The Turning Wheel (Ο Γυριστός Τροχός)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the port city of Nauplion, nestled beside the Aegean Sea, where white stone homes leaned into the hills and fishermen mended nets by the docks, there lived a sculptor named Iophon. Neither young nor truly old, Iophon was a man with certain lines on his face carved not by chisel but by thought. He worked with marble and wood, sometimes bronze, but his truest passion was in shaping meaning—symbols that spoke to the soul rather than the human eye.

One spring morning, when swallows stitched their cries across the sky and oleander bloomed by the roadside, Iophon walked to the agora with a bundle of figs and a scroll beneath his arm. He had read of the philosopher Leandros of Delos, who once said, 'All things return, and in returning, they are born anew'.

That morning, the words clung to him like a veil. He passed by bakers calling prices, heard the harp of a lyre being tuned, and saw no end to motion. Everything moved, everything repeated in its sequence.

He returned to his modest workshop by twilight, deep in thought. That night, he dreamt of a wheel. A wheel that spun slowly in the wind, never ceasing, turning without force yet never stopping. Upon waking, Iophon began his diligent work.

The days turned to weeks as he carved. From the heart of olive wood, smooth and pale, he shaped a great wheel—not one of wagons or war-carts, but one with symbols etched into its face: phases of the moon, olives falling from a branch, a child walking and then fading into bones beneath the earth. Around the outer rim, he inscribed the words: ‘En kuklōi gignetai, panta metavaletai’—‘In circles all things come to be, all things change’.

He mounted the wheel upon a marble pedestal in the centre of his courtyard, open to the sky. The wheel spun only when touched or stirred by the wind, but each time it turned, the sculptor felt a silence within him shift, as though the wheel itself stirred something older than thought.

One day, a boy named Timon wandered by, led by curiosity. His hair was tousled by the wind, his sandals dusty from chasing dragonflies through the olive groves.

‘What is this, sir?’ He asked, pointing at the wheel.

Iophon looked up from where he sat chiselling a slab of limestone. ‘It is a turning that speaks', he answered.

The boy frowned. ‘It does not speak. I hear nothing’.

‘Ah, but it does. Not with a voice, but with the truth', Iophon said.

He rose and placed a hand gently upon the wheel’s rim. It spun. Timon watched, eyes wide as the carved images began their slow rotation: birth, growth, decay and death. Then back again. Seasons circled within the wheel’s face—harvest and barrenness, blossoming and withering.

‘What does it mean?’ The boy asked.

‘It means we are all a part of something that repeats. You run and fall. You sleep and wake. You laugh and one day, you will weep. The world does not ask for your approval—it turns. What matters is how you accept the turning and your fate', said Iophon.

Timon returned the next day. The day after. As the sun moved across the sky, he asked questions that only children dare ask.

‘Will my mother die?’

‘Yes. As will you. As shall I’', Iophon replied with sincerity reflected in his eyes.

‘Then what is the point of all this?’

‘To see the wheel, and still smile. To live the turn without dread', the sculptor replied.

Over time, others heard of the strange sculptor and his wheel. Some came out of curiosity, others with mourning in their hearts. A woman who had lost her husband to a sea storm placed her palm upon the wheel and wept. A farmer who had buried three children came and sat beside it for hours. A veteran of the war against the Euboeans came to touch the image of a sword melting into a ploughshare and said nothing, but returned the next morning.

A priest of Apollo once came and questioned the sculpture. ‘Is this not impiety?’ He said, eyeing the wheel suspiciously. ‘You show no gods, no altars. Only this endless… motion’.

Iophon bowed his head. ‘It is not meant to rival the gods. Only to show that even amongst their temples, the seasons turn. Your god's sun rises and sets without prayer. I merely shape what already is by the Nous'.

The priest left in utter silence.

In the years that followed, Iophon aged. His beard silvered. His hands shook as he chiselled, yet each day, he returned to the wheel and spun it once, just once and watched. His apprentices, Lysias and Dorion, learnt not only to carve marble but to reflect on the rhythm of life. To shape not only forms, but meaning.

One winter, harsh and bitter, Iophon grew ill. His breath became shallow, and he knew his time approached. Timon, now a youth with shoulders broadening and eyes filled with more questions than before, sat by his bedside. He spoke to him.

‘Master, the wheel keeps turning, but what of you? What becomes of the sculptor when the chisel drops?’

Iophon smiled faintly. ‘The sculptor was never more than clay himself, shaped by time, formed by choice. I return to the dust, but the wheel... the wheel always remembers.'

‘But you built it. It will miss you’.

‘No. It needs no one. That is its lesson. What turns, continues. What ends, begins elsewhere', Iophon professed.

When Iophon passed, the city mourned. In his honour, the people gathered in his courtyard. The wheel stood still in the winter air, solemn. Timon stepped forth and laid a laurel branch before it. He looked at the symbols circling its face and touched the rim.

The wheel turned once. From then on, it was said the wheel could whisper to those people who stood before it long enough. Some heard comfort. Others clarity. A few, it was claimed, saw visions of their lives spun forwards or backwards like threads on a loom.

