“Remarkable,” I said.
“I was thunderstruck, and I had no idea what this rant might signify. I said to him, ‘Tribune Gaius Ateius, whatever happened to Jupiter Capitolinus? Or Mars Invictus? If I am to be sent to the underworld in shame, at least I should like to know a little more about the deity who is sending me there.’ The crowd about us fell silent. I asked him if he did not think it unusual to end a curse with lenience. Ateius looked almost as bewildered as I and replied that he had been instructed to say these things by the goddess. ‘This Melek Ta’us,’ I presume. ‘The very same,’ he replied. ‘And who is Melek Ta’us?’ I inquired. He said he did not know. ‘This is becoming tiresome,’ I said. ‘How is it, then, you come to invoke his name?’ ‘Her name,’ he said.”
At that moment, Petronius came back on deck. “Your leave, general.” He saluted by hitting his closed right fist upon his breast. Crassus nodded. “Preparations for the sacrifice will be ready within the hour. Rain approaches from the west,” he added, hoping Crassus would reconsider his decision to embark.
“Then we’d better get those oxen slaughtered,” came the disappointing reply. “Where was I?” he asked as Petronius clambered back down to the jetty.
“This goddess…”
“Ah yes. Ateius told me she had come to him in a dream, in the form of a peacock. This Melek Ta’us assured Ateius that my purpose was made of stone and that I would not be deterred, but that, short of violence, he should try to dissuade me nonetheless. I said in a louder voice for all to hear, ‘It augurs well that the gods know my purpose and determination, even if they be gods unknown to and unsanctioned by Rome. Now, you’ve done your duty and your conscience should be clear. You have also disrupted the tranquility of this city and put needless fear in the hearts of your countrymen. For this, you shall most likely have to answer to them when I have gone, but that is not my concern. Now stand aside and let us pass.’ And that was essentially the end of it.”
“I would have to say,” I said, glancing at clouds so heavy and leaden they appeared to be straining with the effort not to burst, “that this is as inauspicious a beginning to an expedition as ever one might dread. These are powerful signs, lord. Dare we ignore them?”
“You don’t fool me for an instant, Alexander. You put no stock in omens and incense. You see them for what they are: pacifiers for children. Your fear of this undertaking does not become you. There is no Roman death more honorable than one earned on the field of battle.”
“Alas, I am no Roman.” I imagined the Via Appia as Crassus had left it after his defeat of Spartacus. How was the fate of those six thousand eyeless sentinels, their limbs given an occasional twitching, false life by the maggots that consumed them, any different?
To a corpse, honor meant nothing. Death on the battlefield or on a cross was death all the same.
Crassus threw the core of his half-eaten apple over the side. “Don’t mistake me. The gods have their place; fear of them may keep the peace as handily as a veteran legion. I, for one, though I observe the forms, am too busy shaping my own destiny to wonder whether public prayers are heard or not. Politicians make ready use of religion, but press us beyond our devout mouthings and you will find little faith.”
I said nothing, but nodded toward the canopy in the stern, and shelter. In the distance to the west, a grey curtain of rain marched steadily toward the port, and lightning finally broke through the clouds. It crackled and hummed as the gods wrote a brief but illegible note on the landscape. Whether benediction or curse, who could say?
Chapter XXII
55 — 54 BCE — Winter, On the March
Year of the consulship of
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives
Those of you with decent memories will recall that the tribune Ateius invoked the name of the same goddess of whom Melyaket the Parthian was so enamored. It is a strange coincidence, I grant you. Yet there are many wondrous things between the instant we perceive our own mortality and the final moment when, with our last exhalation of disappointment, we resign ourselves to death’s embrace, of which we have no understanding. Do I believe there exists a divine Peacock Angel (Melek Ta’us in the Parthian tongue) keeping a feathery eye on us, her mortal charges? I do not. You may do so if you choose, but with apologies to Aristotle, life among the Romans has caused me to edge closer to Epicurus on this issue: the gods have no time nor interest in the comings and goings of man, and their reality is in all likelihood so far removed from ours that they are entirely unaware of our existence. If a divine peacock has somehow slipped its celestial confinement, someone ought to herd it back to its pen.
•••
The crossing from Brundisium to Dyrrhachium would have taken a single trireme less than a day and a night sailing under fair skies. Our passage took three times as long. Which meant we would have been very hungry and very thirsty, had we been able to think of such things without retching. Before our voyage was over, what food we did have in our bellies was heaved up on deck, washed overboard or onto the rowers below. The storms were relentless; not for even an hour was our captain able to raise the sails and grant the oarsmen a rest. Some were broad-backed free men, mostly Greeks from Syracusae working off their twenty-six year contract to earn Roman citizenship. From what I could hear of their labors through the decking, they earned every one of the four sesterces credited daily to each man’s account. Most, however, were our own legionaries, chosen from among those with the least seniority, to help man the 170 oars. There was room on deck for no more than a century, less if the trireme was carrying cargo or animals.
These cedar ships were meant to sail along the coast for a single day, then dock and take on stores for another short journey, on calm seas. Triremes and other ships of war are not built to withstand winter storms. If you were an eagle soaring high over the Middle Sea at this time of year, your keen eyes would be shocked to find the white-capped waters filled with our frail centipedes, oars beating a desperate, funereal rhythm against the iron waves.
By the time Scourge of Ctesiphon shipped its oars under clearing skies in Epirus Nova’s finest harbor, the last of our storm-battered fleet was barely halfway through their own ordeal. Never had the Adriatic done so much to dissuade so many from the Eastern journey. We arrived drained, drenched and shivering. And behind us, on an ever darkening horizon, lightning silvered the grey sea.
The bosom of Dyrrachium’s port may have been welcoming and blessedly unmoving, but its outstretched arms could only accommodate a fraction of the numbers Crassus had amassed. Weeks passed while thousands of men waited for their turn to disembark, steaming themselves dry in the cool air. Even at the rate of ten ships a day, thousands spent over a month just getting themselves off those accursed boats. The town had to ferry food and water to the queued ships while the men gambled, sharpened their blades, and baled harbor water from their chastised transports.
I say this: if man had been meant to ply the seas, the gods in their wisdom would have given him a stronger stomach. If destined to tread the earth, surely he would have been created with the legs of a lion and the feet of a pachyderm. One must be forced to the conclusion that the unerring gods blessed man with a form best suited for contemplation, study, and a life undisturbed by travel.