Last Days in Miletus

Whence things have their origin,

Thence also their destruction happens,

According to necessity;

For they give to each other justice and recompense

For their injustice

In conformity with the ordinance of Time.

-Anaximander of Miletus

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Part I:           Wednesday morning

           A languid breeze blew through the courtyard this morning, the scent of fennel and oleander at its back. Anaximander turned over slowly, his ankles swollen again. Torus, his physician, had recommended a poultice of rockrose and lavender, but he always forgot to ask the slaves to make it. He made a mental note not to tell Torus when next he saw him. But, in all likelihood, he’d forget that too. He was getting old, and he was feeling it too. No matter, except he still had important work to do.

           Where was Aetius? He was fond of the boy, but the boy had a stubborn streak. Probably out collecting sea shells on the beach, oblivious to the needs of his master. He had trained him on how to best pleasure him and Aetius was an apt, if indifferent, lover. If he didn’t love his caramel skin and black eyes so feverishly, he told himself, he’d find another boy. Still, training a new boy on pleasuring an old man took a certain effort, a certain amount of time he felt he no longer had.

           Rastus brought him his daily broth, a mixture of olive brine, leeks and anchovies. He generally took it on the veranda, for the view of Tragaia, surrounded by the bluest blue the Aegean could offer, was sublime on a nice fall day like today. “Rastus, fetch Aetius for me, I know not where he is,” Anaximander bellowed. Rastus had, he reflected to himself, about fifty more important things to do, but he read his owner’s mood well enough to know this was not a day to test his master. “Yes, sire, I believe that he went to the village with the cook,” Rastus ventured. “Upon his return, thrash him ten for each half-hour he was gone, and send him to me in the library,” Anaximander rejoined.

           He was working on his latest theory and he felt time squeezing him like an uncaring vise. He would need to finish this work before Rastus coined his dead, decaying eyes and sent him off to Hades! Last night, although his sleep was fitful and chaotic, he dreamt of circles within circles, spinning through space and across time. He saw himself, or someone much like himself, above the spinning of the Earth’s flattened cylinder, surrounded by the purest, most beautiful light imaginable. A light like pure fire, yet without the pulsing and disorder seen in a flame. The source of the light was not apparent, it appeared to be infinite, stretching in all directions, through all time. This light, did it emanate from the Apeiron?

           It was five springs ago, after the almonds in the courtyard had dropped their waning blooms among the courtyard tiles, when he first presented his theory on the Apeiron. Telon, a Phoenician philosopher from Byblos, was the first of many travelers to show up at his lecture. Anaximenes and Pythagoras, perhaps Anaximander’s finest pupils, were arguing amongst themselves when he brought Telon into the room. Both intruders were treated to Pythagoras’ attempt to bully his point, “Menes, you are wrong as usual, for it is only because of  numbers, and especially the first ten, that we understand the order and simplicity of the world.” Although Menes found this posit believable, certainly more believable than some of Pythagoras’ other theories (especially Metampsychosis!), he would not concede the point to the impudent young man. Upon his return to Miletus, Menes had found that Pythagoras’ ego was even bigger than it had been when he last encountered him.

           Later, reflecting upon that day, Anaximander decided that his talk was quite successful. It was a radical theory to most Grecians of the time, but he felt he had backed it with sound reasoning and logic. The audience, comfortably sipping diluted wine and figs in the commodious room, fell silent upon his uttering of these words,

           “The universe was born from an unknowable, unobservable substance known as Apeiron, which I loosely translate to ‘the boundless’ or ‘that which has no limit.’ This Apeiron arose from the primeval chaos, it is older than the Universe itself.”

           He imagined how his deceased teacher, Thales, would have reacted to this theory! Thales, like those before him, had assumed that the universe began with one of the four elements. For Thales, this substance had to be water. Whether it was water or not, to suggest that the germ material was not an element was, amongst philosophers, well, unfathomable.

Part II:          Wednesday, after a late lunch in the courtyard       

           His remembrance of that day was interrupted by Aetius, “Master, I found some amazing shells on the beach which I will use to augment your chiton.” “Never mind, boy, I am going to nap, I am exceedingly tired today. You may rub my ankles with salve until I fall asleep.” Aetius helped his master into his bed and prepared a salve with his strong, youthful hands. After a few minutes of rubbing, Anaximander suddenly said, “Aetius, forget about my ankles, sing to me that song you sang last week, the one about dying.” Aetius, chilled by this haphazard remark, began to sing:

Ενώ ζείτε, λάμψτε δεν έχουν καμία θλίψη καθόλου

η ζωή υπάρχει μόνο για λίγο και ο χρόνος απαιτεί το φόρο.

“While you live, shine, have no grief at all

life exists only for a short while, and time demands its toll.”

           Aetius knew, even before he finished the last stanza, that Anaximander was asleep. “Sleep well, old man, you’ve been so tired lately,” the boy whispered. He put the lyre on its stand, the salve on the table beside the bed. Before leaving, he brushed a lock of Anaximander’s hair away from his head. He arranged Anaximander’s night-chiton so that he might be more comfortable. Aetius moved his own cushion near to the door so that he could watch the afternoon sunlight play across the surface of the sea. He could smell the brine coming off the Aegean. He arranged his shells into patterns until he too fell asleep.

Part III:        Wednesday night

           It was the sound of fishing boats that awoke Aetius. The Sun was setting behind Tragaia, the sky an incredible deep indigo, with touches of pink and orange. Anaximander had not moved from his bed. Aetius cleaned up the room very quietly and then left his master alone.

