The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World (Novels of Ancient Rome)

by Steven Saylor

  I considered the implications. “What if Bitto is a hetaera? Is that such a terrible thing? If her clients are respectable men, and if she’s able to make a good living—”

  “But Gordianus—at her age? It’s outrageous.”

  “Is she really that old? I think she’s rather…” I left the thought unspoken. It would hardly be proper for me to express to Antipater the thoughts I was having about his kinswoman.

  “Thank you, Gordianus,” said Bitto, for suddenly she had rejoined us in the garden. “I’m not sure what you were about to say, but I’ll presume it was a compliment. As for your concerns, cousin Antipater—”

  “How much did you hear?” he sputtered.

  “Quite enough. I suppose it was improper of me to eavesdrop, but then, it’s not exactly proper to speak ill of a woman in her own house.”

  “Cousin Bitto, I have only your best interests at heart.”

  “Do you? Then I should think you would be glad to find me prospering. And by the way, before you leave Halicarnassus I intend to pay back to you every drachma of that loan you so generously provided in my time of need.”

  “Bitto, the loan means nothing—”

  “It meant a great deal to me. And the fact that I am now able to repay it also means a great deal to me. Whatever you may think of me, Antipater, I have my pride.”

  “And yet—”

  “And yet I see fit to become a hetaera? I’m proud of that, as well.”

  “Bitto!”

  “Perhaps you forget where you are, cousin. Halicarnassus has a somewhat different heritage from that of other Greek-speaking cities. This was the capital of Caria, and Caria has a long history of strong, independent women—like Queen Artemisia.”

  “But when Artemisia became a widow, her chief concern was to honor the memory of her husband. If you were to follow her example—”

  “I would die of grief, and follow my late husband to Hades! That aspect of Artemisia’s legacy I do not intend to emulate. I prefer to live, cousin, and to live I must have money, and to have money, a widow of limited means has only two options—and I have no interest in weaving. On the day I entered this profession, I broke my loom into pieces and burned it on Aphrodite’s altar. What I do, I do in her honor. I don’t take my profession lightly, cousin.”

  “Even so…” Antipater averted his eyes and shook his head.

  “Is it that you still think of me as cousin Theo’s little girl, and it makes you uncomfortable to imagine me as a woman, capable of pleasing men?”

  Antipater frowned. “If anything, my objection is quite the opposite. It’s so unseemly, for a woman of forty—”

  Bitto laughed. “Cousin Antipater, as long as Aphrodite gives me the strength, and as long as there are men who enjoy my company, what does it matter how old I am? What do you think, Gordianus?”

  Unprepared for the sudden question, I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  Bitto returned her gaze to Antipater. “Cousin, you are more than welcome to stay here, for as long as you like. But I do intend to go about my business. I host small gatherings a few times a month. Other women—some of them widows, like myself—join me in entertaining a very select group of invited guests. The women sing and dance. The men drink wine and talk politics and philosophy, and occasionally, when they say something really silly, I feel obliged to join in the conversation. Later in the evening, some of the guests retire to private quarters off the dining chamber, and in the morning, everyone returns to their workaday life, refreshed and rejuvenated. What could be more pleasing to Aphrodite?”

  “And what am I to do during these parties?” said Antipater.

  “Participate, of course. The food and wine are excellent. The girls are beautiful and talented. The conversation is seldom dull; some of the richest and most highly educated men in Halicarnassus regularly dine under this roof.”

  “Rich, I’m sure,” said Antipater, “but educated?”

  “Oh, what a snob you are, cousin! I daresay you’ll find the wealthy men of Halicarnassus to be as refined as those of Ephesus or Rhodes or even Athens. They know your poetry.”

  “Do they?” Antipater pricked up his ears.

  “Indeed, they do, and it’s a great disappointment to me that I won’t be able to introduce you as my dear cousin Antipater of Sidon, since you’re supposed to be dead. When word of your ‘death’ reached Halicarnassus, you were the talk of all my gatherings.”

