Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

The Son of Rome

I’d never cared for the lyre before meeting Aristotle.

As the Young Patrician of a notable family, I was raised under a certain set of expectations. It was a given that I would be educated. It was all but guaranteed, looking back at my father and my great-uncle’s careers, that I would serve my time in the legions and make the climb up the cursus honorum. How far I progressed in the end was something no one could predict, but it was a safe bet that I would claim that first honor if not any more to follow.

It wasn’t enough to be learned if a man intended to take up the reins of the Republic, even if only in a senator's small way. It wasn’t enough to serve. Those things were required but not enough alone. In order to carry forward what the greatest statesmen of the past had entrusted to us, a man had to embody the virtues that defined his city.

The Greeks possessed four cardinal virtues, four that defined their cultural identity and sculpted the greatest of their sons and daughters: Temperance. Wisdom. Courage. And of course, Justice.

Just as there were eight rounds in the progression of a Roman soul to contrast the four a Greek traversed, so too was the Republic defined by eight virtues instead of the Greek cardinals.

Virtus Integritas. The complete virtues - four for the city and four for the man. It was a given that a Roman statesman would embody at least one of these eight qualities, And that expectation only grew higher as they progressed up the course of honors.

The four for the city were the highest social virtues, the qualities that a man extended to his fellow Romans whether they were patrician or plebian.

First of the four was Honestas, the honor that a man wore like a triumphal crown. It was his reputation in the eyes of the state, and if his heart was true then Honestas was his pride just the same.

Fides, the good faith that a man acted with at all times. His reliability to the ones that served beneath him, and his loyalty to the ones that stood above.

Innocentia, the selflessness with which a man pursued the interests of his city. It was the charities born of his easy generosity, and it was the simplicity that made his soul so utterly incorruptible.

And finally, there was Iustitia. A man’s justice, fourth of the four and brother to the Greek cardinal virtue. It was a man’s empathy for those wronged in the Republic, for the Republic - even, at times, by the Republic. It was his sense of equity and his ever unsatisfied desire for structured order. Most importantly, it was the responsibility he took when the burden of judgement was laid at his feet. His acceptance of whatever followed.

If the four virtues that a Roman citizen kept for himself - pure Salubritas, dutiful Pietas, resolute Constantia, and heavy Disciplina - were internal qualities, expectations he had of himself, then the four social virtues were the external qualities that his people and his city could expect from him. And did expect, more so the higher he climbed. The internal virtues had been hammered into me and pressure treated by the soldiers and centurions of the fifth legion that my father had entrusted me to.

The social virtues, generally speaking, required a softer touch. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you asked, Aristotle was the one that shaped me to them. From the day he caught me picking pockets in the forum to the day he saw me off to the legions, beginning and ending with justice. The overlap of twin excellence between our two cultures.

Aristotle had opened my eyes in more ways than one, exposed me to aspects of myself and the world around me that I had never before considered in my brief life. He had taught me lessons that no other man in Rome could have conveyed, in large part because he was the only man my mother would not mutilate for sending me home from a lesson bruised and bleeding. Back then, irreverent little bastard that I was, I had tried more than once to have my pitiless mentor fired. No matter what I said, though, my mother would only stroke my head and tell me to bear with it.

In time I’d let go of my resentment and became grateful for her sudden shift to firmness, but I never did understand it. Not in the legions, nor in the Scarlet City. It wasn’t until I went to Olympia and met the mentor of his mentor, until I saw for myself the depths of his resolve in the story of the brothers Aetos, that I finally understood why even my adoring mother would not deprive me of his teachings.

It was all but guaranteed that a Young Patrician would receive a fine education. For the Young Patrician of a family as infamous and esteemed as mine, even the finest education a Roman could give wouldn’t be out of the question.

But I had received neither. Instead, I had been given one of the finest educations in the world. As mad as it seemed, I shared a mentor with the same Damon Aetos that haunted the free Mediterranean nearly twenty years after his withdrawal from it. I was a link in the chain that went all the way back up to the Scholar himself. No one, Greek or Roman or savage barbarian, was guaranteed such a mentor.

