A Voice From the Past

 

This work is a translation of a writing discovered during the excavation of an ancient, and previously unsuspected, city, the ruins of which were partially revealed in the desert by severe and freak storm. This work was written in what was believed at first to be an unknown language inscribed in a form of writing never seen before. Cryptographers revealed however that if the symbols were transcribed as letters of the Roman alphabet, the text appeared to have been written in an early form of an existing language isolate.
This not surprisingly, led to it being dismissed as a hoax until the latest advances in carbon dating provided a date of twenty thousand years BCE. This dating is still disputed, it being far earlier than any civilisation that we know of, and I make no claim for its accuracy. I present it here more as a curiosity than as evidence of a long forgotten civilisation, and I do so with the warning that the content runs counter to modern concepts and beliefs.
Much of what is written is most likely to cause offence to many, especially those sections that refer to slavery and the use of boys, some of an exceedingly young age, for sexual pleasure.
I would strongly urge that present day conventions, morals and laws are stringently observed, and that no young eyes should be permitted to read.

Ivor Sukwell, Editor.

 

I am comfortable; I have no complaints. True enough that my dwelling is smaller and more modest than others I have had in my long life, but a man of eighty does not need much, and three slaves are now all I own, they being sufficient to serve my needs, and my dwelling small enough for three to maintain.

Yes, I own slaves; does that shock you? Or perhaps you are surprised that I find three sufficient? Much will depend, I suppose, on the customs and laws of wherever it is you live, or when it is that you live, as I do not write these words for my people and time, but for enquiring minds in some distant future.

Perhaps your mind is confused that I write on purple vellum in words of gold, but that is not a matter of any substance. I write on vellum because that survives for generation after generation, and the purple, though I confess it is rich and rather grand, is not quite the Imperial colour, and I write in gold because gold does not fade or discolour and my words will be clear for centuries to come.

But let me return to my slaves, and one now is bringing me my morning repast; a cup of freshly squeezed juice of oranges and curls of batter, fried deep in olive oil and coated with honey – an indulgence a man of eighty may be permitted.

His hair is not unlike the colour of my writing and his eyes the blue of the morning sky. The unblemished cheeks of his face carry a pink hint of dawn and his wide, full lips are like a freshly blooming rose.

He wears only a simple kirtle of the finest white linen that reaches down his firm legs just to where knee begins to curve into thigh and his skin matches the honey of my breakfast.

He is a delight to my old eyes and smiles at me as he places my repast on a simple table of cedar wood. He is comfortable with his slavery and comfortable also with his beauty and the knowledge that his beauty is appreciated.

He has seen fifteen summers and is the oldest of my three slaves and I have owned him for nine years.

`What?' I can imagine the wheels of your mind turning, `A man of eighty years who owns three slaves and the oldest but fifteen? For what purpose does he own them? Who prepares his food for him, cleans after him, cuts his toenails for him?'

Let me put your mind at rest; I eat but simply now, and Mato, that is the name of my oldest slave, can make a salad and grill a fish as well as any, and I no longer entertain, host lavish dinners or symposiums and have no need for a slave trained in the arts of creating fancy food.

As for cleaning behind me, that is no great task; you may imagine that a man of eighty years does not rush from point to point, but moves with care from and to the places that he likes to be. And for my toenails, and indeed my bath, Sympo, who is eleven now, performs those tasks most admirably.

`What of the third?' I hear you ask, though I hear your question only in my mind for you are not yet born and will not be for many years, but I have aroused your curiosity have I not?

Doro is but six summers old and I purchased him but a month ago, bought him from that very same market where I was sold so many years before.

Mato waits while I taste the crisp batter he has prepared for me, and comes to stand beside me when I nod my approval. He stands close so while I eat with my left hand, my right can go around him, under his kirtle to savour the smoothness of his honey skin and the soft wonder that makes him boy.

`Ah!' I hear you condemn me, `Your slaves are young and boys and you sodomise them,' and I know your thoughts would be less antagonistic towards me if I owned girl slaves instead of boys. `Imagine,' you say to yourself, `The horrors that boy must have suffered, forced, because he was a slave to endure the abuses inflicted on him by his wicked owner,' but would you say that if you saw how Mato leans his head against my shoulder, smiling with content that I am enjoying both him and the food he has made for me?

