"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."