  “Was I?” Antipater could not suppress a smile of pleasure.

  “Everyone agreed that the world had lost its greatest poet.”

  “Well, perhaps not the greatest,” said Antipater, trying to sound humble.

  “In your honor, the girls and I took turns quoting your epigrams about Myron’s cow, and we debated which was cleverest. Have you ever actually seen that statue in Athens? And can any statue really be so lifelike?” She quoted:

  “Had Myron not fixed my hooves to this stone,

  I would have gone to pasture and left you alone.”

  Antipater tittered with delight and matched her with another of his epigrams:

  “Calf, why nuzzle my flank and suckle my udder?

  I am the cow of Myron, not your mother.”

  I rolled my eyes and cleared my throat. Greeks and their epigrams! Given all the poems Antipater had written about that cow, such an exchange could go on indefinitely.

  Bitto sighed. “Alas, I shall have to introduce you as Zoticus of Zeugma, and no one will be at all impressed. But you’re so good at making verses on the spot, I’m sure you’ll win them over. Well, I’m glad that’s all settled.”

  Antipater blinked, suddenly realizing he had been outflanked. “Bitto, I never agreed that I would attend these parties of yours.”

  She shrugged. “If you prefer, you can sequester yourself in the library while they’re going on. You’ll be glad to see that I managed to keep every scroll my husband collected. For a while I thought I’d have to sell them, before my parties proved successful. There’s a complete set of The Histories by Herodotus in there. He was born in Halicarnassus, you know.”

  Antipater’s eyes lit up. “I suppose, on those evenings when you play hostess, Gordianus and I can use the time to better acquaint ourselves with Herodotus.”

  Speak for yourself ! I wanted to say, but bit my tongue. Bitto saw the look on my face and laughed. “We shall see,” she said. “But look—we’ve lost the sunlight here in the garden. You can almost see Aphrodite shiver. Shall we move to the balcony?”

  She led us to a terrace on the downhill, west-facing side of the house. The view was spectacular. To the left I could see the glittering harbor, to the right the hilltop crowned by the Temple of Ares, and looming directly before us, my mind still hardly able to accept its reality, was the vast Mausoleum. The lowering sun was directly behind the golden chariot atop the monument, framing it in silhouette like a flaming halo.

  For a long moment we stood in silence at the balustrade and took in the view. Gradually, I realized I could hear someone talking. Some distance below us and to one side, I looked down on the balcony of a neighboring house, where two women dressed in black sat side by side, the older one reading quietly aloud to the younger. That the reader was older I could tell by flashes of silver amid her blond hair, most of which was contained in a netlike snood. The younger woman’s head was uncovered, and her unpinned hair seemed to float like a golden cloud about her face, catching the last rays of the sunlight. Her black gown covered her arms and legs, but she appeared to have a long, slender body. She listened to the older woman read with her head tilted back and her eyes closed, her expression as serene as if she slept. Her features were lovely. I judged her to be not much older than myself.

  Bitto followed my gaze. “My neighbors,” she said, lowering her voice, “Tryphosa and her young daughter-in-law, Corinna.”

  “Are they in mourning?” I asked.

  “They wear black because of a death in the household, yes. Whether they mourn
is another question. I’d advise you to keep your distance from those two.” She looked sidelong at Antipater. “And if you wish to fix your disapproval on a misbehaving widow, cousin, turn your attention from me and consider Corinna.”

  “That harmless young creature?” said Antipater. “She’s lovely.”

  “Quite,” agreed Bitto. “And possibly deadly.”

  “What!”

  Tryphosa must have heard his exclamation, for she stopped reading and looked up at us. Corinna opened her eyes at the interruption, glanced at her mother-in-law, then also looked in our direction. At once she reached for a black veil pinned to her gown and pulled it over the bottom half of her face. Her eyes, I saw, were a bright blue. Something in her gaze unsettled me—or was I only imagining it, because of what Bitto had just said about her?

  “Greetings, Bitto,” the older woman called out.

  “Greetings, Tryphosa.”

