Apocryphal Tales

by Karel Čapek

  I think back to the time, many years past (how long ago it seems to me now!) when I wrote you a foolish and enthusiastic letter from atop the tomb of Achilles. It was at the threshold of my Persian expedition, and I vowed then that the brave son of Peleus would be my exemplar in life. I dreamed only of heroism and greatness; my victory over Thrace was already behind me, and I thought that I was marching against Darius at the head of my Macedonians and Hellenes simply to cover myself with laurels worthy of our ancestors whose praises were sung by Homer. I kept faith with my ideals at both Chaeronea and the Granicus, but today I hold a very different view of the political significance of those actions of mine. The sober truth is that our Macedonia, more or less united with Greece, was constantly threatened from the north by the Thracian barbarians; they could have attacked us at an unfavorable moment, which the Greeks would then have used as a pretext for revoking their treaty and breaking away from Macedonia. It was clearly necessary to subdue Thrace, so that we would have at least that side covered in the event of Greek treachery. It was sheer political necessity, my dear Aristotle, but your pupil did not understand this well enough then and indulged himself in dreams of emulating the feats of Achilles.

  With the conquest of Thrace our situation changed: we controlled the whole of the western coast of the Aegean as far as the Bosporus, but our command over the Aegean was threatened by the naval power of the Persians. Specifically, positioned as we were above the Hellespont and Bosporus, we found ourselves in hazardous proximity to the Persian sphere of influence. Sooner or later there was bound to be a struggle between us and Persia over the Aegean and free passage through the Pontic Straits. Fortunately, I struck before Darius could prepare for battle. I thought that I was following in the footsteps of Achilles and would conquer a new Ilium for the glory of the Greeks; in reality, as I see it today, it was of utmost necessity to drive the Persians from the Aegean Sea, and I drove them back so efficiently, my dear teacher, that I seized all of Bithinia, Phrygia, and Cappadocia, plundered Cilicia, and did not stop until we reached Tarsus. Asia Minor was ours. Not only the ancient Aegean basin but the entire northern rim of the Mediterranean or, as we call it, the Egpytian Sea, was in our hands.

  You might say, my dear Aristotle, that my paramount political and strategic goal, namely, the final expulsion of Persia from Hellenic waters, had now been achieved in full. With the conquest of Asia Minor, however, a new situation arose: our new shoreline could be threatened from the south, that is, from Venice or Egypt; Persia could procure reinforcements and supplies from there for waging further wars against us. Consequently, it was essential that we occupy the Tyrian coasts and control Egypt, and in this way we became masters of the entire seaboard. Yet a new danger arose at one and the same time: that Darius, relying on the resources of his rich Mesopotamia, might sweep into Syria and thereby cut off our Egyptian domains from our base in Asia Minor. Thus I had to crush Darius at any cost, and I succeeded in so doing at Gaugamela; as you know, Babylon as well as Susa, Persepolisas well as Pasargadae fell to their knees before us. By this action we gained control of the Persian Gulf, but in order to safeguard these new holdings against possible incursions from the north, it was necessary to march northwards against the Medes and Hyrcanians. While our territory now extended from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, it lay open to the east; for this reason I marched my Macedonians to the borders of Areia and Drangiana, laid waste to Gedrosia, and annihilated Arachosia, after which I entered Bactria in triumph. And in order to seal this military victory with a lasting union, I took the Bactrian princess Roxane to wife. It was pure political necessity; I had acquired so many eastern lands for my Macedonians and Greeks that, like it or no, I had to win over my barbaric eastern subjects by my appearance and splendor, without which those wretched sheep herders cannot imagine a powerful ruler. It is true that my old Macedonian Guard bore this with difficulty; perhaps they thought their commander was alienating himself from his wartime companions. Unfortunately, I had to have my old friends Philotas and Callisthenes executed; my dear Parmenion, too, lost his life. I was very sorry about this, but it was unavoidable lest the rebellion of my Macedonians jeopardize my next step. As it happens, I was just then preparing for a military expedition to India. I should explain that Gedrosia and Arachosia are hemmed in by high mountains much like fortifications, but for these fortifications to be impregnable, they require a buffer zone from which to launch an offensive or withdraw to the ramparts. In this instance, the strategic buffer zone is India as far as the Indus. It was necessary, from a military point of view, to invade this territory and with it the bridgehead on the opposite bank of the Indus; no responsible soldier or statesman would have acted otherwise. But when we came to the river Hyphasis, my Macedonians balked and said that they were too tired, ill, and homesick to go any further. I had to turn back. It was a harrowing journey for my veterans, but it was even worse for me; it had been my intention to reach the Bay of Bengal and secure a natural eastern frontier for my Macedonia, and now I was forced, for the time being, to abandon this essential move.

