The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  Nothing, however, pleased the King quite as much as did the massacre of the Romans and Latins and Italians. Every time he came across another place where thousands of bodies had been dumped to rot, he beamed, he laughed, he rejoiced. He had made no distinction between Roman and Italian, despite the fact that he knew Rome and Italy were at war. A phenomenon no one was better able to understand than Mithridates — it was brother against brother, with power the prize.

  Yes, everything was going splendidly. His son Young Mithridates was regent in Pontus (though the prudent King had taken his son's wife and children along on his march to Asia Province just to make sure Young Mithridates behaved himself); his son Ariarathes was King of Cappadocia; Phrygia, Bithynia, Galatia, and Paphlagonia were all royal satrapies under the personal rule of some of his elder sons; and his son-in-law Tigranes of Armenia was at liberty to do as he pleased east of Cappadocia as long as he didn't tread on the Pontic toes. Let Tigranes conquer Syria and Egypt; it would keep him busy. Mithridates frowned. In Egypt the populace would tolerate no foreign king. Which meant a puppet Ptolemy. If such a personage could be found. But certainly the queens of Egypt would be descendants of Mithridates; no daughter of Tigranes could be allowed to usurp a position destined for a daughter of Mithridates.

  Most impressive of all was the success of the King's fleets — if, that is, he ignored the miserable failure of Aristion and his "excellent admiral and skilled general" Apellicon; the Athenian invasion of Delos had turned into a fiasco. But having taken the islands of the Cyclades, Archelaus's admiral Metrophanes went on to take Delos and put another twenty thousand Romans, Latins, and Italians to death there. The Pontic general then bestowed Delos upon Athens to make sure that Aristion stayed in power; the Pontic fleets needed the Piraeus as their western base.

  All Euboea was now in Pontic hands, as was the island of Sciathos and a great deal of Thessaly around the Bay of Pagasae, including the vital ports of Demetrias and Methone. Because of their northern Greek conquests, Pontic forces were able to block the roads from Thessaly into central Greece, a discomfort which decided most of the rest of Greece to declare for Mithridates. The Peloponnese, Boeotia, Laconia, and all of Attica now hailed the King of Pontus fervently as their deliverer from the Romans— and sat back, pure spectators, to watch the armies and fleets of Mithridates crush Macedonia like a boot on a beetle.

  But the crushing of Macedonia proved—for the time being, anyway—an impossibility. Caught between a suddenly antagonistic Greece and the advancing Pontic land forces on the Via Egnatia, Gaius Sentius and Quintus Bruttius Sura didn't panic, didn't concede defeat. They hustled to call up as many auxiliaries as they could, and put them into camp alongside the two Roman legions which were all Macedonia had to counter Mithridates. Pontus would not take Macedonia without paying a bitter price.

  3

  Late summer began to be a little boring for King Mithridates, now well ensconced in Pergamum and undisputed master of Asia Minor. The only interesting thing left to do was to visit the various human hills of dead, and the most imposing of those monuments he had already seen. Except, he realized, the district further up the river Caicus above which Pergamum sat. There were two towns in Asia Province named Stratoniceia. The greater of them, situated in Caria, was still stubbornly holding out against a Pontic besieging force. The lesser Stratoniceia lay further inland than Pergamum upon the Caicus, and vowed itself completely loyal to Mithridates. So when the King rode into the town, its people turned out en masse to cheer him and throw flower petals before his triumphant progress.

  In the crowd he set eyes upon a Greek girl called Monima, and had her brought to him immediately. So pale was her coloring that her hair seemed white and her brows and lashes invisible, which endowed her with an oddly bald kind of beauty; one close look, and the King added her to his wives, so rare and strange was she, with her lustrous dark pink eyes. He encountered no opposition from her father, Philopoemon, especially after he took Philopoemon south with him (and Monima) to Ephesus, where the King installed his father-in-law as satrap of the region.

