne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, N/A, Romance
ISBN: 9781959182238
Amazon: B0BGHKH8V5
Goodreads: 62986809
Publisher: Caryatid Imprint
Published: 2022-10-04T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Turning of the Sun

“You’ve never seen me wrestle, and I’m good.”

Pericles smiled, though Xanthippus was blocking his light.

“You’ve said you’ve been winning. I’d like to see how you do it, sometime.”

“How about this afternoon? You don’t have much to do, you’re not a general anymore.”

Should he retort that at the next election he would be even more of a general than ever, General from all the Athenians? Or was that one more temptation to hubris? Pericles drew several papyri to the top of the tablets and scrolls spread over his writing table. “I’m organizing a new colony in Italy but I suppose you think that’s not much to do.”

“Only my pedagogue watches me—he’s a slave, and everybody else has a father. Teisander comes to watch his son every afternoon. He’ll be there today for our match.”

Somebody was watering the garden. Pericles listened to the sounds of drops falling on leaves and pebbles turning underfoot. It was early in the morning and still cool, but it would be a hot, bright, long day—one of the longest when the sun pauses at the end of its journey north, appearing several mornings over the same peak of Mount Lykabettos. Soon it would turn back and take the old year with it. The pause may only be a seeming, but it is a truth that on those days the light floods the world, beating out the dark. People eat their dinners late, walk abroad in the evening, and sleep little. It was Pericles’ favorite time of the year.

“If I win today, I might make the wrestling contest for youths at the Panathenaic Festival.”

He looked at his son: handsome, though short.

Damon was coming later in the afternoon to continue their discussions about the governing of the new colony. “If I have no further interruptions and finish my work, I’ll come to see your match.” He would invite Damon to accompany him to watch the wrestling—Damon had no sons and would consider it an honor.

“Be sure to come.”

“Be sure to win.”

Pericles returned to listing Greek cities where he might recruit settlers for the colony, New Sybaris. The tip of the Italian peninsula was promising for trade and grain, reports said, but they’d need to find a new site because the old one lacked a good supply of fresh water. Either the citizens of a rival city had diverted the river, as the Sybarites there claimed, or the river had silted naturally and changed direction.

He pulled up a map. Demodicus, a captain on the first expedition to Sybaris, had cruised the loop of southern Italy and, at Pericles’ request, drawn the shape of the land, writing in the names of the cities he had encountered. How narrow the land appeared at Sybaris, where the new settlement was planned. Had the captain drawn it right? He pulled over another map, from the captain’s second trip there. The thin, black lines were rivers, the one drawn in and then crossed over would be the dry riverbed. Demodicus had indicated the hills behind the town with zigzag lines.

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