SPQR IV: The Temple of the Muses

by John Maddox Roberts

  “I admit it seems unlikely,” she said. “Now what’s this I hear about you assaulting the Commander of the Macedonian Barracks? Someone was complaining to the king about it. Are you incapable of staying out of trouble, even in Egypt?”

  “The man was insolent, and he tried to draw his sword on me. You can’t let foreigners get away with that sort of behavior.”

  “It isn’t a good idea to make enemies, either, especially in a land where you have no stake in the status quo and where the local politics are unfathomable.”

  “Cautious good sense sounds strange coming from the niece of Julius Caesar.”

  “When Roman men are so reckless, sanity becomes the province of women. Let’s go inside.”

  The Soma, as with so many of the marvels of Alexandria, was not a single building but rather a whole complex of temples and tombs. All of the Ptolemies were buried there, along with a number of other distinguished persons. At least, they were famous in their lifetimes. I had never heard of most of them. The Soma proper was the central structure, a magnificent house in the form of an Ionic temple that stood atop a lofty marble platform populated with an army of sculptured gods, goddesses, Macedonian royalty, soldiers and enemies. The kings Alexander had conquered were depicted on their knees in chains with collars around their necks. The roof was plated with gold, as were the capitals and bases of the columns. All was built of colorful marble drawn from all the lands Alexander had conquered.

  At the entrance we found a small group of foreign visitors waiting to be shown the place. This tomb was sacred to the Ptolemies and you couldn’t just go wandering through on your own. Before long a shaven-headed priest appeared. Instantly, he caught sight of Julia and me and he hurried over to us.

  “Welcome, Senator, my lady. You are just in time for the next tour.” I should hope so, I thought. You’d better not keep us waiting out here. The others showed him their appointments. We, of course, needed no such thing. It was a mixed group: a wealthy spice merchant from Antioch, a historian from Athens, an overpainted dowager from Arabia Felix, a priest or scholar of some sort from Ethiopia, nearly seven feet tall. This sort of gathering was not at all unusual in Alexandria. We passed through the massive, gold-covered doors into the interior.

  The first thing to greet our eyes within was a huge statue of Alexander, seated on a throne and looking very lifelike but for the odd addition of a pair of ram’s horns growing from his temples. In Egypt, Alexander was worshipped as the son of the god Ammon, whose tutelary animal was the ram. The boy-king was depicted as about eighteen years old, his long hair overlaid with gold. His eyes were extraordinarily blue, an effect I later learned the artist had achieved by inlaying the irises with layer on layer of granulated sapphire.

  “Alexander of Macedon, surnamed the Great,” the priest intoned, his voice echoing impressively, “died at Babylon in his thirty-third year, the 114th Olympiad, when Hegesias was Archon of Athens.” I tried to remember who the Consuls of that year might have been, but I couldn’t. “Before he went to join the immortal gods, he conquered more land than any other man in history, adding to the empire of his father the entirety of the Persian Empire and miscellaneous other lands. When he died his lands stretched from Macedonia to India to the Nile cataracts.” Match that, Pompey, I thought.

  “He died in mid-June,” the priest went on, “and since the godlike Alexander had no adult heir, his body lay in state for a month, during which his generals settled the future of the Macedonian Empire. Then skilled Egyptians and Chaldeans were called in to embalm his mortal remains.”

  “They left him there for a months?” I said. “In June? In Babylonia?”

  Julia dug an elbow into my ribs. “Shh!”

  “Er, well, it may be that some thoughtful person drained the, ah, bodily fluids to aid the preservation and placed the king in some cool part of the palace. In any case, undoubtedly the body of Alexander was not as that of other men. He had joined the immortals, and it is likely that, as when the corpse of Hector was dragged behind the chariot of Achilles, his fellow gods preserved his body from deterioration.”

  “I would hope so,” I said. “Must’ve made the whole palace uninhabitable, otherwise.” Another jab from Julia.