  I returned to Susa. I could have been satisfied with having given my Macedonians and Hellenes such an empire. But so that I would not have to rely entirely on my exhausted people, I inducted thirty thousand Persians into my army; they are good soldiers and I urgently need them for the defense of my eastern frontiers. But I must tell you that my old soldiers are extremely bitter about this. They cannot grasp that, in winning for my people Oriental territories that are a hundred times larger than our homeland, I have become the great King of the East, and that I must appoint my officials and counselors from amongst the Orientals and surround myself with an Oriental court. All these are self-evident political necessities, which I am carrying out in the interests of Greater Macedonia. Circumstances demand more and more personal sacrifices from me; I bear them without complaint, for I think only of the greatness and strength of my beloved homeland. I must therefore endure the barbaric luxuries that attend my power and magnificence; I have taken in marriage three princesses from eastern kingdoms, and now, dear Aristotle, I have actually become a god.

  Yes, my dear teacher: I have had myself proclaimed a god; my good eastern subjects kneel before me and bring me sacrifices. It is politically necessary if I am to have the requisite authority over these camel drivers and mountain shepherds. How far in the past are the days when you taught me to use reason and logic! But reason itself bids me adapt my means to human irrationality. At first glance, my path in life must seem fantastic to many, but when I look back on it now at night, in the quiet of my divine study, I see that I have never undertaken anything that did not, of necessity, derive from my preceding step.

  So you see, my dear Aristotle, that it would be in the interest of peace and order, and entirely within reason given our political interests, if I were recognized as a god in my western territories as well. It would free my hands here in the east, were I assured that my Macedonia and Hellas accepted the political principle of my absolute authority; it would ease my mind in setting out to obtain and secure for my Greek homeland her natural frontier on the coast of China. I could thus ensure for all time the power and safety of my Macedonia. As you see, this is a sober and reasonable plan; I long ago ceased to be the dreamer who once swore an oath on the tomb of Achilles. If I ask you now, as my wise friend and guide, to philosophically prepare the way and to justify to my Greeks and Macedonians, on logical grounds, my proclamation as a god, I do so as a responsible statesman and politician; I leave it to you to consider whether you wish to undertake this task as a reasonable, patriotic, and political necessity.

  With best wishes, my dear Aristotle, from your

  Alexander

  May 1, 1937

  The Death of Archimedes

  As it happens, the story of Archimedes is not exactly as the history books have portrayed it. While it is true that he was killed when the Romans conquered Syracuse, it is not correct that a Roman soldier broke into his house to plunder it
, and that Archimedes, absorbed in drawing some sort of geometrical figure, growled at him crossly: “Don’t spoil my circles!” For one thing, Archimedes was not some absent-minded professor who didn’t know what was going on around him; on the contrary, he was by temperament a true soldier who had invented war machinery for the Syracusans to defend their city. For another thing, the Roman soldier was not some drunken looter, but the educated and ambitious Staff Captain Lucius, who knew to whom he had the honor of speaking, and who had not come to plunder, but rather gave a military salute at the doorstep and said: “Greetings, Archimedes.”

