Peithagoras said: "Why not invite the hipparch to tomorrow's feast, brother dear? Then you could question him to your heart's content."
"It pleases," said Apollodoros. "Tomorrow at sundown in the Hanging Gardens. How about the other officers of your troop? Who are they?"
I listed them. He invited Thyestes, Vardanas, Pyrron, and Kanadas.
"Shall I get boys or girls for any of these people?" said Apollodoros. "How about you, for instance?"
I did not want to go into tedious explanations to the effect that, albeit I preferred girls, there was now only one lass I wanted. Vardanas, too, would prefer a girl, and so would Thyestes. Pyrron and Kanadas would be just as happy without companions.
"Have two good, bouncing wenches for Troop Closer Vardanas and Flank Guard Thyestes," I said. "That's all."
When we came out on Enemy Street again, we found Siladites in a dispute with a Babylonian watchman. The argument lost no vim from the fact that neither could understand the other.
Peithagoras spoke Syrian to the guard, who waved his club and jabbered. Peithagoras said to me: "Oh, dash it all! It seems we've broken some of their beastly traffic laws."
"How now?" said I. "We've not driven Aias in a drunken or reckless manner."
"No, but it's forbidden to stand a beast or vehicle on Enemy Street. The sign says so."
"What sign?"
"This." Peithagoras pointed with his stick to the nearest of the brick posts. I saw, now that I looked closely, that the column was inscribed with writings in the Syrian and Babylonian languages.
"How am I supposed to read that stuff?" I said. "What says it?"
Peithagoras peered at the post and conferred with the guardsman. "Let's see-ah, that's it. It says: ROYAL ROAD. LET NO MAN LESSEN IT, ON PENALTY OF LAW. BY COMMAND OF BOUPARES, GOVERNOR, FOR DAREIOS, KING OF KINGS. This blighter also claims that crowds gathered to see the elephant and blocked traffic."
"What should I do now? Slay myself?"
"I'll manage it, darling." Peithagoras spoke low to the guard and passed him a coin. The guard smiled, saluted, and went his way.
I was trying on the new shirt that Vardanas persuaded me to buy when he came to me and said: "Leon, I am in a strait."
"What?" I said.
"You say General Apollodoros will have a woman for me at the feast. But now Nirouphar insists that I escort her thither."
"I suppose you refused; no Hellene would take his sister to such an affair."
"No, I did not refuse. We are not so bigoted in Persia. Besides, you know not my sister. She has a mind of her own and a burning curiosity."
"Well, what then is the problem?"
"Kanadas and Pyrron have declined the general's invitation, and I really do not think I can manage two women at once."
"And you a polygamous Persian? Shame on you!"
"It is not so much a matter of numbers as the fact that Nirouphar and I have quarreled. We are on strained terms."
"What about?"
"I gave her twenty-five drachmai to buy us some things we needed, and, do you know, the abandoned wench spent every drachma on a Babylonian gown? It is not only a foreign fashion, but an indecent one, being so thin that she might as well be naked. She has no more sense about money than a rabbit."
"Hearken to the god of thrift and prudence! But I see the solution to your problem. I will escort your sister fair, leaving you free to cope with your Babylonian wench."
"Splendid! I knew I could count on you," he said.
With my gear newly polished, I awaited with pounding heart for the sight of Nirouphar in her transparent Babylonian gown. Alas! She appeared in her regular Persian coat and trousers, for Vardanas had given the gown to Elisas with orders to sell it for what he could get.
We rode Aias to the citadel. Warned by my experience of the day before, we sent the beast back with Siladites, with orders to return for us in three hours. We entered the courtyard that I had seen the previous day, passed through doors into another court, and turned right into an alley between two rows of houses. Others streamed into this alley with us, men and women in the varied garb of many nations. After fifty paces, the corridor opened out. There stood one of the world's great wonders, the fabulous Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
These gardens, so-called, are really an enormous building at the northeast corner of the citadel, so constructed that it looks more like a hillock covered with greenery than a work of mortal man. The ground floor of this building is open on three sides and surrounded by a wide border of trees and shrubs. Stout stone pillars and arched vaults of brickwork support a massive roof, bedight around its edge with gilded dragons, lions, and other creatures.
Atop the roof, in a thick layer of soil, stands a grove of trees and shrubs, many of them rare and exotic. I learned that Harpalos the treasurer, when he resided in Babylon, brought such plants at vast expense from distant lands and planted them here, being an enthusiastic gardener like Artaxerxes the Resolute. Harpalos also refurbished the Hanging Gardens building, which had fallen into disrepair.
Spacious stairways lead to the roof. In summer the rulers of Babylon hold feasts by moonlight in the delightful roof garden, looking out over Babylon as the gods were once thought to look out over the works of man from their seat on Olympos. Now, however, because the air was cool with the threat of rain, the tables were laid on the lower level. Still, strange it was to eat in a great gilded hall and look outwards, not at walls, but at masses of greenery.
A machine of chains and leather buckets hoists water from a well in the vaults below the building right up through the ground floor to the roof, where the water runs through channels in the gardens and pours in little artificial waterfalls over the edge of the roof to wet the gardens on the lower level. This apparatus is kept groaning and squealing night and day by slaves who endlessly turn windlasses in the bowels of the building.
Apollodoros, a wreath on his hair, met us at the entrance. The women he had procured for us were a pair of bay fillies named Nin-Zerbanis and Nin-Nika, behung with shawls and veils and ribbons and gewgaws. Zerbanis, who was short and plump, he presented to Thyestes, while Vardanas received Nika, a large and solidly built dame.
"Hoots, what a bonny deemie!" cried Thyestes in broad Thessalian. "General Apollodouros, my lord, you ken what makes a soldier happy!"
Apollodoros smiled and led us to couches which we shared with our companions. So long had it been since I had reclined at a meal that I scarcely remembered how to behave. Most of our companions were Greek officers of the forces at Babylon, but sprinkled amongst them were Babylonians, Persians, and other foreigners. Most of the diners, also, were accompanied by women—of no high degree, if I could judge—or by painted pleasure boys. A handsome middle-aged Persian was presented to me as Stamenes, viceroy of Babylonia.
As soon as we were settled, the Hellenes began throwing questions about my journey. As I was feeling gay and friendly, I so let my tongue wag that only by catching the words in my teeth did I avoid blurting out something about the money we bore.
In a corner, an orchestra of harps, lutes, flutes, cymbals, and drums played wailing music, and a music girl sang in Syrian a naughty song that began: "In the street I saw two harlots."
With an effort I kept myself from staring at Nirouphar, who looked so beautiful in her Babylonian coiffure and cosmetics that my heart ached. We talked in Persian between bites, on what subjects I recall not.
I like the Babylonian ways of cooking meat, albeit I do not care much for roast grasshoppers, and their vegetables (lentils, endives, and lettuce) are tender and delicious. I boggled a bit at the salted bats, which in Babylonia grow to the size of pigeons. In the end I found my bat edible, but there was hardly enough meat on the creature to repay the trouble.