A Heroic King

by Helena P. Schrader

  The answer left not only Hydarnes dumbfounded, but Bulis as well.

  They had been traveling together for almost four months, the first month by sea and since then by land. They had left Eurybiades and his black ship in Sidon in order to follow the Imperial Highway, paved with massive square stones, to Damas. Damas was a bustling, rather chaotic city, where hundred-camel caravans coming up from Arabia with spices met the equally long caravans from Egypt with Nubian gold. The squares and taverns of the city were clogged with pack animals, their drivers, and merchants speaking every known tongue under the sun. Bedouins, all but lost in their fluttering robes and elaborate turbans, mixed with near-naked Nubians, whose skin gleamed with sweat as they labored under the lash of their masters. Elegant Egyptians with naked torsos and striped headgear moved with upright dignity among the lively, bird-like natives in their striped kaftans. Ionian Greeks and Cypriots in brightly dyed chitons mingled with the peoples of the Orient. Here the Spartans and their tiny escort were lost in the melting pot.

  From Damas, the King’s Highway cut across the arid plain to Babylon. A caravansary located every twenty or so miles along the road provided water, shade, and shelter for the night. At each, a horde of local craftsmen and farmers descended on the travelers like vultures, selling everything the local economy could produce―from dates, milk, and trinkets to “virgins.” Travelers usually rested at the caravansary during the hours of darkness and set off after dawn the following morning.

  While some fast-moving travelers, particularly messengers or soldiers on well-bred horses, rushed ahead and the slowest fell behind, the bulk of the travelers moved along the paved road in a loose clump, forming impromptu convoys.

  The Spartan emissaries generally found themselves moving along in this disorganized horde, but as soon as word of their nationality spread, they were isolated even in the midst of many others. Spartans? Weren’t they that barbaric race of godless warriors who had dared murder two ambassadors of the Great King? Merchants, tax collectors, messengers, and slaves carefully kept their distance from the men in red, while casting surreptitious glances filled with awe and horror. They looked quite normal, but they were evidently untrustworthy, like captive wild beasts.

  Teti, his two African slaves Kaschta and Taiwo, and the helot attendants, Geranor and Samias, had an easier time mingling and socializing. Teti spoke five languages, including Persian, and Taiwo and Kaschta each spoke their native African tongue as well as Egyptian, rudimentary Greek, and Arabic. The two helots were at the greatest disadvantage, speaking only Doric Greek, but the other travelers on this great east-west highway generally knew enough Greek for them to communicate.

  By the time the little party reached Babylon, the four servants were a good team. Taiwo had a natural gift with animals, and he looked after the two teams of chariot horses with an attentiveness born of affection. Kaschta was the consummate bargainer and could not only find everything their hearts desired, he could usually get it at a price they could afford. Geranor, Bulis’ attendant, was the brawniest among them, and he handled any heavy lifting, pushing, or hauling with a swagger and pride in his own strength. Samias was their cook. He was the younger son of a syssitia cook, who had taken service with Sperchias after a fight with his father.

  Babylon impressed all of them―the Spartans included. Only Teti seemed unimpressed by a city of such gigantic dimensions, populated with so many different peoples and animal species and overflowing with what seemed like hundreds of palaces. They found time to visit the hanging gardens, which were now open to the public, and shopped in bazaars larger than any they had ever seen.

  From Babylon they took the road to Susa. Although this paved road was wider than any they had traveled before, it was still congested. More and more tribute convoys were converging on the Persian capital, and these were slow-moving assemblages of laden wagons and beasts of burden mixed with herds of animals―goats, sheep, cattle, horses, and pigs. They moved at the pace of the bleating sheep or lowing cattle, herded by barefoot slave boys who were tanned almost as black as the Africans.