Mato is all boy, proud of his firm young body, and proud also that his body gives pleasure to the old man who owns him. He is fit and healthy, runs and jumps and swims with youthful enjoyment and can hit the target with an arrow at a hundred paces, though as yet he has not the strength to draw the horn bow to its full; he is a boy still, not yet a man. Why should he not take pleasure in his youth?

But I do not oblige my ancient fingers to write this so you may read and learn of a slave boy, nor of Sympo and Doro either, though doubtless I will write of them as I am an old man and when a thought comes to the mind of an old man it must be seized upon the instant for if it is not it will disappear the instant after and never come again.

Sympo is here now, his duty to search the words I write and find the mistakes my age has made. Sometimes now I forget the proper spelling of a word and Sympo finds them and guides me to correct them.

You are surprised that a slave boy of eleven can read and knows the proper spelling of words? Why should he not? He also is a boy of some beauty, slight and slender, just beginning the turning from boy to youth, but more now with the thoughts of youth than boy, his mind ahead of his body.

Where Mato has hair of gold Sympo, has black, though blacker by art than nature. I know he uses a dye upon it to make it the colour of a lake at midnight, and draws black around his eyes also to make them larger than they are, and for this I do not admonish him, nor do so that he deepens the rose of his lips. This he does to increase my desire for him, and should a boy be admonished and punished for that?

His skin is not the honey of Mato, but nearer to freshly fallen snow, a curiosity in a land where sun shines bright and strong, and a white kirtle would not look good upon him and Sympo has a strong desire to look good and chooses to make his clothing match his hair. He wears it shorter than does Mato; his legs have as yet less shape to them, so more leg must he expose to make it clear that he does have legs and not two sticks growing from his bottom as Doro has.

He places a small, white hand upon my shoulder and points with the other to something I have written, reminding me that this is to be about myself and not wander into an old man's rambling about the boys he owns.

"Indeed," I tell him, seeing where he was pointing, "I was sold in that very same market and at the age that Doro is."

"Is that why you bought him?" Sympo asks perceptively, as indeed, the circumstances were not dissimilar.

I remember little of my early days; a few images of moments but no solid connection between them. I picture my father as a bearded man always reading scrolls and making notes, my mother as some ethereal figure who floated in and out of my existence at intervals, a swirling mass of silks and perfumes, and I remember a tutor who beat me often to make me learn faster and who dragged me once from a scroll I was attempting to read and thrashed me because it was in a language he had not begun to teach me.

I remember very clearly the fear and terror of the storm that drove the ship I was on with my bearded father onto the cruel rocks around our coast; how my father showed more care and concern for his scrolls than he did for me as waves broke over our ship and the slaves at the oars screamed with fear and pain as those oars snapped like dried twigs.

I do not remember how, at the age of six, the sea rejected me and threw me up on the shore, or how I came to be standing on an auction block, waiting to be sold. I do remember that no-body seemed to want to buy me, and why should anyone wish to buy a ragged sea-rejected boy of six? What possible use could such a one be?

I think I remember the slave seller saying he would throw me back into the sea if no-one bought me, but that may be me adding some colour and fantasy at some later point, to make myself believe that Fate intervened and saved me from a watery death.

Fate did intervene and a passing man stopped and bought me, and soon enough I learned of one use a boy of six can be.

Sympo grins lewdly as he reads these words, turning his head slightly so I do not miss his grin; he also I obtained when he was six and he knows well enough the use I write of.

The one who bought me owned many slaves and six were boys he purchased for but one purpose, and that was to give him pleasure and satisfy his needs, and to those slaves was I added, no duty other than to provide the use of my mouth when it was required. In this I was different from his other boy slaves, but they were all older than I and my owner took his pleasure in them in a different opening in their bodies.

You may perhaps be able to imagine my surprise when I was first acquainted with my task. Never had my eyes seen such a thing; indeed so different was it from the tiny piece of limp gristle that grew between my legs I had no understanding that it was, in essence the same, but grown to man's full size.

