"These blighters say the statue weighs eight hundred talents of solid gold, but I think if we bored into it we should find a wooden core with a thin golden covering. Don't try it, though; my priestly friends wouldn't like it. Now let's go outside, O best ones. This incense gives me a perfectly foul headache."
He took us out on the river wall, so we could look up and down the Euphrates as far as the hazy air permitted. North of this spot, the river makes a sharp bend, passing around the citadel. Thence it flows slowly southward past the sacred enclosures.
Below us, long lines of wharves and quays spread out to north and south along this bustling waterway. There were great sluggish barges piled with produce and moved by poling. There were sharp-nosed little sailing vessels with overhanging bows and sloping masts. There were timber rafts, heaped with brushwood for fuel, drifting down from the Assyrian mountains.
Strangest were bowl-shaped vessels of stitched hides, perfectly round, floating downstream piled with melons and other cargo, each with a hobbled ass reposing on its side atop the load. The boatman keeps this curious vessel in midstream by an occasional stroke with a square-bladed paddle until he reaches his proper wharf. Then, with much splashing and spinning, he forces the bowl-boat to shore. When he has unloaded, the boatman sells the wooden framework of the boat along with his cargo, rolls up the leathern covering, ties it upon the ass, and sets out upstream again.
Whilst others took in the view, I cast a glance over my people. It cost me a pang to see Nirouphar shamelessly clutching Pyrron's arm. Peithagoras sidled up to Vardanas and spoke low in his ear. The Persian turned a dark face upon him and spoke a curt "No!"
"Don't be nasty about it, darling," said Peithagoras. "I can get prettier boys than you any time. Not every blighter gets a chance to befriend one so well connected as I."
He left Vardanas and went to work on Kanadas. Presently I heard the Indian growl something in his native tongue and spit into the river.
"By the twelve postures of Kyrene!" said Peithagoras. "What crowd of barbarians have I fallen into? But come, old things, it's time for lunch. Perhaps a drop of wine will soften your hearts."
The afternoon I spent on the business of the hipparchia: writing the king, counting our money, and conferring with Thyestes and Elisas. According to our figures, if we were very thrifty and traveled swiftly, we could reach the Syrian coast with the soldiers' discharge bonuses intact but hardly anything to spare. It would be hard to last out the sea voyage from Syria to Athens without spending any money, as the voyage would be long and slow with many stops.
"There's no doubt," said I, "that we must present our money order to Harpalos for more funds."
"Aye, buckie," said Thyestes. "If the king's own treasurer willna honor it, who will?"
"Think you I should call the men together to explain our plight?"
"Na, you mauna. 'Tis only the thought of those lovely bonuses that keeps the lads under rein. By Zeus, let them think the silver's not likely to last, and they'll plunder the cotters or desert. As it is, 'twill be a prodigy gin we lose not one or two in this fornicating great city, by desertion, murder, or some sic way."
"Tell them to go in pairs on leave and wear their swords at all times," I said, "and gif I find they've started any trouble with the Babylonians, I'll make them wish they'd never left Thessalia."
A pity it is that I did not take my own advice.
Two days later I rode forth on Aias, with Peithagoras, to attend General Apollodoros' secretary. First we crossed a great bridge with boat-shaped stone piers that carries the Street of Adados across the Euphrates. Then, at Peithagoras' direction, I turned north and followed a winding course up the right bank.
Peithagoras, as excited as a child over his elephant ride, babbled unceasingly. He pointed out the canals and overflow basins with which the Babylonians try to tame their mighty river. The wharves swarmed with merchants, shouting and waving their hands as they chaffered. The Babylonians gathered in gabbling crowds to see the elephant as he lumbered past, but we proudly pretended not to notice them.
We followed the bend of the Euphrates where it flows around three sides of the citadel. At the southeast corner of the citadel we turned north on a wide avenue paved with great slabs of stone. On each side rose a brick wall. Along the base of these walls strode long lines of life-sized lions, depicted in low relief in bright enameled brick, some white with yellow manes and some yellow with red manes. There were also a number of brick posts several feet high along both sides of the street, separating the walkers along the sides from the beasts of burden in the middle. I have never seen such shrewd and splendid street construction in a Hellenic city.
"This is Enemy Street," said Peithagoras. "It has a long Babylonian name meaning 'The Street Whereon May No Enemy Ever Tread,' but it's called 'Enemy Street' for short. They carry Mardoukos along this way when he visits Ishtar in the spring festival. You should be here in Elephabolion; the Babylonians put on a perfect whiz of a parade."
Enemy Street was a furlong in length. At the far end rose the largest gate in the world. Two colossal brick towers loomed over it, and round them stood smaller fortifications.
"The celebrated Ishtar Gate," said Peithagoras. "And there are the equally famous Hanging Gardens." He pointed to a mass of greenery looming over the wall of the citadel, to the left of the Ishtar Gate. "I say, have the driver stop this creature. Here's where we go in."
We clambered down and marched in through a double door in the wall of the citadel. This door, dwarfed by the Ishtar Gate though large by most standards, was set in a doorframe that was painted bright red to scare away the demons.
Inside was a pair of anterooms. In one, Greek guards lounged; in the other, taxpayers stood in line to give their money to clerks, who entered the payments in ledgers and wrote out receipts. Then we came to a big open court swarming with people, and round about it the entrances to more offices. The air was full of Greek, Persian, Syrian, and other tongues.
I will not tell how I was passed from clerk to clerk and from secretary to secretary until I was dizzy; the details are now hazy. Harpalos, I learnt, was still in Tarsos and had not yet sent word that he was making his winter trip to Babylon. Menes I should find at Alexandreia-by-Issos, where he was building a new city for Alexander.
Half the folk I saw seemed to be idling or gossiping, whilst the other half worked frantically to clear their tables of mountains of documents. At length I was passed up to General Apollodoros himself, Peithagoras' brother, a man of much my own size and shape but older. Peithagoras told him of my mission.
"Good for you!" bellowed Apollodoros, and clapped me on the back. "India to Athens on an elephant, eh? By the God! You could write a book about it. Now what's all this about fodder and stuff?"
He gave the necessary orders. As I was bidding him farewell, another Hellene passed the door of the chamber. Apollodoros shouted:
"Ē! Agathon!"
The man, a native of Pydna in Methone, turned out to be the commandant of the citadel. He questioned me about India until I protested: "I could talk all day about my journey, gentlemen, but I must get back to my hipparchia. The elephant will be getting hungry."