papyrus roll to find his place. 'Announce a monetary reward for anyone denouncing a conspirator against the city… the reward offered should be advertised openly in the agora or at an altar or shrine.' Ballista had read the script before. Its main thrust was the need to be on constant guard against traitors within. When Aeneas wrote, the Mediterranean had been a mosaic of warring city states, each one well stocked with potential revolutionaries. One should never discount the possibility of treachery, but times had changed. Issues were simpler now; unless there were a civil war, it was the imperium Romanian against those outside. The main danger Ballista would face at Arete would be regular Persian siege works – artillery, rams, ramps and mines. This was the sort of practical siege engineering that the big northerner understood.
His bodyguard was approaching, shepherding the newly acquired Persian slave along the dock. Ballista thanked Maximus and gave him leave; under the bodyguard's tan there was an unhealthy pallor, he was sweating much more than the sun merited and his eyes peered out from behind lids almost screwed shut. Maximus gave a slight nod and left. As if by magic, Demetrius appeared, his stylus and writing block ready.
Ballista studied the Persian boy. He was tall, nearly as tall as the northerner himself, with curly black hair and beard. His dark eyes were suspicious, and he had an unmistakable air of hostility. 'Sit,' he said in Greek. 'Bagoas is a slave name?' The Persian boy nodded.
'Show respect! Yes, Kyrios!' snapped Demetrius.
'Yes, Kyrios,' said the Persian in heavily accented Greek.
'What was your name before you were enslaved?'
There was a pause.
'Hormizd.'
Ballista suspected he was lying. 'Do you want to be called Hormizd again?'
The question wrongfooted the youth. 'Er… no… Kyrios.'
'Why not?'
'It would bring shame on my family.'
'How were you enslaved?'
Again there was a pause while the Persian considered his answer. 'I was captured by… some Arab… bandits, Kyrios.'
Another shifty answer, thought Ballista, his eyes following the flight of a seagull away towards the north.
The boy seemed to relax a little.
'I will tell you why I purchased you.' Instantly, the boy tensed. He feared the worst. He seemed ready to run or even to fight. 'I want you to teach me Persian. I want to learn both the language and the customs of the Persians.'
'Most upper-class Persians speak a little Greek, Kyrios,' said the boy, sounding relieved.
Ballista ignored him. 'Carry out your duties well and you will be treated well. Try and run and I will kill you!' He shifted in his seat. 'How did the Persians under the Sassanid house overthrow the Parthians? Why do they so frequently unleash their horsemen on the imperium Romanum? How have they so frequently defeated the Romans?'
'The god Mazda willed it' came the instant reply.
If the first stratagem to bring down the walls fails you must try another. Ballista continued. 'Tell me the story of the Sassanid house. I want to know the ancestors of King Shapur and the stories of their deeds.'
'There are many stories of the origins of the house.'
'Tell me those that you believe.' The boy was wary, but Ballista hoped that pride would lead him to start talking.
The boy collected his thoughts. 'Long ago, when the lord Sasan travelled through the lands, he came to the palace of King Papak. Papak was a seer, and he could tell that the descendants of Sasan were destined by Mazda to lead the Persians to greatness. Papak had no daughter or female relative to offer Sasan, so he offered him his wife. He preferred the lasting glory of the Sassanid Persians to his own shame. The son born to Sasan was Ardashir, the King of Kings, who thirty years ago overthrew the Parthians. The son of Ardashir is Shapur, the King of Kings, the King of Aryans and Non-Aryans, who by the will of Mazda smites the Romans.' The youth glared defiantly at Ballista.
'And Shapur wants back all the lands which were once ruled by the Persians in ancient times before Alexander the Great took their empire? So he would take from the Romans Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and Greece?'
'No… well, yes.'
'Which? No or yes?'
'Yes in the sense that they are ancestral lands that must be reclaimed, but no in the sense that they are not all that he will take from the Romans.' The boy's eyes shone with zeal.
'Then what other lands would he have?' Ballista suspected the worst.
'The King of Kings Shapur in his perfect humility accepts that he is just the instrument of the god Mazda. He understands that it is the destiny of his house to bring the sacred fires of Mazda to the whole world, to make all peoples worship Mazda, to make all the world Aryan!'
So there it was. Ballista's transient feeling of happiness had evaporated. The Persians had no need for temporal niceties such as just cause. There was no hope of compromise, or delay. Seemingly, there was no hope of an end: it was a religious war. For a moment Ballista saw the world as the Persian boy saw it: the armies of the righteous, their numbers those of the stars in the sky, sweeping west to cleanse the world. And all that was standing in their path was Ballista himself and the isolated city of Arete.
III
It had taken time for the drink to die out of Maximus. As soon as Ballista had given him leave he had bought bread, cheese, olives, water and a small piece of honeycomb from the main marketplace and gone in search of a quiet place to sit. He found a deserted garden and chose a spot where both possible points of entry were in view. After checking the shrubbery for snakes, of which he had a particular horror, he settled down with the one book he owned: Petronius's novel The Satyricon. Maximus had tried other books since Ballista had taught him to read Latin in Africa some years ago, but none spoke to him like this one. It showed the Romans as they really were: lustful, drunken, greedy, duplicitous and violent – men much like himself.
The next day, Maximus felt full of life. Just after dawn the captain had announced that, as he could see the peak of Mount Tenos, the day was well omened for voyaging. Ballista had carried out the correct ritual, and the Concordia had slipped her moorings. Maximus was now standing on the epotis, or ear timber, just behind the ram of the ship, enjoying a perfect view ahead over the azure sea. What a nice irony: here was he, a slave, enjoying the sun and spray in the best seat on the ship, while behind and below him 180 freemen, technically soldiers of Rome, many of them volunteers, sat on hard benches in the airless semi-dark rowing this great ship. Let the poor bastards get splinters in their arses, he thought.
Slavery sat lightly on Maximus. Others took it hard – young Demetrius for one. The Greek boy had looked down in the mouth ever since it had been announced that they would stop at Delos. Maybe it had to do with how you came to be a slave. Some were born slaves. Some were abandoned on dunghills as babies and taken in by slave dealers. Some were so poor they sold themselves into slavery. Some were enslaved for crimes; others captured by pirates or bandits. Outside the imperium, many had been enslaved by the mighty armies of Rome – fewer now that Roman armies seemed to have acquired the habit of losing. And then there were those who had come into the condition like Maximus himself.
Back when he had been a freeman, he had been known by the name Muirtagh. His last memory of freedom was of laughing with some other warriors. They had tied a peasant to a tree, on the off chance that he had perhaps a hidden pot of gold, and were passing a skin of beer from hand to hand. His first memory of servitude was of lying in the back of a cart. His hands were tightly bound behind his back and, with each jolt of the unsprung wagon, the pain in his head grew worse. He had no memory of anything between the two. It was as if someone had taken his papyrus roll of The Satyricon, ripped out several sheets and then glued the torn ends together again, or maybe better had torn several pages from one of those new bound books. The story just jumped from one scene to another.
