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

by Steven Saylor

  Eager to finalize the transaction at once, the auctioneer summoned me onto the block and reached for my purse. As he counted the coins, I asked him what the girl was called.

  “A name as peculiar and barbaric as she is. Hebrew, I think: Bethesda.”

  Looking at her, I spoke the curious word for the first time. “Bethesda,” I whispered. “Now I know the name of the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

  The auctioneer looked at me as if I were crazy. So did Bethesda.

  So began the next chapter of my life.

  CHRONOLOGY

  ca. 2550 BC

  The Great Pyramid is built in Egypt.

  ca. 600

  The Walls and Hanging Gardens are built at Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.

  776

  The first games are held at Olympia.

  ca. 750

  The Temple of Artemis is constructed at Ephesus; it will subsequently be destroyed more than once (by flood and by fire) and rebuilt.

  482

  Xerxes demolishes the Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  456

  The Temple of Zeus is open for the 90th Olympiad.

  ca. 432

  Phidias installs the Statue of Zeus in the temple at Olympia.

  ca. 425

  The historian Herodotus dies.

  356

  13–14 October: Herostratos burns down the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; Alexander the Great is born the same night. The temple is subsequently rebuilt.

  ca. 350

  The Mausoleum is built at Halicarnassus.

  331

  The city of Alexandria is founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great.

  323

  Alexander the Great dies at Babylon.

  298

  The Celtic warlord Cimbaules makes incursions against the Macedonians and is repelled.

  ca. 290

  The Colossus is completed at Rhodes.

  ca. 280

  The Pharos Lighthouse is built at Alexandria.

  281-79

  The Celts make a second incursion against Macedonia; Brennus attacks Delphi.

  227

  The Colossus falls.

  ca. 170

  Antipater of Sidon is born.

  146

  The Roman general Mummius sacks Corinth, but spares Olympia; Carthage is destroyed by Rome.

  ca. 135

  Posidonius is born in Syria.

  133

  Attalus III of Pergamon bequeaths his kingdom to Rome, which establishes the province of Asia.

  ca. 115

  Posidonius studies under Panaetius the Stoic in Athens.

  110

  23 March (Martius): Gordianus is born at Rome.

  ca. 106

  Bethesda is born at Alexandria.

  ca. 90

  After travels in Spain, Gaul, Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia, North Africa, and Greece, Posidonius settles in Rhodes.

  95

  Rome sides with Nicomedes of Bithynia in his war against Mithridates of Pontus.

  93

  23 March (Martius): Gordianus turns seventeen and puts on his manly toga.

  92

  Rome aids Nicomedes of Bithynia against Mithridates for the second time.

  23 March (Martius): The novel begins in Rome on this day—the birthday of Gordianus and the funeral day of Antipater.

  April (Aprilis): Gordianus and Antipater visit Ephesus during the Artemisia festival and see the Temple of Artemis (“Something to Do with Diana”).

  April (Aprilis) to August (Sextilis): Gordianus and Antipater visit Halicarnassus and see the Mausoleum (“The Widows of Halicarnassus”).

  Late August (Sextilis) to early September: Gordianus and Antipater attend the 172nd Olympiad and see the Statue of Zeus (“O Tempora! O Mores! Olympiad!”).

  September: Gordianus and Antipater visit the ruins of Corinth (“The Witch’s Curse”).

  Autumn to winter: Gordianus and Antipater stay with Posidonius in Rhodes and see the remains of the Colossus (“The Monumental Gaul”).

  91

  23 March (Martius): Gordianus is nineteen.

  Mithridates invades Bithynia, expels Nicomedes, and sets up Nicomedes’ brother Socrates as king; Ariobarzanes, the king of Cappadocia confirmed by the Romans, is usurped and replaced by the son of Mithridates, Ariaranthes Eusebes.

  Outbreak of the Social War, as the Italians revolt against Rome.

  Spring: Gordianus and Antipater visit Babylon and see the remains of the Walls and the Hanging Gardens (“Styx and Stones”).

  June: Gordianus and Antipater journey up the Nile to Memphis and visit the Great Pyramid (“The Return of the Mummy”).

