The Temple Of Krysanthe (Ο Ναός του Κρυσάνθη)

-From The Meletic Tales.

The dust of mid-morning clung to the columns of the agora of Athens, as traders shouted prices and philosophers gestured beneath porticos. Amongst them walked Eutropios, a slender young man of no notable dress, save for the simplicity of its garments. His step was unhurried, his gaze fixed not on the noise of commerce but on the quietude within each motion of the crowd. A Meletic, he lived with few belongings, owned no students, and taught no school, yet those people who spoke with him remembered something—not his words, but the weight behind them.

On that day, as he turned the corner near the dilapidated shrine of Hestia, he heard a disturbance—a voice raised, not in argument, but in disgust.

‘Whore! Get out of the street!’

He slowed. A group had formed around a figure. A girl—no more than twenty—was on her knees, clutching her shawl as the sun exposed her bruises. Her hair was tangled, her eyes open but distant, as if she were watching something inside herself.

A man spat near her feet. ‘You defiled your father’s name and dare walk these streets again? You’re not welcome in Athens, Krysanthe.’

Others added their own voices. Some turned away, but few intervened. It was not their shame to touch.

Eutropios approached slowly and, without a word, knelt beside her closely. The crowd hesitated as they watched.

He laid his hand lightly upon her shoulder. ‘You may rise, if you wish,’ he said quietly.

She turned, startled, as if seeing him through the mist.

‘Leave her!’ That one’s marked. She has no honour left', another voice snapped.

'She is not worthy enough to be called a Christian', a woman uttered.

Eutropios turned his head. ‘Who amongst you has never carried a mark?’ He asked softly. ‘Who amongst you has never wished to be seen beyond it?’

There was a silence, awkward and thin, until they answered, 'We are not sinners like her'.

'Was not your Mary Magdalene considered a sinner as well, but yet your Christ redeemed her?' Eutropios responded.

The crowd had dispersed. Krysanthe was trembling, but stood barely. Her legs shook.

He steadied her. ‘Come,’ he said to her alone.

They walked through the agora and down to the lesser streets that led towards the river. She limped slightly, and he made no comment on it. He offered no name, and asked for none. Only when they reached a shaded courtyard beneath a fig tree did he pause.

‘Here,’ he said, indicating a low stone bench. She sat.

After a moment, she looked at him. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Touch me. Speak for me. I am not worth defending. I have sinned'.

He regarded her quietly. ‘Is that what you believe? Or what you’ve been taught to repeat?’

She looked away. ‘It’s what they all say.’

He did not argue. Instead, he plucked a fig from the tree and set it before her.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

She frowned. ‘A fig.’

‘And yet it grows from the earth, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the earth is not pure. It is filled with decay, with worms and rot and things buried. Does the fig become shameful for growing from it?’

She didn’t answer and pondered the question.

He leaned back. ‘You are not shameful, Krysanthe. You are a being of flesh, yes—but also of consciousness. The body is not evil. It is not to be punished, nor discarded like refuse. It is our physical temple. What they teach you as a Christian is merely doctrine than principle'.

She watched him warily, uncertain if he mocked her.

‘They say the body is a trap for the soul. A curse. That what I did made me unclean', she said bitterly.

He nodded. ‘They say many things, do the Christians'.

He stood and stepped towards the tree. ‘Come. Look.’

She joined him, as he gestured to the roots. ‘See how the tree anchors itself, gnarled and thick, into the soil. That is the body. Above, the leaves spread out and drink the sky. That is the soul. They are not with chaos. They are in balance’.

She was silent in her expressions.

‘What you did—what was done to you—is not your ousia, your essence. It is a moment. Even if you chose poorly, virtue is not a garment one wears only when clean. It is practised. It is reclaimed through purity. Not the purity of the body, but the self and soul. This is where our virtues must be revealed'.

She looked at the fig still in her hand. ‘I’ve been used by men. Sold. Left. What virtue is left in that?’

He looked at her calmly. ‘Virtue is not what others do to you. It is what you choose to do with them. You can either embrace them or dismiss them'.

She sat again, slowly. The bench was warm with sun. ‘Are you a teacher?’

‘No. Only a thinker and philosopher’.

‘You sound like both'.

