Authors: John Maddox Roberts

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical

The Temple of the Muses (2 page)

BOOK: The Temple of the Muses

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There were a great many temples to deities Greek, Asian and Egyptian. There was even a Temple of Roma, an example of that fundament-kissing at which the Egyptians excelled. The chief deity of the city, though, was Serapis, a god invented specifically for Alexandria. His temple, the Serapeum, was one of the most famous in the world. While the architecture was predominantly Greek, Egyptian decoration was much in evidence everywhere. The extraordinary Egyptian hieroglyphs were lavishly employed.

Ahead of us came a sound of musicians setting up an even louder racket than our own. From a side street emerged a frenzied procession, and the litter bearing the court faction halted to give it the right-of-way. A mass of ecstatic worshippers erupted across the great boulevard, many of them dressed only in brief goatskins, their hair unbound and whirling wildly as they beat tambourines. Others, less demented, wore gowns of white gauze and played harps, flutes and the inevitable sistra. I watched all this with interest, for I had yet to visit the Greek parts of the world, and the Dionysiac celebrations had long been forbidden in Rome.

“Them again,” Rufus said disgustedly.

“In Rome they’d be driven from the city,” said an embassy secretary.

“Are they Maenads?” I asked. “It seems an odd time of year to be holding their rites.” I noticed that a number of them were brandishing snakes, and that now there were a number of young men among them, shaven-headed youths with the expression of one who has just been struck sharply at the base of the skull.

“Nothing so respectable,” Rufus said. “These are followers of Ataxas.”

“Is that some local god?” I inquired.

“No, he’s a holy man out of Asia Minor. The city’s full of his kind. He’s been here a couple of years and acquired a great horde of these followers. He works miracles, foretells the future, makes statues speak, that sort of thing. That’s another thing you’ll find out about the Egyptians, Decius: They’ve no sense of decency when it comes to religion. No
dignitas
, no
gravitas
; decent Roman rites and sacrifices have no appeal to them. They like the sort where the worshippers get all involved and emotional.”

“Disgusting,” sniffed the secretary.

“They look like they’re having fun,” I said. By now a great litter was crossing the street, even higher than ours, carried by yet more of the frenzied worshippers, which couldn’t have done much for its stability. Atop it was a throne on which sat a man who wore an extravagant purple robe spangled with golden stars and a tall headdress topped by a silver crescent moon. Around one of his arms was wrapped a huge snake and in the other he held a scourge of the sort one uses to thrash recalcitrant slaves. I could see that he had a black beard, a long nose and dark eyes, but little else. He stared slightly ahead as if unaware of the churning frenzy being staged on his behalf.

“The great man himself,” Rufus sneered.

“That’s Ataxas?” I asked.

“The very same.”

“I find myself wondering,” I said, “just why a procession of
high officials gives way to a rabble that would have been chased from Rome with Molossian hounds at their heels.”

Rufus shrugged. “This is Alexandria. Under this skin of Greek culture, these people are as priest-ridden and superstitious as they were under the Pharaohs.”

“There is no shortage of religious charlatans in Rome,” I pointed out.

“You’ll see the difference before you’ve been at court for very long,” Rufus promised.

When the frantic procession was past, we resumed our stately progress. I learned that the street we were on was the Canopic Way, the main east-west thoroughfare in Alexandria. Like all the others, it was straight as a chalk-line and ran from the Necropolis Gate in the west to the Canopic Gate in the east. In Rome, it was a rare street where two men could pass each other without having to turn sideways. On Canopic two litters such as ours could pass easily, while leaving plenty of room for pedestrian traffic on either side.

