I ordered Cartimandua to come to my room that night, which triggered off a long lecture by my mother on how I must be gentle and all sorts of other things. In the end she conducted my slave girl to my room with almost as much ceremony as if she had been a proper bride: about the only things missing were the musicians and the torches102 . As soon as we were alone Cartimandua burst into tears and carried on crying quietly until I was finished with her and fell asleep in disgust. She was nothing like Habrotonen.
I must have been tireder than I realised, because I slept soundly all night until Cartimandua shook me awake.
"Wh - wh - what?"
I opened my eyes and rubbed them with my knuckles. By the grey light in the room I judged that it was soon after dawn.
"Lord, your father wanting you."
I washed and dressed in double-quick time and hurried out to the hall.
"Ah, there you are, Arxes."
"Yes, dad?"
"I'm sorry to upset your plans, but could you do a little job for me?"
"Sure. What?"
"Hephaeston is due to sail this afternoon and Glaucus and the slaves are over at the shop loading up the donkeys. Could you go to the port and oversee the crossing? I'd go myself only I'm all tied up with the festival of Bacchus. Oh, and by the way, could you call by the shop and give this parcel to Glaucus, please."
"No problem, Dad." This was the first time my father had entrusted such an important part of the business to me and I felt proud to have the responsibility. "Could you tell Alexander that I can't make it?"
My father nodded. "I'll send one of the slaves right away. Mind you, you'll be coming back on the Lecheae Road; perhaps you could meet Alexander somewhere there?" He glanced out the window at the sun's shadow on the courtyard wall. "You'd better make a start fairly soon. The slaves have been working since dawn."
"I'm off," I said. "I'll just get my shoes."
"Oh, have your breakfast first," my father urged. "It's a good seven miles to Kenchreae, then across the diolkos and two miles back from Lecheae. You'll be hungry by the time you get back."
Cartimandua must have been listening to our conversation because she had some food ready for me in the dining room as soon as I finished talking to my father. I ate as quickly as possible then went through the hall to the front door where my hob-nailed sandals were lined up with the rest of the family's outdoor shoes103. I picked them up and Antiochus hurried forward to help me put them on.
"Go in peace, little lord," he called after me as I went out the door.
"Peace to you, Antiochus," I replied. I wish he wouldn't call me "little lord", especially as I am now taller than he is, but he has called me that ever since I was a child and I suppose will carry on until he dies.
The first stop had to be the shop, which added nearly a mile to the journey. I paused at the small altar shrine to Zeus104 at the end of our street and rubbed my hand against its ancient stones while I recited a prayer to Zeus, asking him to grant me his favour this day. It is always wise to show respect to those in heaven and seek their favour, for you never know what unlucky chance Fate may have in store for you.
It was still early when I reached the agora; even the bronze smiths105 had not started work yet. Despite the early hour, the agora looked crowded when I reached it. It seemed as if hundreds of donkeys and their drivers were milling around outside our shop, though when I counted them, there were only forty-three. Half a dozen of our slaves were running in and out of the shop, carrying bundles of material - linen, wool and silk106 - out to other slaves who pressed them down and sewed them up in swathes of oilcloth and coarse sacking. A crowd of small boys and idle slaves stood by watching, fighting, shoving and generally getting in the way.
"How's it going, Glaucus?" I asked my father's overseer.
"Nearly ready, lord," he replied. "Has your father forgotten something?"
We grinned at each other. My father nearly always had a last-minute order and this was not the first time that I had come on such an errand.
"Only this." I held out the parcel my father had given me. "Put it somewhere safe. It's to go to Hephaeston for safe-keeping in his chest."
Glaucus reached out to take it and then staggered into my arms as a small boy, fleeing from an older lad, cannoned into his back. I snatched at the boy's ear and secured a firm hold.
"What did you do that for?" I demanded, twisting the ear vigorously.
"Owww!" he howled. "It wasn't me, sir. Let go, sir. It was him. He pushed me."
I looked along his pointing finger towards a loutish looking youth in the dress of a slave.
"Be off with you." I twisted the boy's ear again and released him, then beckoned to the slave. "Come here, you."
"Yes, lord? It wasn't me, lord."
