Of Merchants & Heros

by Paul Waters

  ‘Drowned?’ I asked, my belly tightening.

  ‘Butchered, even the two little girls, after the pirates had had their pleasure with them. It was that vaunting corsair bastard Dikaiarchos again. He left his altar to Lawlessness and Impiety on the seastrand.

  They say it is his sign.’

  There was little to be said. Presently Phylakos went off. As soon as he had gone Caecilius cursed out loud. ‘It is a heavy loss.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it. I don’t mean the cargo of wool.

  That can be made up. But he was carrying a small fortune of my silver.’

  I stared at him in disbelief. Misreading my expression, he took my arm and went on in a confidential tone, ‘I did not tell you at the time: that captain – what was his name again? – was engaged in a private mission for me – something I did not want talked of – taking funds for arms to a contact of mine in Pergamon.’ He tapped his nose. ‘They were to be shipped to Antiochos in Syria. It had to be kept discreet.’

  In a flat voice I said, ‘Now Dikaiarchos has your silver, or King Philip does, who everyone says is his ally.’

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ said Caecilius, not listening. ‘All I know is I have lost my money. Curses on this pirate – what did you say his name was?’

  ‘Dikaiarchos, sir. He was the one who killed my father.’

  ‘Was he? It is time you put all that behind you. What’s done is done.’ And then, rubbing his chin and frowning, ‘If only I had divided that cargo.’

  I said nothing. I did not trust myself to speak.

  Titus was right. It was not long before we heard of King Philip again, and Dikaiarchos with him. News came that he had launched an attack on the cities of coastal Asia, and with the treasure he had seized he was arming his fleet. He took Lysimacheia, then Thasos; he harried the cities of the Hellespont.

  When I told Menexenos this he said straight away, ‘He means to threaten Athens.’

  I asked him how he was so sure.

  ‘It is the strategy of every enemy of Athens. He who controls the Hellespont controls Athens, for it is our grain-route from the Black Sea. It is our food supply.’

  When Titus next held one of his suppers, he said beforehand, ‘It would be an honour if your friend Menexenos could come as well.

  Should I send an invitation? – yes, I think so,’ he mused to himself, ‘but ask him as well, when you see him, and tell him from me that I should be very glad if he would come.’

  I wondered who had told him. Xanthe, probably. I smiled to myself. I had supposed I had been a picture of discretion; but love shines out, and, looking back, I daresay it would have taken a blind man not to have seen it.

  It was the sort of kindness Titus always strove for. The easier course, after what had happened with Lucius, would have been for him to say nothing. But that was not his way.

  At Titus’s supper-party, his friend Villius was present, on a visit from Rome. He visited often, for he acted as a confidential go- between between Titus and his friends in the Senate. Mimas the Greek was with him; and Titus had invited Verginius from the garrison, and one or two others I knew less well.

  Everyone felt Pasithea’s absence; but pretty fair-haired Xanthe was there, sharing Titus’s couch as always, bright and full of conversation. I was greeting her when Verginius arrived late, having been detained by some business with the garrison. I looked up with something of a start, not at him, but at the girl on his arm. It was Myrtilla.

  She was a professional, of course. Yet I feared, in my innocence of such things, that she would feel slighted, for I had not seen her since the night of Poseidon’s festival. I need not have been concerned. She greeted everyone pleasantly, and when she came to me she caught me with her intelligent eye, as if to say, ‘What happened between us is ours alone.’ Then she turned to Menexenos. ‘You have chosen a good friend, Menexenos son of Kleinias. I see you can tell gold from dross. Many cannot.’

  ‘Then,’ he said, smiling back at her, ‘you have the greater skill, who saw the gold before me.’

  This pleased her, as he had meant. She said, ‘I am not sure whom to envy most, him or you.’

  Menexenos laughed. ‘Why, me of course, just as the rest of the city does.’

  I shook my head and blushed at this flattery, and with a happy laugh Myrtilla went skipping off to sit with Verginius.