  Gordianus and Antipater travel to Alexandria and visit the Pharos Lighthouse (“They Do It with Mirrors”).

  90

  23 March (Martius): Gordianus is twenty. He solves the case of “The Alexandrian Cat” (included in the collection The House of the Vestals).

  89

  War begins between Rome and Mithridates.

  88

  Conclusion of the Social War; Rome is triumphant over the rebellious Italians.

  80

  The dictator Sulla moves the 175th Olympiad to Rome. (The Games are afterward returned to Olympia.) Gordianus is in Rome, and is hired by Cicero, as recounted in the novel Roman Blood.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  IN SEARCH OF THE SEVEN WONDERS

  (This note reveals elements of the plot.)

  Over the course of ten previously published novels and two collections of short stories, Gordianus the Finder has occasionally made reference to his younger days, and specifically to his journey as a young man to see the Seven Wonders of the World.

  For a long time, I have wanted to write the story of that journey. At last the occasion seemed auspicious, and the result is the book you hold in your hands.

  Little did I know at the outset that the author’s voyage of discovery would be every bit as long and arduous and full of wonders as that of Gordianus. To explore the Seven Wonders, one enters a labyrinth of history and legend, hard facts and half-facts, cutting-edge archaeology and the very latest innovations in virtual reality.

  The fascination exerted by the Seven Wonders has long outlasted their physical existence. Only one, the Great Pyramid, remains intact. The others are in fragments or have vanished altogether. To understand the scale and magnificence of these monuments, and the reasons they made such a lasting impact on the world’s imagination, we must turn to ancient literary sources—which are sometimes more confusing than enlightening. Images of the Wonders abound, but are often unreliable; over the centuries, methodologies used to visualize the Wonders have ranged from the rigorously scientific to the patently absurd.

  I soon discovered that there was no single source I could turn to for answers to all my questions; an authoritative book encompassing all we know about the Seven Wonders has yet to be written. But one book came close, and I didn’t even have to search for it; it came to me, arriving by international post at my house one day, a gift from the British editor, anthologist, and author Mike Ashley.

  Like Gordianus, Mike visited the Wonders in his own younger days by writing a marvelous book about them, The Seven Wonders of the World, published as a paperback original by Fontana in Great Britain in 1980. Learning that I intended to take Gordianus to the Wonders, Mike mailed me one of his archival copies—which proved to be a godsend. Meticulously researched and splendidly written, Mike’s book is far and away the best single volume I encountered about the Wonders. Long out of print (and a bit out of date due to subsequent archaeological research), it is a book that cries out for a new edition.

  Among my debts to Mike Ashley is the intriguing notion that Alexander the Great may have had a hand in conceiving the list of the Seven Wonders. In the novel, this theory is put forward by Gordianus’s traveling companion, Antipater of Sidon, a real historical figure who did in fact write a poem listing the Seven Wonders—probably the very earliest such list that still
exists.

  The various poems recited by Antipater in this novel are either of my own invention or are freely adapted from the English translations by W. R. Paton in the Loeb Classical Library five-volume edition of The Greek Anthology, now in public domain. For insight into the more subtle points of Antipater’s work I turned to Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context by Kathryn J. Gutzwiller (UC Press, 1998); Dioscorides and Antipater of Sidon: The Poems edited by Jerry Clack (Bolchazy-Carducci, 2001); and two monumental works by A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams and The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip (Cambridge University Press, 1965 and 1968).

  The rebus epitaph on Antipater’s tombstone also appears in The Greek Anthology, attributed to Meleager. The factuality of the poem—and whether it actually appeared on a stone—are matters for conjecture. From Pliny, Valerius Maximus, and a fragment of Cicero we hear about the annual “birthday fever” that supposedly caused or contributed to Antipater’s death.

  * * *

  How and when and from whom did the list of Seven Wonders originate? What do we actually know about each Wonder, and how do we know it? What became of the Wonders?

  Mike Ashley’s book addresses these basic questions; I cannot repeat all that information here. But I can lay down some pointers for the reader curious to know more about the Wonders. Herewith, some notes on sources, following the order of each Wonder’s appearance in this book.