There was a sort of studied insolence in his tone that made me determined to wipe the smile off his face. Alexander says that his law107 allows you free use of another man's slave if he is doing nothing, because a slave who gets used to idleness becomes worthless. There are many things in Alexander's religion with which I don't agree, but this, it seemed to me, was one good idea.
"Start loading up these donkeys," I ordered.
"But I'm not your slave, lord."
"No," I replied, "but I know whose slave you are and if you don't want a beating, start loading up these donkeys. Glaucus, if he drops anything or doesn't work hard enough, give him a flogging. I'll put it right with his master."
The lad hesitated for a short moment and then stepped forward and hefted one of the cloth bundles. At once one of the drivers led his donkey out of the mob and helped the slave strap the load securely onto one side of the pack-saddle. I smirked, pleased that my bluff had succeeded - because I didn't have a clue who his master was - and grinned even more broadly when I looked around me. All the loafers had disappeared and even the children were standing at a respectful distance.
"Right," I said. "I'm off. My father has asked me to oversee the crossing."
"Congratulations, lord." Glaucus grinned at me. "You're a man now, with a woman of your own. It's about time you were given some responsibilities."
I squared my shoulders and grinned back. To tell the truth, I sometimes felt as if I was being treated like a small boy or one of my father's slaves108. It was good to have a free man's position at last.
"Would you mind?" Glaucus pointed to three donkeys that were standing a little apart. "These are supplies that need to go on the ship first. Could you take them with you to Kenchreae?"
"Sure. Why not?'
Glaucus gave the order and the three drivers came over, unhobbled their beasts and started to drive them forward. We crossed the open space of the agora and jammed through the narrow passageway between the shops and offices in the stoa and onto the Kenchreae Road. One of the drivers glanced over his shoulder at the magnificent triumphal arch109 that marked the exit to the Lecheae Road and made a face.
"Really, it's about time they put up a decent gateway on this side as well."
The donkeys' hooves clattered on the stone of the roadway and echoed from the buildings on either side as we headed towards the city gate.
"Arxes! Where are you going?"
I looked up at a window in one of the houses that lined the street. Lucias, my Roman friend, was leaning out and waving at me.
"Lucias! What gets you up so early in the morning?"
"Guess!" he called back. "Your donkeys and the infernal row they are kicking up. Where are you going?"
"I'm taking this load down to the ship," I explained. "Hephaeston sails this afternoon and I'm to oversee the crossing."
"Hang on!" Lucias yelled. "I'm coming too."
His head disappeared and the shutter banged shut. I told the drivers to go on ahead and waited outside the closed door until it was flung open and Lucias appeared, a rather crumpled toga wrapped carelessly around his body. He was bent over, still trying to do up one of his sandals, and more or less fell out of the doorway.
"Careful, Lord Lucias," a voice called after him.
Lucias made a face and hopped down the street, still fumbling with his strap. "That fellow. Still treats me as if I was a baby. 'Be careful, Lord Lucias', 'Don't do that, Lord Lucias'."
I grinned. "I know. Antiochus, our doorman, is just the same with me. Come on."
I broke into a run and Lucias, his strap tied at last, sprinted to catch up with me. Side by side we followed the road round to the left and caught up with the donkeys just as they reached the main city gate. I hurried past them and stuck my head in at the door of the guardroom.
"Three donkey-loads from the house of Lycurgus, bound for Kenchreae. I'm Arxes, son of Lycurgus."
"Up early this morning, Arxes, son of Lycurgus," the official grunted, opening his ledger. "I've only just got here myself. Not trying to evade the tolls, were you?"
"No, sir." I grinned. "It's just supplies for one of my father's ships."
"Right." The man wrote something in his ledger and then waved me away. "I know your father. He'll give me the particulars later - unless you have them now?"
One of the drivers stepped up beside me and recited details of the onions, lentils and vegetables in the loads and their value, while the man scribbled industriously, his pen dipping in and out of the ink.
"Fine. Fine. Off you go." He laid down the pen and raised his voice, "Let 'em through, Manlius."
The soldier who was chatting to Lucias grinned at us and stepped back out of the way. "Yes, sir," he yelled back and then winked at me. "Fine morning for a stroll, sir. Fortune give you a good voyage."
