ALEXANDER AT THE WORLD’S END
Tom Holt
‘Here are set forth the histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, that men’s
actions may not in time be forgotten, nor things great and wonderful
accomplished both by Greeks and foreigners...’
Herodotus
‘Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth, to see it like it is and to
tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth and live with the
truth. That’s what we’ll do.’
Richard M. Nixon
CHAPTER ONE
Written in Alexandria-at-the-End-of-the-World in Sogdiana in the twenty-third
year after the foundation of the city, the seventy-third year of my life, by
Euxenus the son of Eutychides, of the deme of Pallene.
Consider Alexander, and consider me. Both of us came a long way to die, but my
journey wasn’t like his; mine led me out of vast tracts of folly and into a
small village on the borders of wisdom.
Once, when I was young, I believed in democracy. When I was a little older, I
believed in oligarchy, government by the enlightened few; after that, in
monarchy, the rule of the philosopher-king. Now I believe only in drainage,
public sanitation and clean water.
Oh, yes; I’ve come a lot further than Alexander.
‘My father used to say,’ I told you once, ‘that the greatest misfortune a man
can know is to bury his own son. Of course, he was quoting from one of those
mouldy old tragedians my grandfather Eupolis knocked around with at one time,
but the sentiment is commonplace enough. My father, a remarkably fortunate man,
never got to put this to the test. The consequences for his sons, all seven of
us, were accordingly catastrophic.’
You looked puzzled, my young friend. ‘Sorry,’ you said, ‘I don’t quite follow.
How could it have been any better for any of you if some of you had died?’
You remember the conversation, Phryzeutzis, I’m sure. We were
* Iskander, about 50 miles north-east of Tashkent
standing in the shade of the gatehouse watching them put up the scaffolding for
building the first of the rainwater tanks, which goes to show how long ago it
was. As I recall, it was as hot as a smithy that day, even in the shade. I
confess I was in one of my more garrulous moods. As usual, I was talking about
myself. Most of it was probably going right over your head.
‘Over the course of my excessively long life,’ I explained, ‘I’ve made something
of a study of luck, in roughly the same way as a three-legged cat studies the
habits of mice, and I believe I’ve detected a pattern in the way it operates.
Take, for example, the history of my family over the past few generations. It’s
a wonderful illustration of my theory. You can keep the score if you like.’
‘Excuse me?’ you said.
‘Keep score. Count up instances of good luck versus instances of bad luck, and
tell me who wins in the end.’
‘All right,’ you said.
‘Here goes, then. Now then, let’s see. My great-grandfather (who died long
before I was born) was a nothingish sort of man who lived an uneventful life in
Pallene, fairly but not very near the glorious city of Athens —’
‘ Athens ,’ you repeated. ‘In Greece , right?’
‘In Greece ,’ I confirmed. ‘In his day, Athens was the greatest power in Greece,
the only place in the world ruled by a democracy, the home of the finest poets,
painters, philosophers, scientists and the like that the world has ever seen.’
‘Ah, yes,’ you said. ‘You’ve mentioned it before.’
Of course, we didn’t know each other so well in those days.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘he farmed his land, voted in Assembly when he could spare the
time, went to the Festivals, raised a family, got on with his life in a
reasonably efficient manner and probably went to his grave wondering when the
show was going to start. He was neither rich nor poor, famous nor infamous, and
though he died on active service in the early stages of the Great Peloponnesian
War against Sparta , I don’t suppose he made a big deal about it; I picture him
dying unobtrusively somewhere, probably of dysentery after drinking bad water,
rather than falling ostentatiously among the clash of arms. He was, by any
definition, a lucky man, although his good fortune lay entirely in the fact that
he had no luck of any kind, good or bad.’
‘You’re losing me again,’ you said.
‘Am I? Sorry. You’ll get the hang of it as I go along, I expect. Now then,’ I
went on, ‘my grandfather Eupolis, on the other hand, had far more than his share
of luck. Having survived the plague that wiped out a large slice of the
population of Athens —’
‘Good luck,’ you said, folding down a finger on your right hand.
‘Quite so,’ I said, ‘except that it disfigured him for life.’
‘Bad luck,’ you said firmly, folding down a finger on your left hand. ‘Anyway,’
I continued, ‘because of the plague he inherited substantial amounts of
property by virtue of being the only one left —’
‘Good luck,’ you said. ‘I guess,’ you added.
‘— But found himself bereft of family at an early age —‘
You frowned sympathetically. Of course, at that time I didn’t know about your
family history. ‘Bad luck,’ you said.
‘— And went on to contract a disastrously unhappy marriage —‘
You nodded. ‘More bad luck,’ you said.
