by Mike Ashley
‘Just curious,’ I said, not wishing to tell him that I was already bored half out of my mind and eager for something to engage my faculties.
‘Please, Senator,’ he said, ‘leave this to us. And now, if I may take my leave, I must see to the arrangements for Telemachus’ funeral.’ He and some other dignitaries bowed politely and followed the train of wailing mourners toward the temple of Helios where, presumably, Telemachus would be cremated.
I detained the priest for a moment. ‘Does murder in this spot constitute a sacrilege?’ I asked him.
‘No. This is not a temenos; a place set aside as sacred to a deity or to the shades of the dead. There are no priests, and sacrifices were never performed here. The Colossus was an image of the god, but even when it was whole it was just a statue.’ With a bow he rejoined the procession.
I handed the statuette back to Hermes. ‘Wash this off.’ He ambled off toward one of the city’s many fine public fountains and returned a few minutes later, our trophy now free of the sticky evidence of its misuse.
‘Why brain him with a statue?’ I mused, examining the base.
‘It certainly got the job done,’ Hermes pointed out.
‘But, if I was planning to kill someone, looking about my lodgings for the proper tool, I can hardly imagine thinking, “My sword? No, too cumbersome. My dagger? No, too common. Aha! The miniature copy of the Colossus of Rhodes! Just the thing!” ’
‘We’ve seen people murdered by roof-tiles,’ Hermes said. ‘I knew a slave once, was killed with a kitchen pestle. Bricks, candlesticks, anything handy will do.’
‘Yes,’ I said, waxing philosophical. Philosophical for me, anyway. ‘Yes, when passions flare abruptly, anything that comes readily to hand may serve. Had Telemachus been found murdered in a house, with this lying close by, I would think no more of it. But he was killed in a lonely spot late at night.’
‘Someone might have debrained him at home, then lugged him over there to hide the body.’
‘I think not. That sort of head wound bleeds very freely. There should have been a huge trail of blood leading to the hiding place. And why carry along the murder weapon? No, it looks to me as if he was killed on the spot. Moreover, I think it unlikely that the killer had homicide in mind.’
He shrugged. ‘What’s one more dead Greek, anyway?’
‘Relief, Hermes. Relief. Come along.’
As he walked, I examined the extempore weapon more closely. It was finely cast, the figure of the god being made in one piece with the pedestal. I could find no name, initial, or other maker’s mark. The bottom of the pedestal was sealed with a nicely cut and polished piece of green marble, also unmarked.
Asking directions as we went, we soon came to the Sculptor’s Market, a spacious forum where the musical chime of chisel against stone went on nonstop. The sculptors worked outdoors, with no more than an awning to protect them from the sun, inclement weather being a rarity on idyllic Rhodes.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘all we need to do is locate the artist who made this statue.’
‘It could be a sizable job,’ Hermes said, looking round.
Everywhere in the market we could see copies of the Colossus. There were images done in fine marble, in cheap terracotta, in fired ceramic, in wood, in bronze like the murder weapon and in mixed media. Some were miniatures six inches high, others more substantial, and a few were man-sized. Some were painted, others left in the natural color of the medium.
I walked over to a life-sized specimen. He was of bronze, standing upon a base of Parian marble, and he had been given the full Greek treatment. Most of the flesh part was left in the mellow sheen of polished bronze. The hair and crown were brilliantly gilded. The lips and nipples were sheathed in slightly darker copper and the teeth, barely visible behind the lips, were silver-gilt. The eyes were inlaid with white shell and lapis lazuli. The thing had to cost as much as a good estate in Campania.
‘May I help you, ah, Senator?’ The dealer knew how to spot the insignia. I knew he wasn’t the sculptor, with his fine tunic and his soft hands. ‘I can make you a very favorable price for this sculpture. It was made by the sculptor Archelaus more than two hundred years ago, while the Colossus still stood, a very faithful copy.’
‘Actually, I was interested in something more recent.’
‘Oh?’ he said, disappointed, ‘what might that be?’
I held up my statuette. ‘I need to find out who made this.’ Just my luck if it was two hundred years old, too.
