The Clay Tablet Of Thales (Η Πηλινή Πλάκα του Θαλής)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the city of Miletus, where the air smelt faintly of brine and wild thyme, and the Aegean whispered secrets against the harbour walls, lived a youth named Endymion. He was neither famous nor wise, nor particularly strong, but he was watchful, and more than anything else, he was curious.

Each morning, he would wander the streets of the city just as the sun crept over the eastern rooftops, carrying with him a satchel of fresh parchment, charcoal sticks, and a single question in his mind.

‘What makes the world what it is?’

He had asked his father once, a carpenter with calloused hands and a simple soul. ‘It is the gods, lad. The gods made it so. Now fetch me that thing close to you’.

Endymion's mind would not sit still. It raced beyond Olympus, past temple columns and mythic tales. He had read of Thales—Miletus’s own sage—who had once dared to suggest that water, not the gods, was the origin of all things. Thales, who measured the stars and pondered the heavens not as divine mysteries, but as orderly movements.

Endymions had long dreamt of discovering something—anything—that might still connect him to the ancient thinker. One late summer evening, that dream shifted into motion.

It was a mason named Delios who first mentioned the ruins. 'Old storage cellar near the theatre’, he had said, wiping dust from his brow. ‘Stone caved in during the rains. Found a few strange items—bowls, old wine jugs, even a bit of script on clay. Could be from the old days’.

Endymion's heart leapt. ‘Script? You mean writing?’

‘Yes, but old. So old the letters look more like marks than words. The clay’s cracked and dry, nearly brittle. It’s sitting in my shed now, if you’ve a mind to see it’.

Endymion was eager to see it. The tablet was half the size of a palm and irregular in shape, the edges chipped like broken bark, yet across its surface ran a neat series of etched symbols—early Ionic, from the time when Thales might still have walked beneath the very sky Endymion now saw.

‘I’ve seen diagrams like this in the temple archives, but this… this is different. There are numbers here. Measurements’, Endymion murmured, tracing a line with his finger.

Delios shrugged. ‘Could be some priest’s list, for all we know’.

Endymion knew better. The moment he touched the tablet, something shifted in him—not in a mystical way, but in the strange, awakening sense that he was holding a whisper from the past. It hummed with quiet knowledge, as though it still carried the breath of its creator.

He returned home that evening unable to sleep. His dreams were full of waves rising from the earth, of stars falling into clay vessels and of water speaking through the cracks of stone.

Endymion sought out the oldest man he knew—an aged Meletic philosopher named Agathinos, who lived alone in a narrow dwelling near the eastern gate.

The old man welcomed Endymion with tea and olives and the same dry wit that had earned him both respect and suspicion amongst Miletus’s more pious folk.

‘So, you believe this belonged to Thales himself?’ Agathinos said after Endymion had shown his the unique tablet.

‘I… I do not know, but the markings—look here—this diagram shows proportions, measurements of rainfall perhaps or tides. The number three appears often—look, in this row—it repeats. That must mean something’.

Agathinos leaned back, eyes half-lidded. ‘Thales believed that water was the archê—the first principle. Not because he thought it sacred, but because he observed the world. Rain fell. Rivers fed crops. All living things needed moisture. He saw not gods, but certain patterns’.

Endymion nodded eagerly. ‘Then this tablet could be a record of those patterns!’

‘Perhaps. Or it could be nothing more than the notes of a student. Either way, it has led you here. That, I would argue is already a revelation. in itself'.

Endymion sat in silence for a moment. Then he asked, hesitantly, ‘Do you believe in To Ena, the One, master Agathinos?’

The old man smiled.

‘I believe that truth is not found in a single answer, but in the clarity of asking. I believe that Meleticism teaches us not what to think, but how to think with grace’.

Endymion bowed his head. ‘Then teach me. I want to learn'.

Thus, began a season of study. Each morning, Endymion would meet Agathinos beneath the shade of an old fig tree near the city’s southern wall, bringing with him the clay tablet, his own notes and a growing thirst for understanding.

