The Sword Of Nikandros (Η Σπάθη του Νικάνδρου)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the sunlit hills beyond Thebes, where cypress trees cast long shadows over ancient stones and the soil tasted of iron and thyme, there lived a soldier named Nikandros. He was not young, nor was he old—but carried the bearing of one who had lived many lives across battlefields attested. His eyes, dark as tarnished bronze, held a certain depth that spoke not just of war, but of thought.

He had served many lords. He had raised his spear for honour, for revenge, for land, for order, yet none of these left him whole. In time, he grew weary of names and banners, but not still of the blade.

One spring, as war once more stirred in the peninsula of Peloponnese like a serpent disturbed from sleep, a gift came to Nikandros.

It was delivered by a hooded figure at dawn—wrapped in cloth woven with symbols neither Hellenic nor Persian. The figure said only: ‘This sword does not dull. It does not break, but take care—what it reveals, you must bear its secrets’.

Before Nikandros could speak, the figure was gone, and only the soft chirr of crickets remained.

He unwrapped the blade. It gleamed with a silver-white sheen, although no sun yet touched it. The edge felt eternal beneath his fingers. The hilt bore no emblem, no inscription—only a faint etching of concentric circles, like ripples on a still pond.

Nikandros held it aloft and whispered to himself, 'You shall be my answer to fate’.

He named it Asterion, the unwavering star.

In the battles that followed, the sword earned its worthy repute. It cut through mail as though it were silk. It split shields and turned spears to splinters. Warriors began to whisper of the man with the unbreaking sword, and foes hesitated at the sight of him. Nikandros did not gloat, but each victory renewed the belief that the sword had been sent by divine destiny, yet, something unnerving began to occur.

When he cleaned the blade after battle, the stains—blood, sweat and soot—would not fade completely. Although he scoured with water from the river and cloth from his own cloak, shadows remained on the surface—faint, but present.

‘Strange’, he muttered, squinting at the steel. ‘You have no edge worn, yet you bear these marks as though they are yours to keep as trophies’.

At first, he dismissed it. War was dirty work, and blades were never truly clean of their blood stains, but soon after, came the dreams.

They came not as nightmares, but as solemn visitations. He would find himself on a field of grey light, mist curling around his ankles, and there standing quietly, were the men he had slain.

They did not scream. They did not accuse. They only asked him questions. ‘Why did you raise your sword that day? Did you see me, or only my armour? When you struck, did you know what I had left behind—my child, my mother, my garden?’

He awoke, chest tight. ‘They are dreams. A soldier’s conscience, nothing more', he told himself.

The dreams returned, and so did the unforgettable stains.

Haunted and no longer certain, Nikandros made a lone journey to the south, beyond the vineyards and olive groves, to Eleutherae, where it was said an old sage lived in the hollow of a hill. The sage, Themistios, had once advised generals, but now spoke only to those persons who asked questions rather than sought answers.

Nikandros found him feeding goats and scattering grain for birds and said. ‘I bring no wine or coins, but I come with a burden I cannot name'.

Themistios looked at him with eyes like still water. ‘Then you have brought the greatest gift there is to a soldier’, he said.

Nikandros showed him the sword. The old man did not touch it.

‘You know of this blade?’ Nikandros asked.

Themistios nodded slowly.

‘Many have carried it. Few understood it. It is no ordinary weapon. It reflects the soul of the one who holds it. It is not forged for war, but for consciousness’,

‘Consciousness?’ Nikandros frowned. ‘But it kills as any other sword would do’.

‘Yes, but it does not forget. The sword you carry does not dull, not because it is enchanted—but because it sharpens with the truth of your soul. It shows what you are becoming’, said Themistios.

Nikandros looked down at the faint stains. ‘Then I am becoming stained with death’.

‘No’, the sage said gently. ‘You are becoming aware’.

The soldier sat in silence. ‘What am I to do?’

Themistios pointed to the hills. ‘Return. Not to fight, but to see. When the moment comes, ask yourself—not what the sword can do, but what it is revealing to you’.

A week later, as armies gathered in the vale outside Thebes, Nikandros stood amongst his fellow soldiers. Tension rippled through the ranks like a taut lyre-string. War drums echoed across the plain. He wore no crest upon his helmet. The sword, as always, hung at his side faithfully.

The general yelled orders. ‘We strike before the sun clears the ridge. There will be no mercy given to our foes’.

Nikandros said nothing. As the horns sounded, he looked to the horizon, where a group of enemy warriors had arrayed themselves, equally still, equally solemn. He drew the sword—but did not raise it. He walked forth. Alone.

Each step seemed to silence the field. The wind dropped. Dust settled. He reached the middle of the battlefield. With a slow breath he knelt, and placed the sword upon the earth.

The sunlight caught the blade, and for a moment, it shone not with violence, but with absolute stillness.

Gasps were heard from both sides. Then confusion and awe.

Nikandros stood, hands empty, and looked at the enemy commander—a man he did not know, yet saw fully.

