“Do you know the tale of Sisyphus?” he asked me.
“The name is familiar.…”
He shook his head, dismayed yet again at my ignorance.
“Sisyphus was the founder of Corinth, the city’s first king. Somehow he offended Zeus—the tales vary—and he was given a terrible punishment, forced to roll a boulder up a steep hill only to see it slip away and roll back down again, so that he had to repeat the pointless task over and over again. Some believe this was the very hill where Sisyphus carried out the impossible labor Zeus set for him. That is why this is called the Slope of Sisyphus.”
I looked down the rocky incline, then looked upward. We were more than halfway to the top, but the steepest part was yet to come. Antipater resumed the ascent.
We passed the ruined walls of what must have been a fortress, and at length we arrived at the summit and stood atop the sheer cliff that towered above the remains of Corinth. To the north lay the sea. The wharves at Lechaeum were tiny in the distance, with tiny Roman galleys moored alongside them; the walls of the waterfront garrison were manned by Roman soldiers almost too small to be seen. Below us, at the foot of the cliff, I could clearly discern the course of the old walls and the layout of Corinth.
The sun was directly overhead. The harsh light and the lack of shadows made everything look stark and slightly unreal, drained of color and parched by the warm, dry wind. From the ruins below I imagined I could hear a sound like many voices whispering and moaning. The ruins themselves appeared to shimmer, an illusion caused by the rising heat and the undulation of high grass amid the stones. I shivered, and felt dizzy from the heat.
“What really happened here, Antipater?”
He sighed. “According to our friend Tullius, the Corinthians brought about their own destruction. Typical Roman reasoning: blame the victims!
“When the Corinthians and their allies in the Achaean League revolted, they lashed out against the Spartans, who remained loyal to Rome. The Romans used that incident as a pretext to mount a full-scale invasion of the Peloponnesus—they claimed they were merely coming to the defense of an ally. There were several battles. The Achaean League was crushed, and its leaders were either killed or committed suicide. The climax occurred here, at Corinth. The city opened its gates in surrender, but Lucius Mummius had been given orders by the Senate to make an example of Corinth. His soldiers poured into the city and utterly destroyed it.
“Men were rounded up and slaughtered. Women were raped; if they survived, they were sold into slavery. The same thing was done to the children. Houses and temples were looted, then burned. The soldiers were allowed to stuff their pockets with all the jewelry and gold they could carry, but the choicest works of art were claimed by Mummius and sent back to the Senate. Rome was enriched beyond measure. Look inside any temple in Rome; all the best paintings and statues came from Corinth. And half of them are mislabeled, because the ignorant Mummius couldn’t tell a statue of Zeus from one of Poseidon!”
Antipater paused for a long moment, lost in thought. “There’s a painting by an artist named Aristeides, a stunning work. Hercules is in agony, trying to rip off the poisoned shirt given him by his wife, who thought the magical garment would merely make him faithful to her. Deianira is in the background, horrified by what she’s done. The scheming centaur Nessus looks on from his hiding place in the woods, laughing. When I was a boy, my father took me to see that painting here in Corinth. How that image fascinated and terrified me! I never forgot it. Then, a few years ago, I had occasion to enter a temple in Rome, and there in the vestibule, I saw it again—not a copy or imitation, but the very painting by Aristeides! That was when my boyhood memories of Corinth came flooding back. That was when I wrote this poem.”
Antipater stepped to the very edge of the precipice. I held my breath, fearful that a gust of wind might push him over, but I didn’t dare interrupt him. The words that had sounded pompous and hollow coming from Tullius sounded very different as they poured from Antipater.
“Where, O Corinth, is your fabled beauty now?
Where the battlements and ramparts, temples and towers?
Where the multitudes that lived within your walls?
Where the matrons holding vigil in your sacred bowers?
City of Sisyphus, not a trace is left of you.
War seizes and devours, takes some and then takes more.
Ocean’s daughters alone remain to mourn for you.
The salt tears of the Nereids lash the lonely shore.”
I stepped beside Antipater. Together we gazed down at vanished Corinth with the moaning of the wind in our ears.
A movement amid the ruins caught my eye. It was the party of Tullius—or so I presumed. The tiny figures were too distant to be clearly discerned, but among them I thought I recognized Tullius by his red hair and bristling beard. They were no longer standing in a group, listening to Tullius, or following him from place to place. They seemed to be poking amid the rubble and moving bits of it about, but toward what purpose I couldn’t imagine. I thought of asking Antipater’s opinion, but his gaze was elsewhere, and I didn’t wish to agitate him by returning his attention to Tullius.
The wind continued to rise. Antipater at last stepped back from the precipice and we headed down the slope.
On the way down, a little off the path I noticed some ruins that had escaped my attention on the way up. Antipater saw them, too, and we left the path to take a closer look.
The largest of the ruins had once been a small temple or sanctuary. Drums from a fallen column lay amid the tumbled stones, and in a much-worn painting on a fragment of a wall Antipater claimed to recognize the image of Persephone, wife of Hades and queen of the underworld.
“Can you not see her regal headband, Gordianus, and the winnowing fan in her hands? Harvesters use such an implement to sift grain. Persephone uses it to winnow the dead as they descend to Hades, revealing some souls to be wheat and others chaff. Ceremonial winnowing fans like that are used in rituals at sacred sites all over Greece.”
“What happens at these rituals?”
“No man knows, since the acolytes are all women. Presumably they call upon the powers of the underworld.”
“But that’s witchcraft, not worship.”
Antipater shrugged. “Who’s to say where one ends and the other begins?”
The remains of several other small buildings were nearby. Antipater speculated that these might have been used as dining halls and meeting rooms by the women who worshipped at the sanctuary of Persephone. The buildings had all collapsed except one. It was half-buried in rubble but the roof remained intact. It was hardly more than a shack with a door and a window. Antipater pushed open the door and we stepped inside.
It was normal that the air in the room should be cool, but to me it felt unnaturally so. At first glance the dim little chamber appeared to be empty. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw a few objects scattered about the floor—clay lamps, incense burners, and some thin, flattened pieces of black metal. I picked up one of these tablets, surprised at how heavy it was, and at how soft. The metal was easily bent.