The New Achilles

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Oh, seven or eight. And I swam through water, deep water, to an island, and there was fire there, too.’

  ‘Deep water can have many different meanings,’ Alexanor said. ‘Sex, usually.’

  ‘Hah! Sex … Save that for …’ The man’s face closed. His body went rigid, and his breathing changed. ‘Oh, Zeus, father of gods …’ he said.

  He rolled suddenly, as if trying to avoid something; he rolled over his wound, and he choked.

  ‘God! That hurts.’ He muttered a little and was gone.

  But only to sleep.

  Another month passed, and there was snow on the distant hilltops. No more pilgrims came, and most of the beds were empty. The nine Achaeans and the Aegyptian ambassador were almost the last men left in the sanctuary. A deputation came to the sanctuary from King Cleomenes of Sparta, bringing a talent of gold and promising further reparations. The officer was a different man, a languid youth with long hair and cosmetics on his eyes.

  ‘The king proclaims an amnesty to any Achaean citizen and bids you return to your city of Megalopolis, which he will return to you,’ he said in tones of bored pomposity. ‘His amnesty covers all those who served in arms against him, even Philopoemen and his friends.’

  Sostratos received his scrolls and his sacrifice and sent him on his way. He repeated the speech over dinner, acting the part of the thin Spartan to perfection.

  ‘You should have been an actor and not a soldier,’ Chiron said. ‘I hear we’re putting on a Menander in the spring – perhaps you can have a part.’

  Sostratos took a long drink of wine.

  ‘Medicine and drama are both gifts of Apollo,’ he said. ‘I wanted to be an actor, but my father said it was as worthy a profession as selling my arse on the street in Athens.’

  ‘So you killed people instead,’ Chiron said.

  Sostratos shrugged. ‘Strictly business.’

  The wounded man recovered enough to take exercise, and then enough to begin to excel at exercise. Indeed, Alexanor had seldom seen anyone recover so quickly. The transition from bed-bound patient to enthusiastic athlete was sudden and took Alexanor by surprise. One day he found the Achaean stretching at the magnificent, empty palaestra.

  He had got to know the Achaean’s body as a doctor. He estimated that Philopoemen was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. He had shoulders as broad as an ox, and yet a waist as slim as a woman’s and a delicacy of movement like a gymnast. His heavy features hid a sharp mind and he could speak, at length, about many things. But he would not stop moving, and his restlessness hid something.

  Most of all he seemed to love horses; in matters of literature, he was old-fashioned, preferring the Iliad and the works of Xenophon.

  ‘I love the old bastard, even if he hated Epaminondas, the best of men,’ Philopoemen said.

  It was cold, but not too cold for exercise.

  ‘It’s true, he never mentions Epaminondas,’ Alexanor said.

  He stripped and began stretching. Then he lifted some light weights, as much to stay warm as to build muscle. They had all the sands of the magnificent training area to themselves.

  ‘Exactly. His sons were both killed by Theban cavalry. He never forgave the Thebans.’ Philopoemen looked away sharply. ‘Nor will I ever forgive the Spartans. May Apollo witness my oath.’

  Alexanor, who, as a priest, had heard many oaths of revenge, merely continued to lift his weights and watch his patient.

  Philopoemen stretched and then groaned.

  ‘By Apollo, sir. Will my side ever loosen up? Every time I reach with my right arm … Damn it!’ he said, suiting action to word and flinching. ‘Some spearman I’ll be.’

  ‘By spring, you will be free of pain,’ Alexanor said. ‘In two weeks, I will encourage you to stretch that ligament and the wound a little further. Right now, you are endangering your healing.’

  ‘Good,’ the Achaean said. ‘I have plans for spring. I need to convince the exiled men not to return to our city.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Cleomenes just wants us to come back so that he knows where we are. He’ll leave a garrison, and hostages will be taken.’ Philopoemen picked up a weight-stone. ‘May I exercise in ways that do not stretch the wound?’

  Alexanor considered. ‘Yes, as long as I am with you.’ He watched the bigger man lift a ten mina stone with apparent ease. ‘You are very strong,’ he added.