  There were also increasing numbers of soldiers on the roads. Some, of course, were escorts for the tribute convoys; others were sorry and reluctant bands of conscripts reporting for duty under the angry and disgusted leadership of Persian recruiters. But there were also troops of smartly outfitted fighters apparently deploying from one place to the next. They wore a wide variety of uniforms, depending on their nation of origin, and Teti kept a careful record of them all, just as he wrote down in his copious notes everything else of possible interest to Leonidas.

  The slaves and helots reported to Teti, too, telling him anything that seemed noteworthy and leaving it to the Egyptian scribe to decide what was important. Eventually even Prokles, who on Leonidas’ orders was escorting Sperchias and Bulis all the way to Susa, started to tell the Egyptian things he thought odd or exceptional. Prokles knew a great deal about the Persian army and could distinguish among the various troops, which was particularly useful.

  In Susa, the Spartans were dismayed to learn that Xerxes was yet farther away. They were told he was currently at his newly finished palace in Persepolis―a place they had never even heard of. The court officials in Susa refused to guess when the Great King might return to Susa; to speculate on the Great King’s intentions and plans would have been “presumptuous,” they insisted haughtily, suggesting it could be many months.

  Although in this strange continental climate they had no real sense of changing seasons, Sperchias and Bulis were nevertheless aware that time was passing. They thought of the fever raging at home and counted the passing days in dead children. They felt they had to press on to Persepolis despite their weariness.

  Travel had lost its appeal. New landscapes, buildings, costumes, languages, and customs no longer aroused particular curiosity, much less fascination. They were tired of new impressions―tired of dusty roads, strange beds, food, and beer. Even Samias lamented that he would give anything for a bowl of his Dad’s black broth and a cup of Laconian white wine. And they were tired of being stared at, too―at least Sperchias and Bulis were.

  Despite all this, Persepolis could not fail to impress them. It was not just another bustling, trading city; in fact, it was hardly a trading city at all. It lacked the cacophonic hum of too many people crowded into too-narrow streets. It lacked the smell of spices and dung, cook shops and workshops, and the smoke of cooking fires, forges, and pottery furnaces.

  Persepolis was striking for the very absence of all that had made the other Oriental cities so vibrant. Here the streets were quiet and wide―almost as wide as in Sparta―and they were empty. More important, the poor had been banned, or so a fellow traveler told Kaschta. Cook shops and workshops of any kind were prohibited, while street vendors and beggars were chased away by the Great King’s guard if they dared to set their dirty feet inside his pristine new capital. There was not even a bazaar. Rather than the smell of goods for sale, massed humanity, and domesticated animals, the air in Persepolis was dominated by the smell of jasmine and juniper.

  Persepolis was an administrative capital with ancillary military barracks, royal stables, and chariot house. Above all, it housed the royal treasury, in which the accounts of tribute (but not the stinking, bleating, bleeding beasts, slaves, and goods) were kept by an army of royal scribes and auditors. The city was, of course, dominated by the palace complex, a structure started by Darius shortly after he came to power and still not completed. The palace compound of marble buildings consisted of the Great King’s own Apadana palace as well as a number of secondary palaces for Xerxes’ brothers. Each of these had exquisite bas-reliefs depicting the conquests of Darius, the wealth of the Empire, and its nations. The royal compound sat high above the rest of the city on a terrace partially carved out of the mountain behind. Two broad but shallow staircases gave access to the terrace. As a local explained to Taiwo, the stairs were shallow enough to enable horses to go easily up and down, so that the Great Ki
ng and his nobles did not have to dismount until they were on the same level as the entrance to the royal palace. The terrace was constructed from limestone joined by polished bronze clips, which caught the sunlight like gold scattered regularly across the floor.

  The Spartan ambassadors were graciously taken to an elegant tract of guest quarters that lay in the middle of a garden only slightly lower than the royal compound. These limestone buildings backed up against the gigantic reservoir that served the city. They had a smaller terrace and an interior courtyard with a fountain. The official who led them to their quarters promised to present their credentials to the Great King “at the earliest opportunity,” and begged them to consider themselves guests of “his master the Great King” until such time as they were summoned. They were shown the baths and the dining hall and told to request anything they desired.