The other man stepped forth, sword drawn—but hesitated. He too looked at the blade on the ground. Then he looked back at his men. Then at the sky, and slowly, impossibly—he sheathed his weapon.

From both sides, murmurs rose. Bows lowered. Spears dipped. For the first time in many years, the battle did not begin. Peace, born not of treaty or victory, but of the courage not to strike and kill.

Nikandros returned to Thebes in silence. No trumpet greeted him. No feast awaited, but the people heard. They came not for trophies, but for his testimony.

He gave no lectures. He did not preach, but he began to speak in the agora, under the shade of fig trees. He did not speak of war, but of insight.

‘Victory without consciousness, is no more than a louder kind of loss', he said.

He paused before continuing, ‘A sword that cannot break may yet shatter the man who wields it—unless he learns when to lay it down’.

He became a teacher—not of tactics, but of truth. He taught that strength is not in muscle, but in the ability to pause. That honour is not in conquest, but in comprehension. That peace is not weakness, but wisdom.

He never took another sword in the battlefield. The one he left in the earth remained—some say buried by the wind and time, others say it vanished the moment the two warriors saw each other, not as enemies, but as mirrors.

Children began seeing him as a hero. To him, it was of great kindness.

One evening, as the sun set gold across the Thespian hills, a young man asked him: ‘Master Nikandros, do you regret not finishing your final battle?’

He smiled. ‘The only battles worth finishing are the ones within. All others are beginnings in disguise’, he responded.

The boy frowned. ‘But you gave up your sword’.

‘No’, Nikandros said, gazing at the horizon. ‘I gave up my illusion’.

There, as dusk gathered over the olive groves and the air cooled, Nikandros sat in silence, a soul no longer fighting, but listening.

He bore no scars—only insight. For in learning not to wield the sword, he had mastered himself. He became a Meletic.

As the seasons turned, the vines twisted over the stones of old battle walls. The sword that once shimmered under Aegean skies lay where Nikandros had placed it, half-buried beneath windblown soil and tall grass. No hand returned to lift it.

Nikandros, meanwhile, tended a garden beyond the gates of Thebes—a place not marked by stone but by stillness. There, in a grove of fig and almond trees, he gathered those people who sought not war, but understanding. Some were former soldiers. Others were artisans, healers or young men who had grown weary of being told what honour truly meant or represented.

They called the grove The garden of quiet blades. Here, Nikandros spoke of strength not as dominion, but as discipline.

‘The sword is like the mind. Its sharpness is nothing if wielded without clarity. Many people believe they fight for justice, but they do not know what justice actually means', he said one afternoon to a small group seated in a circle of olive logs.

One listener, a former hoplite named Lysanias, asked, ‘How does one know if his cause is genuinely true?’

Nikandros nodded, gathering a fallen fig. ‘Ask not whether your blade is right,’ he said, slicing the fig open with a reed, ‘but whether your soul is still when you raise it. A calm soul sees truth. A restless one only sees threat’.

They listened, not because of his past victories, but because of the stillness with which he spoke.

Word of the man who laid down the undulling sword continued to spread—not as myth, but as meditation.

Although years had passed since the last battle, Nikandros’ dreams did not fade, but they changed.

No longer did the slain come with sorrow or questioning. Now they arrived with quiet presence. They stood beside him in fields not of mist, but of wheat, golden and swaying, under the skies of dusk.

One such night, a boy no older than seventeen appeared—a face Nikandros recalled from a skirmish in the hills. He had fallen quickly, blade barely raised.

In the dream, the boy smiled. ‘You did not see me that day, but you see me now', he said.

‘I do’, Nikandros replied.

‘Then you are no longer bound to the blade as before’.

The boy faded into the tall wheat, like wind. He awoke with tears on his face and the deepest peace he had ever known.

In time, more visitors came—not only from Thebes, but from distant places. A young philosopher from Delos. A widow from Thessaly whose son had died at war. Even a pair of Spartan twins, curious but sceptical, wishing to understand the meaning of disarmament.

Nikandros did not claim wisdom, but offered reflection. He had no altar, no scrolls. Only his voice and a basin of still water beside a stone bench.

One day, a girl named Antheia, daughter of a potter, arrived asking about To Ena, the One.

‘I have heard you speak of peace and clarity, but is that the same as To Ena? Is it a god?’ She asked.

Nikandros shook his head. ‘To Ena is not worshipped. It is realised. It is the thread through all things—the space between the notes of a lyre, the silence that gives words their shape’.

She frowned. ‘If it is everywhere, why do so few feel it?’

‘Because most people are racing, and one does not see clearly when sprinting through dust', he told her.

One day, decades later, Nikandros, now grey and slender, felt a quiet urging to return to where he had laid the sword.

He told no one. He walked for three days to the same field beyond Thebes, now overgrown and quiet. The air was gentle, the wind warm. He found the place—not by sight, but by sense.

The sword was no longer there. Only a hollow in the earth, filled with pale grasses. He knelt and touched the soil.

