‘They don’t even want to fight,’ Antiphatas said bitterly. ‘They just want money. More and more money, until we are all serfs and slaves, and they own everything.’
Much later, when most of the officers had gone to bed, Philopoemen surprised Alexanor, as he often did, by helping his slaves and servants tidy and clean. Two slave women emerged from the kitchen, the sort of drab, middle-aged slaves that were invisible. Philopoemen knew their names, smiled at them, and then joined Arkas in carrying dishes.
Leon rolled off his side of the couch and began moving the side tables that had carried the food.
‘Who are those women?’ Alexanor asked, carrying a single dish.
‘They came with the house,’ Philopoemen said. ‘The taller one is Mari, and the shorter Hannah.’
He grinned at the two women as they reached out to empty his arms of wine cups.
Alexanor followed his friend back to the andron.
‘Rhodes and Rome will have an investment in those Aetolians,’ he said.
Philopoemen paused, and his blunt features seemed to sharpen as his face took on the look of intelligence that Alexanor had come to know.
‘How so?’
‘Half the piracy in the Inner Sea comes from Crete. That’s where the riches come from, and the slaves.’
Philopoemen began to pick up the little bowls of nuts.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I should have known that. So much to know.’
‘Rhodes and Rome want open seas and no piracy,’ Alexanor went on.
He was collecting all the wine things, the strainer, the measuring cups …
‘Rome,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I would like to go there. A whole new world, run by barbarians.’
‘They are not so barbaric. Their merchants are always on Rhodes. When I was a marine, we supported a Roman squadron. I’ve never seen anything like their military organisation.’
‘And rich?’ Philopoemen asked, squeezing past Leon with his arms full of silver vessels.
‘Richer than you can imagine,’ Alexanor said. ‘Listen, brother. Rhodes has bet on Rome. Over the Seleucids, over the Aegyptians or the Macedonians.’
Philopoemen unburdened himself on the vast, well-scrubbed kitchen counter and turned.
‘I’ll bear that in mind. And Rome is backing the Aetolian League?’
‘Backing is too strong.’
Alexanor had the uneasy feeling that Philopoemen already knew the answer. Is he testing me?
‘What’s your role in all this?’ Philopoemen asked suddenly. ‘A Rhodian serving Macedon?’
‘I serve my god,’ Alexanor said.
Philopoemen nodded. ‘You have saved my life many times, brother. You will hear no carping from me. But tell me the truth. You report to Rhodes?’
Alexanor almost dropped the wine gear; the great mixing krater slipped.
He caught it. ‘Perhaps informally.’ He steadied himself. ‘I’m not a spy.’
‘You wouldn’t let me ride into a trap, would you?’ Philopoemen asked gently. ‘Because I’m going to war, and the faction I’m supposed to back is fighting against your Rhodes. And you want to go there and visit your father.’
Alexanor was appalled. ‘Never!’ he said. ‘How could you imagine …’
Philopoemen nodded. ‘I’m very sorry. You know there was a Rhodian warship at Sounion when you went off into Attica, yes?’
Alexanor turned away to hide both anger and hesitation, and began to walk back along the ill-lit hall to the andron, glad that Philopoemen could not see his face.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I used it to send a letter to my father.’
‘And Rhodes is providing both monetary and military support to the Aetolian contingent on Crete,’ Philopoemen said, following him down the hall. ‘So you see why I might have some concerns.’
The andron was clear; eight men and two women had made light work of clearing it. Alexanor turned and looked at his friend.
‘I should probably leave,’ he said. ‘As you do not trust me.’
‘And if I say you could not leave?’ Philopoemen said pleasantly. ‘Consider, brother, that if I do not trust you, I can hardly allow you to land in Crete ahead of me.’
‘I have nothing to do with Rhodian policy. I don’t even know that Rhodes is supporting these Aetolians – I only heard that from you.’
Alexanor was angry, but also afraid. Afraid that somehow he had forfeited this man’s good opinion.
Philopoemen put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Well, it scarcely matters,’ he said. ‘I do trust you. And what we do in Crete is bigger than Achaea or Rhodes, who ought to be allies anyway. The day is coming when the small states will have to unite to withstand the great empires, exactly as the small landowners need to unite to face the oligarchs.’
