It was one of the most frequented waterways I had ever seen. Outside the huge harbour, ferries plied both north-south to and from the towns on the southern edge of the lake, and also east-west. The fringes of the lake were extremely marshy, yet lined with jetties. Flat-bottomed punts were everywhere. Many people lived and worked from houseboats moored in the shallows - whole families, including infants who at crawling stage were tied on with a rope around the ankle that just gave them enough play to keep safe. ‘Hmmm. I wonder if it would be frowned upon if we tried short tethers with our own dear mites?’ ‘Julia and Favoma could undo a rope in about five minutes.’ The driver refused to stop among the marshes. He said the tall papyrus reeds were full of paths and dens used by gangs of criminals. This seemed at odds with the multitude of luxurious out-of-town villas to which rich Alexandrians migrated for leisure in the countryside. Playboys and tycoons don’t put up with brigands in their neighbourhood - well, not unless they themselves are brigands who have made their pile and settled in huge villas on the proceeds. The tycoons’ spreads here worked like the grand holiday homes in the coastal strip between Ostia and the Bay of Neapolis - close enough to be reached from town in the evening by weary businessmen, and close enough too for obsessive workers to feel they could nip back to the courts and to hear the news in the Forum without ever growing out of touch.
We had left the harbour behind us and driven out on the long narrow land spit between sea and lake. After a time the driver decided the reeds in these parts were not the dangerous kind out of which brigands might rush to steal his horse. They looked the same as the others to me, but you bow to expert local knowledge. The horse itself was game to plod on, since it made progress at an undemanding pace, allowing itself time to gaze around at the views. But the man needed to get down and fall asleep under an olive tree. He made it plain we required a rest stop, so we obediently took one.
Fortunately we had brought drinking-water and snacks to keep us occupied. Herons and ibises paraded themselves. Frogs and insects kept up low background noise. The sun was hot, though not sweltering. While the driver snored, we took advantage of the peaceful spot. He may have been acting and hoped for intimate behaviour to spy on, but I was alert to that. Besides, sometimes catching up on a case is even more alluring.
‘I had a long talk with Cassius this morning, when you abandoned me again,’ said Helena, who liked to be part of everything. Her complaint was light-hearted. She was used to me disappearing on interviews or surveillance. She never minded me doing the boring routines, so long as I let her play dice when the game hotted up.
‘I was with your dear brother part of the time, looking at the Pinakes.’
‘How commendably academic. Oddly enough, Cassius and I were talking about the catalogue.’
‘I hadn’t seen him as a scrollworm.’
‘Well, neither had I, Marcus, but we know very little about him. We just assume Cassius was once some beautiful, vacuous young boy Uncle Fulvius picked up in a gym or a bath house - but he is probably not that young.’
I laughed lazily. ‘So you think he’s an intellectual? Fulvius chose him for his mind? When nobody is looking, they sit together and intently discuss the finer points of Plato’s Republic?’
Helena biffed me. ‘No. But he is his own man. I think Cassius must have received an education - perhaps enough to have wanted more, but his family could not afford it. I’m sure he comes from a working background, he’s too sensible not to. Anyway, so does Fulvius; your grandfather had the market garden. Now it’s Fulvius who takes the lead in their business activities. I reckon that while Cassius is kept hanging around waiting for Fulvius to clinch some deal, he may sit in a corner and read a scroll.’
‘Perfectly possible, my darling. It is what I would do myself
‘You would buy drink,’ scoffed Helena. ‘And eye up women,’ she added balefully. I could not deny it - though of course it would be only for comparative purposes.
‘Not Cassius.’
‘Well, I expect he can read and drink . . .’
‘And eye up men?’
‘I suppose that would depend how near Fulvius was ... do you think men who live with men are as promiscuous as men who live with women?’
I dropped my voice. ‘Some of us are loyal.’
‘No, all of you are men . . .’ Despite her tone, Helena laid a hand on my arm as if exonerating me. Like many women who understand the male sex, she took a charitable view. She might say, women had to do that or live as spinsters - though she would say it kindly. ‘Anyway, do you want to hear what he says?’
I stretched out on my back in the sun, hands clasped behind my head. ‘If it’s relevant.’ It had better be exciting, or I would nod off.
‘Listen, then. According to Cassius there are tensions in the academic community. When the Museion was first set up, it was a magnificent centre of learning. The scholars who came to live in Alexandria all carried out new scientific research and lectured; great men published great papers. On the literary side, they conducted the first systematic study of Greek literature; grammar and philology were invented as subjects of study. At the Library, they had to decide which collected scrolls were original, or closest to the original, especially when they had duplicates. And of course there were duplicates, because the books came from various collections which must have overlapped or, as you know, darling, plays in particular have more than one copy. When you wrote The Spook Who Spoke, you were scribbling in a hurry - so errors may have crept in, even to your master copy; plus the actors made their own scripts, sometimes only bothering with their own characters and cues.’
‘Their loss!’
‘Oh of course, dearest.’
To retaliate for her sarcasm, I made a lunge; despite her pregnancy, Helena managed to shuffle quickly out of reach. Too drowsy for another attempt, I contributed: ’We know how the Library collection was gathered. The Ptolemies invited the leaders of all the countries in the world to send the literature of their country. They backed that up like pirates. If anybody was sailing near Alexandria, teams of searchers would raid their ships. Any scrolls they found in luggage were confiscated and copied; if the owners were lucky they got back a copy, though rarely their own original. Aulus and I saw some of that today - such works are listed as “from the ships” beside their titles in the Pinakes.’
‘The story is true then?’ Helena demanded. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t argue with a Ptolemy.’
‘Not unless you wanted to be tipped into the harbour. So what’s the controversy nowadays?’
‘Well, you know what happens with copying, Marcus. Some scribes make a bad job of it. At the Library, the staff examined duplicates to decide which copy was the best. In the main, they assumed the oldest scroll was likely to be most accurate. Clarifying authenticity became their specialism. But what started as genuine critique has become debased. Texts are altered arbitrarily. People who feel strongly say that a bunch of ignorant clerks are making ridiculous alterations to works they just don’t have the intellect to understand.’
‘Scandalous!’
‘Be serious, Marcus. Once, literary study in Alexandria was of a very high standard. This persisted until recently. About fifty years ago, Didymus, the son of a fishmonger, was one of the first native Egyptians to become an accomplished scholar. He wrote three and a half thousand commentaries on most of the Greek classics, including the works of Callimachos, the Library’s own cataloguer. Didymus published an authoritative text of Homer, based on Aristarchus’ well-regarded version and his own textual analysis; he wrote a critical commentary on Demosthenes’ Philippics; he created lexicons -’