The Logos: The Meletic Testament (Chapter 19 The Betrayal)
Lorient Montaner
đź“ś Chapter 19: The Betrayal
1. In the waning light of Asterion’s memory as a mortal man, the air within our chamber grew oppressively still, as though the very breath of the world had paused in anticipation of a rupture that none of us dared name.
2. He had entrusted his most precious scrolls to Kallias, the youngest amongst our circle of loyal students, whose eyes shimmered with a restless ambition that Asterion, in his wisdom, had chosen to overlook.
3. Asterion, ever the sceptic and philosopher, professed no allegiance to gods, spirits, or sacred rites, but held fast to the purity of reason and the unflinching pursuit of truth.
4. His teachings were not cloaked in mysticism or divine revelation, but forged in the crucible of logic, stripped of ornament, and sharpened like a blade against the illusions of the age.
5. We, his students, had sworn a solemn oath to guard his writings, to shield them from the encroaching tide of zealotry that threatened to drown all dissent beneath the banners of faith.
6. The Christians, newly emboldened by their faith, the Gnostics with their cryptic cosmologies, and the Pagans clinging to fading gods—all saw in Asterion’s philosophy a danger to their fragile certainties.
7. Rome itself, bloated with power and sanctimony, had begun to sniff out ideas that refused to kneel, and parchment had become as perilous as sword or flame.
8. Kallias knew this well; he understood the peril, the oath, and the weight of the trust placed upon him—but understanding is not the same as honour.
9. When Asterion’s final breath slipped into silence, the sanctity of our covenant seemed to dissolve with it, leaving behind only the cold residue of ambition.
10. I watched Kallias not with sorrow, but with suspicion, for his grief was too measured, too rehearsed, and his gaze lingered not on the man but on the scrolls.
11. He remained by the body longer than any of us, not to mourn the passing of a master, but to calculate the value of what now lay within his grasp.
12. The scrolls—those fragile vessels of radical thought—were bound in goatskin and sealed with wax, untouched by fire or faith, and yet more dangerous than either.
13. Asterion had warned us often—Ideas are hunted more fiercely than men, for they cannot be chained, only corrupted.
14. And in Kallias, I saw not a mere guardian to entrust the written scrolls of Asterion that were kept, but the first agent of that corruption.
15. Before the sun had risen over the marble rooftops of the city, Kallias had vanished, scrolls in hand, his footsteps silent and his intentions darker than the dawn.
16. I followed him, not out of loyalty or hope, but out of dread, for I feared what he might do with the knowledge entrusted to him.
17. Through winding alleyways and beneath the arches of imperial corridors, I traced his path to the home of one of the prominent bishop of Athens, where the scent of incense masked the stench of compromise.
18. There, beneath the looming shadow of the night, he offered the scrolls not to scholars or seekers, but to the bishop himself, whose robes were heavy with power and whose eyes gleamed with conquest.
19. The bishop received him with open arms, not as a penitent or a pilgrim, but as a traitor bearing forbidden fruit, ripe for distortion.
20. I witnessed the exchange—no coin passed between them, no blood was spilled, but the betrayal was etched in silence and sealed with a nod.
21. Kallias had handed over the very scrolls Asterion had sworn must never fall into the hands of his enemies, for they contained truths too sharp for dogma to endure.
22. Scrolls that dissected the soul, denied the divine, and unravelled the myths upon which empires or religions were built and sustained.
23. The bishop smiled, and in that smile I saw the death not only of Asterion’s legacy, but of the fragile hope that reason might yet survive the age.
24. I returned to the chamber where Asterion’s body lay, and the air was colder than before—not from death, but from the absence of honour.
25. Kallias had not merely betrayed a man; he had betrayed a mind, a philosophy, and a future that now lay buried beneath ecclesiastical ambition.
26. In Rome, minds are crucified more subtly than bodies, and parchment burns slower than flesh, but the ashes are no less final.
27. The scrolls would be copied, twisted, and buried beneath layers of doctrine, their clarity drowned in ritual and incense.
