The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World Read online

  “The crowing cock—that suggests a man who made himself heard far and wide, as did Antipater with his verses. And as the king of poets, the scepter is rightfully his. But the knucklebone, and the Chian throw…”

  Catulus puzzled a while longer, then clapped his hands. “By Hercules, that’s the cleverest stroke of all! You’ve managed to symbolize not just the beginning of Antipater’s life—his birth in Tyre—but also his end, and the exact manner of his death. ‘Chian’ is a bad way for the die to fall, but the island of Chios is also famous for fine wine. By drinking too much wine, Antipater took a terrible tumble—befallen by a veritable Chian throw. You’ve created a pun in stone, Finder. It’s not merely clever; it’s downright brilliant!”

  My father actually blushed, and lowered his eyes, as if he were too modest to accept such a compliment.

  Catulus drew himself stiffly upright and gathered the folds of his toga. “Finder, I owe you an apology. When I heard that the affairs of my dear friend Antipater had been entrusted to—well, to a person not of our circle—I thought that Antipater must have lost his wits prior to making his will. But I now see how very close the two of you must have been, and the special attention he gave to your son, and most of all, your extreme cleverness, which only a man of Antipater’s intellect could fully appreciate. You’ve done the old fellow proud with this tombstone. I couldn’t have created a better one myself.”

  And with that, the consul burst into tears and cried like a woman.

  * * *

  “Antipater, this is madness!” My father shook his head. “You can’t change our plans at the last moment. You cannot take part in your own funeral!”

  After composing himself, the consul Catulus had rejoined his retinue in the street outside our house, where the funeral procession had begun to gather. I could hear the musicians warming up, playing shrill notes on their pipes and rattling their tambourines. The professional mourners were loosening their throats, making loud, ululating sobs. In a matter of moments, bearers would arrive to carry the bier out of our vestibule and into the street, and the procession would begin.

  Antipater studied his reflection in a polished silver mirror, stroking his newly shaven chin. For as long as I had known him, he had worn a long white beard. But for his exit from Rome, he had allowed Damon to cut his beard and shave his cheeks. It was not exactly a disguise, but he did look quite different, and considerably younger.

  The plan was this: once the funeral procession disappeared down the street, Antipater and I would slip out the front door; there could be no better time to leave unobserved, since anyone likely to recognize Antipater would be attending his funeral. We would steal across the city to the docks along the Tiber and board a boat headed downriver to Ostia. Such boats departed throughout the day and even during the night, so we would have no problem finding one.

  But now, at the very last moment, just as we should have been making ready to set out, Antipater had proposed a change of plan. Yes, he and I would leave for Ostia, and then for Ephesus—but not until after the funeral. He wanted to see the cremation and hear the speeches, and he had thought of a way to do it.

  “When the archmime arrives, Finder, you’ll tell him you don’t need his services after all and send him home. And I shall take his place!”

  It was the duty of the archmime—a trained professional—to walk in front of the bier, wearing the death mask of the deceased. Some archmimes made quite an art of their impersonation, duplicating the exact gait and gestures of the dead man, performing mute, impromptu skits to remind anyone who knew the deceased of some familiar behavior.

  “But I hired the best archmime in Rome,” my father complained, “just as your will instructed. He’s the most expensive player in the whole procession.”

  “Never mind,” said Antipater. “Who better to play me, than me? I’m already suitably dressed; you wanted me to wear black today, so that if anyone should glimpse me I’d not look out of place. And young Gordianus is still wearing his black toga. He, too, will be able to take part in the funeral.” Antipater raised the wax mask, which was affixed to a pole, and held it before his face.

  “Madness!” My father declared again, and then fell silent, for the consul Catulus, coming from the direction of the vestibule, suddenly joined us in the garden.

  “Finder, it’s time to begin,” said Catulus, with the tone of a man used to taking charge. “The bearers have arrived—I took the liberty of escorting them into the vestibule. And look, here’s the archmime!” He stared at Antipater. “How did you enter the house, and I failed to see you?”

