Steven Saylor - Last seen in Massilia

Like the spectators along the battlements, I anxiously watched the sea.

"Do you know the Fallacy of Enkekalymmenos?" Hieronymus suddenly asked.

Davus furrowed his brow at the long Greek word. "The Fallacy of the Veiled One," I translated.

"Yes. It goes something like this: `Can you recognize your mother?' `Of course.' `Do you recognize this veiled one?' `No.' `Yet this veiled one is your mother. Hence you can recognize your mother… and not recognize her.' "

I frowned. "Whatever made you think of that?"

"I'm not sure. Something I read recently. Aristotle, was it? Or Plato…?"

Davus looked thoughtful. "I don't see the point. You could put a veil over any woman and trick her child into not recognizing her. But-it wouldn't necessarily work." He raised an eyebrow and looked uncommonly shrewd. "What if the child recognized her perfume?"

"I suspect the veil is metaphorical, Davus."

"The fallacy is an epistemological allegory," Hieronymus interjected, but this, too, was Greek to Davus.

I cleared my throat, willing to debate the fallacy out of simple boredom. "How do we know what we know? How can we be sure of what we know? And what do we mean by `knowing,' anyway? Very often we say we `know' a person or a thing, when all we really mean is that we know what they look like. To truly know a thing, to know its essence, is knowledge of a different order."

Hieronymus shook his head. "But that's not the point of the fallacy. The point is that you can both know and not know at the same time. You can be in a state of knowledge and in a state of ignorance about the same subject simultaneously."

I shrugged. "That merely describes most people, about most subjects, most of the time. It seems to me-"

"Look!" said Davus. "Look there!"

A ship had appeared, sailing around the headland from the direction of Taurois. By the pale blue pennant atop its mast, we knew at once that it was a Massilian vessel.

A great cheer erupted from the spectators. Old men stamped their feet. Children let out shrill screams. Women who had stood for hours beneath the hot sun swooned and fainted. Although the ship was still too far off to appreciate the sight, many of the spectators waved their bits of cloth in the air.

The cheering grew louder as the vessel approached the harbor entrance. But no other vessel was seen to be following, and the cheering began to fade. Of course, the fact that the ship was arriving alone did not necessarily forebode something sinister; perhaps it was a messenger ship sent ahead of the rest to carry news of victory. Still, there was something disturbing in the way the ship approached, not on a steady course but veering back and forth erratically, as if the crew were shorthanded or completely exhausted. As the vessel drew nearer, it became evident that it had suffered considerable damage. The ramming beak at the prow was in splinters. Many of the oars had been lost or broken, so that the long row along the waterline had as many gaps as a beggar's grin. The remaining oars moved out of time with each other, as if the rowers had no drummer to keep them to a rhythm. The deck was a shambles, with overturned catapults and broken planking, scattered with prostrate bodies that did not move. The crewmen who manned the sail did not wave as they approached the harbor entrance but kept their eyes downcast and their faces averted. One figure in particular I noticed, an officer wearing a light blue cape. He stood alone at the prow of the ship, but instead of facing forward he kept his back to the city, as if unable to bear the sight of Massilia.

The cheering dwindled until it died altogether. A cold silence descended upon the spectators.

All eyes turned toward the headland, watching for the next ship to appear. But when ships were sighted-many ships, a whole fleet sailing in formation-they were not where anyone expected to see them. They were well out to sea, far beyond the offshore islands, barely within sight. They were sailing with all speed in a westerly direction, away from the scene of the battle and away from Massilia.

"Davus, you brag about your keen eyesight. What do you see out there?" I asked, though I already knew what the answer must be.

He shaded his brow and squinted. "Not Massilian ships; no pale blue pennants. And not those rough-hewn galleys of Caesar's, either. But they are Roman warships."

"How many?"

He shrugged. "Quite a few."

"Count them!"

I watched his lips move. "Eighteen," he finally announced. "Eighteen Roman galleys."

"The so-called relief ships from Pompey! All together. All intact. Sailing off toward Spain. They didn't take part in the battle at all! They must have hung back, watching and waiting. If the Massilian fleet had looked a fair match for Caesar's, surely they would have joined the fight. This can only mean-"

I was interrupted by a sound so strange, so full of hopeless despair, it froze my blood. The damaged, returning vessel must have reached the harbor and been boarded by those anxiously awaiting it. The crew had delivered their news. The sound I heard must have originated there, with the first men to hear that news. They moaned. Those who stood behind them heard the noise they made and repeated it. That wailing moan was a message without words, more devastating than any words could be.

It spread through the city like flames through a forest, growing louder and louder. It reached the pious in their temples, whose chanting abruptly turned to shouts and screams. It reached the spectators on the wall and moved toward us so rapidly and so palpably that I cringed as it approached and broke over us like a wave of pure despair.

The whole city joined in a great collective moan. I had never heard anything like it. If the gods have ears, they surely heard it, too, yet the heavens gave no response; the sky remained a blank. Even a hard-hearted man can be stirred to pity by a bleating lamb or a whimpering dog. Are the gods so much higher than mortals that they can hear the despair of a whole city and feel nothing?

A kind of madness gripped the spectators along the wall. Women dropped to their knees and tore their hair. An old man climbed atop the wall and jumped into the sea. People turned toward the Sacrifice Rock, pointed at the scapegoat and screamed curses in Greek too fast and too crude for me to follow.

"I think perhaps it's time for me to go home," said Hieronymus. His voice was steady but his face was pale. He had slipped off his shoes while sitting cross-legged on the rock. He stood and bent over to slip them on again, then gave a little cry and reached down. He had stepped on something.

"Pretty," was all he said as he held it up and peered at it. It glinted in the sunlight: a ring made of silver, quite small, as if for a woman's finger, and set with a single stone. The stone was dark and shiny. He slipped it into the pouch that had contained the stuffed dates. I wanted to have a closer look, but Hieronymus was in a rush. More curses were shouted at him. The crowd on either side was gradually converging toward the Sacrifice Rock.

The way down the slanting rock face was simple compared to the method by which Davus and I had climbed onto the summit from the wall. We descended more swiftly than I would have preferred, but I never felt the sort of danger I had felt swinging over empty space with Davus's hand clutching mine. Above and all around us the moaning continued. As we descended, the noise, echoing off the city walls, grew even louder and more unearthly.

Near the base the way grew steeper, so that we had to climb down backwards, facing the rock. As we neared the bottom I looked over my shoulder and was relieved to see that the area looked deserted; I had feared that an angry crowd might await the scapegoat. But where was the green litter that had brought him? It appeared that his litter bearers had panicked and taken flight.