Of Samnos of Thebes

by Ssi Ruuk25

 

May 3rd

I will include the most incredible tale in my journal. I was walking upon the beach near my home when I noticed some exposed carved stone that I had never noticed before, and apparently was unearthed during the last storm. When I investigated further, I found it to be the tomb of King Haros of Knossos, king of Crete in the mid 8th century B.C.E. The inscriptions were tough for me to read, but I managed. I immediately rushed home, and grabbed my camera, a flashlight, and a strong steel bar we had lying around in our front yard. I took several pictures of the inscribed stone, then, after having found the edges of the stones, used the bar as a lever to open the ancient vault. It was very deep, and very dark. I realized I would need rope to descend into the tomb, so I rushed back home, found some sturdy rope, and returned. I tied it to a nearby boulder that seemed fairly steady, and dropped the other end into the tomb. I climbed down, flashlight and camera in hand, and easily made it into the tomb with out trouble. My first impressions of the tomb, before I lit my flashlight was of the AGE of the place. The air smelled as though it hadn’t been opened in ages, which it probably hadn’t. Then I turned on my flashlight. To the one side was a raised pedesatl with the skeleton of a man, most likely of King Haros. The walls were well decarated, though there appeared to be some damage to a few portions of the wall. Then I turned around. There, on a match pedestal was a woman, in the flesh. How could this have been? I will explain later. Looking at the markings on the pedistal, the woman was proclaimed to be Queen Enara! Incredible. I went to try to touch the flesh of this seemingly young, beautiful, and possibly even intact woman. When I did, her eyes opened, and she turned to look at me! She started speaking as she sat up. At first I did not understand, but then my Grandfather’s lessons in ancient Greek kicked into high gear. She was speaking ancient Greek! I told her to wait until we got to the surface to talk, and thus led her up to the surface. Incredibly, she did not need much in the way of assistance. When I got her home, while my parents were away, as you might recall, for the whole of the first three weeks of May. Then she told me her story. I am, due to the circumstances, inclined to agree with her. But I will leave the final judgement for everyone else to decide. I have transcribed below, very nearly, Enara’s story:

"I was born Samnos of Thebes. I showed intelligence early, and studied a new course of studies: philosophy. At the same time, I began my induction into the priesthood. After I had completed my scholarly studies, I decided that I would travel Greece, teaching, studying, and preaching the ways of the gods and of man. For many years, this worked fairly smoothly for me. I enjoyed the travel greatly. Then I came upon the town of Paras. It was in the far north of Greece, beyond the borders of the emerging renaissance in the south. As I entered the town, there descended upon me a dark pall, a fear and agony that was completely alien unto my general attitude. As I encountered the villagers, they seemed very frightened. They spoke of a dark lord who lived in the fortress that was very visible to the west of the town. From some I heard stories of his possessing great power. From all I heard of a ruthless, hateful spirit that dwelt within him that did not belong on this Earth. So I made the descision to confront him. I was no novice with the sword, and in fact was fairly good with it. Thus I strode up to the dark lord’s fortress, and demanded of his frightened servants that I be allowed to see him. I did this even thought the pall that existed in the town was only more intense here. When we came face to face, I was impressed with him. He seemed endowed with great wisdom and strength. But he also had a great darkness to him. The impudent philospoher-priest that I was, I challenged him, challenged his activities in the nearby town. So we dueled. My sword against his. And I won. But of course, he was only toying with me. He hadn’t expected to lose the sword duel, so he resorted to his dark magiks. He froze me in the position I was in. He proceded to gloat about his power. Then he laid down my curse. I was to become the ailing young Queen Enara, wife of King Haros of Crete. I would life a long, healthful life, and would only die when he allowed me to. Then he cast the spell. I felt myself drawn away from Paras, from my body, and to Knossos, and into the body of Queen Enara. At first I was very sick. However, within a month, I had recovered. Then things became worse. As if becoming a fragile woman wasn’t enough, when I tried to explain myself, I was condemned as crazy, a lunacy supposedly caused by the recent disease. I do not know how Enara had been treated by Haros before I came to inherit her body. However, once I was in its possession, and in possession of its health, he treated me horribly. He beat me often, forced me to retain silence at all time when in public unless absolutely necessary, and raped me whenever he so felt. Thus it went, for three months. But Haros was an old king, and he died on the thirteenth week of my residence in Enara’s body. I thought that that would be the end. But it wasn’t. The custom of Crete I now know all too well is too, whenever the kings dies, the queen, regardless of age or health, is buried with him. Such was my fate, and the dark lord, though he himself is most likely many, many centuries in his grave, the dark lord cursed me with immortality. He appeared in the tomb to do so. I simply gave up. Then you opened the tomb and rescued me."

We had a long descussion of ancient Greece. She has so much information. I might fill a thousand notebooks. Enara, or Samnos as she prefers, is amazed with even the simplest of technology. How exciting is this!?!

May 6

Samnos is withdrawing from me. She had been most cooperative over the past few days, but has now withdrawn into a shell of her own. It is sad, all that could be learned will be lost. I will try talking to her again this evening, at dinner. I will not bore you with all my notes. They will stay in another notebook. My efforts must now be focused on keeping Samnos as a conduit of information. It is key that I learn everything I can.

