Elephants and Castles

by Alfred Duggan

  ‘You were afraid of my little nephew? You feared that the boy would stab the Besieger of Cities in the midst of his guard, and so sacrifice his own life? That is how you read his character? I see. You were so frightened that you forgot the sacred obligation of a host. Let us hope that Zeus, protector of guests, will forget it also.’

  She swept back to the women’s quarters.

  A valet brought a jug of strong wine. Demetrius drank it unwatered, like a barbarian, until he could sleep.

  By dawn he was awake. In the garden he sacrificed a ram to Zeus, Father of Gods and Men. The ram died easily; no thunder rattled in the sky; there was no hint of vengeful old women. Perhaps Heaven had overlooked his offence, or accepted his excuses.

  After all, Larissa was not his home. Until he marched in three days ago he had never seen this palace. That Alexander had been his guest was a mere technicality. Two kings who find themselves in the same place at the same time must drink together or else make war. Undoubtedly Alexander had been bent on murder, and to kill your host is as wicked as to kill your guest. He pulled himself together. He had been in very great danger, with an armed assassin at his back. He had escaped because he was a nimble and quick-witted veteran, the best soldier in the civilised world, the destined successor to Alexander’s Empire. It was just an unfortunate mishap that the killing had been done in his temporary lodging; it was not a hall which any sensible man would call his. Little Alexander was undoubtedly at war with his own brother, and would have killed him if he could. Antipater had murdered his mother. Perhaps the two of them together had poisoned their father Cassander. The world was a better place now that little Alexander had left it.

  In the meantime something must be done about those frightened Macedonian guardsmen. He must get back to Athens at once but he could not leave them masterless on his border. He sent for his armour. At the head of his troops he would speak with the Macedonians, and perhaps persuade them to enter his service.

  Outside the camp Pantauchus was waiting for him, alone. ‘It’s all right, Poliorcetes,’ he said, grinning. Just speak to the men and tell them they are safe. They thought you were going to massacre them, but I spent the night talking them into a better frame of mind. Once they know you are a friend they may tell you something to your advantage.’

  He’s a good soldier, but he thinks small, Demetrius reflected. He has lived all his life in Macedonia, and supposes that any king will be delighted to enlist a few hundred genuine Macedonian mercenaries. He doesn’t know that in any Asiatic satrapy you can recruit a better phalanx of Hellene pikemen than followed poor little Alexander.

  But when he came within hearing of the Macedonians on the rampart of their camp he did as Pantauchus had suggested. He told them at once that they had nothing to fear. He was going on to offer them a welcome in his own ranks when they began to shout in union. At first he could not make out what they shouted, but it was clearly rehearsed and concerted. Pantauchus was at the back of it; he could see him signalling to the soldiers.

  The rhythmic shout came again: ‘Hail to Phila, Queen of the Macedonians. Hail to Demetrius, King of the Macedonians.’

  The guards marched out of the camp. When they halted before Demetrius to give him a royal salute, Pantauchus said happily: ‘You see, Poliorcetes, you are truly King of Macedonia, king by election of the Macedonians gathered in arms, a title never held by Cassander or his sons. What has been done here will be accepted throughout the kingdom. We look to Queen Phila to bring back the good old days of Antipater her father, while the invincible Poliorcetes protects our borders?

  ‘It must be lucky to murder a guest? Demetrius muttered to himself.

  14. ATHENS REVISITED

  It was all as it had been before - the city veiled in heat and dust, the Long Walls stretching into a grey nothingness, the sun-gleam on the bronze shield of Athene the Guardian far above, the tread of marching troops, the crowd waiting to welcome him at the Potteries. All as it had been before - except that then he had been twenty-nine and now he was forty-seven.

