Scheming Phoenician Princes

As he fucked me, the other soldiers gathered about us, laughed and clapped, made suggestions and lewd comments, and took their own shafts in their hands.

When Spiros was done with me, he turned me over to the others.

All of the breedings were rough, being the first I had experienced, and most of them being brutal, but after the taking by the Greek solider captain, Spiro, who had all of the attributes of the Minotaur in the tale Yaalon had been spinning to prepare me for deflowering when he was washed overboard, the rest were manageable. Spiro had both the manners and shaft of a bull. He didn't just take what he wanted from me with an extraordinarily thick, long, and vigorous cock, but he tore his pleasure out of me with cruelty as well. Still, despite being frightened for my life and being brutalized, I was happy to have been with a man at last and there were times in my later life that I looked back on that first fuck as the most arousing, satiating I'd ever had.

After the one named Spiro had deflowered and breeded me, the others took me in positions they preferred by the light of the fire as day turned to evening and then to night. I certainly had to admit that Spiro opened me up to be able to take the following five, none of whom had the shaft and vigor that Spiro had. After him, I just lay there, moaning softly, open, and vulnerable, a gaping sheath to assuage the lust of the other men.

Giorgos was last. I might have thought he would spare me for that night at least, as he had been kind to me earlier. But he fucked me as well; he wanted me no less than any of the others. He was more gentle in the taking and spent more time at it than the rest, trying to give me some pleasure, if that had been possible when my first experience with a man was with six rough Greek soldiers in succession. But he made some effort at mutual pleasure. With him, there was kissing and whispering words of encouragement and praise in my ear.

I was bound again with the roping from the mast and laid near that as the others settled for the night. Giorgos visited me in the night and took me again, but he was even more loving at it than he had been the first time. I had some hope of an ally in this perilous situation.

I woke in the morning, my eyes spying the legs in the dune, which still had not moved, and would not move, I realized, to being unbound and passed around to the Greek soldiers again. This time Giorgos did not take his share--he had taken an extra share during the night, and I think some sense of remorse was setting in with him. I more than once saw a look of concern on his face as one of his fellow soldiers was taking his exercise on top of me.

The last was Spiro, as the rest were preparing to push their vessel back out into the sea. This was a crucial point and I despaired of surviving this moment, especially as, after fucking me, Spiro took a knife out of a sheath lashed to one of us calves. Giorgos had held back from the others but he seemed too timid to attempt to protect me, no matter what his personal feelings might be.

I closed my eyes, anticipating never opening them again, when I heard Giorgos's voice. He was nervous, but the voice was strong and assured. "Do we want to do that, Spiro? He is handsome and well formed, and he speaks impeccable Greek. We might as well return to Athens. The raid on Tyre must be over now or the rest of the fleet has had the same trouble in the storm as we have and the raid has been called off. In any case, there will be no spoils from Phoenicia for us on this voyage. Think of how much this man would go for as a slave in Athens. We could take him back to Athens with us, put him on the slave block, and share out the sale of him between us."

Spiro was swayed by this argument, adding how much more I would be worth as somewhat fresh but well trained to the needs and pleasures of men when I was presented on the Athens' slave block.

All the way back to Athens the six men took turns training me in taking what men enjoyed giving with their cocks, and, indeed, there was little I didn't know about what a man liked to do to another man, including taking two men's cocks at the same time and taking a man's fist, by the time we reached Piraeus, the port of Athens.

Did I lie down and take it? Yes, I did. It was my gateway to survival and, besides, I was increasingly content with being submissive to vigorous muscular men.

Throughout that time, I favored Giorgos and gave him particularly good service because, although I was in dire straits--balanced by not at all rejecting some submissive play with men--I was not lying on my back on the sand of a Cypriot beach, legs splayed and motionless for all time, staring blankly at the sky. The story of my life didn't end on a Cypriot beach.

