by Jill Weber
Once upon a time, in a small town on the Peloponnesia penninsula,
there lived a philosopher who came from a well to do family.
He was well educated, but, being a younger son, he inherited no property.
This didn't worry The Philospher , for he was intelligent and he soon
put his education to good use by becoming a philosopher and a teacher. He
was good at his job, and soon had many students from wealthy families. He
took a wife, also from a well to do family, and had several children by her.
Their life could have been one of unremarkable comfort, except for one small
flaw in The Philospher.
He had a sharp tongue. He was intelligent about things of the
physical universe, but he was abyssmally ignorant about other people. He
also had no patience for anyone less intelligent than he, which was, in his
opinion, everybody. And he wasn't shy about letting anybody, and everybody,
know how he felt.
The Philospher gradually went from snide comments to insults that
bordered on slander. Then his comments went *over* the border, costing him
dearly in court. It also cost him students, forcing him to take on less well
paying customers.
Still, this would not have been a serious problem for The Philospher,
if he had been able to learn from his mistakes. He and his wife had plenty
of money, and even with less money coming in, they could have had a
comfortable life. They did have a comfortable life, until the day The
Philospher went from slander to blasphemy. That was the last straw as far
as his neighbors were concerned. The authorities confiscated all of his money
and The Philospher and his family were banished with nothing more than they
could carry in a small hand cart.
Things could have been worse, and The Philospher soon made them so.
His sharp tongue kept him from acquiring any job of worth, and soon his
family was reduce to poverty. They wound up in a filthy little hovel outside
Athens.
Various sicknesses plagued the area, as is common among ghettos
(though that term wasn't in use in that time and place). The Scholar's
youngest son almost lost an eye to an infection. The other children had
harder fates.
The Philospher saw his family die, one by one. He railed against the
fate that had brought them to this, never once admitting, even to himself,
that it was his own actions that had brought them to this. He continued his
cursing the world and his filthy living conditions until he, too, succumbed
to disease.
His youngest son survived, somehow. He grew up alone and bitter, for
he did not understand that his father's actions had brought this fate upon
them. All Mekhanikles knew was that his family had been killed by humans...
and filth.
And he swore revenge on both.