2. The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  He did not send back to Sinope for more courtiers, nor ride to Zela, where his nearest army was encamped; instead, he summoned those barons who lived in Amaseia and sent them to choose him a detachment of one thousand crack troops. His instructions were well thought out, and issued in tones which brooked neither argument nor defiance. Forth he would go to Ancyra, the biggest town in Galatia, but with a bodyguard only, his soldiers many miles behind. The barons he dispatched ahead of his own progress were under orders to bring every Galatian tribal chieftain to a great congress at Ancyra, where the King of Pontus would have interesting proposals to make. It was an outlandish place, Galatia, a Celtic outpost in a sub-continent peopled by those of Persic, Syriac, Germanic and Hittite strains; all save the Syriacs tended to be fair, at least of skin, but not fair like these Celtic immigrants descended from the second King Brennus of the Gauls. For almost two hundred years they had occupied their big piece of the Anatolian heartland, a rich place and roomy, and lived the lives of Gauls, heedless of the cultures surrounding them. Their intertribal contacts, even, were tenuous; they owned no overall king, and were not interested in banding together to conquer additional territory. For a while, indeed, they had acknowledged the fifth King Mithridates of Pontus as their suzerain, an empty kind of business that yielded them nothing and the fifth Mithridates the same, for they never produced the tithes and tributes Pontus had demanded, and Pontus died before he could exact retribution. No one tampered with them; they were Gauls, far fiercer than Phrygians, Cappadocians, Pontines, Bithynians, Ionian or Dorian Greeks. The leaders of the three Galatian tribes and their tribelets came to Ancyra to answer the summons of Mithridates, looking more forward to the great feast they had been promised than to whatever projected campaign of mayhem and booty the sixth Mithridates was undoubtedly going to offer them. And in Ancyra little more than a village they found Mithridates waiting for them. He had scoured the countryside all the way from Amaseia for every delicacy and kind of wine money could buy, and spread before the Galatian chiefs a feast grander and more delicious even than their imaginations had conjured up. Already in a state of affable content before they made inroads upon the food and drink, they succumbed blissfully to the twin snares of full bellies and whirling heads. And while they lay amid the shambles to which they had reduced the feast, snoring and twitching in drunken stupor, the thousand handpicked soldiers of King Mithridates spilled silently into the compound, went among them, and killed them. Not until the last Galatian thane was dead did King Mithridates move from his lordly chair at the head of the head table, sitting with his leg thrown over its arm, wagging his foot, his big smooth bland face displaying a keen interest in the slaughter. "Burn them," he said at the end, "then spread their ashes on top of their blood. This place will grow superb wheat next year. Nothing makes soil more fruitful than blood and bone." He then had himself proclaimed King of Galatia, with no one left to oppose him save leaderless and scattered Gauls. And then he suddenly and completely disappeared. Not his most senior baron knew where he had gone, or what he was up to; he simply left a letter ordering them to tidy Galatia up, return to Amaseia, and send to the Queen at Sinope to appoint a satrap for the new Pontic territory of Galatia. Clad in the garb of a merchant, astride a mediocre brown horse and leading a donkey upon which he had placed spare clothing and a rather stupid young Galatian slave who didn't even know who his master was, Mithridates rode down the track to Pessinus. At the precinct of Kubaba Cybele the Great Mother he revealed his true identity to Battaces and brought the archigallos into his service, obtaining from Battaces much information he would need. From Pessinus he proceeded into the Roman Asia Province down the long valley of the Maeander River. Scarcely one town in Caria did he leave uninvestigated; the big, curious, slightly-vague-about-his-business eastern merchant rode from one place to another administering an occasional beating to his dullard slave, eyes everywhere, mind filing every item of information away. He supped with other merchant travelers at inn tables, he lingered in the market squares on market days talking to anyone who looked to have something interesting to impart, he strolled the quays of Aegean seaports poking his fingers into bales and sniffing at sealed amphorae, he flirted with village girls and rewarded them most generously when they gratified his fleshly urges, he listened to tales of the riches in the precinct of Asklepios on Cos, in the Artemisium at Ephesus, the sanctuary of Asklepios at Pergamum, and the fabulous treasures of Rhodes. From Ephesus he turned north to Smyrna and Sardis, and eventually arrived in Pergamum, capital of