“How Menander Got His Name” by Altivo Overo

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

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I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

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and today’s story is

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“How Menander Got His Name”

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by Altivo Overo (@Altivo on Twitter,

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who is a horse of many colors if you only see in black and white,

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and you can find more of his stories on FurAffinity,

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Weasyl, Furry Amino,

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or right here on The Voice of Dog.

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How Menander Got His Name by

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Altivo Overo

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The ancient winged horse, descendant of Pegasus himself, stood dozing in the shade when two foals,

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Dusk and Zeb, approached and stood before him.

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The shuffle of their hooves awakened the elder, who snorted dust from his muzzle and looked about suspiciously before focusing on the two youngsters.

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“Ah,” he began, “it's you two.

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Did you want something?”

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Dusk bowed her head respectfully.

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“We were wondering how you got your name, grandfather, and what it means.”

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Zeb nodded beside her.

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The old horse chuckled to himself.

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“That's a long story,”

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he answered. “I wasn't always called Menander, though.

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My mother named me Kratos, which means 'strong' or 'leader.'”

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“But what does Menander mean?”

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Zeb repeated in his high pitched voice.

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“And what happened to your mother?”

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The colt always managed to make two questions out of one.

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“One thing at a time, little one,”

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Menander reminded him.

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“The name Menander means 'nobody' in the old Greek. But I wasn't the first to bear it.

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I was named for a human.

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It happened right after I lost my mother.

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“I was just a yearling when I lost her.

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We were flying over the sea.

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It was growing dark, and I went to the nearest lighted place I could find thinking I might find others there.”

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Zeb interrupted at this point.

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“How did you lose your mother?

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What was her name?”

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“Be quiet, Zeb, and let him tell us,”

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Dusk whickered, swatting the weanling with her tail.

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It was a new trick she had just begun to learn now that her tail was long enough to do it.

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Menander laughed to himself at their antics, but gave them a stern look just the same.

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“Who is telling the story?”

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he asked. “You are,”

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Zeb answered promptly, showing that he hadn’t forgotten previous lessons.

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“I’m sorry,” he added.

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“Her name was Kynthia, but let’s leave the story of what happened to her for another time.

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It’s very complicated and sad.

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“So, I arrived at a city of humans, built of stone.

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It was on the coast of the sea,

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and had a harbor for ships

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as well as a great temple to the god Serapis.

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I could smell and hear the horses, there were many of them there,

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and even more humans.

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Neither of you have ever seen a human, have you?”

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The two youngsters shook their heads.

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“They are rather peculiar-looking creatures,” Menander explained,

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“Though you get used to them after a while.

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They walk on their hind legs,

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sometimes you think they are bound to fall over at any second, but they rarely do.

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Their forelegs have clever divided hooves that let them do wondrous things like weaving grass into different shaped containers for carrying or

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making great piles of stone that are hollow inside.

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They take shelter in these from the rain and wind.

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“They smell funny too.

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Not always unpleasant, but strange.

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Like Coyote, they rub things on themselves to change their scent.

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I was never sure whether it was to confuse their prey or to make them smell better to each other.

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Perhaps it is both.”

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Zeb made a flehman face and Dusk tail-swatted him again.

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Menander laughed, he couldn’t help it.

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“Anyway,” he continued, “I was tired and hungry,

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wet and bedraggled from a tremendous rainstorm, and I smelled sweet grasses and herbs.

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I followed the scent and ended up in a garden on the edge of the human city.

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The grass was very good,

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and I ate some of it.

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No one seemed to be around.

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There were figs too...

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Well, you don’t know figs, but they are delicious...

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and I ate more of them than I should have.

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I’d never tasted anything so good before.

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“Then I laid down in the grass

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and went to sleep.

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I was so tired, nothing could keep me awake.

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If a leopard had come along and eaten me, I think I wouldn’t even have noticed.

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I slept soundly until the humans found me there the next morning.”

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His audience were watching him alertly,

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waiting for him to continue.

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Menander lowered his head and sneezed before he went on.

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“As it happened, I had fallen asleep in the kitchen garden of the Serapeum,

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the temple and museum of the god Serapis.

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It may be what saved me,

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because the ancient god Zeus,

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who was very real, believe me,

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had killed my father and then my mother.

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If he knew about my existence,

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he was surely after me as well.

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“But I was in Egypt,

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and outside the jurisdiction of Zeus.

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The Egyptian gods don’t take kindly to interference from across the seas,

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and Serapis was in charge of the Egyptian underworld by then.

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I was never quite clear whether he was just a new form for Osiris or a different god who had

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usurped Osiris’ place,

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but he was in a position of great power.

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His priests and scholars

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took me under their protection as soon as they saw me in the garden that morning.”

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“Fortunately, I didn’t have to learn the language of Egypt just yet.

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The port of Alexandria, where I had landed,

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was really a Greek civilization,

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and the Attic Greek I had learned from my mother served me perfectly well.

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The kitchen boy who found me asleep first ran back into the kitchen

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crying out that Pegasus himself had arrived.

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A crowd formed quickly,

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and I overheard the arguments. ‘Pegasus is

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silvery white, this one has

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black spots and cannot be he.’

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And ‘Perhaps he just has mud stains from traveling.’

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I got to my feet

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and prepared to escape,

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in case I should need to flee immediately,

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because I had no direct experience with humans then

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and didn’t know what to expect.

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Would they try to tie me up?

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Ride on my back?

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Perhaps even chain my hooves together to keep me from running?

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“They did none of these things, however.

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The high priest of Serapis, who carried a brazen staff with a

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representation of a bull’s horns at the top,

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stepped toward me and said ‘Leave us not, O noble one,

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but stay and teach us.’

