"Oh, maybe three feet."
"That leaves the main deck of the ship several feet above the pier level, and Aias cannot jump nor yet climb down a rope ladder. You'd better build a big gangplank for him, lest we have to sail back to Ephesos with him for want of means of landing him."
Next day the naval camp stirred with activity. Iason and his helper went out to the ship with writing tablets and measuring cords. Sailors hauled timbers from the sheds to the beach at a point near the Destroyer, which was towed in towards shore until she almost touched bottom. From the ship rose a mighty banging as carpenters knocked out the pegs that kept the deck planks and other parts in place.
Whilst waiting for the work to be accomplished, my friends and I began touring the neighborhood. First, we visited the site of the new temple of Artemis. For years the Ephesians had labored and taxed themselves to replace the one that Herostratos had burnt thirty years before to immortalize his name. The temple stands on the plain, eight furlongs from the center of the city. The base had been finished, and most of the columns were up. The half-built temple was shrouded in masses of scaffolding, and the atmosphere rang with the sound of hammers.
Pyrron went up to a tall, handsome, middle-aged man with his hands full of plans, who was directing the building. He said: "I am Pyrron son of Pleistarchos. Are you not Deinokrates? I think you used to know my old painting teacher ..."
Pyrron presented Deinokrates to Vardanas, Nirouphar, and me, saying: "This is the man who laid out Alexandreia-in-Egypt."
I could never have clone as Pyrron did, because I am overcome by shyness before men of godlike intellect. However, Deinokrates greeted Pyrron and the rest of us affably; so heartily, in fact, that nobody else had much chance to say a word. Not even Nirouphar, whose tongue was seldom still for long, could break into the spate of talk.
"Welcome! Rejoice!" he cried in a Macedonian accent. "Look at our new temple! Will it not be magnificent? Four times as large as the temple of Athena Polias in Athens! Where is your elephant? I saw it the day it arrived. Magnificent beast!"
"Aias is at the camp," I said.
"Could I ride on it? Splendid, splendid! I shall be there. Know you what I should like to do? I yearn to carve Mount Tmolos into a statue of Alexander riding an elephant! But alas, the king turned down my proposal to make Mount Athos into a statue of him, holding a city in one hand. He said nobody would live in the city because of lack of nearby farm land to feed them. Ea, Praxiteles!"
A white-bearded man came out of the temple's interior. The great sculptor was as shy and quiet as the architect was boisterous and forward. When he murmured "Rejoice!" Deinokrates boomed:
"You must give Praxiteles a ride on the elephant, too. Now let me show you what we plan. The columns will be forty cubits high. As you see, they will be the most massive columns in the world, to strengthen the structure against earthquakes. Round the base will run a sculptured parapet wall ..."
When we got away, my head rang with architectural terms like "the small Ionic volutes of the capitals" and "the large dentils of the bed mold of the cornice"—most of which I did not understand.
I got back to camp to find that Kanadas, Siladites, and Elisas had worked out a money-making scheme with the elephant. Siladites guided the beast, Kanadas helped riders on and off, while Elisas chanted in his throaty Syrian Greek:
"Come hither all Ephesians! Come hither all Ephesians! Ride the mountainous monster from the deadly jungles of distant India! One little obolos, one sixth of a drachma, for the thrill of a lifetime! Ride the greatest beast the gods ever made ... !"
They had already collected a handsome pile of small coins. Had this happened at the start of our journey, I should have demanded that the money be turned into our general funds. Thus I should have caused much bad feeling for the sake of a few oboloi. Now, however, I merely smiled, praised the mercenary trio for their enterprise, and insisted only that Deinokrates and Praxiteles be allowed to ride free because they were great men.
It was one of the prouder moments of my life when that pair came to camp the next day with a slim man of about my own age, who, I learned, was Praxiteles' son Kephisodotos. I rode them back to their temple on Aias' back. I had little to say to the older men, though. Deinokrates kept booming about his grandiose plans for the temple and for even larger structures. Praxiteles seldom spoke at all.
Kephisodotos Praxitelou, however, crowded close to me and spoke in low intimate tones in soft Attic. "This altar work pays well," he said, "but I really yearn to get back to portrait sculpture. I should simply love to do a bust of you, Hipparch."
"An ugly lump like me? You're daft, man!"
"Not at all, dear boy. Just look at those strong planes of your face! And these godlike arm muscles!" He kneaded my arm.
"Well, if you would fain make a statue of Sokrates, you could do worse than take me as a model. 'Tis said I'm spit of the old satyr."
"Do stay in Athens for a few months!" he urged, holding my hand. "As soon as this beastly altar's done, my father and I shall be back in Athens like bullets from a sling. Do stay! There's nothing like being sculptor and model for real intimacy. It'll be just too utterly divine!"
I was not unhappy to reach the temple and bid farewell to my importunate young suitor. I wondered if there was aught amiss with us Thessalians, that we should scorn this masculine love which southern Hellenes regard as the noblest of life's joys. However, along with my father's lumpish form, I had inherited my mother's stubbornness. Therefore, I cast aside my doubts and resolved to cleave to the morals of my family and nation, and let others jeer at them as rustic and barbarous if they would.
The work went swiftly forward on the Destroyer. All day the sound of hammer and saw drifted in from the anchorage. An endless train of men carrying baskets of earth and stones trudged to the beach and out the mole to dump their loads.
The first thing to be finished was the new gangplank. I looked at it and said: "How much weight will it carry?"
Iason said: "The gods know just how much, but it sure is made of thicker timbers than we use for horse gangplanks. I'm willing to bet it'll do."
"Still, I should like to see Aias tread upon it. My guardian spirit tells me it were not safe to trust it without a test."
Iason ordered a crew of rowers to pick up the gangplank and place thick keel timbers under each end, so that it made a kind of bridge a couple of palms above the sand of the beach. Somebody went to fetch Aias and the Indians; somebody else, Philoxenos.
Aias proved contrary when we tried to get him to step on the gangplank. First, when Kanadas headed him towards it, he walked around it. Kanadas said:
"He think it silly to climb over plank when it is easy to go around."
By coaxing and prodding, Aias was persuaded to put his weight on the plank. He had his forefeet solidly planted and had just placed one of his hind feet on the gangplank when it broke with a rending crash. At the loss of support, the elephant jumped off the gangplank with a squeal and started back for our camp at a swift shuffle, despite the yells of the Indians.
"You see?" I said to Iason.
"Immortal Zeus!" said the naval designer. "That thing of yours must outweigh Mount Pelion. We've got to make the gangplank of keel timbers, as if it was the drawbridge of a castle or siege tower."
Philoxenos said: "But think, man: such a gangplank will be so heavy that we could not handle it by simply picking it up and tossing it over the side. We need a mast to hoist it with, but we cannot have one because of the elephant's pen."
Vardanas said: "If all else fail, we could push Aias overboard and let him swim to shore."