The Seven Hills

CHAPTER SIX

"A walking ship?" Selene looked from one Roman to the other. Their expressions seemed earnest. "I can see that I have stayed away from the Museum too long. Does a ship that walks have some advantage over the more familiar sort that sails or is rowed?" She hoped for some equally ironic response, but they seemed to consider her question seriously. Irony, she had learned, was a subtlety beyond the ken of the Romans. And as for humor-she almost shuddered-what struck the Romans as funny struck most people with horror.

"It doesn't exactly walk," Marcus Scipio said. "In fact, it is more of a rotary motion, rather hard to describe, really-"

"Perhaps," Flaccus said, "a demonstration is in order." Like Scipio, Flaccus was a senator, one with a more literary bent than his friend. The other Romans considered Flaccus lazy and lacking in martial vigor. Only a Roman would have considered him so. With her own eyes Selene had on one occasion seen him kill four enemies with six swift strokes of his short sword. Marcus had upbraided him for the two wasted strokes.

"Yes," she sighed, "a demonstration." The philosophers of the Archimedean school, who had risen from obscurity to preeminence with the arrival of the Romans, dearly loved to show off their new toys.

They trooped from the palace and entered the huge royal litter, which carried them the short distance down to the royal harbor. Since her last visit, a new ship had arrived. It certainly looked strange, with the bizarre addition of wheels to its sides, but how such a thing could walk escaped her. She saw also that it was equipped with the new, single steering oar mounted at the extreme end of the stern, instead of the pair pivoted at its sides in the familiar fashion.

At the wharf they descended from the litter and boarded the ship by way of its extra-long gangplank. The addition of the huge side wheels meant that the ship itself could not directly abut the stone wharf. The main deck of the vessel was as unconventional as the rest. It was very narrow, in order to make room for immense, inboard wheels that corresponded to those on the outside of the ship. These wheels were hollow frameworks, and they contained men.

"I confess," Selene said, "to utter mystification."

A man in a philosopher s ragged tunic came forward, his face wreathed in that self-satisfied smile she had come to know so well. He bowed and waited to be addressed.

"Good afternoon, Chilo," said the queen. "What new miracle have you to show me today?"

"As so often, my queen," he said, "there is little new about it. It is a novel application for the common water-raising wheel used in irrigation operations."

"I had noticed the resemblance," she said. "Why one needs irrigation wheels on a ship is not obvious."

"It has to do with our researches into the properties of energy," he said earnestly. "There is a relationship between force exerted in one direction and another force, or perhaps the same force, in another direction. We feel that there is a principle-"

"Quite fascinating, I am sure," the queen interrupted. "You must be sure to tell me all about it when you have it all figured out. In the meantime, if you could just show me how wheels benefit a ship?"

"Of course, Majesty, of course. Well, the outer structure is not precisely a wheel. I have termed it a 'rotary oar.' You see the boards protruding from its perimeter? These are paddles, and they perform the same function as a conventional oar, except that they work in a vertical plane, instead of the horizontal, or, rather the elliptical-horizontal plane of an oar."

"Chilo," Scipio said, "why not just get it moving? The principle of the thing will be instantly appreciable to Her Majesty then."

"I suppose so," Chilo said, disappointed.

"Now he'll sulk," Selene said when the philosopher went off to give his orders to the crew. "There is nothing sadder than a philosopher cheated of a chance to lecture."

Among the ship's petty officers there was a barking of orders and a popping of whips, and a piper began to play a rhythmic tune on his double flute. Within the inboard wheels, men began climbing rungs as if ascending a ladder. The outboard wheels started to turn, churning the water. The ship commenced a slow movement. It drew away from the wharf and moved out into the harbor amid a great creaking of machinery.

"You see," Chilo explained, "the vertical motion of the slaves climbing is transformed into the rotary motion of the inboard wheel turning. This is in turn transmitted to the outboard wheel, causing the paddles to push against the water, propelling the ship forward. By turning around and climbing the rear of the wheel, the slaves can cause the ship to move backward. Direction can be controlled by causing one wheel to move more slowly than the other, and the steering oar can be used for minor corrections. By working the wheels in opposite directions, the ship can spin quickly on its axis."