  ‘I’m a farmer. I have cattle, and olive trees, and a vineyard. And I haven’t lain on my back for a month since I was a newborn.’ Philopoemen continued to lift his stone: left arm, then right arm, left arm, then right arm. ‘Farming seems less a waste of time than empty exercise,’ he said with a smile. ‘At least there’s wine and olives at the end.’ He lifted again. ‘I need exercise, friend. I need … oblivion. Is there a drug you can give me, so I will not think too much?’

  ‘Wine?’ Alexanor said, trying to be humorous. He had seen patients succumb to the darkness, but had not expected it in this young warrior.

  ‘I had hoped for something stronger,’ the man said, meeting his eye. ‘You mentioned lotus flower, and opium?’

  ‘No,’ Alexanor said, and there they were, eye to eye.

  ‘Cleomenes took everything from me. I do not want to think, for a while.’ Philopoemen looked away, and then back. ‘I know you probably don’t understand—’

  ‘I probably do,’ Alexanor said. ‘I was a Rhodian marine. My ship was almost taken by Aegyptians – all the other marines on board were killed. All my … friends.’

  Philopoemen smiled. ‘Well, there’s my foot in it, then. I thought you were some soft-handed priest.’ He smiled, but the smile couldn’t hide his pain.

  ‘You make Cleomenes sound like the very personification of evil.’ Alexanor allowed his tone to carry a little scepticism. He found that he was not immune from a competitive spirit; he picked up a ten mina stone, too, and lifted it.

  Philopoemen’s eyes flashed. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I am well taught – I have been to the Academy and the Stoa, and I have read Plato and even Aristotle. Ekdelos and Demophanes were my teachers – I know enough to doubt everything, including my doubts. But Cleomenes is a tyrant. He wants to re-enslave the helots and recreate a Sparta that never was. Sparta, the real Sparta, was built by heroes who obeyed the Law of Lycurgus and put the welfare of the state above their own. This is a boy playing at war with money provided by strangers who use him as a tool.’ He glanced back at the Epidauros. ‘Aegypt is paying his bills now. And he has taken from me …’

  Alexanor was as surprised as if his pet cat had delivered an oration.

  ‘Well spoken,’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard you say so many words all together since you recovered your wits.’

  Philopoemen gave him half a smile.

  ‘It is not just rhetoric. I hate him, I will not hide it. He has made war on us for five years, for no better reason than that Aratos and the Achaean League would not bend their knees to Sparta. He killed one of my stepfathers in cold blood – even then, I helped arrange a truce. They attacked us during that truce. And then his mercenaries killed my … my …’

  He had begun to speak quickly; his reserve was cracked, and his face grew red with anger. He turned and faced Alexanor as if they were about to fight, and then, with a visible effort, he mastered himself.

  ‘I am done with doubt, and caution. I will do what must be done to defeat Cleomenes and destroy this rump of Sparta.’

  Alexanor might have smiled; a wounded man, not even in the prime of adulthood, promising the destruction of the Spartan state. Instead he raised his eyebrows in astonishment, but not at the man’s statement; merely his assurance.

  ‘My father warned me against war,’ Philopoemen said. ‘He told me that it simplifies, and destroys, and no good ever grows from it.’ He shrugged, looking out over the sand of the palaestra. ‘But it seems to me that war is about to come.’ He pointed at hand wraps. ‘Will you box?’

  Alexanor thought for a moment.r />
  ‘Let us try.’

  It was an odd bout. The Achaean was recovering. His endurance was poor, and he had trouble moving his right arm correctly. On the other hand, he was almost a head taller and Alexanor was aware from the first that a single blow from those arms, even the left, would send him to the dust.

  He knew how to beat the Achaean: simply by wearing him down, moving, moving, using up his short wind.

  He didn’t like to do it, however, because he was not the man’s sparring partner. He was his doctor.

  He danced in, blocked a weak right jab …

  And the Achaean was helping him up, full of apology.

  ‘Oh, by the gods, sir. I am so sorry! I am out of practice. Is your jaw broken?’

  Alexanor opened and closed his mouth several times.

  ‘No,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘No. Damn it. I am accounted a fair boxer. And as a physician I should certainly know how long those arms are.’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘Damn,’ he muttered again.

  ‘If it is any consolation, my side hurts like fire,’ Philopoemen said with a wry smile.

  ‘That pains me twice – I am a poor follower of Hippocrates if I allow you to indulge in a sport for which you are not sufficiently healed, and the worse for losing to you!’ But Alexanor laughed. ‘When you are healed, we will try a few falls of pankration.’

