The only other man who was competent to interpret was Vardanas. Howsomever, when Nirouphar besought her brother to do so, he discovered that he had to take the Dahas on lengthy scouting rides to ward us from robbers and keep us from going astray in the maze of canals.
So Nirouphar's converse with Pyrron was reduced to simple language lessons. When her mind became weary with these, she ofttimes clambered up to sit with me in the booth on Aias' back, to ply me with questions about our adventures in the East and life in my homeland. The formal and distant manner in which she had been treating me inevitably mellowed. Had she been Greek, I might have been shocked by her unladylike forwardness, but in a foreigner it only added to her exotic charm.
"O Hipparch," she said, "my great ambition is to read and write Greek proficiently. When I was little I picked up a smattering of Greek from Dorymachos whilst he tutored my brothers. But I forgot nearly all of it, save the alpha-beta, for lack of practice until you came. Have I ever shown you my library?"
"Your library, Nirouphar?"
"You will not laugh?"
"By Zeus the king, I swear I will not!"
"Here it is." From her wallet she brought out a small roll of papyrus, a fragment torn from a larger book. With the greatest labor she began to read in Greek, syllable by syllable:
"The har-dy war-ri-ors whom Boi-o-tia bred,
Pen-e-le-os, Lei-tos, Pro-tho-e-nor led:
With these Ar-ke-si-la-os and Klo-ni-os stand,
E-qual in arms, and e-qual in com-mand ..."
Only the memory of my promise kept me from laughing at her pronunciation. I knew the text to be the closing part of Book Two of the Iliad, which some call the "Catalogue of Ships." It was the dullest and most difficult section of the epic she could have chosen. Still, she was vastly proud of such reading skill as she had.
"If Fate allow," I said, "someday you shall have a complete Iliad. I will read it over with you and explain the hard parts."
Thereafter we were friends, if not intimate ones. She reported the women's gossip to me without reserve. Soon I felt for her something more than friendship, admiration, and the simple animal lust which the sight of a comely lass arouses in any healthy youth, Athenians excepted.
I was, I feared, falling in love. In view of Vardanas' attitude towards non-Arian suitors, I knew not what to do about my passion. Vardanas would not entertain a suit for honorable marriage, and to ask Nirouphar to become my concubine would affront both Persians. It might even jeopardize our mission. So, for the time being, I kept a tense and uneasy silence.
As everybody knows, falling in love is something which a sensible man avoids. The man of sense relieves his lusts with light women, weds a girl of good family and ample dowry chosen by his parents, and goes through life without succumbing to the pleasant madness of love. At least, so our parents teach us. But, despite these wholesome moral precepts, most men seem to fall in love sooner or later and become prey to the follies which that state entails. Perhaps the precepts need revision to make them fit the nature of men more closely.
I was not the only one to feel thus. A warm affection sprang up between Nirouphar and the elephant. The lass was always fussing over him and bringing him dainties, until he paid more heed to her than to any of the men.
"O fickle monster!" said Vardanas. "We wear the soles from our shoes and the seats from our trews, fetching this creature from India. We save it from a hundred deaths by starvation, thirst, and the weapons of evildoers. And then the ungrateful animal jilts us for a flutter-witted jade!"
Beliddinos, as I have stated, had two sides to his character: that of a zealous seeker after historical knowledge, and that of a shrewd and worldly temple official. As we neared Babylon, however, he displayed another aspect: his official character as head of the chief cult of the world's greatest city. Day by day he became more solemnly unctuous and dignified. He addressed us all as "my son," called upon Mardoukos and his other grim Babylonian gods to witness every statement, and scattered blessings, exorcisms, and other sacred formulae like rain.
Only rarely, now, could one catch the flicker of amusement that used to pass over his lean, ascetic face during a solemn pronouncement of divine intent or cosmic doom. By the time we reached Babylon, those who had not known him in his holiday mood would never have thought him other than as the holiest, loftiest, purest pontiff in the world, devoted to the glory of his dour divinities.
And so, at the beginning of Gamelion, we came to Babylon. First the villages clustered more thickly, and we passed fair estates and villas.
"Most of these were built by noble Babylonians," said Beliddinos. "But, because of their sins, great Mardoukos allowed the Persian kings from their owners to take them and to their Persian supporters to give them."
Then we reached the outer or suburban wall of the city. This is a low brick wall three hundred furlongs around. It is merely to keep Arab raiders and other robbers out of the suburbs, not to provide a strong defense.
We passed through this wall and marched league upon league through an ever-thickening pattern of villages and wheat fields. Some people ran at the sight of the elephant. When it was seen that we meant no harm, hundreds of naked brown children swarmed after us, yelling, chasing one another, and begging.
Then the main walls loomed over the lines of date palms like a chain of mountains. Pyrron, with Vardanas acting as translator, was arguing the shape of the earth with Beliddinos. He said that it was round, the Babylonian that it was flat. Pyrron dropped his learned reasoning to whistle at the sight of the walls.
"Zeus on Olympos!" he said.
If he, who had seen Babylon before, was so struck by the sight, you can imagine the effect of this colossal if worn and shabby old city on me who had never seen it. I had missed it on my way east because my troop was sent straight from Opis to Hagmatana.
The main wall of Babylon is about thirty cubits high and so wide that two four-horse chariots can pass one another between the towers. These towers bestride the wall every hundred cubits and are nearly twice as high as the wall itself. I was told that the wall is eighty furlongs in circumference (with gaps where the Euphrates flows through the city) so a prudent man does not set out for a stroll around the city on the wall after dinner, as he may in most cities. Yet diligent scrutiny showed that the brickwork was crumbling in many places. Brickers moved about the wall, repairing it, but it would take an army of them to keep ahead of the decay.
The guards waved us through the east gate. As far as my eye could see stretched rows of houses. Here and there the ground rose to a low hill crowned with palaces or temples. It was as if some god had picked up all the cities in the world and set them down together in a clump.
"How finds a man his way about so vast a place?" I asked Beliddinos.
"Not difficult is it when streets are straight," he said. The main streets are indeed nearly straight and cross at right angles, as in Peiraieus.
"If you like," the priest continued, "I will show you the way to my temple. Perhaps we can quarter you on the sacred precincts."
"Many thanks," I said. "That were a princely kindness!"
As we rode, the traffic waxed denser. Never have I seen such a throng of moving people, save when refugees flee an invasion.
"Is aught amiss in the city, that such masses swarm the streets?" I said.
"No. This is the hour when men go home from work. Like this every morn and even it is."
We came to the inner city wall, smaller than the main wall but still a decent defense. Inside the inner wall we passed a huge open space piled with broken brick.