Eudoxos & Tapeinōtos: A Fable

There was — down in the peaceful village where the hens pecked for insects in the grasses in single minded earnest and the spring birds foraged in the roof thatches of the houses for the building of their own — a young mother expecting twins. They were the first of her children and were, she knew with the intimate intuition of motherhood, sons.

She grew concerned about the fate of her children in so cruel a world as this, so she went to consult a wise woman who lived deep in the wood. The cunning woman’s hovel more resembled a hive or a nest than a home. Smoke filtered through the branches that aspired to a roof; there was a tantalizing odor of herbs and applewood smoke. A small dog, with ears too large for its head and the lazy vigilance of a shepherd in a land with no wolves, lay in the sun.

The old woman was without the hovel trimming thyme leaves from their stems, absently singing a little tune to herself.

“You’re here about your boys, then?” said the woman without looking up.

The mother was taken aback.

“Yes,” she stammered. “I am.”

“You worry about bringing them into a world stained with wickedness.”

It was not a question.

“You would know their fates?”

“I,” the young woman said, stiffening her aching back, “would know whether they are to grow to be good men or no. Can you tell me?”

“I can.” The old woman rose and walked into her hovel without another word.

The young mother was confused.

“Well?” the old woman’s voice came from the inner dark. “Are you coming, or not?”

Inside, the hovel was warm and enveloping. The crone was bent over a pot, ladling some broth into a bowl. She hummed to herself.

“Sit! Sit!” she said. “Your time is almost come and I’ll not have you sousing the floor of my parlor!”

The young woman sat dutifully on a stool at the table.

“Now!” the old woman said, the bowl before her and her eyes alight with excitement. “Let us see what we can see!”

She glared into the bowl. She cocked her head to find the proper view. She hm’d and she oh’d. She whistled low and high. She nodded with sage resolution. And then she sat back on her stool in tired contemplation.

“Soup?” she said, suddenly returning to herself and pushing the bowl across the table to the young lady and proffering a spoon.

The young mother was aghast.

“My boys! My precious sons are in that bowl!” she said, quivering.

“Not any more, unless they’re lamb!” the old woman cried with glee, laughing. After her querying raised eyebrow went unanswered, she drew the bowl to herself and ate a spoonful. “One doesn’t come to live in a palace such as this by wasting a perfectly good soup! Ha!”

The young woman, both unsettled and confused by the crone’s behavior, sat while the older woman emptied the bowl with relish and licked it dry, like a jealous cat.

“What did you see?” the young mother ventured.

“Much!” said the crone. “Much did I see, indeed. Of the goodness of the boys you would know? I can settle your heart on that score. Both will be good men. They will make the mistakes all men do but will learn from them. In fact, they make the same mistakes, and from them gain the same wisdom.”

“Oh!” cried the mother. “I can ask for no greater gift than this. You have truly settled my mind.”

“Hm.”

The old woman was silent for a time.

“Have you ever,” the old woman asked, “gone looking for a thimble only to find a needle you’d thought lost and the thimble beside?”

The young woman looked askance at her.

“I don’t mean just that. Have you ever gone searching for a thing and found something you were not looking for along with it?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“I saw more than what you asked in that delicious bowl. And it was delicious. Would you like the recipe? Ah, right! You didn’t taste it. I am a doddering old queen, puttering about my palace. What I tell you is this: I saw more than what you asked. Would you know it?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“I saw the circumstances of their deaths. Would you know these?”

The young mother pondered. What she had heard seemed well, but still: Is this a thing for a mother to know? And yet, if she did know, she might delay the event by some time.

“Yes. I would hear it.” She tried to sound confident in her answer.

“Your sons will die on the same day, and it will be the day they first meet outside your womb.”

The mother knew precisely what she would do. And when the day came and her first son was born he was kissed by his loving mother and rushed into another room by a midwife. When the second came he, too, was kissed by his mother and more lovingly held, for they would soon part and she would never meet him again in this world. They both cried. She told him of her love and passed him to a woman to take him from the village to the city.