  Archimedes raised his eyes from the wax tablet on which he was in fact drawing something and said: “What is it?”

  “Archimedes,” said Lucius, “we know that without your war machinery Syracuse wouldn’t have held out for a month; as it is, we’ve had a rough two years because of them. Don’t think we soldiers don’t appreciate that. They’re superb machines. My congratulations.”

  Archimedes waved his hand. “Please, they’re nothing really. Ordinary hurling mechanisms — mere toys, that’s all. Scientifically, they have little value.”

  “But militarily they do,” said Lucius. “Listen, Archimedes, I’ve come to ask you to work with us.”

  “With whom?”

  “With us, the Romans. Surely you know that Carthage is in decline. Why go on helping them? We’ll teach them a lesson instead! You’d do better to be on our side, all of you.”

  “Why?” grumbled Archimedes. “As fate would have it, we Syracusans are Greeks. Why should we side with you?”

  “Because you live in Sicily, and we need Sicily.”

  “And why do you need it?”

  “Because we intend to control the Mediterranean Sea.”

  “Aha,” Archimedes said, and he contemplated his tablet. “And why do you want to do that?”

  “Whoever is master of the Mediterranean,” said Lucius, “is master of the world. That’s clear enough.”

  “And must you be masters of the world?”

  “Yes. The mission of Rome is to be master of the world. And I’m telling you that it will be.”

  “Possibly,” Archimedes said, and he rubbed out a line on his tablet. “But I wouldn’t advise it, Lucius. Listen, to be master of the world — someday defending your position’s going to be one big headache. It wouldn’t be worth the effort, given all you’d have to do.”

  “No matter; we shall be a great empire.”

  “A great empire,” muttered Archimedes. “Whether I draw a small circle or a large circle, it’s still only a circle. There are still frontiers — you will never be without frontiers, Lucius. Do you think a large circle is more perfect than a small circle? Do you think you’re a greater geometrician if you draw a larger circle?”

  “You Greeks are forever playing with arguments,” Capt. Lucius objected. “We have another way of proving that we’re right.”

  “How?”

  “Action. For instance, we have conquered your Syracuse. Ergo, Syracuse belongs to us. Is that a clear proof?”

  “It is,” Archimedes said, and he scratched his head with his stylus. “Yes, you have conquered Syracuse, except that it is not and never will be the same Syracuse it was before. It was a great and celebrated city, my good fellow; now it will never be great again. Poor Syracuse!”

  “But Rome will be great. Rome must be the strongest of all the lands in the world.”

  “Why?”

  “To maintain her position. The stronger we are, the more enemies we have. That’s why we must be the strongest force.”

  “As to force,” muttered Archimedes, “I’m a physicist of sorts, Lucius, and I’ll tell you something. Force limits itself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a sort of law, Lucius. When force is exerted, it limits itself by that action. The greater your force, the more of your strength you use up; and the time will come — ”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Nothing, really. I’m not a prophet, Lucius, only a physicist. Force limits itself. More than that I do not know.”

  “Listen, Archimedes, you can’t imagine the tremendous opportunities that working with us would open up for you in Rome. You could build the mightiest war engines in the world.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me, Lucius; I’m an old man, and I still have one or two ideas I’d like to work on. — As you can see, I’m trying to design something right now.”

  “Archimedes, aren’t you enticed by the idea of conquering the world with us and ruling it? — Why are you silent?”

  “Sorry,” Archimedes muttered, bent over his tablet. “What did you say?”

  “That a man like you could conquer the world.”

  “Hm, the world,” Archimedes said, engrossed in his drawing. “Please don’t take offense, but I’m doing something more important here. Something more lasting, you see. Something that will truly endure.”

  “What is it?”

  “Careful, don’t smear my circles! It’s a method for calculating the area of a sector of a circle.”

  Later it was reported that the learned Archimedes had met his death through an accident.

