'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 incriminating 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.
'It seems, Senator,' said Dionysus as if the words left a foul taste in his mouth, 'that Rhodes owes you thanks. Not that Pompey or any other general would have found us so easy to take, with or without our harbor chain. How may we express our gratitude?' He was used to Roman envoys, a greedy lot back then.
'I care only for justice,' I told him. Then I draped an arm over his shoulders. 'My father, however, is a great fancier of Greek sculpture. Down in the Sculptor's Market there is a statue of Helios that would be perfect for his country estate:'
These things happened in Rhodes in the year 692 of the City of Rome, the consulship of Metellus Celer and Lucius Afranius.