28. Asterion’s voice, once so precise and piercing, would be muffled by the chants of those people who feared what they could not refute.
29. His ideas would be repurposed, diluted, and weaponised against the very truths they once illuminated.
30. And I, Heromenes, the last witness to this betrayal, would be left to chronicle not the fall of a man, but the slow and deliberate murder of a truth too pure for empire.
31. The city stirred as dawn broke, but within me there was no light—only the weight of what had been lost, and the bitter knowledge that it had been surrendered, not stolen.
32. Kallias, once the most eager of our circle of students, had become the architect of our undoing, and I could not help but wonder whether ambition had always lain dormant beneath his reverence.
33. He had spoken often of Rome’s grandeur, of the power that pulsed through its veins, and even though Asterion had warned against such intoxication, the warning had clearly gone unheard.
34. The scrolls, now in the hands of those individuals who feared their contents, would not be preserved—they would be dissected, reinterpreted, and buried beneath layers of theological varnish.
35. I imagined the bishop’s scribes hunched over the parchment, their quills dripping with ink and intent, reshaping Asterion’s words into palatable fragments for the faithful to obey. I thought how Socrates, Plato and Aristotle's philosophies were manipulated.
36. What had once been a challenge to dogma would become its servant, twisted into footnotes for sermons and weapons for conversion.
37. Asterion had written not to provoke, but to confront falsehoods, and now his confrontations would be dulled into aphorisms, stripped of their edge and urgency.
38. I wandered the streets of the city, searching for remnants of our circle, but most had scattered, fearful of the rising tide of our enemies.
39. Those students that remained loyal to Asterion, spoke in whispers, their eyes darting like hunted animals, for even association with Asterion had become a liability.
40. The Empire had begun its transformation—not through conquest, but through creed—and dissent was now heresy, punishable not by argument but by exile or flame.
41. I returned to the chamber once more, and there I found the remnants of our life: ink-stained tables, half-burnt candles, and the lingering scent of old parchment.
42. Asterion’s body had been taken afterwards, buried without ceremony as was his wish.
43. I lit a single candle in his memory, not as a ritual, but as a symbol of the light he had tried to kindle in a world growing darker by the hour.
44. Kallias had not returned, nor did I expect him to—he had crossed a threshold that no apology could undo.
45. I heard rumours that he had been granted a position within the bishop’s court, a reward for his betrayal, cloaked in robes and rhetoric.
46. He now walked amongst those who preached eternal salvation, whilst carrying the guilt of having extinguished a voice that sought only understanding. He sold his soul for the luxury of coins and reputation.
47. I wondered whether he slept soundly, or whether Asterion’s words haunted him in the quiet moments between prayer and power.
48. But guilt, I knew, is a luxury reserved for those individuals who still value truth, and I feared Kallias had traded that currency for influence.
49. The scrolls, once our inspirational charge, were now relics of a philosophy too dangerous to be left untouched, and too valuable to be destroyed outright.
50. Rome would not burn them—they would absorb them, digest them, and regurgitate them as doctrine, hollowed of meaning.
51. Asterion had taught us that ideas must remain free, unbound by altar or throne, and now his own had been shackled by both.
52. I began to write—not to preserve, but to resist—for if the scrolls could not be saved, then perhaps their betrayal could be remembered.
53. My ink became my rebellion, each word a wound carved into the narrative Rome sought to rewrite.
54. I wrote of Kallias, not as a villain, but as a warning—that even the brightest minds may falter when tempted by proximity to power.
55. I wrote of Asterion, not as a martyr, but as a man who dared to think freely in a time when freedom was a threat.
56. And I wrote of myself, not as a hero, but as a witness—one who saw the truth fall, not by force, but by betrayal.
57. The city grew louder with each passing day, its temples swelling with converts, its streets echoing with hymns.
58. But beneath the surface, I saw the cracks—the questions that could not be answered, the doubts that lingered like shadows.
