Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

He didn't stay long in Mitylene, but when he heard that the great philosopher Cratippus was there, he went to seek an audience. "I am honored, Pompeius," said the old man in the pure white robe with the pure white beard flowing down its front. "No, the honor is mine." Pompey made no attempt to sit down, stood looking into the rheumy eyes and wondering why they showed no sign of wisdom. Didn't philosophers always look wise? "Let us walk," said Cratippus, putting his arm through Pompey's. "The garden is so beautiful. Done in the Roman style, of course. We Greeks have not the gift of gardening. I have always thought that the Roman appreciation of Nature's beauty is an indication of the innate worth of the Roman people. We Greeks deflected our love of beauty into man-made things, whereas you Romans have the genius to insert your man-made things into Nature as if they belonged there. Bridges, aqueducts ... So perfect! We never understood the beauty of the arch. Nature," Cratippus rambled on, "is never linear, Gnaeus Pompeius. Nature is round, like the globe." "I have never grasped the roundness of the globe." "Didn't Eratosthenes prove it when he measured the shadow on the same plane in Upper and Lower Egypt? Flatness has an edge. And if there is an edge, why don't the waters of Oceanus flow off it like a cataract? No, Gnaeus Pompeius, the world is a globe, closed on itself like a fist. The tips of its fingers kiss the back of its palm. And that, you know, is a kind of infinity." "I wondered," said Pompey, searching for words, "if you could tell me anything about the Gods." "I can tell you much, but what did you want to know?" "Well, something about their form. What godhead is." "I think you Romans are closer to that answer than we Greeks. We set up our Gods as facsimiles of men and women, with all the failings, desires, appetites and evils thereof. Whereas the Roman Gods the true Roman Gods have no faces, no sex, no form. You say numina. Inside the air, a part of the air. A kind of infinity." "But how do they exist, Cratippus?" The watery eyes, Pompey saw, were very dark but had a pale ring around the outside of each iris. Arcus senilis, the sign of coming death. He was not long for this world. This globe. "They exist as themselves." "No, what are they like?" "Themselves. We can have no comprehension of what that might be because we do not know them. We Greeks gave them human personae because we could grasp at nothing else. But in order to make them Gods, we gave them superhuman powers. I believe," said Cratippus gently, "that all the Gods are actually a part of one great God. Again, you Romans come closer to that truth. You know that all your Gods are a part of your great God, Jupiter Optimus Maximus." "And does this great God live in the air?" "I think it lives everywhere. Above, below, inside, outside, around, about. I think we are a part of it." Pompey wet his lips, came at last to what preyed on his mind. "Do we live on after we die?" "Ah! The eternal question. A kind of infinity." "By definition, the Gods or a great God are immortal. We die. But do we continue to live?" "Immortality is not the same as infinity. There are many different kinds of immortality. The long life of God but is it infinitely long? I do not think so. I think God is born and reborn in immeasurably long cycles. Whereas infinity is unchanging. It had no beginning, it will have no end. As for us I do not know. Beyond any doubt, Gnaeus Pompius, you will be immortal. Your name and your deeds will live on for millennia after you are vanished. That is a sweet thought. And is it not to own godhead?" Pompey went away no more enlightened. Well, wasn't that what they always said? Try to pin a Greek down and you ended with nothing. A kind of infinity.

He set sail from Mitylene with Cornelia Metella, Sextus and the two Lentuli and island-hopped down the eastern Aegaean Sea, staying nowhere longer than an overnight sleep, encountering no one he knew until he rounded the corner of Lycia and docked in the big Pamphylian city of Attaleia. There he found no less than sixty members of the Senate in exile. None terribly distinguished, all terribly bewildered. Attaleia announced its undying loyalty and gave Pompey twelve neat and seaworthy triremes together with a letter from his son Gnaeus, still on the island of Corcyra. How did word get around so quickly?

