"Kings get nervous when they have too many real men around them," Flaccus told him. "They fear revolts and worry about the paternity of their sons."
"For the next few days," Marcus told them, "we will be organizing our mission here. We will also do what everyone who visits Alexandria does: We will go sightseeing. You all know the drill. Fortifications, naval installations, road approaches. Flaccus, I want you to climb to the top of that lighthouse and draw a map of the whole city."
"All the way to the top?" Flaccus said, aghast. "I'll never make it!"
"Hire a litter to carry you," Brutus advised.
"It's a sad day," said Marcus, "when a Roman official can't manage a few thousand steps on his own feet."
"It's a few thousand steps straight up!" Flaccus said.
"Do it."
"What will you be doing?" Brutus wanted to know.
"I've decided to take up the pursuit of culture," Marcus said.
"Culture?" said young Caesar with wonder in his voice.
"Exactly. I am going to pay a visit to the Museum."
Chapter 12
The court official in charge of foreign embassies wanted to provide guides, litters, personal servants and every comfort and convenience. It was Alexandrian practice to treat envoys lavishly. Marcus politely declined all offers. He wanted neither guides nor spies.
The Museum proved to be a large complex of buildings adjacent to the palace. For the most part, they differed from the palace in being proportioned to a more human scale. Even the temple of the Muses from which the complex took its name was an exquisitely modest building. The largest edifice was the great Library, which housed countless thousands of volumes, together with facilities for making copies of the books stored there.
The rest consisted of lecture halls, porticoes, courtyards, dormitories and dining halls. Here scholars from all over the Greek world came to study and to teach. Here they could live at the king's expense with no obligation to perform any work for the court.
In the entrance hall a learned-looking slave addressed the assembled visitors, informing them that Ptolemy I Soter, "the Savior," founder of the Alexandrian dynasty, had founded the Museum and Library. He pointed to the long list of librarians engraved on the marble wall, beginning with Demetrios of Phaleron and followed by the Librarians of almost two centuries.
Their first great task, he informed the public, was to produce an authoritative text of the poems of Homer. Over the centuries the many texts of these poems, drawn from far older oral sources, had grown corrupt. The scholars of the Library collected every version and ruthlessly purged them of anachronisms, words that had not existed in Homer's day, verses obviously composed by later pretenders. After many years of toil, they produced the purified version now current throughout the world.
Marcus found this interesting, but literary matters did not just now intrigue him. Wandering at large, he came to a wing surrounding a long courtyard in which stood strange devices of stone and metal, marked in some arcane system, clearly instruments of some sort but he could not guess their purpose. He accosted a Museum slave and asked what they might be.
"These are the instruments of the astronomers," the man told him. "By sighting along some of them at night, and observing the shadows cast by others during the day, they divine the nature of the heavens."
"Where do the mathematicians have their quarters?" Marcus asked.
The man led him to another courtyard almost identical to the last, except that instead of strange instruments, this one featured several marble-bordered expanses of gleaming white sand, lovingly smoothed and surrounded by benches. Upon the sand the lecturers drew figures with long wands, explaining the wonders of geometry to their students. The slave introduced him to the master of the mathematicians' wing, one Bacchylides of Samos.
"A Roman?" said the scholar, quirking a sardonic eyebrow. "I heard a rumor that some Romans had arrived. I cannot speak for the mathematicians, but you are going to be in great demand by the historians of the Library."
"Just now my interest is in mathematics," Marcus told him.
"How may I be of service?"
"I learned recently that Archimedes, the mathematician of Syracuse, spent his last years here in the Museum."
"Indeed he did. He was a strange and controversial man, but distinguished in his way. He was a great student of mechanics, which is not a field much pursued here."
"Why not?"
"You are blunt, I see. The fact is, most philosophers follow the precepts of Plato, who taught that philosophers corrupt the purity of their thoughts with manipulation of mere matter. Archimedes had a weakness for building machines, which for most of us partakes too much of the ignoble work of a laborer. If you were to ask most of the philosophers here what was the greatest achievement of Archimedes, they would say that it was his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder."
" 'Most,' but not all?"
"Perceptive as well as laconic. Yes, there is still an Archimedean school here that thinks we place too much value on Platonic detachment. They revere the works of Archimedes and continue his researches into mechanics."
"I would very much like to visit this school," Marcus said.
"Then, if you will accompany me, I shall take you there."
The Archimedeans occupied a wing of their own, partly to segregate them from the more respectable philosophers, partly because they needed space for their experiments. The courtyard was cluttered with a mass of wheels, screws, levers, ropes and pulleys such as Marcus had never seen before. One thing was plain: This was a place where men did things. For the first time among the foreigners of the south, he felt that he might be among kindred spirits. Romans appreciated art, literature and philosophy after a fashion, but they truly loved engineering.
"Chilo," Bacchylides called, "you have a visitor."
The man who came to greet Marcus wore a dingy tunic, powdered with sawdust. His beard was ill trimmed and he was brushing dust from his hands. "If it's about the machinery for the new harbor chain, tell the First Eunuch that we will have the design perfected in about ten days and we'll send the drawings to-" he looked Marcus over. "You're no court official. What brings a barbarian to the School of Archimedes?"
"Not precisely a barbarian," Bacchylides explained. "This gentleman is a Roman. He is an ambassador from the Republic of Noricum."
Chilo grinned. "Really? It's not quite like Odysseus coming back from the dead for a visit, but it's close. The old Romans were people who appreciated good engineering. Let me see-I think roads, tunnels, bridges and aqueducts were their specialties."
Marcus grinned back. "We're still good at them."
"At last! Somebody who doesn't think abstract thought is the highest of virtues."
"I think I can leave you here in the capable hands of Chilo. Good day, Ambassador." He walked off stiffly and quickly.
Chilo grinned after him. "Can't get away from the defilement of work fast enough, can he?" He turned and clapped Marcus on the shoulder. "Come on, Ambassador. Let me show you my school."
The men busy assembling and testing the machines didn't look like any group of scholars Marcus had ever seen. They were mostly young and incredibly busy working the devices, many of which clearly were miniatures of far larger machines. They laughed raucously when one performed as desired and cursed luridly whenever one failed. Chilo explained that some of the machines were water lifters, pumps, dredgers and other practical devices required by Egypt; a land of canals and mud. Others were more fanciful, including a boat to travel beneath the water and a flying machine. Neither of these, Marcus was not surprised to learn, had yet been made to work.