  Except for me, who was a few months younger still, Menexenos was the youngest there that evening. But he could be placed in any gathering and shine. Whether the subject was the city or the soul, he spoke with grace and humanity and wit.

  That evening the talk was all of Carthage and King Philip. Old Quintus Fabius, the Roman general who had retaken Tarentum in the siege seven years before, had recently died. He had been five times consul, and was one of those who opposed Scipio. The Senate had already agreed to allow Scipio to carry the war to the enemy in Africa; but later, to thwart his rival, Fabius had persuaded the senators to refuse Scipio a levy of troops: the only men he was permitted to take were volunteers, if he could find them.

  Fabius thought, by this ruse, he had blocked his rival. But when Scipio called for volunteers there was a clamour of men who wished to follow him, so greatly was he loved. Now they were at the gates of Carthage, preparing to face Hannibal in the final battle.

  Though Fabius was dead, Scipio’s enemies still grumbled on – among them, it seemed, Titus’s own father – saying that to fight Hannibal in Italy was one thing, but to fight him on his own soil, on the very threshold of his home, was another. They warned of defeat, and of tempting the gods.

  All this we talked about. Then the conversation turned to King Philip and the growing chaos in the Aegean. Titus asked Menexenos what he made of the raids along the Hellespont, and Menexenos replied with what he had already told me, that Philip meant to threaten Athens.

  Titus listened, nodding slowly in agreement. When Menexenos had finished he turned to Villius. ‘What are they saying in Rome?’ he asked.

  ‘They avert their eyes like superstitious women. Your father says the Aegean is none of our concern. Let Philip do what he wishes, so long as he leaves us alone.’

  ‘Is that what he says? Did you hear what Philip did to Thasos?’

  The citizens of Thasos, he said, facing defeat, had agreed to surrender, on Philip’s promise that he would spare them. ‘So they opened the gates, and as soon as Philip was in possession of the city he sold them into slavery.’ He shook his head. ‘But why am I telling you? You know what a monster he is. My anger is for that blustering fool my father, who will not see it.’

  A silence fell. We had all come to know what Titus thought of his father; but it was not something anyone wished to comment on, only to have it remembered later, when father and son became reconciled.

  After a moment Villius went on, ‘There is a rumour in Rome that Antiochos has made a pact with Philip.’

  Titus set down his cup and looked at him. ‘To what purpose?’ he asked.

  ‘Egypt,’ nodded Villius. ‘Antiochos has coveted Egypt for years, just as his father did. He wants to conquer all the lands Alexander once held, and now is his chance, while it is in chaos after the succession.’

  ‘And,’ said Titus, ‘he doesn’t want Philip to stand in his way.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  Titus rubbed his downy beard. ‘And what, I wonder, will Philip want in return? What can Antiochos offer him?’

  ‘What else but a free hand in Greece, and control of the Hellespont, and the chance to bring King Attalos low in Pergamon? He has already ravaged his kingdom, and there is an old feud between them.’

  ‘No one will support him, when he breaks his word and sells whole cities into slavery. Does he wish to rule a wasteland?’

  ‘I don’t think he cares, so long as he rules it.’

  Titus frowned. ‘There are limits even to kingship,’ he said.

  ‘Tyrants ignore justice at their peril.’

>   There was a pause as everyone considered this. The only entertainment that night was a single lute-player. In the sudden silence I could hear him quietly picking out a slow echoing Phrygian melody, a tune laden with melancholy.

  It was Mimas the Greek who spoke next. ‘Those two,’ he cried, ‘Philip and Antiochos, are like wolves that fight over a carcass.’

  And then, to everyone’s surprise, Xanthe, who usually had little to say on such matters, said, ‘In that case they had best beware. For sometimes, when the wolves are busy, the lion steals up unheard, and snatches the carcass from them both.’

  Titus, who had been frowning at his wine-cup, turned and looked at her with raised brows. ‘Why Xanthe, you little minx! And who, then, is the lion?’