* * * *

I believe I must have been some sort of bargain sale at the Athens' slave auction if only because the Greek philosopher Cleon bought me. He came from a prominent family in Athens, but he, like most of the philosophers, of whom most in Athens said there were far too many, was known to be stingy. He barely had enough income to feed himself let alone servants, but, of course, the Athens' patricians couldn't do without their slaves. I was somewhat out of any convenient class of male slave, sold in the catamite and sodomite category, meant for those who served both at and on couch equally. But in Athens, I was really too old to be sold this way. I really should have been sold in the soldier's attendant category, I think, where I still would be sodomized, but it was probably my small size and very young appearance that placed me in a category meant for boys rather than young men having just reached their majority.

But Cleon was looking for someone outside of category, so I was meant to go with him, I suppose. He normally would buy a young boy, as most philosophers would, the older the philosopher the younger the boy. But Cleon had a dual need. He wanted a boyish type for himself, and my small size and youthful look served that purpose if the philosopher was short sighted, as Cleon was. But Cleon also needed someone more sturdy and experienced to use as a party favor for powerful men he was trying to enlist to support him remaining in Athens--and alive.

Cleon had a propensity to be too political and for backing the lame horse. He was on the cusp of being exiled or forced to drink the hemlock--or exiled and then forced to drink the hemlock.

The philosopher did good research into his needs and he came up with seeking a comely, perfectly proportioned, young-looking submissive with patrician manners and speech who took a cock like a whore. My natural good, young looks, breeding as a Phoenician prince--although I'd never reveal that--and my two weeks on the sea with six randy and rough Greek soldiers made me the best fit of what was in supply relatively cheaply at the Athens slave market when Cleon desperately needed a match for his needs.

Cleon proved to be a tolerant and helpful master in his own behavior, grateful that I spoke Greek well, and had patrician manners and was willing to teach me how to serve at couch in a Greek villa and then to lie on the couch under a guest. His sexual demands were few, but they were refined. He was slow to erection, so he heated me up considerably with his hands and mouth before he was hard enough to penetrate. Sometimes he never got hard enough to penetrate, but he could bring me off and dribble himself in the process. He added finesse to the rougher aspects the Greek soldiers had taught me to meld with. He was quite old, so he didn't need me in his bed often and mostly was content with fondling, kissing, and me sucking or hand-stroking him off or him doing the same for me.

His guests were another matter, running the gamut from being as refined and limited in demands as he was to being as demanding, vigorous, and cruel as the soldiers who had enslaved me had been--and beyond. There were those who could only become aroused enough to ejaculate by either whipping or binding me or for me doing that to them. In the months I was in Cleon's villa in Athens, and I don't know how long it was, I just know it wasn't more than a couple of seasons, certainly not a full year, I learned the skills of a high-class male sex server. I also learned how to survive another man's sexual needs, no matter how brutal, and to cajole him not to put an end to me.

Cleon didn't keep me under lock and key in his villa as many in Athens did with their slaves. He gave me considerable rein to move about the city, either buying for the sexual needs of the villa--there were other servants to take care of the household supplies needs--or discovering what the city had to offer on my own.

One thing the city had to offer was men seeking coupling with other men encountered on the streets and in the wine houses or just wandering around in the parks looking for other men to mate with. The cultural world for Athens at that time was "hedonism," with "sodomy" being a popular subset. I'm somewhat ashamed to say I had no trouble following that culture. Indeed, although normal life in Phoenicia didn't follow this culture closely, the Phoenician court certainly did.

I first met Acteon at a sex implements shop, where I had been sent to buy a hand whip, one of Cleon's less-honest guests having stolen the one he kept on hand for use by the crueler men he was trying to cultivate. I suppose seeing me there, buying a hand whip, cut through a lot of preliminary work for Acteon concerning what I was and what I would do for a man. He obviously liked the look of me and followed me out of the shop. I hadn't walked more than five steps before he put a hand on my arm to stop me, gave me an appreciate look, and propositioned me.

Athens was a hedonist city at the time; there was nothing to a man stopping another man or a woman in the street, saying he liked the look of the other, and could he fuck them for a designated fee? In my case, I had just purchased a hand whip, so the man was interested in more than just a fuck. I liked the look of him enough that I went with him. He did not know I was a slave until he had invited me to sit and drink with him at a wine shop. I didn't hide the fact, though.