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Flattering, wasn’t it?”

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Dusk snickered a bit.

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“Were you already a teacher?”

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she had to ask. Menander shook his head.

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“I was only four fours of moons old,” he told her.

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“I barely knew how to take care of myself, and certainly nothing you could

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term as wisdom. But I tried to answer as politely as I could,

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telling him ‘Honorable lord,

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I lost my way coming over the sea from the north.

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I have lost my mother and am quite alone.

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If you have a place for me here, I will be happy to ask for sanctuary with you.’

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“And so it was that I became a resident of the Serapeum,

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which adjoined that greatest of wonders,

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the Alexandrian Library.

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The scribes and priests,

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though they were at first astonished that I could speak in such a civilized manner, quickly accepted me

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and began to teach me.

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For, though my mother Kynthia taught me fair speech

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and as much of the old legends as she knew,

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there was nothing she could tell me of geometry

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or astronomy. I do not think she knew how to read.

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Certainly we had no books in our mountain meadow.

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“I became quite a

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pet, and was given free run of the scriptorium.

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That was the place where the scribes made copies of books.

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Ptolemy, who was king of that country,

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had made it a law that any visitor or traveller must surrender the books in his possession.

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Fair copies were made

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and returned to him,

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while the original was retained in the library

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at the Serapeum. It was

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very famous, and contained more books than anyone could possibly count.”

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Pausing for refreshment,

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Menander took a small mouthful of grass and chewed it.

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“What are ‘books’, grandfather?”

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Zeb asked. Menander chuckled.

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“Books are a human invention,”

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he said. “Humans have learned to represent the things they say with little marks called ‘writing.’

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Any other human who has the skill can look at those marks

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and understand what they mean,

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even if the original speaker

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or maker of the marks is long dead.

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Collections of writing onto long strips of flexible stuff are called

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books; and libraries are built to provide safe storage for those books, so that the words of the dead can never be lost.”

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“Don’t humans have shamans to speak for their dead?”

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was Dusk’s next question.

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“Not as we do,” Menander answered.

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“So books are very important to them.”

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“But how did your name get changed, then?”

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Zeb asked, returning to his original question of the evening.

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“I’m just getting to that,”

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Menander said. “There came a day when someone forgot to get me any hay in the morning.

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I was wandering around the scriptorium while the scribes were at their own breakfast, and I noticed

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that the scroll books on the chief scribe’s desk smelled

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tasty. I tried a nibble,

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and it wasn’t bad at all.

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Those scrolls were made of papyrus,

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a river grass that is pounded down to make a smooth flat surface for writing.

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I couldn’t help myself,

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and ate one whole

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except for the waxy tag that hung from the end.

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I tried another, and another.

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By the time the scribes returned from their meal I had finished off most of the stack and was chewing on the last volume.

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“‘Holy Serapis!’

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was the chief scribe’s reaction. ‘He

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has eaten our only copy of Menander.’

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And so, apparently, I had.

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The books contained the plays of a famous Greek writer named Menander.

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Copies of his work were rare,

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and I had just rendered them rarer.

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The chief scribe shook his head. ‘Henceforth

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we must call you Menander,’

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he told me. ‘For you have more of Menander in you now than there is in all the libraries of Egypt combined.’

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I hardly understood his meaning,

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but I was Menander from that day forth.

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And the scribe was right.

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Menander’s famous plays are almost entirely lost.

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I must have eaten his masterpieces right up.

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I was terribly embarrassed,

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but they forgave me on the condition that I promise

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not to eat any more books,

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a demand to which I was only too glad to accede.

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“After that, one of the scribes, convinced that I was quite an intellect,

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made a bet with his fellows that he could teach me to read.

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They agreed readily enough,

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saying ‘Whoever heard of a talking horse that could read?’

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“But my friend, Xenos, just answered them with

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‘Whoever heard of a horse that could speak excellent Greek?’ I think this

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may have given them some doubts,

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but the wager was arranged and my reading lessons began that day.

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At first I had trouble understanding the markings,

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but Xenos finally figured out that my vision was different enough from his own

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that I should use only one eye at a time to read.

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That worked, and soon I was reading aloud from their famous authors:

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Homer, Xenophon,

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Aristophanes. Xenos won his bet, and I gained even more popularity.

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“Eventually I began reading books of my own choice.

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I learned not only the history of Greece,

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but of many adjoining nations.

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When I proved that I could be trusted,

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and would no longer eat the books,

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I received free access to the entire library.

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It was huge, and contained so many books

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that no one had counted them all.”

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Zeb was yawning as Dusk remarked,

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“So that’s why you know everything, grandfather?

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Because you ate the books?”

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“I only ever ate Menander’s writings. I grew in knowledge because I read the books,

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not because I ate them, little,”

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Menander told her. “And now it’s

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bed time. I will tell you more another time if you wish.”

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He led them to the pool to drink,

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and then down to the little pine grove,

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where the yearlings were already dozing.

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“Will you teach us to read books?”

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Zeb asked, sleepily.

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“I have no books for you to read,”

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Menander said. “And I never learned to write, since

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I cannot hold a reed pen with my hoof.

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So I can’t make a book for you, either.

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Go to sleep now. Well into that night,

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the old pegasus stood awake under the stars,

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thinking about things in the past that he had nearly forgotten,

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and remembering his happy days at Alexandria.

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When at last he began to doze with the others,

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his dreams were filled with

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dancing Greek letters, and scrolls of papyrus. They also held something else, bits of his own family history that he had learned while he lived at the Serapeum.

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This was “How Menander Got His Name”

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by Altivo Overo,

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read for you by Khaki,

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your faithful fireside companion.

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Thank you for listening

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to The Voice of Dog