I thanked him and followed the donkeys through the gate and out of the city past the Cynic's grave110. Between the gate and the circus both sides of the road were lined with stalls and crude eating houses, catering to travellers and to the circus crowds when there was a show. Many of them were already open for business, the smoke from their charcoal grills and stoves hanging in the still air and making my eyes smart. I nudged Lucias and nodded towards one stallholder who was standing on a stool and reaching up to balance a piece of wood over his stall. On the wood a barely literate hand had scrawled in charcoal, "All meat here dedicated to Artemis111 ".
"Either his meat is not fresh or else he got up very early," Lucias grinned.
"Or he spent the night up there."
We both glanced in the direction of the Acrocorinth, the citadel of Corinth which is on a mountain that some say is over a thousand feet higher than the city. Somehow we just could not see the wizened little stallholder climbing up there before breakfast while carrying a goat for a sacrifice.
"I wonder who the lucky priestess was who had both him and his goat in bed with her all night?" Lucias murmured, setting us both off into a fit of giggles.
"And if his meat is as old as I suspect," I gasped, "then she had two old goats inflicted on her."
"Which one smelled the worse?" Lucias queried when we had regained our breath, setting us both off again.
A group of peasant girls chattered their way past us towards the market, their burdens of vegetables and flowers borne lightly112 on their heads. The glances of mingled amusement and scorn that they gave us sobered us both up and started us running after the donkeys.
"Ah, the early morning!" Lucias sighed as soon as we passed the last of the shanties. "So healthy. So invigorating."
"Sarcastic wretch." I punched him playfully on the arm.
"Wasn't old Athenodorus saying something about 'mens sana' and 'corpore sana' just the other day?"
"Hardly." I told him. "That's Latin and you know what he thinks about you Romans."
"True, true." Lucias managed to look mournful and mischievous at the same time. "Then it must have been someone else. My father, probably. 'My boy,' he says, 'you need to get up earlier. Work harder. Bath more regularly. Aim to have a healthy mind and a healthy body.'"
We laughed together. Fathers have this fascination with getting up early and studying hard. They seem to have forgotten how to have fun and enjoy life. Still, I had to admit that strolling through the open countryside in the fresh morning air was relaxing and curiously invigorating.
The seven miles to Kenchreae passed easily enough as Lucias and I talked and joked together. We were still a thousand paces away from the town when I heard shouting and a curious groaning sound coming from the left. I turned my head and scanned the skyline where the great stone haulage way ran over the low rise of the Isthmus. A slight movement caught my attention and I spotted the tip of a mast swaying from side to side above the top of the hill. I grabbed at Lucias' arm.
"Look, there's a ship coming on the diolkos!"
"So?"
"Don't be so supercilious." I admonished him. "You're not a Stoic yet. I never tire of watching those things hit the water."
Lucias shrugged. "Small things amuse small minds, I suppose." He leaped nimbly away to avoid the blow I aimed at his shoulder.
This diolkos is truly a marvel, fit to rank with any of the seven wonders of the world. Greece, which is a sort of promontory jutting out from the body of Europe, is here about ninety miles113 wide from east to west. Just at this point Ocean, in his insatiable greed, has eaten a long but narrow channel from the Ionian Sea through the width of Greece, virtually cutting the Peloponnesos off from the mainland.
Nature has done her best to resist him, throwing up the twin headlands of Rium and Antirrium to confine him, so that the start of the channel is barely a mile wide, but she was only able to halt his depredations a bare five miles from the Aegean Sea. The water was placid enough now in the bright spring sunshine, but the conflict between the two was fierce and long drawn out - and is still continuing. It is just over four hundred years since Ocean, with a great shaking of the earth, swallowed up the cities of Basilica, Palaeokastro, Vostitza and Artotine114 on the southern shore of the gulf.
Nature's victory, however, is the sailor's defeat. Because of the Isthmus, the five mile wide strip of land that joins the Morea to Achaia, ships from Greece or Asia Minor to Italy are forced to sail around the five hundred and sixty-three miles of the Peloponnesos115 , whose furthest point, Cape Maleo, has received its evil name on account of the fierce storms that continually beat about it116.
