Killing Pythagoras (Mediterranean Prize Winner 2015) (64 page)

CHAPTER 140

August 12
th
, 510 B.C.

Akenon leaned against the gunwale, holding on with both hands. He was glad not to have suffered seasickness since setting sail from Metapontum two days before. Sailing could be tolerable when the sea was calm and the coast within sight.

Eshdek had told him there were plenty of pirates about, which was why a Carthaginian military ship was escorting them, a long, stylized trireme. Akenon was admiring its impressive bronze-plated prow and the fierce enormous eyes painted on either side of the hull. It was said they helped the ship to see and instilled fear in the enemy. Akenon imagined the trireme rushing towards them, its more than one hundred oarsmen making it fly over the water, and had to admit it would be a frightening vision.

The ship they were traveling in was a wide, pot-bellied merchant ship, a hundred feet long, with twelve oarsmen on each side. The breeze was enough to fill its enormous square sail, so the oarsmen were resting.

Eshdek appeared beside him. He was wearing a short tunic with a wide leather belt and his usual teasing smile.

“You’re going to be one of the wealthiest men in Carthage. Have you thought about what you’ll do there with so much money?”

Akenon looked out at the horizon before answering.

“I’ll buy a quiet life.”

Eshdek thought of making a joke, but something in Akenon’s voice held him back. He searched his bruised face for a moment, and stayed with him by the gunwale, watching the sea in silence.

After a while, he turned to Akenon again.

“You’d both better go down to the hold.” He signaled with his head toward the coast. “In half an hour we’ll be in Croton.”

Akenon nodded. The wisest thing was to hide until Eshdek’s men reported back on the situation. Six days ago, when they had set sail for Metapontum, Croton had been calm, but it was best not to trust a city that had just experienced violent changes in the head of its government and its army.

On the other side of the ship, Ariadne was absorbed in her thoughts, watching Croton. Akenon went up to her and put a hand on her bare shoulder. She turned, startled, and smiled when she saw it was him. For a moment, they looked at each other without speaking. Ariadne saw the sparkle in his brown eyes and his attractive smiling lips.
He’s beginning to look like the Akenon I met a few months ago
, she thought. Maybe his imminent return to Carthage was cheering him.

“We have to go down to the hold,” said Akenon.

Ariadne nodded but didn’t move. She kept looking into his eyes, wondering if gestures such as putting a hand on her shoulder, almost caressing it, were simply something a friend would do, or if they meant more.

Akenon’s face tensed slightly, and he looked away.

When they began to descend to the hold, Ariadne stopped suddenly.

“I want to see him one last time.”

Without waiting for a reply, she walked away from Akenon and entered the oarsmen’s compartment. The air was hot and humid there, so thick with human stench it was almost impossible to breathe. The oarsmen wore shackles around their ankles and were linked together with long chains which also secured them in their places. Almost all the poor wretches were dozing, slumped forward on their oars.

Ariadne’s eyes rested on the first oarsman on the right. Although he was asleep with his face buried in his arms, it was evident the skin on his forehead was burned.

Daaruk…
thought Ariadne.
How can one man have done so much harm?

Asleep and chained, he looked harmless, but he alone, with the hypnotic power of his eyes and his dark voice, had caused the deaths of thousands of men. He had almost condemned Sybaris, a city of three hundred thousand, to oblivion. He had instigated the bloody revolt against the aristocrats, the war against Croton, and the savage sacking perpetrated in its aftermath. Each of these had decimated the population of Sybaris, now a city on its knees.

Ariadne walked up to Daaruk with an increasing feeling of tension. Her father’s ex-disciple, one who had belonged to his intimate circle, had been on the verge of completely destroying the Pythagorean brotherhood. He had stripped the School of its political weight in Croton, and it would probably soon lose its presence in the governments of other cities as well. The Pythagorean School had gone from being one of the most influential organizations in the world to being threatened with extinction. Ariadne felt her breathing quicken. The traitorous disciple had murdered all the candidates to her father’s succession as well as many other grand masters, first one by one, and then en masse during the attack on Milo’s house.

You were also about to kill my father
. She stopped a step from Daaruk, clenching her teeth.
And Akenon
. Daaruk shifted, as if he could feel someone’s presence.
And you ordered Boreas to rape and kill me
.

Daaruk raised his head abruptly, sniffing quickly to his left and right like a rat in the dark. The surface of his eyes was opaque, seared with a red-hot iron by Eshdek’s men. Although he couldn’t see Ariadne, he suddenly pierced her with his blind gaze. His burnt lips drew back like a snarling dog’s, trembling with rage, revealing the few teeth that remained. With a malevolent grimace on his deformed face, he emitted a guttural grunt. The hatred he exuded was so intense, Ariadne shuddered and took a step back, but she made an effort not to turn around, and continued to look at him. The traitorous master erupted in a furious rant of unintelligible curses. His body shook violently against the chains, his face went purple, and the veins in his neck swelled as if they would burst. Inside his mouth, Ariadne could see the frenzied contortions of the stump that had remained after his tongue had been pulled out with pincers.