He smiled faintly. ‘Then it is you who did the teaching.’

She tilted her head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You asked a question. A true one. Most people speak to be heard, but you—today—you listened to your own thought. That is rare in our present society'.

They remained there, in quietude, until the shadow of the fig shifted. When she stood, her eyes had steadied.

‘Will they ever leave me alone and stop condemning me?’ She asked.

‘No. But you must learn not to hear them. If so, then you will continue to suffer their ignorance', he said gently.

Over the weeks that followed, Krysanthe returned to that shaded courtyard. Not every day. Some days she sat alone; other days, Eutropios would be there, watching the light as it shifted across the stones, or writing fragments of thoughts in wax.

She asked him questions. ‘Do you believe in gods?’

He replied, ‘No. I believe in To Ena, the One. I have no need for gods or the Christian god'.

'Who is To Ena, the One?' She asked.

'To Ena is the undivided source—the formless unity from which all flow begins. It is not a god, not a will, not a consciousness in the human sense— but rather, the pre-condition of human existence, the unpartitioned being beneath all structure. If the Logos is the pattern and the Nous is the shape, To Ena is the stillness before the ripple, the ink before the script, the breath before awareness. It's not felt or seen—it is realised, when all separateness fades and what remains is the simple, silent and whole presence of To Ena'.

'That is different than the Christian god'.

'Indeed'.

‘Do you think I am damned?’

‘I do not think in damnation. I think more in direction’.

She began to change—not through faith, but through quietness. She no longer flinched when walking past a group of men. She no longer swallowed the shame that others threw at her. She stood upright, not with pride but with self-acceptance.

One morning, she arrived at the Meletic temple in Athens, with a small bundle wrapped in cloth. Inside were broken sandals, a torn garment, and a strip of red ribbon.

‘I want to leave these at the altar of your temple,’ she said.

He looked at her with calm approval. ‘To burn them?’

‘No. Just to leave them. As a sign that I begin again. Today, I am no longer the same woman that was shamed to be a sinner. I realise now that my body is not evil, and I am not evil'.

He nodded. ‘Then it is not an offering to please one. Instead, it is an offering to yourself’.

'I have learnt much from you, and the one thing that stays in my mind is the beauty of the body, when it is not corrupted by the mind'.

One day, whilst walking in the eastern quarter, Krysanthe saw a girl being cornered by two drunken men. She stepped forth—not angrily, but firmly.

‘Leave her,’ she said.

They laughed, but she did not move. Something in her presence unsettled them. The girl fled. The men curst, but walked away in the end.

Krysanthe stood a moment longer, then turned. Eutropios had been watching from a colonnade.

She approached him. ‘I felt... strong.’

‘You were, but more than that—you were conscious. You chose action, not reaction. That is the beginning of virtue’.

‘The body isn’t sinful'.

‘The body is the earth, and the earth grows figs and trees and warmth amongst other things. It is what we make of it that matters’.

She touched her arm. ‘This... this is not my shame any longer'.

‘It is your temple. Honour it through virtues, but do not fear it’.

That night, she sat beneath the fig tree and wrote a line into the dirt: 'The body is not a prison. It is the expression of the soul'.

The next morning, the city was softer, not by change of people, but by the change within her. She walked to the well and drew water not as one hiding from glances, but as one who claimed her place in the morning. The sun felt different on her skin—not harsh, but warm. She looked up at the fig tree's leaves and smiled.

In the days that followed, she and Eutropios met often. Sometimes they walked in silence through the garden paths behind the temple. Other times, they sat in the grove whilst he read fragments aloud—from Demokritos, from Anaxagoras, from Herakleitos, from Parmenides or from his own small scrolls. Krysanthe listened not with awe, but with immense thought.

'You said the body is our temple,' she remarked 'What if the pillars crumble? What if the walls are broken?'

'Then you mend them. With patience. With action. Not punishment. Not scorn', he said.

'They said my actions could not be undone'.

He tilted his head. 'And they are right, but neither can the spring undo the winter. It does not try. It simply grows from it'.

She was quiet a long time, before they both left the temple.

One afternoon, they came upon a sculptor chiselling a figure near the west wall of the theatre. It was half-finished, the face yet formless, the limbs emerging from the marble like souls from sleep.