‘Thales taught that the world is comprehensible’, Agathinos said one morning. ‘That even the stars can be measured—not worshipped, but known. He believed in reason, Endymion, not merely in stories’.

‘Doesn’t reason lack warmth?’ Endymion asked.

‘Only if it is divorced from humility. Meleticism teaches that reason is a virtue, not a weapon. When you reason with compassion, you are closer to To Ena, the One’.

‘To Ena, the One…’ Endymion whispered. ‘I feel as though I am always approaching it, yet never arriving’.

‘Then you are on the right path.’

They spoke often of To Enas, the One, the primal unity from which all things naturally flow. Endymion would sometimes sit for hours beneath the fig tree, staring at the clay tablet, trying to feel the touch of Thales not as a person, but as a state of mind—an ancient way of seeing.

The weeks passed. Miletus grew quiet in the harvest months, and the sea mists came more often in the morning. One day, whilst attempting to recreate the patterns on the tablet using water and sand, Endymion made a strange discovery.

He had arranged three jars in the proportions carved into the clay: one-third full, one half, and one to the brim. He connected them with thin channels dug in the soil. When he poured water into the highest, the water flowed through in perfect balance—each jar filling to match its design.

‘It’s a measurement of flow. The tablet is a model—a prototype of movement!’ He whispered.

He ran to Agathinos, dragging the jars with him.

The old man inspected them, his brows lifting. ‘Remarkable. You see, Endymion? You have not simply translated the tablet—you have understood it. And more than that, you’ve applied it. That is the heart of the Meletic will: observe, study and reflect upon its meaning’.

Endymion could hardly contain himself. ‘Then I must record this! Share it! Perhaps even teach it!’

Agathinos' smile was tinged with something softer—pride, but caution also.

‘Do so humbly. The greatest lessons are not those we announce from the rooftops, but those we carry inwards, allowing them to shape who we become’.

Winter came with sharp winds and rain that hammered the stone roofs of Miletus. Endymion continued his work, recording his interpretations of the clay tablet and crafting small instruments based on the principles he observed—water balances, pendulums and measuring rods.

Word began to spread. ‘The boy with Thales’s tablet!’ They said.

Some people mocked. Others listened. A few came to learn.

Amongst them was a young girl named Euphemia, whose questions were sharper than his own.

‘Why three measures?’ Why not four? Or five?’ She asked.

‘I believe it is about balance. A triad of motion—too many parts and the flow collapses. Too few, and it lacks distinction', Endymion replied.

‘That sounds poetic. Are you becoming a philosopher or a poet?’ She said, raising her eyebrow.

He laughed. ‘Is there a real difference between them?’

Together they reconstructed more devices, tested more flows. Endymion began to see that the clay tablet was more than an ancient note—it was a map, guiding the mind not only to understand water, but to mimic the balance of existence itself.

It was in early spring, as the first cyclamen bloomed beneath the city’s olive groves, that Agathinos fell ill.

Endymion visited him daily, carrying water and figs, reading to him from the old texts.

‘You have become what you sought. Not a vessel of Thales, but a seeker in your own right', Agathinos rasped one evening.

Endymion gripped his teacher’s hand. ‘I would give the clay tablet to you, if you wished’.

The old man chuckled. ‘Nonsense. The tablet found you, as all wisdom finds its bearer. Promise me only this—continue seeking, but never at the expense of silence. In silence, To Ena speaks’.

Those were the last words Agathinos spoke. He passed that night in his sleep, and the city mourned quietly. Endymion carried the clay tablet to the hill above the fig tree and buried it beneath a stone, wrapped in linen and olive leaves.

As the years passed, Endymion became a teacher, but never called himself such. He taught by sharing, by demonstrating, by listening. He believed, as Agathinos once did, that wisdom grows not from declarations, but from questions. He wrote treatises not on gods, but on balance, on flow, on the harmony between water and thought.

