The Ancient Ocean Blues

by Jack Mitchell

  So, with Homer’s copyists in tow, we began our walk up the old road to Athens. Until the Roman siege just twenty-five years before, that road had been lined on either side by the Long Walls, which protected the link between the inland city and its port. These had been knocked down, however, and lay crumbling a little distance from the side of the road. The route was now lined with small shops, catering to tourists. The Athenians had given up resisting Rome and had lately been transforming their city into a university town and tourist attraction. They had replanted the trees (also destroyed during the fighting) and invited various cultured Romans to live among them and help rebuild.

  Our first stop was the Agora, the town square. This lay beyond the Hill of the Nymphs, nestled under the Hill of Ares. What with the long walk from the port and the May sunshine, we were sweating by the time we reached it. I was eager to see the sights, for the city was altogether glorious: full of well-dressed people, covered in murals, and crammed with monuments and porticoes. I longed to climb the tall Acropolis and visit the enormous Temple of the Virgin. Seeing Homer’s friend was more urgent, however. Homer asked after him in the Agora and got directions to his house.

  “My friend Anaxilaus is just the man,” he proclaimed as we walked, “even if he does belong to the Pythagorean school. You see, he has developed a philosophy to the effect that money and open-handed generosity are the straightest ways to truth. An excellent fellow.”

  As we followed the directions, however, we found ourselves searching through a tangled maze of back alleys. The farther we went, the seedier the alleys got. Finally, not far from the Dipylon Gate, we spotted the double palm tree, which our directions specified. There was a small shack underneath it that was half collapsing.

  “Surely this can’t be the place?” I asked.

  Homer knocked. The door was opened by a thin, unwashed, and undernourished man in rags. He was holding a scroll tightly in one hand, and looked us over suspiciously. Then he noticed Homer’s face.

  “Homer!” he exclaimed. “Is it actually you? Are you back in Athens?”

  “I am indeed,” replied Homer warmly. “But what has happened to you, Anaxilaus? Why are you living in a such a shack?”

  “Oh, this,” said the thin man, smiling. “Yes. It is my latest philosophy. It was shortly after you left for Italy, I believe, and I was speaking with the Epicureans one day. Some thing they said – it was just an aside, mind you – convinced me that money and open-handed generosity were the straightest ways to ignorance.” And here he tossed his scroll to the floor behind his back, as though afraid we might help ourselves to it.

  “But, my dear fellow,” protested Homer, “we’ve come to you for assistance! We have no money at all, and I thought that you might be able to indulge in your former philosophy and help us.”

  “My dear Homer!” exclaimed Anaxilaus. “How can I help you when, being without money and rather miserly yourself, you are yourself already well advanced on the straightest way to truth?”

  “But, my dear Anaxilaus, I have a manuscript in my possession that I have come here to publish. I need money for ink and paper and a place for the copyists to work.”

  Not to mention food, I thought.

  “A manuscript?” inquired Anaxilaus. “Who is it by? Let me see. Oh, it is in Latin, indeed. What’s this – the author is Spurinna? Not the same young man who was just here?”

  “You’ve seen him?” asked Paulla eagerly.

  “No, indeed, my dear,” said the philosopher. “Or only from a distance. The crowds were too thick. Can you believe he captured that pirate ship with so small a crew?”

  “Aulus captured a ship… !” she said, her eyes glowing.

  “But if you want my opinion,” said Anaxilaus importantly, “you ought to take this Latin book of yours to Atticus. He’s a splendid man. Speaks just like an Athenian. Though, of course, he speaks that barbarian language also.”

  “Latin?” I asked.

  “Just so. He is a Roman aristocrat, after all, even if we consider him one of us.”

  “Where can we find him?”

  Asking directions from Anaxilaus proved to be futile, however, as his new philosophy did not include explanation. Instead, we went straight back to the Agora and inquired after Atticus.

  “Why, Atticus,” answered one woman at a vegetable stall, “that’s a charming man! They tried to make him a citizen here, for all the good things he’s done. Don’t you know the way?”

