However, I had too much wine aboard to argue intelligently. I caught the eye of Doris the flute girl and, by a few simple maneuvers, ended the evening in her bed, in one of the two small rooms she occupied at the back of her owner's house. Truly is wine called the milk of Aphrodite.
A jolly evening it was, but I lived to regret it. The next day I got up with four heads instead of one, as the saying is. It took half a cabbage to cure my headache.
Moreover, my parents let me know, without actually saying so, that their feelings had been hurt by my going off to this party without first coming home to let them share my pride in the medal. Such a thought had never entered my selfish young head. I never realized how often I wounded them by my actions until my own children began treating me in the same heedless way. How hard it is to see one's own faults!
With my contract for the statue of Demetrios Antigonou confirmed, I should have felt prosperous and, for one of my years, successful. But the graft that Kallias extorted from me left no margin on which to relax. I still had to work day and night, to squeeze every obolos, and to sponge on my parents for food. I barely took time to shave, let alone to oil myself decently or take proper workouts in the gymnasium. My lunches were loaves of Rhodian lentil bread, hastily washed down with cheap wine between bouts of work.
Moreover, I ran into difficulties in casting the parts of the statue. One of my casts cracked because I stripped off the mold too quickly. Another came out with a hole in it because I had not allowed for an adequate thickness of metal between the mold and the core. Still another was ruined by my failure thoroughly to dry out the core, so that the steam caused a small explosion when the bronze was poured, spattering Kavaros, the studio, and me with molten bronze. Luckily we sustained only a few small superficial burns. As a result of all these mishaps, everything took longer than planned.
I was tempted to sound out the other artists and artisans who had received contracts through Kallias—Bias the carpenter, for instance, who was beginning the construction of Kallias' sluing crane. But I never worked up the courage, fearing to expose my own guilt to somebody who would use the knowledge against me. My father asked:
"What in Herakles' name do you do with all your earnings, Chares? Bury them in the ground, like a squirrel preparing for winter?"
I muttered something about the ever-rising price of materials.
"Oh, don't give me that!" said my father. "I know the price of copper and bronze better than you do. Is it that flute girl again? It's all right for a young man to have a mistress of that class before he weds; it keeps him from bothering decent women. But the girl shouldn't soak up all his substance as a sponge takes water!"
Not wishing to reveal my corrupt relations with Kallias, I did not tell the real reason for my penury. I said: "I have to slave and scrimp to get far enough ahead of my creditors."
"You could accomplish the same end far more easily if you would work full time for me in the foundry."
"And give up my goal in life? You should know me better than that, sir."
My father sighed. "I suppose it's that wretched colossal statue you talk about. The way you're going, you'll never be able to buy the bronze for its little toe, let alone the whole thing."
So things went until the month of Poseideon. One day, wrapped in my heaviest cloak against the driving rain, I slopped and skidded down the muddy slopes of the akropolis to the Town Hall, in answer to a summons from the Council. When I arrived, President Damoteles said:
"O Chares, how far along is the statue of Demetrios?"
"All but the head has been cast, sir, and I expect to pour that soon."
"How long will it take to finish?"
"Weather permitting, we should have it up in a month. Why, sir? Long though it has taken, it is but a fraction of the time that a marble statue of that size would require."
"It is not that, Master Chares. The Council has decided to send an embassy to Antigonos in Syria, for word has . reached us that he took ill our driving off his blockaders and swears vengeance upon us. The Kyklops is a rough, tough old man, not lightly to be flouted.
"Therefore, our ambassadors, of which I shall be one, will try to soften his ire, in hope at least of gaining time. Further to melt him down, we plan to do with him as we did with his son: to take you along as official sculptor, to make what measurements and sketches you need to construct a heroic statue of him. Terms will be as before. Do you agree?"
Perhaps in the father, if not in the son, was my ideal to be found. Of course, Antigonos was old and one-eyed now, but a colossal statue could show him as he was in his younger and more heroic years.
"Certainly, sir," said I, sincerely. "I am honored!"
"Then be ready to sail at dawn the day after tomorrow."
BOOK III — ANTIGONOS
The sacred trireme Peripolos, mended after the action off Rhodes, crept eastward through curtains of rain along the southern coast of Asia Minor. Through the shifting gray sheets could be glimpsed the olive-green rampart of the Lykian hills. Kavaros, with his cloak pulled over his head, leaned on the rail and wept into his red mustache.
"Why weep?" I asked. "Isn't there enough water without your tears?"
"Ara! The sight of all this water is making me think of my lost freedom. If you could see your way to promise me, sir, that after a certain time I will be going home—"
Touched, I was tempted to offer him another chance to earn his freedom. But I hardened my heart. I still had my mission. For great works of art to be created, the artist must be freed from the myriad chores of everyday living, and this can be done only by a slave. Is not immortal art more important, I asked myself, than the mortal happiness of one barbarous foreigner?
"You should see my country," he went on. "The blue-eyed lassies watching the sheep; the white-robed priests in their sacred groves; some of the boys coming back from a bit of a raid, with maybe some heads from the neighboring tribe to hang over the gate ... Ah, indeed and it is a beautiful sight. If I could only see it again before I die—"
"That's as the gods decide," I said.
He chuckled. "Calling on the gods, and you a terrible atheist? Few favors for you would they do, I am thinking."
Like all galleys, we had to stop at every port along the coast to sleep our rowers. We passed Mount Kragos, where Bellerophon slew the Chimaera, and stopped at Patara and Myra and other coastal towns. At Korakesion, perched on a crag as dizzy as that of my native Lindos, begins the land called Rough Kilikia, which has a bad repute for piracy. No indubitable pirates did we see—aside from some stares and muttering at a tavern in Kelenderis—but then, no pirate in his senses would attack a well-armed trireme.
We did see several thirty- and forty-oared rowing craft tied up at seaside villages. They were too small for warships and called for too large a crew for merchantmen. Had we not had a more pressing mission, we might have cruised about, lurking behind promontories in hope of catching one of these dubious craft in a predacious swoop on some fat-bellied trader; for we look upon the suppression of piracy as the special duty, honor, and glory of Rhodes. But, as things were, our captain held straight on.
At Soloi, Rough Kilikia flattens out into the fertile plain of Flat Kilikia. It is said that Soloi was settled by colonists from my own Lindos. However, when I sought to test this legend by speaking with the Solians, no trace of the Lindian dialect did I find. Instead, the Solians spoke the strangest and most corrupt Greek I have ever heard.