Beneath the Temple of Zeus

Softalk Publishing, Softline 1984

Language:: English
Authors:: Ken Rose
Platforms:: Apple II, Atari 400/800
Genres:: Myths and legends, Type-in
Entered by:: Garry, Gunness, jgerrie, Juan, Strident
Added:: 01-12-2010
Edited:: 01-11-2022

Synopsis

Plot

My name is Spiro Aristoras.

My home is in Plaka, which lies in the shadow of the Acropolis, the sacred hill, in the town of Athens. Which is in Greece.

My living is made as a guide and an interpreter and it is said I do both well. My love is my country, my city, and I know much about their past...as much as any man living.

I know little of you and nothing of your computers and you may well ask why it is that I am writing to you, who care little of Greece and nothing of me.

I will tell you.

There is a man in your country who is named Colonel Nigel Bledgelog. During the great war, when many of my people fought in the mountains, this Colonel Bledgelog was sent to aid us by the British. Although the fighting was bloody, blood is nothing new to this country of mine. It has the blood of many men over many centuries soaked in its soil. I digress.

When there was no fighting we discussed many things, he and I, but especially the tales of the old ones. It was I who told him of Dionysus Bromios, the Thunderer, he who was known as Taurokeros and as Tauroprosopos. The old gods, he would say, are gone...but at night in the hills of Athens he knew they still watched over man.

I have not seen the colonel for many years, but I have heard of him and of the work he has done with those who seek answers to strange riddles and puzzles and mysteries. And so I wrote to him, with the evidence that the Maenad, the "mad one," had returned — the corrupted follower of Dionysus, he who practiced the 'sparagmos,' the tearing of living victims to pieces and feasting on their raw flesh...that which is called 'omophagia.'

He wrote back to me and told me of one of his friends, one Mister Kenneth Rose, who would be in England and whom he would send to my country to see me and aid me. This Mister Kenneth Rose, wrote the colonel, was a disbeliever, but could help me if a riddle was to be solved or a puzzle to be answered. Mister Rose, he told me in his letter, should be led step by step through the proofs and he would then follow the challenge.

So it was that I met Mister Kenneth Rose. It was I who stole the thunderbolt of clay from the British Museum in the city of London and it was I who delivered the swan to the rooms of Mister Kenneth Rose in the Athens Gate Hotel many months ago.

It was I who led him to the ruins of the Temple of Zeus....

It was I who waited on the hill of the Acropolis many nights waiting for him to return.

It was I who found him, dazed, trembling, pale, on the hill many weeks ago.

It was I who watched him write what follows.

He has asked that I write the above as he says he can write no more. He asks that I tell you to believe or not believe, as your instinct instructs you. He asks that you take what follows as an extract of reality or a flight of fancy. He says you may now go without fear near the ruins of the Temple of Zeus.

Notes

This adventure was published in Softline, vol. 3, no. 2, November/December 1983, pp. 34-38, 42-43, 45. It was written for the Apple II with conversion notes for the Atari 8-bit.

It was ported to the Atari 8-bit by Paul Hegge in 1984.

It was ported to the TRS-80 MC-10 by Jim Gerrie.