Companions (The Parthian Chronicles) (77 page)

‘An ancient system whereby the city’s citizens meet to elect their leaders.’

I laughed, causing a sharp pain in my ribs. ‘What a strange idea.’

‘It is one of our most cherished ideals,’ he said, ‘the idea that free Greeks shall choose their leaders and their destiny.’

I had no knowledge of this
demokratia
but I knew what it was to be free and enslaved and in all conscience I could not deny the people of Charax that which I held most dear. So my plan regarding Cleon and Hippo was in tatters and the people of the city would elect their own supreme commander, which turned out to be Patreus. I also discovered that the ancient Greek notion of freedom was very qualified, only freemen being allowed to choose their leaders; women, foreigners and slaves being forbidden to vote. After his election I visited Patreus and managed to convince him to make Cleon and Hippo citizens of the city. I had told them that they were welcome to return with me to Dura but they were both besotted with Charax, a city of free Greeks far from the Romans, and so they stayed.

As did Athineos. Like the pirate he was he managed to sell the warship he had purchased, with my money at Gerrha, to the city authorities, assuring them that with minor repairs it could be the flagship of the Charaxian navy. With the profit he made he purchased a merchant vessel and named her
The
Cretan
. I went to see him on the day we left. He stood on the deck of his new ship and wore a mischievous grin as he shook my hand.

‘The last time we said farewell to each other,’ he said, ‘you were a fugitive and I was a successful captain. Now you are a king and I am living on my wits.’

I looked around at the splendid vessel and its pristine mainsail. ‘I’m sure you will survive, Athineos.’

He smiled, a glint in his eye. ‘So am I.’

Patreus provided ships to transport us to the west to collect our horses and other horse archers. Athineos waved to us as he stood on the gunwale of his ship the day we departed, Cleon and Hippo beside him. Charax was bathed in brilliant sunshine as we left, a city seemingly from another era that had done away with kingship forever. As it became smaller on the horizon Orodes joined me at the gunwale.

‘Are you disappointed, Pacorus?’

‘Disappointed?’

‘About Cleon and Hippo not being the rulers of Charax?’

‘They are both happy,’ I said, ‘deliriously so. Who am I to deny them their desires? It was my wish that they should rule Charax, not theirs. Some battles cannot be won.’

I turned away from the sea. ‘By the way, my thanks for saving my skin.’

He looked at me blankly.

‘Your cuirass, Orodes, it shone in the sun and blinded my adversary to allow me to strike with my last reserves of strength.’

He smiled but looked back towards Charax. ‘Do you think the city will survive, Pacorus, with no king to rule over it?’

‘I hope so, my friend, but I have to say that this system they have, this democracy, is most strange.’

‘They allow the people to choose their leaders.’

I shook my head. ‘Imagine that, the people of a kingdom electing their rulers. It will never catch on, of course.’

Yasser wanted to kill the slaves that had been consuming our rations as they awaited our return, but I told him that I would offer them sanctuary at Dura as free men. They accepted but it made our journey north a long one. When we reached Uruk we stayed in the city for a week so the former rowers could rebuild their strength. It was decided to utilise their skills and let them row their way up the Euphrates in boats while we resumed our journey on horseback. Yasser was still complaining that they would abscond without any guards and overseers as we bid him farewell by the blue waters of the river. But none did and so they either joined Dura’s army or became farmers. Gallia and Praxima had a tearful farewell, the latter embracing every Amazon before we crossed the Euphrates to ride north along the western riverbank back to Dura.

Cleon kept in contact with me for years. He immediately offered his services to the city as a soldier, his enthusiasm ensuring he rapidly ascended through the ranks. He eventually rose to command the army he had been instrumental in creating. He and Hippo had three children, a daughter and two sons. They called the daughter Ephesia.

He also kept me informed of what Athineos was up to. True to form the Cretan found the waters of the Persian Gulf much to his liking: full of business opportunities and devoid of Romans. Cleon wrote me that Athineos ended up owning a small flotilla of merchant vessels and had told him and Hippo that he had purchased a map from an old sorcerer in Gerrha that showed the location of an island overflowing with gold. Located off the coast of Africa, he had set out in
The
Cretan
intent on discovering this fabled isle and bringing back a ship filled with riches.

No one ever saw him again.

Epilogue

Claudia put the last scroll of papyrus down on the table and leaned back in the wicker chair. It was perhaps two hours before dawn and very still. The flames of oil lamps did not flicker on their stands around the terrace or on the table that had provided the illumination to allow her to read her father’s tale. Even though he had died only recently the events of his life seemed like a distant age to her, a more violent age. And yet her parents had been happy in each other’s company and in her childhood Dura had always been a place of safety and reassuring strength. She smiled when she thought of Haytham and his son Malik, the Agraci leaders who had struck terror in the minds of Parthians who lived east of the Euphrates but who had been like a father and uncle to her.

She picked up the silver statuette of the Goddess Artemis that her mother had purchased in Ephesus all those years ago. Intricately wrought, it was one of the few possessions of Queen Gallia that she possessed, aside from her sword, bow and a torc that had been given to her by a dying Gaul. Her mother had never been one for riches or property and did not even possess a crown when she and her father had ruled Dura.

Still clutching the statuette she stood and walked to the door that led to the throne room, the guards that had stood sentry on the terrace escorting her as she walked through her palace. In the silent throne room she halted and stared at the griffin standard that hung on the wall. Vagharsh, the first standard bearer to have carried it, now long dead, had once told her when she was a young girl that the banner had been created by the gods and had been carried to Dobbai by a real griffin before it came to Dura. He also told her that it was only on loan and that one day the gods would send a griffin to take it back to the land of the immortals.