May 8

Samnos has written for me, in ancient Greek of course!, a text of her impressions of the modern age. I will keep it here. The translation is below:

Translated from Ancient Greek, Text by Samnos of Thebes:

"What a year this is. Machines that fly, machines that move without pull or push from beast or man. Machines to handle cooking and cleaning. Everything is a machine! From a standpoint of progress, this society is incredible. And though they are yet incapable of the ability of the Dark Lord to do such things as have been done to me, they are not far off. I find it all very remarkable. However, everyone seems obsessed with things. They all want this thing or that thing. Philipi himself has more wants than an aristocrat of my age. They do not focus enough on the human element. There are few places where one is taken care of for the balance of one’s life free of any charge except the taxes you pay during the productive period of one’s life, which is so much longer than I remember it. And the people of this ‘modern age’ have the money to do so. Yet they do not, they instead buy luxury after luxury. It is incredulous. Who needs to be able to reach another man in less than an hour, or even a day? And yet communication is possible in seconds. While governement may benefit greatly from such communication, it can do the general populace no good. The ‘modern’ world, with all it’s wonders and its amazing science, is not necessarily better."

I have to disagree with her. She is used to a different time and a different culture. The truth is that our society has evolved to be the way it is for a reason. Yes, we are focused on "things," but buy buying and buying for ourselves, we create a gradual, general, and much more steady and guaranteed upward trend in living standards. Samnos has also asked me to research his "Dark Lord." I will, but I do not see what will come of it.

May 10

Samnos has told me her ultimate goal, and it is outrageous. She wants to commit suicide! Outrageous. She gave me the following reasons. One, that being a woman is below her, so she wishes to end that portion of her life as quickly as possible. And two, she does not want to live forever. I think that I would very gladly trade places with her if I could, but I can’t. She keeps insisting that immortality is not all it would appear to be. However, she won’t cooperate unless I am actively looking into it, and she made me promise not to decieve her, so I won’t. I have begun searching for anyway to counteract the dark lord’s spell. In the meantime, Samnos has become much more productive. Notebooks are again filling themselves up with the littlest of effort. There is so much to learn!

May 12

I believe I found a cure for Samnos’s immortality, if it can be called that. It was buried in one of my father’s old books on ancient magic. Sad that the cure should be so near when Smanos is being so helpful. I have filled seven notebooks with condensed material on everything Samnos is willing to tell me. It is wonderful, but it must come to an end soon. I can not conceal the fact from Samnos long that I have found a cure for his immortality.

May 13

Tomorrow Samnos will be cured of her immortality. We had a debate on the merits of immortality. I argued that being immortal allows you to divest yourself of your various fears of death, and that you are given a longer time to accomplish all that you want. Samnos talked shortly but well, and has started me to think. Her arguements are as follows. One, you would outlive all your friends and family, and thus be left alone in the world with no one to love or be loved by. And two, as the times passed you by, you would lose more and more connection with the world around you, until you understood nothing of the world and it understood nothing of you. She also spoke of his being cursed to remain in the female form. That the higher expectations of fashion, image, behavior and such as well as greater maintenance than what a male body requires makes it impossible for all but the strongest of men to live as, act as, and be as a woman. That his form is a curse, on par with if not higher than her immortality. I told him of the immortality cure. I will administer it to him tomorrow.

May 21

Samnos of Thebes, in the cursed body of Enara of Knossos is dead, after twenty-eight centuries of life. This journal and my notebooks are all that remains of her legacy. I administered the cure on the 14th, and after that, though we continued our discussions, she became older and weaker with each passing moment. I now agree with Samnos was right about immortality. It is not meant for mankind. We disagreed until the end about the value of women. His society just indoctrinated him too well for me to work any magic in the little over two weeks we had. And he finally agreed that to an extent, a material culture as such now exists, has some value. In the end, he became very ancient, very fragile. I think, with her passing, I have lost a dear friend. I include below her last words. She led a brave life of ideals. I think that if we all agreed on at least similar ideals and were to live by them as she did, the world would be a much better place.

The Last Words of Samnos of Thebes in the Cursed Body of Enara of Crete, Translated from Ancient Greek

"I remember the sun on my back, walking the roads of Attica in those early days. The Athens you have described to me was but a small and insignificant village with a fort in it. It was charming though. I believe no man was meant to see all that I have seen. Perhaps materialism is for the best at this point, but wasn’t practical or right during what you call the classical period and what I call home. Each man is born into a system of social beliefs. No man should out-live those beliefs to the point that I have. The nice and regular turnover of generations allows us to change as things around us change. If we were all to live forever, nothing would ever change. That is why man is mortal, so that we amy change and thus be able to handle whatever the gods may see fit to confront us, the men of Earth, with. Change is key. Change is what makes us human, and what defines us. Remember that, Philipi, remember it well. Do remember. We should all remember things that we knew when we were young, when we were innocent. We would be better for it." - ( Philipi - Samnos kept mumbling for sometime before he passed away, but these were her last intelligible words. I hope that you can, like me, come by some wisdom in these words. After she passed on, I buried her in a grave near the shore near my home. I plan to erect a grave. It will, I think, have the following epitaph, "She lived so that we should know what is is to be human.")

Author’s Note - I hope you will excuse this story it’s oddities and its lite quality of narrative. It came out as a single thought, and I tried to capture it all but became very tired while doing so. The TG element is also even less than my two other stories, which do not center the story on the TG. Forgive me my trespasses.

 

 

 

*********************************************
© 2002 by SsiRuuk25. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.