The Temple of the Muses(33)
“From Babylon the king traveled through Mesopotamia, into Syria, down to Damascus and then to the Temple of Ammon in Libya, where the god might behold his divine son. From there the funerary carriage was to proceed to Aegae in Macedonia, there to rest among the tombs of the former Macedonian royalty, but in crossing Egypt the procession was met by the king’s former companion, Ptolemy Soter, who persuaded the leader of the procession to allow him to perform the final rites instead, at Memphis.”
“Hijacked the body, eh?” I said. “Good for him. You wouldn’t catch me letting that much gold leave my kingdom, either.” Jab.
“The king lay at Memphis for a number of years,” the priest went on, ignoring me, “until this splendid mausoleum could be completed. Then, amid much rejoicing and solemn ceremony, the king, Alexander the Great, found his final resting place in the city named for him.”
He let us contemplate all this splendor for a while, then signaled for us to follow him again. We entered a room where Alexander’s robes and armor were displayed, then another which held the marble sarcophagus the priest had described, along with the outer coffin with its wonderfully carved golden lid. After a few minutes of contemplation, he led us into the final chamber.
This was a room of relatively modest dimensions, perfectly circular, with a domed ceiling. In its middle lay Alexander, sheathed in thin, perfectly molded gold, looking as if he might wake up at any moment. After the Macedonian custom, he was laid out on a bed, this one carved from alabaster. I leaned toward Julia and whispered in her ear:
“Short little bugger, wasn’t he?”
Unfortunately, the chamber was one of the magical sort that magnifies sound. My whispered words boomed out as if shouted by a herald. The priest and the other tourists glared at us as we made our embarrassed way out, bestowing effusive thanks and proclaiming our appreciation.
“Have you been drinking early again?” Julia demanded.
“I swear I haven’t!”
I thought she was going to attack me, but she couldn’t keep it up, and by the time we fell into our litter we were both laughing helplessly.
“Must be a lot more fun in there than it looks like from out here,” Hermes said.
“To the Heptastadion!” I said, and the bearers hoisted us to their shoulders and off we went.
“Have you learned anything?” I asked Julia as we drifted through the streets.
“It’s difficult to get Alexandrian ladies to talk about anything except religion and clothes. Nobody talks about politics in a monarchy.”
“Forget the Alexandrians,” I advised. “Work on the wives or other womenfolk of the foreign ambassadors, specifically the ambassadors of those yet independent nations that fear being the next additions to Rome’s empire.”
She looked at me sharply. “What have you learned?”
“Very little,” I admitted, “but I suspect that Iphicrates, despite his protestations, ran a profitable sideline in designing weapons for our enemies or those who expect to become our enemies soon. Parthia would be a good place to start. Now that the nearer East is subdued, King Phraates is the one who has Pompey and Crassus and, forgive me, your uncle barking at the gates like so many starving Molossian hounds. The last truly rich kingdom left independent.”
“Except for Egypt,” she said.
“Egypt isn’t … well, Egypt is nominally independent, but that’s a joke.”
“Perhaps it isn’t funny to the Egyptians. They’re only poor because the recent generations of Ptolemies have been stupid. Once they were the mightiest nation in the world. The Pharaohs ruled in Egypt when the Greeks besieged Troy. What nation that has fallen from power doesn’t dream of regaining it?”
“A good question. That would explain Achillas’s interest in Iphicrates. But whatever the military gentry is up to, it’s still stuck with the Ptolemies. Everyone except Egyptians considers brother-sister marriage an abomination. Such matings seem to work well enough with horses, but not with humans. It certainly hasn’t improved the Ptolemaic line.”
“Degenerate dynasties are easily toppled by strong men who have the army behind them,” she said. Leave it to a Caesar to take the pragmatic view of power politics.
“But the Egyptians are awfully conservative. They prize their royalty even if they weren’t Egyptian to begin with. An Alexandrian mob toppled the Ptolemy before this one just because he murdered his rather aged wife, one of the Berenices. What would they do to a usurper, who wasn’t even a part of the family?”
“I’ll look into his pedigree,” she said practically. “I’ll wager he has some sort of family connection. And the traditional way for a usurper to legitimize his power is to marry into royalty. There is a selection of princesses, you’ll recall. Besides, he could ease his way into power by acting as regent for young Ptolemy.”