"Rejoice!" I said. "Have you no royal pupils this afternoon?"
"No, they are all rehearsing for tomorrow's march past."
"You know, Master Agatharchides, I have never seen your famous Library. If you would care to show me ..."
He shut his tablet with a snap. "Delighted, old boy, delighted. Wait whilst I get my stick. Alexandria has its allotment of savage dogs and tough characters."
"I'll get mine, too, and meet you here."
I fetched my stick—no dainty little cane, good only for punishing puppy dogs, but a solid, four-foot oaken cudgel— and gave Gnouros the afternoon off. A few moments later, we were walking south on Argeus Avenue on our way to the Library, which lay about ten furlongs southwest of the palaces. I asked the tutor:
"Has His Divine Majesty decided between the two proposals?"
"I saw him this morning, but he did not say. I suspect he has; but then, Physkon never tells one anything unless he has a reason for doing so."
"Which do you think he has chosen?"
"I suspect yours, from the tenor of his questions. He sought my advice on the organization of the party, and he seemed anxious that the commander have maritime experience. He even asked me if I should like to head the expedition."
"What did you tell him?"
Agatharchides: "I respectfully declined the offer. I'm a bit elderly—in my sixties—for anything so strenuous."
"I'm not much younger than you, but I feel I could command such a journey."
"You're a powerful man who doesn't look his age, but I know my physical limitations."
"Whom did you recommend for captain?"
"I told the king that Ananias the Judaean was the ablest of his commanders with whom I was personally acquainted, despite his lack of marine experience. Physkon was not prepossessed by the idea, since Ananias' first loyalty is to Kleopatra the Wife. Besides, he would probably not wish to go, because he suffers excruciatingly from seasickness."
"How about his brother? I thought he would be at the supper last night"
Agatharchides grinned slyly. "The same; and, anyway, I fear that Chelkias' royal mistress has too much use for him to let him out of her sight. He and she are like that—" (he held up two fingers pressed together)"—and also like that." (He rotated his hand until the two fingers were horizontal.) "Everybody is aware of it, including the king; but we don't mention it in the presence of Physkon, unless we are impatient to learn gold mining from the inside."
"I wonder that General Chelkias isn't breaking rocks in Nubia."
"Oh, Physkon doesn't mind; it keeps the Wife out of his way. He's beyond such interests, anyhow. So long as nobody brings the matter into the open, he prefers to turn a blind eye. There are other able royal servants; but most are adherents of one queen or the other, so Physkon doesn't trust them. His own entourage consists mostly of Egyptians, and your modern Egyptian is a peace-loving, stay-at-home sort of faintheart, no man for a daring expedition. And his naval captains, he feels, are too routine-minded."
"Whom, then, will he choose?"
"I don't know, but it wouldn't astonish me to see Hippalos get it."
"That entertainer?"
"Yes. He's a versatile individual, who has managed to keep in the good graces of Physkon and the Wife, despite being one of the Sister's faction."
"Has Hippalos really been all the places and done all the things he claims?"
"What he tells you is at least half true, I should say. As a mere boy, he escaped from the Romans' destruction of Corinth and has been living by his wits ever since."
At last we reached the Library section. This was a huge complex of buildings, not so large as the mass of palaces at the base of Point Lochias but still covering more than a city block. Actually, there were two groups of buildings. One was the Library proper; the other was the Museum, which housed the classrooms and laboratories of the professors of the various sciences. As we arrived first at the Museum, Agatharchides took me through it.
Despite the royal parsimony of which the scientists complained, some remarkable pieces of research were in progress. For instance, one man was working on a geared device—a kind of box, two feet high, with dials on its faces and a knob to one side. When one turned the knob (according to the proud engineer) the dials would go round and show the positions of the heavenly bodies on any chosen date. There were models of catapults and other siege engines. There were elaborate water clocks and devices for measuring the angles of the stars. There were pumps for fighting fires and irrigating fields. Some engineers were trying to get power from flowing water; others, from rushing wind; still others, from heated air or boiling water.
Agatharchides introduced me until I could no longer remember names. Then we passed on to the section devoted to the life sciences. When I met Kallimachos, the head of the medical school, I jokingly asked:
"Well, when are you fellows going to find a cure for age?"
Kallimachos smiled. "That's a long way off, Master Eudoxos. Talk to some half-literate country doctor, and hell assure you he knows the cause and cure of all your ills. Talk to one of us, who are really trying to push back the bounds of knowledge, and you'll hear a different tale. What we know about the human body is but a drop in an amphora compared to what we have yet to learn."
We commiserated with Kallimachos and crossed the street to the Library, where book rolls were stacked in their pigeonholes to the ceiling and the endless rows of bookcases receded far into the distance. We found Ammonios at work at a desk surrounded by a railing.
"Rejoice!" said Agatharchides. "How goes the world's intellectual ganglion today?"
Ammonios clutched at his head. "Do you know what that idiot wants to do now?"
"What?"
"He has some imbecile scheme for reclassifying the books alphabetically by the names of the authors' native cities: Athenians, then Babylonians, and so on."
"Many good-byes to him!" exclaimed Agatharchides.
"Who's the idiot?" I asked.
Agatharchides whispered in my ear: "His superior, the brave General Kydas. Kydas has two assistants: Ammonios to run the Library, and the Priest of the Muses to head the Museum. Being barely literate, he usually leaves them alone; but every now and then he thinks it incumbent upon him to earn his remuneration and issues some well-meant but witless instruction. Once he decided that the Library ought to dispense with everything composed before the time of Alexander the Great, on the hypothesis that it was obsolete. We talked him out of that; then he proposed that all books should be halved in length by deleting and discarding alternate sheets, so they shouldn't occupy so much space. Then—what was that other scheme, Ammonios?"
"He proposed that everything in the Library be rewritten in simple language, with all the long words and hard concepts left out," said Ammonios bitterly. "Making culture available to the masses, he called it. The originals were to be sold or burnt. And now this."
"Cheer up," said Agatharchides, clapping Ammonios on the back. "We'll circumvent him yet. I have brought Master Eudoxos for his first visit to the Library."
Cordially, Ammonios took us in tow. He showed us the principal sights of the Library, such as the original, autograph copies of the plays of Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides. The third Ptolemy had tricked the Athenians out of these manuscripts by borrowing them, promising to return them and posting a bond of fifteen talents. Then he kept them, sent back copies, and cheerfully forfeited the bond. {O Theon: Let this teach you never to trust a king! Father.]
A clerk came up to Ammonios, saying: "Sir, we have two noisy readers."
"Well, hush them up," said Ammonios.
"One—one is a fierce-looking barbarian, and I dare not."