"When I learned that you and your son were here in Syracuse, Gordianus, I sent Tiro to find you at once. You have no idea what a comfort it is, seeing a familiar face out here in the provinces," Cicero smiled and raised his cup.
I returned the gesture. Eco did likewise, and the three of us sipped in unison. The local vintage wasn't bad. "I appreciate the welcome," I said, which was true. Indeed, Tiro's unexpected appear-ance at the dingy inn down at the harbor where Eco and I were staying had taken me by complete surprise, and the invitation to dine with Cicero and to spend the night at his rented house surprised me even more. In the five years since Cicero had first employed me (to assist him in the defense of Sextus Roscius, accused of parricide), our relationship had been strictly professional. Cicero generally treated me with a cool diffidence: I was merely the Finder, useful for digging up dirt. I regarded him with wary respect; as an advocate and rising politician, Cicero seemed genuinely interested in justice and truth- but in the end he was, after all, an advocate and a politician.
In other words, we were on friendly terms, but not exactly friends. So I found it curious that he should have invited Eco and me to dine with him purely for pleasure. His twelve months as a government administrator here in Sicily must have been lonely for him indeed if the sight of my face could bring him much enjoyment. "You're not exactly at the end of the world here," I felt obliged to point out. "Sicily isn't all that far from Rome."
"True, true, but far enough to make a man appreciate what Rome has to offer. And far enough so that all the gossip gets a bit distorted on the way here. You must tell me everything that's been happening in the Forum, Gordianus."
"Surely your friends and family keep you informed."
"They write, of course, and some of them have visited. But none of them have your…" He searched for the word. "Your particular perspective." Looking up at the world, he meant, instead of down. "Ah, but now that my year of service is up, I shall soon be back in Rome myself. What a relief it shall be to leave this wretched place behind me. What's that the boy is saying?"
On the dining couch beside me, my mute son had put down his cup and was shaping thoughts in the air with his hands. His pictures were clear enough to me, if not to Cicero: high mountains, broad beaches, stony cliffs. "Eco likes Sicily, or at least the little we've seen of it on this trip. He says that the scenery here is beautiful."
"True enough," Cicero agreed, "though not so true of the people."
"The Greek-speaking population? I thought you adored all things Greek, Cicero."
"All things Greek, perhaps, but not all Greeks." He sighed. "Greek culture is one thing, Gordianus. The art, the temples, the plays, the philosophy, the mathematics, the poetry. But-well, since my other guests haven't yet arrived, I shall speak freely, Roman to
Roman. The Greeks who gave us all that marvelous culture are dust now, and have been for centuries. As for their far-flung progeny, es-pecially in these parts-well, it's sad to see how little they resemble their colonizing ancestors.
"Consider this city: Syracuse, once a beacon of light and learning to the whole of the Mediterranean this side of Italy-the Athens of the west, the rival of Alexandria at its peak. Two hundred years ago, Hiero ruled here, and men like Archimedes walked the beach. Now one finds only the remnants of a proud race, a degraded people, rude and uneducated, without manners or morals. The far-flung colonies of the Greeks have forgotten their forebears. The mantle of civilization has been taken up by us, Gordianus, by Rome. We are the true heir to Greek culture, not the Greeks. Only Romans nowadays have the refinement to truly appreciate, say, a statue by Polyclitus."
"Or is it that only Romans have the money to afford such things?" I suggested. "Or the armies to bring them home by force?"
Cicero wrinkled his nose to show that he found my questions inappropriate, and called for more wine. Beside me, Eco fidgeted on his couch. The early education of my adopted son had been sorely neg-lected, and despite my best efforts, his progress was still hampered by his inability to speak. At fifteen, he was almost a man, but talk of culture, especially from a snob like Cicero, quickly bored him.
"Your year of foreign service has made you even more of a Roman patriot," I remarked. "But if your term is up, and if you find the com-pany of the Greek Sicilians so lacking, I wonder that you don't leave the place at once."
"Right now I'm playing tourist, actually. I was posted to the other half of the island, you see, over in Lilybaeum on the west coast. Syracuse is a stopover on my way home, a last chance to see the sights before I quit Sicily for good. Don't misunderstand me, Gor-dianus. This is a beautiful island, as your son says, resplendent with natural wonders. There are many fine buildings and works of art, and many sites of great historical importance. So much has happened in Sicily in the centuries since the Greeks colonized it- the golden reign of Hiero, the great mathematical discoveries of his friend Archimedes, the Carthaginian invasions, the Roman takeover. There's plenty for a visitor to see and do here in Syracuse." He sipped his wine. "But I don't suppose it's pleasure that's brought you here, Gordianus."
"Eco and I are here strictly on business. A fellow back in Rome hired me to follow the trail of a business partner who absconded with the profits. I tracked the missing man here to Syracuse, but to-day I learned that he's sailed on, probably east to Alexandria. My instructions were to go only as far as Sicily, so as soon as I can book passage, I plan to head back to Rome with the bad news and collect my fee."