‘So I am free to go?’ Alexanor asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sleeping with Phila?’
Philopoemen whirled. ‘What?’
‘If you can ask me if I’m a spy,’ the priest said, ‘I can ask you an equally horrible question.’
Philopoemen raised an eyebrow. ‘Fair,’ he said. ‘No,’ he added. ‘We’re allies, not lovers.’
Alexanor wasn’t sure he believed his friend, but he wanted to.
‘I need more wine,’ he said.
Philopoemen sighed. ‘Me, too,’ he admitted.
He walked off, his bare feet slapping on the mosaic floor, and came back with Arkas and a fine amphora covered in beautiful decoration.
Arkas poured unwatered wine into two Boeotian cups, handed one to each of the two men, bowed, and withdrew.
‘It strikes me,’ Alexanor said, ‘that we love each other, and that you want to believe I am not going to betray you to Rhodes, and I want to believe that you are not sleeping with Phila, and that in each case, our desires are irrational. I am a loyal Rhodian. You are free to engage Phila as a hetaera, or she to take any lover she wishes. We are—’
‘Fools? Listen, brother. Some day, I may meet a woman who stirs me, but all that …’ He shrugged. ‘It died with my wife. There, it’s said. No man or woman has stirred me since …’ His eyes narrowed, briefly. ‘Since she died.’ He choked, physically, speaking those words.
Alexanor turned and put an arm around him. Philopoemen, so imperturbable, was unable to speak.
But he mastered himself. He shrugged again. Wiped his eyes, cleared his throat.
‘Phila is engaged, as a Stoic, in a war on the slave trade, especially the trade in women.’
‘She never told me that,’ Alexanor said bitterly.
‘Perhaps you were always busy doing something else,’ Philopoemen said, smiling. ‘You say I am a secret man, but you spent a year at the court of Macedon, and none of us really know why.’
Alexanor sat back on the kline, his wine cup balanced on his stomach. He looked at the white ceiling and sighed.
‘But Achaea is an ally of Macedon,’ he said.
‘Aratos is an ally of Macedon,’ Philopoemen said. ‘He’s harnessed to them now. He’s taken their money, and he’s guest-friends with Philip, and his whole policy is dependent on Macedonian support. He’s wagered that Macedon will do his fighting for him, so that he can dismantle our army and make deep tax cuts, which will ensure that the richest part of the citizens will support him.’ Philopoemen drank a healthy amount of unwatered wine and sat down. ‘I’m playing both sides,’ he admitted. ‘I need Macedon’s support to even land this expedition – after all, you put me in this role. But in the long run –’ he took a deep breath – ‘I want Achaea out from under Macedon’s boot, as she was in my youth, before Aratos sold Corinth.’
‘We are both playing complicated games,’ Alexanor said. ‘We live in complicated times. I pass things to my father that will benefit Rhodes, or protect her. I suppose that I still seek his good opinion. But not in everything. I am a priest of the god first. My first loyalty is to my temples and the priests who trained me.’ He smiled. ‘And right now, the
y are getting a great deal of support from young Philip, who seems determined to be the richest donor in the Inner Sea.’
‘I’m going to guess that Philip believes he can have it all. All of Greece – the islands, Crete, maybe even Syria.’ Philopoemen swirled his wine in his cup and drank it off. ‘Are we good?’
Alexanor sat up. ‘I feel better,’ he admitted. ‘I already have two masters. You are a third.’
‘I am not your master,’ Philopoemen said.
‘You are working to save Greece. No one else is.’ Alexanor raised his cup. ‘I liked your speech to young Lykortas. I am a doctor, of course I want to make the world better.’
‘We can do it,’ Philopoemen said. ‘But not if we have hangovers.’
‘This from you?’ Alexanor asked, but he was pleased.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rhodes and Crete
220 BCE
Alexanor and Leon landed on the same great mole that Demetrios the Besieger had failed, bloodily, to take when he attacked the city of Rhodes just a hundred years before. The Rhodian marines trained there, and every morning at dawn they stood on the mole in formation watching the sun rise out of the sea. Every ephebe was reminded of the fight on the mole before their morning run.
