We traveled in the state galley. I took my slave, a Scythian named Gnouros. This was a quiet little man, who did as he was told and kept his thoughts—if any—to himself. This left Astra with only one servant in the house, our hired maid-of-all-work Dirka. But your mother preferred it that way. She felt secure, with daily visits to and from our many relatives, and she did not wish to have to break in a new slave or a hired servant in my absence.
As we headed out into the windy Propontis, I stood on the poop deck, waving to your mother, and she waved to me from the quay. I suppose you were too young at the time to remember that parting now. We waved until each was out of the other's sight. When Mount Dindymos sank below the blue curve of the Propontis, I wept tears as salty as the sea. Some of my fellow passengers spoke of this, and I made an excuse about the pain of leaving one's beloved city. It would not have done to admit that a mere woman had brought my feelings so visibly to the surface.
And so the tale of my later voyages, which has taken me months to dictate, begins. I hope you will find it beguiling for its own sake as well as an effective self-justification by your sire. Rejoice!
BOOK I — Hippalos the Corinthian
On the tenth of Mounychion, in the third year of the 165th Olympiad, [*Approx. April 1, 119 B.C. ] when Hipparchos was archon of Athens and Ptolemaios Physkon had reigned as sole king in Egypt for forty-five years, I, Eudoxos son of Theon, left Kyzikos in command of the delegation sent by my city to Alexandria for King Ptolemaios' Persephoneia.
As we coasted the south shore of the Propontis in the state galley Persephonê, we had not gone three hundred furlongs [**1 furlong (stadion)= 1/8 mile.] before we passed the boundary of the Kyzikene lands and came abreast of those ruled by Rome. We made our overnight stops at those Ionian cities—Troy, Mytilenê, and Phokaia, for example—that the Romans had not yet raped of their independence.
Whilst our relations with Rome had been good, a small power like Kyzikos is well advised not to remind the Romans wantonly of its existence. The Romans are great ones for putting their noses into other people's business. It does not take much of a pretext—a tavern brawl between your sailors and theirs will do—to convince them that they owe it to the peace, of the world to take you under their fatherly wing. Then you awaken to find a Roman garrison in your city and a Roman proconsul stealing everything not firmly nailed down and selling you and your family into slavery in Italy.
So we avoided the Roman-ruled cities of Asia Minor. As it was, a Roman fiver came boiling out of the harbor of Ephesos as we passed, signaling us to stop. When the Roman galley drew close, an officer shouted across the water through a speaking trumpet, demanding to know who we were and what our business was. We told him and sailed on. Alas for the great days of Hellas, when the ships of a free Hellenic city went where they listed without anybody's leave!
Eighteen days after we set out, we raised the Egyptian coast near the Sebennytic Mouth of the Nile. I had been to Egypt twenty years before, as supercargo on one of the family's ships. The Egyptian shore showed the same dreary monotony: a land as flat as a marble flagstone in the temple of Persephone, rimmed by a never-ending beach, and beyond it a mass of reeds and a hedge of palms against the sky.
We sailed westward, past Kanopos and Boukiris and little fishing villages, until the coast rose in the slight ridge that passes for a hill in the Delta. And so we came at last to the walls of Alexandria.
At the Bull Channel, a pilot boat, with the red-lion pennant of the Ptolemies whipping from its masthead, led us into the Great Harbor. To our right, on the isle of Pharos, rose Sostratos' colossal, gleaming lighthouse, towering up at least four plethra, [* 1 plethron = 100 feet.] with a plume of smoke streaming from its top. On our left stood the fortifications and barracks at the end of Point Lochias, and then the temple of Isis.
Once we were through the channel, the Great Harbor opened out on all sides. On the right was the mole called the Seven Furlonger, joining the Pharos to the city, with scores of merchantmen tied up along it on both sides. Beyond lay the Old Harbor, or Haven of Happy Return, devoted to commercial and fishing craft. On the left, as we entered the Great Harbor, were the naval docks, with squadrons of Ptolemaic fivers and larger ships. Their hulls were black, and each bore a gilded statue of Alexander on its stern. Beyond and above the warships, the gilded roof tiles of the royal palaces glittered and their marble columns gleamed.
Near the palaces, a section of the harbor was marked off from the rest by a mole. In this inner harbor lay the king's private ships, which included three of the largest vessels in the world. These ships had all been acquired about a hundred years before, in the time of the fourth Ptolemy—Ptolemaios Philopator, the degenerate with whom the dynasty began to go to seed.
One of the ships was Philopator's pleasure barge. Another was a huge vessel built by Hieron of Syracuse. The tyrannos had meant to combine the virtues of a war galley, a merchantman, and a royal yacht in one hull; but the ship proved too slow for war, too costly for commerce, and too crowded for pleasure. So, in disgust, Hieron gave her to Philopator, who liked such nautical freaks.
The third ship was the largest war galley of all time, a for-tier over four plethra long. Four thousand rowers, pulling ten-man oars arranged in four banks, propelled her. She had proved too slow for any practical use, and the hire of so many rowers would have strained the finances even of Egypt; so she had been tied up and neglected. Of the three, the barge was the only one that had been kept up. The two galleys lay forlorn, with most of the paint gone from their woodwork and no oars in their ports. I suppose the kings now and then had their bilges pumped out, or they would have sunk from simple leakage.
The pilot boat led us to a wharf to the right of the naval docks, near the temple of Poseidon on the teeming waterfront. Here several other sacred municipal triremes were drawn up. I recognized the Athenian Salaminia, having seen her several times on voyages to Athens.
We had not finished tying up when a naval inspector in gleaming cuirass and a couple of Greek civilians came aboard. While the inspector went down the line asking every man on board his name and business, and the two customs men poked amongst our baggage, I saw a dozen people hurrying from the mass of palaces to our left, with cloaks flapping and helmet plumes nodding. The nearer they came, the faster they went. At last they broke into a run, the soldiers clattering and the civilians clutching their garments.
As they straggled to the base of the companionway, a furious argument broke out. Fists shook; insults were shouted. Presently two—an army officer whose harness flashed with golden trim, and a tall, red-haired civilian—attempted to ascend the plank at the same time. Since the plank was too narrow for this purpose, they tried to shoulder each other off. Then they fell to pushing and wrestling, shouting: "Out of my way, you collared knave!"
"You're mad, you temple-robbing sodomite!"
"Go to the crows, you thickskin, or I'll cut your lying throat!"
While they strove in this unseemly fashion, another man quietly climbed up on the plank and proceeded to the deck. He was about my age, lean and swarthy, with a shaven head, wearing a long white Egyptian robe and carrying an ornate walking stick. As he approached, panting from his recent run, the other two ceased their battle and followed him up the plank, still muttering threats and insults under their breath. The rest of the party followed.
Stepping down to the deck and speaking good Greek with a trace of Egyptian accent, the white-robed man began: