"But how, my friends, am I to put this thing together? Remembering all the trouble we had with the scaffolding of the Tarentine Zeus, I doubt if a scaffold so high as this statue could even be built."
We mulled over this question for days until Daïppos proposed: "Why not erect a mound around the statue, raising it little by little as each part of the structure is completed? Then, when all is finished, the earth can be shoveled away."
I said: "Hm ... That means that the statue must be far enough back from the waterfront so that the earth shan't spill into the harbor. Let's see, what is the normal angle of repose? ..."
When Lysippos had shared his wisdom to the full, I returned to Rhodes and took up work on my lesser commissions. I could do nothing definite on the Colossus, because Rhodes had experienced difficulty in selling the timber, rope, and hides from Demetrios' engines. We kept the iron and bronze for use in the statue.
I told the Counciclass="underline" "To provide wood for his stockade and his engines, Demetrios has denuded whole mountains. He felled as much timber in the year and a quarter of the siege as we should normally have cut in decades. The only market than can possibly absorb so vast a store of timber before it rots is Egypt, which has no hardwood to speak of. Why don't we send an embassy to the Ptolemaios to arrange a deal? I shall have to go thither anyway, to take measurements for his statue."
Although I tried to push this proposal through, the discussion took several ten-days, because every Councilman had to have his say several times over. When the embassy was finally approved, it was too late in the season for the voyage. Besides, we heard that the Ptolemaios was marching up the coast of Palestine to join the allied kings in their invasion of the Antigonid lands. Demetrios, who had been campaigning against Kasandros' forces in Hellas, hastened to Asia to his father's support.
As things fell out, the Ptolemaios heard a false report that Antigonos and Demetrios had crushed the allies. Thereupon he scuttled back to Egypt without accomplishing anything of military value, while the opposing armies maneuvered on the Anatolian plain until the mud and snows of Poseideon drove them into winter quarters.
With the coming of spring the armies stirred again. Seleukos arrived from India with his five hundred elephants.
Then came the great battle of the kings at lpsos, where Seleukos' elephants turned the tide against the royal father and son. Antigonos commanded the foot. When Demetrios had gone off in pursuit of the allied cavalry, and some of Antigonos' men went over to the allies, his friends cried: "Sire, they are coming upon you!"
"Well," said old One-eye, "what do you expect them to do? But Demetrios will come and save me!"
But Demetrios could not come, being cut off on his return to the battle by the impassible line of elephants. Antigonos fell beneath a shower of javelins.
So ended Antigonos' successful thirty-year rule of Asia Minor. For all his cruelties and treacheries, his subjects missed him, especially those who fell under the harsher rule of Lysimachos. They say that one of the latter, a Phrygian peasant, was seen digging a pit on his farm. When asked what he did, he sadly replied:
"I seek Antigonos!"
Soon after the battle of the kings, Lysimachos' soldiers freed Demetrios' Rhodian hostages at Ephesos. My father-in-law Genetor returned home, bemoaning his two years' sufferings but looking like a stuffed pheasant at a banquet.
Demetrios escaped from the battle of Ipsos. Still having powerful forces of his own, and bases in Hellas and Phoenicia, he spent several years in wild adventures around the Inner Sea until the death of Kasandros enabled him to seize the throne of Macedonia.
But although Demetrios could conquer, he could not rule. He never learnt the lesson that Ptolemaios taught me, to wit: that ruling is hard work. He spent his years in endless carousals and amours, leaving his people to fend for themselves against his officials.
Once, when a number of Demetrios' subjects had presented petitions to him, he accepted them graciously and put them in his riding cloak; then, coming to a ford of a river, he dumped them all into the stream and rode on. It is not the wont of Macedonians tamely to accept such contemptuous treatment, even from kings. So, when Lysimachos combined against him with Pyrros, the warlike young king of Epeiros, Demetrios' people deserted in droves, and he had to flee.
After further campaigns, Demetrios finally fell into the hands of Seleukos the Victorious, who kept him in genteel confinement and hospitably invited him to drink himself to death. And this the great adventurer soon did.
When things had settled down after Ipsos, Rhodes dispatched its embassy to the king of Egypt. Although the nominal head of the embassy was Admiral Damophilos, everybody knew that, as I had the widest acquaintance at the Alexandrian court, I should lead the negotiations.
We were paraded into the palace with trumpeters blowing flourishes and an usher announcing us in a voice to awaken the dead. I know not whether this formality was a tribute to the honor gained by Rhodes in her struggle or simply part of the pomp of the Egyptian court. In years gone by, while the Ptolemaios claimed to be only one more Macedonian general, he adhered more or less to the rustic simplicity of his forebears. Now, however, Egyptian ceremoniousness was taking over.
The stout old king sat on a throne of gold and jewels, flanked by his minions. One of these was the aging Demetrios Phalereus, on whom the yellow hair looked more and more grotesque. Another was the priest, Manethôs of Sebennytos, a little heavier but as grave as ever.
Damophilos made his speech and presented the king with the inevitable gift: a small bronze of a dancing satyr, which I had executed for the occasion.
After the audience officially ended and everybody began to mill around the court and talk, Manethôs touched my arm. When we had exchanged warm greetings, I asked:
"Did Nembto get home safely?"
"She certainly did, and she told us how the members of Onas' club had come forward to help her. There are good men in Rhodes."
After Onas' death in the siege, it transpired that his stock of gems barely paid off his debts. The Seven Strangers, of which I had become a member, had accordingly taken up a collection to send his widow and child back to Egypt.
"What has become of her?" I asked.
"Well—ah—as a matter of fact, she keeps house for me here. But what has your embassy really come for?"
"To sell your king some wood."
Manethôs lowered his voice. "You will work through Demetrios. We must get together, but discreetly, so that he shall not know."
"Why the secrecy?"
"Because Demetrios hates me. If we openly showed our friendship, it would harm your chances. I see him scowling at your back now."
"By the gods, what has Demetrios Phalereus against you?"
"Simple jealousy. I have risen to equal him in importance on the civil side of the administration, as I am the king's personal representative in dealing with the Egyptian priesthoods, with the rank of prophet. So the Athenian has become bitterly anti-Egyptian. He hates all us 'natives,' as he calls us, and hobnobs with young Prince Thunderbolt, who is of the same mind."
Demetrios Phalereus entertained the embassy the following night, along with several Alexandrian intellectuals. One was a thin, sickly-looking man whom Demetrios Phalereus introduced as Straton of Lampsakos. The thin man was the new tutor to the king's younger legitimate son, the eight-year-old Ptolemaios Ptolemaiou.
"He is also a former student of the great Aristoteles," said Demetrios Phalereus.
"Do you then know Dikaiarchos of Messana, or Eudemos of Rhodes?" I asked the scholar.
"I knew both well," said Straton. "I fear, however, that they would disown me now."
"Why, sir?"
"My researches in physics have led me far from the master's doctrines, in particular his teaching regarding the vacuum—"