  The two Spartan emissaries retired to separate rooms, understandably taciturn now that their journey was almost at an end. Prokles disappeared, presumably in search of a drink or a whore. Teti took out his rolls of papyrus, his brushes, and ink, and began to record recent impressions with single-minded concentration, bending over the writing tablet balanced on his crossed legs. So the two slaves and the two helots withdrew to the outermost chamber of the guest apartment and sat around on the cool marble floor, eating fresh oranges that Kaschta had bought.

  “It will be strange returning without the masters,” Taiwo remarked―as so often on this trip, putting into words what the others were thinking.

  “I won’t be coming with you―at least not all the way,” Geranor announced, causing the other men to gape at him.

  “What do you mean?” Kaschta asked, sitting up straighter and pausing in his orange-peeling. “You think the Great King might kill us, too?”

  “No, no,” the burly helot assured the aging African, “I just mean I have no intention of going back to Lacedaemon. Why should I?”

  “But I thought Spartan slaves were the property of the Spartan state,” Kaschta protested.

  “Yes, well, let them come and find me!” Geranor scoffed. “I see no reason to return to Lacedaemon when I can live in Babylon.”

  “You want to find a new master?” Taiwo asked, puzzled.

  “Master? What do I need a master for? From the moment the last breath leaves Bulis’ body, I intend to be my own master!” Geranor declared emphatically.

  “But who will look after you if you get hurt, or sick, or old?” Taiwo asked, alarmed. He had been sold by his parents to slave traders when he was little more than a toddler. He had never in his life had to look after himself.

  “I can take care of myself,” Geranor answered with a stubborn set of his jaw―adding, “Maybe I’ll find a wife and start a family.”

  “You think you can just live here as if you were a free man?” Kaschta countered with raised eyebrows.

  “Why not? How would the Persians know I’m not a free man?”

  Kaschta weighed his head from side to side. “It is not so easy. The Persians keep long, long lists of everybody living in their territories―”

  “All these millions of people?” Geranor asked, disbelieving.

  Kaschta nodded. “Yes, that is why they have so many scribes. They keep track of every single person, and for each person there is a tax. The head of each household pays for his wives and children and slaves. Don’t you remember all the guards at the gates of the cities? All the toll booths along the roads? And the inspectors in the caravansaries? Every time we entered or exited a city, or passed a checkpoint, or stopped for the night, we had to show the ambassadors’ credentials. If you were alone, you would be arrested at once. You have no stamp that proves you have a right to move freely and have paid your taxes.” Kaschta pressed his right fist into the palm of his left hand to imitate the sound of a stamp. “The Persians are very strict about collecting taxes. They even have standardized weights and measures and test all metals for their purity, so that no one can pay less by using a different measure or by offering impure silver, tin, or gold.”

  “I will tell them I am a traveling salesman,” Geranor insisted, frowning.

  “You cannot just travel around the Persian Empire without permission,” Kaschta countered. “You need a document that gives you permission to pass the ports, use the highways, and enter the cities.”

  Geranor frowned more darkly and protested, “There has to be a way! There are so many different peoples here―I can’t even remember the names of them all―Parthians and Scythians and Elamites and the like. Surely one lone helot can disappear among the hordes of them?”

  Kaschta shook his head slowly. “I don’t know how you could do it. You need a paper sealed with a stamp to stay in one place, and another to travel. You need documents to come and to go. Besides, a strong man like you will be a prime candidate for conscription. The Great King’s officers are always looking for men to serve in the army or with the fleet. If a recruiter sees you and you cannot show him you are exempt from conscription, he will have you in uniform and locked in a barracks before you know what is happening to you.”

  Geranor was starting to look uneasy, but he resisted giving up his dream of freedom, so he growled belligerently, “Let ’em try!”

  “If you must run away, then it would be better to wait until we are back in Sidon,” Kaschta suggested. “Most galley captains don’t ask a lot of questions. If they’re short of rowers and a man offers himself for hire, they’ll take him.”