"Suck my cock," was the order I was given, and I remember now most clearly the confusion in my young mind. `Suck' was a word I knew and knew the meaning of, but `cock' was a word I did not know and had never heard and I stared at the hard thing in front of my face and wondered what it was that I must suck.

You must understand that I was but six years old and had been a slave for but one day only and was in great fear of doing the wrong thing and of the punishment that would surely follow if I did.

"Suck it," my owner commanded a second time, adding. "What do you think I bought you for?" There being but one thing only that I could see to take in my mouth, I leaned forward with open mouth and prayed that I had not got it wrong.

"You're making this up," Sympo says as he reads the passage, seeking for mistakes, "I was six when you bought me and I knew what a cock is."

"Your education had followed a different path from mine," I tell him, "And I swear what I write is true and I invent nothing."

Sympo snorts, he does not believe me, and why should he? He knew well enough when he was put up for sale the purpose for which he would be bought, but his upbringing was different from mine and he had learned different things than I.

My duty was not onerous, nor did I find it in any way unpleasant, though the taste of what my owner's cock spurted in my mouth was strong and somewhat bitter, and in texture not unlike an uncooked egg, it was easy enough to swallow and I performed my duty as well as I was able.

It was my only duty and one I was not called upon to perform each day, my owner preferring the bodies of the older boys he kept for pleasure and he did not use their mouths.

Fate had taken a liking to me, for not only was I infrequently called upon, but I spent my free days and time with my owner's other boys, and from them I learned much.

The six other boys he owned came each from a different race; one was black and another had unusual eyes that were shaped like almonds and slanted slightly upwards, two were brown in colour and one of them had a bit missing from his cock (yes, I had learned to call it such) and two were of pale skin though not the same people as one had hair the colour of ripe wheat and the other darker. My interest in them came not from the differences in their looks, but from the different languages that they spoke.

True we all learned the language of slaves and used that language to converse with each other, but when I found that each spoke a different tongue, I begged them all to teach me and offered payment of my mouth for them if they would do so.

They had no need for me to make that offer for they were all older and bigger than I and could have put my mouth to use by force had they so wished, but they were kind boys and agreed to my offer, a willing mouth providing greater satisfaction than a compelled one, and in a year there were six new languages I could speak.

If this surprises you, I beg you to recall that I wrote earlier of how a tutor thrashed me for making attempt to read a scroll in a language I had not been taught. A desire to learn new things seems to have been always strong within me.

"Yes, Sympo," I sigh with affection, well knowing what my boy slave is bursting to ask, "But that is not a difficult skill to master for a boy who enjoys his lessons, and I enjoyed mine as much as you did yours."

Sympo grins; he is eleven and cannot help the carnal thoughts that constantly invade his brain, what boy that age can? It is in the nature of the human male to think often of carnality and a pleasure to a man's old age to see those thoughts expressed so clearly on a boy's face and in the twinkle of his eyes.

"Turn your attention to my writing," I tell Sypmo, "Already I have twice had need to correct a word myself."

"I was wondering which of those boys you most enjoyed making your payment to," Sympo replies, the grin wider on his lips. He knows I will not punish him for his lapse; he knows he must always speak what is in his mind, and speak without constraint or artifice as that is the way to learn, and in just this little moment he has learned that curiosity must wait its turn behind duty.

An old man also has a duty towards the boys who give him pleasure, and it matters not if that boy is a slave or the son of a king, and my duty to Sympo is to expand his mind. Curiosity is important; we learn far more from curiosity than ever could be learned from a zealous tutor who believes knowledge can be beaten into boys.

I put down my pen and invite Sypmo close that I may put an arm about him. He does not flinch from the embrace of an old man, indeed, his grin widens more instead of fading.

"I am sure you enjoy every moment of your practice with Mato," I say and Sympo, being eleven, sniggers on my shoulder, "But I acquired you five years ago when you were six, and there was an older boy than Mato. Can you remember his name? Can you say for certain which of them you enjoyed most your lessons with?"