Many years later, when Timon was old and grey-bearded himself, he would sit beside the wheel and speak to children.

‘It teaches that nothing is wasted. No sorrow, no joy, no death. The turn is eternal. Acceptance is the gate to peace', he would say.

A girl once asked him, ‘If the wheel stops, will the world end?’

Timon chuckled. ‘The wheel never stops. Even when your eyes are closed, it spins. Even in silence, the cycle sings’.

Thus, the turning wheel stood in the courtyard of Nauplion, through war, plague, feast, and peace. Its symbols grew weathered, its wood darkened by time, but its message remained.

What turns does not end. What ends only waits to turn again.

One season, a traveller from Ephesus named Nikarkhos arrived in Nauplion. He was a man of pride, sharp wit and many questions. Hearing rumours of the turning wheel, he came with scepticism in his step and philosophy on his tongue. He found Timon seated in the courtyard.

'I have heard of this wheel. A sculpture that stirs tears and silence. Show me, old man. I have travelled far to learn the truth', said Nikarkhos.

Timon motioned towards it with a simple wave. Nikarkhos examined the wheel, its carvings, its weather-worn face. 'I see a clever piece of carpentry, but where is the wisdom in wood?'

'You must spin it', said Timon.

Nikarkhos reached out and gave it a forceful shove. The wheel spun fast, too fast, the carvings blurring into one another.

'Is this meant to enlighten me?' He asked, with a scoff.

'Not in haste. The wheel is not a riddle to be solved. It is a rhythm to be felt', said Timon.

Nikarkhos stayed in the town for several days. Each day, he returned to the wheel. At first, he said nothing. Then, on the fifth day, he sat beside it and asked Timon, 'Why does it soothe me to watch it?'

'Because you have stopped trying to control it. As with life. The peace is in the turning', said Timon.

Nikarkhos remained for a season. He helped mend the pedestal, replaced weather-worn carvings, and came to speak with the children who gathered. When he finally departed, he left a small bronze plaque beneath the wheel. It read: 'He who resists the turn shall break. He who flows with it shall endure in life'.

Thus, the turning wheel passed from legend into tradition. It was not worshipped but honoured. It was not divine, but it was truthful.

The generations passed, and storms came. Earthquakes cracked walls, and plagues emptied homes. The turning wheel remained, sometimes buried under rubble, but always uncovered, cleaned and returned to its pedestal.

A thousand names stood in its shadow. A thousand hearts opened and softened. All who came to it heard something, whether it was wisdom or only the whisper of wind.

The wheel turned, and turned again.

In the years that followed, a young woman named Euthalia came to Nauplion from Aegina. She had heard tales of the turning wheel in the port of her home, whispered amongst sailors and storytellers. The journey had been long, her sandals worn and her cloak sun-bleached, but she came with a question heavy in her chest.

Euthalia had lost her child in the winter past. Her grief was not loud, nor did she wail, but it nested inside her ribs and made silence unbearable. She arrived at the courtyard where the wheel stood, and saw it for the first time. It was less grand than she'd imagined, but more alive. The carvings did not shine; they were not gilded or adorned, but they felt honest, as if the wood remembered every hand that had touched it.

Timon was gone now—his bones resting beneath the hillside cypress, but a man named Dorion, one of Iophon’s last apprentices, sat there now, an old man with thick eyebrows and a thoughtful mouth. He greeted her with a nod and gestured toward the wheel. 'You’ve come for it', he said simply.

Euthalia did not reply. She stepped forth, pressed her fingers to the grain of the olive wood, and gave the wheel a gentle spin. It turned slowly, revealing an etched image of a woman holding an infant, followed by one of the same child walking alone, and another—stones laid in a circle around a tree.

'I have not come for comfort', she said at last.

Dorion nodded. 'Nor does it promise it. Sometimes, the turning reveals what silence hides'.

She stayed the night beneath the stars, wrapped in her cloak, head resting near the base of the pedestal. At dawn, a soft breeze stirred the wheel, and Euthalia opened her eyes to see it turning on its own.

'I named him Thestor', she whispered.

The wheel then turned.

She remained in Nauplion, taking up work in the herb gardens outside the city. Villagers came to know her by her patience and gentle hands. She seldom spoke of her sorrow, but those who saw her before the turning wheel knew she had carried it. In time, she carved her own image onto the wheel—just a small one, on the inner edge: a sprig of thyme, with a sleeping child beneath it.

Dorion passed in his ninety-first year, leaving the stewardship of the wheel to a boy named Melas, whom he had taught in his final decade. Melas was clever, and though young, he knew how to listen.

When questions came from sailors, merchants, even scholars from Athens who laughed at the simplicity of the thing, Melas would reply, ‘It does not ask for belief. Only attention’.

He wrote down many of the stories people brought to the wheel. Over time, they filled scrolls—a record of griefs, joys, reconciliations and realisations. He called them the turning accounts, and they were kept in the modest library beside the courtyard.

One such account was that of a stonemason named Krates, who had long resented his brother. Their quarrel had begun over inheritance but had grown, like ivy, to choke every shared word. Krates came to the wheel not for answers, but out of bitter disbelief.