the Roman governor, glittering from its mountaintop like a jeweled box. Here for the first time he saw genuine Roman troops, a small guard belonging to the governor; Asia Province was not considered a military risk, so its soldiers were made up of local auxiliaries and militia. Long and hard did Mithridates study the eighty members of the real thing, noting the heaviness of the mailed armor, the short swords and tiny-headed spears, the well-drilled way in which they moved, seconded to soft duty though they were. Here too he saw his first purple-bordered toga upon the person of the governor himself. This worthy, escorted by lictors in crimson tunics, each bearing the bundle of rods upon his left shoulder with the axes inserted because the governor had the power to deal out death, seemed to the watching Mithridates to defer very humbly to a small number of men in plain white togas. These, he discovered, were the publicani, executives of the companies which farmed the provincial taxes; from the way they strutted through the exquisitely planned and laid out streets of Pergamum, they seemed to think they owned the province, rather than Rome. Not, of course, that Mithridates presumed to strike up a conversation with any of these august fellows, they were obviously far too busy and important to take heed of a lone eastern merchant; he simply noted them as they passed by in the midst of their small armies of clerks and scribes, and did his talking to Pergamites across friendly tables in little taverns far beneath the notice of the publicani. "They bleed us dry," he was told so many times he judged it to be the truth rather than the typical grumblings of men who grumbled only to hide their prosperity, as rich farmers and those running monopoly businesses did. "How so?" he replied at first, and was asked where he had been since the death of King Attalus thirty years earlier. So he concocted a tale of long wanderings to the north of the Euxine Sea, secure in the knowledge that should some fellow quiz him on Olbia or Cimmeria, he could indeed speak of these places as one who had seen them. "In Rome," he was told, "they have two very high officials they call censors. They are elected isn't that odd? and they must previously have been consuls, which shows you how important they are. Now in any decent Greek community, the business of the State is run by proper civil employees, not men who might last year have been leading armies! Not so in Rome, where these censors are complete amateurs in business. Yet they have control of every kind of State business, and it is their job every five years to let contracts on behalf of the State." "Contracts?" asked the oriental despot, frowning. "Contracts. Like any other contracts, except that these are between companies in business and the Roman State," said the merchant of Pergamum whom Mithridates was entertaining. "I fear I have been too long in places ruled by kings," said the King. "Does the Roman State have no servants to ensure its enterprises are properly run?" "Only the magistrates consuls and praetors and aediles and quaestors and they are solely interested in one thing, that the Treasury of Rome be full." The Pergamite merchant sniggered. "Of course, friend, quite often their major concern is that their own purses be full!" "Continue. I am fascinated." "Our plight here is all the fault of Gaius Gracchus." "One of the Sempronius brothers?" "The same. The younger one. He legislated to have the taxes of Asia collected by companies of men specially formed for the purpose. That way, he reasoned, the Roman State could have its share without actually employing tax-gatherers. Out of his laws the Asian publicani were born, the men who farm the taxes here. The censors in Rome announce to the bidders for contracts the terms the State requires. In the case of the taxes of Asia Province, they announce the sum of money the Tr
easury wants paid in each year for the next five years not the actual sum of money to be collected in Asia Province. That figure is up to the tax companies to decide, as they have to make a profit for themselves before paying the Treasury what they contracted to pay it. So a squadron of accountants sit down with their abacuses and calculate how much it will be possible to squeeze from Asia Province annually for the next five years, and then the bid for the contract is made." "Forgive me, I must be dense how can it matter to Rome what amount is bid, if the sum the State wants has already been told to the bidders?" "Ah! But that figure, my dear fellow, is merely the minimum the Treasury is prepared to accept! So what happens is that each company of publicani tries to calculate a figure that will be sufficiently higher than the minimum to make the Treasury very happy indeed and also incorporate in it a fat profit!" "Oh, I see," said Mithridates, blowing through his nose. "The contract is let to the firm which makes the highest bid." "Correct." "But is the figure bid the figure to be paid to the Treasury, or the whole sum including the fat profit?" The merchant laughed. "Only the sum to be paid to