           Anaximander awoke from his nap, strangely refreshed. The Sun had just set; an onshore breeze blew the muslin curtains back and forth. He paused at the window to watch the night fishermen prepare to work. “Skata,” erupted from his mouth, when, turning to gaze at the door, he noticed himself still sleeping upon the bed. He moved to touch the object, himself! His fingers, even his arms, moved right through his sleeping form, even through the straw-filled bedding. It was at that very moment, when he comprehended his incorporeality, that he felt himself shooting upwards, away from his bedroom, away from his home, into the sky. My Gods, his senses! He could smell every flying insect in the air; he could see, with the vision of a bird, the trajectories of their flights through the air, the dance of life and death. He could smell the molecules of scent arising off the rock rose, pines and holly oaks. There was no fear in him, just a glorious dance that pulled him higher and higher into the darkening sky. Here and there he saw the forms of other humans arising along with him. Other men and women, even children, whose lives had also ended. Looking downward, he could now see the shape of Ionia below him. Here and there, pinpoints of firelight where men grouped together for protection against an uncaring world.

           His eyes were deceiving him! The Earth below, appearing to move ever faster below and away from his feet, resembled a sphere! Years ago, while most men were going about their lives, pushing and pulling to just stay alive, Anaximander had proposed a theory that the Earth was a cylinder, flattened at the top where men lived, three times as wide as it was deep. The Earth, his home, was not a cylinder at all but a massive sphere! If he wasn’t dead already, he felt sure this knowledge would have killed him. He marveled at the landforms, most of which even a geographer such as he, did not recognize. My Gods, how many people lived on those islands and continents below him, each of which was larger than the eastern Mediterranean, his entire world.

           This journey took him higher and higher, now the Moon presented its perfectly spherical shape, a smaller version of the Earth. This force pulling him upward continued to show him just how common spherical objects were in this Universe. He could see Mercury, Venus and Mars, all perfectly spherical, moving in orbits around the Sun! Around the Sun! Now Jupiter, the giant surrounded by dozens of orbiting moons, fell below him. Finally, he rose above Saturn, the most beautiful object he had seen yet, its equator encircled with bands of flickering light and dark.

           He checked himself. He felt no fear that the Earth, his home for sixty-four years, was now just a speck of light, easy to miss in all this splendor. Soon more planets, unknown to his people, arose below him. At least 5 or 6 new planets, all spherical in shape, moved in this remote dance around the Sun. Comets played among them. Time and space seemed to speed up below him, his flight from home exponentially faster and faster as he arose. Soon the shape of stars all around him became visible. Almost all of them were spherical in shape! They were actual objects themselves; most of them surrounded by planets dancing around them in prescribed orbits.

           How wrong he had been when he proposed (years ago) that the stars were simply holes in the firmament that surrounded the Earth, pinpoints emitting light from an unknown but powerful source behind them. He had been so wrong! The stars were themselves behind the Moon and Sun, far, far away. And there were billions of them, numbers so big that they no longer made sense. And finally, the most beautiful objects he would ever experience, came into view: collections of millions of stars, the outer stars revolving around those stars in the hub, the center. The shape of these had spherical shapes imbedded within them, he saw the repeating structure of the Universe now – spheres within spheres, rotating, revolving – the dance of the Universe!

           He was still aware of other humans around him, for many had died that day. Do all dead men and women see this, is this a requirement for death? Is this Heaven? Suddenly something took him away from his reverie; he began to feel a pull to the left. Many felt and followed his lead. Others, their faces masks of terror, were pulled in the opposite direction. Soon, the two groups could not see each other anymore. He quickly surmised the reason: those beings who loved the order and symmetry of the Universe, pulled to the left. Those whose minds found the symmetry too much, too frightening, pulled to the right. Those beings, he deduced, were more comfortable with disorder and decay.

           As he was pulled towards this “heaven,” he wondered what had created all of this, for it was too great to be left to those gods on Olympus. No, this force, this being was much greater! By now time and space had no meaning, he was beyond that. He knew that he was being pulled back in time, for space and time were interconnected, as they always had been. He would finally get to see the creating force. He felt sad for those who had taken the other path. They were lost to this beauty, to this Universe.

           Soon, there was no color, no anything. As he noticed this he heard a sound. A rhythmic beating, no, a pounding, coming from all directions! “BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM”

Dear gods, what was this? He knew that the frequency of the pounding was perfect, unchanging, in fact, unchanged since the beginning of time. And then, suddenly, there it was. A machine, without any form really, just two sides. With each “bam” a beam of what he would have formerly considered “light” was emitted from both sides of the machine. It wasn’t light, it wasn’t really anything that he could name. It simply was.

           He studied the shape of the emission -- first like the sunbeams he would never see again. Then suddenly, so suddenly there was no time unit to describe it, its trajectory changed from a straight line to a pulsing wave. This machine generated waves. These waves formed the shape of the Universe. The Universe was made by a machine! There was no sentience here, there was no reason, no cause, just effect. The old Anaximander would have been frightened to his core by this realization. He was a part of it now. He felt no fear. Why, how, when – these words had no meaning anymore. It simply was; a machine sending out waves of structure, spinning out dualities (yes/no, up/down, bad/good, dark/light, order/disorder) on and on and on and on. For all times, for this machine was older than the Universe itself.

           And he was home.