It wasn’t morning, but a late summer afternoon, and the sun beat down on the pale stone and reflected back on the passengers coming ashore, grilling them like the sardines and anchovies in the tavernas along the civilian waterfront. To his right, under the walls, there were ship sheds and military equipment instead of tavernas, and the citadel towered over all of it, visible from every point in the city.
Alexanor hadn’t even shouldered his sea-bag when a slave took it off his shoulder and his father embraced him hesitantly, and then both of his brothers embraced him with more force and affection.
‘We heard you were coming,’ Menes said. He was two years younger, and still struggled to have a beard.
‘The harbour master told us,’ Lysander said. He was the youngest, and still an ephebe.
‘It seems like a long way round to go to Crete,’ Philokles said with a smile, an hour later, at the family table. Alexanor had not been home in six years, and his eyes filled with tears every time he looked at his mother, Antigone, who couldn’t stop placing food in front of him.
‘You’re so …’ she said again.
‘Big?’ his father asked. ‘He was always a big man.’ He pounded his son’s arm. ‘Lot of muscle for a priest.’
‘Is that a wound?’ Menes asked, looking at his arms. ‘By Poseidon, brother! You’re covered in scars!’
‘I was in a bit of a fight,’ he admitted.
‘You took on a pair of pirate ships single-handed!’ Philokles said, his voice warm with praise. ‘We heard all about it from a merchant navarch, didn’t we, boys?’ He smiled at his son as if he’d never reproached him for failing to die in battle. ‘And now what, the Macedonian fleet single-handed? I thought that you were a priest?’
‘I was with my friend Philopoemen,’ Alexanor said. ‘We were attacked in a market. In Zone.’
‘Zone?’ his father said, spluttering. ‘That mud hole?’
‘The place where pirates sell their slaves?’ Menes asked.
Lysander crossed his arms.
It took two days for him to tell them all his stories, and by then, his brothers were far too curious about his time at the court of Macedon. He had too many secrets; his father already seemed to know them all, and wasn’t particularly good at keeping them.
Philokles had problems too.
‘No matter what I do, I seem to bleed gold,’ he said one evening, in irritation. ‘I made a fortune on the grain from the Euxine Sea last autumn, and it is gone.’
Indeed, the whole time he was in the house, his brothers and his mother grumbled about money.
‘Your father works like a dog,’ his mother said. ‘And has too little to show for it. He’s getting bitter.’
‘Agepolis treats him like a dog,’ Menes said quietly. ‘Pater ought to tell him to fuck off.’
‘Menes!’ their mother said. ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head.’
‘He’s stealing from us,’ Menes insisted. ‘Fucking Agepolis.’
Agepolis, the man who had married Aspasia. His name made Alexanor shiver with distaste.
It wasn’t just his father’s financial difficulties that made his time stressful; his sisters came in, first Lydia and then Nestoria, his favourite sister, slipping away from their own families and households to see him. Both of them demanded his stories and seemed to know too much of his travels.
‘Are you the youngest high priest in Greece?’ Nestoria asked.
Alexanor smiled. ‘Acting high priest. I may be out on my ear in a year.’
‘So modest,’ Nestoria said. ‘When will you get married?’
‘Most priests of Asklepios don’t marry,’ he said.
‘Really?’ Nestoria asked. And then, as if changing the subject, she said, ‘Aspasia still talks about you.’
Alexanor had thought of Aspasia every few minutes since landing on Rhodes, but he hadn’t imagined he would hear of her. Her name went through him like a warm wind.
He spent the next morning fishing with his brothers, and the afternoon meeting his sisters’ children, dandling babies … and practising medicine for them. But that evening Philokles took him to an evening with friends, and he was brought face to face with her, the woman he hadn’t married, now the young wife of his father’s business partner, Agepolis.
She frowned at meeting him.
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember your name,’ she said with a false smile. ‘Tell me again?’
It was like a sword blow – cold and painful. It was deliberate, and he was cut to the bone at her deliberate slight.