  ‘That would suit me,’ Philopoemen said, with more enthusiasm than he had shown for anything but hating Sparta. ‘I love pankration.’

  Later in the afternoon, Alexanor found Leon putting clay labels on medicine pots.

  ‘Make sure the opium and the hellebore and lotus are secured,’ he said.

  Leon nodded. ‘The Achaean?’

  ‘Has he been by?’ Alexanor asked.

  Leon smiled. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  That night, they sat in the tholos, all their couches circled, with wine flowing freely. Philopoemen drank more than Alexanor would have liked, and yet it didn’t seem to affect him much. It was a symposium, although not so formal as some; even Chiron attended. It had been a difficult year at the sanctuary, and the autumn had brought hundreds of pilgrims. The Achaeans had only been the harbingers of a flood of refugees and sick.

  They drank to the healing god, and the kylix circled the couches. Chiron directed that wine be allowed to the slaves serving them.

  ‘We should speak on worthy subjects,’ suggested Philopoemen.

  ‘We should lie here and drink until we are drunk,’ Dinaeos said. ‘That’s as worthy as I feel. I haven’t been drunk in two months. Say, doc, is there a woman anywhere in this place?’

  Alexanor was lying with Philopoemen.

  ‘A woman? Of course. Dozens – in the woman’s sanctuary. There are priestesses …’

  Dinaeos grunted. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Philopoemen laughed. ‘He probably does not, our dear doctor,’ the Achaean captain said.

  ‘I’m from Rhodes, not Olympus,’ Alexanor said. ‘I know what you want. You want a slave porne. We do not allow any such here.’

  ‘Because it wastes the humours?’ Dinaeos asked. ‘I want to waste some humour.’

  Chiron lay with Sostratos. He sat up.

  ‘Because the trade in flesh is ignoble,’ he said. ‘The mind governs the body as aristocrats govern lesser people. Yes? And when you take people and make them slaves, force them to copulate, humiliate them, you injure their minds as surely as a sword injures their bodies.’

  Dinaeos shook his head. ‘I don’t plan to injure anyone,’ he said, expecting a laugh that didn’t come. He sat back and sighed. ‘Fine,’ he muttered. ‘Prudes.’

  The Aegyptian ambassador nodded. ‘Surely this is a very … heretical thought? And you are very strict?’ He was a small man for a Macedonian, with blond hair and bright blue eyes undimmed by a life of excess. He lay by Dinaeos. ‘The whole world runs on slavery, surely? This temple, if you will pardon me, has hundreds of slaves.’

  Chiron lay back. ‘We have hundreds of slaves who are trained, treated humanely, and most of whom earn their freedom. None of them are ever forced in sex.’

  The Aegyptian raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘They remain slaves. A slave is a slave.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Why?’ Chiron asked. ‘Is the contrary also true? Is a free man always a free man? Since he can so easily be made a slave by any pirate, by war, by chance? And once he is made a slave, is that slavery eternal? Or can he return to being a free man?’

  ‘Like all philosophers, you ask difficult questions,’ the Aegyptian said. ‘I have never been a slave. I’d rather die.’

  ‘Perhaps you would not have the opportunity to die?’ Sostratos asked. ‘Come – you have been a soldier.’

  The ambassador shrugged again.

  As a Rhodian, Alexanor was stung, because the Aegyptians were too often the enemies of Rhodes.

  ‘Aegypt benefits from slavery,’ he said without thinking. ‘Aegypt supports the Cretan pirates.’

  ‘Aegypt supports the cause of freedom,’ the ambassador said smoothly.

  ‘By paying hard cash for Greeks seized from weddings and fishing boats and forced into the lowest forms of slavery!’ Alexanor said.

  Philopoemen listened attentively but said nothing.

  Chiron raised an eyebrow. ‘You are too spirited, young man.’

  Alexanor took a breath. ‘I am from Rhodes,’ he said. ‘I have served as a marine. Our navy faces the pirates every day. Every Rhodian knows someone who has been seized as a slave – women made whores, even boys.’

  He blinked, and thought of all the ways to do harm, and forced his thoughts away from the dead young men and the Aegyptian ship. He closed his eyes and calmed his breathing. He almost missed the Aegyptian ambassador’s next sally.