Hundreds of years ago sailors began to bring their ships to the shore here, unload them and transfer the goods to other ships on the western side, and receive in exchange freights from the west for transport to the east. This was better than the long and dangerous voyage around Cape Maleo but so many captains were cheated when they exchanged cargoes that people sought for a better way.
No one knows who the genius was who first dragged his whole ship across the Isthmus but the idea quickly caught on. Giant wooden trolleys were built that could be pushed down into the sea while the ship was floated into place above them. When the ship was securely fastened, teams of slaves and oxen dragged the trolley out of the water, up the hill and down into the water on the other side.
Of course the wheels - or rollers in the case of the larger cradles - chewed up the ground terribly. To make things easier those early men built the diolkos, a paved track four miles long and five paces wide with shallow curbs at all the bends to guide the trolleys. So many ships have passed this way that there are deep grooves worn in the diolkos by the wheels.
"You weren't here when that centurion was wandering all over the isthmus, were you?" I asked Lucias.
"What centurion?" he replied.
"That one sent out by the divine Gaius to measure it117 ."
Lucias smirked. "Trust a Roman to think of a good idea like that. What this place needs is a canal - and it wouldn't be too difficult. After all, the isthmus isn't all that wide or high."
"We thought of it first," I reminded him. "Fortunately we Greeks have enough respect for the gods to refrain from such a sacrilegious act. If Nature wouldn't allow Ocean to cut through the isthmus, why should she allow a mere mortal to do it118? That's probably why Gaius was murdered."
I didn't try to explain about the mingled excitement and terror that gripped the city as the centurion and his assistants surveyed the route, or the rumours that raced through the agora nearly every day: that as soon as the canal was cut the Peloponnesos would float away into the sea, that we would no longer be called Greeks, that we would all be rich because of the tolls we could charge - or that we'd all become poor because sailors would simply sail through the canal and not stop at Corinth.
"Rubbish!" Lucius interrupted my thoughts. "I'm sure I heard someone say that the real problem is that one sea is higher than the other. Dig a canal and you'd drown Kenchreae119."
I looked back up at the stone trackway. The procession of men and oxen was just coming over the brow of the hill and starting down the final slope. Like all ships, this one seemed to scent the water ahead and tried to hasten towards it. Already men were straining at the ropes attached to the stern and, as I watched, more men left the bow and hurried round to the back. (Oxen, of course, are useless at restraining a descending load.)
"Do you think that ships can sense the water?" I asked Lucias.
"Eh?"
"Well, just look. It takes teams of oxen and dozens of slaves to drag even the smallest of them out of the water and then, when they get to the other side, you have to hold them back as they plunge eagerly towards the sea again."
Lucias grinned in a superior manner. "It's all a question of ideals120," he said. "The Ideal ship floats in water, that is what ships are made for. It follows, therefore, that any ship taken out of water is contrary to the Ideal and will, given the opportunity, seek to conform to its Ideal by returning to water."
I grinned back, scenting an opportunity for debate, something old Athenodorus is very keen on teaching us. I raised two fingers121 , like an orator seeking to attract the attention of his audience.
"On the other hand, perhaps it is to do with weight. The weight of the ship and of the load it carries drags it down towards the sea."
"Not so, my friend," Lucias objected. "The ship weighs as much when it is going up the road as when it is coming down."
"But that's just it!" I exclaimed. "When the ship is going up the slaves and oxen are pulling against its weight whereas when the ship is going down the weight is pulling against the slaves."
"So you are saying that the weight - or rather, the ship - is attracted towards the water?" Lucias pressed the tips of his fingers together.
"Exactly," I told him.
"But that is precisely what I said," Lucias put on his best Athenodorus voice. "Well argued, Lord Arxes."
I was silent for a moment, rethinking my argument. "Listen, it is the same as when I carry a load myself. It is easier to carry something downhill than uphill."
Lucias stood up and gathered his toga about him in exact imitation of the old philosopher when he had scored a point. "That, Lord Arxes, is because it is the natural state for an object to be at rest and in the lowest possible position. When you carry something up a hill you are removing it from that lowest possible position and naturally it resists you. On the other hand, when you carry it downhill you are bringing it closer to its proper state and it therefore assists you."
"Is that so, Lord Lucias?"