  Hiding his face behind the mask, Antipater performed an elaborate shrug and gracefully extended one arm, making a flourish with his fingers.

  Catulus frowned. “That’s nothing at all like Antipater! But the mask is a good likeness, so I suppose he’ll do. Finder, shall we begin?”

  My father sighed and followed Catulus to the vestibule, where the bearers had gathered around the bier. In lieu of the death mask, a sprig of cypress had been laid over the ruined face of the deceased. I gave a start when I saw the archmime, a redhead with a weak jaw, standing in the front doorway; apparently he had just arrived. I tugged at my father’s toga and pointed. He quickly moved to whisk the actor back into the street. Catulus was never aware of his presence.

  The bearers lifted the bier. Antipater, keeping his mask raised, strode before them as they carried the body over the threshold and into the street. At the sight of the deceased, the hired mourners broke into a lament.

  I looked up the street, and was startled by the size of the crowd that had gathered for Antipater’s funeral. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised; he was one of the most famous poets in the world, after all.

  The musicians commenced a plaintive dirge. The procession slowly wended its way up the narrow streets of the Esquiline Hill until we passed through a gate in the city wall and arrived in the necropolis, the city of the dead. The bier was placed upon a pile of wood. Many speeches were made, extolling the virtues of the dead man, including a memorable one by Catulus. Antipater’s poems were recited at great length. Then, at last, the bonfire was lit.

  The remains were reduced to ashes, and the ashes were gathered in an urn. The urn was placed in a simple stone tomb, and atop the tomb was placed the marble tablet with its image of a cock clutching a palm branch and a scepter, with a knucklebone precariously balanced at the edge of the base.

  Throughout the proceedings, watching all, and watched by all, the archmime wore the death mask and performed an uncanny imitation of the way that Antipater had been known to walk or stand or tilt his head just so.

  As the old Etruscan adage goes, every man attends his own funeral—but Antipater was the first man I knew to walk away from his.

  * * *

  “Did you hear what Catulus called me? ‘The greatest poet of his generation’!” Antipater grinned. “But he misquoted my epitaph for Homer. ‘Herald of heroes, spokesman of gods, glory of the Muses,’ he said, but what I actually wrote was ‘light of the Muses.’ Still, it was flattering to hear my own humble efforts compared to those of Homer—”

  “I hardly heard a word,” said my father. “The whole time I was waiting for someone to realize your deception and expose the hoax. I’d have been ruined. No longer the Finder they’d call me, but the Fraudster!”

  “But no one suspected a thing. It went off brilliantly! Though I must say it’s a bit unnerving to see yourself consumed by flames, then scooped up like so much dust and gravel and poured into an urn.” Antipater took a long sip of wine. Night had fallen, and we had returned to the house on the Esquiline to share a hastily gathered dinner of scraps from the pantry. There was not much food in the house; my father had expected us to be gone by now.

  “To be candid, Antipater, this makes me doubt your judgment,” he said. “I’m having second thoughts about entrusting my son to your care on such a long journey. Who knows what mad risks you’re likely to take, if today is any exampl
e?”

  “If it’s danger you fear, will the boy be any safer if he stays here with you? One of the reasons for him to accompany me was to get him out of Rome while—”

  “I’m not a boy,” I felt obliged to point out. I would have done better to keep my mouth shut and listen to the rest of what Antipater had to say. How young I was, and how blissfully unaware of all that was going on in the world around me! I looked to my father to deal with all that; he was my shield against the winds of war and upheaval. The law might call me a man, but truly I was still what Antipater had just called me, a boy.