"Very ingenious," the queen allowed. "But oared ships can do all these things, and have for centuries. What is the advantage of these wheels?"

"There are several," Marcus Scipio informed her. "In the first place, you need far fewer slaves to turn these wheels than to man oars. A ship this size would require at least three hundred, with plenty of relief rowers. Thirty or forty slaves are all you need to man these wheels. They eat far less and that makes for longer voyages."

"And," said Flaccus, "rowers must be highly skilled. They are expensive and are not replaced easily. Totally, unskilled slaves and convicts can turn these wheels. Nothing is required except for a sound pair of legs."

"They can't be deaf," Marcus pointed out. "They have to be able to hear the flute."

Flaccus nodded. "That is true."

"If a wheel is damaged in battle," Selene pointed out, "it wouldn't be easy to replace, not like a damaged oar."

"This vessel is a prototype built to test the design," Chilo said. "For a warship, the wheels will have armored cowlings. Only the part that actually touches the water need be exposed." He looked at her expectantly.

"Very well," she said at last, "you may proceed with this project. What is the next phase?"

"Trials on the open sea, Your Majesty," Chilo told her. "These can proceed immediately, with this experimental vessel. Upon successful conclusion, a full-sized armed and manned warship will be built and tested. If all goes well, as I am sure it will, a flotilla will be constructed and deployed."

"The ultimate test will be battle," Scipio said. "If the wheeled ships prove to be more effective in battle, as well as cheaper and less wasteful of manpower, then we will convert entirely to the new system."

"Your Senate may be displeased to hear of it," she said, smiling. "I hear that they are even now building a fleet on the old model, and taking a great deal of trouble to train rowers."

"They'll adapt," he said. "We are an adaptable people."

That evening the two Romans dined with the queen on a palace terrace overlooking the beautiful little royal harbor with its jewel-like artificial island. Just to the west, they could see the huge double harbor of Alexandria, divided by the immense Heptastadion Bridge connecting the Pharos to the.mainland. On the eastern end of Pharos towered the incomparable lighthouse.

All this, Selene thought, was hers. Alexandria, the most glorious city in the world. And this city was only the crowning gem among her possessions. She owned all of Egypt, from the Delta, which contained the richest farmlands in the world, all the way down the immense river and beyond the quarries near the First Cataract, where the market of the Elephantine Island received all the exotic goods of the continent to the south, such as the ivory that gave the island its name, wonderful feathers and the pelts of beautiful animals, and the animals themselves: lions, cheetahs, apes, birds. There were woods for tree-poor Egypt, dye-stuffs, spices and endless coffles of black slaves from the interior to work the farms and quarries of Egypt and to be sold abroad, where they commanded high prices for their exotic looks, so different from common, pale-skinned slaves.

She was the richest as well as the most powerful woman in the world. But, she thought, it means nothing, because I owe it all to these Romans. They had saved her from political impotence as sister-wife to a reigning boy, and probable death at the hands of his corrupt ministers, once she had fulfilled her duty by delivering a royal heir. These Romans, by their arrogant intervention and surprising political sophistication, had eliminated those ministers by manipulating the Alexandrian mob. Their nation's reoccupation of Italy and invasion of Sicily had forced Hasdrubal to break off the Carthaginian assault on Alexandria, and now she sat on the throne of Egypt, her brother banished to an obscure wing of the palace.

She knew better than to be grateful. The Romans did nothing out of disinterested goodwill. Everything they did was calculated to advance the cause of Rome. First came their almost obsessive need to conquer, humiliate and destroy Carthage, as Carthage had once all but obliterated Rome. And after that?

This required careful thought. It was by no means certain that Rome could even win a single battle with Carthage, once Hamilcar mobilized his full might against them. Should Rome be defeated, or even suffer a setback, her position would prove far more secure than it now was. She would have leverage to use, positioning herself in a place of power as the most desirable ally for either nation. Should the present war be long and costly and end in an uneasy peace, she would be safe. Neither contender could afford to allow the other to have the matchless wealth of Egypt at its disposal.

But should Carthage prove victorious? That, too, might be to her advantage. The Romans would be certain to make the war costly. Even in victory, Carthage would be exhausted and close to ruin. Reoccupation and restoration of its possessions in Sicily and Italy would distract and drain Carthage for many years to come, while she consolidated her position and made new alliances. Parthia was the growing power to the east, and Syria might well see the advantage of an alliance with Egypt. If Antiochus was too stubborn to reverse his policy, there were time-honored methods for putting a more suitable heir on the throne without resorting to war.

