Ivan Yefremov - Thais of Athens

“Have I earned forgiveness?” Ptolemy asked.

“What for?” the hetaera asked with surprise. “Although if you are guilty of something, you would know better. Still, you have earned it. Catch!” Thais cried, then jumped off the horse straight into Ptolemy’s arms, as she had many times with Menedem. But while the mighty Spartan had stood like a rock, Ptolemy wavered despite his strength, and almost dropped the hetaera. She managed not to fall only by putting her arm firmly around his neck.

“Bad omen,” Thais said, laughing. “You won’t hold on to me.”

“Yes I will,” Ptolemy spat.

Thais freed herself from his arms and ran to the pacer. She patted him gently and kissed his soft warm nose.

Boanergos shifted from one foot to another several times, tipped his head, then lightly pushed Thais with his head, neighing softly. There was no better way he could indicate that he liked his new mistress. At Ptolemy’s signal, a slave handed Thais a piece of barley bread. She unbridled the horse and gave him the treat. Having eaten it, the steed rubbed his head against her shoulder. As he was led away, Thais could have sworn he looked back and winked at her, so mischievous was his expression.

Despite all of Ptolemy’s efforts, he could not seem to revive his old relationship with Thais. The spirited, mischievous and courageous girl, who had seemed like an ideal lover to the Macedonian, had given way to a woman. The woman was just as courageous, but possessed greater inner strength and was both mysterious and incomprehensible. Her interests no longer coincided with those of Ptolemy, despite the fact that he was an observant pragmatist and good strategist.

Thais’ thirst for knowledge reminded him of Alexander. Ptolemy remembered one nighttime conversation when he had tried to engage Thais in politics. While pontificating on the subject of Plato, Aristotle, Athenian democracy, and Spartan military state, he talked about the need to create a new city that would be more splendid and glorious than Athens.

Lands conquered by Alexander had already formed a strong empire, including the entire Inner Sea coast from Hellespont to the Libyan shores. Not one of the previous state structures: polis (city-state), monarchy, or oligarchy suited this new country. Nothing but tyranny would do: a rule by one man in possession of military force. But tyranny was short-lived, and military luck was changeable. The life of an army leader was even more subject to chance, especially the life of one as prominent as Alexander. It was necessary to create a clear plan for structuring Alexander’s empire, but the king himself hadn’t even thought of the name for his new country.

Ptolemy noticed that Thais was bored, and was listening only out of courtesy. In response to his forced outrage, Thais said calmly that all these thoughts appeared immature to her. One could not fantasize about the future, but had to do what was best for the people now, at the present moment.

“People? What people?” Ptolemy asked with irritation.

“All of them.”

“What do you mean, all of them?” the Macedonian asked. He stopped when he saw a patronizing smile flicker across her face, and suddenly remembered that Alexander was telling him the same thing when he discussed homonoya, the equality of all minds.

Their road took them north. Green islands of forests appeared more and more frequently, appearing in the midst of a grayish sea of shrubs which grew on the slopes of hills. Thais had been used to the rough, scratchy oak, as well as the pistachio and myrtle thickets since childhood. Large areas of black-trunk strawberry trees grew here as widely as they did in Hellas, as did the small laurel groves, where the air was stuffy even during cooler days. Thais loved the tall wide pine trees with long needles, the soft carpet of fallen needles and slanting rays of sunlight poking through the branches.

When the road passed through the crests and flat peaks of mountain ranges, the army was surrounded by the primal might of ancient cedar and fir trees. Thick and bumpy fir trunks, their straight branches hanging to the ground, obstructed the entire world, creating a quiet, dusky kingdom of silence and isolation. The powerful Syrian sun barely penetrated their short, coarse needles.

The Athenian was impressed by her first meeting with a grove of Lebanese cedars. Until then, only the oaks and tall pines growing in sacred places had filled Thais with reverence. No matter how big, the trees lost their individuality in groves and forests, becoming a crowd, from which an eye could only distinguish certain features, adding them up to build the image of a tree.

But here every cedar was a “personality”, and the multitude of colossal trees did not merge into an impression of a forest. Row after row of these remarkable, incomparable giants approached, allowing one to admire every detail, then vanished behind the next turn in the road. Their trunks grew up to ten elbows thick, with coarse, scaly bark the color of Salmaakh’s hide. They seemed to melt under their own weight, pouring into the rocky soil in bumps and bubbles. The cedars branched out low to the ground, their huge branches undulating into fanciful shapes. Snakes, hydras and dragons were outlined against the blinding sky. The trees reminded Thais of hecatoncheirs, hundred armed creations of Gaea, who rebelled against heaven with all of their awkward might.

More slender trees grew further down the slopes, having escaped the axes of Finikian shipbuilders and citizens of Byblos who prepared lumber for the temple of Solomon. These giants stood up straight, frequently splitting into two treetops and spreading their mighty branches to fantastic breadth. Millions of small branches with a fluff of short, dark, green or bluish needles grew horizontally, forming flat, patterned levels, one row after another, soaring up like the stairway of tree-dwellers, the dryads.

Ptolemy explained that these were leftovers of the once mighty woods. Further to the north they turned broader and more imperious, especially in the Taurus mountains of Cilicia, in Southern Cappadocia and in Phrygia. Hearing about the woods that were cut down there, Thais thought that despite her love of beautiful ships, these most important creations of human hands were not worth cutting down a giant. Destruction of a colossal tree seemed like sacrilege against

Gaea’s sacred rights as the all-bearing, nursing mother of all. This would unquestionably be punished by the wrath of mother Earth. In fact, punishment could already be seen in the endless rows of sun scorched mountain ranges, whose searing stones emitted suffocating heat day and night.

Having passed through the cedar grove, the road took the Macedonian army to a ledge leading through pale, craggy mountains with scant plant life, covered with dark vertical “ribs” that made them look like walls of a city. Their route was taking them closer to the sea.

“Are there any wild animals here?” Thais asked. “Do I need to worry about the horse?”

“You might run into a lion or a panther here and there in the mountains, but they’ve become rare because of the constant hunts. Several centuries ago a breed of small elephants lived in the valleys and hills of Syria. They were hunted by Egyptians. Finikians gathered ivory for Crete and exterminated the elephants completely.”

Thais easily made daily marches of three hundred stadiums. Ptolemy did not rush, letting the last few detachments from the Delta catch up with them. Leontiscus and his Thessalians rode off ahead of everyone. Before they parted, Leontiscus taught Thais how to use the Persian sweat blanket with wide straps and a military-style chest cover. The Athenian quickly came to appreciate its conveniences, especially for a distant trip. Leontiscus gave Thais a jug of potion made of leaves and the green shells of walnuts, boiled in vinegar. It was used to wipe down the horses; its scent repelled stinging insects. The Thessalian explained to Thais the rules for rubbing down sweaty horses, and the hetaera always made sure the stablemen rubbed down her steed starting from the legs. Whenever a horse became fatigued, its ears grew cold, Leontiscus said. He told her how to massage the ears, restoring the steed’s energy. Thais found out many such small and important secrets from Leontiscus during the five days the Thessalians traveled with Ptolemy’s men.