the State, friend! What sort of profit the company expects to make is purely company information, and the censors don't ask any questions, believe me. They open the bids, and whichever firm has offered the Treasury the most is the firm awarded the contract." “Do the censors ever award the contract to a firm bidding less than the highest figure?" "Not in my memory, friend." "And the result of all this? Are the company estimates, for instance, within the bounds of probability, or are they far too optimistic?" Mithridates asked, knowing the answer. "Well, what do you think? The publicani base their estimates, as far as we can tell, on a set of figures obtained from a survey done in the Garden of the Hesperides, not Attalus's Asia Minor! So when there's a fall in production in the smallest district and in the smallest activity there, all of a sudden the publicani panic the sum they've contracted to pay the Treasury is suddenly more than they're gathering! If only they'd make their bids realistic, everyone would be better off! As it is, unless we have a bumper harvest, don't lose a single sheep in the shearing or the lambing, sell every last link of chain, foot of rope, piece of fabric, hide of cow, amphora of wine and medimnus of olives why, the tax-farmers start squeezing, and everybody suffers," said the merchant bitterly. "How do they squeeze?" asked Mithridates, wondering where the camps of soldiers were, as he had seen none in his travels. "They hire Cilician mercenaries from the areas where even wild Cilician sheep starve, and they let them loose. I've seen whole districts sold into slavery, down to the last woman and child, no matter how old or how young. I've seen whole fields dug up and houses pulled down, searching for money. Oh, friend, if I told you everything I've seen the tax-farmers do to squeeze a drop more, you'd weep! Crops confiscated except for just enough to let the farmer and his family eat and plant the next year's crop, flocks halved, shops and stalls rifled and the worst of it is that it encourages people to lie and cheat if they don't, they lose the lot." "And all these tax-farming publicani are Romans?" "Romans or Italians," said the merchant. "Italians," said Mithridates thoughtfully, wishing that he hadn't spent seven years of his childhood hiding in the Pontic forests; his education, as he had discovered since beginning his journey of exploration, was sadly lacking in geography and economics. "Well, Romans, really," explained the merchant, who wasn't sure of the distinction either. "They come from special suburbs of Rome called Italy. But beyond that, there's no difference as far as I can see. They all start rolling tides of Latin when they gather together instead of doing the decent thing and keeping what they say in honest Greek, and they all wear frightful unshaped and untailored tunics the sort of thing a shepherd would be ashamed to wear, not a dart or a tuck in it to make it fit nicely." The merchant plucked at the soft stuff of his own Greek tunic complacently, sure it had been perfectly cut to flatter his rather small and spare figure. "Do they wear the toga?" Mithridates asked. "Sometimes. On holidays, and if the governor summonses them," said the merchant. "Italians too?" "Don't know," said the merchant, and shrugged. "I daresay." From conversations like this did Mithridates gather his information, mostly a litany of hate against the publicani and their hired minions. There was also another thriving business in Asia Province, again run by Romans; the lending of money at rates of interest no self-respecting borrower would agree to, nor self-respecting lender stipulate. And, learned Mithridates, these moneylenders were usually employees of the tax-farming companies, though the companies had no share in the money lending. Roman Asia Province, thought Mithridates, is a fat fowl the Romans pluck, they have no other interest in it. They come here from Rome and the suburbs called Italy, they pinch and squeeze and extort, and then they go home again with purses bulging, indifferent to the plight of those they leave behind, the people of Dorian, Aeolian, and Ionian Asia. And they are hated! From Pergamum he journeyed inland to cut off the unimportant triangle called the Troad, and emerged on the southern shore of the Propontis Lake near Cyzicus. From here he rode along the Propontis Lake to Prusa, in Bithynia. Prosperous and growing, it lay in the lap of the vast, snow-covered mountain called Mysian Olympus; pausing only to note that its citizens were uninterested in the machinations of their octogenarian king, he went on to the capital of Nicomedia, where the octogenarian king kept court. It too was a prosperous and fairly large city, dominated by the temple precinct and palace atop a small acropolis, dreaming alongside its wide calm inlet. This of course was dangerous country for a Mithridatid; it was even possible that on the streets of Nicomedia he might encounter some person who would recognize him, a priest of the far-flung confraternity of Ma or Tyche, or some Sinopean visitor. So he chose to stay