  “Are you having a party?” Was there a note of sarcasm in the woman’s voice?

  “These men are houseguests,” explained Bitto. “This young one is Gordianus, who’s come all the way from Rome, and this is his tutor and traveling companion, Zoticus of Zeugma. Zeugma—that’s in the part of the world you come from, isn’t it, Corinna?”

  Above her veil, the younger woman’s blue eyes widened a bit. “Yes, Zeugma is in Commagene,” she said, in a voice almost too low to be heard. “But I’m sure your guest and I have never met.”

  “I never suggested you had,” said Bitto, flashing a brittle smile that perhaps looked more genuine at a distance.

  “We’ve lost the sunlight,” noted Tryphosa, and indeed, the sun had just vanished behind the Mausoleum. “Corinna and I shall go inside now. Come, daughter-in-law.”

  Without another word the two women withdrew from their balcony and into their house.

  * * *

  That evening, while we reclined on plump couches and dined on delicacies from the sea, Bitto told us the story of the two women who lived next door.

  “Tryphosa is about my age, but she was widowed long ago—not long after the birth of her son, in fact. Her husband left her very well provided for. By law, the baby boy was his heir, of course, but Tryphosa was able to take control of the estate. That’s seldom the case. Usually the husband’s male relatives take over and the widow is elbowed rather brusquely aside. But because of a dearth of adult male relatives on both sides of the family, Tryphosa was able to establish herself as head of her own household, in control of the inheritance and free to raise her little son as she saw fit—an unusual circumstance for a woman.”

  “How is it that you control your own finances, Bitto?” I asked.

  “Technically, I don’t. My affairs have to be overseen by my late husband’s younger brother. Fortunately, he’s very amenable.”

  “You mean you have the fellow eating from the palm of your hand,” said Antipater wryly.

  Bitto cleared her throat. “To continue the story: Tryphosa managed to become an independent woman, and from early on, there was talk about the way she raised little Timon—that was the boy’s name. I suppose he received an education from tutors who came to the house, but most boys of good family are also sent to the gymnasium, to meet one another and receive athletic training. Tryphosa kept him at home. He never made close friends among boys his own age, or took part in competitions.”

  “Having lost her husband, perhaps the mother was overly protective of the boy,” said Antipater.

  “Perhaps,” said Bitto, “but there was always something odd about that household. Was Tryphosa cautious, as you suggest, or uncaring and neglectful? One hardly ever saw little Timon; it was almost as if she kept him imprisoned in that house. And when he reached the age to marry, a few years ago, instead of meeting with local families who had an eligible daughter, Tryphosa took the young man off to Commagene to seek a bride there. Apparently that’s where her own family comes from, and she was able to marry Timon to a girl with a very handsome dowry—young Corinna, whom you saw on the balcony today.

  “The three of them returned to Halicarnassus and settled down in that house. There was no party to introduce the new bride to the neighbors. Every now and again I’d see Timon and his mother out and about, but the bride from Commagene hardly ever stirred from the house. Of course, that’s not unusual; often a young bride is kept secluded until she’s given birth to her first child. I’m probably one of the few people ever to see her, because of my view overlooking their balcony. She likes to bask in the sun for bit in the afternoons. Occasionally I try to engage her in conversation, but it’s awkward, having to raise one’s voice, and the girl is about as talkative as a stone. It’s all I can do to pry a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ out of her before she scampers back into the house.”

  “I imagine she’s just shy,” said Antipater charitably. “The poor girl comes from far away, and from what you say, she doesn’t know anyone outside her mother-in-law’s household. A big city like Halicarnassus must seem quite overwhelming to a girl from Commagene, and I imagine she’s rather intimidated by a woman of your … sophistication.”

  Bitto smirked. “You mean Tryphosa has told her that I’m a wanton creature and warned her to avoid speaking to me. ‘Sophisticated’ I may be—but no one has ever whispered that I’m a murderer.”

  “What are you saying, cousin?”

