Olympic Games

396 BCE , Olympia, Greece

Cynisca was a Spartan woman whose brute mannerisms spoke less of her princess stature, and more to her tomboy nature. She was born shortly after the First Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, and the Second War, which lasted twenty-seven years, consumed her adolescents and adulthood.

The Spartans were masters of combat—Sparta hailed itself a militaristic city-state where men underwent military training beginning at age seven, and the livelihood of women focused on fitness so they could easily handle childbirth and readily rear more soldiers. Cynisca had a natural aptitude for fitness—on account of her royalty and wealth, she spent her days riding horses, hunting, and practicing gymnastics and dance—though she breathed a great sigh of relief every four years when Sparta and the rest of the Greek-speaking world took pause from war to attend the Olympic Games.

“At last, we can take rest!” Cynisca exclaimed.

“But not you!” her brother teased. “This time, you must enter the games! I insist it be so!”

The Olympic Games, held every four years in Olympia, Greece, were first recorded in 776 BCE, though legend speaks to its existence well before. Sporting events—such as footraces, boxing, wrestling, equestrian events, and a pentathlon consisting of a jumping event, discus and javelin throws, a foot race, and wrestling—accompanied a day-long festival in honor of the mighty Zeus. In 680 BCE, the event of chariot racing was added to the games, and the Olympics became a two-day affair.

“The strength and gait of your horses is unparalleled!” her brother boasted, jostling Cynisca’s shoulders to galvanize her.

“Do not gloat on my behalf, dear brother. For words mean little,” she said, throwing his hands from her back. “Let me prove to the world that I am, indeed, a master of horses,” she said with a grin.

“So you are willing? You shall enter the games?” he asked with excitement.

“Yes! I shall enter a four-horse chariot team, run by the finest horses I have bred, with our most fit slave at the reigns!”

Cynisca’s brother gave her a stiff pat on the back before exiting the room, a nefarious smirk running across his face, for his encouragement had been motivated by deceit. He secretly hoped a woman’s win would discredit the sport of chariot racing, rendering it unmanly and unworthy of the Olympic Games. He detested the sport because its winners—those who received the laurel wreath prize and the great esteem that accompanied it—were not the men who drove the horses, but the wealthy patrons who owned them. Victors won based not on their own bravery and skill, but on the bravery and skill of others.

Women were not allowed to be athletes, let alone attend the games. The chariot race offered Cynisca the only means of participation, and she was overjoyed at the opportunity. As with each opening of the Olympic Games, the day’s events began with a lavish ritual slaughtering to the great god Zeus. Cynisca wore her most luxurious tunic for the festivities. When the sports themselves began, and all the women returned to their homes, Cynisca reported to the hippodrome to prep her chariot driver.

Her driver wore a long-sleeved tunic fastened with a simple belt. Two straps crisscrossed high on his back to prevent the material from ballooning during the race. It was due to the dangers of the sport that chariot racers wore a protective garment—it was the only Olympic event not performed in the nude.

Cynisca helped her driver get situated on his chariot, a sturdy, wooden cart with two wheels and an open back. Once the horses and cart were drawn behind their gate, she fastened the driver’s feet into place and bid him good luck.

“May my horses be swift-footed, and your dexterity unrivaled.”

“Praise Zeus!” the driver replied before fixing a stern gaze forward at the oblong racetrack.

When the starting gates dropped, which they did in staggered fashion so the inside lane did not receive benefit, the chariots bolted around the course, turning sharply around the bends. Some turned too fast, some too recklessly, causing spill after spill, but Cynisca’s driver remained unscathed until the end. When her chariot was first to cross the finish line, Cynisca lept for joy into her brother’s arms. He jumped in excitement too, believing his devious plan was on the cusp of fulfillment. But there was no truth to his plot.

Cynisca—the first woman to win at the Olympic Games—was honored by having a bronze statue of herself and a chariot placed in Olympia’s great Temple of Zeus. From that point on, she was worshipped as a hero and praised as having paved the road for other women victors at the Olympic Games.