  She told us to look for a modern house with a red door on the Hill of Mars, by the Temple of the Unknown God. Weary, but eager now to meet a man of whom all spoke so highly, we again ascended the Hill of Mars and searched near the Temple. In the end, we found we had walked right past it twice. It was much more modest than we were expecting, in the best Athenian taste, shaded by cypress trees and set back from the street.

  A polite slave answered the door.

  “We are Romans,” I began, “shipwrecked and wretched, and we ask to see the master of this house.”

  The slave’s mouth curled in amusement and he signaled for us to wait. A minute later we were shown in. From the front, I had expected an entirely Greek interior, and had been wondering what sort of Roman would live in a Greek house. I was relieved to see the front hall adorned with portraits of his ancestors, just like in Rome. In the middle of the courtyard stood a man in a toga, a Roman knight. I nearly wept to see that garment: it reminded me of my father in his hall in Reate, and even of Gaius in his gentler moods.

  He was about forty years old, I decided. His hair showed no gray, but the face was that of a man who knew life well. His green eyes twinkled as he gave us a friendly wave and approached.

  “Shipwrecked and wretched, are you?” he inquired with a smile, speaking Latin. “But what may be your names?”

  The Captain grunted his name.

  “Marcus Oppius Sabinus,” I added.

  “Aemilia Lepida Paulla,” said Paulla with downcast eyes.

  “Aulus Lucinus Homerus,” put in Homer.

  Atticus’s mouth fell open for a moment. Then he closed it and seemed about to speak. Then he merely smiled again. “Well, well,” he said with a bow, “I can see there is more to this than you can explain in my courtyard. You are just in time for dinner and that, I think, will solve the first of your problems.”

  He led us to a dining room at the back of the house. It looked out on a small but colorful garden. The hallways were painted, but not with any elaborate frescoes. Our copyists went off to eat with the household.

  “It is always my custom to have some reading at dinner,” Atticus said, as we lay down. “With Roman guests, I think we might have a little Latin poetry.”

  As we ate the simple meal – fish, grilled vegetables, and seed-cakes, but with lots for everyone – the same slave who had answered the door performed a reading of an epic poem in Latin. It was full of storm and fury, but rather swollen, and I confess I stopped paying attention fairly quickly. Besides, I was famished and preoccupied with the food. I do remember one especially dreadful line – O luck-borne Rome, when I was consul born! - which clashed like someone playing the cymbals. The Captain, at least, seemed interested, stroking his beard the whole time and nibbling a seed-cake until he fell fast asleep.

  By the time the reader finished, dinner was over and the evening was ending. The slave lit some lanterns and Atticus himself poured us each a modest glass of wine.

  “Did you like the poem?” he inquired.

  I said it wasn’t bad.

  Atticus smiled. “It was bad,” he confessed. “Or at least, a bit long. But I just received a copy in a letter from my friend, Cicero.”

  “Cicero?” I was startled. Had I been dining at the enemy’s table?

  “Yes,” said Atticus, “and I’m afraid he’s the author of the poem. Would you think a man so eloquent could write verse like that? There was one line in particular – O luck-borne Rome, when I was consul born! - which I think must be a copyist’s mistake.”
r />   I laughed and said that I too had noticed that particular verse.

  Atticus smiled. “But now we come to even stranger things,” he said. “I am amazed to find I am dining with the daughter of my friend Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, the freedman of that remarkable young fellow Spurinna, and a young man from the Sabine country, judging by your name. As well, of course, as with my honored Carthaginian guest.” The Captain was snoring gently. “Now, I would be fascinated if just one of you appeared at my door, but all three together is quite remarkable. Please tell me your tale.”

  We told it to him in full. I carried the main story, Paulla leapt in frequently to correct me, and Homer enlarged on various incidents with a telling poetic quotation. The stars were twinkling by the time we finished.

  “Where is this precious memoir of Spurinna’s?” asked Atticus, when we were through. Homer produced it from beneath his shirt, and the Roman took it gingerly. “It’s been through a lot,” he remarked as he unfolded the scroll, which was indeed a little damp and flattened. “But how do you intend to publish it?”