  “The body,” the priest went on, “was swathed in Sidonian linen of the finest quality and then, as you shall soon see, was completely encased in plates of gold exquisitely wrought so as to preserve and display the exact contours of both frame and features. This was encased in a coffin, also of gold, with the spaces between filled with rare spices. The lid of the coffin, likewise of gold, was also wrought in the exact likeness of the late king.

  “A funeral carriage was prepared, of a splendor never seen before or since. It was cunningly crafted to endure the shocks of travel through Asia. Its superstructure combined the elegance of Greece with the barbaric magnificence of Persia. On a throne base covered with a Tyrian carpet of fabulous weave lay the sarcophagus of Pantalic marble, carved by a master sculptor with episodes of the king’s heroic life. The sarcophagus was protected by a cover of gold, over which was spread a purple robe, heavily embroidered with gold thread. Atop this were placed the arms of the king.

  “Housing the sarcophagus was a mortuary chamber ten cubits by fifteen cubits in the shape of an Ionic temple, its proportions identical to the temple in which we now stand. Its columns and roof were of gold, embellished with precious gems. At each corner of the roof stood a statue of the winged victory wrought of gold. Instead of celia walls, the temple-chamber was surrounded with a golden net, so that the king’s subjects could see his sarcophagus as the funerary procession passed by. The netting bore painted tablets, taking the place of an Ionic frieze. The tablet on the front portrayed Alexander in his state-chariot, with his Macedonian bodyguard on one side and his Persian bodyguard on the other. The tablet on one side displayed war-elephants following the king and his personal entourage. That on the other, cavalry in battle formation. The rear tablet showed ships of war ready for battle. Golden lions stood at the entrance of the mortuary chamber.”

  I was beginning to wonder whether there was any gold left in Alexander’s empire. But there was more to come.

  “Over the roof was a huge golden crown in the form of a conqueror’s wreath. As the great vehicle moved, the rays of the sun were dashed from it like the lightning of Zeus. The car had two axles and four wheels. The Persian-style wheels were shod with iron, their spokes and naves overlaid with gold, the axles terminating in golden lions’ heads, with golden arrows in their mouths.” This, I was sure, had to be the end of it. But such was not to be.

  “The funeral car was drawn by sixty-four selected mules. The mules wore gilded crowns, and golden bells on each cheek, and collars of precious cloth adorned with gold and gems. The carriage was accompanied by a staff of engineers and roadmenders and was protected by a select body of soldiers. The preparations for Alexander’s last journey required two years.

  “From Babylon the king traveled through Mesopotamia, into Syria, down to Damascus and then to the Temple of Ammon in Libya, where the god might behold his divine son. From there the funerary carriage was to proceed to Aegae in Macedonia, there to rest among the tombs of the former Macedonian royalty, but in crossing Egypt the procession was met by the king’s former companion, Ptolemy Soter, who persuaded the leader of the procession to allow him to perform the final rites instead, at Memphis.”

  “Hijacked the body, eh?” I said. “Good for him. You wouldn’t catch me letting that much gold leave my kingdom, either.” Jab.

  “The king lay at Memphis for a number of years,” the priest went on, ignoring me, “until this splendid mausoleum could be completed. Then, amid much rejoicing and solemn ceremony, the king, Alexander the Great, found his final resting place in the city named for him.”

  He let us contemplate all this splendor for a while, then signaled for us to follow him again. We entered a room where Alexander’s robes and armor were displayed, then another which held the marble sa
rcophagus the priest had described, along with the outer coffin with its wonderfully carved golden lid. After a few minutes of contemplation, he led us into the final chamber.

  This was a room of relatively modest dimensions, perfectly circular, with a domed ceiling. In its middle lay Alexander, sheathed in thin, perfectly molded gold, looking as if he might wake up at any moment. After the Macedonian custom, he was laid out on a bed, this one carved from alabaster. I leaned toward Julia and whispered in her ear:

  “Short little bugger, wasn’t he?”

  Unfortunately, the chamber was one of the magical sort that magnifies sound. My whispered words boomed out as if shouted by a herald. The priest and the other tourists glared at us as we made our embarrassed way out, bestowing effusive thanks and proclaiming our appreciation.

  “Have you been drinking early again?” Julia demanded.