I smiled. ‘Not long after that,’ I said, swatting away an unusually persistent
fly, ‘he took part in the ill-fated Athenian invasion of Sicily , where the
whole of our army was massacred—’
‘Still more bad luck,’ you pointed out. ‘I’ll run out of fingers soon.’
‘The whole of our army,’ I repeated, ‘except for him—’
‘Ah,’ you said cheerfully. ‘Good luck at last.’
‘Him and his deadliest enemy—’
‘Oh. Properly speaking, that’s more bad luck, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely,’ I replied. ‘A good man loves his friends and hates his enemies.
After a series of hair-raising adventures — lots and lots of luck; a jumble of
good and bad, like the junk lots at the end of a public auction — he made it
back to Athens (good luck) only to be charged with sacrilegious treason and put
on trial for his life (bad luck), escaping by a hair’s breadth
‘Good luck?’ you suggested hopefully.
I nodded. ‘You could say that,’ I replied, ‘though from what I can gather, pure
fluke would be nearer the mark. After that,’ I added, ‘he continued the
distinguished career as a writer of comic drama that he’d begun before the War
interrupted it. He lived to see the fall of the great Athenian democracy (bad
luck), which with good reason he detested (so good luck really), survived his
shrewish and deceitful wife (good luck), whom he’d been devoted to (bad luck)
and died at a ripe old age (good luck) after choking on a flshbone (bad luck),
survived by one son, my father Eutychides.’
‘Sorry,’ you said. ‘I lost count some time back. But I think it was pretty
evenly matched.’
I shrugged. ‘In Greek,’ I explained, ‘Eutychides means “son of a lucky man”.
Grandfather had his faults, Heaven knows, but you couldn’t fault his keen sense
of irony.’
You smiled, and offered me the pitcher of water. You were laughing.
‘What’s the joke?’ I said.
‘Nothing,’ you replied. ‘Have a drink. You need to drink more in this hot
weather.’
‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘Tell me what I said that was so confoundedly funny.
Usually when I make a joke you just stare at me with a half-witted expression on
your face.’
‘All right,’ you said. ‘Though it isn’t funny, just — well, curious. Sounds to
me,’ you said, ‘that your grandfather had luck the way we have rats in our
barn.’
While I think of it, maybe I should just explain at this point why I’m not
writing this in Greek. I should be, I know. After all, Greek is now the common
language of the known civilised world, whereas this barbarous Scytho-Sogdanian
dialect, which is so obscure it hasn’t even got a name, has never previously
been used for writing and probably won’t be used again; as witness the fact that
I’m having to use the Greek alphabet to write it down in, notwithstanding that
there aren’t Greek letters for half the peculiar noises these people (sorry; you
people) make with your mouths. If there’s a reason, it’s because I simply don’t
want to be an Athenian any more, or even a Greek of any description. In which
case, you ask, why are you doing something so absurdly, quintessentially Greek
as writing a book — ‘sitting talking to yourself with a stick and a bit of
sheepskin,’ as my neighbours call it —which nobody will want or be able to read?
To which I immediately reply that I wish I knew. I do, honestly. My excuse,
however, is that it behoves those of us who have seen momentous events to record
them for the benefit of generations yet unborn, so that the deeds of great men
shall not be wholly forgotten, and the mistakes of the past shall not
unwittingly be repeated in the future. Or something like that.
Where have we got to? Oh, yes, my father, and luck.
I had another discussion with you about this, Phryzeutzis (if that’s your damn
name; it sounds more like a dog being sick than anything I’d call a name, but
Phryzeutzis is the nearest I can get to it in Greek letters), a month or so
back, if you remember; and since you’re probably going to be the only reader
this book ever has, I can’t think why I’m painfully transcribing it here. But I
did make some rather brilliant points, as I recall, and I expressed myself with
more than usual clarity, succinctness and wit; and anyway, most of the time you
were watching a beetle climbing up the doorframe and not paying proper
attention, so here it is again, for you to read and digest at your leisure.
‘My father,’ I told you, as we watched them digging the big trench for the main
drain I was insisting on (very sweetly, they were humouring an old man), ‘was a
stolid man; solid bronze all the way through and never claimed to be anything
else. He never wore a thin coating of silver and pretended to be a drachma.’
You turned your head and looked at me. ‘What’s a drachma?’ you asked.
‘It’s an Athenian coin,’ I replied. ‘They were always made of pure silver, but
at the end of the War we were so poor we took to making them out of bronze and
coating them in silver. Didn’t fool anybody.’
‘Ah,’ you said. ‘This is money we’re talking about, yes?’
‘That’s right,’ I said, nodding.
‘The little round metal buttons with a horse on one side and Alexander on the
other.’