But what if, against all expectation, Rome should win? They had the martial energy of her own Macedonian ancestors, those unbeatable warriors who in the reigns of only two kings had gone from control of an impoverished near-barbarian nation to lords of the old Persian Empire, masters of the world from Greece to India. If the Romans lacked any single leader with the tactical brilliance of Alexander, they seemed to have a great many commanders with widely differing methods, from the conventional, by-the-book generals who were reducing Sicily so methodically, to her own Marcus Scipio with his love of military machines and his preference for using foreign troops and sparing Roman legionaries for better things, to the dashing Titus Norbanus who now bid fair to become the glorious new Xenophon of his generation. The Senate would decide which general to send to take care of which situation, and this was a military advantage no other nation had ever. had.

Rome, she thought, might well conquer the world, as Alexander had once almost conquered the world. Alexander's empire had not outlived the conqueror himself, immediately splitting into minor empires controlled by his generals, who swiftly fell to battling among themselves.

Her own ancestor, Ptolemy, had seized Egypt as his share. Rome, she was certain, would not allow such a thing. Its outlandish republican government seemed chaotic, but it worked and it had staying power. Their unbelievable rise from beggar nation to northern empire was proof enough of that.

So what to do in the event of Roman victory? Selene was of Greek-Macedonian descent, without a drop of native blood in her veins. But after more than two hundred years the Ptolemies had Nile water in their veins and their flesh was the soil of Egypt. They combined the qualities of the Two Lands with those of Greece. Domination by Rome would simply call for patience, and patience was an ancient Egyptian specialty.

"Your Majesty," Scipio said, breaking into her thoughts, "I have to address a disturbing report I've received."

"You are being uncommonly formal," she observed. "You don't normally address me by title except in public."

"We Romans," Flaccus said with a mischievous smile, "consider capital punishment worthy of formality."

"Capital punishment?" she said, mystified. "Who is being executed?"

"My fellow senator here," Flaccus said, jerking a thumb toward Scipio.

"What? You know I don't understand Roman humor. Please explain."

"Nothing humorous about it," Marcus said: "I understand you are having statues of me erected in towns all up the Nile."

"Naturally. You are a great man now, and Egyptians are accustomed to seeing their great men in the form of statues. They won't take them seriously otherwise."

"I am flattered, but my fellow senators will take them as a sign of dangerous ambition and the fact will be used against me in the Forum."

"Furthermore," Flaccus pointed out, "some of them have been placed in temples, particularly those devoted to the cult of Alexander. Marcus's enemies in the Senate will say that he aspires to become king of Egypt and receive not only royal but divine honors. Among us 'king' is a foul word, and only a triumphing general receives semi-divine honors, and that for only a day. To aspire to such things warrants a gruesome death by Roman law."

"How silly," she said. "Why risk everything for power if you can't be king? And there is great precedent for living monarchs to be deified."

"We have different customs, Your Majesty," Scipio said.

"You hardly need to tell me that. Besides, I merely honor your services by ancient custom."

"Nonetheless, the mere appearance of such ambition will be quite sufficient for the Senate to demand my head. As proof of friendship with Rome, you might be asked to deliver it personally."

"In some ways you are a most unreasonable people. Oh, very well, I'll have the statues removed."

"Not removed-destroyed," Marcus specified.

"If the Egyptian people need a visible demonstration," Flaccus suggested, "why not erect tablets inscribed with words of your esteem for Rome and pledging the friendship of our two nations? If the populace truly require statues, make them statues to the genius of the Roman people."

"Genius?" Selene said.

"Every Roman male," Flaccus explained, "is born with a genius: a guardian spirit who protects him and advises him to right behavior. Girls are born with an equivalent spirit called sijuno. Places have genii as well: The genius loci is thespirit of that place. There is a collective genius for the people as a whole. This will be a way for you to render divine honors to your new allies without attracting the wrath of either the Senate or the gods."

"I see. Be so good as to give my director of works instructions on how these statues should be designed. I will see that they are placed in every town in Egypt."

