"Mary Renault - Greece 4 - The Last Of The Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

when I was old enough to go to school with a pedagogue he would take the occasion to be rid of her; so
any progress I made was a signal for her anger.

Seeking some company, I had got a stray kitten from a slave; which presently finding, she wrung its neck
before me. While trying to get it from her, I bit her arm; and it was then she told me, after her own
fashion, the tale of my birth, which she had heard from the slaves. So, when she beat me, I never thought
of telling my father, or asking his help. While he, seeing me grow daily more sly and sullen in my ways,
paler and duller in the face, must I daresay have wondered, sometimes, if first thoughts would not have
been best.

In the evenings, when he came in dressed for supper, I used to look at him and wonder how it felt to be
beautiful. He was more than six feet tall, grey-eyed, brown-skinned, and golden-haired; made like those
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big Apollos Pheidias' workshop used to turn out, in the days before the statuaries began carving their
Apollos soft. As for me, I was one of those who grow late, and still small for my age; it was clear already
that I should favour the men of my mother's family, who are dark-haired, with blue eyes, and who tend to
be runners and jumpers, rather than wrestlers and pankratiasts. The Rhodian had left me in no doubt that
I was the runt of a good kennel; and no one else had told me otherwise.

It pleased me, however, to see him in his best blue mantle with the gold border, his brown chest and left
shoulder bare, bathed and combed and rubbed down with sweet oil, his hair dressed into a garland and
his. beard short-pointed. It meant a supper-party: going by myself unwashed to bed while the Rhodian
was busy in the kitchen, I would lie listening to the flutes and laughter, to the ring of the bronze bowl
when they played kottabos, the rise and fall of voices in talk, or someone singing to the lyre. Sometimes,
if a dancer or a juggler had been hired, I used to climb the roof, and look in across the courtyard.

Once he gave a party to which the god Hermes came. So at least I first believed; not only because the
young man seemed too tall and beautiful not to be a god, and had the air of one accustomed to worship,
but because he was so exactly like a Herm outside one of the rich new houses, that his head looked to
have been the model, as in fact it had. I was only shaken from my awe when he walked out and made
water in the courtyard, which made me almost sure he was a man. Then someone inside called out,
Alkibiades! Where are you? and he went back into the supper-room.

My father, having at this time concerns of his own, seldom brought me into remembrance. But
sometimes he would call to mind that he had a son, and set himself to do his duty by me. There was, for
example, the day when our steward caught me stealing corn to throw to the doves, and took it away
from me, for corn was scarce that year. With the kind of manners I had learned from my nurse, I
stamped my foot at him, and said he had no right to forbid me, being only a slave. At this my father, who
had overheard, stepped into the room. He sent out the man with a civil word, and called me to him.
Alexias, he said, my shield is over there in the corner. Pick it up, and bring it to me.

I went over to where the shield was leaning on the wall; and, getting hold of it by the rim, began to roll it
along, finding it too heavy for me to lift. That is not the way, he said. Put your arm through the bands, and
carry it as I do.

I put my arm through one of the bands, and managed to stand it upright, but I could not lift it; it was