B004H4XRB4 EBOK

by Roberts, John Maddox

  "Your Majesty is well versed in the details of trade," Marcus noted.

  "Queens usually are," she said. "Kings love war and conquest. Queens know that real wealth and prosperity come through profitable trade."

  "Few nations are so favored by the gods as Egypt," Flaccus noted. "You have a great deal to trade with."

  "That is true," she agreed. "But peaceful trade is more than just wealth. It is vision. A predecessor of mine, one Queen Hatshepsut, reigned over Egypt as pharaoh in her own right some fourteen hundred years ago. The glory of her reign was a huge trade expedition she sent along the coasts of Arabia and Ethiopia. The ancestors of these myrrh trees may have come to Egypt on that voyage. The details of it are carved on the walls of her temple. She expanded Egypt's knowledge of the world and bettered the condition of the whole nation. She was succeeded by Thutmose the Third, another warrior-king. He killed a great many foreigners but he did nothing to enrich his kingdom."

  Marcus disliked hearing conquest spoken of thus dismissively, but he knew that certain allowances had to be made for a reigning queen, especially one as rich as this one. "Truly, Your Majesty, a nation of prominence and power will have neither without both military strength and a profitable balance of trade."

  "Well spoken. You people are not as rustic as you would have us believe."

  "We lack your level of sophistication. This does not mean we are stupid. Perhaps we overemphasize military virtue to the detriment of foreign trade, but it is our backwardness in the latter that we hope to correct with this mission. You, on the other hand, would be well advised to reevaluate the importance of your military." He could almost hear the eyes rolling behind him. Once again, he was overstepping his authority.

  She blinked, seeming astonished for the first time. "Your nation's reputation for blunt speech is not exaggerated, I see. What do you mean?"

  "You must be aware that Hamilcar of Carthage is preparing for war against you. He makes no secret of it."

  "Certainly. It is far from the first time Carthage has sought to take advantage of us. There will be some fighting on the Libyan border. There will be some naval forays. He will probably make an attempt to take Cyprus. We have met these threats before."

  "I saw something of the scale of his preparations. I believe you should take this threat more seriously."

  "Why?"

  "Because Hamilcar wishes to hire Roman legions for his war. If he does that, you can kiss your kingdom—"

  "Scipio!" Brutus barked. "The Senate has not—"

  Marcus whirled to face him. "The Senate has bestowed upon me power of negotiation. Do not interfere." Brutus held his glare for a moment, but Roman discipline prevailed. Brutus lowered his eyes and stepped back.

  Selene chose to ignore the little byplay. "I know your reputation. At least, I've read of the reputation of your ancestors. I think it would take more than the addition of a few of your legions to turn Hamilcar into his ancestor." She studied his expression for a moment. "You mean it! You really think that you are that good."

  "I would not question the quality of Your Majesty's army and navy," Marcus said. "But when was their last war?"

  "Four years ago Antiochus of Syria invaded the Sinai and I had to repel him."

  "And this war required what part of your military forces?"

  "I sent six myriads, but in the event only a third of the force was used. There was a battle near Gaza and Antiochus withdrew."

  "I see. Majesty, about how often are your men required to fight?"

  She looked mystified but amused. "I would say that there is fighting in two or three out of each ten years. What is your point?"

  "It is this. The legions of Roma Noricum have been engaged in active campaigning every year since we left Italy. That was one hundred sixteen years ago. For all those years, at least half the legions of Rome have been committed to active campaigning in any given year. Rarely does any legion go for two years without heavy fighting."

  "I see. But you have been fighting barbarians."

  "They are hard-fighting warriors and they are not as undisciplined as you might think. I have seen something of the armies of Carthage. They are well equipped and finely drilled, but few of them are what Romans would consider veterans."

  "And what is the Roman definition of a veteran?" she asked.

  "We rate a man as a veteran if he has ten campaigns behind him. Not ten fights: ten campaigns. A legion is considered inexperienced and unreliable if no more than half its men are veterans."

