The Bronze God of Rhodes
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1963
- Язык: английский
- Год: Bantam Books
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Bronze God of Rhodes». Краткое содержание книги:
From the sea in thousands of ships they came, the brutal legions of Antigonos, a giant lusting for the power of Alexander the Great. For endless weeks and months they battered at the tiny island city, smashing it with monstrous weapons, crushing it with the terrible weight of their numbers.
Among the handful of grim defenders was one man who fought for a dream, a vision of a great statue that would stand above the highest towers as a monument to his city's grandeur.
He was Chares, soldier, adventurer, a man tormented by passion, a wanderer in strange, deadly lands—an artist who lived to see his incredible dream become one of the seven wonders of the world.
When it became evident that the statue was going to stand securely, the Rhodians began to look upon it with quiet pride, as if some of the virtue of the god had entered into the statue and, through it, into them as well. I found that they even looked with quiet pride upon Chares the Lindian. When the rich, the noble, and the learned went out of their way to pass the time of day with me, I had to ask myself: Am I really the same man as that boastful, runty, testy, friendless, part-Phoenician youth who had so set everybody by the ears when he arrived, twenty-seven years before? I had so long struggled for respect and recognition that it took me a while to realize that I need not battle for them any more.
Then I turned the statue over to the city at a great public ceremony, at which I was at last made a full citizen of Rhodes.
"By the gods!" said old Admiral Damophilos, craning his neck. "I never realized it before, but the statue's face is the spit and image of the Besieger!"
For so they now call King Demetrios Antigonou, from his many famous sieges.
"I didn't intend it that way," I said. "I merely tried to get my idea of perfect beauty and virtue into those features. But the Demetrios was a man of godlike beauty and presence—whatever one say of his character—so I suppose some resemblance is inevitable."
"Well, I daresay we ought not to hold grudges," said Damophilos. "Demetrios' attack and our defense did give Rhodes more glory than anything else could have done."
"There's a certain logic about the statue's looking like him, too," I said, "since it was built with the spoils from his siege."
The admiral gave a cackling laugh and slapped his thigh. "That is right! He paid for it, didn't he? That's good! Oh, Chares, how about dinner at my house tonight?"
I accepted this and many other such invitations. I ought to have been ecstatically happy; the richest and best-born men in Rhodes accepted me as an equal and even paid social court to me, just as if I had never worked with my hands and bore pure Hellenic blood in my veins.
I soon found, however, that most of these parties bored me to tears. These magnates are not really such villains as the poor are wont to think them; their worst fault is dullness. They talk about their games and sports, their children and relatives, their purchases and sales, their aches and pains, and they talk about them over and over.
When I burn to learn about the progress of the arts and sciences, about new engineering techniques, high politics, and distant lands, what do I get? So-and-so's roof leaks; so-and-so seeks a divorce; so-and-so's slave has run away. To the crows with it!
So back to the Seven Strangers, of which I had long been a member, I went, starving for food for the mind as well as for the body. Shortly after I had finished the Colossus last year, Giskon called a meeting of the club at his house. To this meeting I brought my oldest son, who wanted his first taste of club life. When I entered, there stood a fat bald man who looked somehow familiar.
"Chares!" he cried. "Know you me not? Berosos of Babylon?"
"By Zeus! I didn't recognize you without your hair."
"Well, I scarce knew you with your hair all gray. You are not, I trust, still angry with me—ah—"
"On the contrary, old boy, I'm delighted to see you." We embraced and burst into talk. Berosos said:
"… I settled in Kôs, sold some more sundials, cast horoscopes, and started a class in the science of the stars. I was never in danger of starvation"—he glanced down at his paunch—"and happy I should have been, but for that woman."
"Amenardis?" I asked innocently.
He shuddered. "Speak not that name! From morn to night it was: 'Do this! Do not do that! What a fool you are!' Nearly mad was I driven."
"Why didn't you throw her out? She had no legal claim on you."
"Oh, you know me, Chares. No liver for combat have I, and she frightened away, what little valor I have. For nigh unto ten years I submitted."
"Herakles, man! My heart bleeds for you."
Berosos: "Well it may. Would to Mardoukos that I had a flinty streak in my soul, as you have! At last, having secretly hoarded a goodly sum from my earnings—for she demanded the monetary management of our home—I quietly took ship for Athens. For aught she knows, I went for a swim in the Aegean and was swallowed by a shark."
"What became of her?"
"May I never know! In Athens I prospered and married a jolly wench, the daughter of a Syrian metic. She knows how to protect a man of intellect from the shocks of this rude, rough world. When I left, the Athenians put up a gilded statue of me, belly and all. Recall you that queer Phoenician youth, Zenon of Kition, who dined with the Seven Strangers at the first meeting you attended?"
"Vaguely. What about him?"
"He has settled in Athens, audited the sundry philosophers, and become a teacher on his own account, with a sizable following. 'The Man of the Porch'* (* Ho Stôikos, the Stoic.) they call him, from his lecturing in the Painted Porch. Although he claims to have based his doctrines in part upon my celestial science, I cannot say I ever truly liked him. When sober, he is haughty and irascible; when drunk, he chases every boy and youth in sight; and his teachings seem to me a tissue of windy rhetoric. Howsomever, Athens was lovely."
"Then why did you leave?"
"Oh, a better prospect have I. The new king of Syria and Persia, Antiochos son of Seleukos, wrote asking me to come to his court at Antiocheia as official historian. Do you remember that oath that Manethôs and I swore, to write the histories of our peoples in Greek? Well, here is my chance to carry it out." He lowered his voice. "And, speaking of queer young Phoenicians, who is this that Giskon has dredged up from the Syrian Sea?"
"This" was a young Phoenician from Ake, Abdemon by name, who had gone Greek in the biggest possible way. He dripped oil, fluttered his eyelashes, made sexual advances to all the men, and spoke with the most extreme Atticisms.
"This whacking great statue of yours," he said, "is all very well as a monument, but is it art? Is it in the best taste? Rather, I should compare it to the sign over a tradesman's shop. Jolly useful, but hardly esthetic. You might as well have the god hold a banner reading, 'Come to Rhodes, commercial center of the Inner Sea!' "
Talk died down; eyes turned toward me. Although I have learnt with the years to control my temper, I still have a name for touchiness.
"Oh, I say!" said Abdemon, glancing round the circle. "Is this the man who put the thing up? I'm frightfully sorry—"
I gave a short laugh. "Never mind, you may have something there, son. Do you want to know the real reason I erected that statue? It wasn't the money—in fact, I'm a poor man tonight, because my costs far outran my estimates— nor was it an excess of piety, though I am a good conventional worshiper of the Bright One. The reason is that I'm a small man, so I have always wanted to be remembered for building the largest thing of its kind.
"Well, now I have done it. I won't say I am sorry, because it has been a lot of fun. I have learnt some useful technical lessons, and I have fulfilled the vow I swore to the god and garnered some slight glory. But I agree with this young fellow that it's time I got back to art of a more normal kind. Besides which, I have a living to earn. Kavaros, tomorrow we must clean all the models for the Colossus out of the studio. We're going to do some sculpture better than anything that has yet been seen!"
The End