We rounded the Gulf of Issos and, at the end of the month of Poseideon, reached the mouth of the Syrian Orontes. This is a shallow stream, navigable only a few furlongs from its mouth. The banks were lined with Antigonos' docks and shipyards, although but few warships were present. The rest had joined Demetrios in Cyprus.
We anchored at the head of navigation and went ashore under the watchful scowls of Antigonos' Macedonian officers. After a delay while President Damoteles made himself known to the Antigonian commander, we bedded down in a tavern in the village and fought the vermin—and without catapults, too—throughout the night.
Next morning the commanding officer appeared with a file of cavalry, a string of mules, and one spirited black stallion that bared its teeth and rolled its eyes as the grooms dragged it forward. The officer said with a grin:
"I suppose the president of a free Hellenic city would like something more dignified than a mule, eh? Here you are, O President."
Damoteles looked at the horse and said: "We Rhodians are famous for our seamanship, for our oratory, and for the high plane of our public life. But no Pindaros will ever write panegyrics in praise of our horsemanship. Take it away and give me a mule, if you please."
The officer turned to me. "How about the sculptor? Here, young fellow, show us backwoodsmen how a horse should be ridden!"
I gave Damoteles a stricken glance, but no help did I get from that quarter. While I had been on a horse perhaps three times in my life, to decline would not inspire respect for us either.
"Well—" I said.
The soldiers jeered.
"All right," I said. "Give me a leg-up."
The next thing I knew, I had been hoisted up to the pad and the reins put into my hand. The grooms released the animal, which at once put down its head and bucked. At the second buck I lost my knee grip and went sprawling into the dirt. My head struck a stone with force enough to make me see the goddess Selene riding the starry night. The soldiers guffawed.
"Would you like to try again?" said the officer.
Kavaros murmured: "I could gentle the beast down for you, master darling, if I could give him a bit of a ride."
The Kelt had often boasted of his skill as a rider, driver, and all-around horseman. Now, I thought, he should be put to the test. I said to the officer:
"May I do as I like with the beast, provided I don't harm him, as long as we're in Syria?"
"Aye, you may."
"Take him, Kavaros," I said.
Kavaros took three steps and vaulted on the horse. The stallion bucked as before, but Kavaros stuck like a burr, yelling hideous Keltic war cries and slapping the beast with the loose end of the reins. After a few bucks the animal gave up and suffered himself to be guided about as tamely as any other horse. Perhaps the Kelt's weight, half again as great as mine, helped to quiet the beast.
Kavaros leaped lightly down and handed the reins to me. "Try him now, sir," he said, clasping his hands for me to mount.
"You!" he barked as the horse began to roll his eyes again. "Mind your manners or it will be the worse for you!"
The horse obeyed. Thereafter I rode the horse but took care to keep close to Kavaros, in case I needed his help again.
"It is all in knowing how to handle the beast," he explained while giving me pointers in riding. "Like the time my great-grandfather Gargantyos and his friend Leonnorios had to handle the dragon."
"What was that?" said I, as he knew I should.
"It was when they were hunting in the foothills of the Rhiphaians to once. Seeing that night was about to overtake them, they camped at the mouth of a cave in the side of a hill, not knowing that a dragon had slept the winter in that cave and was getting ready to wake up.
"So my great-grandfather and his friend built a bit of a fire at the entrance to this cave, and soon the dragon was thawed out and came roaring out to eat them. Well, naturally, my ancestor and Leonnorios were surprised, and they started to run around the hill, and the dragon after them.
But the dragon was so long that when its head was snapping at them from behind, they were treading on the end of its tail in front, because it went nearly the whole way around the hill. So when they had run around the hill fifty times, neither gaining nor losing, my great-grandfather said: 'Leonnorios darling, it is out of breath I soon will be unless we think of some way to whop this gigantical worm. Let you catch the tail of it, which wriggles on ahead of us, and that will stop the monster from chasing us round this hill, the scenery of which becomes less beautiful every time I pass it. I will take care of the head.'
"So Leonnorios caught the tail and braced his feet and pulled. This stopped the dragon. And my great-grandfather caught hold of the nose, holding the muzzle in both hands so it could not open its mouth. And they pulled and pulled until they stretched that dragon out so thin that they cut it up into short lengths to make harp strings. And the harp that was strung with the strings from the dragon had so sweet a tone that no maiden who heard my ancestor sing to the tune of it could resist him, which is how the clan is after having so many strong warriors."
We rode up the north bank of the river, escorted by the file under a double-pay man. For a hundred and sixty furlongs we followed the river. At that point it cuts through a tremendous vale between the Lebanon Mountains to the south and the Taurus to the north. The mountains descend to the river in terraces and tawny cliffs, spotted with groves of oak and sycamore and with plantings of olives, figs, and vines. We turned up a tributary of the Orontes and presently came to Antigonos' new capital.
Had it ever been completed, Antigoneia would have been as large a city as Rhodes. The clink of masons' hammers resounded from the hillsides as an army of workmen swarmed over the great empty space. While most of the vegetation had been removed from this area, no houses had yet been completed, save huts for workers and for a few Phoenicians and Syrians who had moved in to be among the first citizens.
The artisans worked on a theater, a town hall, a splendid temple of Zeus, a stadium, and a palace. Everywhere were blocks of marble on ox-drawn carts and sleds, architects waving scrolls of papyrus and shouting at foremen, and workmen trotting about with baskets of earth and buckets of mortar and plaster.
There were also the tents of an army camp, with soldiers drilling. Among these tents rose one of great magnificence, with a gilded wooden eagle perched atop its central pole. Off to one side there stood an enormous funeral pyre. I asked Damoteles:
"The satrap hasn't just died on us, has he?"
"Hush!" said the President. "No such luck."
Our double-pay man galloped ahead to tell of our coming. As we picked our way through the embryonic city, the man rode back and led us to the half-built palace.
Here we found a group of Antigonian notables, both soldiers and civilians, looking on at the sweating workmen. It was easy to pick out Antigonos son of Philippos, satrap of Syria and Anatolia.
Antigonos was not seven feet tall—I measured him—but he was almost six and a half, and with the towering crest on his helmet of gilded bronze he looked his nickname of "Kyklops." In his younger days Antigonos had been outstanding for physical might even among Alexander's Companions, who included such monsters of brawn as Lysimachos and Seleukos. Now, nearing eighty, he had become paunchy and unwieldy, leaning heavily on a walking stick. A shortcut beard of snowy white covered his heavy jowls. One cold blue eye looked out of a somber face bronzed with sun, wrinkled with age, and seamed with the scars of old battles. A black patch covered the empty socket on the other side.
His voice was like the mutter of distant thunder. "What wants Rhodes of me?" he growled. "You have seen my son."