The first son was named Eudoxos and raised at home with his father and mother and, as the years passed, with brothers and sisters as well.

The second son was named Tapeinōtos and given to a lady in waiting for the queen in the city, who in her turn took him on as an adopted junior son, for she had already borne several of her own.

Many years passed.

Eudoxos grew to be regarded for his wisdom by the people of the village, ever willing to teach and share his learning and fair in resolving disputes. His consultation was valued beyond gold and his wisdom cherished as the most precious of gifts. As his hair greyed and thinned and his beard grew long and as his pace slowed and his steps came to fall in threes rather than twos he came to be called the wisest of men, a great font of deep understanding and just decision.

One day Eudoxos became tired and knew this fatigue to be not of his body but of his soul. 

His time in this world was drawing to a close.

“My unmet brother,” he thought. “I should think he must feel the same, and I would know this Tapeinōtos, despite what our meeting will bring.”

Thus he resolved to go to the city and meet his brother face to face and to know this counterpart. He gathered his things and said his farewells to the people of the village he’d known his life entire. Eudoxos had never ventured beyond the boundary stone at the crest of the hill, where you could just see the city on a clear day beyond.

Eudoxos knew that he was leaving the green hills and harvest songs of his beloved uplands for the last time. At times the road was craggy with rocks and from behind them came brigands who challenged him, but his name was his passport, for even the brigands had heard of the wisdom of Eudoxos, and knew his kind teaching to be of greater value than the jingle of his purse.

He passed through a wood where the forest creatures spied him curiously from the dark and crossed a bridge over a river far wider than any he’d ever seen or imagined. As he drew near to the city, with every change of the wind the air smelled now like the worst stench he could imagine, and now like close—almost seasoned—air, full and intoxicating.

When he came to stand atop the hill before the city, the walls glinted in the sun and he thought he could see what he thought they called the sea in the thin azure line between the city and the sky. As he came nearer to the city he saw how tall were its walls, how great its towers, and how multitudinous were the poor and the outcast outside its gates. They set their mats in dust, the same tossed up by the feet of men and horses who came and went from the city, and begged in their squalor, each more pitiful than the last and each indistinct, in their crust of filth immiseration.

He could no longer smell the sea, but only the thick corruption of the city before him.

Eudoxos’s heart ached for these men, women and—indeed, yes!—children splayed along the road outside the city gates. He would gladly have taken each and every one into his keeping, if he could. But three-legged he shuffled through them into the city to find his brother, Tapeinōtos.

He was not found among the guard, as Eudoxos had supposed..

Was he found among the merchant class? There was he  neither.

Among the mighty, to whom he had been delivered? His brother was not there.

What was more, every inquiry Eudoxos made was met with scorn and derision. What had Tapeinōtos done to earn such ignominy? Had he blasphemed, or fomented rebellion against his king? Had he fallen in league with some tyrant?

“No,” thought Eudoxos. “My mother was told that Tapeinōtos and I would live our lives making the same mistakes, and while I have made a great many, I am respected by the people of my village. Why do the people of the city so disdain even the name of Tapeinōtos?”

Eudoxos found the Chief Elder of the city and said to him, “Where is my brother Tapeinōtos? I have searched the city in vain and I long to see him.”

The Chief Elder’s face darkened with anger. “Why would any man seek such a one as Tapeinōtos?” he cried.

A crowd began to form.

“The name of Tapeinōtos is a bye-word for error and poor judgement. It is the lowest of names. Shame is ever upon the name of Tapeinōtos, and if you would not have the name of Eudoxos brought so low, you will never speak that name in this city again.”

The crowd became restive.

“I mean not to offend!” Eudoxos said, as much to the crowd as to the Chief Elder. “All I ask is this: Where can I find my brother? Tell me this and I will go in peace.”

The crowd hummed, but from it came a young girl. She approached Eudoxos and, taking his hand, drew him away. As she walked him through the streets—between shops and down blind alleyways, once cutting directly through a butcher’s busy back room—she skipped and hummed a tune absent mindedly, her brown hair bouncing.