"Ah, but now that we've found one another here in a strange city, you must stay with me for a while, Gordianus." Cicero sounded sincere, but then, all politicians do. I suspected the invitation for an extended stay was merely a polite gesture. "What a remarkable livelihood you have," he went on, "hunting down murderers and scoundrels. Of course, one hardly meets a better class of people, being in government service, especially in the provinces. Ah, but here's Tiro!"
Cicero's young secretary gave me a smile and mussed Eco's hair as he passed behind our couches. Eco pretended to take offense and put up his fists like a boxer. Tiro indulged him and did likewise. Tiro had an affable, unassuming nature. I had always found him easier to deal with, and to like, than his master.
"What is it, Tiro?" said Cicero.
"Your other three guests have arrived, Master. Shall I show them in?"
"Yes. Tell the kitchen slaves that they can bring out the first course as soon as we're all settled." Cicero turned back to me. "I hardly know these fellows myself. I was told by friends in Lilybaeum that I should meet them while I was here in Syracuse. Dorotheus and Agathinus are important businessmen, partners in a shipping firm. Margero is said to be a poet, or what passes for a poet in Syracuse nowadays."
Despite his disdainful tone, Cicero made a great show of welcom-ing his guests as they entered the room, springing up from his couch and extending his arms to give them a politician's embrace. He could hardly have been more unctuous had they been a trio of unde-cided voters back in Rome.
The meal, much of it harvested from the sea, was excellent, and the company more genial than Cicero had led me to expect. Dorotheus was a heavyset, round-faced man with a great black beard and a booming voice. He joked continually during the meal, and his good humor was contagious; Eco particularly succumbed to it, often joining his own odd but charming bray to Dorotheus's pealing laughter. From certain bits of conversation that passed between Dorotheus and his business partner, I gathered that both men had cause to be in high spirits, having recently struck some very lucrative deals. Agathinus, however, was more restrained than his partner; he smiled and laughed quietly at Dorotheus's jokes, but said little. Physically, he was quite the opposite of Dorotheus as well, a tall, slender man with a narrow face, a slit of a mouth, and a long nose. They seemed a per-fect example of how a successful partnership can sometimes result from the union of two markedly different natures.
The third Syracusan, Margero, certainly looked and played the part of a pensive Greek poet. He was younger than his wealthy com-panions and quite handsome, with ringlike curls across his forehead, heavy lips, and a dark-browed, moody countenance. I gathered that his verses were quite fashionable at the moment in Syracusan intellectual circles, and I sensed that he was more an ornament than a friend to the two businessmen. He seldom laughed, and showed no inclination to recite from his poems, which was probably for the best, considering Cicero's snobbishness. For his part, Cicero only oc-casionally struck a patronizing tone.
There was talk of business regarding the port of Syracuse and the Sicilian grain harvest, talk of the season's dramatic festivals at the old Greek theater in the city, talk of the current fashions among the Syra-cusan women (who always lagged a few years behind the women of Rome, as Cicero felt obliged to point out). Much of the conversation was in Greek, and Eco, whose Greek was limited, inevitably grew rest-less; eventually I dismissed him, knowing he would find the conversa-tion much more fascinating if he could eavesdrop from the kitchen with Tiro.
Eventually, over fresh cups of wine after the final course of sa-vory onions stewed in honey with mustard seeds, Cicero steered the conversation to the past. He had spent his year in Sicily making himself an expert on the island's long and tumultuous history, and seemed quite pleased at the chance to demonstrate his knowledge to a native audience. Little by little his voice fell into a speechifying rhythm that invited no interruption. What he had to say was fascinating-I had never heard so many gruesome details of the great slave revolts that wracked Sicily in the previous generation-but after a while I could see that his Syracusan guests were growing as restless as Eco.
Cicero grew especially impassioned when he turned to Hiero, the ruler of Syracuse during its golden age. "Now there was a ruler, an example to all the other Hellenic tyrants who reigned over the Greek cities in his day. But then, you must know all about the glory of Hiero's reign, Margero."
"Must I?" said Margero, blinking and clearing his throat like a man awakening from a nap.
"Being a poet, I mean. Theocritus-his sixteenth idyll," Cicero prompted.
Margero merely blinked again.
"The sixteenth idyll of Theocritus," said Cicero, "the poem in which he extols the virtues of Hiero's reign and looks forward to his ultimate victory over Carthage. Surely you know the poem."
Margero blinked his heavy lashes and shrugged.
Cicero frowned disapprovingly, then forced a smile. "I mean those verses, of course, which begin,
"This is ever the business of Muses, of poets,
to sing praise to gods, to sing hymns to heroes…
"Surely, Margero…?"
The young poet stirred himself. "It is vaguely familiar." Dorotheus laughed softly. Agathinus's thin lips compressed into a smile. I realized that Margero was having Cicero on.
Cicero, oblivious, prompted him with more lines:
"Bravely the men of Syracuse grip their spears and lift up their wickerwork shields.
Among them Hiero girds himself like a hero of old, with a lion's head atop his helmet."
"Horsehair," Margero grunted.
"What's that?"
" 'With a plume of horsehair atop his helmet,'" said Margero, in-dolently raising an eyebrow. "Lion's head, indeed!"
Cicero reddened. "Yes, you're right-'with a plume of horse-hair…' Then you do know the poem."