"Very good of you, Your Majesty," Flaccus said. "The Senate and People of Rome will be pleased."

Later the Romans took their leave and Selene sat brooding. The men had a way of undermining her most careful, foresightful plans and somehow turning them to their own advantage. Who would have imagined that they would detect the subtle implications of those statues? Most men, especially the military sort, never saw beyond their own aggrandizement. These seemingly blunt, practical men were uncannily attuned to the attitudes of their peers, and they considered no one, not even a queen of Egypt, to be higher than their own peerage.

This called for further planning.

In their quarters in what was now acknowledged as the Roman wing of the Palace, Marcus Scipio and Aulus Flaccus compared notes. They drank the Lesbian wine they had come to love, Flaccus taking three swallows for Scipio's one, in a large room filled with models of machines from the Archimedean school of the Museum.

"I found out about the horns," Flaccus said.

"What horns?" Marcus said, examining a bewildering contraption its designer insisted would lift whole cohorts of soldiers above the walls of an enemy city and set them down inside without having to storm the battlements.

"These," Flaccus said, lifting Marcus's elaborate helmet from the table. "They are ram's horns."

"That much I figured out for myself."

"You haven't done enough sightseeing around here."

"I've been busy," Marcus said.

"If you'd paid attention, you would have learned that the ram is sacred to the god Ammon. Long ago, Greek priests determined that Ammon is identical with Zeus, hence the many temples to Zeus-Ammon erected by the Ptolemies. Zeus, in these temples, is carved in the Greek fashion, but with ram's horns to identify him with the native god. I believe you've noticed that the portraits of Alexander on local coins also depict him wearing these horns."

"That much I had noticed," Marcus said, nodding. "I wondered about that."

"Well, wonder about this." Flaccus reached into his purse and withdrew something. It glittered in the lamplight as he flipped it through the air.

Marcus caught it and sucked in his breath as he saw what rested in his palm. It was a magnificent golden coin, new-minted and as broad as three of his fingers held together. On its obverse side was a beautifully carved and struck masculine profile. Its features were unmistakably his own, and a curling ram's horn sprang from the rather abundant, curling hair above his ear. He raised his eyes to meet his friend's.

"Are these in circulation?" he all but whispered.

"I visited the royal mint this morning, luckily for you. They'd only struck a few, to show to the queen for her approval; I personally watched them melted except for this one. Then I got a sledgehammer and smashed the dies. I told the master coiner that I would see him crucified if so much as a single coin or die were held back. I even found the clay model the sculptor made for the die-cutters as a guide and destroyed that."

"Thank you, old friend," Marcus said with great sincerity. Then: "What do you think the woman is up to? Is she deliberately trying to have me killed?"

"I doubt it, though I wouldn't put it past her. She's not a nasty piece of work like her brother, or like Hamilcar and his sister, but royalty have their own set of priorities. Her first order of business is to secure her own reign. Next, she has to increase or at least sustain the power and prestige of Egypt. Rome is the rising power in the world, so she sees the advantages of an alliance with Rome. You represent Rome."

"That doesn't explain giving me divine horns," Marcus pointed out.

"I haven't told you all I found in the mint."

"Do be so good," Marcus said, pouring himself a large goblet of Lesbian, all but sweating with relief at his near escape. Death was nothing, but execution by senatorial order, with its attendant disgrace to his family, was unthinkable.

"In the sculptor's shop, where I found the prototype for the coin, there was another, unfinished model. This one showed you, horns and all, paired with Selene, portrayed as an old hag in the quaint local fashion."

"What! She really has plans to make me king of Egypt?"

Flaccus shook his head. "Nothing of the sort. She has only just become virtual queen in her own right. What monarch wishes to share power by elevating someone else to equal rank? But she knows her people will feel more secure if they see a strong man by her side. No, I think she wants you for her consort: by her side and in her bed, but definitely under her authority."

"She already has a husband," Marcus said, "her brother."

"Well, he's easily disposed of, isn't he?"

Marcus shrugged. "He's nothing, I agree. But royalty only breed among themselves. I don't think she'd want a commoner like me to father her children."

