For this was the year of the famous First Triumvirate. Back in Rome, Caesar, Pompey and Crassus had decided that they owned Rome and the world. People now write as if this were some great, world-shaking event. In fact, nobody was even aware of it save the three involved. It was merely a highly informal agreement among the three to watch out for one another's interests while one or more of them had to be away from Rome. It was a portent of things to come, though.
But that evening we were blissfully unaware of such intriguing. We were free of tiresome politics, and we had time on our hands and all of Alexandria in which to enjoy ourselves.
Chapter III
"The Museum," I said, "was founded in the reign of Ptolemy I, surnamed Soter, 'the Savior,' two hundred thirty-five years ago." I had bribed a tour guide to teach me his spiel, and I now delivered it to Julia as we mounted the steps to the main hall. "It was planned and directed by the first Librarian, Demetrios of Phaleron. The Library, of worldwide fame, is actually an adjunct of the Museum. Since the time of Demetrios, an unbroken chain of Librarians has overseen the institution and its collections. The successors of Demetrios have been Zenodotus of Ephesus, Callimachus of Cyrene, Appolonius of Rhodes, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Appolonius the Eidograph, Aristarchus of Samothrace-"
"I can read, Decius," Julia said, cutting me off in mid-genealogy.
"But I still have a hundred years of Librarians to impart," I protested. It had been a considerable feat of memorization on short notice, but we noble youth of Rome had that sort of rote learning flogged into us from an early age.
"I read everything I could find on the Museum and the Library during my journey. You can learn a great deal between bouts of seasickness."
At the top of the stair one passed between a pair of gigantic obelisks. Beyond them was a courtyard paved with polished purple marble, dominated by beautiful statues of Athena, Apollo and Hermes. The greatest buildings of the Museum complex faced on this courtyard: the Library, the magnificent dining hall of the scholars and the Temple itself, a modest but exquisite structure sacred to the Muses. Beyond these were a good many more buildings: the living quarters, lecture halls, observatories, colonnades and so forth.
Julia did much exclaiming over the architectural marvels. In truth, Rome had nothing to touch it. Only the Capitol had anything like the splendor of the great edifices of Alexandria, although our Circus Maximus was a good deal larger than their Hippodrome. But the Hippodrome was made of marble, where the Circus was still mostly of wood.
"This is sublime!" she said excitedly.
"Exactly the word I would have chosen," I assured her. "What would you like to see first?"
"The lecture halls and the refectory," she said. "I want to see the scholars as they go about their philosophical labors."
Someone must have sent word ahead of us, because Amphytrion appeared at that moment. "I will be most happy to escort our distinguished guests. The Museum is at your disposal."
The last thing I wanted was to have some dusty old Greek coming between me and Julia, but she clapped and exclaimed what a privilege this was. Thus robbed of a graceful way to sidestep his unwanted intrusion, I followed the two into the great building. In the entrance peristyle he gestured toward the rows of names carved into the walls.
"Here you see the names of all the Librarians, and of the famous scholars and philosophers who have ornamented the Museum since its founding. And here are the portrait busts of the greatest of them." Beyond the peristyle was a graceful colonnade surrounding a pool in which stood a sculptural group depicting Orpheus calming the wild beasts with his song.
"The colonnade of the Peripatetic philosophers," Amphytrion explained. "They prefer to converse and expound while walking, and this colonnade is provided for their convenience. The Orpheus was sculpted by the same hand that created the famous Gigantomachia at the altar of Zeus in Pergamum."
This I was prepared to admire to the fullest. It was an example of that flowering of late Greek sculpture that I have always preferred to the effete stuff of Periclean Athens, with its wilting Apollos and excessively chaste Aphrodites. Orpheus, caught in mid-note, was the very embodiment of music as he strummed his lyre. The beasts, obviously stopped at the moment they were about to spring, were carved with wondrous detail. The lion's fanged mouth was just relaxing from a terrifying snarl, the wolf lapsing into doglike friendliness, the bear standing on his hind legs looking puzzled. In real life no one is ever attacked simultaneously by such a varied menagerie, but this was myth, and it was perfect.
But Julia wanted to see the philosophers at their labors, so we went in search of some. The problem was that, when they aren't talking, philosophers aren't doing much at all. Mostly they stand around, or sit around, or in the case of the Peripatetics, walk around, pondering matters and looking wise.
We found Asklepiodes in a lecture hall, speaking to a large audience of physicians about his discoveries concerning the superiority of stitching lacerations rather than searing them with a hot iron. One of the attendees ventured to question whether this was properly the concern of physicians, and Asklepiodes parried him neatly.
"Before even the divine Hippocrates, there was the god of healing, Asklepios. And do we not read in the Iliad that his own son, Machaon, with his own hands tended the wounds of the Greek heroes, even withdrawing an arrowhead in one instance?" I applauded this point vigorously, and there were learned murmurs that this was a valid point.
From the lecture halls we passed into a large courtyard filled with enigmatic objects of stone: tall spindles, slanted ramps, circles with gradations marked off in inscribed lines. A few of the smaller instruments I recognized as similar to the gromon that engineers use to lay out building sites or camps for the legions.
"Welcome to my observatory," said a man I recognized as Sosigenes, the astronomer. He grinned engagingly as Julia went through her now-customary gush of enthusiasm.
"I shall be most happy to explain something of my studies, my lady," he said, "but I confess that there are few things more useless than an astronomer in the daytime." And this he proceeded to do. Sosigenes had a redeeming sense of humor that was notably absent in most of the philosophers there. I found myself actually listening attentively as he explained the purpose of his instruments, and the importance of recording the movements of the stars and planets in calculating positions in navigation, and in determining the real date as opposed to the slippery dates of conventional calendars. The reliable calendar we now use was the invention of Sosigenes, although Caesar took the credit by making it the legal calendar through his authority as Pontifex Maximus. I resolved to return to the observatory some night when he could explain more effectively the mysteries of the stars.
In another courtyard we found the redoubtable Iphicrates of Chios, bossing a crew of carpenters and metal workers as they assembled a complicated model of stone, wood and cable. At our arrival he turned frowning, but smiled and bowed when he saw that Rome had come calling.
"And what do you work on now, Iphicrates?" Amphytrion asked.
"His Majesty has asked me to solve the long-standing problem of silting in the great canal that links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea," he proclaimed proudly.
"A daunting prospect," I said. "But its solution would do much to facilitate traffic between the West and India."