"Slightly," allowed Margero. "Of course, Theocritus was just blowing hot air to try to get Hiero's favor. He was a poet without a patron at that particular moment; thought he might enjoy the climate here in Syracuse, so he dashed off an idyll to get Hiero's attention. Figured the tyrant might be shopping for an epic poet to record his victories over Carthage, so he sent some sycophantic scribbles by way of applying for the post. A pity Hiero didn't take him up on the offer-too busy killing Carthaginians, I suppose. So Theocritus dashed off another encomium, to King Ptolemy in Alexandria, and landed a job scribbling on the Nile instead. A pity, how we poets are always at the whim of the rich and powerful."
This was more than Margero had said all evening. Cicero eyed him uncertainly. "Ah, yes. Be that as it may, Hiero did drive back the Carthaginians, whether any poets were there to record it or not, and we remember him as a great ruler, in Rome, anyway. And of course, among educated men, his friend Archimedes is even more famous." Cicero looked for a nod from his guests, but the three of them only stared back at him dumbly.
"Archimedes, the mathematician," he prompted. "Not a philosopher, to be sure, but still among the great minds of his time. He was Hiero's right-hand man. A thinker in the abstract, mostly, consumed with the properties of spheres and cylinders and cubic equations, but quite a hand at engineering catapults and war machines when he set himself to it. They say that Hiero couldn't have driven the Carthaginians from Sicily without him."
"Ah," said Agathinus dryly, "that Archimedes. I thought you meant Archimedes the fishmonger, that bald fellow with a stall on the wharves."
"Oh, is the name really that common?" Cicero seemed on the verge of apprehending that he was being mocked, but pressed on, determined to lecture his Syracusan guests about the most famous Syracusan who ever lived. "I refer, of course, to the Archimedes who said, 'Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth,' and demonstrated as much to Hiero in miniature by inventing pulleys and levers by which the king was able to move a dry-docked ship by a mere flick of his wrist; the Archimedes who constructed an extraordinary clockwork mechanism of the sun, moon, and five planets in which the miniature spheres all moved together in exact accordance with their celestial models; the Archimedes who is perhaps most famous for the solution he devised to the problem of the golden crown of Hiero."
"Ah, now you are bound to lose me," said Dorotheus. "I've never had a head for logic and mathematics. Remember, Agathinus, how our old tutor used to have weeping fits, trying to get me to under-stand Pythagoras and all that?"
"Ah, but the principle of the golden crown is quite simple to explain," said Cicero brightly. "Do you know the story?"
"In a vague, general, roundabout way," said Dorotheus, with laughing eyes.
"I'll make the tale brief," promised Cicero. "It seems that Hiero gave a certain weight of gold to an artisan, with a commission to make him a crown. Soon enough, the man returned with a splendid gold crown. But Hiero heard a rumor that the artisan had pilfered some of the gold, and had substituted silver for the core of the crown. It weighed the correct amount, but was the crown made of solid gold or not? The piece was exquisitely crafted, and Hiero hated to damage it, but he could think of no way to determine its compo-sition short of melting it down or cutting into it. So he called on Archimedes, who had helped him with so many problems in the past, and asked if he could find a solution.
"Archimedes thought and thought, but to no avail. Gold was heavier than silver, that much he knew, and a blind man could tell the two apart by weighing them in his hands; but how could one tell if a given object was made of silver covered with gold? They say that Archimedes was sitting in a tub at the baths, noticing how the level of the water rose and fell as the bathers got in and out, when the solution suddenly came to him. He was so excited that he jumped from the tub and ran naked through the streets, shouting, 'Eureka! Eureka!'-'I have found it! I have found it!'"
Dorotheus laughed. "All the world knows that part of the tale, Cicero. And for better or worse, that's how the world pictures Archimedes-as an absentminded old genius."
"A naked absentminded old genius," Agathinus amended tartly.
"Not a pretty picture," said Margero. "A man of a certain age should know better than to subject others to his bony nakedness, even in private." It seemed to me that he shot a caustic look at Agathinus, who stared straight ahead. I realized that the two of them had hardly said a word to each other or exchanged a glance all night.
"Gentlemen, we digress," said Cicero. "The point of the story is the solution that Archimedes devised."
"Ah, now this is the part that I've never been quite able to follow," said Dorotheus, laughing.
"But it's really quite simple," Cicero assured him. "This is what Archimedes did. He took an amount of gold of a certain weight-a single Roman uncia, let's say. He placed the uncia of gold in a vessel of water, and marked how high the waterline rose. Then he took an uncia of silver, placed it in the same vessel, and marked the water-line. Being a lighter substance, the uncia of silver was larger than the uncia of gold, and so displaced more water, and thus caused a higher waterline. Then Archimedes took the crown and, knowing the exact number of uncias of gold that Hiero had given the artisan, calculated how high it should cause the waterline to rise. If the waterline rose higher than expected, then the crown could not be made of solid gold, and must contain some material of greater volume per uncia, such as silver. Sure enough, the crown displaced more water than it should have. The artisan, his deception discovered, confessed to having covered a silver crown with gold."