  Enjoying the diversions Ephesus was famous for—and enjoying his albino bride too—the King devoted enough time to business to send a laconic message to Rhodes demanding that it surrender itself and the refugee governor, Gaius Cassius Longinus. The answer, swiftly delivered, was a firm no to both requests; Rhodes was a Friend and Ally of the Roman People, and would honor its commitment to the death if necessary.

  For the first time since he had set his campaign in motion, Mithridates had a temper tantrum. While his Pontic court and the more enterprising of the Ephesian sycophants cowered, the King ranted up and down his audience chamber until his rage blew out and he subsided to a glowering mass upon his throne, chin in hand, lips pouting, the marks of tears upon his fleshy cheeks.

  From that moment he lost interest in every other enterprise he had started; he bent his energies exclusively upon securing the submission of Rhodes. How dared it say no to him! Did such a little place as Rhodes think it could hold out against the might of Pontus? Well, soon it would find out it didn't stand a chance.

  His own fleets were too heavily involved in maneuvers on the western side of the Aegean to tap into their numbers for such an insignificant campaign as the one against little island Rhodes; so instead the King demanded that Smyrna, Ephesus, Priene, Miletus, Halicarnassus and the islands of Chios and Samos donate him all the ships he needed. Of land troops he had plenty, as he had kept two armies in Asia Province; but thanks to the dogged resistance of Lycian Patara and Termessus, he could not get those troops to the logical place from which to launch a land invasion of Rhodes—namely the beaches and coves of Lycia. The Rhodian navy was deservedly formidable of reputation, and was concentrated upon the western side of Rhodes overlooking that sea which washed down from Halicarnassus and Cnidus. But, unable to use Lycia, down these sea-lanes must the invasion forces of Mithridates pass.

  He demanded transports by the hundreds and as many war galleys as Asia Province could find, ordering that they congregate in Halicarnassus—to which city, so beloved of Gaius Marius, he brought one of his armies for embarkation. And at the end of September he sailed, his own gigantic completely enclosed "sixteener" in the midst of the crowd, easily distinguished by the gold and purple throne erected under a canopy on the poop. Here he sat, master of all he surveyed, and reveling in it.

  Cumbersome and slow though the biggest of the warships were, still any armed galley moved faster than the transports, a motley collection of all kinds of coastal cargo boats never designed to do more than hug the contours of bays and headlands. Thus by the time the forerunners of the fleet rounded the tip of the Cnidan peninsula and faced the open water of the Carpathian Sea, the enormous number of vessels was strung out all the way back to Halicarnassus, where the last of the transports were even then just leaving harbor, packed with terrified Pontic soldiers.

  Manning light and very fast trireme galleys which were only partially decked, the Rhodian navy appeared on the horizon and headed straight for the makeshift Pontic fleet. It was no part of Rhodian sea tactics to employ the kind of heavy "sixteener" in which King Mithridates himself sat. These capital ships carried vast numbers of marines and many pieces of artillery; but the Rhodians despised the efficacy of artillery in sea battles and didn't keep still for long enough to allow their ships to be boarded by marines. The Rhodian navy's reputation had been won because of the speed and the extreme maneuverability of its vessels, able to dart at will between lumbering capital ships; the crews could stroke so strongly on a ramming charge that sheer speed more than compensated for lack of weight, and the bronze-reinforced oaken beak of a Rhodian trireme could drive deeply into the side of the heftiest "sixteener.'' Holing the enemy's ships was the only way to win decisively at sea, said the Rhodians.

  When the Pontic fleet sighted the Rhodian navy, all was readied for a mighty battle. But it appeared Rhodes was only attempting a sally, for after making the Pontic galleys dizzy at th
e speed of their gyrations, the Rhodians turned and made off without doing more than stoving in the sides of two particularly inept five-bankers. However, before the Rhodians did depart the scene, they succeeded in giving King Mithridates the fright of his life. This was actually his first engagement at sea; he had done all his sailing within the Euxine, where not even the sauciest pirate would have dared to attack a ship of the Pontic navy.