  Homer confessed that he was altogether penniless.

  “Yes, I see that. Well, for now you must stay here as my guests. No, no, I insist – for a few days at least. If you have a mind to follow after Spurinna” – and here Paulla’s eyes came alive – “then I won’t set any guards at your door: at least not at yours, my dear girl. They wouldn’t survive.”

  Paulla took a quick breath.

  “Yes,” Atticus went on with a smile, “I had news about such things two months ago. They are searching every inch of Italy for you, I believe. Some people are saying it is all a wicked plot by Caesar to kidnap you in exchange for your clan’s votes.”

  Paulla began to correct him, but Atticus just smiled.

  “Of course, I realize it was your own doing,” he said, “and rather rash of you, if I may say. I will mention that you are safe when I next write to Cicero; he will reassure your family. They will certainly send for you, but for the time being at least, all of you should rest. Shipwrecked and then three months on a plantation – why, by Hercules, I would never believe it if I read it in a novel! The Captain here needs careful tending, but I can provide that. The best doctor in Athens owes me a favor.”

  We expressed our sincere gratitude for his kindness.

  “Please,” said Atticus, blushing slightly, “there is no need to thank me. I too, am a guest in Athens, you know, though I have been here twenty years. The hard part is trying to leave. But tomorrow you will see more of the place, I hope.”

  We spent nine glorious days in the city of philosophy. The first day, as we took a bite of bread together before he was obliged to meet his morning visitors, Atticus spoke with me, and I told him about myself.

  “If you like speeches,” he said, “this is your city. Why don’t you go down to the Painted Porch and hear the orators?”

  The three of us went together; the Captain was being treated by Atticus’s friend the doctor. It was hot for May, with a sweep of cloud across the north. Life in the street seemed different than it was in Rome, though hardly less noisy. Many more women were veiled, and everyone walked. There was not a sedan-chair to be seen. Half the men wore beards, not bushy like the Captain’s but trimmed quite short. Students, staring at their feet, wandered past with scrolls stuck under their arms. Vagabonds slept in the open, until you realized, when they woke up and began discoursing, that they were actually members of an open-air philosophical movement. There were few togas to be seen, except on some young Romans who were hurrying, like ourselves, to hear the orators. Atticus had lent me a toga, but Homer said he preferred a simple shirt while he was on his old stomping grounds.

  “There’s that old fellow,” he said, pointing to a beard in the crowd, “still hawking those old doctrines! By Zeus, is it possible? And there’s Anaxilaus with his miserly new philosophy. Hallo there, Anaxilaus!”

  The philosopher joined us as we reached the Painted Porch on the north side of the Agora. This was a huge open colonnade with a tall roof and famous paintings on the inside. On one end, a group had gathered facing the outside marble wall. A man was just walking up the few steps that raised him above the level of the crowd. I didn’t catch his name.

  “Quickly, let’s find a place,” I muttered.

  The man began to speak. He started with a bit of light humor about Alexander the Great – “Is Alexander in the crowd? No? Good!” – and then addressed us. He was pretending to be Alexander the Great urging his army to fight bravely. I laughed at first – for the man was plainly not Alexander the Great – and then found myself swept away by his words. The future of Greece was at stake, he proclaimed. Yes, there was the danger of death, and death was certainly fearsome. But more fearsome was the death of a friend, and more fearsome still was the death of a country. Beside the element of danger, there was the hope of glory; beside the possibility of defeat, there was the chance of victory. Indeed, the gods might take victory for granted – for they are all-powerful – but today we mortals must seize hold of it before the sun sets. He urged us to take pity on the enemy, who were facing us unaware that fate was on our side. He reminded us that our ancestors were looking on, trembling that we might lose. And he declared that this was the final battle, and all we had won before would be for nothing if we failed, and everything in the world would be ours if we triumphed. He himself would be there beside us, fighting in the front rank.