"I see," said Dorotheus slowly and without irony. A light seemed genuinely to dawn in his eyes. "Do you know, Cicero, I have never before been able to grasp Archimedes's principle."
"Ah, but you should. It can be of great practical use to a man dealing in payments and commodities, as you do."
"Yes, I can see that," said Dorotheus, nodding thoughtfully.
Cicero smiled. "You see, it's really simple, as most basic principles are. But it takes a man like Archimedes to discover such princi-ples in the first place." He gazed at his wine by the lamplight. "But absentminded he certainly was, always drifting into his world of pure geometry. At the baths, they say, he would even use himself as a tablet, drawing geometrical shapes in the massage oil on his belly."
This image pleased Dorotheus, who slapped his own belly and laughed heartily. Even Agathinus grinned. Margero merely raised an eyebrow.
"Thus Archimedes met his death as absentmindedly absorbed in mathematics as ever," said Cicero. "But I'm sure you all know the story of his end already…"
"Vaguely," allowed Agathinus.
"Oh, but you must enlighten us," said Dorotheus.
"Very well, if you insist. After Hiero died, the Romans occupied Sicily, to keep it as a bulwark against Carthage. On the day that Syracuse was taken by the general Marcellus, Archimedes was on the beach, working out a theorem by drawing figures with a stick in the sand, when a troop of Roman soldiers came marching up. Archimedes, who didn't even know that the city had been taken, took no notice until the soldiers began to tramp across his drawings. He made a rude remark-"
"He suggested that they all go copulate with their mothers, as I recall," said Margero, smiling languidly.
Cicero cleared his throat. "At any rate, one of the soldiers flew into a rage and killed Archimedes on the spot."
"1 had no idea that a preoccupation with mathematics could be so dangerous," quipped Agathinus, straight-faced.
"At least Archimedes knew how to mind his own business," said Margero quietly. Again, I thought I saw him glare at Agathinus, who showed no reaction.
Cicero ignored the interruption. "When the Roman general learned of the tragedy, he was mortified, of course. He ordered a grand funeral procession and the construction of an elaborately or-namented tomb inscribed with the greatest of Archimedes's theorems and decorated with sculptures of the forms whose properties he discovered-the sphere, the cone, the cylinder, and so on. I say- where is the tomb of Archimedes? I should like to see it while I'm here."
Agathinus and Dorotheus looked at each other and shrugged. Margero's face was as unreadable as a cat's.
"Do you mean to say that none of you knows the location of Archimedes's tomb? Is it not general knowledge?"
"Somewhere in the old necropolis outside the city walls, I suppose," said Agathinus vaguely.
"Not everyone is as preoccupied with their dead ancestors as you Romans," said Margero.
"But surely the tomb of a man as great as Archimedes should be regarded as a shrine." Cicero suddenly stiffened. His eyes flashed. His jaw quivered. "Eureka! I have found it!" He was suddenly so animated that we all gave a start, even the heavy-lidded Margero. "Gor-dianus the Finder, it was the Fates who brought us two Romans together here in Syracuse! I have a purpose here, and so have you."
"What are you talking about, Cicero?"
"What do you say to a bit of employment? You shall locate the lost tomb of Archimedes for me-if it still exists-and I shall restore it to its former glory! It shall be the crowning achievement of my year in Sicily. Brilliant! Who can doubt it was the Fates who engi-neered this evening and its outcome, who brought us all together, we two Romans and our new Syracusan friends? Eureka! I feel like Archimedes in the bathing tub."
"Just don't go running naked though the streets," quipped Dorotheus, his round body shaking with mirth.
The evening had come to a natural conclusion, and the three Syracusans made ready to leave. Cicero retired, leaving it to Tiro to show them out and to conduct Eco and me to our beds. At the door, Agathinus lingered behind his departing companions and drew me aside.
"I take it that Cicero is serious about hiring you to go looking for Archimedes's tomb tomorrow?"
"So it appears. They call me Finder, after all."
Agathinus pursed his thin lips and studied me with cool, apprais-ing eyes that betrayed a hint of amusement. "You seem to be a decent enough fellow, Gordianus-for a Roman. Ah, yes, don't deny it-I saw you laughing in silence tonight along with us, while your countryman lectured us about Hiero and Archimedes. As if we were schoolboys, indeed! As if he were the native Syracusan, not us! But as I say, you seem decent enough. Shall I do you a favor and tell you where to find the tomb?"
"You know?"
"It's not exactly common knowledge, but yes, I know where it is." "Yet you didn't tell Cicero."
"Never! I think you know why. The know-it-all! From what I've heard, he's more honest than most of the bureaucrats Rome sends us, but still-the gall of the man! But I like you, Gordianus. And I like your son; I liked the way he laughed at Dorotheus's awful jokes. Shall I show you where to find the tomb of Archimedes? Then you can show it to Cicero, or not, as you please-and charge him a stiff fee for your services, I hope."
I smiled. "I appreciate the favor, Agathinus. Where exactly is the tomb?"
