At almost any hour of the day, sometimes even at dusk or after the twilight had faded, on the rocky and sandy beaches of Rhodos could be found a few scampering adolescents, brown and naked but for shifts or lioncloths. Usually they were Avar Altais from the south of the island or the old refugee slums in Lindos, swarthy, oriental-eyed, round-headed, mouths full of curses, sun-gold limbs flashing as they spear-fished in the tidepools or carried makeshift metal detectors in search of lost coins or buried wrecks. She had stolen away as an adolescent from her studies to run with them, laughing and learning their language, their curses and sunny expressions of enthusiasm, musical and harsh at once, so alien on her Hellenized tongue. Her mother had called them “barbarians,” an old word seldom used now. Most of the citizens of the Oikoumenē were barbarians by her mother’s definition.

When Rhita’s breasts had developed, and the shoulders on the beach boys had grown broader, something new had come into their play—a tender roughness. She had almost appreciated the curses thrown at her, half in jest, half as if growled by carnivores wanting her flesh. Had she been less protected, a bit more worldly and less enshrouded by the Hypateion gymnasion’s code of behavior, one of those boys might have been her first lover. The Great Mother knows she had had enough caresses and kisses stolen from her.

She still remembered their jokes, born out of centuries of struggle and desperation, not at all tempered by the tolerance and clime of Rhodos. There were cruel, wild jokes about ill-timed death spoiling great plans, raucous fables about separated families and lost relatives, about herd animals never seen on Rhodos.

Once, she had sat talking with a boy perhaps a year younger than she. He had told her his family’s story, unnumbered centuries tangled up with the lives of other families, other tribes, perhaps even other nations; and she had tried to fit that in to what she knew about the old Rhus-Oikoumenē-Parsa alliances and the extinguishing of the Steppes tribes. In return, he had listened to her formal history with unusual politeness and attention, and then had told her, “That’s what you winners say.” Leaping up, he had brayed at her like an ass, and run across the beach, his bare feet unerringly picking a path on flat sun-heated stones.