Steven Saylor - Wrath of the Furies

Killing a man by his own hand was not beyond him. Nor was cold-blooded murder, committed before thousands of witnesses. Everyone knows the old story of how he murdered his own nephew, young King Ariarathes of Cappadocia, when the two were on the brink of war and met face-to-face in front of their troops. First, they both laid down their weapons, so as to meet unarmed, but Ariarathes, sensing treachery, insisted that his uncle be searched. When the man patting him down came near his crotch, Mithridates snidely said, “Take care, lest you should find another sort of weapon down there,” and the man drew back-just as Mithridates intended, for concealed next to his genitals was a slender knife. The two kings drew close. Mithridates put his arm around his nephew’s shoulders, and before Ariarathes could say a word, Mithridates pulled out the knife and slit his throat. While the young king writhed on the ground and bled to death, Mithridates picked up Ariarathes’s crown and placed it on the head of his eight-year-old stepson, and no one, including the army of the murdered king, dared to oppose him.…

With such images in my head, you may understand why I was so fearful at being in the king’s presence, especially in circumstances that seemed irregular. Night was falling, and the room was dimly lit. As the king turned to face me, I looked first at his hands to see if they held a weapon or some instrument of punishment-they did not-then at his face. His expression was somber, but not angry.

I lowered my face and began to bow.

“You can dispense with the groveling,” he said. “There’s no one here to see it. Besides, I can hear the cracking of your joints, and the sound is most unpleasant.”

I began to apologize for making such a noise, but the king interrupted me. “What do you know about the Furies?” he asked.

“I beg Your Majesty’s pardon?”

“The Furies-what do you know about them?”

“I’m not sure … I mean … Your Majesty is aware that I am not a priest or wise man-”

“Great Zeus, man! I have priests and wise men running out my ears! If I lined them up outside this door and gave each one an hour to talk to me, I’d still be listening to them a month from now. Of course I know you’re not a priest. You call yourself a poet, don’t you?”

I sighed. “Perhaps, if Your Majesty would give me a chance to recite some of my work, Your Majesty would call me a poet, too.”

He laughed. Harsh as it was, the sound of that laughter caused me to relax a bit. “Perhaps I would. But that’s not what you’re here for. Poets are like priests in a way, aren’t they? They know things that others don’t-see what others do not. Well, then-have you ever seen a Fury?”

“I have not.”

“Ha! Neither have any of the Megabyzoi or Magi I’ve talked to. Yet they seem to know a great deal about these Furies. What do you know about them, poet?”

I thought about this for a moment.

“For one thing, there are those who believe it’s unlucky even to speak of them, or say their names aloud.”

“But speak of them you will, because I command you!”

I racked my memory, and recited back to him all I could remember about the Furies. The winged sisters are three in number: Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. They are older than Zeus and the other Olympian gods, having been born from the blood of Uranus when his son Kronos castrated him. They dwell among the dead in Tartarus, but are sometimes drawn to earth to punish certain kinds of wickedness. Once they find the mortal culprit, they hound him relentlessly, circling him and shrieking, striking him with brass-studded scourges. To be forced to see their hideousness is itself a punishment. They have snouts like dogs, bulging, bloodshot eyes, and snakes for hair. Their bodies are as black as coal, and they flit through the air on batlike wings.

I recited for him various lines from the poets and playwrights having to do with the Furies. He paced back and forth on the balcony, not looking at me. When I could recall no more about the subject, I fell silent for a long moment, then dared to speak again.

“Why does Your Majesty wish to know about the Furies, if I may ask?”

“That’s none of your business!” he snapped. He stopped his pacing and gazed at the first stars to appear in a sky of darkest blue. “But you’ll know soon enough-if you don’t know already! It’s supposed to be a secret, known only to those who need to know, but with a scheme of this magnitude, there are always rumors flying about.”

“Rumors?” I said, as innocently as I could, for I was remembering what Eutropius had told me, about being enlisted to help organize a massacre of unprecedented proportions-the slaughter in a single day of every Roman still alive in the territories conquered by the king. If such a scheme could be realized, tens of thousands of men and women-frightened, unarmed, guilty of no crime-would be murdered in a matter of hours.

“Why do I ask about the Furies? I have been advised by the leading religious authorities-Persian as well as Greek-that a certain ritual sacrifice must be carried out before this … secret event … takes place. The exact timing of this event was determined by my astrologers. But before the event, there must be the sacrifice. Otherwise…”

He was silent for so long that I dared to whisper, “‘Otherwise,’ Your Majesty?”

“Otherwise, the enormity of the event may rouse the Furies … may incur their anger … may cause the full, dreadful, unthinkable wrath of the Furies to be unleashed against me, not against my enemies.”

“And if the ritual sacrifice is properly carried out?”

“Then the Furies will be propitiated. If their wrath is stirred, it will be in my favor, like a wind against a runner’s back. The Furies will be on my side when … the event … takes place. The wrath of the Furies will be unleashed not against me, but against…”

Your victims, I thought-for surely he was speaking of the tens of thousands of Romans who were to die at his command. By making a sacrifice to the Furies, he intended to harness the very power that might otherwise be directed against the slayer of those victims. Instead of punishing the perpetrator of the slaughter, the Furies would sate their hunger for human suffering by taking part in the slaughter. Mithridates would receive the blessing of the Furies, not their curse.

Mithridates was an even greater monster than I had imagined. And yet … if he could truly harness and direct the terrible rage of the Furies, was he a monster, or something more closely approaching a god? The king turned toward me, saw the awe on my face, and smiled.

“From the look on our face, Zoticus of Zeugma, I think perhaps I’ve given you the inspiration for a poem.”

What sort of poem would that be? I wondered. What epic would celebrate the slaughter of innocents? What words could capture the amazement and horror I felt in the presence of a man who intended to bend the will of the Furies?

He sighed wearily, and suddenly looked not like a god at all, but simply a tired man of middle age at the end of a long day. “You haven’t been very helpful to me, poet. Or perhaps you have. This is the first time I’ve stated out loud what I expect to achieve with the sacrifice in the Grove of the Furies. My mind is clearer than before. Yes, I see my path more plainly now. You may go.”

Reflexively, I bowed as I retreated, and saw him wince at the noise made by my creaking joints.