"In the old necropolis outside the Achradina Gate, about a hundred paces north of the road. There are a lot of old monuments there; it's a bit of a maze. My father showed me the tomb when I was a boy. The inscriptions of the theorems had largely worn away, but I remember the geometrical sculptures quite vividly. The necropolis has fallen into neglect, I'm afraid. The monuments are all overgrown." He thought for a moment. "It's hard to give exact directions. It would be easier simply to show you. Can you meet me outside the gate tomorrow morning?"
"You're a busy man, Agathinus. I don't want to impose on you."
"It's no imposition, so long as we do it first thing in the morning. Meet me an hour after dawn."
I nodded, and Agathinus departed.
"How did the dinner go?" asked Tiro as he showed us to our room. "I know that Eco didn't think much of the evening." He mimicked Eco yawning. Meanwhile Eco, yawning for real, tumbled backward onto a sleeping couch that looked infinitely more comfortable than the vermin-ridden mats at the inn where we had been staying.
"An evening is never too dull if it ends with a full stomach, a roof over my head, and the prospect of gainful employment." I said. "As for the company, Dorotheus is likable enough, if a bit loud. And Agathinus appears to be an alright fellow."
"Rather dour-looking."
"I think he just has a very dry sense of humor."
"And the poet?"
"Margero was clearly in no mood to recite poetry. He seemed to be rather preoccupied. There was something going on between him and Agathinus…"
"I think I can explain that," offered Tiro.
"You weren't in the room."
"No, but I was in the kitchen, soaking up local gossip from the slaves. Agathinus and Dorotheus are Margero's patrons, you see; every poet needs patrons if he's to eat. But lately there's been a chill between Agathinus and Margero."
"A chill?"
"Jealousy. It seems they're both paying court to the same pretty boy down at the gymnasium."
"I see." The two were rivals in love, then. Margero was younger and more handsome than Agathinus, and could compose love poems; but Agathinus had the attractions of money and power. Clearly, the two of them had not yet fallen out completely-Margero still depended on Agathinus for patronage, Agathinus still used the poet as an ornament-but there was friction between them. "Any other interesting gossip from the kitchen slaves?"
"Only that Agathinus and Dorotheus just received payment for their largest shipment ever of imported goods from the East. Some people say that they're now the richest men in Syracuse."
"No wonder Cicero was advised to make friends with them."
"Do you need anything else before you retire?" asked Tiro, lowering his voice. Eco, not even undressed, was already softly snoring on his couch.
"Something to read, perhaps?"
"There are some scrolls in the room that Cicero uses for an office…"
I ended the night curled under a coverlet on my couch, puzzling by lamplight over a musty old scroll of the works of Archimedes, amazed at his genius. Here were such wonders as a method for deter-mining the surface area of a sphere, explained so lucidly that even I could almost understand it. At length I came upon the proposition which had resulted from the problem of the gold crown:
Proposed: A solid heavier than a fluid will, if placed in it, descend to the bottom of the fluid, and the solid will, when weighed in the fluid, be lighter than its true weight by the weight of the fluid.
Yes, well, that much was obvious, of course. I read on.
Let A be a solid heavier than the same volume of fluid, and let (G + H) represent its weight, while G represents the weight of the same volume of the fluid…
This was not quite so clear, and I was getting drowsy. Cicero's explanation had been easier to follow. I pressed on.
Take a solid B lighter than the same volume of the fluid, and such that the weight of B is G, while the weight of the same vol-ume of the fluid is (G + H). Let A and B be now combined into one solid and immersed. Then, since (A + B) will be of the same weight as the same volume of fluid, both weights being equal to (G + H) + G, it follows that…
I gave a great yawn, put aside the scroll, and extinguished the lamp. Alas, it was all Greek to me.
The next morning, at daybreak, I roused Eco, grabbed a handful of bread from the pantry, and the two of us set out for the Achradina Gate.
The stretch of road outside the walls was just as Agathinus had described it, with a great maze of tombs on either side, all overgrown with brambles and vines. It was an unsettling place, even in the pale morning light, with an air of decay and desolation. Some of the stone monuments were as large as small temples. Others were simple stelae set in the earth, and many of these were no longer upright but had been knocked this way and that. Crumbling sculptural reliefs depicted funeral garlands and horses' heads, the traditional symbols of life's brief flowering and the speedy passage toward death. Some of the monuments were decorated with the faces of the dead, worn so smooth by time that they were as bland and featureless as the statues of the Cyclades.
Agathinus was nowhere to be seen. "Perhaps we're early," I said. Eco, full of energy, began nosing about the monuments, peering at the worn reliefs, looking for pathways into the thicket. "Don't go getting lost," I told him, but he might as well have been deaf as well as mute. He was soon out of sight.
I waited, but Agathinus did not appear. It was possible that he had arrived before us and lacked the patience to wait, or that his business had kept him from coming. There was also the chance that he had changed his mind about helping me, decent enough fellow for a Roman though I might be.
I tried to remember his description of the tomb's location. On the north side, he had said, about a hundred paces from the road, and decorated with sculptures of geometrical shapes. Surely it couldn't be that hard to find.
