When we hear of him first he was alone. Not that he was left to himself, because people always kept near him. He was alone in what he wanted most to do, and alone in his thoughts.
The thing he valued most was a copy of the Iliad, or Troy Tale, which he read at night until he knew much of it by heart. After reading it, he put it under his wooden headrest for the remainder of the night. So he thought a lot about Achilles, and one of the tutors nicknamed him Achilles. In the time just before sleep, when the lamp was taken away, the boy traveled with the heroes of the book across the sea and landed upon a strange coast in the east. That parchment book was something that belonged to himself, that he did not need to share with Kinsmen, Companions, tutors, or even the Theban veteran.
The tutors who drilled him in Greek and such things as rhetoric and logic had been selected by his mother. Rigid Leonidas, the governor of the tutors, was Kinsman on his mother’s side. They filled the hours of the day for him, calling him before the first light, to run with the foot slave over a measured course before he tasted food.
“A run before daybreak, ” chanted the tutor at the starting point, “gives you a good breakfast. A light breakfast gives you a good dinner.”