  She popped an olive into her mouth. ‘Rome is the lion,’ she said.

  Titus burst into a laugh. ‘Well, wise strategist, I can see we’ll make a general of you yet. But that, I think, is a feast which even Rome has no stomach for.’

  Caecilius, too, who seldom heeded the world beyond his own interests, had his eyes set on the East that year.

  The loss of his money on Theramon’s ship was not, it seemed, the great financial disaster he first made out. In two months he was ready to send more money for his Asian venture. He kept the fine details from me, but I knew he was up to something. He would say, with unconvincing casualness, ‘Ah, I think, today, I shall go to the harbour myself and deal with Phrikias; the walk will be pleasant.’ Or he would cough and enquire, ‘Tell me, Marcus, has news come yet of Hamilcar’s ship?’ Or Chares’s. Or Mellon’s.

  He liked to keep his absurd little secrets; but he liked even more to let me know he had them. I took no notice of his half-spoken sentences and heavy hints, and certainly did not descend to questioning him, which was what he wanted. If he did not wish to tell me, that was his affair. His evasions merely reminded me how he did not trust anyone, not even me, whom he called, when it suited him, his son.

  The East, being at that time a place of trouble and uncertainty, was, for Caecilius, a place of promise. Where honest men saw ugliness in chaos, he saw opportunity. He would quiz me for whatever news I had heard on the quayside; and, at times, if some tale particularly interested him, he would hurry down to the dock himself and question the captain who brought it.

  I knew my friends – Menexenos, Eumastas, Titus – despised him.

  How could they not? Who, after all, can respect a man who treats the acquisition of money as an end in itself, and has no care for the fortunes of others except what he may make out of them? A good man, Menexenos said to me one day, needs wealth as a means to the good life. ‘Yes,’ I said straight away in answer. ‘But if he does not trouble himself to know what the good life is, how then does all his money serve him? He becomes its slave, not its master.’

  That summer, for the first time, I had begun to dwell on such questions. I asked myself what it was that makes a man good, what steps he must follow, what lessons he must learn. The answers still eluded me. And yet, for all my uncertainty, I knew that Caecilius was everything I did not want to be.

  During that year, he had forged links with a certain Kritolaus of Patrai, a politician and an orator of accomplishment.

  Kritolaus, he told me, had persuaded the people of Patrai to elect him to supreme power, and, upon gaining it, had driven out the landowners and put the wealthy aristocrats to death, seizing their property, which he had promised to share out among the poor.

  ‘Of course,’ explained Caecilius, ‘he has taken his cut, as is only natural. But now, it seems, some of the rabble have complained, saying he has helped himself to what is not his.’ He nodded wisely and added, ‘It goes to show . . .’

  I do not know what it went to show, but, of late, Kritolaus had decided he was in need of an armed bodyguard to protect himself from his own citizens; he had come to Caecilius for weapons.

  When I happened to mention this business to Menexenos he said, ‘Oh yes, Kritolaus. He is a demagogue. The very worst sort.’

  By now, my Greek was very good, but this word was new to me.

  ‘Is a demagogue not an orator, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Not quite; though it is true that both men use their voices to persuade others. But an orator is a man who is guided by the common good, and uses his skills to persuade others to it. But a demagogue will say whatever is necessary to gain power, and to enrich himself.’

  We had left the city that day, and were walking beside the water along the great curve of the bay. I said, ‘Yet Caecilius said the man is well liked.’

  ‘Perhaps so. He steals from the few, and gives to the many. It is the way to easy popularity. Yet you say he now needs an armed guard to protect him from his own people. Well I suppose the money has run out. And as for the men whose property he has stolen, he can hardly suppose they will forget it. He must live every day in fear.’

  He fell silent. Presently, coming to a great rock, we climbed and sat, and looked out at the sea, and the distant ships. It was a beautiful day. The high-summer humidity had gone, and the air was fresh and clean.