He said, "Oh, Cleon. He is permissive. He will have no problem. He has been trying to curry favor with me. The poor man has no concept of who to back and what political philosophy to follow in a given month, though."

"No problem with what?" I had asked.

"I find you very attractive and desirable, and I see you do not shirk from the whip. I wish to dally with and cover you. And I have a fondness for the whip. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Not if my master doesn't," I answered. Acteon was an extremely handsome man, young and muscular, much the same bearing and powerful body as Spiro, the soldier captain had. Cleon was good to me, but he was old, as had been most of the men he had brought to the villa to cajole and for me to entertain. The guests who aroused me the most in the using were ones who used the whip and other forms of sexual torture judiciously to enhance their erections, I must admit. I was ripe for the attentions of such as Acteon. "Do you wish to speak with Cleon on this matter?"

"Only if I am sure," Acteon said. "Will you come to the baths and service me? If you are all that I hope you will be, I then will talk with Cleon." I assented and he sent his attendants away.

He took me to a rather fancy private-membership bath. He was a refined lover in the baths at the beginning, pulling me onto his lap, facing him in the pool, as he sat on the ledge below the water. We kissed and embraced, and I sheathed his cock and rose and fell on it. He changed the position to my placing my feet on the sides of the tiles of the pool on either side of his waist and leaning back into the water, my back floating, as he gripped my hips and pulled me on and off his shaft. He was thick and long and throbbing and he had the expertise of kissing every surface of my passage with the bulb of his shaft just as I had the expertise of activating the muscles of my passage walls to undulate and ripple over his stroking member. We each climaxed repeatedly during an hour of dalliance in the pool.

He was visibly pleased with our coupling and he was the best I'd ever had.

What he wanted next wasn't as pleasing to me, but it was, in truth, more arousing and propelled me to a higher plane of satiation. The bath house had a dungeon. There were iron rings and ropes to bind and hang me from. Acteon slapped me and whipped me, none too bitingly, though, as his complete captive and came in behind me, lifted and spread my legs, set my anal passage down on his especially erect and throbbing cock, and fucked me to multiple climaxes.

Acteon declared that he was very pleased with the look of me and my expertise in the coupling. As for me, I was mesmerized by the two sides of the man and accepted him as my master. Even when he said that we should meet here in the baths regularly but that Cleon need not know about the arrangement, I assented. I had hesitated, but he had said that meeting in baths was only temporary until he could make arrangements at his villa. When he could set something more permanent up, he would speak to Cleon. He may even buy me. Denying him nothing, I did not question this.

We met several times at the baths, having glorious sex in the pool and on the massage tables and moving on to more cruel but greater climax sex in the bath's dungeon. Acteon became more demanding with each meeting, but as it was incremental, I did not realize the toll he was taking on my body. If Cleon noticed it, he said nothing. He was growing increasingly fond of me and treated me less and less as a slave and more as a young lover and confidant. He seemed to realize that I was more than a good-looking young man with a yielding hole. He instructed me in philosophy as well. If he saw the evidence of the hard use by Acteon, he seemed not willing to endanger our relationship by challenging me about it.

I did not awaken to the danger of what I was falling into with Acteon until the day I was in the market with Cleon, who rarely went into the market but this day said he had a meeting with a ship's captain there. I had no idea the import of that meeting until later. I had meant to ask, but all such thoughts were thrown out of my mind by a sighting of Acteon strolling through the market--with a woman and two small boys.

"That man? Oh, that's Acteon," Cleon said in answer to my query. "From one of the most prominent Athens families. That is his wife and his sons. A peculiar bird, though. There is talk of Acteon and young men who are here but then are no longer here. I would be careful of that one if I were you. I could have used his patronage, but I did not feel I could risk it."

Could have used his patronage? Again, from the shock of seeing Acteon with a family when I thought he went only with men and was going to make a trysting room for us in his villa and hearing what Cleon had to say about him and the disappearance of other young men, I failed to consider the significance of what Cleon was saying about a ship and his need for patronage.