  "You have high military standards."

  "So we have. We learned a great deal from Hannibal. We believe that military preparedness is the highest of priorities and we vowed never again to go to war with hastily raised armies of conscripts. No man can seek public office unless he has those same ten campaigns behind him. A praetor— a senior magistrate—is also a qualified general. We are soldiers from birth: farmers, shopkeepers, artisans and the wealthiest equites and patricians."

  She nodded. "Captain Aeson reported to me about your fight with the pirates. He was most impressed."

  "It wasn't much of a fight," Marcus said.

  "That was what so impressed him. I believe you when you tell me you are a nation of born soldiers."

  "Not born," he corrected. "Made. Soldiering is something that must be learned early and in a hard school. Your own ancestors, Philip and Alexander's Macedonians, understood this."

  "We shall talk about this further," she said. "But let me show you the royal menagerie. We have some of the world's fiercest animals in our collection."

  The queen assigned them accommodations in the huge palace complex and when they went to their new quarters that evening, the rest of the Roman party took Marcus to task for his actions that day.

  "Wasn't proposing a military alliance with Carthage enough?" Brutus said. "Now you want to do the same with Egypt?"

  "And why are you dealing with this woman?" Caesar asked.

  "It's that coin portrait," Marcus said.

  "Your sense eludes me," Brutus said.

  "She said that reigning queens are so depicted on the coins. She does not consider her unripe husband the king and herself the queen-consort. She is the real ruler of Egypt."

  "There is likely to be a faction at this court that does not share that opinion," Brutus pointed out.

  "Undoubtedly. Would you rather deal with this very clever and sane woman, or with a boy who is almost certainly controlled by courtiers and counselors? I understand that these positions are usually filled by eunuchs at the Alexandrian court."

  "Just what is this southern enthusiasm for deballed men?" Caesar wanted to know.

  "Kings get nervous when they have too many real men around them," Flaccus told him. "They fear revolts and worry about the paternity of their sons."

  "For the next few days," Marcus told them, "we will be organizing our mission here. We will also do what everyone who visits Alexandria does: We will go sightseeing. You all know the drill. Fortifications, naval installations, road approaches. Flaccus, I want you to climb to the top of that lighthouse and draw a map of the whole city."

  "All the way to the top?" Flaccus said, aghast. "I'll never make it!"

  "Hire a litter to carry you," Brutus advised.

  "It's a sad day," said Marcus, "when a Roman official can't manage a few thousand steps on his own feet."

  "It's a few thousand steps straight up!" Flaccus said.

  "Do it."

  "What will you be doing?" Brutus wanted to know.

  "I've decided to take up the pursuit of culture," Marcus said.

  "Culture?" said young Caesar with wonder in his voice.

  "Exactly. I am going to pay a visit to the Museum."

  Chapter 12

  The court official in charge of foreign embassies wanted to provide guides, litters, personal servants and every comfort and convenience. It was Alexandrian practice to treat envoys lavishly. Marcus politely declined all offers. He wanted neither guides nor spies.


  The Museum proved to be a large complex of buildings adjacent to the palace. For the most part, they differed from the palace in being proportioned to a more human scale. Even the temple of the Muses from which the complex took its name was an exquisitely modest building. The largest edifice was the great Library, which housed countless thousands of volumes, together with facilities for making copies of the books stored there.

  The rest consisted of lecture halls, porticoes, courtyards, dormitories and dining halls. Here scholars from all over the Greek world came to study and to teach. Here they could live at the king's expense with no obligation to perform any work for the court.

  In the entrance hall a learned-looking slave addressed the assembled visitors, informing them that Ptolemy I Soter, "the Savior," founder of the Alexandrian dynasty, had founded the Museum and Library. He pointed to the long list of librarians engraved on the marble wall, beginning with Demetrios of Phaleron and followed by the Librarians of almost two centuries.