Often, when the sun dipped into the sea, he would walk alone to the fig tree, and sit with closed eyes, listening.

One day, many years later, a child approached him.

‘Master Endymion. Do you believe in To Ena, the One?’ The boy asked with intrigue.

Endymion smiled and looked at the sea and responded. ‘I believe that all things naturally flow from To Ena, the One. That balance is truth, and that somewhere, beneath this very earth, a clay tablet still speaks to those persons who are willing to listen.’

The years turned gently into decades. Endymion grew older, even though his eyes retained the gleam of that curious youth who once wandered the harbour wondering how the world worked. He kept no title, founded no school and accepted no coin for his guidance. Those persons who sought him came not for certainty, but for the chance to think in the company of someone who knew how to listen.

He would often walk the length of the city, pausing to observe how the rain pooled in grooves along the stone-paved roads, how shadows shifted upon marble walls, how children laughed without knowing why. All of it, to him, was philosophy.

‘To understand, one must first love observing. The soul of Meleticism is not in answers, but in attentiveness’, he once told Euphemia, who then was teaching others as he once had.

‘What of knowledge?’ She asked. ‘What of conclusions?’

‘Let them emerge like springs from the hillside. Quietly, and only when the ground is ready’, he replied.

Endymion continued to refine his interpretations of the clay tablet’s markings from memory. His diagrams grew more intricate—measuring ratios of rainfall to crop yields, tracking lunar influence on tides, designing rudimentary instruments to demonstrate equilibrium. Some accused him of impiety, claiming he sought to replace the divine with mechanics, but others—especially the young—saw in his work something far more than sacred: the dignity of seeking truth through reason and virtue.

Amongst his students was a boy named Spyridon, a quiet lad whose speech came slowly but whose mind was keen. One afternoon, whilst sitting beneath the now-weathered fig tree, Spyridon asked: ‘Master Endymion… do you believe the world can ever be known entirely?’

Endymion looked at the sky. The clouds were thin and golden, stretched like threads. ‘I do not, but I believe it can be known enough to make us gentler’, he said.

‘Gentler?’

‘Yes. When we realise how vast the world is—how finely it’s made, how much escapes our grasp—we stop pretending to control it. We begin instead to live in harmony with it. To think with humility’.

The boy nodded slowly. ‘Then To Ena… is not power?’

Endymion smiled. ‘To Ena is unity. It is the source and structure. Not something to wield—but something to reflect’.

In time, the fame of the quiet philosopher of Miletus spread across Ionia. Visitors came not for oracles, but to walk with him, to observe the mechanisms he had designed, to ponder his teachings. A few attempted to purchase his instruments or take wax impressions of his diagrams. He declined most of them.

‘This is not knowledge to own. It is understanding to be lived', he professed.

Still, he agreed to one request—that his observations be compiled. Euphemia took it upon herself to record his teachings, gathering them in a scroll entitled On The Flow Of Being. It contained lessons both practical and reflective, meditations on water, time, thought and virtue. Some pages were mathematical, whilst others poetic.

One passage read: ‘What water does without effort, we must learn with care: to move, to nourish, to yield, to return. To Ena is reflected not in might, but in stillness. Like a clay vessel, we are shaped by the spaces within us’.

Another spoke of the clay tablet itself: ‘The tablet was not wise. It was a fragment or a clue, but through it, I saw the ancient mind of Thales not as a relic, but as a mirror. It is not what we find that changes us—but what we understand from the finding’.

The scroll became quietly treasured. It travelled farther than Endymion ever had—across the Aegean, to Rhodes, to Alexandria and even to distant parts of Attica. Endymion never left Miletus again. He said he had already journeyed far enough within.

One day, in his later years, a delegation arrived from a neighbouring city. Amongst them was a senator, a scholar and a builder. They had heard of the devices Endymion had constructed and wished to employ his principles for the management of their river systems and aqueducts.