"No," Sympo admits after some little thought, "But I can remember that I always enjoyed my lessons."

"At least you must know if you liked the flavour of that boy better or not than Mato? All boys taste slightly different, and you have only three to pick from."

"I was only six," Sympo protests, "And when I was eight, you sold him and bought another to replace him. I do remember that he had a bigger cock," Sympo grins, no doubt hoping to distract me.

"And yet you expect me to remember clearly boys from more than seventy years ago and you cannot remember even just five years past?"

"I suppose I just enjoyed my lessons so much I did not think to consider different flavours," Sympo understands that he has just learned another lesson, that memory is an unreliable tool, and that we forget those things that did not seem important.

I ruffle Sympo's black hair, knowing this will annoy him; he spends much time brushing and combing his hair, adding curls to make himself look yet more desirable, and he frowns at me, showing his displeasure that I have so carelessly spoiled his morning efforts. The boy is vain and all too aware that at eleven, he is losing the appeal of boyhood and has not yet grown sufficient to replace that with the charms of early youth and so has turned to artifice in hope to keep my desire for him strong.

I have sympathy for him; it cannot be easy for a boy to be a slave for an old man. Were I thirty years younger I would have satisfied both his needs and mine, but it is many years now since I have been able to rise sufficient for that, and though Mato ensures his physical needs are met, I know it troubles his mind that he cannot provide his owner with all the pleasures and delights a boy slave should provide.

He has some understanding that I do not need to rut with him in order to desire him, but he needs another year or two to comprehend why I desire him for his mind even more than for his body.

I pick up again my pen to return to my tale, and Sympo concentrates now on the words I write, surreptitiously attempting to return some order to his hair.

My owner tired of me after some two years; in truth he had only bought me on a whim, a passing fancy to try the mouth of a young boy, but had used me little, finding he much preferred young youths, though even those he bought and sold frequently, always desiring something new in his bed.

He gave me as a gift to a friend who took a fancy to my mouth and to whom he owed a favour, and once again Fate played her part as my new owner was the Keeper of the city library, and though he liked my mouth and used it frequently, he did so from need more than desire as books and scrolls were his abiding passion.

He kept no other boys, and, being as he was subject to most random bursts of need, kept me always close should such a need arise and thus was I able to peruse and read the books and scrolls he kept and so feed my voracious mind.

That owner found it amusing that I spent my time looking at books and scrolls he was unaware that I could read, and as long as I showed no signs of damaging them he allowed me my pastime without concern, until and I do remember this most clearly, I discovered a scroll that had words written upon it but words in a writing I did not recognise.

That they were words I had no doubt but words written not in proper letters but in strange squiggles, though a few seemed like letters, but placed the wrong way round or upside down.

I traced a finger across them, attempting to make sense, and my owner saw me do so and hurried across, fearing I was causing damage.

"Are these words?" I asked and was told they were and that they were written in an old language that now only a few men could read.

"Once," he said, forgetting for a moment he was talking to a boy slave, "The people who wrote this were the greatest civilisation on the world," and he intoned a line or two.

"What does it mean?" I asked him and was told a boy slave had no need for such knowledge.

You may recall that before I had used my willing mouth to learn new languages, and had done that by some instinct, but now I was rising close to ten and had some understanding that a boy could use words to obtain what he wants if he chooses those words with care.

There would be no success for me if I asked my owner to translate some words for me to satisfy my curiosity; I would be told I was a boy slave and a boy slave's duties did not include the ability to read a forgotten language, but if I behaved as a boy slave who knows he has only one duty to perform and concealed my curiosity by hiding my real intentions behind a common boy slave's words, I might gain some success.

"If I were your boy slave and you my owner in those days," I asked, "How would you have said, 'Suck my cock'?" As this was all he ever said to me when the need for that was upon him, that or `Use your mouth, boy,' my owner found my question amusing and promptly said the words for both of his instructions and even wrote them for me on a clay tablet, and then said them again in the language of the city and so I was obliged to perform that duty before I could study the clay.

