Chapter 25: Great Caesar’s Ghost!

I DIDN’T STAY in Babylon long after Alexander died. No one did. His generals split up the empire among them and all led their armies out to rule their part of the world. Many soldiers went back to Macedon and Greece. I decided I missed the sea and went to Tyre to buy a boat. It wasn’t as difficult this time as it had been the last time I bought a boat here. I did look around at every sound to see if My Lady Goddess had shown up. But she, too, was silent in the process. I bought a small ship, which came with a crew from Cyprus. I guess I was feeling sentimental and thought I might visit Crete as well as the island of My Lady Goddess. I offered to transport the crew back to their home base as I learned the intricacies of my new ship.

My new ship had a single mast that could be lowered to the deck in case of a storm. There was essentially nothing else above deck except the rails. Below deck, there was a cabin for the captain (me) and hammocks for the crew. The remaining space was used for cargo and I picked up a shipment of copper bound for Rhodes at the port in Beirut. While my crew was loading the ore, I went looking for books and found a few very interesting old daily journals and account lists, mostly scrawled on clay tablets. The Phoenicians focused their society on trade and so, they had made records of every transaction of every kind. I bought a few old record books, but found little to interest me otherwise.

We sailed first for Kyrenia on Cyprus. There, I bade farewell to my crew who were happy to be back in their home port. I did not allow curiosity to grow regarding what I would do for a crew when I continued my voyage. Suddenly, my deck was crawling with women from the infinity room who all wanted a Mediterranean cruise. It looked good to have so many people swarming over my ship and I set sail on the next tide, not waiting for the longshoremen to negotiate a new crew.

That next portion of our voyage was very pleasant. I set a fair wind to the northwest and then spent my time enjoying the sunbathing beauties lying naked on my deck. Every day or two, the crew would change and one group would return to the infinity room as another emerged.

Among my many subjects in the infinity room were a few good sailors—some from my time as Odysseus. These I invited above deck to man the craft as we sailed into the harbor of Rhodes. I was able to trade the copper for a good profit. Rhodes was a center of education and understanding. Following the withdrawal of Demetrius’s army and capture of all their military equipment, the city had decided to build a colossus in honor of Helios, their sun god. The copper was needed for the statue. I’d had a couple of run-ins with Helios back in the day, so I was careful to make fair trades on the copper.

Perhaps as a result, I had the unbelievable good fortune to take on a cargo of manuscripts and books bound for Alexandria. Ptolemy Soter was one of Alexander’s best generals and had forged a strong bond with Rhodes. He was building a great library in which to store all the knowledge of mankind. That was my kind of king!

I am an admirer of Ptolemy Soter and believe he would have been the best choice to rule the empire after Alexander’s death. However, when Alexander was asked who should succeed him, his answer was simply, “The strongest.” That had the predictable result of creating conflict among the three remaining generals of his army, and the division of his empire. Antipater, the regent of Macedon and Greece held that territory, even though Alexander had sent a replacement for him. Seleucus made the biggest land-grab, claiming everything from southern Anatolia to the Indus River. In today’s language, that included Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It was also the most unruly portion of the empire and Seleucus could not effectively fight off Ptolemy when the latter claimed Egypt, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Judea.

Ptolemy claimed to be Alexander’s half-brother, the bastard of Philip II and Arsinoe of Macedon. As such, he claimed the body of Alexander from Babylon and moved it to Egypt, eventually settling the tomb in Alexandria. He attempted to establish his dominance through negotiation and marriage. His sons by Eurydice briefly ruled over Macedon in their succession. He later married Eurydice’s lady-in-waiting—apparently waiting for her opportunity to marry her mistress’s husband—Bernice. To them was born Ptolemy II of Egypt.

One of the reasons I liked Ptolemy was because he shared Alexander’s cultural perspective. As I’ve indicated, Alex was educated under Aristotle, knew the arts and sciences as well as war, and had a dream of creating a vast paradise as his kingdom. Antipater was primarily a politician with all that spells included. Seleucus was a warrior and had very little to do with the arts in any way. It was easy for him to conquer and difficult for him to rule. Only Ptolemy carried on that dream of creating a cultural center of the Mediterranean—a dream carried on by a dozen generations of his descendants.