'Does he know what it will be?' she asked.

'Perhaps not. Perhaps he listens to the stone as he shapes', Eutropios answered.

'Like you,' she said, and he looked at her.

'I listen to what remains when words fall away'.

She reached down and brushed dust from a fallen fig. 'I—I'm learning to listen to my own breath'.

One evening, as they sat facing the Acropolis bathed in dusk, she turned to him.

'Do you think I shall always carry this past as a lingering burden?'

'Not as long, as you have buried it. When you do, answer with virtue, not with shame'.

'How?'

'By choosing again. Choosing differently. Every moment is a gate. We pass through it with consciousness or not'.

They sat without speech as the light dimmed and the sky opened into violet.

Later that month, a woman named Melite, once her neighbour, approached Krysanthe by the market well. Her eyes were wary.

'I heard you stopped those men harassing Lina'.

'I did,' Krysanthe said. 'She was young. Frightened'.

'They said you stared them down like a priestess'.

Krysanthe smiled faintly. 'Not a priestess. Just someone who remembered how it felt.'

Melite hesitated. 'May I sit with you sometime? I have questions. But the Christian priests frighten me. All they do is condemn and hush our minds'.

'Of course,' Krysanthe said. 'We can walk the gardens. No answers promised. Only space to ask'.

In time, others joined her. One by one. Not to be taught, but to speak. Widows, beggars, women cast off by households or by fate. They came not to worship, but to remember their worth.

Krysanthe never claimed wisdom, but she listened. When she spoke, her voice carried the stillness of Meletic thought.

She would often say: 'We are not made virtuous by what we suffer, but by how we meet it.'

She told them: 'Your body is not the price of your error. It is the garden in which you begin again. There is no sin in that. Sin is nothing more than fear imposed upon us by the Church'.

Eutropios, now greying at the temples, came less frequently. When he did, he watched her quietly.

'You are the fig,' he said one afternoon, smiling.

She laughed. 'I've been called many things. That one I like'.

He offered her a worn scroll. 'It is yours now. Not as relic, but as reminder'.

She opened it and saw fragments—his thoughts, his reflections.

'You wrote these?'

'No,' he said, 'they wrote themselves when I listened deeply enough'.

She placed it gently beside her. 'I shall care for them. As I care for myself'.

The wind moved lightly through the grove. Neither spoke for some time.

In that silence, something passed between them—not knowledge, not farewell, but something older. A kind of understanding, without shape, yet more solid than stone.

The days continued, and the grove was never empty again.

The following day, as dawn spilled gold over the rooftops, Krysanthe returned to the grove earlier than usual. She carried with her a small clay bowl filled with olive oil, a token offering—not to a god, but to presence. She poured a little of it on the ground near the fig tree and closed her eyes.

‘Not for pardon, but for peace', she whispered.

She had begun to speak aloud more often—not to be heard, but to feel the fullness of her own voice. In doing so, she felt the weight of silence lift from the years behind her.

When Eutropios arrived that afternoon, he noticed the change in her posture.

‘You’ve begun to walk like someone who has stepped out of the storm’.

‘The storm still exists, but I’m learning not to carry the rain’, she replied

They sat together, as they often did, with the quiet ease of two souls that no longer sought to explain themselves. In the silence, a breeze stirred the leaves, and Krysanthe spoke without looking at him.

‘Have you ever missed anyone, Eutropios?’

He did not answer right away. When he did, his voice was calm.

‘I have missed many—in moments. The child who touched a statue as though it lived. The woman who lit a lamp though the sun was still up. The old man who fed pigeons as though each were hungry, but I realise that those people who are remembered are not forgotten'.

Krysanthe nodded. ‘I think I loved once. Or maybe I loved the idea of being loved. I don’t know which was lonelier’.

‘Loneliness, can be a teacher, but it must not be your captivity’, he said.

In the weeks that followed, Krysanthe began writing her reflections on clay shards—whatever she could find. She did not call them teachings, but they passed from hand to hand. Women read them quietly behind market stalls. A few even made their way into the hands of travelling scribes.

One shard read: ‘Virtue is not born from fear. It is grown through clarity’.