‘Your water balances are the most precise we’ve heard of. With them, we could predict floods and store drinking water more efficiently. The city would benefit greatly’, the builder said.

Endymion, seated beneath the fig tree, listened quietly. He nodded as they spoke. ‘You may use the knowledge, if you vow two things', he replied.

‘Name them’, said the senator.

‘First, that it not be gained for profit. This understanding comes from To Ena, the One, and it belongs to all. Second, that the system you create honours balance—not just in its function, but in its purpose. Let it serve rich and poor alike’.

There was silence for a moment. The senator looked at the others, then bowed his head. ‘It shall be as you say'.

Endymion shared the principles, not through parchment or secret formulae, but by walking them through the fields, showing them how flow could be directed gently, how proportion governed motion. It was said that their city prospered for decades afterwards—and that a statue was later built in his honour, although Endymion never saw it.

In the final year of his life, Endymion became even quieter. He would sit longer beneath the fig tree, sometimes with Euphemia, sometimes with Spyridon, sometimes alone. He spoke less of the clay tablet and more of memory.

‘Everything we know is borrowed. Even our thoughts are echoes of those before us. But what we do with them—that is our own’, he told Euphemia one dusky evening.

‘Do you wish the tablet had been preserved?’ She asked.

Endymion shook his head. ‘It served its purpose. It stirred the soul, as all true wisdom does. When it was time, I let it go. We are not meant to cling to symbols forever. We are meant to become what they represent in life’.

When he passed, it was beneath the fig tree, seated upright, eyes gently closed. No cries were heard. No procession was held. Only silence, and the sound of water trickling in the jar beside him.

The people of Miletus gathered not in a temple, but on the hillside, near the fig tree where so many had studied. There they carved a stone, plain and low, with a single inscription: 'Here sat Endymion of Miletus, seeker of flow, teacher of balance, student of To Ena, the One'.

Euphemia took his scroll and buried it beside the stone, next to where the clay tablet had once been placed.

Even though time wore away names and cities and even trees, the story endured. They told of a boy who found a tablet and did not worship it, but understood it.

They told of a teacher who spoke not with fire, but with stillness, and they told of the water that moved through his hands, his thoughts, his determination—always in balance.

The city of Miletus changed, as all cities do. New thinkers rose, new shrines were built, but beneath the soil, just beyond the fig tree’s roots, the clay tablet remained.

Some people say that Thales himself inscribed it in his final years, passing it to a student whose name history never kept.

Others say it was only a fragment of a greater text, long since broken by time, but the tale of Endymion endured.

He became a quiet symbol of the Meletic path: observant, patient, grounded in virtue and guided by the whisper of understanding.

Each spring, when the first cyclamen bloom, some people still gather near the fig tree—not to worship, but to remember.

For the tablet was never just clay. It was a beginning that epitomised the journey of life.

Some say that when the rain falls gently on Miletus, it follows hidden paths—along old stones, through roots and soil—until it reaches the place where Endymion once sat. There, the water pauses, if only for a breath, as if remembering, and those people who sit in silence beneath the fig tree, with open hearts and listening minds, feel it too: not a miracle, not a message, but a presence. For what endures is not the clay, nor the words—but the awareness it awakened.

They say that awareness, once awakened, never truly vanishes. It travels—from teacher to student, from question to insight—like water flowing endlessly through the channels of thought. Endymion's presence remains not in stone or scroll, but in every soul that dares to wonder, to observe, and to walk gently with the present world.

Even now, long after his name has faded from the city stones, those who follow the quiet way remember Endymion not as a master, but as a mirror. They say that to seek with humility is to honour the One, and to live with balance is to become part of it. Children still gather pebbles near the stream, testing flow and form, asking questions with wide eyes, and the fig tree, weathered yet alive, stands as a testament—not to fame or power, but to the silent truth that flows in all things, awaiting only the conscious mind to perceive it.

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