"Just like him," Niger grumbled. "He doesn't command a single legionary, but he wants to keep tabs on us."
"Still," said Cato, "the idea makes sense. Militarily, I mean. Close communication between the armies and navies can be important in a war as big as this one, and it looks like these new boats will do the job better than the older type. Not," he added hastily, "that I'd ever trust a traitor like Marcus Scipio."
Norbanus nodded. "My own thoughts. Well, there's an answer to this: I want my shipmasters and shipwrights to study that little vessel while it's here, learn how to sail it, then build me a flotilla of them. That way I can keep in control of my own flow of information, without everything going through Alexandria and Scipio's hands."
Everyone agreed that this was a brilliant idea.
Outside, the Greeks strolled through the legionary camp, admiring the superb discipline of the soldiers. Norbanus's veterans were easily distinguishable from the men of the new legions recently added to his army. The former were more weather-beaten, and their motley equipment gave them a raffish distinction. The newer legions were made up of mostly younger men, and their arms and clothing were turned out by the new fabricae to standardized patterns. It gave them a uniformity of appearance that was odd to the eyes of men accustomed to armies made up of soldiers who were expected to supply their own panoply, usually whatever they had at home or could afford to purchase.
"They're a fierce-looking lot," Izates said, nodding toward a unit of the veterans. A centurion had found some fault with a legionary and was beating him mercilessly with the vitis: a stick carried by all centurions for just this purpose. The man being beaten did not betray pain or distress by the slightest change of expression. His comrades, clearly the recipients of many such beatings, looked on with amusement.
"There hasn't been anything like them since the great days of Sparta," Zeno agreed. "I've seen citizen militias of the sort most Greek cities produce, and Macedonian professional phalangists, and mercenaries of the sort hired by Egypt and Carthage. But I've never before seen a nation of men who are professional soldiers from the cradle. Did you know that some Roman officers don't consider men truly reliable until they reach their forties? It's an age when most soldiers give up war for good."
"Our friend Marcus Scipio's one-eyed grandfather still serves in arms. I think old Gabinius would pick up his sword if he wasn't so arthritic."
For a while the Greeks admired the colors of the sunset, then Zeno said: "We could be playing a dangerous game, dealing with these Judean women."
"I've found that I have a taste for dangerous games," Izates said. "We were a pair of penniless, itinerant scholars, and by pure chance we were thrust into the regions of power. Perhaps the gods had a hand in it; perhaps it was blind chance. Whichever, I find that it has a powerful attraction. It's a game where one throws the knucklebones not merely for wealth, not even for life and death. The stakes are lordship and immortal fame. It gives life a flavor that scholarship lacks."
Zeno laughed. "What would Diogenes think of you? A Cynic is supposed to scorn all such things as mere vanity."
"Diogenes was never presented with such an opportunity." He brooded for a while. "I once thought philosophy held the answer to everything. Now I see that far too often it is a turning away from the world. One has no power, therefore one despises power. One has no wealth, so one scorns wealth. It is the old fable of the fox and the grapes, and if that is not vanity, what is?"
"Surely you are not giving up philosophy? It is your whole life."
"Certainly not. But I now know that philosophy as it has come to us has taken some incorrect turns. In the days of Heraclitus, philosophy took all of existence as its subject, and nothing in the cosmos was deemed unworthy of study. But then it came under the domination of Plato and the Academics. Plato was a great philosopher, but he had an aristocratic blindness and taught that the material world was unworthy of a philosopher's attention.
"Chilo and the philosophers of the Archimedean school are very different. They are engaged in the world. They do things! They accomplish wonders. True, they sometimes build mere toys for the vulgar mob to marvel at, and they have to please the patron of the Museum, but this enables them to do serious work. I suppose I will always be a questioning Cynic, but I now perceive the world through different eyes. And I confess that playing this game gives me a thrill that even the greatest intellectual accomplishment lacks. I think it must be akin to the exaltation of battle."
"But Marcus Scipio was against suborning these astrologers," Zeno pointed out.
"Marcus Scipio is a remarkable man," Izates said judiciously. "He is a true visionary. But still, he is too much the man of action. He wants to use the Archimedean school and the wealth of Egypt to achieve his ends, whatever those may be. Flaccus, now, he is different. He is more deep-minded, more subtle, more farsighted. He is the least Roman of any Roman we have met thus far. He could almost be a Greek.
"And he wants us to undermine Norbanus through the Judean women. In this instance, far from Alexandria, we are well employed in doing his will, rather than Scipio's."
"And how do you propose to approach these women?" Zeno asked. "Bribery seems the usual method, but with what does one tempt women who have attached themselves to a man who is already outrageously wealthy and successful, and who bids fair to become master of the world?"
"A good question, and one that will require some thought. I must meet them, sound them out and find out their weaknesses and desires. We need to know what they want. Perhaps most of all, we need to know what they fear."
The next morning, a delegation of the leading men of Massilia emerged from the city. Led by a pair of white-robed heralds wearing wreaths of laurel and bearing staffs, they walked to the great awning stretched before the command tent of Titus Norbanus. The general sat enthroned upon his dais, seated in a curule chair, enfolded in his purple robe. Behind him stood his principal officers, looking stern.
"Great General Norbanus," said the senior of the heralds, "here before you stand the governors of the Assembly of Massilia." He introduced them, beginning with Socrates, elder of the council. "They come to you under the protection of Apollo, guardian of envoys. Any harm that comes to them in this place must be regarded as sacrilege, and will surely be punished by the immortals."
"Rome yields to none in observance of divine law," announced Lentulus Niger. "These dignitaries are under Rome's protection for the duration of their visit among us. What shall become of them after their return to their city shall be the subject of these negotiations."
"Socrates, son of Archilochus," Norbanus said, addressing the leader of the council, "you have heard already the terms laid down by me: surrender of your city to me, or utter extermination. How have you decided?"
It escaped no one that Norbanus laid down terms and demanded surrender in his own name, not in that of Rome.
Socrates came forward. He was a white-bearded, dignified man who had the look of one who had already accepted his own death. "Great General Norbanus, the ancient and independent city of Massilia is proud, but we Massiliotes understand overwhelming power when we see it. As once we yielded to Carthage, paying tribute and sending our young men to serve in her armies, so we must now bow our necks to Rome. Your army invests our walls and your navy occupies our harbor. Only fools could ignore this, and we are not fools. I know that it is customary for a conqueror to execute the leading men of a surrendered city and to take hostages of the wealthiest houses to ensure loyalty. We ask only that you spare our city and our people."