Another said: ‘To dress the body with shame is to deny the gift of breath’.

She did not seek attention. Still, word began to spread, and not all who heard were pleased.

A young deacon from a local Christian came to confront her. He found her beneath the fig tree, reading a scroll of Anaximenes.

‘They say you tell women to worship their flesh’.

She looked up calmly. ‘No. I tell them to cease fearing it’.

‘The body is corruption! It must be overcome. Christ himself suffered in it to redeem us from it’, he insisted.

Krysanthe tilted her head. ‘Then Christ must know what it is to suffer in the body. Why do you judge so quickly what even your saviour wore?’

He frowned. ‘The soul must triumph over the body’.

She traced a circle in the dirt with her finger. ‘If the soul learns nothing from the body? If it only seeks to escape it? What kind of triumph is that?’

‘You sound like a pagan philosopher’.

‘I am a Meletic. I observe what is real, and what is real to me is this—’ she gestured to the earth beneath them, ‘—this life. This breath. This body which allows me to speak to you’.

He left, unsettled.

Eutropios later said, ‘When your truth causes discomfort, it is not because it is false, but because it touches a root others have buried in denial'.

That autumn, Krysanthe began teaching girls how to write—not as an act of rebellion, but as an act of honour. To write, she told them, was to reflect. To know one’s own voice in silence.

Amongst the girls was one named Isidora, a sharp and curious orphan of thirteen. She clung to every word Krysanthe offered, but also questioned fiercely.

One afternoon, Isidora asked, ‘If the body is not evil, why does it hurt so much sometimes?’

Krysanthe replied, ‘Pain is not proof of sin. It is the body's way of speaking. Like when the soul weeps, not out of weakness, but because it needs to be heard’.

‘When people do evil, they use their bodies. Doesn’t that make it the cause?’

‘No. It is the consciousness behind the action. The hands do not sin. The intention does. Just as a fig falls not because it is wicked, but because the tree has changed its season', Krysanthe said.

Isidora pondered this long into the evening.

One night, a group of men threw stones at the grove. They shouted slurs, calling it a haven of heresy and whoredom. One stone shattered a clay shard. Krysanthe did not flinch.

The next morning, she swept the shards with care and lit a lamp beside the fig tree.

Eutropios, arriving just after dawn, looked at the flame and asked, ‘Are you frightened?’

‘Yes. But I am more afraid of forgetting who I am than of what they will do’, she replied.

He looked at her with the softest of expressions. ‘Then you are no longer my student. You are truly a Meletic'.

Krysanthe bowed her head slightly. ‘Then let us walk forth, side by side’.

They did—for one more season. The winter came, quiet and hard. Eutropios began to slow, his steps deliberate, yet he never ceased coming to the grove.

They shared fewer words, but more often, they simply watched the wind blow.

When a child came to the fig tree one day to ask if Krysanthe would read, she answered, ‘Not today. Today, we remember stillness with our awareness'.

The child, sensing something special, sat down without a word.

As the years passed. Eutropios aged slowly, as those people who reflect often do. Krysanthe became known—not as a prophet, not as a saint, but as a woman of clarity. She took in other women who had been discarded. She taught them not to beg for forgiveness, but to find stillness, and from it, their own strength.

Some called her mad. Others called her dangerous, but the Meletic ones knew: she had remembered the body, not as a curse, but as a vessel for truth.

When Eutropios died, there was no statue built. Only the fig tree, and the words she carved into its bark: ‘Virtue is not what we claim. It is what we return to, again and again, when no one sees’.

Below that: ‘To Ena. The One. Is not in the heavens, but within and within the cosmos.’

As the days grew colder, Krysanthe would often sit beneath the fig tree wrapped in her woollen himation, remembering the wise words Eutropios had once offered like stones in her hand. ‘The body is not evil. It is our temple.’ The phrase returned to her not as a mantra, but as a lived truth. She had learnt, through pain and practice, that it was not flesh that brought shame—but what people placed upon it. ‘We corrupt the body with our vices, our lies, our deception. Sin is man made, used to shame the body', he had said. Now, when she bathed in the river or stretched her hands to the sky, she did so without guilt—only gratitude to be alive. She whispered, ‘This body remembers, and I honour it.’

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