in a foul-smelling inn well away from the better parts of the city, and muffled himself closely in the folds of his cloak whenever he ventured out. All he wished to do was to gain a feel of the people, test the temperature of their devotion to King Nicomedes, decide how wholeheartedly they might support their king in a war with idle speculation though it was, of course the King of Pontus. The rest of winter and all of spring he spent wandering from Heracleia on the Bithynian Euxine to the remotest parts of Phrygia and Paphlagonia, observing everything from the state of the roads more like tracks to how much of the countryside was cleared for the planting of crops, and how educated the people were. And thus in early summer he returned to Sinope feeling all-powerful, vindicated, brilliant, to find his sister-wife Laodice shrill-voiced and prone to feverish chatter, and his barons too quiet. His uncles Archelaus and Diophantus were dead and his cousins Neoptolemus and Archelaus were in Cimmeria, a state of affairs which left the King aware of his vulnerability, and that upset his mood of triumph, made him suppress his impulse to sit upon his throne and regale the entire court with every detail of his odyssey to the west. Instead, he dowered everyone with a breezy smile, made love to Laodice until she cried for quarter, visited all his sons and daughters and their mothers, and sat back to see what would happen next. Something was going on, of that he was sure; until he discovered its nature, he resolved to say not a word about where he had been during his long and mysterious absence, nor about his plans for the future. Then came Gordius his Cappadocian father-in-law to see him in the night marches, a finger upon his lips, a hand indicating that they should meet upon the battlements above the palace as soon as possible. The air was silver-drenched by a great full moon, a wind blew glittering skitters across the surface of the sea, the shadows were blacker than the deepest cave, the light beneath the still orb in the sky a colorless parody of the sun. Sprawled across the neck of land which connected the mainland with the bulbous promontory whereon stood the palace, the town slept easily, dreamlessly; and the dense darkness of the walls enveloping all human habitation loomed stubby-toothed against the sheen of a low-lying cloud bank. Midway between two watchtowers the King and Gordius met, hunched themselves down below the parapet of the battlements, and murmured too softly for sleeping birds to hear. "Laodice was convinced that this time you would not come back, Great One," Gordius said. "Was she?" asked the King, st
ony-voiced. "She took a lover three months ago." "Who?" "Your cousin Pharnaces, Great One." Ah! Clever Laodice! Not a nobody lover, but one of the few males of the line who could hope to ascend the Pontic throne without fearing that eventually he would be displaced by one of the King's brood of underaged sons. Pharnaces was the son of the fifth king's brother and also of the fifth king's sister. The blood was pure on both sides; he was perfect. "She thinks I won't find out," said Mithridates. "She thinks those few who know will be too afraid to speak," said Gordius. "Why then are you speaking?" Gordius smiled, teeth reflecting the moon. "My King, no one will best you! I have known it from the first time I saw you." "You will be rewarded, Gordius, I pledge it." The King leaned back against the wall, and thought. Finally he said, "She will try to kill me very soon." "I agree, Great One." "How many loyal men have I got in Sinope?" "More by far, I think, than she has. She is a woman, my King, therefore crueler and more treacherous by far than any man. Who could trust her? Those who follow her have done so for great promotions, but they rely upon Pharnaces to ensure promotion. I think they also rely upon Pharnaces killing her once he's well established on the throne. However, most of the court was proof against their blandishments." "Good! I leave it to you, Gordius, to alert my loyal people as to what is going on. Tell them to be ready at any hour of the day or night," said the King. "What are you going to do?" "Let her try to kill me, the sow! I know her. She's my sister. So it won't be knife or bow and arrow. She'll choose poison. Something really nasty, so I suffer." "Great One, let me arrest her and Pharnaces at once, please!" whispered Gordius frantically. "Poison is so insidious! What if, in spite of every precaution, she should trick you into swallowing hemlock, or put an adder in your bed? Please, let me arrest them now! It will be easier."" But the King shook his head. "I need proof, Gordius. So let her try to poison me. Let her find whatever noxious plant or mushroom or reptile she thinks will suit her purpose best, and let her administer it to me." "My King, my King!" quavered Gordius, appalled. "There's no need to worry, Gordius," said Mithridates, his calm unimpaired, no atom of fear in his voice. "It is not generally known even to Laodice that during the seven years when I hid from the vengeance of my mother, I