  About the city of Ephesus and the worship of Artemis, the most useful volume I encountered was Rick Strelan’s Paul, Artemis, and the Jews of Ephesus (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1996; also published as Journal of Theological Studies 49, no. 1, 1998), which contains a long chapter vividly describing the city’s devotion to the goddess. Among the ancient sources, Pliny and Vitruvius provide details about the temple, while Strabo and Tacitus tell us about the grove of Ortygia. Very little remains of the Temple of Artemis; a few fragments can be seen at the British Museum in London.

  What are we to make of the appendages that hang from archaic statues of Artemis—are they breasts or bovine testicles? See a clear digression on this point in “At Home in the City of Artemis: Religion in Ephesos in the Literary Imagination of the Roman Period” by C. M. Thomas in Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia, edited by Helmut Koester (Trinity Press International, 1995). Where was the grove of Ortygia located? I defer to the opinions of Dieter Knibbe and Hilke Thür in their respective papers, also included in Koester’s book.

  Ephesus appears as a setting in several ancient Greek novels. Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius describes the procession of Artemis and recounts the story of the virginity test and the Pan pipes in the sacred cave. The novel Apollonius, King of Tyre, by an unknown author, was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s play Pericles, Prince of Tyre, which comes to a giddy climax at the Temple of Artemis and gives us these memorable lines:

  Marina

  If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep,

  Untied I still my virgin knot will keep.

  Diana, aid my purpose!

  Bawd

  What have we to do with Diana?

  Gordianus’s visit to Ephesus had nothing to do with Dionysus, but everything to do with Diana.

  A detailed reconstruction of the Mausoleum can be found in the multivolume The Maussolleion at Halikarnassos: Reports of the Danish Archaeological Expedition to Bodrum by Kristian Jeppesen. Volume 5 of the report, published in 2002, analyzes all the architectural, sculptural, and literary evidence (Pliny is our primary source), and includes photographs of a scale model. Fragments of the sculptural remains, including the famous statues thought to represent Mausolus and Artemisia, can be seen at the British Museum.

  The grief of the widow Artemisia is described by many ancient authors, perhaps most vividly by Aulus Gellius. Ovid tells the story of Hermaphroditus and his transformation at the spring of Salmacis. Strabo and Vitruvius also mention the spring and its reputed powers. The sexual activity of the widow Bitto is the subject of one of Antipater’s poems, but it was my conceit to make her a relative of the poet.

  Many books have been published about the ancient Games at Olympia. One of the most accessible is Tony Perrottet’s The Naked Olympics (Random House, 2004), which lays out the known facts with all the panache of a modern sportswriter. The Chronicle of the ancient author Eusebius lists the Games by date and names some of the winners, including Protophanes of Magnesia, about whom nothing else is known. The viper called a dipsas is mentioned in several ancient sources, including one of Antipater’s poems.

  Ancient authors were astonished by the magnificence of the statue of Zeus by Phidias. The Roman author Quintilian declared that its “beauty is such that it is said to have added something even to the awe with which the god was already regarded: so perfectly did the majesty of the work give the impression of godhead.” Nothing of the statue remains today.

  The interlude in Corinth was inspired by Antipater’s poems, recited in the novel, and also by a lecture I attended at the University of California at Berkeley in 2011, “Magic and Religion in Ancient Corinth,” delivered by Ronald Stroud, Klio Distinguished Professor of Classical Languages and Literature Emeritus. Professor Stroud’s vivid account of curses and witchcraft was the genesis of Gordianus’s uncanny experiences amid the ruins of a once-great city. For archaeological details I consulted Ancient Corinth: a Guide to the Excavations (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1960). Was the destruction and depopulation of Corinth as complete as many ancient authors suggest? Elizabeth R. Gerhard and Matthew W. Dickie address this question in their paper “The View From the Isthmus” in Corinth, the Centenary, 1896–1996, edited by Charles K. Williams II and Nancy Bookidis (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2003).