  Excited and fascinated, the King sat upon his gold and purple throne with his eyes trying to go everywhere at once; it did not occur to him that he himself stood in any danger. He had swiveled to his extreme left to watch the antics of a superbly sailed Rhodian galley some distance off his stern when his own huge ship lurched, groaned, shuddered convulsively, and the sounds of many oars snapping off like twigs became intermingled with cries of dismay and alarm.

  His sudden and utterly overwhelming panic was over almost before it began; but not quickly enough. In the midst of his brief yet total terror, the King of Pontus shat himself. It went everywhere, solid faeces mixed with what seemed an incredible amount of more liquid bowel contents, a stinking brown mess all over the gold-encrusted purple cloth of his cushion, trickling down the legs of his throne, running down his own legs into the manes of the golden lions upon the flaps of his boots, pooling and plopping on the deck around his feet when he jumped up. And there was nowhere to go! He could not conceal it from the amazed eyes of his attendants and officers, he could not conceal it from the sailors below amidships who had looked up instinctively to make sure their King was safe.

  Then he discovered that his ship had not been rammed at all. One of his own vessels, a big and clumsy "sixteener'' from the isle of Chios, had blundered broadside into his own ship's beam and shorn off every oar down one side of each galley.

  Was that amazement in their eyes? Or was it amusement? The King's bulging orbs glared with frightful fury from one face to the next and watched every face flush red, then pale like a transparent goblet suddenly emptied of wine.

  "I'm ill!" he shouted. "There's something wrong, I'm ill! Help me, you fools!"

  The stillness broke. People rushed at him from every side, cloths seemed to pop into existence from nowhere; two really quick thinkers found buckets and doused the King with seawater. It was when the cold contents of those pails slapped against his legs that the King bethought him of a better way to deal with this ghastly situation; he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  "Come on, you fools, get me clean!"

  The King lifted up his skirts of golden pteryges, the kilt of golden mail beneath and the purple tunic under that again, displaying powerful thighs, firm buttocks—and, in front, a mighty engine which had sired half a hundred lusty sons. When the worst was washed from his nether regions to the deck, he doffed every item of clothing he wore and stood naked upon the high stern of his ship, showing his dazzled crew what a magnificent specimen was their King. He still laughed, still joked, and occasionally clutched at his belly and groaned for extra effect.

  But later, when the Rhodian fleet had gone and the two Pontic "sixteeners" had been disentangled—and a clean cushion sat on his thoroughly scrubbed throne—the freshly garbed King beckoned his ship's captain to his side.

  "The lookout and pilot of this ship, captain. I want their tongues torn out, their testicles cut off, their eyes put out, and their hands cut off. Then set them loose with begging bowls," said Mithridates. "On the Chian ship, I want the same punishment meted out to the lookout, the pilot, and the captain. Every other man on board the Chian ship is to be killed. And never, never, never let me go again within spitting distance of a Chian, or that vile island called Chios! Do you begin to understand, captain?"

  The captain swallowed, closed his eyes. "Yes, O Great One. I understand." He cleared his spasmed throat, launched heroically into the question he had no choice but to ask, "Mighty King, I must put in somewhere to pick up more oars. I do not have enough spares on board. We cannot go on as we are."

  It seemed as if the King took this news very well. He asked in a fairly mild voice, "Whereabouts do you suggest we put in?"

  "Either Cnidus or Cos. Not anywhere to the south."

  An expression of interest in something other than his public humiliation came into the King's eyes. "Cos!" he exclaimed. "Make it Cos! I have a bone to pick with the priests of the Asklepeion. They granted asylum to Romans.

  And I would like to see how much treasure they have. And gold. Yes, go to Cos, captain."

  "Prince Pelopidas wishes to see you, O Great One."

  "If he wants to see me, what is he waiting for?"

  He was still dangerous, never more dangerous than when he laughed but was not amused. Anything might set him off—a wrong word, a wrong look, a wrong guess. When Pelopidas appeared before the throne in the time it would have taken the King to snap his fingers, he was terrified; but took enormous care not to show it. "Well, what is it?"

  '”Great One, I heard you order this ship to Cos for repairs. May I transfer myself to another vessel and go on to Rhodes? I presume that you will want me there when our troops land—unless you plan to transfer yourself to another ship, in which case if you wish it I will remain here to see to things. Please instruct me, Mighty King."

