In 404 BC glorious Athens loses the Peloponnesian War to Sparta after a twenty-seven year struggle. Members of a vicious, pro-Spartan oligarchy known as the Thirty are installed and their brutal rule of murder and hellish mayhem lasts a year before Athenian democrats oust them and restore their sacred democracy. Four years later Athens tries and executes the renowned philosopher Sokrates for impiety and corrupting the young, producing an onslaught of angry prejudice and cruelty against his family. 

Lost in the swirl of events is Sokrates’ son, Niko. Taken in by a battered, war-weary hoplite-potter and his family after the philosopher’s execution, Niko grows up spending his days fired by two ardent dreams; becoming as skilled at the potter’s wheel as his gifted foster father, and gaining Athenian citizenship, for only then can he leave behind once and for all his father’s shameful legacy. As his eighteenth birthday and the time for his examination for citizenship nears, his abusers step up their campaign of hostility and humiliation, and then on a fateful morning, one goes too far. 

 

In a blink of an eye a single, fist-sized rock forever transforms Niko’s life, and he finds himself bereft of all of his hopes and dreams. His long-smoldering anger erupts and thrusts him on a collision course with the ancient Gods of Hellas and the Moirai, those Sisters of Fate, who have apportioned for him a life of abuse and contempt and scorn. Duty-bound to honor a dying request, he is swept up into life’s splendor and depravity, love’s tenderness and war’s ruthlessness, and discovers along the way that though it is easy to defy the Gods’ will, it’s not so easy to withstand their wrath. Set against the renewed hostilities between Athens and Sparta during the Corinthian War, this is the tale of Sophronikos, son of Sokrates, who defiantly proclaims to all, just where is it written that one must meekly abide one’s lot in life? 

 

Adult content.

Book 1 of the trilogy

Creatures of a Day