Beautiful eunuchs Bagoas and Oromedon (on the top).
"I removed the robe, baring his slender olive-colored shoulders, on which his black curls fell down, just touched with henna. He was extremely graceful, with a flawless skin; the Median, not the Persian beauty.
***
He reached out and caught my arm; his grasp was firm, but without anger or greed. "Gently, Gazelle-Eyes. Hush now, and listen to me." I had not said a word; but I sat still and ceased to struggle. "I have never, all this time, told you a word of a lie. I am just a teacher; all this is part of what I am here to do. If I like my work, so much the better for both of us. What you wish to forget, I know; soon you can do so forever. There is a pride in you, wounded but still unyielding; it is perhaps what shaped your prettiness into beauty. With such a nature, living as you have lived between your sordid master and his vulgar friends, you must have been holding back all the while. And very right. But those days are gone. There is a new existence before you. Now you must learn to give a little. I am here for that, to teach you the art of pleasure." He reached out his other hand, and gently pulled me down. "Come. I promise you, you will like it much more with me."
I did not resist persuasion. He might indeed possess some magic, by whose power all would be well. So at first it still appeared, for he was as skilled as he was charming, like a creature from another world than that I had been frequenting; it seemed one could linger forever in the outer courts of delight.
***
Like a poet who can sing of battles though not a warrior, I could conjure the images of desire, without suffering the sharpness of its wounds which I knew too well. I could make the music, its pauses and its cadenzas; Oromedon said I was like one who can play for the dancers, yet not dance. It was his own nature to take delight in the measure he gave it; yet I triumphed with him. Then he said, "I don't think, Gazelle-Eyes, you have very much more to learn."
His words dismayed me like news unknown before. I clung to him, saying, "Do you love me? You don't only want to teach me? Will you be sorry when I am gone?"
"Have you learned to break hearts already?" he said. "I never taught you that."
"But do you love me?" I had asked it of no one since my mother died.
"Never say that to him. It would be considered far too oncoming."
I looked into his face; relenting, he hugged me like a child, which did not seem strange to me. "Truly I love you, and when you go I shall be desolate. But then comes tomorrow. I would be cruel to make you pledges; I may never see you again. If I do, maybe I cannot speak to you, and then you would think me false. I promised not to lie to you. "
-- Mary Renault - Persian Boy