59. Asterion’s ideas, though buried, had not died—they whispered through the minds of those who still dared to think.
60. And I knew that even in betrayal, truth has a way of surviving, if only in fragments and echoes.
61. I began to gather what remained—notes, letters, fragments of discourse—and hid them in places no bishop would think to search.
62. The catacombs beneath the city, the abandoned libraries of the old quarter, the forgotten alcoves of ruined temples—they became my sanctuaries.
63. There, I preserved what I could, not for glory, but for the possibility that one day, someone might seek what had been lost.
64. I did not know whether such a day would come, but I knew that silence was the final betrayal, and I refused to be complicit.
65. Kallias had betrayed Asterion once—I would not betray him again by forgetting his legacy and philosophy.
66. The Empire would march on, its banners raised, its doctrines enforced, but beneath its splendour, the seeds of doubt had already been sown.
67. And doubt, Asterion had said, is the beginning of wisdom, although it is often mistaken for rebellion.
68. I clung to that thought as the city changed around me, as friends vanished, and as the scrolls became myths.
69. I became a ghost amongst the living, a keeper of forbidden memory, and even though my name would be forgotten by the majority, my task would endure with the minority.
70. For betrayal may silence a voice, but it cannot erase the echo—and Asterion’s echo, I vowed, would never fade.
71. The days grew longer, and with each passing hour, the city seemed to forget the man who had once dared to speak without reverence, without fear, and without the crutch of divinity.
72. Asterion’s name, once spoken with cautious admiration in the halls of learning, was now uttered only in hushed tones, or not at all, as if memory itself had become a dangerous indulgence.
73. The scrolls he had written before his death—those uncompromising treatises on ethics, ontology, perception, metaphysics and other themes—were now being reshaped into tools of persuasion, stripped of their original intent.
74. I heard whispers that fragments of his work had been cited in sermons, twisted to support doctrines he would have scorned, his words bent into praise for the very gods he had denied.
75. It was not destruction that had claimed his legacy, but distortion—a slower, more insidious death, where truth is not burnt but bent until it no longer recognises itself.
76. Kallias, now robed in ecclesiastical finery, had become a voice of authority, his betrayal rewarded with influence and immunity.
77. He spoke of unity, of divine order, of the necessity of faith, and those persons who listened saw only a man of conviction, not the coward who had bartered truth for favour.
78. I watched him once from afar, standing as he was preaching to a crowd that hung on his every word, unaware of the scrolls hidden beneath his robes.
79. He had become what Asterion had warned us against—a philosopher turned corruptor, a thinker turned propagandist, a man who no longer questioned but commanded.
80. And yet, I could not hate him entirely, for hatred is too simple a response to betrayal; it lacks the complexity that such a wound deserves.
81. Instead, I felt a deep and abiding pity, not only for Asterion, but for all those individuals who would never know the clarity he had offered.
82. The Empire was changing, and with it, the very nature of truth—no longer something to be discovered, but something to be declared.
83. The threat of exiling philosophy loomed on the horizon, and I feared that what remained of philosophical enquiry would be drowned beneath religious creeds and canon.
84. Asterion had once said —When truth becomes a matter of decree, philosophy dies, and dogma reigns in its place like a victor on the battlefield.
85. Those words echoed in my mind as I wandered the libraries, now emptied of dissenting texts, their shelves filled with sanctioned volumes and approved interpretations.
86. The scribes worked tirelessly, not to preserve knowledge, but to curate it, to ensure that only the acceptable versions of reality remained.
87. I found one of Asterion’s scrolls in a monastery archive, its title changed, its content altered, its author uncredited—a ghost of its former self.
88. I copied it by hand, restoring what I could from memory, and hid it beneath the floorboards of my dwelling, alongside other fragments I had salvaged.
89. Each scroll became a relic of resistance, a testament to the idea that truth, though buried, could still be exhumed.
90. I began to teach in secret, gathering a few trusted minds, sharing Asterion’s ideas not as doctrine, but as questions—always questions.