I began nosing about as Eco had done, looking for ways into the thicket. I found his tracks and followed them into a sort of tunnel through the thorns and woody vines that choked the pathways between the monuments. I moved deeper and deeper into a strange world of shadowy foliage and cold, dank stone covered with lichen and moss. Dead leaves rustled underfoot. Whenever the pathway branched I tried to follow Eco's footsteps and called out his name to let him know that I was behind him. I soon realized that finding Archimedes's tomb would not be such a simple task after all. I con-sidered turning and retracing my steps back to the road. Agathinus might have arrived, and be waiting for me.
Then I heard a strange, twisted cry that was not quite a scream, but rather the noise a mute boy might make if he tried to scream.
Eco!
I rushed toward the noise, but was confounded by the branching maze and the echo of his cry among the stone tombs. "Cry out again, Eco! Cry out until I find you!"
The noise echoed from a different direction. I wheeled about, banged my head against the projecting corner of a monument, and cursed. I reached up to wipe the sweat from my eyes and realized I was bleeding. Eco cried out again. I followed, stumbling over creeping vines and dodging crooked stelae.
Suddenly, above a tangle of thorns, I glimpsed the upper part of what could only be the tomb of Archimedes. Surmounting a tall square column chiseled with faded inscriptions in Greek was a sphere, and surmounting the sphere, balanced on its round edge, was a solid cylinder. These two forms were the concrete representation of one of the principles I had encountered in my reading the night before-but all such thoughts fled from my mind as I found a way through the thicket and stepped into a small clearing before the tomb.
In front of the column there were several other geometrical sculptures. Upon one of them, a cube almost as tall as he was, stood Eco, his eyes wide with alarm. Next to the cube and equally as tall was a slender cone that came to a very sharp point. The point was dark with blood. Impaled on the cone, face-up, long, spindly limbs splayed in agony, was the lifeless body of Agathinus. His upside-down features were frozen in a rictus of pain and shock.
"You found him like this?"
Eco nodded.
How had such a thing happened? Agathinus must have been standing on the cube where Eco now stood, and somehow fallen backward onto the point. I flinched, picturing it. The force of his fall had pushed his body halfway down the cone. But why should he have been standing on the cube at all? The faded inscriptions on the column could as easily be read from the ground. And how could he have been so careless as to fall in such a dangerous spot?
Unless someone had pushed him.
I thought of a triangle, not of the sort which Archimedes studied, but with properties just as predictable-a triangle made not of abstract lines but of the powerful forces that link mortal to mortal.
I told Eco to stop gawking and get down from the cube.
Given the circumstances of our discovery, and the fact that we were strangers in Syracuse, Eco and I might very well fall under suspicion ourselves if it was decided that Agathinus had been murdered. I thought it best to report what I had seen to Cicero, to let him handle reporting the death to the appropriate provincial magistrate, and then to book passage for Rome and have as little to do with the mat-ter as possible.
"But Gordianus," Cicero protested, "this sort of thing is your specialty. And if I understand you correctly, Agathinus was there to meet you, and to do you a favor-though it seems he could as easily have shown the tomb to me instead. Do you feel no obligation to discover the truth?"
Cicero is a master at playing on a man's honor. I resisted. "Are you hiring me to investigate his death?"
"Gordianus-always money! Paying you for such a service would hardly be my responsibility, but I'm sure I can persuade the local Roman magistrate to do so. I might point out that your participation would also remove you from suspicion. Well?" He raised an eyebrow.
There was no debating logic with Cicero. "I'll do it."
"Good! First, someone will have to inform his friends and family. Dealing with a widow takes a certain finesse-I'll handle that. I leave it to you to deliver the sad news to his partner, Dorotheus."
"And Margero?"
"Ah yes, I suppose the poet will want to compose some funeral verses in praise of his dead patron."
Unless, I thought, Margero had been the author of Agathinus's death.
Margero's place was a small but respectable house in the heart of the city. I rapped upon the door politely with my foot and was shown by a slave through a modest atrium into a modest garden. After a long wait, Margero appeared wearing a rumpled robe. The ringlets across his forehead were in disarray and his eyes were puffy with sleep.
"It's close to midday," I said. "Do all poets sleep this late?"
"They do if they've drunk as much as I did last night."
"I didn't notice you drinking any more than the rest of us."
"What makes you think I stopped drinking after I left?"
"You had a late night, then?"
"What business is that of yours, Roman?"
"One of your patrons is dead."
In the span of a heartbeat several emotions crossed his handsome features, beginning with what might have been surprise and a flicker of hope, and ending with a grimace that might have been no more than a symptom of his hangover. "Dorotheus?"
"No."
A definite smile of satisfaction flickered across his lips.
"Agathinus-dead? But how?"
"Eco and I found him this morning, outside the Achradina Gate." I described the circumstances.
"Impaled? How gruesome." Margero's disgust slowly turned to amusement. "Yet how appropriate! An ironical turnabout from his usual preference." He laughed out loud. "Agathinus, impaled. Delicious! Poor Nikias will be distraught, no doubt. I shall make a poem to console him."
"Nikias-the boy at the gymnasium?"
Margero darkened. "How do you know about him?"
"I know more than I care to about your affairs, and those of Agathinus-and yet, still not enough… "
"What do you think?" I said to Eco as we made our way toward the large building near the docks where Agathinus and Dorotheus kept their offices and warehouse. "Was Margero really surprised by our bad news?"