He pursed his lips. ‘A common piece. I can think of more than two or three dozen artisans who might have made it. The founder might know.’
‘The founder?’
‘Yes. The bronze sculptors make their images in wax, then all of them take the wax images to the bronze foundry to be cast. There is only one on the island.’
I thanked him and made a mental vow that, should I ever get a chance to conquer Rhodes, I was going to claim that statue as my first piece of loot.
Like all the smokier businesses, the bronze foundry was located on a spit of land downwind of the city, where the whoosh of bellows vied with the clamor of the smiths’ hammers and the roar of the fires to determine what could make the most noise. The foreman of the foundry was a sooty Greek with singed eyebrows. He turned the statuette over in hands so covered with burns that they shone like glazed ceramic.
‘This is Myron’s work. I cast it for him no more than a month ago. I can tell by the color. We’d just got in a shipment of Spanish copper. It’s a little darker than the Syrian metal we’d been using.’
Now I was getting someplace. ‘Did he say if it was a special commission?’
He shook his head and cinders sprinkled his shoulders. ‘No, it was one of maybe ten pieces he brought in. He comes by three or four times a year, and it’s almost always the Helios images.’
‘Do you supply this base plug?’ I tapped the marble on the bottom.
‘No, it’s all specialist work. The sculptor makes the wax image. We do the casting. A polisher does the polishing and if the base is marble it’s cut by a lapidary.’
‘Why isn’t the base just cast in place?’ I asked.
‘Sculpture is always cast hollow. It saves weight and it saves bronze, which is an expensive metal.’
I thanked him and we headed back into the city proper. ‘Now we find Myron?’ Hermes asked.
‘No, now we look for a lapidary.’
The quarter of the lapidaries was somewhat quieter than those of the sculptors and metal workers. The tools are much smaller. A little asking around brought us to a stall where five or six slaves worked industriously at a bench, overseen by an elderly craftsman.
‘Yes, this is my shop’s work,’ he acknowledged with a glance at the statuette’s base. ‘I have the only stock of green Italian marble on the island just now.’ He nodded toward a big block of greenish stone which a pair of slaves were patiently sawing into inch-thick slabs, the saw moving slowly back and forth while a small boy trickled water into the cut.
‘When was this?’
He scratched his head. ‘Myron came to pick them up about ten days ago.’
‘Did he say who had commissioned them?’
‘Copies like this are seldom made to commission. I do remember that he wanted special treatment for one.’
‘How so?’
‘Ordinarily, the bases are glued in with pitch. He wanted one base left unglued.’
‘Did he say why?’ The Greek just shrugged.
‘Now we return to the Sculptor’s Market to look for Myron?’ Hermes asked wearily.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘Now we find a nice, shady spot and have lunch. Then we go find Myron.’
Back in the Sculptor’s Market, after a little side trip to the harbor mole, we found Myron before his shop, molding wax. Everyone has heard of the famous Myron, the sculptor who created the Discus-Thrower. This, needless to say, was another Myron. The original has been dead for about four hundred years. Like charioteers, sculptors like to use
the names of old champions.
‘That’s mine, all right,’ he said, not interrupting the rhythm of his hands on the wax.
‘Who bought it?’ I asked.
‘I’ve made and sold hundreds of those. Most of the buyers are foreign travelers like you.’
‘Who asked for one with the base left unattached?’
Now the busy hands paused. ‘Oh, that one. It was Cleomenes, the harbormaster.’
‘I see. Did he say why he desired this eccentric treatment?’
Again, that Greek shrug. ‘No. Why should he?’
As we walked back toward our digs, I said to Hermes, ‘I don’t understand how the Greeks got their reputation as a curious, inquiring people. Most of them are utter dullards.’
‘Maybe,’ he opined, ‘they know some questions are better left unasked.’
When we got to the temple of Helios, things were in full swing. In the balmy climate of Rhodes, they waste no time in getting the dead disposed of. Telemachus lay on a bier atop a great heap of timber that reeked of oil. The mourners had quieted down so that the eulogies could be delivered. Rhodes had the world’s most illustrious teachers of rhetoric, and I think it was the famous Molon, teacher of Cicero, who was speaking as we arrived. A whole crowd of students from many lands stood around while the old man showed them how a real expert dispatches a dead nonentity to the netherworld.