91. We met in silence, in cellars, catacombs and ruined temples, away from the eyes of the faithful foes, and there we spoke of ethics without gods, of reason without revelation.
92. It was dangerous, of course, but danger is the natural companion of thought in times of certainty.
93. One of my students, a young woman named Lysandra, asked me once why Asterion had never written of divinity, even to refute it.
94. I told her that to Asterion, divinity was not an enemy—it was a distraction, a veil that obscured the real questions of existence in life.
95. He did not seek to destroy gods, but to render them irrelevant, to show that morality, meaning, and truth could stand without their presence. I taught her the Meletic way of the truth.
96. Lysandra nodded, and in her eyes I saw the same fire that had once burnt in Kallias, even though hers was tempered by humility.
97. I feared for her, as I feared for all who dared to think freely, for the Empire had grown intolerant of ambiguity, and demanded allegiance not only in action, but in thought.
98. The Christians had become the new architects of faith with their followers, their theology woven into practice, their bishops fiery as their monks.
99. Rome, once a haven for many gods and many voices, had become a monolith, its diversity sacrificed for unity, its curiosity replaced by certainty.
100. And in that certainty, there was no room for Asterion, nor for those philosophers who followed his path.
101. I wrote more fervently now, not only to preserve, but to provoke, to challenge the narrative that had begun to calcify around us.
102. I wrote of the betrayal, not as a singular act, but as a symptom of a larger disease—the fear of thought, the hatred of nuance.
103. Kallias was merely its vessel, a man who had succumbed to the seduction of simplicity, and in doing so, had become its champion.
104. I wondered whether he remembered our nights of debate, our shared astonishment at Asterion’s clarity, our youthful belief that ideas could change the world.
105. Perhaps he did, and perhaps that memory haunted him—but if so, he buried it beneath robes and ritual, as he had buried the scrolls.
106. I saw him once more, years later, at a public disputation, where he denounced heresy with eloquence and fire, his voice ringing through the hall like a bell of judgment.
107. He spoke of truth as revelation, of wisdom as obedience, and I knew then that the man I had once called brother was gone.
108. In his place stood a priest, polished and powerful, but hollow—a vessel filled not with thought, but with doctrine.
109. I left the hall before he finished, for I could not bear to hear Asterion’s language twisted into chains.
110. And as I walked through the streets of Rome, beneath statues of emperors and saints, I whispered to myself the words of our master:—Let no man own truth, for it belongs to none and speaks to all.
111. The days that followed were marked by silence—not the silence of peace, but the silence of fear, of minds retreating into themselves.
112. Lysandra did not come to our next gathering. Nor the one after. I feared she had been discovered, or worse, persuaded.
113. Persuasion had become the Empire’s preferred weapon—more elegant than chains, more enduring than fire.
114. They did not burn our scrolls in the streets; they rewrote them. They did not jail our bodies; they colonised our minds.
115. I received a letter, unsigned, written in a hand I recognised but could not name. It read only: —They know.
116.I burnt it, not out of panic, but out of ritual. Fire, at least, was honest. It destroyed without pretence.
117. The cellar where we met grew colder, emptier. The voices that once filled it with debate now echoed only in memory.
118. I began to speak aloud to the shadows, reciting Asterion’s aphorisms as if invoking a vanished god.
119. —The mind is a republic, and tyranny begins when one thought rules unopposed.
120. I then wrote those words on parchment and left them in the marketplace, tucked between loaves of bread and amphorae of wine.
121. Some were found and discarded. Others were copied. One was nailed to the door of a church.
122. That one caused a stir. The bishop called it blasphemy. The baker called it poetry. I called it hope.
123. But hope is a fragile thing, and Rome had grown skilled in crushing it beneath the weight of certainty.
124. One evening, as I returned from the archives, I found my dwelling ransacked. The floorboards torn up. The scrolls gone.
125. No guards waited. No accusations were made. The silence was the punishment. The absence was the warning.
126. I knew then that I had become a ghost in my own city—seen but not acknowledged, present but already erased.
127. I wandered the Forum, listening to the tales of mythology then replaced by Christian martyrs, who had been immortalised.