  ‘Perhaps they should find a stronger protector. Perhaps they need to stop pretending to independence and admit a royal garrison that could protect them.’ He smiled nastily.

  Alexanor met his eye. ‘Rhodes? Submit to Aegypt? Never.’

  ‘Speaking of slavery,’ the Aegyptian said with an intent to insult. ‘Did you hear that the Achaean League sent envoys to Antigonus Doson, king of Macedon, for aid against Sparta? And yet King Cleomenes still was able to sack Megalopolis with impunity.’

  Philopoemen bridled. ‘That was ill said.’

  ‘I have said nothing ill,’ the Aegyptian reassured him. ‘Weak states should submit to protectors. It is my master’s policy. Only the strong can protect the weak.’

  ‘You suggested that the Achaeans make themselves slaves,’ Philopoemen said.

  ‘To Macedon, yes,’ the Aegyptian said. ‘Better you had approached my master, Ptolemy. He is the richest lord in all the world, with the money to put armour on your hoplites and garrisons in your fortresses. Now Macedon will own you.’

  Alexanor could feel his companion by his side – his muscles rigid, and then gradually loosening as the Achaean made an effort of will to relax.

  ‘I really know little about it,’ Philopoemen said. ‘But if the hegemon of the Achaean League chose to approach the regent of Macedon, I assume he knows his business. Aratos has been the strategos of the Achaean League since I was born, or thereabouts. He probably does not think your master’s reach is long enough.’ He glanced around the room. ‘And surely it would be uncomfortable for your master to have both Sparta and the Achaeans as horses in his stable?’

  ‘We could land ten thousand men on these shores …’ the Aegyptian said. ‘We may yet.’

  ‘And feed them?’ Philopoemen asked.

  All the other eyes were on him, and suddenly his thick features did not seem so brutish. Alexanor admired the way he did this; from the sleepy sword-brute to the statesman in one change of expression.

  Philopoemen sat up and took the kylix.

  ‘May I counsel you, sir? There was a time, and not so long ago, when there were just three powers in the world – the Ptolemies of Aegypt and their allies, the Seleucid kings and their allies, and the kings of Macedon
and their allies. And Greece was your battlefield and your stage, where you could build fine theatres and fight your surrogate wars.’ He drank.

  The room was silent, and so was the world outside.

  He handed the kylix to Alexanor.

  ‘But the world is changing. Epiros and Illyria; the Aetolian League; Rome and Carthage. Once there were three powers, and now there are ten, or twenty. If the hegemon has gone on one knee to Macedon, it is because they have the power to help us and their throne is far enough away that we might not fear oppression. Aegypt might send troops, but they would demand concessions, and I do not imagine that the Seleucid king would allow an Aegyptian fleet to pass west of Crete without a fight. Do you?’

  The Aegyptian ambassador could not have been more surprised if a dog had sprouted wings, than by the Achaean captain speaking so exactly about issues of politics.

  ‘I would maintain that Macedon is close enough to be your master,’ he insisted. ‘But I admit there are more powers now than there were in my father’s generation. But Rome? A city of barbarians and the merest oligarchy.’

  ‘Beggars cannot always choose,’ Philopoemen said bitterly. ‘As men without a city, Macedon may simply be the daemon we know.’ He glanced at the other men. ‘And what I hear of Rome suggests to me that they are very strong.’

  ‘An interesting point of view, I’m sure,’ the ambassador said. ‘Tell me when they have a fleet, and perhaps I’ll be interested. What I see is a barbarian state that struggles to overmatch a mere colony of Tyre.’

  Chiron nodded. ‘Philopoemen, before you came, we had a visit from a Roman nobleman who sought to learn our skills.’ He shrugged. ‘You never heard more superstitious nonsense than this man spouted.’

  Philopoemen subsided. He nodded to Chiron and bowed to the ambassador.

  ‘I am still a young man. Perhaps I know little. But I will remind you, gentlemen, that the Romans imposed a treaty on the Illyrians, with their fleet. I find that … amazing.’

  ‘Barbarians fighting barbarians!’ the ambassador said, his voice rich with contempt.

  ‘Rather like Greeks fighting Greeks,’ Chiron said. ‘Pointless and wasteful. I propose we change the subject.’