You won’t be doing any more damage
.

Ariadne lifted her chin and turned her back on him without saying a word. The ex-master’s demented howls echoed behind her as she walked away, thinking of how Daaruk had dreamed of dominating them all and being venerated like a god. Now, instead, he would spend the rest of his days in chains, unable to communicate, accumulating hatred and contempt for Pythagoras, Akenon, herself, and the entire human race until the day he drowned in his own bile.

A few hours later, Eshdek’s men informed them they could disembark safely. If anyone asked, all they had to do was deny any knowledge of Daaruk.

Ariadne was standing on deck, looking toward the community. She couldn’t actually see it from there, since it was blocked by the buildings of Croton, but she knew that in that direction lay the heart of the brotherhood her father had founded and led for thirty years.

The place I’ve spent my entire life
.

Despite that, she didn’t feel the compound was her home.
And less so now that my father’s not there
.

For some time she had felt as if she was closing a chapter of her life without feeling another one open up before her. She sighed, putting her hand on her abdomen. For now, she would live in the community, and later on she’d decide what was best for her child. She had kept a small bag of gold, enough for the two of them to lead a modest life.

When she turned around, she saw Akenon and Eshdek chatting animatedly on the ship’s prow. Eshdek’s business had gone better than expected, and in three days his ships would return to Carthage.

After a while, Ariadne realized she was still looking fixedly at Akenon.

Forget him
. She closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath.
It was probably for the best that I didn’t tell Akenon I’m expecting his child
. It wouldn’t have been good for him to stay with them only out of a sense of duty.

She felt her jaw and lips tighten and made another effort to relax. It would be best to disembark now, stop seeing Akenon as soon as possible. She knew from experience that time heals all wounds.

Even if it takes a long time
. She checked the urge to look at him again, and walked toward the gangway, sliding her hand along the gunwale.

Suddenly, she felt a pair of strong hands take her by the shoulders. She hadn’t heard him coming. Her body tensed and she closed her eyes without turning around. She didn’t want any more kind gestures. They made it difficult to start forgetting him.

Akenon’s arms enveloped her from behind. Ariadne felt the tiny hairs on her skin stand up under those caressing fingers, betraying her desire to appear indifferent. Akenon brought his lips so close they brushed her ear and spoke with a slight tremble in his deep voice.

“Come to Carthage with me.”

Letter to my readers:

March 15
th
, 2013 A.D.

“Did this really happen?”

I was asked this question several times by the people who helped me edit the first manuscript of the novel, as they read the different events narrated in the story. I almost always gave an affirmative answer.

“Yes, it really happened.”

I’ve tried to be as faithful as possible to historical events. However, documentary sources on Pythagoras and his life and times are scarce, sometimes contradictory or unreliable, and often have large gaps in the chronology. For that reason, during this historical recreation, I sometimes had to decide which source to choose from among several incompatible ones, and at other times I had to resort to invention to reconstruct facts that have been irretrievably lost across the darkness of time.

My aim has been to create a true story based on what is known, and a possible one in the case of what we don’t know. At the same time, I tried to make the novel entertaining. For that purpose, I took the liberty of introducing some characters and events born exclusively from my imagination.

The events narrated took place, as far as we know, in the year I’ve indicated: 510 B.C. As for the months, I’ve used ours—from the Gregorian calendar—to make the timeline easier to follow. Ancient Greeks used a lunisolar calendar with a different number of days and months than the Gregorian. Moreover, their months were named for feasts and beliefs that varied from one city or region to another.

Pythagoras is, of course, a historical figure. All the prodigious ideas and actions attributed to him in the novel are documented in the historical sources available to us. He was doubtless one of the most important teachers in the history of humankind, both from an intellectual and a moral perspective. There are also numerous accounts of the spectacular spread of the Pythagorean brotherhood, not only among ordinary citizens, but among many governments as well, making the philosopher one of the most influential men of his time. On the other hand, history is vague on the matter of his death. Some say he starved himself to death after witnessing the attacks on his brotherhood, while others say he lived many more years. I prefer to imagine him in his final years devoted to passing his thought on to future generations. In fact, Pythagoreanism was remarkably resilient after the wave of revolts that expelled it from political power in Magna Graecia. Its mathematical discoveries served as the foundation for subsequent researchers, its philosophy influenced Platonism and Christianity—among other schools of thought—and as a religious movement, it remained active through the first centuries of the Roman Empire. The trail of Pythagoreanism can be followed down through the last twenty-five hundred years, from the genius who founded it to the small groups still active today, preserving many of its ideas and symbols as well as the oath of secrecy.