  Why was Antipater leaving Rome, and in such a secretive way? I was vaguely aware that toleration for Greek intellectuals like Antipater was at a low ebb in the city. Some among the Roman elite, like Catulus, admired all things Greek—Greek art, Greek literature and learning, even Greek philosophies of how to live and love. But others remained suspicious of the Greeks, considering them nothing more than a conquered people whose inferior, foreign ways were likely to corrupt Roman youth. That Rome was the master of Greece, no one disputed; all Greek resistance had ended a generation before I was born when the Roman general Lucius Mummius annihilated the city of Corinth, a terrifying example that cowed all the other Greek cities into submission. But as the wily Greeks had stolen into Troy by the ruse of a giant horse, so there were those in Rome who thought that Greek poets and teachers were a sort of Trojan horse, insidiously undermining the Roman way of life. Antipater had fervent supporters in the city, like Catulus, but he had enemies as well, and at the moment they were ascendant.

  Other changes were afoot. The long-simmering discontent of Rome’s subjects in Italy—conquered territories whose people had been granted only a portion of our own rights and privileges—was rapidly coming to a boil. If open revolt broke out, there could be violence on a scale that had not been seen in the Italian peninsula in a very long time. More trouble was brewing abroad, where Rome’s imperial ambitions were about to collide with those of King Mithridates of Pontus, who fancied that he, not the Romans, should dominate the wealthy city-states, provinces, and petty kingdoms of the East.

  All these concerns seemed very distant to me. I had only a nebulous sense that something dangerous loomed over Antipater and my father, and by extension myself. Any worries about this were relegated to the background of my mind. In the foreground was the immediate distress I felt at my father’s threat to keep me from going with Antipater.

  “I’m not a boy,” I repeated. “I’m a man now. It should be my decision whether I go with Antipater or not.”

  My father sighed. “I won’t stop you. I only feel a need to express my displeasure with the irresponsible way he behaved today. I hope it won’t happen again, in some circumstance that may cause you both to lose your heads!”

  “Finder, you worry too much,” said Antipater. “Young Gordianus and I will be among friends in many of the cities we visit, and when we venture to new places, we shall make new friends.”

  My father shook his head, then gave a shrug of resignation. “Have you finally settled on a name to use while traveling incognito?”

  “I have,” said Antipater. “It came to me in a flash of inspiration while I was watching myself burn on the funeral pyre. Allow me to introduce myself.” He cleared his throat, gave a flourish, and bowed deeply, which cause his joints to creak. “I am Zoticus of Zeugma, the humble tutor and traveling companion of young Gordianus, citizen of Rome.”

  My father laughed. I summoned up my spotty Greek, and caught the joke.

  “Zoticus,” I said, “Greek for ‘full of life.’”

  “What better name for a man supposedly dead?” said Antipater with a smile.

  “Actually, I was laughing at the choice of Zeugma,” said my father. “A rich man might come from Alexandria, a wise man from Athens, but no one comes from Zeugma—which makes it an ideal choice, I suppose.”

  “Actually, we may travel through Zeugma on our way to Babylon, depending on which route we take,” said Antipater. “We may have a chance to visit Issus as well, which isn’t that far from Zeugma.

  “On the promontory of Issus by the wild Cilician shore,

  Lie the bones of many Persians, slain in days of yore.

  The deed was Alexander’s. So states the poet’s lore.”

  My father continued to fret. “But are you not too famous, Antipater, to travel incognito? You saw how many people attended your funeral today. The name of Antipater of Sidon is familiar to anyone who knows even a smattering of Greek—”

  “The name is known—exactly so,” said Antipater. “And a few of my more famous verses are known as well, I should like to think. But my face is not known, nor the sound of my voice. People read Antipater; people have heard of Antipater; but they have no idea what he looks like. Once the news of my death spreads, no one will be expecting to see me in some city far from Rome. With my face clean-shaven, even the rare acquaintance who might recognize me won’t give me a second look. No one will connect the late, lamented Antipater of Sidon with the humble tutor, Zzzzoticus of Zzzzeugma.”

  Antipater seemed to take great pleasure in drawing out the buzzing sound of the initial letters. Later I would realize another reason that “Zoticus of Zeugma” pleased him so much: no name could be more Greek, or less Roman, since neither word could even be properly rendered in Latin, the letter Z having been eradicated from our alphabet two centuries ago by Appius Claudius Caecus, who complained that it produced an abhorrent sound, and the physical act of pronouncing it made a man look like a grinning skull. This tidbit of knowledge I had learned from Antipater, of course.

