A short conversation ensued, during which Hormus seemed to find it necessary to emphasise a point by gently stroking the Persian boy’s arm; the slave looked back at his master. ‘Bagoas here says that there are many associations of traders throughout the city and over in Seleucia as well.’
Vespasian thought for a few moments. ‘Ataphanes was Persian, I believe; not Median, Babylonian or Assyrian or any of the other sorts. Ask him where I should start to look for a Persian spice merchant.’
Another conversation followed involving a lot of eye contact, some shy smiles and, it seemed to Vespasian and Magnus, an unnecessary amount of stroking. ‘We need to go to the agora near to the royal palace,’ Hormus said, briefly dragging his eyes away from his informant.
‘Good, tell him there is a drachma in it for him to show us the way there and then act as our guide for the rest of the day.’ Vespasian paused before adding with a smile, ‘And night.’
‘You shouldn’t encourage him,’ Magnus grumbled as Hormus translated Vespasian’s wishes. ‘This is what I meant; he just can’t help himself. Everywhere we went it was the same thing; I wouldn’t have minded so much had all the grunting and groaning not kept me awake on so many nights.’
Bagoas whistled and another couple of boys emerged from the crowds on the quay; both were a year or two younger than him and, judging by their looks, were either his brothers or cousins.
Hormus eyed the boys with interest as Bagoas pointed to them and explained their presence. ‘He says that they will look after the boat for a drachma each now and another on your return in the morning.’
Vespasian shook his head. ‘Tell Bagoas that if he helps us find the people we’re looking for we won’t need the boat and he and the boys can keep it.’
After they had settled their account with the inevitable harbour official demanding mooring fees as well as a small donation directly into his own purse based on the number of people arriving in the boat which seemed to be in lieu of any goods in their possession worth stealing, Bagoas led them towards the city.
One look at the buildings lining the wide thoroughfare that dived, straight as an arrow’s flight, from the harbour gate, bisecting the maze of streets, into the heart of the city was enough for anyone to realise that Ctesiphon was the heart of power. Only the dwellings of the noble or the immortal were allowed in such a prime position; consequently it was a succession of brightly painted palaces and temples interspersed with paradises – areas of manicured cultivation whose beauty exceeded the Gardens of Lucullus. Wide, splendid and rich and lined with many varieties of trees and flowering shrubs, the thoroughfare had been designed to mask the haphazard planning and the nonexistent sewage system of the rest of the ancient city so that the Great King saw only beauty and grandeur and breathed nothing but sweet air as he made his way to his main palace at Ctesiphon’s centre. But today the Great King was not using his way in and out of the city so the population were graciously allowed to promenade up and down and stare at its wonders.
Inured though they were to the glories of great civilisations – coming from Rome and having visited Alexandria – Vespasian and Magnus still found themselves staring in admiration at the architecture, the scale and the human endeavour that it had taken to create this avenue.
‘That’s a stable!’ Magnus exclaimed, looking at a three-storey palace built around three sides of a courtyard in which horses were being exercised. A ramp led up to a wide balcony that ran around the first floor giving access to scores of individual stalls; a further ramp ran up to the second floor, which replicated the first. The stalls in the ground floor, however, were twice the size of those above. ‘Those horses have more room than most families back in Rome, or anywhere else for that matter.’
‘Easterners have always loved their horses,’ Vespasian pointed out, ‘and having seen the way that they whip their conscript infantry to almost certain death, does it really surprise you that the Great King’s horses are more valuable to him than his people?’
‘I suppose not; he seems to have plenty to replace the ones he loses and lots of different sorts.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ Vespasian said as Bagoas steered them through the crowds, mostly attired in the Persian and Median manner but many other styles of dress were on display reflecting the diversity of the huge empire of which this was the hub: the flowing robes and headdresses of the desert dwellers to the south, the leather of the horsemen from the northern seas of grass, dark-skinned Indians from the East in long-sleeved tunics and baggy trousers, Bactrians and Sogdians in leather caps, sheepskin jackets and embroidered trousers, Greek, Jewish, Scythian, Albanian, everything that could be imagined; but amongst them all there was not one toga. Although he knew that with their eastern clothes they blended in well, Vespasian felt conspicuous, foreign, and he wondered what Caratacus must have thought when the Britannic chieftain had been brought in chains to Rome, seeing such an alien place and alien people for the first time. Here he saw what he realised was the Rome of the East: the empire that had subjugated as many, if not more, races. He recalled Caratacus’ words to Claudius: ‘If you Romans, in your halls of marble, who have so much, choose to become masters of the world, does it follow that we, in our huts of mud, who have comparatively little, should accept slavery?’ That was evidently as true for the peoples of the East as it was for those in the West. Here, therefore, was the balance to Rome; here was the empire that would always rival her, fight her but never dominate her because no empire could comprise both East and West. Both would stay strong through fear of the other; both needed war to take their conquered peoples’ minds off their subjugation; both knew that to destroy the other would mean death because a super-empire with nothing to fear would break apart under its own weight.