  “I swear I haven’t!”

  I thought she was going to attack me, but she couldn’t keep it up, and by the time we fell into our litter we were both laughing helplessly.

  “Must be a lot more fun in there than it looks like from out here,” Hermes said.

  “To the Heptastadion!” I said, and the bearers hoisted us to their shoulders and off we went.

  “Have you learned anything?” I asked Julia as we drifted through the streets.

  “It’s difficult to get Alexandrian ladies to talk about anything except religion and clothes. Nobody talks about politics in a monarchy.”

  “Forget the Alexandrians,” I advised. “Work on the wives or other womenfolk of the foreign ambassadors, specifically the ambassadors of those yet independent nations that fear being the next additions to Rome’s empire.”

  She looked at me sharply. “What have you learned?”

  “Very little,” I admitted, “but I suspect that Iphicrates, despite his protestations, ran a profitable sideline in designing weapons for our enemies or those who expect to become our enemies soon. Parthia would be a good place to start. Now that the nearer East is subdued, King Phraates is the one who has Pompey and Crassus and, forgive me, your uncle barking at the gates like so many starving Molossian hounds. The last truly rich kingdom left independent.”

  “Except for Egypt,” she said.

  “Egypt isn’t … well, Egypt is nominally independent, but that’s a joke.”

  “Perhaps it isn’t funny to the Egyptians. They’re only poor because the recent generations of Ptolemies have been stupid. Once they were the mightiest nation in the world. The Pharaohs ruled in Egypt when the Greeks besieged Troy. What nation that has fallen from power doesn’t dream of regaining it?”

  “A good question. That would explain Achillas’s interest in Iphicrates. But whatever the military gentry is up to, it’s still stuck with the Ptolemies. Everyone except Egyptians considers brother-sister marriage an abomination. Such matings seem to work well enough with horses, but not with humans. It certainly hasn’t improved the Ptolemaic line.”

  “Degenerate dynasties are easily toppled by strong men who have the army behind them,” she said. Leave it to a Caesar to take the pragmatic view of power politics.

  “But the Egyptians are awfully conservative. They prize their royalty even if they weren’t Egyptian to begin with. An Alexandrian mob toppled the Ptolemy before this one just because he murdered his rather aged wife, one of the Berenices. What would they do to a usurper, who wasn’t even a part of the family?”

  “I’ll look into his pedigree,” she said practically. “I’ll wager he has some sort of family connection. And the traditional way for a usurper to legitimize his power is to marry into royalty. There is a selection of princesses, you’ll recall. Besides, he could ease his way into power by acting as regent for young Ptolemy.”

  Caesars can be frightening people. She had worked all this out since hearing of my run-in with Achillas and Memnon, while I was sniffing around the Serapeum, eating sacrificial beef and ogling bloody-backed priestesses. These absorbing speculations were interrupted by our arrival at the Heptastadion.

  “It’s the longest bridge in the world,” I told her as we were carried across. “Almost a Roman mile.” It divided the Great Harbor to the east from the Eunostos Harbor to the west. We paused over the central arches and marveled as several ships passed from one harbor to the other without having to lower their masts.

  Back in our litters, we traversed the rest of the causeway to the island of Pharos, which had its own small town, complete with several lovely temples, including the one to Poseidon and another to Isis. At the extreme eastern spit of land we climbed from our litters at the base of the lighthouse. Seen up close, it was oddly unimpressive. That was because the step-back of its construction made its great height invisible. All one could see was a rather massive wall that did not at first seem to be terribly high. We went inside and were shown the dizzying central shaft, which terminated in a tiny dot of light so far overhead that it seemed that the tower was in danger of scraping the underside of the sun. Amid a great mechanical clatter a huge basket of iron and timber was lowered at intervals to be filled with wood for the fire basket overhead. Since Egypt was so poor in native wood, most of it was shipped in from the islands and from the mainland to the west. Ashes were dumped down a chute into a waiting barge, which took them out to sea for disposal.

