Hannibal's Children (25 page)

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.

Slaves entered the courtyard bearing trays of food and pitchers of wine. Work stilled for the moment. And men sat on benches or on their machines to eat. Marcus joined Chilo on a bench.

"We have a fine dining hall," Chilo said, "but we seldom use it at midday. We prefer to stay close to our work while the light holds. Plenty of time for relaxing after dark."

"You are men dedicated to your discipline," Marcus noted.

" 'Discipline'," Chilo said. "I like that. It sounds much better than 'craft' or 'work.' Not so degrading. It sounds like a soldierly virtue."

"It is. Has to be, if you would rather stay out here with your machines than go inside and eat."

"We love it," Chilo said fondly. "And here at the Museum is the best place for it. Anyplace else in the world, some city or tyrant might employ us to design an aqueduct or a pump or a superior catapult, but at the Museum we can do pure research."

"What does that mean?" Marcus wanted to know.

"In pure research, we strive to discover fundamental principles, to learn how the world works. We are unencumbered by the need to accomplish a specific task."

"Yet you seem to do a good deal of work for king and court."

"Well, yes. After all, we are the men who can accomplish things, and the king has many projects. It is a small price to pay for the freedom and resources we enjoy here."

"What do you do for him besides the earth and water— moving projects?"

"You already know about the harbor chain. Unfortunately, we are often called upon to provide novel devices for the royal pleasure-barges, or spectacular effects for the lavish parties the court puts on. It is a trivial waste of time and resources."

"What about Queen Selene? Does she make use of your services?"

"Oh, yes. And at least her projects are useful. She rarely demands anything frivolous. She has us working on a new crane to more quickly load and unload ships in the harbor. A great deal of time is wasted while they wait for an unloading dock."

"Are you asked to design many new war machines?" Marcus asked.

"Rarely. The Egyptians are complacent in military matters. The ruling Macedonians think warfare reached its height with Alexander the Great and there is no sense in trying to improve upon his tactics and drill. The machines used on their ships have changed little in two hundred years, and since they rarely indulge in city sieges, we're not often called upon to design heavy artillery."

"That seems a waste of a fine resource," Marcus said.

"True. It wasn't always so. Demetrios the Besieger, son of Antigonus One-Eye, built wonderful and very imaginative machines just the generation after Alexander. They rarely worked, but he had the right idea. Let the machines do the work and take most of the damage and save your men for the decisive thrust."

"An excellent concept," Marcus commended. "But, do you really think you can build a machine that can fly like a bird, or a boat that can travel under water?"

Chilo took a drink of watered wine and pondered his answer. "I'll tell you one of the basic answers to such a question. The fact is, nobody can think of any convincing reason why we can't."

Marcus set down a honeyed roll. "Could you expand upon that?"

"It's like this: Most people will tell you that these things can't be done because they have never been done. We do not accept such reasoning. Long ago, somebody paddled out on the water astride a log
for the first time.
Somebody piled stone upon stone to build a house
for the first time.
Because these things had never been done before did not mean they could not be done, merely that no one had ever tried before. Others will give you philosophical or religious reasons why things cannot be done. We do not accept them. Here we believe in experimentation and proven results."

"Another excellent principle," Marcus said. "But do you not fear attracting the anger of the gods when you attempt these fabulous things?"

"To believe that the immortal gods can be jealous of mortal men is to hold a very low opinion of the gods. Here most of us respect the gods. But we do not believe that they are Homer's Olympians, fighting and bickering and seducing each other's wives. If we poor, limited mortal men can be philosophers, then the gods must be philosophers beyond our imagining. If we here can build clever machines of stone and metal and wood, what is that to gods who invented this world and the whole cosmos surrounding us? No, my friend, we fear men, not the anger of the gods:"

"I want to hear all about you," Marcus said. "And about your master, Archimedes."

It had been his lifelong experience that men needed little prodding to speak of their fields of expertise, their lonely manias, especially if they seldom had someone to listen. So it was with these men. First Chilo, then one after another of the others spoke of their projects, their dreams, and of the man who had founded their school. He was not sure that he could believe everything they said about the man.

Still, these were men who thought they might someday fly.

A few days later Marcus and the rest of the Roman party had an opportunity to see one of the more lavish indulgences of the royal court. The young king was to receive them, and the event would be aboard one of the royal barges of which Chilo had spoken.

They had learned that Alexandria was built upon a narrow spit of land between two bodies of water. To the north lay the broad waters of the Middle Sea. To the south was Lake Mareotis. A channel linked the Eunostos Harbor with the lake, and yet another channel connected the eastern tip of the lake with the westernmost mouth of the Nile. Thus the seagoing vessels could pass from the harbor to the river without sailing westward and navigating the hazardous, multiple mouths of the Nile with their ever-changing sandbars and baffling false channels. Likewise, the rich river traffic of Egypt found its outlet at Alexandria.

The city itself was laid out in a grid with wide, perfectly straight streets. The eastern part of the city was the district of the huge Jewish population. To the west was the Rakhotis, or native quarter. In the center was the Greek section and here were to be found the greatest buildings, temples, shrines and formal gardens of the city. Alexandria was uniformly beautiful and harmonious, which Carthage, for all its magnificence, was not.

At least there was harmony in its symmetry and proportions. There was little harmony among the inhabitants. Disputes among the numerous ethnic groups were frequent and full-scale riots were no rarity. Alexandrian mobs had been known to depose kings who displeased them too greatly.

They had also learned something of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Founded by Alexander's general, Ptolemy Soter, the early kings had been intelligent, liberal rulers of great capability. They had turned the ancient, backward, weak land of Egypt into a great power, installing a royal bureaucracy of great efficiency, breaking the power of the ancient priesthoods and deposing the feudal landholders.

Three or four generations into the dynasty, the quality of royal competency declined alarmingly. The kings had adopted the quaint Pharaonic custom of marrying their sisters to keep the royal bloodline pure. Many attributed the decadence of the dynasty to this practice. Weakness of mind and outright insanity began to crop up with some frequency. Some kings were merely eccentric, others truly monstrous, such as the brutish Ptolemy Psychon, so named for his great obesity. He had murdered most of his own family, and this was among the mildest of his atrocities.

Oddly, the women of the family seemed to have retained the virtues of the early kings and, when they had an opportunity to rule in their own right, usually proved to be exemplary monarchs.

They came to the royal wharf on the lake side of the city and, once again, were forced in spite of themselves to gape.

"That thing
moves?"
Flaccus gasped.

Had it been a temple, it would have been of but middling size. But it was not a temple. It was a boat, but such a boat as they had never dreamed of. Half as long as a stadium, its superstructure was a palace three stories high, with tall pillars and a pitched roof, pillars and roof alike gilded, with carved frieze and pediment bright with paint, and between the pillars instead of walls there hung curtains of costly fabric or chain mesh of silver and gold. This incredible structure was situated atop twin hulls, each greater than the largest warship they had yet seen.