  "You go to Rhodes. I leave the choice of a landing place up to you. Not so far from Rhodus City as to tire the army on the march. Put the men into a camp, and wait for me to arrive."

  When the "sixteener" hove to in the harbor of the city of Cos on the island of Cos, King Mithridates left the captain to deal with his oar troubles, and himself went ashore in a sleek and well-rowed lighter. He proceeded immediately with his guard to the precinct of the god of healing, Asklepios, which lay on the outskirts of the city; so rapidly had he moved that his identity was unknown when he strode into the forecourt of the sanctuary and bellowed to see whoever was in charge—a typical Mithridatic insult, as the King knew perfectly well the man in charge would be the high priest.

  "Who is this arrogant upstart?" demanded one priest of another within the King's hearing.

  "I am Mithridates of Pontus, and you are dead men."

  Thus it was that by the time the high priest arrived, two of his servitors lay headless between him and his visitor. A very subtle and intelligent man, the high priest had guessed who his unknown visitor was the moment he had been informed a big gold and purple ape was shouting for him.

  "Welcome to the precinct of Asklepios on Cos, King Mithridates," said the high priest calmly, displaying no fear.

  "I hear that's what you say to Romans."

  "I say it to everyone."

  "Not to Romans I had ordered killed."

  “Were you to come here yourself crying for asylum, it would be granted to you in like measure, King Mithridates. The God Asklepios plays no favorites, and all men need him at one time or another. A fact it is wise to remember. He is a god of life, not of death."

  "All right, consider them your punishment," said the King, pointing to the two dead priests.

  "A punishment two times greater than it ought to be."

  "Don't try my temper too far, high priest! Now show me your books—and not the set you keep for the Roman governor.''

  The Asklepeion of Cos was the greatest banking institution in the world apart from Egypt's state bank, and had grown to be so because of the careful acumen of a long succession of priestly administrators who had come into being under the aegis of the Ptolemies of Egypt—Cos had once been an Egyptian possession. Therefore its development as an institute devoted to the care of money was a logical offshoot of the Egyptian banking system. At first the temple had been a more typical sanctuary, akin to those in other places. Consecrated to healing and to hygiene, the Asklepeion of Cos was the brainchild of some disciples of Hippocrates, and had originally practised the art of incubation—the sleep-cure of dreams and their interpretation as still practised in the precincts at Epidaurus and Pergamum. But with the passing of the generations on Cos and its occupation by the Ptolemies
of Egypt, money had replaced cures as the staple income of the temple, and the priests had become more soaked in things Egyptian than in things Greek.

  It was a huge precinct, its buildings scattered among parklands beautifully gardened—gymnasium, agora, shops, baths, library, a priestly training college, facilities for scholars in residence, houses and slave quarters, a palace for the high priest, a necropolis on special ground, circles of subterranean sleep cubicles, a hospital, the great complex devoted to banking, and the temple to the god himself contained within a sacred grove of plane trees.

  His statue was neither chryselephantine nor gold, but made of white Parian marble by Praxiteles, and showed a bearded, rather Zeus-like deity standing leaning upon a tall staff around which a serpent was entwined. His right hand was extended and held a tablet, at his feet was a large and supine dog. The whole had been painted by Nicias in such a lifelike way that the statue seemed in the shadowy light to stir its garments from the minute and natural movements of its muscles; the god's eyes, a bright blue, sparkled with human and unmajestic joyousness.

  None of which enchanted the King, who put up with the grand tour of the sanctuary for just long enough to decide that the statue in the god's temple was a poor thing, not worth looting. Then he got down to the books, and informed the high priest what he intended to confiscate. All Roman gold on deposit, of course; some eight hundred talents of gold on long-term deposit from the Great Temple in Jerusalem, whose synod was canny enough to keep an emergency nest egg safe from the depredations of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies; and the three thousand talents of gold brought to the temple some fourteen years earlier by the old Queen Cleopatra of Egypt.