own convenience.’
Anicius sat looking at me for a while. ‘And you found that in your Epicurus?’ he asked at length.
As said, I’d found very little yet in Epicurus. I’d had to guess most of it for myself. I didn’t answer, but waited for him to go on.
‘Your Epicurus,’ he said, ‘believed that the sole value of knowledge was to dispel superstitious fear. He encouraged his followers to learn astronomy simply to let us know that heavenly phenomena are natural and predictable effects, not acts of Divine Intervention. Equally his defective theory of the atoms.
‘But all other pure knowledge he despised. He taught against geometry and virtually all mathematics. They do nothing to remove fear, and so have no value.
‘Your positive theory of knowledge has no echo in any of the great philosophers of ancient times. There is a story of the great Euclid. While he was lecturing one day in the Alexandrian Library, a student interrupted him to ask what use the particular geometrical proposition might have.
‘ “Give the man some money,” Euclid said to an assistant, “and throw him into the street”.’
Anicius smiled at the recollection of the story. He went on to make some sniffy comments about where Archimedes had gone wrong in using his mathematical skills to build ‘mere machines’. He made a brief defence of knowledge for the sake of moral improvement.
He saw my look of polite disagreement. He leaned forward and looked closely into my face. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
I steadied my features against the blast of his stinking breath and told him about England. I used its old name, Britain.
‘A strange people, if there are more like you,’ he said with an uncomfortable laugh. ‘You will come again, though, will you not?’ he asked, suddenly earnest. ‘There are so many books here that you will find of value. I will personally dig out some translations of Plato that my uncle made into Latin.’
He paused and looked at me. ‘If you can tell me each time when you’ll be back, I’ll personally find the books you want. I’ll take you through them – that is, if you can bear an old man’s company… Do take whatever you want. I’ll mark the ones I want back after copying. The rest you can keep. I’ll gladly-’
He broke off with a gasp of pain. He lurched backwards, and I only just caught him in time before he hit the tiled floor. Teeth chattering, his face white, he clutched at his lower belly. I later discovered he had kidney stones. By the time he’d recovered from the spasm, he was lapsing out of rational mode.
‘But it’s all worthless,’ he said, back in the whining tone of our first meeting. ‘I envy you your barbarism. Devoid of philosophy, devoid of religion, you are all so pure of heart and mind.’
He prosed on about that learned ancestor of his. So educated, he’d been, yet still he’d met his end by having a cord put around his forehead and tightened till the eyes popped out. ‘Let there be an end to learning, and then we can all be at peace,’ he concluded, hobbling off for what I took at the time, from his quickened movements, to be a piss.
By the door, he turned back and added, now more rational again – almost, indeed, humorous: ‘Never grow old, my little Briton. It really isn’t worth the effort.’
Martin was sitting at a table in one of the other rooms. He had several books open before him.
‘What are those?’ I asked.
‘I’ve found the Greek section, sir,’ he said, pointing down at a scroll written in black with headings in faded gold.
I looked hungrily at the text. ‘What is that one you’re reading?’ I asked.
‘It’s the fifth book of Thucydides – his description of the Sicilian Expedition.’
‘May I see?’ I looked closer over his shoulder.
He stood up and gave me his place. I sat, making sure not to get dust on my fine clothes, and looked at the glued sheets. I could read some of the words, though they were written in a slightly different alphabet from the one Maximin had taught me by scratching in the mud on those French roads. I could understand words here and there. But the whole was in a Greek far more complex than I had learnt. It might for the most important part have been in a foreign language.
I looked up in despair. ‘I can’t read it,’ I said. ‘Can you teach me?’
‘When would you start?’
‘Now?’ I suggested.
Martin went to the racks and brought back another book. ‘This is by Xenophon,’ he explained. ‘The Greek is pure, but simple enough to understand if you can read the Gospels.’
He pulled up another chair, and began the lesson.
So I put myself back into school. Martin was a good teacher. If his father had been even better, no wonder the Greeks had hated them. He read each sentence, giving me his father’s reconstructed sound of the words. I followed him with my own reading. He told me it was important for appreciating the pure language to forget the modern pronunciation I’d got from Maximin. The two languages were often so far apart, it was best to regard them as separate. I could easily switch back into the modern pronunciation for speaking with educated moderns. Then he turned to explaining those difficulties of grammar and syntax that would puzzle a student who knew only the spoken language of the moderns.
It was like swimming in the sea at Richborough – the water was cold, so that wading in was difficult and movement was stiff and awkward at first, but then gradually your strokes became more and more confident. I won’t pretend that I ended that lesson with anything like a perfect grasp of those endlessly complex variations of tense and mood. But I could understand the rising excitement of those brave and resourceful Greek mercenaries who, after so many months of passing through the landlocked realms of the barbarian, at last reached the sea and knew that they would see home again.
As Martin rolled up the book, I asked: ‘How long before I can read your Thucydides?’
‘It can take years of patient study by the modern Greeks to write like him,’ he said. ‘The only modern my father said had perfectly succeeded was a Syrian called Procopius – and he’d studied Greek as a foreign language. But just to read him – I think, at your speed of progress, we can move to him long before the books are all ready for shipping to Canterbury. But you will need to work every day.’
‘Every day and all day, if I must,’ I said firmly.
It was dark outside when we left. This time, we were accompanied back by two of Marcella’s big slaves. And still we were followed. No one else seemed to notice, and I decided to ignore the footsteps behind us.
As we arrived, it began to rain, and I could feel a storm coming on. I hadn’t gone off as agreed to dine with Lucius. Should I set out in the dark and rain? No. I sent him a note of apology, and promised to come to him for breakfast.
33
I’d decided on dinner in the common room that Marcella provided for her guests. I would get Martin out of dining with the other slaves. In return for a decent meal, he could continue explaining some of the difficulties that had come up during our inspection of Xenophon.
As I was locking the door to my rooms, though, I was caught by the diplomat. He’d been dawdling in the long corridor that led to all the upper quarters, and I knew he’d been waiting for me. But he smiled as if surprised at a sudden meeting, and invited me to dinner in his own rooms.
I thought to go back and change. I was, after all, only expecting to eat with persons of little consequence – and not even that if Martin had gone off to be with his woman. But the diplomat was dressed with less than his usual magnificence, and was rather pressing with his invite.
I agreed and followed him directly to his rooms.
The dishes were all of gold, made in a style I’d never before seen. The food almost knocked my head off – all pepper and other spices I’d not yet encountered. As we munched our way through the various courses of burning and brightly coloured meats, I found myself downing pint after pint of that fizzy water.
‘You will surely forgive my lack of wine,’ the diplomat had explained as I sat down with him. ‘Except for the