  I had intended to go on and mention something that had been weighing on my mind. Caecilius had been hinting that it might suit him to send me to this Kritolaus in Patrai as his agent there. As usual it had all been conveyed in half-completed sentences and indirect comments; and I knew, if I questioned him on it, and let on that I did not want to go, it would only strengthen his resolve to send me. So I had said nothing. And now, with Menexenos too, I decided my fears could wait for another time, when there was something more definite to tell him. So instead of speaking I jumped to my feet, pulled off my clothes, and dived from the rock into the bright cool water, and he jumped in after me.

  Later we returned by the inland path. On the far terraces, men were moving with baskets, gathering the harvest. In the distance, beside a spreading farmstead, a sleek herd of horses stood grazing in the golden sunlight of the late afternoon. I knew the place well. How could I not? It was one of the farms my stepfather was contracted to manage. It was the farm of Eumastas’s father.

  The man Caecilius had put in charge there was not as bad as most; he was a smallholder from Campania who had a love of horses.

  But I seldom went that way, even so. I had tried to speak to Caecilius about the farm, telling him it had been seized unjustly, and that Eumastas was my friend. In answer he had said, ‘Then you had better spend less time with Greeks, as I have told you before.’

  I was remembering this, when Menexenos, who had been silent for a while, broke into my thoughts and said, ‘I have had a letter from my father.’

  Our eyes met. We both knew what this meant, for we had spoken of it.

  ‘So soon?’ I said.

  He frowned out across the valley. ‘He says, with the future so uncertain, it is time I was home.’

  I walked on a few paces before I answered. I had already resolved, many times, that when this moment came I should steel myself to bear it like a man. As Menexenos had once said, there is no disputing with necessity. I said, ‘Is it so bad, then?’

  ‘He says there will be war. He does not know when, not exactly.

  But the motions have begun. Philip is a great vaunting bully, just like the Athenian Demos, but at least he has intelligence with it, which is more than you can say for the Demos. When it comes to matters of war, they are like the glutton at the overladen table, impatient to begin, but with no idea of how they will finish.’

  ‘When must you go?’ I asked.

  He crooked his arm around my neck and drew me to him. Close up I could smell the faint tang of sea-salt on his body.

  ‘It must be before the shipping lanes close for winter,’ he said.

  ‘Not long then.’

  ‘No. Not long.’

  I nodded, reflecting that there is pain even in love. Not for the first time I thought of how I was Roman, he Athenian; and in the natural course of things we walked different paths. Thus the Fates had woven our destiny, before w
e were born. And yet I knew I would not have it different. That summer had been like day after a long night.

  As if reading my thoughts he said gently, ‘This we always knew.

  For the rest, it is what we decide to make it. There is a power in longing, Marcus. Always remember that.’

  We had reached the top of the low ridge. A breeze had picked up, stirring the leaves in the olive groves and ruffling our tunics. Ahead, in the near distance, Tarentum lay before us, red roofs and white houses, and, on the citadel, Poseidon’s temple with its golden trident.

  I thought, at first, the noise I heard was the breeze whistling in the valley. But now I realized it was the sound of many men’s voices, rising and falling, carried on the wind. It was not the sound of battle; it was something else. It seemed to be coming from within the city, or from the garrison fort beside it.

  Beside me Menexenos’s head went up. He had heard it too. We looked at each other.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ I said. ‘We had better get back.’

  We quickened our pace. I saw, ahead in the distance, outside the city wall in the place where the wagons and carriages wait, a small crowd was gathering. Then I noticed a Roman legionary on mule- back, striking out along the path, urging the creature on with a switch on its rump. He was an old, lean, grizzled centurion. His face under his beard was flushed, and his mouth was moving, as if he were shouting, or singing. But he was too distant for me to make out his words.

  We cut across the downward slope to intercept him. When he was near enough for me to hail, I called out in Latin, asking what had happened.

  ‘Zama!’ he cried back, breaking into a grinning laugh and waving the withy switch in the air so wildly that he nearly fell off the mule.