Father, I have sent this same letter to many places. Please, I beg of you, don't give up! I have heard of your frightful ordeals in the command tent from Cicero, who was here but has now gone. That Labienus! Cicero told me. He arrived with Cato and a thousand recovered wounded troops. Then Cato announced that he would take the soldiers on to Africa, but that it was inappropriate for a mere praetor to command when a consular he meant Cicero was available for command. His aim was to put himself and the men under Cicero's authority, but you know that old bag of wind better than I do, so you can imagine what his answer was. He wanted nothing to do with further resistance, troops or Cato. When Cato realized that Cicero was secretly bent on going back to Italia, he lost his temper and went for Cicero with feet and fists. I had to drag him off. The moment he could, Cicero fled to Patrae, taking his brother Quintus and nephew Quintus with him. They had been staying with me. I imagine the three of them are now squabbling in Patrae. Cato took my transports I have no need of them and set sail for Africa. Unfortunately I had no one I could give him as a pilot, so I told him to point the bows of his ships south and let the winds and currents take him. One consolation is that Africa shuts Our Sea in on the south, so he can't help but fetch up somewhere in Africa. What this tells me is that the war against Caesar is far from over. Resistance will crystallize in Africa Province as the refugees all head there. We are still alive and kicking, and we still own the seas. Please, I beg you, my beloved father, gather what ships you can and come either to me or to Africa.

Pompey's answer was brief.

My dearest son, forget me. I can do nothing to help the Republican cause. My day is over. Nor, candidly, can I face the thought of the command tent with Cato and Labienus breathing down my neck. My race is run. What you do is your choice. But beware Cato and Labienus. The one is a rigid ideologue, the other a savage. Cornelia, Sextus and I are going far, far away. I will not say where in case this letter is intercepted. The two Lentuli, who have accompanied me until now, will leave me before I reveal my destination. I hope to elude them here in Attaleia. Look after yourself, my son. I love you.

Early in September came the time for departure; Pompey's ship slipped out of harbor without the knowledge of the two Lentuli or the sixty refugee senators. He had taken three of the triremes but left the other nine to be sent to Gnaeus in Corcyra. They called in to Cilician Syedra briefly, then crossed the water to Paphos in Cyprus. The prefect of Cyprus, now under Roman rule from Cilicia, was one of the sons of Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor and very keen to do what he could to help Pompey. "I am so sorry your father died so suddenly," said Pompey. "And I," said Gaius Claudius Pulcher, who didn't look sorry. "Though he'd quite gone off his head, you know." "I had heard something of it. At least he was spared things like Pharsalus." How hard it was to say that word "Pharsalus"! "Yes. He and I have always been yours, but I can't say the same for the whole patrician Claudian clan." "All the Famous Families are split, Gaius Claudius." "You can't stay here, unfortunately. Antioch and Syria have declared for Caesar, and Sestius in the governor's palace at Tarsus has always inclined toward Caesar. He'll declare openly any day." "How is the wind for Egypt?" Gaius Claudius stiffened. "I wouldn't go there, Magnus." "Why not?" "There's civil war."

8

The third Inundation of Cleopatra's reign was the lowest on record in a land where records of the Inundation had been kept for two thousand years. Not merely down in the Cubits of Death: eight feet, a new bottom for the Cubits of Death. The moment Cleopatra heard, she understood that there would be no harvest this coming year, even in the lands of Ta-she and Lake Moeris. She did what she could to stave off disaster. In February she issued a joint edict with the little King directing that every scrap of grain produced or stored in Middle Egypt was to be sent to Alexandria. Middle and Upper Egypt were to feed themselves by irrigating the narrow valley of the Nilus from the First Cataract to Thebes. As every grain of wheat and barley grown in Egypt was the property of the Double Crown, she was fully entitled to issue this edict and to exact the punishment for any transgression by grain merchant or bureaucrat: death and confiscation of all property. Informants were offered cash rewards; slave informants were offered their freedom as well. The response was immediate and frantic. In March the Queen thought it politic to issue a second edict. This one assured those possessed of Letters Regnant exempting them from taxation or military service that their exemptions would be honored on the sole condition that they were engaged in agriculture. The whole kingdom outside Alexandria had to be driven to grow in the most painful way, by irrigation minus Inundation.