  Once again he sat in a triumphal chariot drawn by white horses. Here in Athens they insisted that he should be the Saviour God, even if he would rather ride as a commander in chief. Civic pride was at the root of it; free Athenians did not bow the neck to kings, but any human being will take orders from a god. So Stratocles had explained it long ago. Now Stratocles was dead, and one Phaedrus ruled the Assembly in his place. But Stratocles had died in his bed, with his fortune intact; for one who followed the precarious trade of demagogue he had been very lucky. Still, he had been an honest rogue, a genuine son of the people who understood the lower orders. It seemed queer that nowadays the oligarchs and the middle classes looked to Demetrius the upholder of order, while the extreme democrats revered Demarchares the tool of Lysimachus, safe in his Thracian exile. Good old Stratocles. He had never supposed that a time would come when he would say that.

  Since first they met, Stratocles had been his ally. But nowadays people continually changed sides. Pyrrhus, who had served so faithfully at Ipsus, was now a dangerous enemy. Even Sosigenes, the companion of his childhood, had taken offence at some trifle and gone off in a huff to the court of King Seleucus. But Lysimachus was still his deadly foe; that would never alter.

  For his third formal entry into Athens he was wearing a novel costume and new attributes. At his first entry they had seen him as the new and unknown Saviour God, non-committal in appearance save that he was unarmed. The second time he had been when everything was going his way before poor old Father got himself killed at Ipsus! (But a general who planned the battle before he met the enemy deserved to be killed.) Lamia had been good fun - good fun for a young man. He was now too old for those dissipations. It was just as well she had not approached him while he made his preparations in Piraeus. Perhaps she was dead, like Stratocles; no Athenian of the present day seemed to know her whereabouts. She had not been young in the old days, even while she was the life and soul of those scandalous suppers in the Parthenon.

  Today he wore the garb of the god Demetrius. Not Demetrius Poliorcetes, the best soldier in the world, the deified ruler; but a rather obscure godling, unless like these Athenians you made pilgrimage every year to the Mysteries - Demetrius the partner of Demeter the Earth-Mother.

  No one would tell him right out whether this Demetrius was the Mother’s husband or her son; he was probably both, though they could not say so without revealing a Mystery. At any rate the sacred chariot was garnished with ploughs and sickles, as though he embodied both the sown seed and the ripe grain. Perhaps there was something agricultural about his costume, though it was made up chiefly of enigmatic and symbolic knots of tangled cord. Whatever his position, he must be junior to the Goddess; which seemed hardly right for a hero of his eminence, King of Macedonia and soon to be King of the World.

  The Goddess rode in her chariot behind him; but then in many religious processions the rear is the place of honour. Demeter the Earth-Mother must be drawn by white plough-oxen, not by war-like horses. The whole procession moved at the slow pace of the ox, so that the horses of his chariot fretted and lathered. But whether she figured in his train, or he in hers, to have brought Lanassa to Athens was a considerable achievement. After so many years of disappointing strife he was still on the way up to greater things.

  During the more than three years he had been King of Macedonia he had wasted very little time in ruling his subjects. Even the new capital city he had built in tribute to his own glory, the city he had named Demetrias, stood near the border of his kingdom but outside it, in Thessaly. His chief occupation had been to reduce all Hellas to his sway.

  His hand moved uneasily to the broad gold collar at his throat. It was a barbaric piece of jewellery, unsuitable for a Hellene; but it hid the ugly scar made by the exit of the Theban javelin. The scar of entry was much smaller and not especially disfiguring, as usually happens when a javelin goes right through. Few men could stand in a chariot after being transfixed by a j
avelin.

  He was not proud of his honourable scar. A king has no business skirmishing under the walls of a besieged city. It had been a silly display, though pride had driven him to it. When Thebes rebelled against the Captain General of Hellas he had to squash the revolt before it could spread. Any sensible soldier could have told the obstinate Thebans that they had no hope of relief; but people had got into the habit of expecting miracles from King Pyrrhus.

  Engineers these days were much clumsier than they used to be. The great City-taker he designed, a taller and more effective version of that used at the siege of Rhodes, was handled so ineptly that it took two months to get it up to the wall.

  Impatience made him try to fight his way before the wall had been battered. Of course he failed; there are no short cuts into a well-defended city. His soldiers grumbled, and even his son Antigonus said he was asking too much of the men. After that he had to prove that he could do all he asked his men to do; until that confounded javelin burrowed right through his neck as he placed a scaling ladder.