"She's royal but she's also a realist. As far as she's concerned, the scion of a very ancient family holding the highest honors of a republic is good enough. After all, your ancestors were consuls long before hers were kings. She's descended from Macedonian goatherds who tied their fortunes to the local chief and hit it lucky when one of those chiefs turned out to be Alexander the Great."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Marcus admitted.

"To give her credit, I doubt that it ever occurred to her how mortally offended the Senate and the population would be by those statues and coins. She isn't accustomed to republican institutions."

Marcus sat and pondered. "I suppose most men would find my predicament hard to comprehend. From being a minor officer and an unimportant senator I've risen to the position of the most important man in the richest nation of the world. I have the throne of Egypt almost within my grasp. Yet here I am, terrified at the implications."

Flaccus smiled. "It does seem odd. It would be a glorious thing to conquer Egypt as a Roman general. But to accept the rulership as the gift of Egypt's queen would be treason. Worse yet, it would make you richer than the whole Senate combined, and that could not be tolerated. And here you are, in a foreign land, all alone except for me, connected to Rome only by a few letters now and then. It's a good thing your family is so powerful and influential. You'd probably have been condemned already."

"That could change at any time," Marcus said. "If some of my relatives are killed in Sicily, or if some of our rivals should win great glory there, the balance in the Senate could change overnight. It's happened before."

"Yes," Flaccus said, sitting at the table and pouring himself another, "our political life is always uncertain. At least it keeps things interesting. Personally, I find all this dynastic intrigue boring, compared with politics at home."

A short while later a steward appeared and summoned them to Selene's private chambers.

"What might this portend?" Marcus said, checking his appearance in the burnished silver mirror.

"Maybe she's had a change of heart," Flaccus said. "She may have decided to execute us, since we don't share her taste in statuary."

Flaccus meant it in jest, but they both knew that it could be true. Helmets beneath their arms, military cloaks swinging smartly behind them, they strode in lockstep to the queen's private quarters, where slaves opened the massive doors before them. They marched through, halted and saluted in unison before the queen, who sat at a small table.

"Nicely done," she commended. "Now, get out of that silly armor and sit down. We have some serious talking to do."

"If it's about those statues-" Marcus began as slaves rushed to free him from his dress cuirass.

"Forget about the statues. I've-" She paused and wrinkled her nose. "You've been into the wine this evening."

"We usually are, when we aren't on duty," Flaccus said, grinning. "And the best, too. Lesbian."

Selene raised a hand and a beautiful young girl ran to her side. "Go to the wine steward and tell him to send us some Lesbian. The best, not the swill these two have been drinking."

"You mean there's better?" Flaccus said as the girl dashed off.

"What's happened?" Marcus demanded, sounding cold sober.

"A ship from Tyre put in tonight. The winds have been contrary and it's the first to sail from there in almost two months. One of my agents has sent an intelligence report. It seems that your friend Titus Norbanus has reappeared, with his army intact."

"Norbanus!" Marcus all but hissed. Their scouts had lost him when he took his army into the desert, confounding their expectations. Selene's ships stood ready to shadow his progress along the coast, but Norbanus had not obliged them. Flaccus had speculated that he would march down the coast of Arabia and seize the rich frankincense ports, but Selene's Red Sea skippers had reported no sign of him.

"He showed up in southern Judea. He brought his army across that awful desert in fine form, just as you said he might," she conceded. "Now he's in Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom, no doubt planning to capture the northern kingdom, Israel. It is the more populous and warlike of the two."

"And Norbanus is throwing his support behind the weaker king," Marcus said.

"You say that with a certain satisfaction," she observed.

"It's the wise thing to do. It's the Roman thing. I can't find it in me to wish a Roman army ill, though it pains me to give Titus Norbanus credit."

"Now that he's reappeared," Flaccus said, "the Senate could call him back."

"He won't report to the Senate until he's won a victory," Marcus said. "And if he's victorious, and sends home some fine loot, and has improved Rome's position in the East, the Senate won't dare call him in. My own family will vote him honors."

"You've been right about him so far," Selene said.

Marcus shook his head. "No. I was wrong about him for far too long. I thought he was nothing but a Forum politician who would be worthless at war. I don't dare underestimate him again."

"If he gets things his way in Israel," Flaccus said, "what will he do next?"

"That," said Selene, "will depend upon what Antiochus of Syria decides to do about him."