  Their first great task, he informed the public, was to produce an authoritative text of the poems of Homer. Over the centuries the many texts of these poems, drawn from far older oral sources, had grown corrupt. The scholars of the Library collected every version and ruthlessly purged them of anachronisms, words that had not existed in Homer's day, verses obviously composed by later pretenders. After many years of toil, they produced the purified version now current throughout the world.

  Marcus found this interesting, but literary matters did not just now intrigue him. Wandering at large, he came to a wing surrounding a long courtyard in which stood strange devices of stone and metal, marked in some arcane system, clearly instruments of some sort but he could not guess their purpose. He accosted a Museum slave and asked what they might be.

  "These are the instruments of the astronomers," the man told him. "By sighting along some of them at night, and observing the shadows cast by others during the day, they divine the nature of the heavens."

  "Where do the mathematicians have their quarters?" Marcus asked.

  The man led him to another courtyard almost identical to the last, except that instead of strange instruments, this one featured several marble-bordered expanses of gleaming white sand, lovingly smoothed and surrounded by benches. Upon the sand the lecturers drew figures with long wands, explaining the wonders of geometry to their students. The slave introduced him to the master of the mathematicians' wing, one Bacchylides of Samos.

  "A Roman?" said the scholar, quirking a sardonic eyebrow. "I heard a rumor that some Romans had arrived. I cannot speak for the mathematicians, but you are going to be in great demand by the historians of the Library."

  "Just now my interest is in mathematics," Marcus told him.

  "How may I be of service?"

  "I learned recently that Archimedes, the mathematician of Syracuse, spent his last years here in the Museum."

  "Indeed he did. He was a strange and controversial man, but distinguished in his way. He was a great student of mechanics, which is not a field much pursued here."

  "Why not?"

  "You are blunt, I see. The fact is, most philosophers follow the precepts of Plato, who taught that philosophers corrupt the purity of their thoughts with manipulation of mere matter. Archimedes had a weakness for building machines, which for most of us partakes too much of the ignoble work of a laborer. If you were to ask most of the philosophers here what was the greatest achievement of Archimedes, they would say that it was his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder."

  " 'Most,' but not all?"

  "Perceptive as well as laconic. Yes, there is still an Archimedean school here that thinks we place too much value on Platonic detachment. They revere the works of Archimedes and continue his researches into mechanics."

  "I would very much like to visit this school," Marcus said.

  "Then, if you will accompany me, I shall take you there."

  The Archimedeans occupied a wing of their own, partly to segregate them from the more respectable philosophers, partly because they needed space for their experiments. The courtyard was cluttered with a mass of wheels, screws, levers, ropes and pulleys such as Marcus had never seen before. One thing was plain: This was a place where men did things. For the first time among the foreigners of the south, he felt that he might be among kindred spirits. Romans appreciated art, literature and philosophy after a fashion, but they truly loved engineering.

  "Chilo," Bacchylides called, "you have a visitor."

  The man who came to greet Marcus wore a dingy tunic, powdered with sawdust. His beard was ill trimmed and he was brushing dust from his hands. "If it's about the machinery for the new harbor chain, tell the First Eunuch that we will have the design perfected in about ten days and we'll send the drawings to—" he looked Marcus over. "You're no court official. What brings a barbarian to the School of Archimedes?"

  "Not precisely a barbarian," Bacchylides explained. "This gentleman is a Roman. He is an ambassador from the Republic of Noricum."

  Chilo grinned. "Really? It's not quite like Odysseus coming back from the dead for a visit, but it's close. The old Romans were people who appreciated good engineering. Let me see—I think roads, tunnels, bridges and aqueducts were their specialties."

  Marcus grinned back. "We're still good at them."

  "At last! Somebody who doesn't think abstract thought is the highest of virtues."

  "I think I can leave you here in the capable hands of Chilo. Good day, Ambassador." He walked off stiffly and quickly.

