György Spiró - Captivity

Uri stood at the dock, in brand-new sandals and a tunic of delicate fabric and wrapped in a cloak of even finer angora wool, ruffled by the mild, early-winter northerly breeze. Commercial shipping sailed even during the winter; Uri was pleased to know that he had secured a spot on a powerful bireme with excellent rigging: he would reach Puteoli in two or three weeks, and from there he would soon get to Rome.

In his luggage he had several scrolls, including the Garland of Great Writers compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and his pupil Aristarchus, as well as the renowned Soros: an anthology of the epigrams of Asclepiades, Poseidippus, and the poet Hedylos, all bound into a bundle, as well as a volume of Leonidas’s epigrams about imaginary heroes and stupefying events. An exciseman rifled abstractedly through his sack; soldiers, bored to death, lounged to one side. The exciseman picked up the books and mentioned that Uri’s residence permit had expired long ago, so that his embarkation came up against some difficulties. Uri asked whether in that case, seeing that he had apparently been living in Alexandria without permit, would he be permitted, even compelled, to carry on enjoying Alexandrian hospitality henceforth. I’ll let you off, said the exciseman, but you cannot take these volumes with you; I am confiscating them in the name of Rome. Uri protested that he had copied these with his own hand; they were his own personal possessions. Right, said the exciseman, then I’ll also confiscate your cloak and I’ll think about what should happen to the tunic. The soldiers smirked. Uri nodded and slipped off the cloak from around his shoulders. The exciseman, astonished, gestured that Uri should move speedily up the gangplank, and in the end only the books were lost.

Uri looked back, his eyes screwed up, as the boat pulled out of the Eastern Harbor.

The morning sunshine cast a strange light on the buildings. The roofs of the massive, magnificent edifices shone yellowish white; the Sebasteion, the Emporion, and the magnetite vault of the forever-unfinished yawning block of the temple of Arsinoë glistened; the eastern semicircle of the amphitheater was shrouded in a dark shadow from which the western half of the structure emerged, with a reddish tinge, and the buildings beyond looked as if they were covered with snow.

Uri had seen snow once before, in Rome, when he was a little boy, and on that occasion he had laughed all day long.

It was not snowing in Alexandria, of course; the morning was cool, but not cold, yet it still seemed as if the entire city of wonders had been covered by something frozen, definitive, deadly.

At Puteoli, Uri took a look around the renowned slave market; that is to say, he looked around it in Dikaiarchia, because every inhabitant of the town spoke Greek, and Latin was hardly ever heard. Uri was even a bit apprehensive that he might have forgotten it, since it had been more than two and a half years since he had spoken a word of the language.

The consignment on offer was mediocre: sickly men with dark skin and thick lips and scrawny women, hanging around by the auctioneers’ tents; on the stand three people were examining the teeth of a woolly-haired boy, gazing into his mouth, and shaking their heads. Only the cosmetics merchant had attracted a crowd of any size, women carefully studying the varnishes and daubs before making their selections. Uri stood nibbling a lambchop roasted on an open fire (he’d asked for it to be well-done), and as he tucked into his food he found that his stylish cloak was attracting attention. Uri thought it best to make his way back, as quickly as possible, to the port, where he located a ship heading for Ostia, carrying a cargo of wool from Syria. He haggled the fare down by half, not that he couldn’t have paid, but he was a grown-up now, quite capable of driving a bargain, and what’s more an experienced traveler, and it did a lot for his spirits to show that he couldn’t be easily duped. He sold the stylish cloak as a matter of urgency, buying a shabby one instead, and also exchanged his sandals for a secondhand pair. The money he got for those he added to the sum he’d been given by the alabarch, enough to cover the annual salary of a legionnaire for two years: 450 drachmas, to be precise, money that he carried in a linen tube twisted around his waist under his loincloth.

While the ship was being loaded he strolled a bit farther along the wharf, where upon arriving he’d noticed something peculiar. He stepped out onto a bridge, which he saw — even with his poor eyesight he had noticed it — was sagging into the water at one point, though farther off other sections seemed to carry on above the tide.

The bridge — or rather, these pieces of a bridge — crossed the bay between the resort of Baiae and the naval base of Misenum; in place of pilings, ships, acting as pontoons, held girders and planks onto which stones and earth had been hauled in some rough approximation of the Appian Way. Uri strolled over to a building that stood at the other end of the bridge’s intact section; it was an inn constructed of timber, and it was in operation. There were no guests in evidence; the innkeeper greeted him jovially in Greek and led him over to a marble relief, the subject of which he started explaining enthusiastically.

Specifically, it was this very bridge.

The plump, ruddy-faced man told him proudly that the bridge had once spanned the entire distance between Puteoli and Baiae, some twenty-six stadia! It had been supported all along its length by ships similar to the few that could still be seen; some were old barks that would otherwise have been scuttled, but many dozens more had either been constructed on the spot, or were grain merchants’ crafts that had been pressed into service. But all of them had been taken away, the new ones too, because the shortage of ships had threatened the country with starvation, and now — it had to be admitted, a little late in the day — the entire fleet had been sent to Alexandria. It was a shame this had led to the bridge’s collapse because it had been built so exceptionally well: it had been strong enough to last four or five winters.

The emperor surely could not allow a famine this year when last year the Tiber had overflowed and swept away half of Rome.

Let’s just hope Far Side wasn’t washed away as well, thought Uri.

Uri looked at the relief; it was a splendid work, with much to be seen on it.

The innkeeper pointed out that this, here, was the emperor, and this the Parthian prince Dareios, who was held hostage in Rome, and those there were the senators; that the breastplate on the emperor was not just any breastplate but the very one which had belonged to Alexander the Great; his robes had been of silk, which unfortunately could not be shown on a relief, and they had not been painted as was the case with these carvings — the silk had been dyed a pure purple. And he had worn masses of gemstones on it, which the sculptor had also not represented, but he, the innkeeper, had seen it from very close up — all Indian jewels, no mistake! Also superb were the shield and sword carried by the emperor. He had made sacrificial offerings to Neptune, and to the goddess of Envy, so that no one should be jealous of his acts, and then he rode from the Baiae end onto the bridge, accompanied by the Praetorian guard, storming across it into Puteoli as if he were pursuing an enemy! That was not the end of it, either, because the following day he had returned to the bridge on a war chariot, wearing a gold-hemmed tunic, with famous charioteers riding behind — the innkeeper did not know their names, but they were all very famous — with an immense cargo of war spoils lugged behind! Fully worthy of it, he was as well, because he was the first man in the world who had crossed a sea on foot!