The Truth of the Matter: Cynisca was indeed the first woman to win at the Olympic Games, and it was widely believed that her brother encouraged her entrance into the race to dishonor the sport. The description of people, places, and things is historical; this story’s fictional elements lie in its dialogue.

Friday the Thirteenth

Circa 450 CE, Tarentum, Southern Italy

“Let us set sail tomorrow, Friday, the thirteenth day of September!” Albus said, his adolescent voice cracking with excitement. It would be his first business trip from Italy to Egypt, where his father often sold their freshly pressed olive oil.

“We certainly shall not! I refuse to give myself over to the malign hands of Fate so easily!” his father, Tullius, said. “The sea shall not become our burial shroud, nor shall I risk the well-being of hundreds of jugs of olive oil, whose sale will feed our family for many months.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Albus asked.

“Friday the thirteenth is a day for tragedies,” his father said. “Sit, and I will explain why you must never embark on a new venture on the thirteenth day of any month if it happens to fall on a Friday.”

His son sat down upon a patterned rug of maroon, purple, and green triangles that softened the hard stone floor, and beside a simple square chest on which a copy of the Bible rested, alongside a small painted image of Jesus performing a miracle.

“Let us hearken back to the beginning of time. It is said that Adam ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge on a Friday, and so it was on this day that humanity became corrupt. God then punished Eve, the coaxer, and future female generations to come with menstruation, a cycle which occurs thirteen times a year,” Tullius explained.

“It is also believed that Cain murdered his brother Able on Friday the thirteenth, and the Great Flood began on a Friday. The Tower of Babel, too, built to commemorate the victory of humanity after the flood, was destroyed on a Friday.”

“Are these dates for certain?” Albus asked, his brows raised with skepticism.

“I believe they are, but if you need further convincing, we can turn to more recent events—those surrounding Jesus himself!” his father said. “Thirteen was the number of people present at our Savior’s last supper, attended by Jesus and his twelve apostles. Judas, the thirteenth member to arrive at the table, betrayed Jesus, a wretched soul he was, leading to the death of our Lord, whose crucifixion occurred on…”

“A Friday!” Albus shouted.

“Yes!” his father said. “And even the dregs of our society agree the number thirteen to be cursed. Witches gather in groups of twelve, for the thirteenth is said to be the devil!”

“What is it about the number thirteen that is so cursed?” his son wondered.

“I shall tell you,” his father answered firmly. “The number twelve has always been judged a complete number. There are twelve tribes of Israel, twelve labors of Hercules, twelve apostles of Jesus, twelve Grecian gods on Olympus, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve months in a year, and twelve numbers on a clock. In exceeding twelve by one, we are beyond complete, and surely, that brings ill luck.”

Albus looked at his father with astonishment.

“For this reason, you will not see many ships set sail this Friday the thirteenth, nor will you see many people embark on new ventures—for they fear they are doomed from the start.”

The Seven Deadly Sins

390 CE, Tabennisi, Egypt

In the first year of his child’s life, Aesop developed an unquenchable love of gambling. As the sun peaked each day, he would take pause from his diligent craft of calligraphy to frequent the local theatre in his hometown of Karanis, situated south of Egypt’s Nile Delta. The sight of brawny gladiators mustering every drop of their beastly power to tear asunder their opponents intoxicated him. Aesop allied himself to certain of these men by soliciting their success through silver coins. Tragically and one by one, the men he had admired from afar fell to the sword, taking with them to the grave all of his wealth.

When a money collector barged into Aesop’s home and beat him and his wife with a cudgel, he was forced to pay for his sin. With an overflowing of tears, he sold their first and only born child into slavery. At the demand of his wife, he consented to divorce and left Karanis.

“I am going off to be a monk,” he had told his wife, convinced that only Christianity and the virtues it embraced could mend his life. His wife laughed and bade him never to return.