'I want to prove this wheel speaks nothing', he told Melas.

Melas merely said, 'Then listen to the silence'.

Krates spun the wheel. It stopped upon an image he had never noticed before—a pair of hands, one offering, the other clenched. He sat before it until evening, when he rose and walked to the house of his brother. That night, they spoke for the first time in years.

Another scroll told of a girl named Nikaia who had lost her sight to fever. She came led by her cousin, unsure what she could gain. She placed her palm on the carvings and listened as Melas described them to her. When the wheel turned, she asked him to recite the symbols aloud.

'You’ve made it visible again. Not by eyes, but by rhythm', she said after some days had elapsed.

She returned every week. Her cousin carved for her a tiny wheel of her own to keep.

As the years passed, the city changed. New stone roads were laid, and the market grew. Ships with coloured sails brought silks from the east and wine from Rhodes, yet the courtyard remained untouched. The city now called it The place of turning, and it was no longer a curiosity. It was a place of visiting.

Once, a noble from Corinth offered to build a great temple around it.

'Let the wheel be housed in marble. So all may honour it properly', he uttered.

Melas refused. 'Its strength is in the sky above it and the dust beneath it. It needs no shrine. The turning itself is the presence of life'.

Some people disagreed. Others argued, but Melas never allowed it. When he died, Euthalia, now grey and revered, took the stewardship. She added her own scrolls to the library and kept the wheel oiled, clean and spinning.

She taught that the wheel was not a source of doctrine, but reflection.

'It is not here to command you. It is here to remind you. What you do with the reminder—that is your virtue or your mistake', she said.

The seasons passed. Children who had played beside the wheel grew to be old, and their grandchildren stood where they once stood. The symbols were re-carved every generation, some fading into legend, others given new meaning.

One spring, a great fire swept through the lower quarter of the city. Flames touched temples and homes alike. Ash blew like snow across the hills. The library beside the courtyard was lost.

When the townspeople came in the morning, the wheel stood untouched. Euthalia wept—not for the loss of the scrolls, but for the stories that would no longer be shared aloud.

A girl named Thelxinoe, who had copied many of the accounts by memory, began to write them anew. 'Not all was lost', she said. 'Only what we chose not to carry with us.'

Thus, the wheel turned.

It turned when tyrants came and went, when philosophers gave way to generals, when the sea storms broke ships against the harbour stones. It turned when lovers were reunited and when mothers grieved. It turned in peace and war, hunger and harvest.

No one ever claimed to own it. It was never named divine, yet it endured. And so long as someone stood before it and asked not for answers but for understanding, the turning wheel fulfilled its true purpose. It made people accept and embrace their mortality, understanding the Meletic belief that the cycle of life and death formed a part of the process of the Logos.

Some people stood before it in silence for hours, hearing nothing yet sensing something shift inside them. Others brought their children to see it—not to marvel at its form, but to let them witness that which did not demand faith, only contemplation. Even strangers, passing through Nauplion on their way to Delphi or the Isthmus, would pause at the sight of it and walk away slower than before, carrying the weight of a thought they had not yet named.

Once, a young soldier named Sophos returned from the front lines of a border skirmish. He had seen his comrades die, had taken life himself, and felt something broken within. He came to the wheel, still bloodstained and shaken, and turned it. Watching the cycle of symbols pass, he wept for the first time since the battle. When he left, he took nothing but a piece of olive bark from the ground—a reminder that time, like trees and men, must be weathered to be understood.

In this way, the turning wheel became more than a sculpture. It became a threshold. A quiet place where the inner self met the greater pattern. Where the individual was reminded that suffering was not punishment, nor joy a reward—but all part of a grander unfolding. One could resist or embrace it. The wheel did not care, but for those people who embraced it, a different kind of peace took root—one without illusion, but full of truth.

And still, it turned.

It turned for the dying and the newly born, for the aged who understood and the young who did not yet need to. It turned beneath stars, beside tears, in the quiet of thought and the noise of festivals. Even when no one watched, it turned—because the truth did not require witness to remain true. The wheel endured, not through power or decree, but through the constancy of meaning woven into its motion.

In time, some began leaving offerings near its base—not coins or incense, but quiet symbols of their own lives. A spindle from a weaver. A sprig of thyme from a widow. A child’s worn sandal. Not because they believed the wheel would change their fate, but because they had come to understand it would not—and that was the comfort. What turned would turn again. What passed had its place in the rhythm.

There were those people who came in anger, too—demanding why pain existed, why death struck the innocent, why joy was fleeting. The wheel never answered. It never judged, argued, or soothed. It simply turned, as if to say: ‘This is how it is. Make peace with the motion.’

And so it remained—a teacher without voice, a philosopher without name. Long after those people who first stood before it were dust, and even after Nauplion’s harbour crumbled, the turning wheel was remembered in stories, copied in form, misunderstood by some but revered by others.

Its lesson was not carved in stone but carried in the minds of those individuals who had stood before it and accepted what was always there: the quiet truth that we, like the wheel, are part of the turning—never apart from it, never above it, always within it.

And still, it turned.

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