  April 17, 1938

  The Roman Legions

  Four of Caesar’s veterans, who had been through the campaigns in Gallia and Britannia and had come back covered with glory and in the greatest triumph the world had ever seen — these four heroes, namely Bullio, an ex-corporal, Lucius known as Macer because of his slenderness, Sartor known as Hilla, a veterinarian with the Second Legion, and finally Strobus of Gaeta, met at the wine shop of Onocrates, a Sicilian Greek and a great rascal, to reminisce about the great and memorable military deeds they had witnessed. Because the weather was fairly hot, Onocrates set a table for them in the street, and there the four soldiers sat, drinking convivially and talking in loud voices. Who can wonder that people in the streets soon flocked around them, artisans, mule-drivers, children, and women with babes in their arms, to listen to their words? For it is well known that in those days the illustrious deeds of the great Caesar still roused the interest of all Roman citizens.

  “Listen,” said Strobus of Gaeta. “Let me tell you what happened that time when thirty thousand Senones faced us across a river.”

  “Wait a minute,” Bullio corrrected him. “For one thing, there weren’t thirty thousand of those Senones but barely eighteen thousand; and for another, you were with the Ninth Legion, and they never once faced the Senones. You were camped in Aquitania at the time, and you were mending our boots because you had all those cobblers and shoemakers serving with you. All right then, go on.

  “You’ve got it mixed up,” Strobus objected. “We were camped right there in Lutetia at the time, for your information. And we mended your boots that other time, when you wore the soles right out running away from Gergovia. You got good and clobbered then, you and the Fifth Legion, and you deserved it.”

  “That’s not how it was,” said Lucius known as Macer. “The Fifth Legion never was in Gergovia. The Fifth Legion got their pants kicked at Bibracta the minute they got there, and from then on you couldn’t get them to go anywhere else or do anything but scrounge. A fine legion that was,” added Macer, spitting a long distance.

  “Well, whose fault was it,” Bullio demanded, “that the Fifth Legion got smashed to a pulp at Bibracta? The Sixth was supposed to move up and relieve them, but the Sixth didn’t want to, the lazy bums. They’d just come from the girls in Massilia — ”

  “You’re dead wrong,” objected Sartor known as Hilla. “The Sixth Legion wasn’t even at Bibracta. They didn’t get to the front until Axona, when Galba was in command.”

  “That’s how much you know, pig-spayer,” Bullio retorted. “It was the Second, Third, and Seventh Legions at Axona. The Eburoni sent the Sixth running back to their mommies long before that.”

  “That’s all a pack of lies,” claimed Lucius Macer. “The only true part is that the Second Legion, the one I
served in, fought at Axona. You made up everything else.”

  “Don’t try and get away with that,” said Strobus of Gaeta. “Your legion was snoring away in reserve at Axona, and by the time you woke up, the battle was over. Burning Cenabum, now, you were good at that; and hacking a couple hundred civilians to bits for stringing up three moneylenders, you managed to do that, too.”

  “Caesar ordered us to do it,” said Lucius Macer, shrugging his shoulders.

  “That’s not true,” shouted Hilla. “Caesar wasn’t the one who ordered it, Labienus did. Caesar, my foot — he was too shrewd a politician for that. But Labienus was a soldier.”

  “Galba was a soldier,” declared Bullio, “because he had no fear. Labienus never got closer than half a mile from the front, to make sure nothing would happen to him. Just where was Labienus when the Nervii had us surrounded, I ask you? That’s when our centurion fell, and since I was the senior corporal I took over the command. ‘Boys,’ I said, ‘if I see anyone yield so much as an inch — ’”

  “The Nervii?” Strobus interrupted him. “That was nothing. They were shooting at you with acorns and pine cones. It was worse by far with the Arvernes.”

  “Get out of here,” objected Macer. “We couldn’t even catch up with the Arvernes. I tell you, friends, it was like trying to catch rabbits.”