Harry Sidebottom - The Caspian Gates

Seated by Ballista in the front row, on the speaker’s right hand, Hippothous knew that Flavius Damianus would continue for some time. He surreptitiously picked food out of his teeth, and looked around. The council chamber was high and dark. It smelt of antiquity. Some one hundred men sat on the banked seats that filled three sides of the room. There was room for many more. Five hundred? Six? The town may have decayed, but Hippothous wondered if it could ever have boasted a Boule of anything like that number.

Flavius Damianus had settled into an extended excursus on the unchangeable nature of northern barbarians. Galatians, Goths, Scythians, they were all the same: fierce, yes, but irrational as they were, they lacked the true moral dimension of courage, as possessed by a Hellene. Just as they had no moral fortitude, their big, pale bodies could not endure the heat or hard labour.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hippothous checked how Ballista was taking all this. The northerner was staring impassively at the low fire smoking on the altar in the centre of the room. Probably he had heard the like many times before. Hippothous worried at a fragment of lamb stuck in his teeth. He had a slight headache.

At last, Flavius Damianus finished, with a rousing panegyric of the men of Priene, the descendants of the heroes of the battle of Lade. What did such men have to fear from a drunken rabble of Scythians?

There was a murmur of applause, rather muted. Carried away by his rhetoric, Flavius Damianus possibly had forgotten that the Ionians had lost the battle of Lade. Not the man with an oration your ancestor was, thought Hippothous. That is the problem with us Hellenes: forever dwelling on the distant past. Maybe the Romans are right: we Hellenes talk too much and do too little.

Tatianus thanked Flavius Damianus, and called the Vir Ementissimus Marcus Clodius Ballista to take the floor.

Hippothous sat forward. He knew what Ballista was going to say. Although he did not understand the reason for it, he was interested to see what reaction it would provoke.

As Ballista stood, collecting his thoughts, a shaft of light came from the door at the top of the northern steps. Ballista waited as the latecomer found his seat.

‘Councillors of Priene.’ Ballista spoke Attic Greek well, with no barbarisms and almost without a northern accent. He had, after all, been educated at the imperial court in Rome. ‘Your city lies some miles inland. The Goths will not go far from their boats. If they lose them, they are cut off in a hostile land. Further down the coast, the city of Miletus and the sanctuary of Didyma have much to fear; the city of Priene little. Should the Goths come here, you have stout walls. The Goths have come to plunder, not to besiege. I believe, if sensible precautions are taken, that the city of Priene is safe. So safe that I intend to leave my familia – my beloved wife and small sons – here while I travel to Miletus. As an experienced military officer, I will offer my services in their defence.’

Ballista stopped. There were cries of protest. What malignant daemon had put this in his mind? Ballista should stay here and help them.

The northerner shook his head. ‘My mind is made up. I will take just my accensus Marcus Aurelius Hippothous and my freedman Marcus Clodius Maximus. The rest of my familia I entrust to your protection. They will stay at the house of my friend Marcus Aurelius Tatianus. May the gods hold their hands over all of us.’

Outside, walking through the Sacred stoa, Hippothous recalled the parting at Tatianus’s house. Ballista’s sons had behaved well. The younger, Dernhelm, might be too young to realize the full import, but the elder, Isangrim, had been brave. There had been few words spoken between Ballista and Julia: brief platitudes, a simple kiss. The atmosphere had been tense with things unsaid, thoughts never to be formed as they had not been uttered. At the last, Ballista had embraced old Calgacus, they whispered close – fierce, strong things – and it had been done.

Leaving those you loved – Hippothous had done it many times. But two stood out. Tauromenium, all those years ago: the last, brief meeting with Cleisthenes, upstairs above a bar, in a room rented by the hour, time running out, the retainers and hired toughs already out looking for him. The youth crying, pleading to leave with the man he loved – he would not care when his family disinherited him, if the whole world called him a cinaedus. Hippothous was moved, but he knew Cleisthenes did not mean it or, if he did, he would soon change his mind. He had loved the boy one more time, and set off for the docks.

Cleisthenes, dear boy though he had been, was nothing compared with Hyperanthes. They had grown up together. Hippothous and Hyperanthes, ephebes of the city of Perinthus; their families rich, well connected. Possibly, if they had not been the same age, the polis would have looked more indulgently on them – as the older erastes and his younger eromenos, a throwback to the great days of free Hellas, the time of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Alcibiades and Socrates. Maybe then Hyperanthes’ father would not have sent him away to Byzantium into the so-called care of Aristomachus. Even then, after Hippothous had killed Aristomachus, even then it would have been well but for the shipwreck. Not a night passed that the memory did not haunt Hippothous. The dark waters off Lesbos, the life slipping from Hyperanthes in the cold, the boy slipping away in the dark.

They reached the crossroads to the north-east of the agora where the horses were waiting, and Hippothous came back to the present. The two slaves Ballista had hurriedly purchased held the bridles of the five horses and two pack mules. The animals looked up from the fountain, mouths dripping.

Ballista had asked Tatianus to provide a messenger to go to the governor Maximillianus. The man was there. Ballista led him away from the fountain, away from the others, then called for Maximus to join him. He did not ask Hippothous. The horses went back to drinking.

Ballista talked earnestly to the messenger. Hippothous watched. He felt jealous of the northerner’s intimacy with Maximus, angry that Ballista should trust that ignorant Hibernian and not his accensus.

