Nicomedes

Nicomedes is a rich man of the highest class in Olbia, a man so rich that he would be welcome anywhere and can “play politics” in his home city, hire a fleet, buy expensive foreign slaves, and equip his troop of hippeis to be better than the other troops.

Nicomedes is certainly a type who can be found in the pages of Classical literature. He is an aesthete, a literate man who likes fine things and can afford them. In our modern world, we often assume that a man of refined taste is effeminate — the more so if that man is obviously homosexual (which Nicomedes obviously is). In the Greek world, however, such men were still expected to take their place in the Phalanx or the hippeis, to fight at sea or on land, to wrestle and box and fight like lions. I enjoyed creating a character to defy the conventional characterization of such men.

But Nicomedes is not a simple man, or a particularly good one. Despite being a good friend to Kineas and a loyal subordinate, he is also a bad master to Leon and takes pleasure in debauching the young Ajax. And yet, in the end, he falls in love with Ajax, and then must live up to his lover’s heroic ideals…