  We turned down an offer to ride up in the wood basket and instead climbed an endless ramp that wound up the inner sides of the base. For Julia, recently arrived from the hilly terrain of Rome, it was an easy climb. I had been living the soft life and was puffing and sweating by the time we walked out onto the first terrace. Even on this lowest section of the lighthouse we stood higher than the highest temple roofs of the city. The stone spire soared interminably above us, its peak sending up smoke into the clear air. Julia leaned back and shaded her eyes, trying to see the top.

  “I almost wish I’d had the courage to ride up,” she said wistfully.

  “It isn’t natural for people to ascend so high,” I said. “However, if you want to climb the steps up there, I’ll wait for you here.”

  “No,” she said, “the view from here is splendid enough. You can see the whole city, from the Hippodrome to the Necropolis. You can see all the way to Lake Mareotis. It’s all so orderly, like a picture painted on a wall.”

  “It does seem so,” I said. “It’s hard to believe that in the midst of all that order, something very peculiar and dangerous is happening. At least Rome looks like a place where awful things are happening all the time.”

  “I wouldn’t have put it that way.”

  “Julia, I want to get to know Princess Berenice better.”

  “Why?” she said suspiciously.

  “We need to talk religion.”

  That evening we were rowed from the royal harbor in the curve of Cape Lochias to the gemlike palace on the Antirrhodos Island. This was an even more frivolous place than the Great Palace, strictly a pleasure retreat, wanting even a throne room or any other place for conducting public business. Berenice was throwing another of her endless parties for the fashionable set. Ptolemy and Creticus weren’t attending, but I went, along with Julia, Fausta and a number of the embassy staff. The parties on the island were legendary because they were without even such feeble restraints as the Great Palace insisted upon.

  It was in full roar when we got there, as the setting sun made an imperial purple mantle of the western sky and the torches were being kindled. Music made the evening riotous, and we were helped from our boat by pseudo-Maenads costumed, if that is the word, in leopard skins and vine leaves, wearing masks. Men dressed as satyrs chased naked nymphs through the gardens while acrobats walked on tightropes stretched between the wings of the palace.

  “My father would never approve,” Julia said, wide-eyed. “But then, my father isn’t here.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I commended her. “I wish Cato was here, just so I could watch him drop dead from apoplexy.” Berenice came out to greet us, leading a half-dozen tame ch
eetahs on leashes.

  The Egyptians are fond of cats of all sorts, from lions down to the little house cats that seem to own the towns. So devoted are they to these little beasts that, when one dies, it is mourned exactly as if a member of the family had died. The punishment for killing one was the same as for murder. It seemed odd to me that people would want little lions running around the house, but in recent years they have become popular even in Rome. They are said to be good at catching mice.

  Berenice gushed the usual welcomes and compliments and urged us to loosen up and have a good time, something I was quite prepared to do. Instead of tables where guests could recline to eat, there were small tables everywhere heaped with rare delicacies. Slaves carried pitchers of wine and everyone stood or wandered about, eating, drinking and talking as long as they could remain upright. Besides the human servants, there were more of the liveried baboons. They were not very efficient as servers, but they were better behaved than many of the guests.

  I wanted to speak with Berenice, but the big cats she led made me nervous. I knew that these tame cheetahs behaved like hunting dogs, but somehow they looked unnatural on leashes. So I left Julia and Fausta with the princess and made my way into the palace. It had all the marks of a long evening, so there was no rush about cornering the woman.

  I had never been to the Island Palace before, and found it very much to my taste. The proportions were almost Roman in their acknowledgment of human stature. The rooms were not vast echoing halls, and their decoration was calculated to enhance rather than to overwhelm.

  The same could not be said of the guests and the entertainment. In an open court was a pool in which a muscular youth wrestled with a medium-sized crocodile, splashing the guests almost as copiously as the pair of hippos who shared the water. Some guests, overcome with excitement, leapt into the pool and disported themselves after the fashion of naiads, diving beneath the surface and coming up to spout water on unsuspecting passersby. I watched for a while, hoping that the wrestler would lose his hold and the crocodile make a lunge for the naiads. That would have been even more exciting. However, the youth trussed up the reptile with cords and carried it off amid much applause.