From those seven simple words I was, though it took me much time, able to work out the strange squiggles of writing, and added reading of a language to the eight I could already speak.

Fate then intervened again and I was once more sold. My librarian owner finding himself in need of money and I being his only disposable asset, sold me to another, but for a most unusual purpose or so I thought at first.

This owner bought me not for my mouth, or even for that other place, which as I was now coming towards eleven, could be used without causing too much harm, but to be the scapegoat for his son.

Beatings are deemed by many to be an essential part of education for boys, and I believe that for many tutors, are the only aspect of their employment that they find agreeable and they are most diligent in their search for errors and ever eager are they to thrash proper understanding of rhetoric and logic into their pupils. A well-beaten boy is an educated boy, and true it is that much of my own early learning had been enhanced by the sting of my tutor's rod.

True also that I had learned much since and not been beaten for it, my education enhanced by rods of a different nature.

Sympo sniggers as his finger traces over these words and I fix him with a glare that serves only to increase his snigger.

"A carrot moves a donkey better than a stick," he quotes the ancient proverb, thinking to be clever, but I return his attention to his task by making meaningless threat to deny him Mato's carrot if he returns not at once to his task.

He rewards me with a mock look of horror and turns his face back to my writing before, he hopes, I see the grin he is unable to restrain.

Tutors may be educated men but they are held in no esteem, and indeed many are slaves, and it would be contrary to social order if such persons were to beat the sons of the important and wealthy, and so a slave boy is obtained to accompany such boys in their lessons and receive all beatings in his stead. Such is the purpose of a scapegoat and for such had I now been bought.

The boy I had been bought for was thirteen, and a spoiled brat of exceptional stupidity but with sufficient native cunning to convince his father that he needed scapegoat younger than himself and not the much older slave boy who had been whipped for him before.

I discovered at once the true reason for this, as at the first opportunity, he bid me use my mouth. I had been performing this boy slave duty for more than four years by now and had developed some not inconsiderable skill in the task, and had discovered when serving my second owner that whilst I found this duty to be an acceptable one when performed for an owner, it was one I found great enjoyment in when performing it for a boy.

Naturally, Helio being the stupid boy he was, provided his tutor with many reasons to beat me and I set my mind to discovering a way by which I would occasionally be able to eat my meals sitting down. I could not use my mouth for this as Helio was already using it on a daily basis and being a slave I could not deny it to him, but Helio was thirteen and though his mind was that of a six year old, his body was definitely thirteen, and I knew that soon he would find a need to use more than just my mouth.

I knew I could not wait till he realised he desired to enter me in that other place, for if I did then he would use that as freely as he did my mouth, and as a slave I could not deny him.

"I know you must have desire to enter me from the rear," I said to him one day when he had been particularly stupid and I would be unable to sit for days, "But that cannot happen if my arse is ever like this."

I lifted my kirtle and displayed my battered and striped rear, "It can only ever be my mouth unless you get your answers right."

Truly Helio was so stupid that he had not yet made connection between the desires of his body and the use my rear could be put to until that moment when I displayed my arse and then it was like a revelation to him and entering me there became his great obsession.

For me the next three years became years of some considerable pleasure and also learning. Helio as a free citizen, would have to become a soldier as all free men are obliged to be, but the status of his family meant that he would be an officer and not a common soldier, and by the time he was twenty five he would be a general, a rank which his stupidity made him most fitted for.

His studies, therefore were mostly of past battles lost and won, and I, though Helio did not, added military strategy and tactics to my store of knowledge.

Surprisingly considering his innate stupidity, Helio did have one natural skill and for that I was most grateful. I cannot believe it was through any thought, for thinking was not a characteristic of Helio, but he was quite sublime in the use of his cock, and because he wished to use it as often as he could, and was only able to so do if my arse had not been thrashed, he permitted me to solve his problems and do his lessons for him.

His father was so delighted with the progress he had made with his tutor that he gave that man a large reward and declared that Helio should enter the army at sixteen instead of eighteen, and may even rise to general by twenty one.

That I contributed not a little to the military disasters the city later suffered did not escape me, and indeed, those disasters were to play no small part in my rise to fortune.