  Sculptor and author Herbert Maryon recounted the history of the Colossus and considered the artistic and engineering challenges of its construction in a long article, “The Colossus of Rhodes,” published in 1956 in The Journal of Hellenic Studies 76. More recently, Wolfram Hoepfner published his ideas about the monument, with illustrations of a reconstruction, in Der Koloß von Rhodos und die Bauten des Helios (Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2003). Nothing of the Colossus remains, and the exact location it occupied is uncertain. Despite their profound impression on popular imagination, old-fashioned images that show the statue straddling the harbor at Rhodes are works of fantasy, depicting a physical impossibility.

  At the time of Gordianus’s visit, as recounted in the novel, the polymath Posidonius had recently settled at Rhodes after extensive travels. His writings about the Gauls survive only in fragments; a summary can be found in Philip Freeman’s The Philosopher and the Druids: A Journey Among the Ancient Celts (Simon & Schuster, 2006). Diodorus Siculus is probably quoting Posidonius when he describes the homosexual behavior of the Gauls: “Although their wives are comely, the men have very little to do with them, but rage with lust for each another. It is their practice to sleep on the ground on the skins of wild beasts and to tumble with a boy on each side. And the most astonishing thing of all is that they feel no concern for their proper dignity, but prostitute themselves without a qualm; nor do they consider this behavior disgraceful, but rather, if they should offer themselves and be rebuffed, they consider such a refusal an act of dishonor.”

  By the time of Gordianus’s visit to Babylon, there was not a great deal left to be seen of either of the two Wonders located there. Numerous reconstructions of the Hanging Gardens have been proposed over the years, drawing on descriptions by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus. Herodotus describes the ziggurat Etemenanki and recounts the Babylonian tradition of temple prostitution. As for the Walls of Babylon, one can gain some idea of their magnificence from the reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way on view at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, which was built from material excavated by Robert Koldewey. Parts of the excavation, including images of lions and dragons, can be seen in several other museums around the world. At the site of Babylon itself, a
rchaeological research has been made problematic in recent decades by Saddam Hussein’s building projects, by looting during the chaos of the U.S. invasion in 2003, and by subsequent occupation of the site by the U.S. military.

  The Great Pyramid at Giza, our only surviving Wonder, has been endlessly explored by books, magazine articles, television programs, etc. It was equally famous—and mysterious—in the time of Gordianus. Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, and Ammianus Marcellinus all wrote about the pyramids.

  Herodotus tells us about the use of mummies as security for loans; Diodorus Siculus repeats this information, and both authors provide fascinating details about the different forms of mummification.

  Neither Herodotus nor the later writers Strabo and Diodorus Siculus (both contemporaries of Gordianus) makes any mention of the Great Sphinx of Giza, which is described by Pliny the Elder, writing a couple of generations after Gordianus. Pliny notes that Egyptian sources, too, are silent about the Sphinx. This leads to the hypothesis that the giant monument was buried by sand for a long period, and not rediscovered until the time of the last Ptolemaic rulers or even later. (See the Loeb edition of Pliny, 36.17, and the translator’s note by D. E. Eichholz.)

  As readers of the novel will gather, the Pharos Lighthouse was not among the original Seven Wonders; it was added only later, long after the list was first devised, usually replacing one of the faded Babylonian Wonders. (Many other variations occur in the canonical list over the centuries; the permutations are too numerous and complicated to recount here.) Even after seeing the original Seven Wonders, Gordianus marvels at the Pharos, the world’s first (and for many centuries, only) skyscraper.

  A miracle of engineering, the Pharos survived until the fourteenth century, when earthquakes sent it tumbling into the harbor of Alexandria. Hermann Thiersch assembled all the literary sources, coin images, and other data about the lighthouse in Pharos, Antike, Islam und Occident (Teubner, 1909); if you can find an original edition of this classic, feast your eyes on the two enormous foldout illustrations of the Pharos as rendered by Thiersch. Equally essential to an understanding of the Pharos’s history and appearance is a close reading of the details in P. M. Fraser’s three-volume Ptolemaic Alexandria (Clarendon Press, 1972); see vol. I, pp. 17–21, and vol. II, pp. 45–46. Judith McKenzie’s The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, c. 300 B.C.–A.D. 700 (Yale University Press, 2007) also provides useful information about the lighthouse, including the idea that naphtha may have been used as a fuel; see pages 41–48.