Eco looked pensive. He rotated his palm up and down inconclusively.
"Let's suppose that Margero overheard Agathinus last night when he arranged to meet us outside the Achradina Gate-" Eco shook his head.
"Yes, you're right, Margero and Dorotheus had already moved on and were out of earshot. But suppose Agathinus caught up with them and told them of his plan. That's certainly possible."
Eco nodded sagely.
"And suppose that Margero volunteered to meet Agathinus this morning, and the two of them got there ahead of us and began to search for the tomb without us-or perhaps Margero showed up on his own, staying hidden, and secretly followed Agathinus into the maze. One way or the other, the two of them ended up there inside the thicket, safely out of sight, and Margero took the opportunity to get rid of his rival for Nikias once and for all."
Eco shook his head and mimed a poet in the throes of recitation.
"Yes, I know: Margero is a man of words, not actions. And he'd have to be an awfully good actor, too, if he was faking all his reac-tions when we gave him the news this morning."
Eco put his cheek against folded hands and feigned sleep.
"And yes, he was obviously asleep when we called on him-but that proves nothing. Perhaps he stayed up all night so as to ambush Agathinus, then went to bed after the crime."
Eco clutched an imaginary spike erupting from his chest, then feigned sleep, then shook his head dismissively. How, he asked, could any man sleep after doing such a thing?
"You have a point there," I admitted. Eco winced, catching the pun before I did. "And another thing: Margero is younger than Agathinus, but was he that much stronger-strong enough to force Agathinus up onto the cube, then push him onto the cone?"
Dorotheus kept us waiting for some time in the atrium of his busi-ness establishment. At last he appeared, smiling glumly and stroking his bushy beard. "Gordianus and Eco!" he boomed. "Come to say a last farewell before you head back for Rome?"
"I only wish that we were here on such happy business. It's about Agathinus-"
"Ah, yes, I learned of the tragedy earlier this morning-his wife sent a messenger the moment she was given the news by Cicero. I understand that you found his body. Horrible! Shocking!"
"Did you know of his plan to meet me outside the Achradina Gate this morning?"
"What? Of course not."
"I thought he might have mentioned it to you and Margero after you left Cicero's house last night."
"Agathinus caught up with us, yes, and the three of us walked for a while together. But he said nothing of any plans to meet you. I left the two of them outside my door, so Margero saw him last. Now that you mention it-"
"Yes?"
"Of late there had been some trouble between them. Perhaps you noticed Margero's rudeness last night, and Agathinus's aloofness. Some silly business over a boy. Absurd, isn't it, how people can go mad over such things? Still, it's hard to believe that Margero could…"
A slave entered the room and spoke to Dorotheus in hushed tones.
He shrugged apologetically. "Business. Agathinus's death leaves everything in terrible confusion. You must excuse me. Have a safe journey home, Gordianus!"
Dorotheus departed with his secretary, leaving us alone in the atrium.
Or leaving me alone, rather, for when I looked around, Eco had vanished.
I called his name softly, but this appeared to be another occasion when he had gone conveniently deaf. There were several doorways leading out of the atrium into various parts of the building, but my attention was drawn to a passageway covered by a curtain that had been straight when we arrived but now hung slightly askew. I pushed it back and stepped into a dark hallway.
On either side, the hall opened onto a series of small offices cluttered with scrolls, bits of papyrus, and wax writing tablets. The offices were deserted, the clerks presumably sent home on account of Agathinus's death. The records stacked all about appeared to be the normal stuff of business-invoices, bills, ledgers. I peeked into each room, softly calling Eco's name.
The hallway ended in a door, which stood ajar. I pushed it open and stepped into a high, open warehouse filled with crates. The place appeared to be as deserted as the offices, and the mazelike aisles between the stacked boxes reminded me uneasily of the maze-like necropolis outside the Achradina Gate.
"Eco!" I called softly. "We've no right to be snooping here. Eco, where are you?" I wandered up and down the aisles, until I discov-ered another door at the far corner of the room. It opened into yet another office. From small windows set high in the wall came the sounds of ships knocking together in the harbor and the cry of seagulls. There was no sign of Eco inside. I backed out of the room and closed the door behind me. I took several steps before I suddenly realized what I had seen and hurried back.
On a table against one wall I saw a simple scale. Neatly stacked beside it were some sample weights of silver and gold. There was also a small wooden tub on the table. I stepped closer. Sure enough, the tub was half filled with water, and there were several waterline markings made with a piece of chalk along the inner surface.
Behind me, I heard the door close.
"I thought I bade you farewell, Gordianus." There was not the slightest hint of good humor in Dorotheus's voice. Without the beaming smile, his round, bearded face had a stern, almost menacing look; the constant smile had kept me from seeing the cold, predatory gleam in his eyes, so common in successful traders and merchants. I also realized what a large man he was. Fat, yes, but the fellow had arms like a blacksmith's-strong enough, I had no doubt, to drag the smaller, weaker Agathinus onto the stone cube, and then to push him backward onto the cruel spike.