128. I thought of Asterion, as I stood before a statue—There is no divinity in marble, but there is wisdom in the hands that built that statue.
129. His voice was clear and unwavering. Mine now unsteady, not with doubt, but with weariness.
130. I found Lysandra again, in a convent outside the city. She wore the robes of the faithful Christians, but her eyes betrayed her.
131. We spoke in whispers, beneath a fig tree, where even the wind seemed to listen.
132. She told me she had not abandoned the cause, only changed her armour
—To survive, one must sometimes wear the enemy’s colours.
133. I did not know whether to admire her or mourn her. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
134. She gave me a scroll, hidden beneath a psalter. It was Asterion’s final treatise, one I had thought lost.
135. Its title: 'On the Tyranny of Certainty'. Its first line: 'To believe without question is to die while breathing'.
136. I wept, not for the words, but for the man who had dared to write them. For the world that had refused to read them.
137. I copied the scroll by candlelight, each stroke a prayer to reason, each word a rebellion.
138. I sent copies to Alexandria, to Antioch, to Carthage—cities where thought still flickered, however faintly.
139. Some were intercepted. Others arrived. One was quoted in a debate by a young scholar who did not know its origin.
140. That was enough. Asterion lived, not in name, but in thought. And thought, once seeded, grows in silence.
141. Kallias sent me a letter. It was brief, formal, and cold. Cease it. You endanger what remains—it said.
142. I did not reply. There are some conversations that must remain unfinished and best to be spoken in person.
143. Instead, I wrote a new treatise, titled 'On Betrayal.' It began: 'To betray truth is to betray oneself, for we are made of questions'.
144. I did not sign it. I left it in the library of the Senate, tucked between histories of conquest and laws of empire.
145. Perhaps one day, a curious mind will find it. Perhaps they will read it. Perhaps they will ask.
146. And in asking, they will honour Asterion afterwards—not with temples, but with thought.
147. For that is the true legacy of a philosopher—not the preservation of his name, but the continuation of his questions.
148. Rome may silence voices, but it cannot silence wonder or the minds of philosophy.
149. And as long as wonder lives amongst us presently, so too does resistance and knowledge.
150. So I write. Not to be remembered, but to remind the world of a man who once lived named Asterion.
151. It was in the old Senate hall, beneath the fading frescoes of Jupiter and Mars, that I saw him again—Kallias, robed in ecclesiastical splendour, his face carved by years of certainty.
152. He stood alone, reading from a scroll, lips moving silently, as if rehearsing truth like the acts from a theatre.
153. I stepped forth, my footsteps echoing across the marble, and he looked up—not startled, but wary, like a man who had long expected this reckoning.
154. Heromenes, I wondered when you would come—he said in a calm but cunning voice.
155. I’ve come not to exact mere vengeance. You owe me the truth, if nothing else—I replied.
156. He nodded, and for a moment, the priest vanished, and the philosopher returned—a flicker, brief and brittle.
157. You think I betrayed him. You think I betrayed you, but I preserved what I could—he said.
158. —You preserved nothing but your ego. You embalmed him. You turned his living thought into relic for the luxury of coins.
159. He sighed—Rome was changing. The gods were dying. The people needed certainty. Asterion offered questions. I offered answers. Christianity was the answer.
160. —You offered obedience, and called it wisdom. You achieved nothing with your betrayal, except to use the disguise of Christianity as your mask'.
161. He looked away, as if to hide his guilt before me. He knew that I saw beneath his disguise and betrayal.
162. You think I had a choice, but choices are illusions when survival is at stake—he said.
163. I said to him —Asterion chose truth over survival. And in doing so, he lived more fully than you ever will. Unlike you, he died for his principles.
164. His jaw tightened—He died a forgotten man that no one except you and others will remember in the decades to come.
165. No. He died remembered by those people who matter. And feared by those who pretend to forget—I interjected.
166. Kallias stepped closer—You speak as if purity were a virtue, but purity is brittle. It breaks. I bent so I would not.