She didn’t even glance at him again, and while she made small talk with other guests, she was apparently uninterested in conversation with him. His eyes followed her, surprised to find that six years hadn’t changed his reaction to her. She was tall, broad-shouldered, deep-breasted and beautiful, and maturity had only refined her presence. And now he missed her smile and her wit, neither of which were on display. She had been Nestoria’s best friend. She welcomed the male guests to her husband’s house, all very modern; she sat in a chair with the men for a little while, made some stilted jokes, and then sat in silence, except to motion to the slaves for more wine.
The talk immediately turned to the war in the Bosporus. Patrokles, a Euxine Sea grain merchant, and Nicodemus, one of his father’s friends, spoke eloquently of their determination to see the war to its conclusion even if the city of Byzantium was destroyed.
‘Nothing can be allowed to interrupt commerce,’ Patrokles said with the air of a man saying a prayer.
‘I haven’t even heard of this war,’ Alexanor said.
His father shook his head. ‘My son forgets he is from Rhodes. Listen, my child.’
Philokles used the word pais. Alexanor hid his reaction; the last man to call him pais had been Chiron.
His father continued, ‘Byzantium attempts to tax our grain coming from the Euxine Sea. They demand a tax merely for passing what they claim as “their” waters. They threaten our entire grain trade.’
Aspasia smiled. ‘It’s not really “our” grain, is it?’ she asked. ‘It is grain belonging to farmers in the Euxine.’
The men ignored her. ‘We will crush them with sea power,’ Nicodemus asserted. ‘And then I would suggest we send the fleet to Crete.’
‘Crete?’ the host asked. He was looking at his wife, who sat, blank faced.
‘The so-called Neoteroi are just pirates and terrorists,’ Nicodemus said. ‘We should help Knossos crush them. Deny Macedon a foothold, and improve trade with Aegypt, all in one.’
‘How does killing men in Crete improve trade with Aegypt?’ Aspasia asked, her voice clear.
‘How many ships would it require?’ Patrokles asked.
‘Six should do it, and a strong marine conti
ngent,’ Nicodemus said.
Aspasia stood up. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she said, her voice tight.
Alexanor started to rise, but his father’s arm pinned him to the couch.
‘Men’s affairs are as dull to women as women’s are to men,’ Agepolis said, to cover his wife’s withdrawal.
Philokles laughed. ‘She’s a brave little thing, your wife,’ he said. ‘No woman can really be happy in company. She braves it out, but what would she talk about? War?’
The other men agreed. ‘It’s a foolish custom,’ Patrokles asserted. ‘What can a woman bring to a party? I mean, except …’ He made a lewd gesture.
Alexanor looked away.
Agepolis cleared his throat. ‘I am almost insulted. My wife welcomed you to my home.’ He looked around. ‘Alexanor, you have travelled widely. What do you think of this custom?’
Alexanor thought of Philopoemen, and of Phila.
‘I like it,’ he said. ‘I am the youngest man here. I am hesitant to speak out of turn—’
‘He’s unmarried,’ said another guest. Alexanor thought he was the Rhodian admiral, Polemecles, and wondered why the navarch had been silent on the subject of war. ‘He hasn’t had his fill of women’s prattle yet.’
‘Maybe we can speak of wool winding, or spinning,’ said another.
Everyone laughed, except Alexanor and Agepolis.
‘It is a Macedonian custom, is it not?’ asked Nicodemus. ‘Alexanor, haven’t you been to Macedon?’
‘Has he, though?’ asked Agepolis. ‘I didn’t know that!’
Oh, Pater. What have you done?
‘I spent some time as a physician to the king of Macedon.’
Alexanor hadn’t expected to have to say this in public. Every head turned.
‘Ha, ha, and then he died! Well struck, marine!’ called out Nicodemus.
There was general laughter. Slaves moved among the couches, delivering wine, the prettier slaves writhing to avoid the men’s hands while not spilling their wine.
Alexanor, who had watched a hundred Macedonian evenings, complete with men and women coupling in couches, extravagant kissing contests, and lewd demonstrations of every sex act conceivable, some surprising even to a physician, merely smiled.
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