  Geranor grunted. Working the oars of a merchant galley wasn’t his idea of freedom.

  “You do not want be arrested by the Persian authorities as a deserter or a runaway,” Kaschta continued, helping himself to a second orange. “The kindest thing they would do to you is put you in their army, but they might instead send you to the mines or the quarries. The slaves in such places are not treated like men at all. They are treated even worse than animals. They are kept chained together at all times, even when they relieve themselves or lie down to sleep at night. They are not allowed to even look at women, much less lie with them. In the mines you never see the light of day, but crawl in the darkness until you go blind and your knee bones wear away. Then they roll you aside and leave you to die down there in the underworld. In the quarries you go blind, too, not from the darkness but because the fine dust of the stone scratches away the surface of your eyeballs, just as it fills your lungs until there is no room for air to go into them. No one lives more than a few years in the mines or the quarries.”

  By now both helots were gaping at Kaschta in horror. Taiwo broke the tension with a bright smile and the observation, “It is much better you travel with us back to the sea!”

  Geranor was inwardly convinced, but reluctant to admit it, so he grunted ambiguously, and Taiwo turned to Samias. “And you will come back with us to Sparta, won’t you?”

  Samias nodded vigorously. “I can’t wait to get home, and when I do I’m never going to travel again!”

  The others laughed briefly, but Geranor frowned and wanted to know, “But why? In Lacedaemon you will be just a helot again.”

  Samias shrugged. “What’s so bad about being a helot? It’s a lot better than the slaves Kaschta just told us about, and better than being a beggar, too.”

  “You spent the first half of this trip bitching about Sperchias’ wife and how she made your life hell on the estate!” Geranor protested.

  Samias shrugged. “I know, but I’ve learned better; besides, I won’t go back to there. I’ll make it up with my father and work at the syssitia.”

  “You can just do that?” Taiwo asked, amazed. “Choose where you want to work?”

  “Within limits,” Samias explained. “Being a cook is a hereditary profession, so only the sons of cooks can become cooks. But Geranor could seek employment with a different hoplite, or hire himself out in one of the factories or shipyards or on a farm.”

  “For fixed wages!” Geranor scoffed. “Starvation wages!”

  Samias shrugged and admitted,
“There’s a girl I want to marry ….”

  “Ah!” Kaschta exclaimed with a knowing grin. “Women make a man do crazy things.”

  Taiwo, however, asked, astonished, “Marry? You are allowed to marry?”

  “Yes―if I can convince the girl’s father I can look after her. Which, if I make it up with my Dad, shouldn’t be that hard. You see, if I go back to working with him, my wife and I could live over the syssitia―in a stone house heated by the syssitia ovens.” Samias was clearly taken with this idea.

  “I thought you said she was a slave?” Taiwo asked, confused.

  “A helot like me, the daughter of Pantes the carpenter.”

  “Pantes is stinking rich!” Geranor protested. “He’ll never have you!”

  Samias just smiled slyly and remarked, “He might not have a choice.”

  The Africans at once threw back their heads in approving laughter, and Taiwo clapped Samias on the back in congratulation.

  But in the next instant Teti stood in the doorway, looking reproachfully at his slaves. “Have you no sense of propriety?” he asked sadly. “The good Spartan ambassadors are on the brink of death. They may be tortured or horribly humiliated. And you sit here laughing like heartless children!”

  “What did you say?” Xerxes sprang up from his throne in anger and stared at his uncle Artaphernes. Then, not giving the older man a chance to answer, he exclaimed in a tone of outrage, “Spartans? Is that what you said? Spartan ambassadors dare to come here, all the way to Persepolis, to seek audience with me?”

  “Yes.” Artaphernes was not in the least intimidated by his nephew. He did not think Xerxes was particularly gifted, brilliant, or competent―but Artaphernes had no interest in civil war, either, and was content to let his nephew be the “Great King.”