  “Hardly a year after he brought his bride home to Halicarnassus, Timon died quite suddenly—supposedly of a fever, and not yet twenty years old. He had just come into his majority and gained control of his inheritance. Think about it. The boy’s father also died at a young age. Tryphosa became a widow shortly after becoming a mother. Corinna didn’t even have a child before she lost her young husband. The two of them are both widows now.”

  “Two victims of tragedy!” declared Antipater. “Women of different generations sharing a house, each robbed of her husband, together maintaining a widow’s decorum, dressing in black. The older reading aloud to the younger on that balcony—what a touching scene! Do you know, I think there could be a rather good poem in all this.” Antipater drew a breath and extemporized:

  “Two widows of Halicarnassus lived under the same roof,

  One beautiful, young, and shy, the other stern and aloof—”

  “You haven’t heard the whole story,” said Bitto, cutting him off. She was peeved, I think, by his comment about maintaining a widow’s decorum. “No one really knows how Timon died, you see. It happened quite suddenly, and the funeral ceremony took place with hardly any notice. By the time most people heard about his misfortune, the poor young man’s ashes were already interred in the family sepulcher beside those of his father. Everyone agreed the funeral was arranged with undue haste. Supposedly Timon died of a fever—”

  “It happens,” said Antipater.

  “But when people began asking questions, no one could find a physician who had been called to attend the young man. Nor could we find anyone who’d attended the funeral. It seems to have been strictly a family affair, with only his wife and mother and the household slaves in attendance. Once a body is burned, there’s no way of knowing the cause of death—any evidence of poison or injury is gone forever. And then people began to recall the death of Timon’s father, which in retrospect began to seem equally suspicious. He, too, died suddenly. And in both cases, due to a dearth of male relatives, it was the widows who came into the estate, despite all the provisions in the law that hamper a woman from owning property outright. And so, what we end up with are two men, both dead, and two women, very much alive, who have managed to inherit everything.”

  Antipater was aghast. “Are you suggesting that the lovely young creature we saw on that balcony murdered her young husband to acquire his property—and did so with the connivance of the young man’s own mother? And now the two of them are happily living together, a pair of cold-blooded killers, enjoying the spoils of an unspeakable crime? Where is your evidence for such a terrible accusation? The whole idea seems absurdly far-fetched.”


  “To you, perhaps,” said Bitto. “I think I may be a better judge of the lengths to which a woman might go to live the life she chooses.”

  “But for a mother to participate in the murder of her own son, in preference to a daughter-in-law? That makes no sense.”

  “Again, cousin, I think you underestimate the complexities of the emotions and desires that may drive a woman. You consider mother-love to be the beginning and end of female existence, but not every woman fits the mold of dutiful wife and doting mother. The ways of the world may be more complicated than you imagine.” Bitto lowered her voice. “People are even beginning to wonder if Tryphosa and her daughter-in-law might actually be lovers.”

  “Enough, cousin! When you say ‘people,’ I presume you mean the men and women who frequent this house on the nights you play hostess.” Antipater scowled. “Well, if this is an example of the sort of wild gossip they propagate, I do believe I would prefer to spend those evenings in the far more rational company of Herodotus.”

  “As you wish, cousin,” said Bitto evenly. Like a good hostess, seeing that the conversation had become overheated, she deftly changed the subject, and we talked of more pleasant matters.

  * * *

  The meal that night must have been too rich for Antipater’s constitution, for the next day he complained of indigestion and kept to his room. Bitto could see that I was eager to explore the city, and offered to be my guide.

  “Just the two of us?” I said.

  She smiled. “Of course not. I’ll bring along a slave to attend to our needs. Oh, and a bodyguard to carry my money; eventually we’ll want to hire a litter for two, when we tire of walking.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. Is it really proper for a woman like myself to go about the city accompanied by a handsome fellow half her age, who is not a kinsman? Well, Gordianus, you’re a grown man and a citizen of Rome, and you must decide for yourself whether you’ll be seen with me in public.”

  “Will you take me to see the Mausoleum?”