  There were tears in my eyes by the time the man finished. I saw myself literally holding a pike and glaring across the battlefield. The speaker was no longer, in my mind, a rather short Athenian but instead a magnificent young king on horseback, gesturing with his sword to the horizon and proclaiming that the universe was his. I cheered at every full stop.

  As the man left the steps, to great applause, Homer nudged me in the ribs.

  “Sir, all this battling makes me hungry.”

  “Homer, I had no idea a speech could be like that! Did you hear him? It was like he was a different person! What fire! What emotion!”

  “Yes, sir, there is something to be said for oratory.”

  I looked around me. I was still in the same Agora, still at the Pointed Porch. But suddenly I understood something I had never learned from all those speeches in class. It wasn’t about the words on the page anymore: at least, it didn’t have to be just that. I felt rather embarrassed at my old performances in school, or in front of my parents. But I knew that I could do it too, if I got a chance.

  I turned around to tell Paulla. She wasn’t there.

  “Oh, yes, sir, she and Anaxilaus departed. They’ve gone to listen to the philosophers in the shade. They declared it was too hot to stand here.”

  Regardless of the weather, I was entranced. I spent all day listening, imagining what courage it must take to get up in front of such a critical audience. The Athenians, however, did it very calmly. Eight or nine speakers gave their speeches, most on a historical subject, and the effect was the same each time. I could well picture what such men must have been like before the Romans came, when those fiery speeches were for real. At last, Homer dragged me away to eat.

  So our days passed. My parents, I reflected, would be quite pleased that I was really in Athens, learning from the very best – how different it was from sleepy Reate! Eventually I could show off what I’d learned to Gaius, maybe even impress Caesar himself! Meanwhile, the Captain recovered slowly under the doctor’s care, and Homer got into dozens of arguments with old friends. As for Paulla, she visited the philosophers every day, wandering off with one of Atticus’s female slaves to sit under the trees, even as far off as the old Academy outside town. Each evening she looked a little more thoughtful, less like a silly girl and more like a young Roman woman.

  “I didn’t think I’d like it at first,” she confessed, when I grilled her about her philosophizing one afternoon. “At first I just went to laugh at them. But the thing is, Marcus, none of these philosophers are alike. Some of them are just
buffoons, like Anaxilaus, but some are quite serious. And even with those, some are gentle, and some are very cold, and with some you feel like you’re talking to your grandfather. And they listen to you, even if you’re just a girl -well, sometimes.”

  “You mean, even if you’re going to be a powerful Roman lady someday.”

  “Oh no, Marcus, it’s not like that. To them, we’re just a sort of barbarian, you know.” She grinned. “But they don’t care, and they don’t mind when you disagree with them. Take that Zeno of Sidon, for instance. Yesterday he was going on about how romantic love is the only real kind there is, and I put up my hand and I said, ‘Zeno, that’s not true, there are other kinds. What about love of your country?’ The students all laughed at this, of course – a typical Roman question, they said. But I stuck to my argument. I said, ‘Well, what about love of your family, Zeno? What about love of your friends?’ Because loyalty is real love too, isn’t it, Marcus?”

  “You’re missing your family,” I said.

  “No!” she said fiercely. “That’s not it. They can rot in Rome, for all I care,” which didn’t strike me as a very philosophical thing to say.

  On the ninth day of our stay in Athens, Atticus summoned us to his study.

  “I’ve just had another letter from my friend Cicero,” he said. “Not much in it, mostly the usual gossip, but there is one thing.” He read from the letter:

  “‘My people have found out that Caesar has sent an agent to Greece to keep Pompey away from me. We don’t know who, but it might be that Spanish officer I wrote to you about before. In your previous letter, you told me that Pompey has scattered his fleet looking for the last pirates, so there is nothing to prevent him from returning to Italy at once. Be a friend and send him the enclosed note immediately.’”

  Atticus looked up. “I must do this for Cicero: he is my best friend. Let me say it right now. I want you to take his note to Pompey for me. I trust you, and I would appreciate it.”