Nonetheless, I plied the waters from Rhodes to Alexandria and set up a favorable trade situation with Ptolemy, whom I had met when I was an actor. Of course, I’d changed shape since then and he didn’t recognize me. He did, however, introduce me to his librarians and I became a book gatherer for the great library. That was a relationship I enjoyed for many years, though I returned to Alexandria in a new body each generation, having inherited my ship from the previous Bob.

On each of the trips, as we sailed (and my women sunbathed), I replicated nearly all the books I was transporting and moved them into the infinity room where my own librarians were thrilled to have the additions to my rather impressive and growing library. Occasionally, I convinced a librarian from Alexandria to join me and we created a replica of the great library in the infinity room.

The entire Mediterranean was a war zone from the time of Darius to the time of Caesar and beyond. As the heirs of Alexander were primarily in the East, Rome, founded by Aeneas after the fall of Troy, gained prominence in the West. Instead of turning straight north after my book-buying voyages, I turned westward and sailed along the coast of Africa as far as Carthage. Another great mess. The Carthaginians were at war with the Roman Republic, or with a Roman in Sicily, or both. I continued west and sailed through the great rock passage and into the next sea.

FAST FORWARD. I don’t remember anything really interesting happening in the islands west of Gaul. Oh, there was Tiona, but I’ll get to her later. I know I sailed into the frigid North Sea and settled there with Impi until she passed away. I might have stayed there if it hadn’t been so cold. Neither the Scandanavians nor the Britons had progressed to the point of wanting my hand at architecture for temples or palaces. There were some impressive stone circles, though. There were precious few books of any sort there, but I collected what I could, and after paying my respects to Mac Lir, I made my way back through the great rock passage into the Mediterranean, sticking closer to the north shore of the sea this time.

I’m not exactly certain how long it had been since Alexander’s death—a couple of centuries, at least. I’d become rather skilled at sailing past the warships of Carthage, Rome, Greece, and Persia. Egypt had withdrawn from the fight and simply held its borders. I used a look-away spell to conceal my ship from others to which I gave wide berth. Mine was one of the few vessels that made its way to Alexandria unmolested.

Rome had risen as the dominant power in the north. They annihilated Carthage and the western Mediterranean was theirs. Their alliances had consolidated their rule into the Seleucid kingdom, giving them control over the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and a shaky alliance with Egypt.

In all this time, there was as much damage being done by pirates on the sea as there was by warships. I made it my unofficial mission to intervene when I saw pirates besetting undefended merchant ships. When I succeeded in freeing a merchant ship from pirates, I was often given some reward from the merchant. A portion of its merchandise, for example. All too often, I was too late to help the merchant and crew when I drove off the pirates. Then I found myself in possession of a ship and its entire stock of goods for trade. It was very profitable.

Unfortunately, it also earned me the reputation of being a privateer.

But I am an honest demon. I can say without blushing that I never attacked a trade ship, but only the pirates I found preying on them. I just couldn’t be everywhere at once.

THAT WAS how I met Julius Caesar—the third of the great rulers who would influence my life.

I was sailing south through the Aegean Sea and saw a battle raging. It was rather one-sided. The master of the Roman galley lowered sails and shipped oars. The pirates were all over it in an instant. It seemed there was little cargo aboard the galley, but I saw a few men led from it to the pirate ship.

This was something that was becoming more common these days. The Roman Navy ruled most of the Mediterranean by this time. They used galleys that typically had a hundred slaves to man the oars, so they could gain speeds much faster than a simple sailing ship. I noted the pirates stayed tied to the galley for longer than was necessary and eventually, there was a trade of galley slaves made. Maybe twenty were swapped from one ship to the other. Then the pirate ship shoved away from the galley and the galley made quick work of getting away and heading south—presumably to get to Athens or perhaps all the way around the Peloponnese to Rome.

Pirate ships were often older than the galleys. Mine was much older, but didn’t require slaves to row it. Most had the upswept bow and stern of the Cretan ships and could cut through the water with greater speed due to their shallow draft. In general, they were more maneuverable than the galleys and hence ideal for piracy. You didn’t see many pirates take on a galley, though. Galleys were warships and could throw fire at you or ram you. This one had to be something special.