(You didn’t say ‘Alexander’, of course; you can’t pronounce Alexander, you poor
savage. You said something like Zgunda. But I knew who you meant.)
‘Correct,’ I replied, rather grumpily. ‘Except that in those days, they didn’t
have Alexander on them anywhere, they had Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, eternal
patron of Athens .’
‘I see,’ you replied, optimistically in my opinion. ‘Athena is the giver of
wisdom, and you Athenians were especially fond of her.’
‘That’s it.’
‘Why?’
You have this aggravating habit of asking difficult questions. Not difficult, of
course, in the sense that sixteen multiplied by four take away six divided by
three is difficult; awkward to explain to one of your limited intelligence is
probably a better way of putting it.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘because we Athenians honour wisdom above all things.’
‘Oh.’ You looked puzzled. ‘Strange.’ You didn’t choose to amplify that rather
odd remark; instead you asked me whether stolid was a good or a bad thing to be.
I thought about that for a moment. ‘Neither, really,’ I said. ‘Or both. Of
course, he was lucky—’
You laughed, for some reason. ‘Sorry,’ you said. ‘Please, go on.’
‘He was lucky,’ I continued, slightly annoyed at the interruption, ‘to be living
during an uncharacteristically peaceful time in Athenian history. Well, I say
peaceful; it wasn’t.We were caught up in a series of nasty little wars — us
against the Spartans—’
‘Just a moment,’ you said. ‘I thought you told me the war was over by his time.
That’s your trouble, you never pay attention. ‘The War, yes. That finished when
Father was seventeen. The wars against Sparta in his day were just wars. We were
also fighting the Persians, and with the Persians against the Spartans, and with
the Thebans against the Spartans, and with the Spartans against the Thebans—’
‘Why?’ you asked.
‘What? Because we were at war, of course.’
‘Yes, but why? What was the war about?’ You looked so worried it was almost
comical. ‘It must have been pretty complicated, if your enemies kept becoming
your friends and the other way around.’
I frowned. ‘I can’t remember,’ I said. ‘Mostly, I think, it was about who owned
which cities. The cities of the various empires, I mean.’
You nodded; then something else bothered you. ‘ Athens had an empire, then?’ you
asked.
‘Sort of. Well, we were protecting them against the others, you see. Except when
they rebelled.’
‘And then you protected them against themselves?’
‘Pretty much. You see, the Spartans and the Thebans and the Persians were
picking on our cities, trying to take away their freedom, so we had to prevent
that. And sometimes our cities wanted to go over to the enemy, so we had to
prevent that too.’
‘I see,’ you said, though I think you were probably lying. ‘And you were
protecting them because you were a democracy.
‘That’s it.We believed that no man should be superior to another.’
‘Right. And that’s why you had an empire. I think I get the idea. But all these
wars,’ you went on, ‘they mus
t have made life terribly difficult for you and
your family, when you were growing up.’
I smiled and shook my head. ‘Oh, no,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t anything like the War.
Actually, it was a fairly good time to be an Athenian. We had the democracy back
again — the Spartans abolished it at the end of the War, but when we threw out
the Thirty Tyrants—’
‘They were Spartans, then.’
‘No,’ I said patiently, ‘they were Athenians. Anyway, after we’d got rid of
them, and when we’d started rebuilding the empire and tribute-money was coming
in from the cities of the empire, it was almost like it had been back in
Grandfather’s day.’
You closed your eyes for a moment. ‘You mean, during the War?’
‘Well, yes. But the War wasn’t all fighting, there were big gaps in it when life
wasn’t too bad. And in Father’s time, too, we were really quite prosperous,
thanks to the state-owned silver mines. In fact, a few years before I was born
we were able to pay people just to sit in Assembly and listen to the debates.’
You were suitably impressed by that; or so I thought. ‘You mean, people wouldn’t
go to the debates unless they were paid? I thought Assembly was where you did
the democracy.
I sighed. ‘This is why it’s so hard for me to teach you anything,’ I said. ‘You
keep wandering off the point. And the point is, life wasn’t so bad after the
War, in my father’s day. Nothing much was going on; not like it was during the
War.’
You gave me an odd look when I said that, presumably because you still hadn’t
grasped what I was trying to tell you. Maybe it’s just as well I’m writing all
this down for you. You’ll be able to read it through slowly and carefully and
finally get it all straight in your mind.
‘You were telling me about your father,’ you said.
‘Yes indeed.’ I smiled fondly. ‘He was a man for his time, really. He cared
about his property and his family and that was about it. And he had seven sons.’
‘Ah,’ you said, ‘I think you said something about that once before, when we were
talking about luck that time.You seemed to think that was bad luck.’
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 1