  * * *

  That night, at an hour when all the reputable citizens who might recognize Antipater were presumably indoors, we stole across the city—a young Roman suitably dressed for a journey, his father, his white-haired traveling companion, and the old slave who tended to our baggage cart. Poor Damon! Once Antipater and I were finally gone, he could look forward to getting some rest.

  At the dock, my father assumed the role of Roman paterfamilias—which is to say, he did his best to show no emotion, even though an old friend was setting out on a journey from which, at Antipater’s age, it was unlikely he might ever return, and even though the son who had been at his side from birth was about to be parted from him, for the first time and for a duration neither of us could foresee.

  What did I feel, as I embraced my father and gazed into his eyes? I think I was too excited at the prospect of finally setting out to realize the gravity of the moment. I was only eighteen, after all, and knew very little of the world.

  “You have her eyes,” he whispered, and I knew he meant my mother, who had died so long ago I barely remembered her. He almost never spoke of her. That he should do so now caused me to blush and lower my eyes.

  Damon embraced me as well, and I was taken aback when he burst into tears. I thought he must be exhausted from working so hard. I did not understand that a slave who moved in the background of my world could form attachments and experience the pangs of parting as acutely as anyone else.

  * * *

  As it turned out, Antipater and I were the only passengers on the little boat. As we glided down the Tiber under starlight, nestled amid our baggage, I was too excited to sleep. Antipater, too, seemed wakeful. I decided to ask him about something that had been puzzling me.

  “Teacher, the Tiber will take us overnight to Ostia, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And at Ostia, we’ll book passage on a ship to take us to our first destination: the city of Ephesus, on the coast of Asia.”

  “That is the plan.”

  “Ephesus, because there you have a trusted friend with whom we can stay—but also because Ephesus is home to the great Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Because it is your intention that on our journey we shall visit all seven of the Wonders.”

  “Yes!” Even by starlight, I could
see that he smiled and that his eyes sparkled.

  “Teacher, I’ve been thinking about something I overheard you say to my father, earlier today. You said to him: ‘People are always saying, “Before I die, I want to see the Seven Wonders.” Well, now that I’m dead, I shall finally have time to see them all!’”

  “And what of it?”

  I cleared my throat. “Teacher, did you not compose these verses?

  “I have seen the walls of Babylon, so lofty and so wide,

  And the Gardens of that city, which flower in the skies.

  I have seen the ivory Zeus, great Olympia’s pride,

  And the towering Mausoleum where Artemisia’s husband lies.

  I have seen the huge Colossus, which lifts its head to heaven,

  And taller still, the Pyramids, whose secrets none can tell.

  But the house of Artemis at Ephesus, of all the Wonders Seven,

  Must surely be the grandest, where a god may rightly dwell.”

  I paused for a moment. The Tiber, reflecting starlight, glided past us. Frogs croaked along the riverbank. “So, in the poem, you declare the Temple of Artemis to be the greatest. But if you haven’t actually seen all the Wonders, with your own eyes, then how could you—”

  “First of all, my name is Zoticus, and I never wrote that poem; a famous fellow named Antipater did.” Antipater spoke in a low voice, and even by starlight I could see that he scowled. “Second, your accent is atrocious. I pity that Antipater fellow, that anyone should declaim his verses in such a manner. You murder its music! We must drill you on the finer points of Greek pronunciation daily between now and our arrival in Ephesus, or else you shall cause laughter every time you open your mouth.”

  “Teacher—Zoticus—please forgive me. I only wondered—”

  “Third, a young Roman does not ask his Greek tutor for forgiveness, at least not where anyone might overhear. And finally, have you never heard of poetic license?” Antipater sighed. “As a well-traveled Greek, I’ve seen most of the Wonders, of course—at least the ones in the Greek part of the world.”