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“I don’t ‘posit’ anything, Dr. St. John. It says beneath the image, ‘For Astyanax, beloved son of Hector, Prince of Troy.”
“For the dating to be accurate, then early Homo sapiens spoke Ancient Greek.” He turned his back on me and jabbed a finger at the gold Cyrillic written under the image.
“It seemed impossible to me as well.” We had run the dating models a hundred times, but it came up with the same results. This shard of pottery, discovered thousands of miles from the birthplace of our species, was somehow created at the same time other humans were discovering fire.
This image had changed everything. Rather than continue to argue, I moved to the next image. It was a classical painting,Andromache Mourning Hector, 1783.I stared at the prince, dead, his body prostrate, and his wife, the beautiful Andromache, who held their child in her arms as she wept.
“Everything about this conflicts with established,accepted,” he emphasized the word, “classical theories about Greece, Troy, and the ancient world.”
I knew that. “I’m sure the students will challenge me.” It happened at every lecture, every exhibit, and in every paper I wrote. But I stuck to the facts as my proof. The science. The language.
“You should stay if you’re not otherwise engaged,” I went on. “Watch the undergraduates attempt to eviscerate me.”
That brought a smile to the old man’s face. “I shall.” He left his bag on the desk, found a seat at the very front of the room, and settled in. “If you don’t mind. I haven’t seen you lecture.”
I smiled in return. I was used to being challenged and put on the spot. “Be my guest.”
With that, I ignored him and went on with my preparations. In no time, the hall began to fill. My class was at capacity, so when all the seats were taken, but people continued to enter, I frowned.
“Seems as though you have a fan club, Dr. Ophidia.” I could barely make out his voice over the din of undergrads.
I examined the student roster again. There were no auditors, and the dean hadn’t mentioned guests.
There was nothing to do about it now.
I waited until the stream slowed to a trickle and cleared my throat. “Good morning.” I barely raised my voice, but the effect was immediate. The room descended into silence.
“This is Heroes and Heartache. The Intersection of Ancient History and Mythology, and I’m Dr. Leonora Ophidia.”
A rumble filled the room as people shifted in their seats or in their spots on the stairs.
“My class list has eighty students, so I’m not sure all of you are in the right place.” There were definitely averted gazes now. “But since we’re all here, let’s get started.”
I dimmed the lights and put up the first image. It was another eighteenth century painting. Tiny ships dotted the bright blue expanse of sea. Despite the point of view from which it was painted—high above the ocean and Troy—I didn’t feel removed from the action. Instead, an eerie sense of doom filled me. I could almost hear the waves and the gulls, and the voices of the soldiers as the Greek and Spartan ships approached the coast.
“The Trojan War. The face that launched a thousand ships. The Odyssey. The Iliad. For generations, all this has been a myth—”
The heavy door swung open, squealing on its hinges as it was thrown into the wall. I jumped, dropping my remote.
At the door stood a man, though perhapsgiantwas a better term. He froze in the doorway as if shocked by the noise. “My apologies.”
He was nearly as tall as the door, and as wide. It was the first thing I noticed—his size—but next were his eyes. They were as bright a green as I had ever seen, and seemed to blaze out of his face, even in the dim lecture hall. He didn’t hold my stare for long. Instead, he scanned the room for a seat.
His skin was tan, as if he’d returned from a summery spot where the sun shone every day. He wore his brown hair short, but not so short I couldn’t tell it was probably wavy, not unlike mine, if he were to let it grow.
He moved from the door and hesitated.
“You may want to find a comfortable stair,” I told him, attempting to set him at ease if he should be one of my students.
He didn’t so much as crack a smile. Nodding, he strode past me. Up close, I could make out the strength of his jaw, and the way he shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked by. He glanced at me briefly, and a wrinkle appeared between his heavy, dark brows.
In the front row, Dr. St. John cleared his throat.Right.
“Sorry, where were we?” Troy. “Troy. For thousands of years, experts agreed the Trojan War was at worst a myth, and at best, a real event, twisted and dramatized by an ancient storyteller. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century when archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated Hisarlik, in Turkey, that historians began to consider that there might be truth in the stories.” I went on, showing slides of the excavation, and images of the items unearthed. “Many of these relics were stolen. Here is a picture of Schliemann’s wife wearing what he named,Priam’s Treasure. He actually smuggled this artifact out of Turkey, which was par for the course when it came to nineteenth century attitudes.”
“Wasn’t your discovery compared to Schliemann’s?” It was my late arrival who spoke. He wasn’t asking anything that hadn’t been asked before.
“The only thing my excavation had in common with Heinrich Schliemann’s was that they were in Turkey. I worked hand-in-hand with a professor from Istanbul, and all artifacts are property of the Turkish government. Anything that has left the country did so with permission and reams of legally binding agreements. While I may have been the person digging, I was well aware it wasn’t my sandbox.”