I lunged at Lucias, grabbed him round the waist and had him half-way down the slope to a nearby olive grove before he could resist. There was a brief struggle and then we collapsed, laughing, on the ground.
"What was that all about?" Lucias demanded as soon as we had stopped laughing.
"I was carrying you downhill," I pointed out, "but you didn't assist me much."
"That is because I have rational soul," Lucias objected. "Aristotle says that it is characteristic of ensouled things that they can think and are capable of movement122. Ships can neither think nor can they move of themselves."
"Ships are made of wood," I argued, "and wood comes from trees. Trees are alive, even if they do not move, so they must have souls123 . Many believe that there are gods that inhabit trees. Does the soul vanish just because the tree is cut down? Does the god forsake the wood just because it has been divided?"
"On that argument you could say that even stones have souls," Lucias objected. "They are taken from the earth and you might say that they partake of the world soul, yet everyone knows that stones and clods of soil have no soul at all."
Fortunately we didn't have time to get onto the question of whether or not the soul continues to exist after death124 . The donkeys were a little ahead of us by now, so Lucias and I ran to catch up with them and accompanied them through the gate and into the town. Ever since my father first took me with him as he went about his business among his fellow merchants, the crowded port of Kenchreae has fascinated me. Like any true member of my family, there is salt in my veins; in any harbour the ships tugging restlessly at their moorings seem to call out to me, promising adventure and opportunity.
There is more than this at Kenchreae, however. As Lucias and I pushed through the crowds that thronged the streets and market place our nostrils were assailed by a thousand different scents: spices from the distant Orient, gums and resins from beyond the Bosphorus, and perfumes from Arabia and Egypt competed with the smell of hot cooking oil and the unwashed bodies of the slaves who unloaded the ships. We jostled against Roman businessmen in their respectable togas, black Nubian slaves in loinclothes and dignified Syrian merchants with huge turbans125 .
"Is that a real language they are speaking or are they just communicating in grunts and squeals like animals?" Lucias demanded as a trio of shaggy natives from Scythia or Chalcis pushed past in the opposite direction.
"Bar-bar-bar-bar," I mocked. "No wonder they're called barbarians. The only decent, civilised language is Greek126 ."
"There's nothing wrong with Latin," Lucias said with heat.
"No," I retorted loftily, "but even you Romans flock over here to learn Greek and become civilised."
The argument - an old favourite of ours - might have developed further had we not reached the port. Fortune must have been smiling on us, for we emerged from the alleys that surrounded the harbour almost directly opposite Hephaeston's ship.
102 Torchbearers were an essential part of a wedding procession. In the Satyricon Petronius describes a mock-wedding: "Psyche had already put a veil round the girl's head and old Night-cap was leading the way with a torch. The tipsy women, still clapping, had formed a long line and had fixed up a bridal chambers with draperies in the appropriate way." (p. 43) In The Golden Ass a girl describes her wedding: "he went off with his family and friends to offer the usual sacrifices in the different temples while I waited for him at home among the laurel leaves and torches, with everyone singing the bridal hymn." (p.112) Pliny, in his Natural History XVI.xxx, tells us that "these trees are accompanied into the same regions by the May also, the most auspicious tree for supplying wedding torches . . . but at the present time the Hornbeam and the Hazel are most usually employed for torches."
Further details of the marriage ceremonial are given in the plays of Menander. In The Girl from Samos Parmenon says, "Ceremonial offerings, garlands, pounding sesame for the wedding cake, that's what I want to be helping with." (p. 57) and a little later another character, Moschion, remarks, "I started imagining the wedding service, planning the guest list for the reception, seeing myself escorting the ladies to the ritual bath, cutting and handing round the wedding cake, humming the wedding hymn." (p. 59) The garlands were for the guests and the gods, as another Moschion says in The Farmer, "I was off in Corinth on private business and I come back in the evening to find a different marriage being organised for me - garlands being put on the gods, my father making the proper offerings inside." (p. 187) Return
103 Eulogising the blessings of tidiness, Ischomachus in Xenophon's The Estate Manager declares, "What a fine impression is given by footwear of all different kinds when it is kept in rows." (p. 320) Return
104 See the early chapters of Robin Lane Foxe's Pagans and Christians to understand how fervently and sincerely the pagans of the first century believed in the reality of their gods. Return
105 Black Corinthian bronze, inlaid with gold or silver, was famous and very expensive. Suetonius, in his The Twelve Caesars tells us that Augustus was "a good deal too fond of expensive furniture, Corinthian bronzes and the gaming table" (p.93) while Tiberius "once protested violently against an absurd rise in the cost of Corinthian bronze statues" (p. 131) According to Pausanias in his Guide to Greece II.ii, "The Peirene spring . . . the water is sweet to drink and they say Corinthian bronze is dipped in it red-hot."