What had I done to deserve such an education? Nothing. And what have I done with it? Even less than that.

That wasn’t Aristotle’s fault, though. He had done what he could with me, and corrected as many of my ugly traits as he could. If I had been better from the beginning, I knew in my heart and the marrow of my bones that I could have learned so much more. Even still, Aristotle had accounted for my feelings and instilled in me skills and qualities that would benefit me regardless of whether I fully understood the reasoning behind them.

Such as the lyre.

“You must be-“

“Thyoneus’-”

“Lampter’s-”

“Lyaeus’-”

“Melanaegis’-”

“Eleuthereus’ boys!”

Pleasantries came and went and came again, a dozen introductions and pithy conversations, followed by a dozen more. It seemed like every chthonic spirit saw a different face in the cowls of the ravens, remembered a different man that surely must have sent us in his place. Some greeted us with naked joy, others with thinly veiled hostility, but curiosity was universal.

Young blood, the late Ptolemy had called us. I supposed that made the chthonic revelers the sharks.

“No,” replied the tattooed raven by my side. “Never heard of him,” he informed another spirit. “Disgusting lush. Close your mouth when it’s full,” he said to the next, smacking the man lightly on his shoulder as we passed to take the sting out of his words. The man’s friends jeered at him while we continued on, prodding his flushed cheeks and snatching the grapes off his plate.

Griffon navigated through a symposia attended only by the dead like it was the most natural thing in the world to him, as if he had been raised for environments like these. In some ways, he had. Though he may have cast off his status as Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn, he still carried that upbringing with him wherever he went. It revealed itself in the elegance of his speech, betrayed him even while uttering the foulest sentiment. It was there when he walked, in the commanding swagger of his stride. It was in his eyes most of all. In their distant amusement - and in their disdain.

I ignored the pleasantries that I could and allowed Griffon to engage with the rest, because even though we had both enjoyed the privilege of a sophisticated upbringing, I have never been the man that thrives in social waters. At best I could keep my head above the current and avoid shaming myself. I was no author of conversational flow, never the man whose word commanded every ear in the room. Not like my father had been, and certainly not like Gaius or Aristotle. That was Griffon’s domain more than it had ever been mine.

Aristotle had identified this failing early on, blaming it often and in a tone of long-suffering on the poison of a doting mother and the cruel praise of sycophants. Prior to becoming his student, I had been surrounded by the children of lesser patrician families and enjoyed the delusion that they listened intently when I spoke because I was worth listening to. I allowed them to convince me day after day that they agreed with me because I was convincing, and not simply because their parents had urged them to find my good graces.

A boy whose age could still be counted on his fingers, and I had been convinced that I was already a paragon of social virtue. When Aristotle had challenged me to match action to words, bundled me up in anonymous rags and taken me to the forum, there had been no doubt in my mind that I would carry whatever conversation he had me take part in.

To this day, the memory still ached.

That was the day that Aristotle showed me the immensity of the gap between the boy I truly was and the socialite I had always thought myself to be. I never forgot that lesson, only learned it again and again as time went on. Eventually, when comparing myself to my role models became too painful, I gave up on my rhetoric all together. Though by this point I was aware of how shameful my past behaviors had been, I regressed anyway, fell back on familiar petulance and refused to engage with Aristotle‘s lessons on discourse and persuasion.

I even used the benefits of his other lessons against him. No matter how many times he smacked me around, no matter how deeply he cut me with his words, I only drew the bruises and the reprimands around me like a cloak. Stacked them like bricks between me and him and refused to come out from behind them.

So, being that I was a stubborn child and he was as wise as he was impatient, Aristotle changed his approach. Rather than try to scale the wall I had built between us, or perhaps break it down, he instead bypassed it all together.