  For the rest of his life he would carry the mark. But it might have been worse. That he was alive today proved that his Luck had not deserted him. The Furies were not on his trail, even though he had murdered his guest. When at last Thebes surrendered he was still grateful for his lucky escape, so grateful that he punished the rebels very lightly.

  Once again he must halt for those confounded oxen to catch up. Why had Lanassa insisted on oxen, just because they were appropriate to Demeter? As though nowadays gods and goddesses had any objective reality, anything that distinguished them from one another, or indeed from ordinary mortals! Gods could be created out of nothing by a decree of the Athenian Assembly. Besides, was Lanassa an embodiment of the Earth-Mother, or merely her representative for the duration of this ceremony; as some actor represents Dionysus when plays are presented in his theatre? The invitation from the Assembly had been vague on this point.

  On second thoughts, the Assembly must see Lanassa as a mortal woman. Deification was not a matter that even Athenians would leave in doubt. Long ago they had endowed the Saviour God with priests, temples and revenues. Why should he wait for her? In this procession he was the only god.

  All the same, the lady Lanassa was important in her on right. It was another proof of the continuing favour of Zeus that she had joined his cause of her own free will. She was a princess, handsome, with excellent manners and masculine courage; an inferior substitute for Phila but still a passable substitute.

  Ever since the Macedonians made him their king Phila had been a dispiriting companion. She never ceased to remind him of that quite excusable guest-murder. She waited for some calamity to strike her husband, but she would not leave him though that might have been more comfortable for both of them. By her inflexible code a wife shared the misfortunes of her husband. In the new city of Demetrius they slept in the same palace, though never in the same bed; if he forgot to make other arrangements he sometimes found himself dining alone with her.

  A year ago Lanassa’s letter had offered a temporary escape. She had invited him unprompted, without any hint from his side, which made it all most flattering. It was even more important that she controlled a strong fortress, so that to be her friend was sound strategy as well as pleasant entertainment.

  Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, whose dominions were so wide that some called him King of Sicily, happened also to be lord of Corcyra, which King Pyrrhus coveted. To avoid a war, and gain a warlike ally, Agathocles gave Pyrrhus his daughter Lanassa, and with her as dowry the island of Corcyra. In his usual feckless way Pyrrhus neglected to garrison the island with his own troops, so that when Lanassa left him because he had too many other Queens she was able to retire to her own fortress, held by her father’s men. As Lady of Corcyra, an independent sovereign, she looked round for some way to annoy her detested husband. An invitation to the great Poliorcetes would not only place a dangerous foe on his western flank but in addition publicly affix horns to his forehead.

  Before Demetrius left Thessaly he explained his plans to Phila. It was one of his bravest deeds, and he still shivered a little as he remembered it. Of her own accord Phila pointed out the strategic value of Corcyra. Threatened on the west from the island, and on the south from Hellas, Pyrrhus would not dare to march eastward against Macedonia. Then she added coldly: ‘Of course you will not introduce Lanassa into the presence of your Queen. You never asked me to receive Lamia, whom you loved, nor Deidameia, a princess of unblemished morals who came to you a virgin. Neither I nor the Macedonians would welcome this woman into Demetrias, my home.’

  The threat was scarcely veiled. The Macedonians did not like Demetrius. Their loyalty was given to Phila, daughter of the upright Antipater, whose regency was remembered as the last period of good government in their war-ravaged land. If Phila should turn against him they would soon set up another king.

  He had wintered in Corcyra, and on the whole enjoyed himself. Lanassa was not the attraction. She was tall, with a regal figure and a handsome face; but she moved clumsily, and she gave orders to everyone, even to her current lover the mighty king of Macedonia.

  But her court was full of Sicilians, to Demetrius a new kind of Hellene. These westerners were colonials, like the Hellenes of Asia among whom he had been reared. But they were not pioneers in a strange land, unstable, cut loose from the ways of their ancestors. Their colonies were mature cities, already centuries old. They had never cowered under the shadow of the Persian King.