Excavators in the 1930's found the metal-working area of the city with huge troughs fed directly from the spring. Analysis of the water shows that it is unusually rich in various minerals. A book by Zosimus, now in the University of Cambridge Library, gives the recipe for this exotic material: a mina of copper and 8 drachmas of gold and silver (about 6.5% of each precious metal). The surface was then treated with various chemical preparations. ("Secrets of Achilles' shield" by Paul Craddock, New Scientist January 22, 1994, p. 32) Return
106 Pliny, in his Natural History XI.xxvi comments, somewhat disapprovingly, "A specially large grub changes into a caterpillar with two projecting horns of a peculiar kind and then into what is called a cocoon, and this turns into a chrysalis and this, in six months, into a silk-moth. They weave webs like spiders, producing a luxurious material for women's dresses, called silk. The process of unravelling these and weaving the thread again was first invented in Cos by a woman named Pamphile, daughter of Plateas, who has the undeniable distinction of having devised a plan to reduce women's clothing to nakedness." Return
107 The Babylonian Talmud, tractate
Baba Kama, says, "Did Rab really say that slaves are on the same footing as
real property? Did Rabbi Daniel ben Kattina not say that Rab stated that if
a man forcibly seizes another's slave and makes him perform some work, he
would be exempt from any payment? . . . It may be said that here also it may
be beneficial to the owner that his slave should not become prone to
idleness." However, if the owner owed you money then you were not allowed to
use his slaves, lest it appear that you were engaging in some form of
usury. Return
108 As Paul remarks in Galatians 4:1-4,
"What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different
from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians
and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were
children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world, but
when the time had fully come, God sent His Son."
Return 109 Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece
II.ii, says, "As you leave the market place on the road for Lecheae you pass
through a formal entrance with gilded chariots on it, one carrying Phaithon,
the other his father the Sun." This arch - or a similar one - is depicted on
a Corinthian coin from the time of Hadrian, now in the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford. Return 110 In the same section of his book,
Pausanias mentions that "there are memorials along the road up [from
Kenchreae] to Corinth; Diogenes of Sinope, whom Greeks call 'the Dog' is
buried by the gate." The Greek for 'dog' is kynos, from which comes
'cynic'. Return 111 Robin Lane Fox in his Pagans and
Christians tells us: "In the Imperial period, we have recently learned,
the servants of Meidon ate 'unsacrificed meat' and poor Meidon was struck
dumb by the local god, Zeus Trosos. He only recovered his voice three months
later after a dream had told him to put up a monument to the incident. It
turned up recently in Pisidia. While Paul's Gentile Christians were being
told to avoid meat offered to idols, Meidon and his pagan servants were
learning from hard experience to eat nothing else." (p. 70)
Return 112 Speaking of the amazing strength of the
rhinoceros beetle, New Scientist magazine reports "The field of
biomechanics has been faced with a similar mystery once before. African
women can carry up to 20% of their body weight on their heads without making
any extra effort. Some researchers have suggested that the trick is a
pendulum-like movement of the body, which allows women to transfer their
muscle energy into forward movement more efficiently, but this effect only
works when the body is moving reasonably quickly." ("Riddle of the
Superstrong Insects", by Peter Aldhous, New Scientist, February 10,
1996, p. 17) Return 113 Measurements taken from Pliny's
Natural History IV.iv. He seems to be measuring from the twin
promontories of Rium and Antirrium where the gulf is barely a mile wide,
rather than across the whole width of the Peloponnesos. The idea that inlets
and gulfs are the result of conflict between the gods Ocean and Nature also
comes from Pliny. Return 114 According to Pliny Natural
History IV.v, these cities were swallowed up in an earthquake in 373
BC. Return 115 Again taken from Pliny, Natural
History IV.iv. According to Isidore, Pliny's authority, this is the
measurement for the whole circumference of the Peloponnesos, excluding the