167. You bent so far you became unrecognisable. You did not survive—you transformed—I answered.
168. He paused, then whispered—I still hear his voice. In dreams. In silence. It accuses me.
169. —Then you are not lost. Only buried. And buried things can be unearthed in the end.
170. He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw visible tears—not of guilt, but of exhaustion.
171. I did what I thought was right. I feared the darkness. I feared irrelevance—he said.
172. You feared freedom. Because freedom demands courage. And courage demands solitude—I told him.
173. He turned away—What would you have me do now? Renounce it all? Tear down the altar I built?
174.No. But speak. Speak truth again. Even if it costs you. Especially if it costs you now—I said.
175. He was completely silent and puzzled. The hall seemed to hold its breath with every moment passed.
176. I cannot be Asterion. I am too stained already—he professed.
177. Then be Kallias. But be the Kallias who once asked questions, not the one who answers without thought—I said.
178. He looked at me, and for a moment, I saw the boy I had once debated under moonlight, eyes alight with wonder.
179. Perhaps. But I lived in reality. And in that reality, I must either be someone or be nobody.
180. I tossed him some coins that fell to the floor in front of him then said—Here is the only reality that you will truly ever know in life.
181. And I left him there, beneath the gaze of falsehood, hoping that somewhere within the robes and rituals, a philosopher still breathed.
182. The man that stood before me was not the companion of my youth nor the adversary of my later years any longer, but as a living embodiment of what philosophy forfeits when it surrenders to power and greed.
183. His gaze, once filled with restless curiosity, now held the cold clarity of a man who had traded his loyalty for servitude to a god and to a demigod.
184. And in that gaze, I had seen the death of enquiry—the quiet extinguishing of the flame Asterion had spent his life tending.
185. I confronted him not with rhetoric or reproach, but with the fragile thread of memory, hoping that the shared past might still stir something uncorrupted within him.
186. I remembered our nights beneath the stars conversing with Asterion, of the scrolls we devoured and debated, of the laughter that once accompanied our pursuit of the truth.
187. But he had already crossed the threshold into certainty, and there is no bridge that spans the chasm between belief and doubt once it has been sealed by conviction.
188. Faith had become his deceit, and within it, philosophy was no longer a companion but a captive, bound and silenced.
189. When he turned away from philosophy, it was not with anger or regret, but with the serene indifference of one who believes himself absolved of further questioning.
190. And I, recognising the finality of that moment, did not pursue him, for some departures are not meant to be reversed.
191. In the days that followed, I wandered through the city like a relic misplaced in time, watching as the symbols of empire adorned sanctuaries that once welcomed debate.
192. The streets, once alive with the hum of disputation and the clash of ideas, now echoed only with the repetition of doctrine and the rhythm of ritual.
193. Asterion’s teachings, once whispered in courtyards and inscribed in margins, were now condemned as heresy, their parchments seized, their readers silenced.
194. But I carried his words not in scrolls or codices, but etched into the architecture of my mind, preserved in the quiet chambers of memory.
195. And so I began to write—not to persuade the masses or challenge the authorities, but to bear witness to a truth that refused to die.
196. This testament was not a manifesto, nor a defence, but a final act of testimony to a philosophy that had shaped my soul and defied the age.
197. I knew well the peril of naming ideas that had been exiled, for in naming them, one invites the blade as much as the debate. The inner circle which included Zagreus, Sosibios, Polybios, Thalia and myself remained committed to the philosophy of Meleticism and to Asterion our teacher.
198. And it was in the shadow of that knowledge that Kallias met his end—not in the dignity of a forum or the sanctuary of a library, but in the forgotten alley behind a lone statue.
199. The zealot who struck did not speak, for his blade was his creed, and in its arc Kallias would meet his fate.
200. As his blood mingled with the dust of the street as he was dying, he thought of the betrayal to Asterion. It was coincidence then that his face would be surrounded by coins, as he laid on to ground.
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