"You confuse me with one of your sheltered Greek milch cows who never see the outsides of their fathers' houses ere they wed. As you have seen, I can ride with the best, and at need I can fend for myself in other ways, too. However, I will keep out of your way and cause you as little bother as I can."
She betook herself to Beliddinos and thereafter used me with the same cold courtesy that had obtained between Vardanas and me at the start of our journey in India.
The road wound snakelike across the Babylonian plain, for the surface of this plain is cut up by coiling streams and pocked with lakes and marshes. Swarms of wildfowl flew overhead. In the distance, besides herds of antelope and wild asses, we sometimes saw ostriches. The Dahas went off in chase of them until I forbade it. While it cannot fly, the ostrich outruns a burdened horse with ease, and my lads never got within bowshot. Lions and leopards abounded in the thickets, but we had had our lesson and suffered no more losses from these beasts of prey.
As the plain grew flatter and the watercourses larger, fields of sprouting grain became thicker. Here the Babylonians, mostly small dark folk, till their fabulously fertile soil.
A little group of horsemen with lances appeared in the distance, keeping us in sight but never coming close. They followed us all day. When they appeared the next day, I pointed them out to Beliddinos.
"Be wary," he said. "Perhaps a band of Kossian robbers are they." Then he returned to the theological argument in which he was engrossed. "If you like, I will concede that, as our various religions on one supreme deity agree, you could say that Auramasdas and Brach-man and Zeus are but other names for Mardoukos. But it does not follow that the rituals are so effective, or the beliefs so true, or the morals so pure, of those who worship this god as Auramasdas, and so forth, as they are of those who revere him as Mardoukos."
"But all priesthoods say their doctrines are the truest," said Vardanas. "Thus our Magians say their doctrines come straight from the prophet Zarathoushtras, inspired by the good God."
"Come now," said Beliddinos. "Zarathoushtras may have been a good man, but he lived only a few centuries ago, whereas the holy traditions of Babylonia go back thousands of years. As our doctrines are the oldest, they must be the purest, because they have lasted the longest."
"I do not see how that follows. Rather they are more likely to have become corrupted in all that time."
"But everyone knows that the men of ancient times were closer to the gods and hence wiser than we!"
"I am not even sure of that," said Vardanas. "Time was when men made weapons of bronze, not knowing how to smelt iron. You cannot say knowledge had not advanced in that respect."
"The knowledge of how to slay each other more swiftly is no true advance in civilization."
"Well then, aside from the contradictory assertions of competing priesthoods, how shall we choose amongst the doctrines of the various religions? If they have things in common, they also disagree on many things. The myths of the Hellenes, for instance, say nothing about the evil spirit Arimanes, rival to Auramasdas for the rule of the universe."
"Maybe truth different to different men," said Kanadas. "Men see different parts of it, like story of blind men feeling elephant."
"That is like some of Pyrron's theories," said Vardanas. "It is a shame he cannot speak Persian, for he loves a disputation."
"What is his belief?" said Beliddinos.
"Why, he is actually an atheist! And such a good man in most ways, too."
"Like the Judaeans?"
"What are Judaeans?" I asked.
Beliddinos said: "A warlike, godless Syrian tribe whom for rebellion King Naboukodreusor deported. Many were settled in Babylonia, where still they dwell."
"Have they no gods at all?" I asked.
"Not quite. They have a bloodthirsty little tribal god called laves.
But all other gods they impiously deny and contemn. They deem it sinful to make statues of gods, even of their own fierce laves."
"It does seem absurd," said Vardanas. "I am told the Judaeans' religion makes them haughty and forbidding, so they will not eat or treat with other men."
Kanadas clucked over the iniquities of the Judaeans, whereupon Vardanas burst into coarse laughter. "Behold him who speaks!" he cried. The Indian had the grace to look shamefaced.
"Not so hostile are all Judaeans," said Beliddinos. "Many are men of sense and virtue, and some have even come over to Mardoukos. But hard to deal with are their priesthood. I fear their intolerant doctrines are subversive of good order and morality. For, while we may argue points of doctrine amongst ourselves in an intellectual way, the sinful mass of men need impressive religions, with many gods, exciting myths, and beautiful images and ceremonies, to make them act virtuously. But the priesthoods must respect one another and not strive to undermine one another's creeds or divert one another's revenues. This insolent Judaean claim to a monopoly of all religion has in it the seeds of bloody upheavals and persecutions."
The plain was now broken only by occasional low mounds. Sometimes we saw none for leagues at a time, and again several were in sight at once. I gave them no thought until one morning Beliddinos was missing at marching time. I found him and his servants scratching at the surface of a nearby mound. When I taxed him with the delay, he smiled a vague, otherworldly smile and held up a slab of brick covered with bird-track writings. "What is that?" I said.
"An ancient letter. It is of no value; the writer wants to know when the addressee will pay him for the five sheep as he promised. But it shows that here, too, stood a town in ancient times."
"Mean you this knoll was once a town?"
"So are they all." Beliddinos gestured round the horizon. "Folk build a town, and their houses crumble in the rains, and they cast them down and build new ones on the rubbish. Higher and higher rises the town, its own hill building, like the hills of Sousa." Beliddinos dropped the tablet, dusted his hands, and came back with me to the camp. "Were not my priestly duties so heavy, fain would I spend my life digging up the history of my people. In the mounds of Babylon is more history than in all the other books and inscriptions in the world."
"I envy your wisdom," I said, "but, while ancient history is a fine study, I find the modern world all I can keep up with." I cast a glance of perplexity towards Nirouphar, who, using her poor brother as interpreter, was trying to talk of cultural matters with Pyrron.
It became a nuisance, though, when Beliddinos began to run off from the hipparchia at every stop, to grub in a mound. Once he came back waving a brick and crying: "Soumerian!"
"What is that?" I asked.
"The kings of Soumer ruled this land just after the Flood. A few can still read their writing, though we know almost nothing about them."
Pyrron, when this was explained, quoted:
"The day shall come, the great avenging day,
Which Troy's proud towers in the dust shall lay."
Beliddinos tenderly wrapped the tablet in a cloth and stowed it in a saddlebag. Meseemed he had two souls in one body. One was that of a shrewd, farsighted, self-possessed temple official, who took his sacred revenues seriously but not his theology. The other was that of an unworldly seeker after pure knowledge, whose true deity was not Mardoukos but Kleito, the muse of history.
That afternoon, the concubine of Trooper Machaon went into labor. We camped at once to await the birth. The pains went on for hours. The woman was still groaning and screaming after the stars had come out. The women clustered about, whispering big-eyed among themselves, muttering charms and fetching amulets. Word got around that this would be a hard birth if it came off at all.