rendered myself immune to every kind of poison known to men and some no one has yet discovered, except me. I am the world's greatest authority upon the subject of poisons, I can say that with truth. Do you think all these scars I bear are the result of weapons? No! I have scarred myself, Gordius, to make sure that not one of my relatives can succeed in eliminating me by the easiest and least impeachable method we know by poison." "So young!" marveled Gordius. "Better to stay alive to grow old, say I! No one is going to take my throne from me." "But how did you render yourself immune, Great One?" "Take the Egyptian asp, for example," said the King, warming to his theme. "You know the creature big wide hood and little head swaying between its wings. I brought in a box of them in every size, and I started with the little ones, made them bite me. Then I worked up to the biggest one of all, a monster seven feet long and thick as my arm. By the time I was finished, Gordius, that thing could strike me, and I never even became ill! I did the same with adders and pythons, scorpions and spiders. Then I took a drop of every poison hemlock, wolfsbane, mandragora, cherry seed pulp, brews of berries and bushes and roots, the Death Cap mushroom and the white-spotted red mushroom yes, Gordius, I took them all! Increasing the dose a drop at a time until even a cup of any poison had no effect. And I have continued to keep myself immune I continue to take poison, I continue to let myself be bitten. And I take antidotes." Mithridates laughed softly. "Let Laodice do her worst! She can't kill me." But she tried, during the state banquet she gave to celebrate the King's safe return. As the whole court was invited, the big throne room was cleared and furnished with dozens of couches, the walls and pillars were decked with garlands of flowers, and the floor strewn with perfumed petals. Sinope's best musicians had been summoned, a traveling troupe of Greek actors was commissioned to give a performance of the Elektra of Euripedes, and the famous dancer Anais of Nisibis was brought from Amisus, where she was summering on the Euxine. Though in ancient times the Kings of Pontus had eaten sitting at tables like their Thracian ancestors, they had long espoused the Greek habit of reclining upon couches, and fancied in consequence that they were finished products of Greek culture, genuinely Hellenized monarchs. How thin that layer of Hellenism was became evident when the courtiers entered the throne room one by one and prostrated themselves flat on the ground before their King; if additional evidence was necessary, it was furnished during the agonizing space of time after Queen Laodice, smiling seductively, offered her Scythian goblet of gold to the King, licking at its rim with her pink tongue. "Drink from my cup, husband," she commanded, but gently. Without hesitation Mithridates drank, a good deep draft which halved the goblet's contents; he put it down on the table in front of the couch he shared with Queen Laodice. But the last mouthful of wine he kept in his mouth, rolling it round as he stared with his brown-flecked, grape-green eyes at his sister. Then he frowned, but not direfully; a thoughtful, reminiscent sort of frown that changed in a twinkling to a wide smile. "Dorycnion!" he said delightedly. The Queen went white. The court stilled, for he spoke the word loudly, and this welcome-home feast had so far been quiet. The King turned his head to the left. "Gordius," he said. "My King?" asked Gordius, sliding quickly from his couch. "Come here and help me, would you?" Four years older than her brother, Laodice was very like him not surprising in a house where brother had married sister often enough down the generations to compound family resemblances. A big but well-proportioned woman, the Queen had taken special care with her appearance; her golden hair was done in Greek style, her greenish-brown eyes ringed with stibium, her cheeks daubed with red chalk-powder, her lips carmined, and her hands and feet dark brown from henna. The white ribbon of the diadem bisected her forehead, its tasseled ends straying across her shoulders. She looked every inch the Queen, and such had been her intention. Now she read her fate in her brother's face, and twisted her body to leave the couch. But not quickly enough; he grasped the hand she used to propel herself backward and yanked her across the bank of cushions she had reclined against until she half lay, half sat within the King's arm. And Gordius was there, kneeling at her other side, his face ugly with a wild triumph; for he knew what reward he was going to ask for that his daughter Nysa, a minor wife, be elevated to Queen, and that her son, Pharnaces, therefore take precedence over Laodice's son, Machares. Laodice turned her head helplessly to see four barons march her lover Pharnaces up to the King, who gazed at him impassively. Then the King swung his attention back to her. "I will not die, Laodice," he said. "In fact, this paltry brew won't even make me sick." He smiled, genuinely amused. "However, there's more than