There were strict rules regarding how far balconies could protrude from the facades of buildings, and clotheslines over streets were forbidden. This in its way was refreshing, but one raised in Rome acquires a taste for chaos, and after a while all this regularity and order became oppressive. I realize that it seems a good idea at first, laying out a city where no city has been before, and making sure that it does not suffer from the ills that afflict cities that just grew and sprawled like Rome. But I would not care to live in a city that was a veritable work of art. I think this lies at the heart of the Alexandrians’ reputation for licentiousness and riotous living. One forced to live in surroundings that might have been devised by Plato must seek relief and an outlet for the human urges despised by philosophers. Wickedness and debauchery may not be the only answers, but they are certainly the ones with the widest appeal.

In time we turned north along a great processional way. Ahead of us were several clusters of impressive buildings, some of them within battlemented walls. As we proceeded northward, we passed the first of these great complexes on our right.

“The Museum,” Rufus said. “It’s actually a part of the Palace, but it lies outside the defensive wall.”

It was an imposing place, with wide stairs ascending to the Temple of the Muses, which gave the whole complex its name. Of far greater importance than the Temple was the cluster of buildings surrounding it, where many of the world’s greatest scholars carried on their studies at state expense, publishing papers and giving lectures as they pleased. There was nothing like it in all the world, so it took its name from its temple. In later years, other such institutions, founded in imitation, were also called museums.

Even more famous than the Museum was the great Library attached to it. Here all the greatest books of the world were stored, and here copies were made and sold all over the civilized world. Behind the Museum I could see the great pitched roof of the Library, dwarfing all surrounding structures. I commented upon its immensity, and Rufus waved a hand as if it were a trifle.

“That is actually the lesser Library. It’s called the Mother Library because it’s original, founded by Ptolemy Soter himself. There’s an even bigger one, called the Daughter Library, attached to the Serapeum. It’s said that, between them, they contain more than seven hundred thousand volumes.”

It seemed unbelievable. I tried to picture what 700,000 books must look like. I imagined a full legion plus an extra auxiliary cohort. That would be about 7,000 men. I imagined such a body of men, having looted Alexandria, filing out, each man carrying 100 books. Somehow, it still did not convey the reality. The wine probably didn’t help.

Once past the Museum, we passed through yet another gate and were within the Palace itself. The Palace of Alexandria displayed the by-now familiar urge of the Successor Kings to build everything bigger than anyone had built before. Its lesser houses were the size of ordinary palaces, its gardens were the size of city parks, its shrines were as big as ordinary temples. It was a veritable city within a city.

“They’ve done well, for barbarians,” I said.

We were set down before the steps of a sprawling stoa that ran the length of an apparently endless building. A crowd of court functionaries appeared at the top of the steps. In the middle of them was a portly, pleasant-faced man I recognized from his previous visits to Rome: Ptolemy the Flute-Player. He began to descend the Palace steps just as Creticus descended from his towering littler. Ptolemy knew better than to await him at the top of the steps. A Roman official climbs stairs to meet no one but a higher-ranking Roman official.

“Old Ptolemy’s fatter than ever,” I noted.

“Poorer than ever, too,” Rufus said as we made our unsteady way to the mosaic pavement. It was a matter of constant amazement to us that the king of the world’s richest nation was also the world’s most prominent beggar. Not that we failed to take advantage of the fact.

The previous generation of Ptolemies had assassinated one another nearly out of existence, and an irate Alexandrian mob had finished the job. A royal bastard, Philopator Philadelphus Neos Dionysus, who was, in sober fact, a flute-player, had been found to fill the vacant throne. For more than a century Rome had been the power broker in Egypt, and he appealed to Rome to help shore up his shaky claim and we obliged. Rome would always rather prop up a weak king than deal with a strong one.

On the pavement Ptolemy and Creticus embraced, Creticus making a sour face at the scent Ptolemy wore. At least Ptolemy did not affect the Egyptian trappings so favored by the court. His clothing was Greek, and what remained of his hair was dressed in the Greek fashion. He did, however, make lavish use of facial cosmetics, to disguise the ravages of time and debauchery.