What Cleon was saying about his vanishing need for support in Athens and why he was meeting with a ship's captain here was that he was planning on leaving Athens--and doing so secretly, because the dangers both of remaining in Athens and escaping to some destination unknown by his enemies in Athens were getting to be too great for him.

He would not share that information with me for the present, although he seemed like he was unconsciously begging me to pull the information out of him. I also suspected that what he told me about Acteon was rooted in a knowledge that it was Acteon who was putting the lash marks on my back and buttocks. It happened too often for it all to have been caused by Cleon's own guests.

What I had seen and learned informed what Acteon said to me the next time we met at the baths. After a very satisfying fuck in the pool, he took me to the dungeon room. Before we started on the crueler, but more exotic sexual practices, he said, "I have had a better idea than meeting in my villa. They have rooms here to accommodate more intimate meetings than the communal pool and this chamber, which any of the members can use at the same time."

"Rooms?" I asked.

"Yes, just off this chamber."

As my luck would have it, Acteon was called away momentarily before I was bound and hung from the ceiling rings. I checked out the auxiliary rooms off this chamber. As I feared, they were more prison cells than trysting rooms. They had cots, but they also had manacles attached to the stone walls. They were more for holding someone prisoner to the continued needs of someone like Acteon than love nests--for as long as the captive lived.

When he returned, he suggested that I come to him more permanently, beginning with the next meeting we would have here. I somehow wondered if, when I next came here, I would not be leaving by my own will and before my demise and if young men before me had suffered that fate.

The session of demanding bound sex that then unfolded opened my eyes to how much farther into the testing of endurance this had gone from the first time he had brought me here. Was Acteon a man who used his partners completely up, being finding release in loving them to death? I was a slave. The only one who could object would be the one who owned me, and Acteon had spoken by buying me from Cleon. Already his demands were becoming more stringent.

Still, I found myself going hard and panting for Acteon when I thought of myself being manacled to the walls of one of those rooms, with my knees hooked on Acteon's hips and him fucking me hard with that masterful cock of his. I sobered when the last image in my mind of such an encounter was me manacled to the wall still, my body bloody and broken, the door to the cell slamming shut, and the bar being shot home for eternity.

Two days later, Cleon told me of his self-imposed exile and that he would be taking only me with him. He was going to the other end and shore of the Mediterranean to the seaside town of Utica, near the larger city of Carthage.

"That's in Phoenicia," I said.

"Yes, it is," he answered, apparently having no awareness that that would be taking me into the jaws of danger, where I would be under the power and palace machinations that my mother, Eleni, had tried to save me from by sending me to Greece. Nor could I now tell Cleon that I was an endangered prince of Phoenicia who was safer here in Athens as a sex slave than I would be in Utica.

I had decisions to make. I could give in entirely to my sexual master, Anteon, getting the most out of sexual pleasure for as long as that lasted. I could risk exile with Cleon, who had been kind to me, back under the sway of Phoenicia. Or I could strike out on my own and try to reach my mother's family in Olympia, wherever that was from Athens.

In the end, I chose the safer route of kindness. When Acteon next went to the baths prepared to meet and imprison me for the yet more demanding sexual conquest he had in mind for me, I already was back on the Mediterranean Sea on my way to what I hoped would be a secret future in a Phoenicia town far beyond the gaze of the empire's capital at Tyre.

Surviving Brother

I knew as well as anyone why the soldiers were searching the port of Utica, along the Mediterranean coast from Carthage, so frantically. The rumors were on the fly that Prince Abosir, the brother of the usurper king of the Phoenicians, Philosir, had fled west through the Mediterranean from the Phoenician capital at Tyre to Utica. Abosir was escaping the ire of his elder brother, who wanted no possible challenge to remain to the throne he had stolen from the previous king and his father, Hanno. The reports that the prince was being sheltered in Utica had grown to the point that Philosir sent his palace guard here to search for him. The palace guard from Tyre would recognize him. Particularly suspect as providing Abosir shelter were the Greek exiles living here, like my master, the philosopher Cleon. The Greeks had favored Philosir's predecessor.