Alexandria

‘Aulus, be inspired by your own area of interest. You need to find some previously untouched subject and pursue it independently. You may have been rubbish as an informer at street level, but now you are embellished with an expensive education so we expect better things . . . Just ask me before you run off and waste a lot of effort, in case I think your research is pointless - or I want to pinch it for my own. You mentioned plagiarism, I believe.’

‘Oh there’s a story that everyone here seems to be told. One Aristophanes of Byzantium, once a Director of the Museion -’

‘Not the Athenian playwright called Aristophanes?’

‘I said Byzantium; do try to keep alert, Falco. Aristophanes the Director systematically read every scroll in the library. Because of his well-known reading habits, he was asked to judge a poetry competition in front of the King. After he had heard all the entries, he accused the students of plagiarism. Challenged to prove it, he ran around the Library, going straight to the shelves where the right scrolls were. He gathered them up, completely by memory, and showed that every entry in the competition had been copied. I think this story is reiterated to new scholars as a dire warning.’

‘They would cheat? Appalling!’

‘Indubitably, it still goes on. Philetus can’t know. Unless you have the right calibre of man in charge, who will be capable of telling whether work is original or a blatant steal?’

I was thoughtful. ‘People speak well of Theon. Any indication that he had accused some scholar, or scholars, of plagiarism?’

‘That would be a neat solution,’ Aulus conceded. ’Unfortunately, no one knows of him doing it.’

‘You asked?’

‘I am thorough, Falco. I can see logical connections.’

‘Keep your ringlets on ... I wish I knew whether Theon was looking at the Pinakes that night.’

‘He was.’ Aulus had an annoying habit of withholding information, then dropping it into the conversation as if I already ought to know.

‘How can you tell?’

He stretched his sturdy legs. ‘Because.’

‘Come on; you’re not three years old! Because what, you flitterbug?’

‘I got to the Library before opening time this morning, talked my way in and found the little knock-kneed slave who always cleans the room.’

I kept my temper. I had dealt with Aulus for some years. When he gave me a report he always had to make himself look good. Simply relating the facts was too simple - yet it would generally be a good report. I gave my body some exercise, pulling my joints systematically and adding in a head-rub just to show I could be patient.

‘One!’Aulus liked order. ‘When he first turned up with his sponges that day, he says the room was locked. Two! He came back, after people had broken in and found the body. He was told to tidy up.’

‘How long have you known this?’ I thundered.

‘Just today’

‘How long have I been in this room and you didn’t tell me?’

‘Philosopher, does a fact take on substance only when Marcus Didius Falco knows it, or does information exist independently?’ He had posed, gazing at the ceiling, and was speaking in a comic voice like a particularly tedious orator. Aulus enjoyed the student life. He stayed up late and went unshaved. In fairness, he enjoyed thought too. He had always been more solitary than his younger brother, Justinus. He had friends, whom his family thought unsuitable, but none were especially close. My Albia knew more about him than anyone and even that was a long-distance friendship. We let her correspond so that she could practise her writing. Presumably he answered her out of kind-heartedness. ‘Anyway, I’m telling you now, Falco.’

‘Thank you. Aulus. Who gave the order to tidy up?’

‘Nicanor.’

‘The lawyer. He should have known better!’

‘Nicanor had come over from the Academic Board meeting. He told the cleaner to straighten the room and said the body would be taken away later. The slave could not bear to touch the corpse. So he did everything else just as he would have done normally - swept the floor, sponged the furniture, threw out the rubbish - which included a dried-up dinner wreath. There were a few scrolls on the table; he replaced them in cupboards.’

‘I don’t suppose he can say which they were?’

‘My first question - and no; needless to say, he cannot remember.’

In fairness to the slave, all the Pinakes scrolls looked similar. The situation was tantalising; if the scrolls were relevant, I would have given a lot to know which Theon had been reading. ‘Did he find any other writing? Was Theon making or using notes?’

Aulus shook his head. ‘None on the table.’

‘So that’s all?’

‘That’s all he said, Marcus.’

‘You asked this slave, I presume, whether it was he who locked the door?’

‘Yes. He’s a slave. He doesn’t have a key’

‘So when Nicanor broke the door down, was he up to anything?’

‘I can’t see what. Thank Zeus you’re the brains of our outfit, Falco, so I don’t have to worry. The lock isn’t broken now’

‘It was, after the death - didn’t you notice? They have a handyman. The Librarian’s room ‘will take priority for repairs.’ I posed my next question as cautiously as possible: ‘Do I need to interview this slave myself?’

‘I can talk to a cleaning slave and be trusted to get it right!’ he answered, with resentment.

‘I know you can, Aulus,’ I answered back gently.

XXIV

I left Aelianus and went to meet his sister. The Serapeion stood on the highest point of the city. This rocky outcrop in the old district of Rhakotis could be seen from all over Alexandria. It was a landmark for sailors. It would have made a fine Greek acropolis - so instead we Romans had installed a Forum, at the back of the Caesarium. Now there was a civic focal point of our choosing, while a huge shrine to the invented god Serapis occupied the heights. Uncle Fulvius had told Helena that the Egyptians paid little attention to Serapis and his consort, Isis; as a religious cult, the couple were held in more regard at Rome than here. That may have been because in Rome this was an exotic foreign cult, whereas here it passed unnoticed amongst the multitude of old pharaonic oddities.

The precincts of the Serapeion did stand out. This site of pilgrimage and study was a large, gorgeous complex, with a huge and beautiful temple in the centre. Foundation tablets from the reign of Ptolemy III celebrated the establishment of the original sanctuary. Two series, set up in gold, silver, bronze, faience and glass, recorded the foundation in Greek letters and Egyptian hieroglyphics. ‘Even now,’ commented Helena thoughtfully, ‘nobody has added Latin.’

Within the temple, we found a monumental statue of the synthetic god - a seated male figure sporting heavy drapes. His barber must be bursting with pride. Of hefty build, Serapis was lavishly equipped with hair and a flowing primped beard, with five fancy screw-curls lined up across his broad forehead. As a head-dress he wore the characteristic inverted quarter-bushel measure that was his trademark - symbolic of prosperity, a memento of Egypt’s abundant corn fertility.

We paid a guide a bunch of coins to tell us how a window was arranged high up, through which sunlight streamed at break of day, falling so the sunbeam seemed to kiss the god on the lips. It was a device created by the inventor, Heron.

‘We know of him,’ I said. Aulus and I once did a job where I had him in disguise as a seller of automaton statues, all deriving from the crazy imagination of Heron of Alexandria. ‘Is the maestro still practising?’

‘He is full of ideas. He will continue until death stops him.’ I muttered under my breath to Helena, ‘I wonder if Heron does magic with door locks? Might be worth exploring.’

‘You boy, Falco! You just want to play with toys.’

We were told that beneath the temple ran deep underground corridors, used in rites connected with the god’s afterlife aspect. We did not investigate. I keep out of ritual tunnels. Down there in the dark, you never know when some angry priest is going to run at you wielding an extremely sharp ritual knife. No good Roman believes in