‘You are where you belong. You were never meant to be wielded forever by the hands of any man', he whispered.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and from within, he felt no loss—only completion.

As he stood, a light breeze carried petals across the field, and he felt To Ena not as idea, but as presence.

In his final years, Nikandros wrote short verses on clay tablets. Not doctrine, but reminders.

The final one read: ‘I once believed the sharpest sword could protect the soul. I have learnt: only the soul, sharpened by awareness, can protect the world. I do not regret what I laid down. I rejoice in what I took up.
The quiet path. The long road. The One within’.

When he passed away in sleep beneath his fig tree, people did not mourn him with lamentation, but with silence. They placed no sword on his pyre. Only a single olive branch.

To this day, amongst those people who seek Meletic wisdom, it is said: ‘He who once as a proud soldier held the sword now holds stillness’.

In the garden where he once taught, wild flowers bloom in a circle, where no blades are drawn.

For in learning not to wield the sword, Nikandros had become not less—but more. A master not of war—but of the self.

Years after his passing, a simple stone was placed where Nikandros had once sat beneath his fig tree. It bore no name, no dates—only a carved symbol: a circle within a circle, like the ripples etched into the sword’s hilt.

Some people believed it was a quiet nod to the blade’s legacy. Others understood it to be something greater—a clear symbol of the soul’s unfolding through awareness.

Visitors came still, not in droves, but in pairs and small groups. They didn’t arrive with offerings but with questions.

One such visitor was a young woman named Kassia, the daughter of a merchant from Chalcis. She had heard of Nikandros from her grandmother, who had once walked to Thebes to hear him speak.

She knelt by the stone and whispered, ‘I want to know how to live. They teach us how to fight, how to trade, how to survive, but no one teaches us how to be'.

An old gardener tending the grove nearby—once a student of Nikandros himself—heard her and came to sit beside her.

‘He never gave answers, but he gave space. He said the soul is not filled by knowledge, but uncovered by reflection', the man said wisely.

Eudokia looked at the carved circles. ‘And the sword? Was it real?’

‘Yes, but the sword was not the point. It was a mirror. It showed what we carry within. Many people came to see the sword. Only a few stayed to see themselves', he told her.

She stayed the night in the grove. By morning, she had taken up no sword, made no vow—but she walked away with her eyes clearer, her mind quieter.

In time, Nikandros' sayings were gathered, not by scholars, but by his listeners. They called it The dialogue of dust, for he once said: ‘The dust we raise in battle is nothing compared to the dust that remains. Still is the wind within, and the truth will settle, as we become the dust after death'.

Amongst the sayings were these: ‘To conquer another is to make noise. To conquer the self is to make music. A blade can end a life, but cannot begin one. That is the task of thought. Peace is not a ceasefire. It is a seeing. Do not confuse silence with defeat. Often, it is the beginning of clarity’.

These reflections travelled quietly through the years. A potter etched them into bowls. A teacher used them as prompts in her school. A sculptor engraved one into the base of a statue depicting not a warrior, but a man resting, eyes closed, hands open.

Although Nikandros left no bloodline, his legacy lived through the questions asked, swords not drawn, and choices made in stillness and awareness.

Those people who walk the quiet path now know: the soul does not grow through the noise of steel, but through the harmony of presence and of To Ena.

They do not seek the unbreaking sword. They seek what he found when he eventually laid it down. To Ena, the One. In that seeking, they find themselves. They relinquish the ego and humble the self.

The years passed like soft rains over stone. Even though Nikandros was long gone, the echo of his decision—the single moment when he laid the sword down—outlasted the clangour of all the battles he had ever fought.

Travellers who passed through Thebes would still ask directions to the grove. Not all found it. Those who did often described a stillness in the air, as if the wind itself paused to listen.

In time, a slender marble stele was placed near the circle of wildflowers where he had once taught. Upon it, not his name, but a single inscription:

‘To see is greater than to strike. To understand is greater than to win’.

No statue of Nikandros was ever made. Those people who remembered him said that would have betrayed his legacy.

A young boy once asked an elder there, ‘What happened to the sword?’

The elder smiled and replied, ‘It returned to the One, as all things do’.

Thus, it is that in the Meletic tradition, the story of Nikandros is not told with glory, but in quiet gardens, between silences, where one learns that true mastery is not conquest—but of conscious being.

His name is not carved in marble, nor chanted in festivals, yet those people who pause beneath olive trees, or walk alone at dawn when the air still holds its breath, sometimes speak his name—not aloud, but inwardly. For Nikandros became more than mere memory; he became a presence felt in moments of inner stillness.

It is said that the memory of the sword was not left on a battlefield or buried in a shrine. It endured in the minds of the people that revered Nikandros' valour and wisdom.

The tale lives on—not for triumphs won, but for the soul returned to harmony. A reminder that in returning to To Ena, nothing is lost—only fulfilled.

Nikandros’ true legacy is not the sword he wielded, but the peace he forged within himself. In that inner peace lies the essence of Meletic wisdom: that to conquer the self is to embrace the One, where all dualities dissolve into unity.

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