Steven Saylor - The Seven Wonders

Posidonius shook his head. “The tale as you reconstruct it makes perfect sense, Gordianus. How could I have been so blind to Gatamandix’s treachery? I was ready to accuse Cleobulus!”

“Of course, we still don’t know the truth of the question that set off this sequence of events,” said Antipater. “Was Vindovix’s ancestor the model for the Colossus, or not?”

“You forget that I saw the statue before it was defaced,” said Vindovix. “I have no doubt whatsoever. Vindovix, my great-great-great…” He lost track, blinked a few times, and went on. “He was the model for Chares.”

“I also saw the statue, and I have no doubt either,” said Cleobulus. “It looked nothing like you, Vindovix. You merely saw what you wanted to see.”

“But surely Gatamandix also thought it looked like Vindovix, or else he would never have gone to such lengths to destroy it,” observed Antipater.

“That bit of logic counts for something,” said Posidonius. “But the truth remains elusive. We have only legend, hearsay, and subjective observation to guide us. In this instance, empirical reasoning yields no definitive conclusion. Alas!”

* * *

It took Vindovix only a day to recover from his hangover, but I developed a fever from the wound I received from the Druid’s knife and was sick for days. With care from my host and Antipater, the fever passed, and I gradually recuperated.

Several days later, during a break in the stormy weather, I sat in the garden. Posidonius and Antipater were nearby, discussing a philosophical question. The slight warmth of the wintry sunshine felt good on my face.

Vindovix strolled across the garden. If anything, the lingering scars from his fall added character to his rugged features. He had begun to grow his moustache, but it would take a long time to regain its former glory.

He tugged at the silky hair above his lip, gave me a long, languid look, then walked on.

“Poor Vindovix,” said Antipater, “betrayed by a man he trusted. He must be lonely now, the only Gaul on an island of Greeks. I do believe he’s rather smitten with you, Gordianus.”

“He’s certainly persistent,” I said.

Posidonius raised an eyebrow. “And winter has only just begun. You’ll have to give in to his advances sooner or later.”

“What makes you think I haven’t done so already?”

Antipater blinked. “ Have you?”

I smiled and shrugged, feeling quite sophisticated and at home among these worldly Greeks.

“In Babylon, we shall see not one, but two of the great Wonders of the World,” said Antipater. “Or at least, we shall see what remains of them.”

We had spent the night at a dusty little inn beside the Euphrates River. Antipater had been quiet and grumpy from the moment he got out of bed that morning-travel is hard on old men-but as we drew closer to Babylon, traveling south on the ancient road that ran alongside the river, his spirits rose and little by little he became more animated.

The innkeeper had told us that the ancient city was not more than a few hours distant, even accounting for the slow progress of the asses we were riding, and all morning a smudge that suggested a city had loomed ahead of us on the low horizon, very gradually growing more pronounced. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and for miles around is absolutely flat, without even low hills to break the view. On such a vast, featureless plain, you might think that you could see forever, but the ripples of heat that rose from the earth distorted the view, so that objects near and far took on an uncertain, even uncanny appearance. A distant tower turned out to be a palm tree. A pile of strangely motionless-dead?-bodies suddenly resolved into a heap of gravel, apparently put there by whoever maintained the road.

For over an hour I tried to make sense of a party approaching us on the road. The shimmering heat waves by turns appeared to magnify the group, then make them grow smaller, then disappear altogether, then reappear. At first I thought it was a company of armed men, for I thought I saw sunlight glinting on their weapons. Then I decided I was seeing nothing more than a single man on horseback, perhaps wearing a helmet or some other piece of armor that reflected a bluish gleam. Then the person, or persons, or whatever it was that approached us, vanished in the blink of an eye, and I felt a shiver, wondering if we were about to encounter a company of phantoms.

At last we met our fellow travelers on the road. The party turned out to consist of several armed guards and two small carts pulled by asses and piled high with stacks of bricks, but not bricks of any sort I had seen before. These were large and variously shaped, most about a foot square, and covered on the outward-facing sides with a dazzling glaze, some yellow, some blue, some mixed. They were not newly made-uneven edges and bits of adhering mortar indicated they had been chiseled free from some existing structure-but except for a bit of dust, the colored glazes glimmered with a jewel-like brightness.

Antipater grew very excited. “Can it be?” he muttered. “Bricks from the fabled walls of Babylon!”

The old poet awkwardly dismounted and shuffled toward the nearest cart, where he reached out to touch one of the bricks, running his fingertips over the shimmering blue glaze.

The driver at first objected, and called to one of the armed guards, who drew his sword and stepped forward. Then the driver laughed, seeing Antipater’s bright-eyed wonder, and waved the guard back. Speaking to Antipater, the driver said something in a language I didn’t recognize. Apparently, neither did Antipater, who squinted up at the man and said, “Speakee Greekee?”

This was my first visit to a land where the majority of the population conversed in languages other than Latin and Greek. Antipater had a smattering of Parthian, but I had noticed that he preferred to address the natives in broken Greek, as if somehow this would be more comprehensible to them than the flawless Greek he usually spoke.

“I know Greek, yes, little bit,” said the driver, holding his thumb close to his forefinger.

“You come from Babylon, no?” Antipater also tended to raise his voice when speaking to the natives, as if they might be deaf.

“From Babylon, yes.”

“How far?” Antipater engaged in an elaborate bit of sign language to clarify his meaning.

“Babylon, from here? Oh, two hour. Maybe three,” amended the driver, eyeing our weary-looking mounts.

Antipater looked in the direction of the smudge on the horizon, which had grown decidedly larger but still held no promise of towering walls. He sighed. “I begin to fear, Gordianus, that nothing at all remains of the fabled walls of Babylon. Surely, if they were as large as legend asserts, and if any remnants still stand, we would see something of them by now.”

“Bricks come from old walls, yes,” said the driver, understanding only some of Antipater’s comments and gesturing to his load. “My neighbor finds, buried behind his house. Very rare. Very valuable. He sell to rich merchant in Seleucia. Now my neighbor is rich man.”

“Beautiful, aren’t they, Gordianus?” Antipater ran his palm over a glazed surface, then lifted the brick to look at the bottom. “By Zeus, this one is actually stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar! It must date from his reign.” For a moment I thought Antipater was about to break into verse, but his thoughts took a more practical turn. “These bricks would be worth a fortune back in Rome. My patron Quintus Lutatius Catulus owns a few, which he displays as specimens in his garden. I think he paid more for those five or six Babylonian bricks than he did for all the statues in his house put together. Ah well, let’s push on.”