  Sicilians spoke familiarly of the Pillars of Hercules and the stream of Ocean beyond. The far west was not fairyland, but water where a ship might sail if you could dodge past the Carthaginians. The land of the Celts was a good market for wine; if you could hire reliable guides you might follow the river-valleys until you reached Ocean again on the far side. Barbarians were quaint and amusing, but no Hellene need be frightened of them. To explore the unknown might be difficult, but it could be done. They did not speak of strange lands with that awe with which Alexander’s veterans discussed India. There was a lot to be said for Sicilians.

  Because Lanassa ordered him about, so he had decided to bring her to Athens where he was literally a god on earth, treated with due deference. Lanassa had jumped at the chance, because she had never seen Athens and any woman with brains would want to visit the centre of civilisation. He wondered whether she had perceived that the decision that she should impersonate Demeter, out of all the goddesses and nymphs on Olympus, was not exactly a compliment to her appearance.

  He had to leave Corcyra anyway in the spring. Pyrrhus had made an alliance with the Aetolian League, which gave him control of all the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth. With an impudent disregard of religion and the laws of civilised warfare he had proclaimed that no Athenian, no subject of King Demetrius, would be permitted to journey to Delphi; and this was the year of the Pythian Games.

  It was a cunning move, but not quite cunning enough. Pyrrhus waited for Demetrius to cut his way into Delphi at the head of the Macedonian army; he had gathered mercenaries until he was strong enough to throw back an invasion in force. But Epirus was a poor land, and mercenaries cost money; Pyrrhus must pay them whether they fought or not, so that next year he would be short of cash. Demetrius had avoided the trap laid for him, knowing that by next year Pyrrhus must dismiss most of his soldiers.

  Instead of fighting his way to Delphi he had proclaimed an opposition Pythian Games, to be held in Athens. It was a breach of ancient custom, but Pyrrhus had broken it first; even in time of war no Hellene should be barred from Delphi. It was also a risky move, for these uncanonical Games might fall flat. In fact they had pleased everybody. The Athenians were flattered by the honour done to their city. Ionians and islanders could reach Piraeus by ship; the journey to inland Delphi was more arduous and costly. The Spartans and Thebans, the only peoples of mainland Hellas not entirely loyal to Demetrius, dared not openly cross into Aetolia under the eyes of his frontier guards; if they wa
nted to attend any Games at all they must come to Athens. In Delphi this year, so they were saying, there would be no visitors save half-barbarous Aetolians and Epirots; while all the true Hellenes competed at Athens.

  Ah, here was the city at last. The crowd waiting by the gate was immense; these must be the strangers come for the Games, since the citizens would be in the market-place. Athenians managed these functions very well; so they should, they had plenty of practice.

  They were singing a new hymn in his honour, instead of the old one about the invincible might of the Saviour Gods. That was just as well. After the death of a Saviour God at Ipsus it would be hard to praise their prowess with a straight face. How did it go? He listened carefully.

  It did not sound very devout. They sang first of the good fortune of Athens. Other cities relied on gods they could not see or feel, gods who slept happily on Olympus, careless of# human woe; Athens was guarded by a human god, a god with two eyes and a nose between them. No one could doubt the existence of Demetrius son of Antigonus; for proof you need only visit the graveyards of Hellas, filled with men killed in his wars.

  No, it was not at all devout. They were all atheists at heart, even though atheism was forbidden by their law; that was why their divine protector enjoyed such a satisfactory reign.

  The city appeared to be flourishing. There was new paint about, and he saw few of those gruesome jars in which female infants were exposed if their fathers considered them superfluous. Probably everyone was doing well out of the new Games. As he passed under the rock of the Acropolis he looked up at the Temple of Victory shining clear-cut under a glowing sun.

  The Temple of the Wingless Victory was its full title, he recalled. The image was wingless, because Victory had made her home in Athens and would never go away. It had been put up, he supposed, sometime after the Persian Wars. Probably it had seemed a harmless flight of fancy, not the kind of boasting that incurs the envy of the gods. That had proved a mistaken view.