The messenger left. Ballista and Maximus came back, and they all mounted. Ballista played with the ears of his pale horse. ‘Time to go.’

They rode west, the ordered columns of the Sacred stoa on their right, the agora to the left. The half-witted Hibernian was singing a song about a woman with five accommodating daughters. They passed the steps up to the great blue and red temple to Athena and Augustus. The street fell away before them.

The full decline of Priene was evident. Shops on one side, houses the other; most ruined, roofs fallen. It was not recent. Tall pines thrust up through some of the broken buildings. There were very few people about.

Hippothous had no idea why Ballista had taken this dangerous course. There was little in his physiognomy that suggested the hero. His eyes were very dark blue, almost bluish-black. Often, they caught the light, shone like the rays of the sun. It was a combination that suggested caution about everything, if not cowardice and fear, as well as an unseemly companionship with the poor. Still, one single sign will not suffice.

Yet, no matter how illconsidered their expedition was, the sun was shining, swallows cut through the air, the pines gave shade. Life could be worse.

A black man suddenly walked out from one of the sheer, stepped alleys to the right. In the lead, Ballista’s horse shied. It backed, rear hooves stamping dangerously close to the broken slabs covering the drain on the left of the street. Hippothous could not suppress a shudder. A bad omen. Black was the colour of the underworld; of ghosts and daemons, of triple-faced Hecate and the terrible Eumenides. Before the battle of Pharsalus, Brutus’s men had come across an Aethiopian. They had run him through with their swords. They had lost the battle.

Ballista got his grey under control, spoke soothingly to it. The Ethiopian bowed, blew a kiss to the mounted men. Ballista nodded and moved on. The others followed. The Ethiopian watched them go.

They rode on slowly, in silence. Even Maximus was quiet. Hippothous thought that some of the warmth had gone out of the afternoon.

They were nearing the West Gate when Ballista reined in and spoke to an old man squatting by the side of the street. Was the Alexandreum nearby? The ancient unfolded himself and shuffled to an alley off to the left. He gestured: come, come.

Ballista and Hippothous swung down. Maximus said he would stay with the animals.

The entrance to the alley was narrow, largely overgrown. The old man was waiting some paces down on the left. He pointed to an open door.

Ballista’s hand went to the wallet on his belt. With an air of the greatest dignity, the old man demurred and returned the way they had come.

Hippothous followed Ballista into a courtyard. It was dusty and empty, with the sad air of neglected festivals. On the doorpost was an inscription: You shall enter this sanctuary clean and dressed in white . Hippothous noted that Ballista was wearing black.

A priest appeared from a doorway in the south wall. He walked unhurriedly. Disconcertingly, he gave the sense of having expected them. He welcomed them formally, talked briefly with Ballista and graciously accepted some money.

After the priest had left, they stood waiting. The courtyard was still, hushed. Ballista was not in the mood to talk.

In due time, the priest reappeared with a small boy carrying the offerings. They ushered the men towards a door in the north wall, into the sanctuary itself. The room was dark; three columns down the middle. In the north-east corner was a low platform. They mounted the steps. On the platform stood a marble table. On it were statues: Alexander reaching for his sword, Cybele, other divinities. The table stood over a crevice in the rock.

Ballista took the small cakes and placed them on the table. He took the unmixed wine he had requested and tipped it down into the crevice.

Alexander lives and reigns.

With no further ado, Ballista turned and left. Hippothous followed him.

Outside, a fresh wind had got up. The alley afforded a magnificent view out over the city walls, across the Maeander plain and the Aegean, to a range of hills. Misty and blue in the distance, the last of those had to be the peninsular of Miletus. Alexander, it was said, had gone from this very house to conquer Miletus. Hippothous did not know what Ballista was thinking, but he wondered if the bad omen had been averted.

Ballista looked at the moon. It was big, one night before full. Over the starboard bow was the small, three-humped island of Lade, dark and quiet. To the other side, no distance across the water, the lights of Miletus twinkled all over the slopes of the peninsula. The water ran down the sides of the boat, spun out behind, the wake bright on the dark sea.

It was late. Ballista was tired. They had ridden out of Priene, past the landlocked port of Naulochos, to a village called Skolopoeis. There they had sent one of the slaves back to Priene with the animals. Having hired the fishing boat, they had waited for the coming of the evening offshore breeze. Ballista stretched and yawned. It seemed an age since they had set out before dawn that morning to travel to Priene.

Seated in the bows, Hippothous was telling Maximus about Miletus. Like a good Hellene – like Demetrius, the previous accensus – Hippothous seldom missed an opportunity to parade his knowledge of distant Hellenic history. ‘The land here was ruled by a local, a Carian chief called Anax or something barbarous like that. Then warriors from Crete came. They were led by Miletos, the son of Apollo and Areia; although some say his mother was Deione or Acacallis.’

‘Strange,’ said Maximus. ‘It is usually the father a fellow is not so sure about.’

Hippothous ignored the interruption. ‘Of course, some say the founder was Sarpedon, but that is obvious nonsense.’

‘Obvious to the most benighted fool.’

‘Anyway, the Cretan newcomers settled down with the local Carians and things were fine between them. But things were very different when the Ionians came under Neileus, son of King Kodros of Athens. They killed all the men and took their women. And that is why, to this day, the wives of the Milesians will neither sit at table with their husbands nor call them by name.’