The term “sybarite” is used nowadays to describe someone who enjoys refined pleasures. It comes from the ancient city of Sybaris which I’ve tried to recreate in accordance with the accounts passed down to us by the historians of Antiquity. They also wrote about Tellus, the Sybarite leader who led the popular revolt and who later demanded that the Crotonian Council hand over the Sybarite aristocrats who had sought refuge in Croton. It appears that the Council’s refusal sparked a war between the two cities. Other historical facts are the Crotonian strategy of making the Sybarite horses dance in order to defeat their improvised army and the sacking of Sybaris that followed. This novel goes no further, but the historical misfortunes of the Sybarites continued. Some time later, Croton diverted the course of the river Crati, causing it to flood Sybaris, destroying the city and preventing the return of the Sybarites. That was the end of the legendary city. Any Sybarites who escaped, like Glaucus, had to accept they no longer had a city to go back to.

We know Milo of Croton was a heavyweight wrestling champion, undefeated for decades according to the records of winners in the Ancient Olympic Games. Some documentary sources also identify him as Pythagoras’ son-in-law and commander of the troops that led Croton to victory against the Sybarites. There are countless anecdotes about his herculean strength, but there is also a legend that attributes a tragic death to him in which he was devoured by vermin. As his fate isn’t clear in the pages of history, I decided to have him give his life to save Pythagoras, which seems a much more appropriate end for the greatest hero Croton ever produced.

As for Cylon, the miserly aristocrat and Crotonian politician, it is true that he tried to enter the community in Croton and was rejected by Pythagoras. This so humiliated him that he held it against Pythagoras for the rest of his life and never desisted in his efforts to turn the Council of a Thousand against the philosopher. Many of the arguments Cylon uses in the novel to expel the Three Hundred from the government were taken directly from
De Vita Pythagorica
, by Iamblichus.

Other historical figures are Damo, Pythagoras’ daughter, and Theano, his wife. Theano made some discoveries of her own and apparently wrote important treatises on mathematics and medicine. She held a preeminent position in the Crotonian community after Pythagoras’ departure, and after his death she continued to play an important role in the School for many years. This was unusual in Greek society of the time, which considered that a woman’s role should be confined to household affairs. However, the Pythagorean brotherhood was an island of relative equality in that sea of discrimination.

The seed for this novel was planted in 1989, in a way that had little to do with literature. This is how it happened:

I was seventeen years old, and a mediocre student. Though I loved learning, I found it almost impossible to pay attention during class. One day, however, I was struck by something the math teacher said. She claimed that the scholars of Pythagoras’ time had only calculated Pi as 3 and a fraction. They weren’t even sure of the first decimal place. I knew Pi was 3.14, and thought it strange that Pythagoras, the discoverer of the famous theorem, wouldn’t have been capable of calculating at least those two decimal places. I immediately stopped listening to the teacher’s explanations and started drawing geometric shapes. When I got home, I was still immersed in the problem. I wanted to obtain several decimal places of Pi using only the mathematical technology Pythagoras would have had at his disposal. I wanted to do something they could have achieved, but hadn’t. It seemed to me that the key was to double the sides of a square, using Pythagoras’ theorem, then double them several times more so that with each iteration the resulting polygon would resemble a circle more.

Though I wasn’t able to achieve my goal, I sensed I was on the right track and kept the notes I’d made on it. In 2003, during a move, I was surprised to come across that long-forgotten problem again—only that time, I resolved not to give up until I had solved it. I devoted so much time and energy to it that by the end I could work on it without notes. When I closed my eyes, the diagrams I had drawn so many times would appear in front of me. One morning, I awoke at dawn and stayed in bed, using the shadows on the ceiling to mentally sketch the problem over and over again. I kept coming up against the same obstacle: a single, elusive line that refused to reveal to me how to calculate its value. Suddenly, as if a bright light had clarified the problem, I experienced a feeling I can only describe in the words of the ancient Greeks:
Eureka
! I leapt out of bed, nervously scrambling to find pencil and paper, afraid that the puzzle in my head would fall apart. I drew everything again, checking the solution several times… It worked. I’d figured it out.

I knew it had no practical application—there are other ways of calculating Pi, and with computers millions of decimal places have already been obtained—but I was happy to think I had achieved something that in Pythagoras’ time would have been considered a discovery, something valuable they would have protected with their oath of secrecy. In any case, since we no longer live in Pythagoras’ time, all I did was lovingly put away my little achievement, thinking I wouldn’t be opening that notebook again.