And so, as I turned thirteen, Helio had no further use for me, going as he did into the army where he could learn how to send real men to real deaths rather than the pretended ones of the battles he mimicked under my instruction for the satisfaction of his tutor.

So it was that I came to be sold yet again and once more Fate found an owner for me.

At thirteen I was at the start of those few years in life where a no longer boy but not yet youth is of great appeal to certain men, and I found myself to be the property of one named Ephebophilos, a philosopher of considerable note in the city.

Philosophers, as you undoubtedly know, are men who think. In the city that was all they did; they had thoughts most times wild and fanciful but occasionally of some practical benefit. Of course such thoughts they could do nothing but repeat and hope some others who had natures more practical could translate into actions or constructions.

Ephebophilos was such a one and had once speculated that it would be of some benefit if water, instead of being fetched in buckets by slaves, could be conveyed into houses by a system of pipes and a thing he named a `tap' fitted at the end of the pipe in a house to be turned on only when water was required so the house was not flooded by a constant flow of water.

Needless to say he had no idea how such a thing could be constructed, but a city carpenter and another who was a metal smith, made drawings of his thoughts and created this for their own dwellings and as it all worked, soon became very rich from creating similar for others.

Philosophers did no work and lived by being invited to lunches and dinner by the wealthy who they entertained for free, apart from the food, by regaling hosts and guests with wild fancies, and it was during such visits to my owner's house that he became acquainted with my existence.

The apparent conversion of Helio from idiot to aspiring military genius, though it fooled many did not so Ephebophilos, and when my owner expressed his intention to sell me, that philosopher begged to be allowed to take me, and, as being seen to be a patron of such a one was regarded in the city as a sign of great wealth and status, my owner gifted me to him.

Ephebophilos was a man of some affectations, and owning now a slave boy he chose to indulge himself in his favourite one and spoke to me in a language I did not understand.

It was a most pleasing sounding language, soft and lilting without the hard consonants of the city tongue, and I had a distant memory that a sound or two may be not unlike the few words of that ancient language I had learned to read but not speak, that my librarian owner had spoken.

Feeling very daring, but also knowing that if it was not the same language then Ephebophilos would not understand the words, I said them as I believed I remembered the sound of them.

Ephebophilos stared at me in amazement and spoke some more, but, of course, I could not understand him, and said that those were the only words I had any idea how to speak but that I could read the language when I saw it written.

"Do you know the meaning of the words you spoke?" he asked me and I replied that I did and said that I had said, 'Suck my cock' and `Use your mouth, boy,' and he grabbed me by the shoulders, held me firm in his grasp and said, in the city language, that he had every intention of doing the former and would, at times, appreciate the latter.

I believed I had misunderstood him or he me because I had not yet been owned by any who wished to suck my cock, but Ephebophilos assured me that I was not mistaken.

The language he told me, was Old Greek, and that the people who had spoken it were great admirers of young youths, and that the Old Greek word for such a one was `ephebe', and as he shared that Old Greek liking for young youths, he amused himself by taking the name of `Ephebophilos' the 'philos' meaning `lover of'.

"So am I your slave boy or your boy slave?" I dared to ask and was told that I was a little of the former and a lot of the latter, and that pleased me much for slave boys are set to work and labour and boy slaves are used only for their owner's pleasures. I said that I would be his willing boy slave in any manner he wished, yet as it had before, my mind sought to make a bargain for my use,  and offered the pleasures that were his right to take if he would teach me how to think.

"And to speak Old Greek," he grinned at me, "For speaking Old Greek is the best way to have men think you know much more than you do."

He then bid me to divest myself of my kirtle as the Old Greeks liked their ephebes best when they were unclothed.

 

These last paragraphs, referring as they do to `Old Greek', are often highlighted as being evidence of forgery and hoax, as the words used and the homo-erotic culture of the classical Greek city states are of a much later date than the one given by scientific investigation of the document.

As a mere editor, I will refrain from giving an opinion and only encourage that the work be read to its end before the reader passes judgement.

 

isukwell@hotmail.co.uk