While Creticus and the king went into the Palace for the formal reception, I sneaked off with Rufus and a few others to the Roman embassy, where we would be staying. The embassy occupied a wing of the Palace and came complete with living quarters, banqueting facilities, baths, a gymnasium, gardens, ponds and a mob of slaves who might have staffed the biggest plantation in Italy.
I found that my own quarters were far more spacious than my house in Rome and that I was to have twenty slaves for my personal service.

“Twenty?” I protested when I was presented with my staff. “I already have Hermes, and the little wretch hasn’t enough to do as it is!”

“Oh, take them, Decius,” Rufus insisted. “You know how slaves are; they’ll find something to do. Do the quarters suit you?”

I surveyed the lavish suite. “The last time I saw anything like it was when I visited Lucullus’s new town house.”

“It is a bit better than being a junior official back home, isn’t it?” Rufus said with satisfaction. Obviously, he had found the best possible dead end for his career.

We went into a small courtyard to sample some of the local vintages and catch each other up on the latest doings in our various spheres. It was delightfully cool beneath the palms, where tame monkeys gamboled among the fronds. In a marble-bordered pool, bloated carp swam up to be fed, their mouths gaping like the beaks of baby birds.

“Did you stop by Rome on your way here?” the secretary asked eagerly.

“No, we came by way of Sicily and Crete. Your news from the Capitol is probably more recent than mine.”

“What of Gaul, then?” Rufus asked.

“Trouble. The Helvetii are making warlike noises. They resent the Roman presence and they’re talking about taking back the Roman Province.”

“We can’t let them do that!” someone said. “It’s our only overland connection to Iberia!”

“That’s just what we were trying to prevent,” I said. “We called on a number of tribal leaders and reminded them of our old friendships and alliances and we passed a few bribes.”

“Do you think they’ll stay peaceful?” Rufus asked.

“You can never tell with Gauls,” I said. “They’re an emotional people, and they do love to fight. They could jump either way. When
we left, most of them seemed to be content, but tomorrow some fire-raiser could make a speech accusing them of being women for accepting Roman authority, and the next day all Gaul could be in revolt just to prove their manhood.”

“Well, we’ve beaten them many times before,” said the secretary, who was a safe distance from Gaul.

“And they’ve whipped us a few times,” I reminded him. “A tribe or two at a time, they’re no danger. But if every tribe in Gaul decides to throw us out, I don’t see that we could do much about it. They outnumber us about fifty to one, and they’re on their own home ground.”

“We need another Marius,” someone said. “He knew how to handle Gauls and Germans.”

“He knew how to handle Romans, too,” I said sourly. “Mainly by massacring them.”

“Only people of senatorial rank,” the obnoxious little secretary pointed out. “But then, you Metelli were Sulla’s supporters, weren’t you?”

“Pay no attention to him,” Rufus said affably. “He’s a freedman’s son, and the common herd were Marians to a man. But seriously, when does the proconsulship for transalpine Gaul change?”

“It will be one of next year’s Consuls,” I said, “which means some amiable dolt will undoubtedly be on the spot when the Gauls finally rise up and start wiping out every Roman citizen they can lay hands on.” If I could have known what was happening back in Rome that year, I would have been far more alarmed. We faced something a great deal worse than a trifling military disaster in Gaul. But I was blissfully unaware of it, as was Rome in general.

“Now what of Egypt?” I asked. “There must be some problem, or the Senate wouldn’t have ordered Creticus all the way from Gaul.”

“The situation here is a chaotic shambles, as usual,” Rufus told me. “Ptolemy is the last living male adult of the line. The question of the succession is growing urgent, because he will drink himself to death before long and we must have an heir to support
or we’ll have a whole civil war to sort out, and that could take a number of years and legions.”

“Who are the contenders?” I asked.

“Just one, an infant born a few months ago, and sickly at that,” the secretary said.

“Let me guess. Would his name be Ptolemy?” The only other name they used was Alexander.

BOOK: The Temple of the Muses

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