bays between the southern headlands which, he says, are as much
again. Return 116 Pliny, in his Natural History
IV.iv, says, "The circuit of the Morea is a long and dangerous voyage for
vessels prohibited by their size from being carried across the isthmus on
trolleys" while Strabo, in his Geography VIII.vi.20 records a
proverb: "Just as in early times the Strait of Sicily was not easy to
navigate, so also the high seas and particularly the sea beyond Maleae were
not, on account of the contrary winds and hence the proverb, 'But when you
double Maleae, forget your home.'" Return 117 Suetonius, in his The Twelve
Caesars records various building projects undertaken by Gaius (perhaps
better known as Caligula) and then remarks: "But he was most deeply
interested in cutting a canal though the Isthmus in Greece and sent a
leading centurion there to survey the site." (p. 163)
Return 118 In his Natural History IV.iv
Pliny says that "successive attempts were made by King Demetrius, Caesar the
dictator and the emperors Caligula and Nero, to dig a ship canal through the
narrow part - an undertaking which the end that befell them all proves to
have been an act of sacrilege." Return 119 Strabo, in his Geography I.iii.11
makes fun of the idea put forward by Eratosthenes that "the surface of every
liquid body at rest and in equilibrium is spherical, the sphere having the
same centre as the earth," (an idea which is true, incidentally.) To
disprove this idea, he quotes an engineer's survey: "Demetrius too,
attempted to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth in order to provide a
passage for his fleets, but was prevented by the engineers after they had
taken measurements and reported to him that the sea in the Corinthian Gulf
was higher than at Cenchreae, so that, if he should cut through the
intervening land, the whole strait about Aegina, Aegina itself and the
neighbouring islands would be submerged and the canal would not be useful
either." Return 120 Platonic philosophy was deeply concerned
with the world of ideas or ideals. For example: the word "chair" refers to
an item of furniture equipped with a seat, a back and legs to support it.
This "idea" of "chair" is well understood by everyone, even though it does
not describe any one particular chair - Queen Anne, folding, kitchen or
rocking. The distinguishing features of these different varieties of "chair"
are called, by Plato, their "accidents". One particular chair might be made
out of wood, have carving on the back and a leather upholstered seat. Wood,
leather and carving are all "accidents". Return 121 This gesture and its relationship to
oratory is referred to in The Golden Ass of Apuleius. "With his right
hand he signalled for attention in oratorical style, protruding the
forefinger and middle finger, pointing the thumb upward and folding down the
two remaining fingers for good luck." (p.63) One may wonder if there is any
connection between the stance of the ancient orator and the gesture of
priestly blessing employed by the Roman Catholic church. I was intrigued to
discover that in Yugoslavia, where many of the old Roman traditions still
linger, people seeking attention still raise a hand with the first two
fingers extended. Return 122 Aristotle's De Anima
I.iii Return 123 In the beginning of the twelfth volume
of his Natural History XII.i, which deals with plants, Pliny remarks:
"It remains to describe the things produced by the earth or dug up from it -
these also not being devoid of vital spirit, since nothing lives without
it." Return 124 The Greeks were by no means certain that
the soul survived death. As Plutarch remarks in his essay On God's
Slowness to Punish, "Olympichus interrupted me in mid-speech and said,
'You seem to be implicitly underpinning your argument with a huge assumption
- that the soul persists.'" Plato held that the soul is completely
indestructible whereas the Stoics thought that souls continued to exist for
a limited period after death. Return 125 In The Golden Ass Apuleius
remarks that "Kenchreae has a safe harbour and is always crowded with
visitors." (p. 268) Return 126 In his Guide to Greece V.xxvii
Pausanias describes a religious ceremony that took place in Hypaipa, a city
between Ephesus and Sardis. "A magician comes into the building and piles up
some dry wood on the altar: first he puts a crown on his head and then he
chants the cult-title of some god in barbarous words quite incomprehensible
to any Greek, reading what he chants out of a scroll."
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