She walked across the stone tiles of the throne room and into the reception hall, the guards following. Claudia halted at the top of the steps and looked around the courtyard. She could see the glow of oil lamps coming from behind the shutters of the headquarters building where the sacred standards of the Durans and Exiles – the golden griffin and silver lion – were housed under constant guard. Even at this hour the palace never slept: stable hands on night duty were checking stalls and cleaning saddlery, guards patrolled the walls and slaves were preparing the ovens in the bakery. She walked down the steps, sentries beside the columns snapping to attention as she did so. She crossed the courtyard, her escort following, and headed towards the closed gates, stopping when she reached the granite plaque set in the wall near the entrance to the Citadel. The duty centurion came from the guardroom beside the gates and saluted.

‘Is everything all right, your majesty?’

Claudia turned away from the plaque. ‘Have a torch brought here.’

‘Torch for the queen,’ the centurion shouted at the guardroom, his deep voice shattering the pre-dawn quiet.

A legionary in a white tunic, mail shirt and helmet rushed from the guardroom with a lighted torch in his hand. He saluted the centurion and passed it to his superior. The centurion slipped his vine cane into his belt and took the torch.

‘Hold it near the plaque,’ Claudia told him.

The granite slab was cast in a red glow as the centurion moved the flame nearer the stone so Claudia could read the names.

‘You know the story of the Companions, centurion?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, majesty. The one hundred and twenty followers of your parents, the king and queen, who came from over the seas to fight beside King Pacorus and Queen Gallia.’

Claudia studied the columns of names carved into the stone.

‘One hundred and twenty men and women,’ she said. The centurion nodded.

‘Which would make one hundred and twenty-two in total, including my father and mother.’

‘Yes, majesty.’

‘But there are one hundred and twenty-three names carved on this stone.’

‘Majesty?’

Claudia ran her fingers over the names of her mother and father, the latter having been recently carved.

‘One hundred and twenty-three,’ she said to herself as her eyes settled on one name: Burebista. She smiled. Even though he had never set foot in Dura her father had not forgotten that the Dacian was also a Companion, the band of brothers and sisters who had helped to make this city among the strongest in the Parthian Empire.

‘Thank you, centurion,’ she said.

The torch bearer bowed his head and retreated back to the guardroom. Soon the Citadel would be stirring, soldiers assembling in front of the barracks for roll call prior to another day of duties, clerks arriving from the city to work in the treasury, palace and headquarters’ building and a long line of petitioners outside the palace who would attempt to bribe, flatter and impress her chief advisers. Perhaps today she would take a break from royal duties and accompany the Amazons on their daily training exercises. It had been a while since she had felt the wind in her hair while shooting a bow from the saddle. Too long. She would take her mother’s bow and wear her mother’s sword at her hip.

Claudia turned and headed back to the palace, her escort close behind. The duty centurion stood outside the guardroom, gently tapping his cane against his thigh. He watched the queen and her small party ascend the steps and disappear into the palace. The courtyard was empty, the Citadel was quiet and all was as it should be in the city of Dura.

Historical notes

Following their liberation from Roman captivity Burebista and Anca returned to Dacia. But their hopes of a simple, happy life were dashed as he was drawn into Dacian politics. His military expertise meant his services were in great demand and he was soon successfully leading Dacian armies against the Celts that threatened his country from the northwest. He defeated them in 60–59BC, after which he was offered the leadership of all the Dacian tribes.

After 55BC Burebista conquered all the Greek cities on the west coast of the Black Sea, including Histria, thereby increasing the economic strength of Dacia as a whole. Records of the time allude to him leading Dacian armies up to 200,000 strong. Whatever the truth it is a fact that Burebista crushed the Celtic tribes to the northwest and southwest of Dacia after 48BC. While Burebista ruled no Roman army dared threaten Dacia. Soon after 44BC however, jealous nobles assassinated Burebista and the Dacian confederacy quickly fell apart.

Ephesus continued to prosper under Roman rule, entering a ‘golden era’ following the accession to power of the Emperor Augustus in 27BC. Augustus made it the capital of the Roman province of Asia and it received the title ‘First and Greatest Metropolis of Asia’. During his reign Ephesus became the third largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria. It reportedly had a population of over 200,000 people and prospered as a centre of commerce, learning and religious devotion.

The city went into relative decline in the second and third centuries AD as the Roman Empire was assaulted by external foes. However, it was earthquakes and malarial mosquitoes that finally finished Ephesus as a population centre, sometime between the sixth and tenth century. Today Ephesus is a magnificent ruin in western Turkey but only a single stone column of the once mighty Temple of Artemis is extant.

And what of Dura Europos? Long after the reign of King Pacorus had ended, in 165AD the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus captured the city. Thereafter it became a garrison of the empire, though the Romans allowed the locals to retain their customs as long as they paid their taxes. Dura fell to the Sassanid Persians in 256AD, the city subsequently being looted and abandoned. In the following centuries the name Dura Europos was completely forgotten.

But in April 1920 Indian troops under British command, battling local Arab tribesmen in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, dug in on a piece of high ground beside the River Euphrates. As they dug their trenches they came across ancient paintings showing Middle Eastern faces and uniforms alongside Roman priests and soldiers. Within two years the site had been extensively excavated, and there were subsequently ten major archaeological digs between 1928 and 1937. In the early 1980s a major Franco-Syrian project at Dura unearthed some significant finds. Excavations were resumed in 1986 and continued until recently.

True to Pacorus’ wishes the city became a melting pot of different races and religions. During the many excavations inscriptions have been found in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syrian, Palmyrenean, Safaitic, Pahlavi and Persian.