enough left to kill you." Her nose was nipped between the thumb and forefinger of the King's left hand, he tilted her head back, and she gasped, mouth falling open at once, for terror had taken her breath away, she could not hold it. A little at a time, he poured the contents of her beautiful golden Scythian goblet down her throat, making Gordius clamp her mouth shut between each application, himself stroking her neck voluptuously to make swallowing easier. She did not struggle, deeming it beneath her to do so; a Mithridatid was not afraid to die, especially when there had been a chance to snatch at the throne. When it was done and the goblet was empty, Mithridates laid his sister full-length upon the couch, there before the horrified eyes of her lover. "Don't try to vomit it up, Laodice," the King said pleasantly. "If you do, I'll only make you drink it a second time." Those in the room waited, silent, still, terrified. How long a wait it was no one afterward could tell, except (had they asked him, which they did not) the King. He turned to his courtiers, male and female, and began to address them in much the same tones as a teacher of philosophy might have used in imparting his expertise to new students. For everyone there the King's knowledge of poisons came as a revelation, a side to the King that was to circulate swifter than rumor from one end of Pontus to the other, and from
there to the outside world; Gordius added his additional information, and the words Mithridates and poison became linked together in legend forever. "The Queen," said the King, "could not have chosen better than dorycnion, which the Egyptians call trychnos. Alexander the Great's general, Ptolemy who later became King of Egypt, brought the plant back from India, where it grows, they say, to the height of a tree, though in Egypt it remains the height of a woody bush, with leaves akin to those of our common sage. Next to aconiton it is the best of all poisons very sure! You will notice as the Queen dies that consciousness is not lost until the last breath is drawn indeed, from personal experience I can assure you that all one's perceptions are exquisitely heightened, one looks out at a world more important and visionary than the normal state of being could ever suggest. Cousin Pharnaces, I must tell you that every heartbeat you suffer, the least flutter of your eyelids, your gasps as you feel her pain, she will take inside her as never, never before. A pity, perhaps, that she can take no more of you inside her, eh?" He glanced at his sister, nodded. "Watch now, it's beginning to happen." Laodice's gaze was fixed on Pharnaces, who stood between his guardians staring doggedly at the floor, the look in her eyes something no one in the room ever forgot, though many tried; pain and horror, exaltation and sorrow, a rich and ever-changing gamut of emotions. She said nothing, it became obvious because she could not, for slowly her lips stretched away from her big yellow teeth, and slowly her neck curved and her spine arched so that the back of her head strained to meet the backs of her knees. Then came fine and rhythmic tremors which slowly increased in size as they decreased in frequency, until they turned into massive jerks of head and body and all four limbs. "She's having a fit!" cried Gordius shrilly. "Of course she is," said Mithridates rather scornfully. "It's the fit will kill her, wait and see." He watched her with a genuine clinical interest, having suffered minor variations of this himself, but never in front of his big silver mirror. "It is my ambition," he remarked to the people in the room as Laodice's convulsions dragged on and on and on without let, "to develop a universal antidote, a magic elixir to cure the effect of any poison, be it a poison of plant or animal or fish or inanimate substance. As it is, every day I must sip a concoction composed of no less than one hundred different poisons, otherwise I will lose my immunity. And after that, I must sip a concoction composed of no less than one hundred antidotes." Said he in an aside to Gordius, "If I don't take the antidotes, I confess I feel a little unwell." "Understandable, Great One," croaked Gordius, trembling so violently he dreaded the King's noticing. "Not long now," said Mithridates. Nor was it. Laodice's jerks grew grosser and sloppier as her body literally wore itself out. But still her eyes held feeling, awareness, and only closed tiredly at the moment she died. Not once did she look at her brother; though that may have been because she was looking at Pharnaces when the rigors clamped down, and after that, even the muscles controlling the direction of her eyes would not answer their devastated owner. "Excellent!" cried the King heartily, and nodded at Pharnaces. "Kill him," he Said. No one had the courage to ask how, with the result that Pharnaces met his death more prosaically than poor Laodice, beneath the blade of a sword. And everyone who had seen the Queen die absorbed the lesson; there would be no more attempts upon the life of the sixth King Mithridates for a long time to come.