Though I hadn’t realized it at the time, he never stopped tutoring me in the sphere of social grace. He simply approached it from a different angle. From the side.

First, he taught me how to play the lyre.

The melody drifting up from the sunken stage did not disrupt the flow of any of the conversations taking place in the odeon, nor was it muffled or overburdened by the various songs being simultaneously sung. Orpheus’ strumming did not disrupt the flow, nor was it disrupted by it, because here in the Orphic House it was the flow. The rhythm and the ambience that the chthonic spirits in attendance were matching themselves to was the product of an instrument that could be made from a tortoise shell and sheep guts. The great Hero didn’t have to say a word to hold the entire singing house in his open palm.

Rhetoric was the art of persuasion, and the conveyance of intent. Nothing more and nothing less. Some men, like Aristotle, conveyed the contents of their soul through the spoken word. Others, like Alexander the Conqueror, persuaded through overwhelming force. Through words, through actions, through music and acting and art. There were an endless number of tools that a man could use to make himself understood, eloquently and with grace.

The lyre was one of those tools. The first, but far from the only one. Aristotle had pressed as many of those tools as he could into my hands before my father took me on campaign, and Gaius had done what he could in the years that followed to refine my skills with them. And in time, leading the way by example, to make me at least passable in my areas of greatest lack.

I would never take to these environments the way that Griffon did, with ease and clear relish, but I could avoid embarrassing myself. With the proper tools, and in the proper circumstances, I could convey my intent as eloquently as any Young Aristocrat.

And about as boldly, too.

Every voice in the singing house went silent when I plucked my first string.

The Orphic House was small even for an odeon. Still, it contained seating enough for hundreds of spectators, and every one of those seats was currently filled. Dozens of conversations and songs, spoken in a vast array of languages from the mouths of men and women all over the world. All of them, every single one, slammed to a dead halt as I began to strum an instrument that I had not possessed only moments before.

Down on his stage, the fingers of the late Hero Orpheus paused on his strings. He looked up for the first time since our arrival, puzzled. I felt his eyes on me, felt the brush of his influence against my raven attire not as the touch of a hand, but more like the dissonant chill a lingering hand left behind when it withdrew.

I focused on my strings and worked to fill the horrified silence. My seat was less a dedicated space and more a gap in the benches created by a wooden support beam. Leaning back against it, I did what I could to convey myself to the late Hero.

This is outrageously rude, Griffon remarked, leaning against the same vertical beam and crossing his arms. Bemused, but curious enough to let me finish. Just as before.

In both of the stories I had heard about the Augur the last couple days, first from Griffon and then from the Thracians standing guard outside the Orphic House, a special emphasis had been placed on the chthonic Hero’s appeal. Charming to the point of absurdity. Charming beyond that point, at times. To charm an animal with music was a less likely prospect than charming a man, but not impossible.

Charming the earth, though? Charming sticks and stones so they would avoid his face when thrown at him? That was ridiculous. Utterly absurd.

Entirely Greek.

Aristotle had taught me all that he could, and evidently it had been enough to leave its mark in the foundations of my soul. But I still felt like a foreigner in this culture that was at least nominally a part of me. I still didn’t know enough. I was still grasping, blindly, in the shadows.

I understood intuitively the difference between myself and a man like Gaius. In theory, I knew what it would take to progress through the course of honors, what it would take to see the succession of my Roman soul to its end. It was because of that understanding that I knew that way was lost to me now. Succession was no longer possible, which meant refinement was my only hope. The Greek path to ascension.

What did that entail, though? The more I learned the less I understood. Reason, spirit, and hunger. Principle, passion, and purpose. Discoveries, deeds, and domains. Philosopher. Hero. Tyrant. There was no unified path to heaven if you traveled the Greek way, and the most successful of the culture’s cultivators were considered utterly mad by the standards of even their own people - even their own brothers.