A few years later, in 2009, I had just finished a writing project and found myself mulling over different ideas that interested me for the novel I wanted to write next. I had decided to devote a couple of years to it, between research and writing, so the main themes had to be things I was passionate about (in a biography of Darwin, I had read that at the end of his life, he bitterly regretted having wasted eight years studying cirripedia
[9]
. I found that horrifying). Suddenly, I knew what I was going to write about, and the next day I shared my ideas with a friend.

“I'm going to write a novel with the number Pi in it. I might also include my little discovery as part of the plot.”

“Sounds boring.”

Well, as a first reaction to my project, it wasn’t very encouraging, but I had already worked out other aspects of the context and the plot that I hoped would sound more interesting.

“It’ll take place during Pythagoras’ time, and he’ll be one of the protagonists. He’s a fascinating character.”

“I still think it sounds boring.”

That made me wonder. I had been studying philosophy for several years, and Pythagoras had become one of my favorite philosophers. My friend’s response made it clear I’d have to be careful to strike a balance between factual knowledge and entertainment. I risked boring my readers if I focused only on my fascination for Pythagoras’ world. On the other hand, I would run the risk of writing a novel that was entertaining but empty if I left out all the factual elements for fear of boring my readers. I embarked on the project, but took an extra precaution: I asked that skeptical friend to be one of my editors.

When I read a novel I like to learn something as well as be entertained, and I know that’s true for many people. Because of that, and my devotion to Pythagoras, I tried to include at least an outline of the main elements of Pythagorean philosophy. As for the mathematical and geometrical concepts, such as the pentacle, the number Pi, and the golden proportion, I tried to present them in enough depth to give the reader a general idea and to make their role in the novel clear. The interested reader can easily find more information on these concepts. Nevertheless, the
masked man
—before his identity as Daaruk is revealed—makes a discovery which requires further explanation to make it understandable. It’s my own method of calculating Pi, for which Glaucus awards the masked man 3,000 pounds of gold and the fearful Boreas. I explain the method in the novel when Ariadne, Akenon, and Evander travel to Sybaris to get Glaucus to tell them about it. I outlined it in a certain amount of detail because of its importance to the plot. Glaucus gives the main explanation of the method, and though brief, it’s so complex that only Evander and Ariadne, mathematical geniuses, can comprehend it. Despite his training as a geometrician, Akenon gives up, and I imagine that most of the readers who’ve tried to understand the method have had to do the same. Following it through to the end requires the help of diagrams and more in-depth explanations, which would have been too involved for a novel. On my website (
www.marcoschicot.com
) there’s a page dedicated to the novel, where I explain in detail my method for calculating Pi using Pythagoras’ theorem.
[10]

Some editors were surprised to find many parallels between Pythagoras and Jesus Christ, and asked me if the character of the Greek master was based in part on the Nazarene master. I agree it might seem strange to read about Pythagoras preaching to his disciples and the multitudes about an unusual doctrine of solidarity and fraternity, and to find that his contemporaries believed he could perform miracles, such as controlling elements of nature and healing the sick. Of course, it might also be disquieting to hear that the Greek master claimed that our immortal souls were united with the divine until they committed a sin, for which they were condemned to inhabit humans’ mortal bodies and live righteous, austere lives in order to be elevated once more to a divine level. These similarities could raise suspicions about whether Pythagoras was inspired by the Christian Messiah, yet it must be remembered that Pythagoras lived and preached his doctrine almost six hundred years before Jesus Christ. What actually happened was that Pythagoras’ teachings flowed into the same river of human knowledge from which Christianity later drank, both directly and indirectly through Platonism.

Pythagoras was as revered in his day as Jesus Christ in his, and exercised greater political and intellectual influence over his contemporaries. Nevertheless, his political enemies and the oath of secrecy surrounding his doctrine resulted in the figure of the philosopher remaining hazy in the pages of history. Fortunately, he didn’t disappear completely. The profound knowledge of that great master has passed down to us. It’s true that western society appears to have lost the values and codes of behavior that Pythagoras and other great masters taught us. Luckily, in our hearts, each of us is still free to follow his teachings.

We’ve seen in this letter what happened to some of the protagonists beyond the scope of the events narrated in the novel. But we haven’t spoken about Ariadne and Akenon’s future. We left them on Eshdek’s ship after overcoming situations that brought them close to death. Thanks to them, the wisdom of Pythagoreanism—despite the terrible blow it suffered—will continue to enlighten humanity. Daaruk is chained to an oar, eaten away by hatred, while among the ship’s cargo a fortune in gold is hidden, more than enough to guarantee a comfortable life for Akenon, Ariadne, and the child they’re expecting.