Book Ten
THESSALIA
At first I meant to end my book here, as Eumenes' letter severed my official tie to Aristoteles and to the elephant. True, I saw Aias years later at the Macedonian court, and he remembered me and hugged me with his trunk. But I was no longer responsible for him thenceforth.
The rest of my life's history, while full enough of lively adventures, is that of a mere private man, not of the agent of the greatest king of his age on a strange and wonderful mission. Whereas that mission was now completed, this seemed a likely place to rein in my galloping pen.
Howsomever, when I read the manuscript to an audience of my friends and my children, they set up an outcry that I should go on, tell what betided next, and explain how I came to be where and what I now am. And so, for a short space, I continue my tale.
Time flew. The month of Pyanepsion had come, the weather had cooled, and the mountains stood brown from the summer's drouth, when one of Aristoteles' slaves, Pyrraios, brought a strange talc from Peiraieus. Harpalos, Alexander's treasurer, had suddenly appeared at the tip of the Paralian peninsula with thirty warships bristling with soldiers. All but one of these ships anchored in the lee of Sounion Promontory. The men went ashore, set up a rude fortification, and rested.
Meanwhile Harpalos came on to Peiraieus with a single ship and urged the Athenians to let his whole fleet into the principal harbor. He held a shouted conference with Philokles, the Athenian general in command of Fort Eëtoneia, Harpalos standing on the forecastle of his ship and Philokles on one of the chain towers of the sea gate.
"Are you here as King Alexander's man?" said Philokles.
Harpalos shouted back: "Nay. I am my own master."
"Then what do you want with us? We don't let strange war fleets into our harbor."
"I have come to save you from Alexander's insatiable ambition!"
"We are at peace with Alexander. If you have aught to say to the people of Athens, say it through proper channels."
"Let me in, ere it be too late! The Alexander is returning from India, burning to reduce Athens to slavery."
"Begone or I'll open on you with the catapults!"
The argument went on all day. Philokles sent a runner to Athens for advice. The prytaneis called the generals and politicians to a hurried consultation. Demosthenes advised against admitting Harpalos and persuaded the rest. So in the end Harpalos had to row away, as the chain was up and he could not enter the harbor without a fight.
The market place seethed with the excitement of the volatile Athenians, each asking the other what this visitation meant and shouting in a thousand voices for war, peace, attack, defense, retreat, surrender, alliance, isolation, and any other policies that the mind of man could conceive. After I had spent a while there, picking up wild and contradictory rumors, I went to see Alexander's resident minister Amyntas. Although I was no longer a servant of the king, Amyntas had kept on a friendly footing with me, no doubt in hope of another bribe. He told me:
"I had not expected the Harpalos to come here, but it does not astonish me. I have had letters lately from the king himself. Alexander is returning from India. He had passed through the deadly deserts of Gedrosia and is now in Persia. He has already begun to chop off the heads of governors who proved unworthy. No doubt Harpalos got word of this, too, and fled while his head was still affixed to his body."
Next day it became known that Harpalos' fleet had rowed away. The excitement died, save for speculation as to whither Harpalos had gone: to Syracuse, Carthage, or even farther.
Half a month later, as the season's first rain drizzled down upon Athens, word came by a trading ship that Harpalos had not gone far. He coasted south and west until he turned the promontory of Tainaron, the middlemost of the three prongs of Lakedaimonia. He rounded the promontory and beached at the village of Tainaron. As the peninsula is rocky and sparsely settled, it was unlikely the Spartans could expel him. The Spartan spirit had been broken at Megalopolis, when King Agis fell before Antipatros' Macedonians, even as had the Athenian spirit at Chaironeia.
Now veered the winds of politics in Athens. Several leaders who had loudly demanded that Harpalos be kept off the sacred soil of Attika began speaking well of the man. Some argued that nought had been proved against him; some said any foe of Alexander was a friend of Athens.
I asked Aristoteles about this, one evening as we were walking home from the Lykeion with Theophrastos, Vardanas, some other members of the faculty, and our servants. Ordinarily I should have ridden the distance. But Aristoteles was a great walker, so that, if one wanted an extra half-hour of his company, one had to walk, too. He said:
"Harpalos has let it be known that he possesses thousands of talents, and that his friends in Athens shan't go unrewarded. He has probably sprinkled a few talents amongst them already as bait. If you wish to see what I mean by the tendency of democrathy to degenerate into anarchy, behold our demagogues."
Vardanas said: "Do you remember, Leon, our argument in the wilds of Assyria about democracy? See how Aristoteles supports me in that!"
"What's this?" said Aristoteles. Vardanas gave the gist of his argument against democracy.
"There's something in what you say," said Aristoteles, "but you forget that all other forms of government become corrupted as well. Thus monarchy decays into tyranny, and aristocrathy into oligarchy. However, it takes an exceptional degree of culture and thivic spirit, such as Athens had at her best, to practice democrathy at all. I've never heard of democrathy amongst foreigners."
"It exists," I said. "Some Indian states are democratically ruled, and so are some of the Gandarian tribes."
"Come, my good Leon, that cannot be real democrathy. I can prove that Hellenes are the only folk ..."
Off we went on another argument. We came to the crossing in the Skambonidai where we usually broke up, going to our several dwellings. Instead of parting, however, we stood jabbering while the sun set. In the twilight, a man stepped out of the shadows and said:
"Pardon, gentlemen, but is not one of you Leon of Atrax?"
"I am," I said. I thought the man was a traveler with a letter from home for me. (I had long since delivered, or arranged for delivery of, the letters my comrades-in-arms had entrusted to me in India.) I was reckoning how much to tip him when he drew a dirk and lunged.
Luckily, I was trained in the art of fighting without a shield. Many soldiers, even experienced ones, do not know it. As the man thrust at my breast, I brought my left fist down upon his wrist, knocking his arm aside. The blade ripped my cloak and shirt but did not touch my skin. I struck at his face with my right fist, but he rolled his head so that the blow glanced from his scalp. He drew back his arm for another stab.
I stepped back, starting to whip off my cloak as a shield, while my friends stood in amaze with their mouths open. Then Inaudos, my lusty manservant, seized my attacker from behind. They scuffled for the space of a couple of heartbeats. The Kordian hurled the stranger to the ground. However, ere anybody could leap upon the latter to pin him, he squirmed free, leaped up, and dashed off, leaving his cloak in Theophrastos' grasp. Vardanas and I gave chase but soon lost him in the dark, winding alleys.
We came back to find Inaudos nursing a bleeding forearm and the others looking over the attacker's dirk and wallet.
"Did he cut you?" I asked Inaudos. "Let me see."
"He never cut me! Villain bit me!" roared the hillman.
The dirk had nought distinctive about it, but the wallet contained a fistful of shiny new staters. I held one of these up in the fading light and said:
"This looks fresh from the mint at Tarsos."