“But wait, child,” Eudoxos said, stopping. “I am an old man, and many a league have I travelled to come here. Who are you, child? And where are you taking me.”

“I am taking you to my kingdom, to meet the man you are looking for,” she said.

“But are you not afraid of him? To consort with one held in such low regard by the people of this city?”

“No, he’s always been kind to me,” she said, with a little sing-song in her voice. “And besides, I love all of my subjects.”

Eudoxos was bemused, but he heartened to the little girl, he knew not why.

She skipped off.

“Well?” the little girl said looking back at him down the sun-bright street. “Are you coming or not?”

“Oh, well,” Eudoxos said.

She took his hand and led him off again. The city stank horribly, but the little girl continued to skip and sing catches of little songs and tunes. They sneaked through a sally port and beyond the city walls and soon found the road, embanked with lepers and beggars.

The little girl brought Eudoxos to a low, dark ditch. 

“Good afternoon, Tapeinōtos!” she said.

A duty lump Eudoxos had thought was a pile of gravel turned and took the shape of an old man, the spit of himself.

“My brother!” Eudoxos cried. “Tapeinōtos, my beloved brother! I am Eudoxos.”

The little girl took a dusty pot and ran off to a nearby brook.

“I have a brother?” said Tapeinōtos. “Well, quite clearly I do, as it’s your face I see in the little brook where I wash, when I can. I have a brother! I am whole again. What can you tell me brother? I am weary of this life.”

“I was told that you and I would be the same, error for error, in life,” Euxdoxos said. “Much surprised am I, Tapeinōtos, to discover that you are laid so low.”
“Equal in error, did you say?”

The little girl returned and put the pot, now filled with water and some herbs she had found, on a little fire she had made. She trimmed thyme leaves into it.

“Indeed, Tapeinōtos!” said Eudoxos, from the depth of his being. “A wise woman told her that we would be alike in error, but equally alike in wisdom from the errors we made. This is why I am considered wise in my village.”

“Wise, you say?” Tapeinōtos said. “Did you once upset an apple cart to entertain your friends?”

“I did!” said Eudoxos.

“Were you punished?”

“I was! And in later years I have counseled many a child not to harm the property of others for petty entertainment.”

“Ah!” he said. “I am still known as Tapeinōtos the Applecart Tosser.”

“This is true, sadly,” said the little girl, stirring her broth.

“Have you ever stolen bread to feed your family?” asked Tapeinōtos. “For I did so many years ago and I am known to this day as Tapeinōtos the Thief.”

“I did so and was punished,” Eudoxos said. “But many a work of charity have I done unto men compelled to steal in the way I once had, and I am said to be wise for it.”

“I have done the same, brother Eudoxos! Have you ever, when a mindless youth, blasphemed?”

“I have,” Eudoxos said.

The little girl tasted her soup.

“And have you thus lived in infamy all your days, even though you repented of your sin and asked the Divine for forgiveness?” asked Tapeinōtos.

“I have not, brother Tapeinōtos. I have repented, as you have, and been likewise reconciled to the Divine. I have been, thus reconciled, allowed to teach the young of my most grievous faults in hope that they will not fall victim to the same traps as I have.”

“Oh, brother Eudoxos,” said Tapeinōtos. “You have lived in a land of wonder. I have had every error, every fault, written indelibly upon my name. I have studied the nature of these errors and taken the nature of each into my heart. I have endeavored to, such as I can as a mere man, never repeat them. I have grown in wisdom. But poverty and privation are my lot, scorn and disdain my bread and water.”

“Brave Tapeinōtos,” said Eudoxos. “You have been ill used by your fellow man. Today is the day we die, and I would die in the arms of no other.”

So Eudoxos laid down next to Tapeinōtos in the ditch and held him in his arms. They embraced as brothers, and so died.

The little girl, her meal finished, licked her bowl like a cat and walked to the road and stood in its center. She looked to the city, and she looked away from the city, to the green hills and harvest songs of the uplands, and thence away she walked.

And though Eudoxos and Tapeinōtos both sowed error and reaped wisdom, neither could understand how the one could be praised and the other humbled.