‘The heavens weep,’ intoned the orator, ‘and the sun hides its face in mourning for the peerless Telemachus, priest of Helios.’ Actually, it had been perfectly clear all day, and the sun was merely getting ready to go down the way it does every day. I suppose it’s the sentiment that counts. ‘Surely, the god cannot permit this perfect servant to descend, a mere bodiless shade, to the Stygian shore. Rather, he now attends his deity with his own hands, perhaps grooming the fiery steeds of the sun, or pouring the nectar to soothe the god’s thirst after his daily ride in the solar chariot . . .’ and so forth in this vein for some time. I’ve heard the same sort of eulogy for innumerable dead priests. If they were all true, every god would have more servants than Crassus and there wouldn’t be enough work for most of them to do.
‘Do you see Cleomenes among the mob?’ I asked Hermes. ‘He must be here. Everyone of importance is.’
‘Over there, with all the men in gilded wreaths. I guess that’s the rest of the city council.’
‘Right. They’re looking a little uncomfortable.’ The council members, dressed in their best robes, were trying to maintain their dignity. The surrounding crowd were clearly in a dark mood, muttering and glowering. A Roman mob would have been in full riot by now, but as I have said, the Rhodians are rather more easy-going.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘time to liven things up.’
‘Maybe you’d better wait until tomorrow,’ Hermes cautioned. He held up the wineskin and examined it. The thing had gone flat during the course of the day.
‘Nonsense. No time like the present. We have an audience now.’ I pushed my way through the mob of mourners, into the cleared zone just before the temple steps, where the pyre had been erected. ‘May I have your attention, please!’ I shouted in my best Forum voice, which had considerable volume.
The speaker, Molon or whoever it was, broke off in mid-praise. ‘Sir, do you wish to deliver a eulogy for the departed? If so, you shall have your turn.’ The fellow had tremendous, almost Roman dignitas, for a Greek.
‘Not a bit of it,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to make an accusation of murder.’ At this there was an uproar from the crowd.
‘Senator!’ cried Dionysus, outraged. ‘This is not the place for such an action! You have no right to . . .’
‘Nonsense!’ I interrupted grandly. ‘I’m a Roman senator and I can do anything I want to.’ I really had been hitting the wine too hard that day. ‘I accuse the harbormaster, Cleomenes, of braining the late Telemachus, high priest of Helios, with this statuette of his own deity!’ I held up the bronze figure for everyone’s edification.
‘Death to the Aristocrats!’ shouted some idiot, safely anonymous within the midst of the crowd.
‘Oh, pipe down, moron! That fool,’ I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, indicating the body on the pyre, ‘and Cleomenes were conspiring to sell out your republic.’
‘Be silent, you interloping barbarian!’ Cleomenes shouted, gone quite red in the face. ‘Not only is your charge absurd, but Rome has no business meddling in the affairs of the ancient Republic of Rhodes!’
‘Hah!’ I said, wittily. ‘That’s not what you said when you entertained Pompey last year, was it?’ Actually, I wasn’t certain that it had been Pompey the traitors had been conspiring with, but in those years he was certainly the best candidate. His red face whitened and I knew my dart had struck home.
‘Senator,’ Dionysus said, this time in a lower voice and casting nervous glances in the direction of the restive crowd, ‘are you telling us that General Pompey, that glorious conqueror, while enjoying our hospitality, was plotting against us?’
‘Not directly and with no immediate designs upon your republic,’ I assured him. ‘But Pompey, like any good general, no sooner wraps up a successful war than he makes preparations for the next. His recent campaign against the pirates taught him the importance of naval power, a thing long neglected by Rome. He knew that a big eastern war would necessitate a strong base with a good harbor, and what finer harbor, what stronger island than Rhodes exists in the eastern part of the sea? Was it not in celebration of your defeat of Demetrius, that theretofore unconquered besieger, that you erected your Colossus?’ I just thought I would show these Greeks that they were not the only ones who knew how to give a rousing public speech. This even roused a mild cheer from the mob, remembering their island’s greatest moment of military glory.
