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