  Chilo grinned after him. "Can't get away from the defilement of work fast enough, can he?" He turned and clapped Marcus on the shoulder. "Come on, Ambassador. Let me show you my school."

  The men busy assembling and testing the machines didn't look like any group of scholars Marcus had ever seen. They were mostly young and incredibly busy working the devices, many of which clearly were miniatures of far larger machines. They laughed raucously when one performed as desired and cursed luridly whenever one failed. Chilo explained that some of the machines were water lifters, pumps, dredgers and other practical devices required by Egypt; a land of canals and mud. Others were more fanciful, including a boat to travel beneath the water and a flying machine. Neither of these, Marcus was not surprised to learn, had yet been made to work.

  Slaves entered the courtyard bearing trays of food and pitchers of wine. Work stilled for the moment. And men sat on benches or on their machines to eat. Marcus joined Chilo on a bench.

  "We have a fine dining hall," Chilo said, "but we seldom use it at midday. We prefer to stay close to our work while the light holds. Plenty of time for relaxing after dark."

  "You are men dedicated to your discipline," Marcus noted.

  " 'Discipline'," Chilo said. "I like that. It sounds much better than 'craft' or 'work.' Not so degrading. It sounds like a soldierly virtue."

  "It is. Has to be, if you would rather stay out here with your machines than go inside and eat."

  "We love it," Chilo said fondly. "And here at the Museum is the best place for it. Anyplace else in the world, some city or tyrant might employ us to design an aqueduct or a pump or a superior catapult, but at the Museum we can do pure research."

  "What does that mean?" Marcus wanted to know.

  "In pure research, we strive to discover fundamental principles, to learn how the world works. We are unencumbered by the need to accomplish a specific task."

  "Yet you seem to do a good deal of work for king and court."

  "Well, yes. After all, we are the men who can accomplish things, and the king has many projects. It is a small price to pay for the freedom and resources we enjoy here."

  "What do you do for him besides the earth and water— moving projects?"

  "You already know about the harbor chain. Unfortunately, we are often called upon to provide novel devices for the royal pleasure-barges, or spectacular effects for the lavish parties the court puts on. It is a trivia
l waste of time and resources."

  "What about Queen Selene? Does she make use of your services?"

  "Oh, yes. And at least her projects are useful. She rarely demands anything frivolous. She has us working on a new crane to more quickly load and unload ships in the harbor. A great deal of time is wasted while they wait for an unloading dock."

  "Are you asked to design many new war machines?" Marcus asked.

  "Rarely. The Egyptians are complacent in military matters. The ruling Macedonians think warfare reached its height with Alexander the Great and there is no sense in trying to improve upon his tactics and drill. The machines used on their ships have changed little in two hundred years, and since they rarely indulge in city sieges, we're not often called upon to design heavy artillery."

  "That seems a waste of a fine resource," Marcus said.

  "True. It wasn't always so. Demetrios the Besieger, son of Antigonus One-Eye, built wonderful and very imaginative machines just the generation after Alexander. They rarely worked, but he had the right idea. Let the machines do the work and take most of the damage and save your men for the decisive thrust."

  "An excellent concept," Marcus commended. "But, do you really think you can build a machine that can fly like a bird, or a boat that can travel under water?"

  Chilo took a drink of watered wine and pondered his answer. "I'll tell you one of the basic answers to such a question. The fact is, nobody can think of any convincing reason why we can't."

  Marcus set down a honeyed roll. "Could you expand upon that?"

  "It's like this: Most people will tell you that these things can't be done because they have never been done. We do not accept such reasoning. Long ago, somebody paddled out on the water astride a log for the first time. Somebody piled stone upon stone to build a house for the first time. Because these things had never been done before did not mean they could not be done, merely that no one had ever tried before. Others will give you philosophical or religious reasons why things cannot be done. We do not accept them. Here we believe in experimentation and proven results."