Socrates had advised me to strengthen my body after he thrashed Griffon and I, but was that because the Greek way demanded it or simply to combat the burden my Roman virtue imposed upon me? The Gadfly had warned me not to take my Roman virtue for granted while among Greeks, but he hadn’t offered any specifics as to why. Because he himself didn’t know where one half of me ended and the other began.

I was a Philosopher of the first rank by the standards of a Greek, yet I had stood above the Roman equivalent of that the day the fifth legion fell and Damon Aetos took me into his city. How can I progress one way but not another? What had I done to progress through the Greek Civic realm before I knew I was even a part of it? How did life in the Roman military translate to Greek philosophy? What had I done before? What did I have to do now?

I hadn’t been lying when I promised our Heroic companions that I would do whatever it took to see Carthage destroyed. The Roman way was closed off to me, but every Greek stands alone against the wrath of raging heaven. Whatever was required, I would see it done if it meant I could stand alone in fields of salt and ash. I’d do it if it meant I could drag the stars down from heaven, like Griffon’s father had so casually done, onto the heads of every cursed dog.

But I only vaguely knew what was needed. There was no marked road to follow, especially not for me. There was a suggestion of structure, I could almost see it, but every time I thought I nearly had it something would take me by the shoulders and rattle my brain in my skull. An old man would grab me by the head and leap up a fucking mountain like he was vaulting a rose bush, or the insatiable Young Aristocrat that called me his brother would casually reveal to me a fever dream of his uncles and father burning a ship to make it steadier at sea, fighting dragon spirits with wooden blades, and manifesting a hand of scarlet glory the size of a city to simply… pick up an island.

It wasn’t that the Greeks were stronger than the legions in their prime. Even now, I knew that like I knew that water was wet. It was just that they were so godforsakenly ridiculous about it.

What did I need to do to become a man like Damon Aetos, or the late Tyrant of Tyrants himself? How much of Bakkhos’ strength was a product of the nectar he so jealously hoarded, and how much of it was due to some other absurdity? I had agreed to this errand quest because as far as I could tell, each explanation was as likely as the other.

Who could say how it was a Greek became strong? Certainly not me. What was the difference between a genius and a madman, in a world where man could defy nature's wrath if he was compelling enough about it? What separated a Hero from the souls both above and below them, that they alone could linger centuries after their death in a house built out of repurposed wagons for any baffled Roman or irreverent Greek to wander by and see?

Are we the shadows, Sol?

How much of this path was an illusion? Where did the shadows end and the light begin to shine? How far could I progress off of implication alone? Instinct by itself couldn’t possibly be enough, or else every man would end up a god eventually, but nothing else felt real when I grasped it in my hands.

Maybe I was the man that cast the shadow on the wall of the cave, or maybe I was nothing but the silhouette. If that was the case, why shouldn’t I be able to do something that should’ve been impossible, for no other reason then because it was enthralling?

If the Greek approach was nothing but flash and illusory thunder, it followed that I should be able to change the shape of my shadow if I only adjusted my silhouette and let the light catch it from a different angle. Shift my stance - physical, mental, spiritual. Contort myself until it hurt.

And lo, there upon the wall, something that looks nearly like a lyre is in my shadow’s hands.

I plucked and strummed an ivory lyre that I’d pulled from the shadows, one that I had not put there first or ever seen before, and the sound of it was deceivingly sweet. I put everything I had into its wispy shadow strings, conveying through melody alone the reason why I had come to this place. I put all of my confusion, my uncertainty, and my desperation for clarity into my song, and I willed the chthonic Hero to understand it.

Aristotle had told me once that a song was at times a better conveyance than any spoken words. I had seen enough of his culture to take that sentiment literally now.

I played my last bewildered cord and weathered Griffon’s solitary applause. Looking up, I locked eyes with the Hero Orpheus down on his stage.

He was smiling.

“It seems you have some questions,” he said, because of course he’d understood. He raised his golden lyre to his forehead in a friendly salute and beckoned us down with a voice like molten honey. “Come, friends, and join me on stage. It’s been far too long since I’ve spoken to a raven.”

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