‘You, yourself,’ Cleomenes protested, ‘have said that Rome has no enemies left!’
‘I mentioned Parthia and Egypt. Alone, either is a negligible quantity. But together, remembering that Cyprus, too, belongs to Egypt, they could prove troublesome.’ I did not think it wise to point out the greatest danger: that a future war in the east would most likely be a civil war, between Pompey and one of our other successful, trouble-making generals, someone like Lucullus, Crassus, Gabinius, or even Caesar, whose star was ascendant at the time.
‘Pompey wanted assurances of cooperation from both camps, the Aristocrats and the Populars, so he suborned promises of aid from two prominent members of those parties. You recall, noble Dionysus, how you told me just this morning that these statues of Helios are often given as pledge-tokens?’
‘So I did,’ he admitted.
‘This statuette,’ I waved the thing aloft, really warming up to my denunciation, ‘was to symbolize their pledge to Pompey. As good conspirators always do, they divided the incriminating activity between them. Cleomenes bought the token. Telemachus, high priest of Helios, was to send it to Pompey, supposedly in fond remembrance of his visit here. The two, political rivals that they publicly were, could not meet publicly so that the statuette could be handed over, nor could they trust a go-between. So they met late at night, in a conveniently deserted spot, the Place of the Colossus.’ I had their rapt attention now. Even the muttering had stopped.
‘But,’ I cried, pausing dramatically for effect, ‘the two had a falling out. Perhaps one of them wanted a bigger slice of the spoils to be divided when Pompey should take the island, perhaps Telemachus, with a last-minute attack of conscience or cowardice, wanted out of the arrangement entirely. Whichever it was, Cleomenes, in a thwarted rage, bashed him over the head with the only weapon available – this statuette!’ I brandished it like a sword and everyone gasped.
‘And just how did you come up with this fabrication of blatant lies?’ Cleomenes said with contemptuous indignation, his shifting eyes betraying him.
‘I admit,’ I said, preening, ‘that when I learned from Myron the sculptor that Cleomenes had requested a statuette with its hollow base left unsealed, I expected to find incriminatin
g documents within. Naturally, even an amateur conspirator and assassin like Cleomenes would never leave anything so incriminating right next to the corpse of his victim. The token contained nothing so blatant.’
‘What, then?’ Dionysus urged, torn between indignation at the plot, resentment of me and fear of the crowd.
‘Something he thought no one in on the plot would ever notice. But, Cleomenes was not expecting the arrival on the scene of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.’ Here I popped loose the marble base, something I had done earlier, while Hermes and I had been enjoying lunch in one of the many delightful little parks that dot the city. ‘Here,’ I held up the nicely crafted piece of green marble, ‘scratched into the base, are words not in Greek but in Latin. They say, simply, ‘It is cut.’
‘And what does this mean?’ Dionysus asked.
‘It would mean nothing to anyone who did not know exactly who had made the inscription. But, knowing that it was Cleomenes the harbormaster, I took a little walk down to the mole to examine the one thing in his charge that might be of interest to Pompey: the great chain that blocks the entrance to the harbor. If you will send officers to examine it you will find that some of the links have been cleverly sawn halfway through. The tampering is well disguised, and it does not affect the regular raising and lowering of the chain. But one Roman trireme would snap it like a string and Pompey’s troops would be quartered in your houses before you knew he had arrived.’
‘Cleomenes,’ Dionysus shouted, white-faced, ‘you are under arrest pending investigation of the Senator’s charges.’ The guilty man opened his mouth to speak, but a traitor’s death was already upon his face and no sound emerged.
As the crowd broke up in disappointment and confusion I congratulated myself. Personally, I didn’t care who controlled Rhodes, but our warmongering generals had already come near to destroying the Republic, and in those days I considered Pompey the most dangerous of the lot. I was pleased to have done him a bad turn.
‘Shall we go ahead and burn him?’ asked a torch-bearing slave, nodding toward the heap of oily wood. At the president’s nod he tossed his torch into the pile which began to crackle merrily.
