Agamemnon nods, a dismissal, and we turn to go. Iphigenia. A tripping name, the sound of goat hooves on rock, quick, lively, lovely.

He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.

It is the only memory I have of my mother and so golden that I am almost sure I have made it up.

IT TURNED OUT that she did know a little Greek. A few words that her father had picked up and taught her when he heard the army was coming. Mercy was one. Yes and please and what do you want? A father, teaching his daughter how to be a slave.

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

He was utterly still, the type of quiet that I had thought could not belong to humans, a stilling of everything but breath and pulse—like a deer, listening for the hunter’s bow.

You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

There was violence in that room, with so many princes and heroes and kings competing for a single prize, but we knew how to ape civilization.