Each footstep out of town felt insurmountable as the weight of Aesop’s heartache bore down hard upon him. He passed through Karanis’ stone city gates and, to his good fortune, happened upon a caravan traveling south along the Nile River. For nine days, he traveled by camel train into the depths of Egypt until, reaching the great city of Thebes, the caravan disbanded.

Without delay, Aesop trekked east toward the famed monastery of Tabennisi until he was stopped by a colossal mud-brick wall that climbed up and out from the earth. The wall was five times his height and stretched five hundred paces to his left and five hundred paces to his right before bending back in on itself to ultimately form a circle. Inside the enclosure, the desert bloomed with hundreds of monks.

As Aesop approached the monastery door, the gravity of his circumstance became overwhelming and his stomach was sent tumbling. The door was slightly taller than he and made of rotting wood. With a deep sigh, Aesop gave it two firm knocks. It immediately cracked open, revealing a somber face with parched skin and eyes sunk deep beneath the brow.

“I wish to renounce the world,” Aesop said. “I beg you, receive me into your hermitage, that I may become a monk.”

Without a word spoken, the doorkeeper escorted him to the guest chamber situated just inside the monastery wall. It was a small and simple room containing a bare mattress, an oil lamp, and a small window no bigger than Aesop’s head over which a red cross was painted. The window looked out onto an olive tree.

For seven days, Aesop was forbidden to leave his chamber. The doorkeeper would visit three times daily—in the morning, afternoon, and at sunset—entering the guestroom carrying a tray of unsalted bread, cooked vegetables, and figs. The two would break bread together in absolute quietude—the doorkeeper explained silence of mouth and stillness of heart allowed the faithful to commune with the Lord and appreciate his fruits. After they put down every last morsel, the doorkeeper offered Aesop instruction in the language of the monks—Coptic—which he fittingly described as Egyptian vernacular expressed in Greek letters, and taught him the Lord’s Prayer and many other psalms for memorization. On the seventh day, the doorkeeper prepared Aesop for what was to come.

“You must think of the monastery as a spiritual battlefield on which the most veracious of demons, bent on the destruction of pious souls, bring all their weapons to bear. A fellow monk, Evagrius of Pontus, who has been buffeted by these demons for many years, pinpointed the eight most harmful that cause man to falter. They are the demons of gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, vainglory, pride, and acedia—these are the eight deadly sins,” he said.

Aesop listened in earnest.

“The demon of gluttony forces us to overindulge; lust creates a desire for inappropriate sexual intimacy; avarice spawns a desire for worldly goods for their own sake; sadness comes from the desire of not having what one wants, and the frustration that comes with it; anger involves the improper use of our motivations, which should always be used to thwart demonic assaults; with vainglory we seek the admiration of others to puff up the self; with pride we attribute all success or virtue only to ourselves, to the point where we reject God as the source of good things, wrongly finding the source to be within ourselves instead; and last, acedia, which we also call the noonday demon, strikes with a sense of boredom, making the monk feel like the day is dragging on or is too difficult, spawning a case of spiritual sloth. Do you understand these?” the gatekeeper asked.

“Some of them I understand all to well,” Aesop said.

“In this monastery, we train to quell these passions, to reject the wicked advances of demons that bind our souls in chains of sin. Those who can stand steadfast in virtue with unfettered souls can partake in divine and spiritual things, transforming themselves evermore in the image and likeness of God. It is that for which we toil,” he said.

“And it is that which I seek,” Aesop replied.

The gatekeeper then stripped Aesop of his secular clothes and dressed him in the monastic habit. Aesop would live out his life in the monastery, fighting against the eight deadly sins until his body became dead to demonic advances, and his soul ascended to God.

By the sixth century, the spiritual battlefield on which Aesop fought looked slightly different—Pope Gregory the Great reduced the list from eight to seven deadly sins, folding vainglory into pride, acedia into sadness, and adding envy—but the battle remains the same.