Oracle of the Dead(34)

“Exactly. Well, every year at the Festival of Apollo, small arrows are among the offerings brought to the god, although the petitioners usually bring them after dark.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “Apollo is a solar deity, and his sacrifices always take place in the daytime.”

“Because Apollo of the Bow is the god in his aspect as avenger. The arrows mean the petitioner is asking his aid in taking vengeance upon his enemies.”

“Quite interesting,” I said. It seemed there was no way I could keep the gods out of my investigation.

“Cordus,” Julia said. “You said you had been thinking about this very subject. Why is this?”

“Because I was struck by an odd coincidence in names. Do you recall the Greek name for Apollo Far-Shooter?”

I thought about it. “Why, it’s—” Then the light dawned. “It’s Apollo Hecatebylos.”

“Exactly. I am sure that it is a mere coincidence in sounds, but the first three syllables of the cognomen form the name of the goddess of the temple below.”

“Could this have some bearing upon the rivalry between the temples?” I asked.

“It is possible, though I am at a loss to explain why. Confusion among the names of gods is not unknown, sometimes causing an alteration in their forms of worship.”

“That’s interesting,” Julia said. “Can you give us an example?”

“Well, there is the case of the god Plutus, from very ancient times honored as the god of wealth. People confused his name with that of Pluto, Roman god of the underworld, whom we identify with the Greek Hades. As a result, most people think of Pluto as a god of wealth, which was not his original role at all.”

“I am intrigued,” I said, “by something you brought up at our earlier meeting, that Hecate is not an oracular deity. Yet Apollo is. In fact, the most prominent of the oracles—those of Delphi and Cumae and Dodona and such—are priestesses of Apollo. Might this have been a source of this strife? Do the devotees of Apollo see those of Hecate as usurpers of their god’s functions?”

“Perhaps taking advantage of the local peoples’ confounding of the two names?” Julia put in.

Cordus nodded. “Quite possible.”

“But,” said Gitiadas, “this conflict has been going on for centuries. Why have these multiple murders occurred now?”

“That is the question,” I agreed, “and it causes me to think that these murders have little or nothing to do with the ancient strife between the strangely superposed rival temples. I think it is something local, immediate, and most likely based on something mundane, such as money.”

“That would be disappointing,” Julia said.

“We have seen a great many murders in our time,” I told her. “Were any of them motivated by anything elevated? It’s always politics, power, jealousy, insult to personal honor, or money. Usually, money. Men seldom prize their own honor or their wives’ chastity above their purses.”

“My husband is a Cynic, to the extent that he can be said to have a philosophy at all,” Julia commented.

“The doubt of human motives is one of the bases of Cynical philosophy,” Gitiadas said. “Or, should I say, the doubt of human motives as stated. Diogénes said that when a man claimed to be doing something for honor, or for patriotism, or for love of his fellow man, or any other such high-flown reason, you could be certain that the real motive was something base and shabby. This is a perfectly respectable philosophical premise, and the older I get, the more I am persuaded that it is true.”

“Alas, it is so,” Cordus agreed.

“That is because you are all men,” Julia informed us. “Men gain wisdom with age but continue to behave like boys their whole lives.”

“My wife is not an admirer of the male gender,” I told them. “Her uncle Caius Julius always being the exception, of course.”

“One must always make an exception for such men,” Gitiadas said, smiling.

“My husband has an unreasoning distrust of Caesar. He suspects a Sulla-like dictatorial ambition. This is quite foolish. His Diogenean example is an underhanded way to question a great man’s integrity.”

We were straying onto dangerous ground. “But, returning to the question of the temple and its annihilated clergy, there is the matter of the girl, Hypatia. It is clear to me that she was killed because she had some part in the murder of the priests. She was primed to tell me what she did, but someone thought she was going to tell me more and she was silenced.”

“What might she have known?” Julia wondered.