"I'm looking for my son," I said, as innocently as I could. "Eco has a terrible habit of wandering off on his own. I really should be less indulgent…"
But Dorotheus wasn't listening. "How much, Finder?"
"For what?"
"How much to shut you up and send you on your way back to Rome?" He might be a murderer, but he was a businessman first.
If accepting his bribe meant getting safely through the door behind him, why not? But I thought of Agathinus on the night before-the final night of his life-saying, I like you, Gordianus. and I like your son… the way he laughed at Dorotheus's awful jokes…
and offering to do me the favor of showing me Archimedes's tomb. I remembered the gaping grimace of horror on his face when we found him, and I shuddered, thinking of the appalling agony he must have suffered at the end, transfixed like an insect on a pin.
"Agathinus did tell you last night about meeting me outside the Achradina Gate?" I said.
Dorotheus, deciding to submit to a bit of conversation, let his face relax. The hint of a smile returned to his lips. "Yes. He was quite looking forward to tramping through the thicket with you. I insisted on coming along for the fun."
"And Margero?"
"I'm afraid I lied to you about that, Finder. Margero excused himself as soon as Agathinus caught up with us last night. He could hardly stand dining in the same room with him, in case you didn't notice, and he was in no mood to stroll along beside him afterward. Probably Margero was in a great hurry to get home so he could get drunk in solitude and make up new poems for that silly boy at the gymnasium."
"And you?"
"I saw Agathinus home. Then I came here." "To your offices? In the middle of the night?" "Don't be coy, Finder. You saw the scale and the tub of water." "A demonstration of Archimedes's principle?" "Would you believe, I never quite grasped it, until Cicero explained it last night."
"What could be so important that you had to rush here at once to try it out?"
He sighed. "I've suspected for years that Agathinus must be cheating me. Why not? He was always smarter than me, ever since we were boys. And the smarter partner always cheats the stupider one-that's the law of business. So I always watched every transaction, always counted every piece of silver and gold we divided be-tween us. Still, I could never catch him cheating me.
"For the last shipment of goods, he talked me into taking my pay-ment in gold vessels-pitchers and bowls and such-while he took his in coin. He needed the ready money to spend on certain investments of his own, he said, and what did it matter anyway, so long as we both received the same weight? Secretly, I thought I must be getting the better deal, because worked gold is more valuable than its weight in coinage. Agathinus was counting on my own greed, you see, and he used it against me. He cheated me. The devious bastard cheated me! Last night, with Archimedes's help, I proved it."
"Proved that your gold vessels weren't made of solid gold?"
"Exactly."
"Perhaps Agathinus didn't know."
"Oh, no, he knew. After we went into the thicket and found the tomb this morning, I confronted him. He denied the deception at first-until I dragged him onto the cube and threatened to throw him on the cone. Then he confessed, and kept on confessing, with the sight of that spike to goad him. It didn't begin with this transaction! He'd been pilfering and corrupting my shares of gold for years, in all sorts of devious ways. I always knew that Agathinus was too clever to be honest!"
"And after he confessed-" I shuddered, picturing it.
Dorotheus swallowed hard. "I could say that it was an accident, that he slipped, but why? I'm not proud of it. I was angry-furious! Anger like that comes from the gods, doesn't it? So the gods will understand. And they'll understand why I had to get rid of you, as well." He reached into the folds of his tunic and pulled out a long dagger.
I coughed. My throat was bone-dry. "I thought you intended to buy my silence."
"I've changed my mind."
"But you said-"
"You never agreed, so there was never a bargain. And now I withdraw that offer."
I looked around the room for something that might equalize the situation, but saw nothing remotely resembling a weapon. The best I could do was to pick up the tub. I threw the water on him, then threw the tub, which he knocked aside. All I managed was to make him furious and dripping wet. All trace of the laughing, genial dinner companion of the previous night had vanished. Seeing his face now, I would not have known him.
It was at that moment that the door behind him gave a rattle and burst open.
Cicero entered first, followed by a troop of well-armed Roman peacekeepers who surrounded Dorotheus at once and took his dagger. Eco trailed behind, leaping in the air in great excitement, the anxious look on his face turning to jubilation when he saw that I was unharmed.
"Eco fetched you?" I said.
"Yes," said Cicero.
"You heard Dorotheus confess?"
"I heard enough."
Eco opened his mouth wide and moved his lips, but managed only to produce a stifled grunt.
"What's the boy trying to say?" asked Cicero. "I think it must be 'Eureka! Eureka!'"
"Greed!" I said to Eco the next morning, as we made ready to vacate our room at Cicero's house. "Last night I read that idyll of Theocritus,
the poem that Cicero quoted from at dinner the other night. The poet certainly got it right:
Men no longer aspire to win praise for noble deeds,
but think only of profit, profit, profit.
Clutching their coinbags, always looking for more,
too stingy to give away the tarnish that comes off their coins!
"Thanks to greed, Agathinus is dead, Dorotheus awaits trial for his murder, and Margero the poet has lost both of his patrons in one stroke, which means he'll probably have to leave Syracuse. A disaster for them all. It's very sad; enough to make a man want to leave behind the grubby human cares of this world and lose himself in pure geometry, like Archimedes."
We gathered up our few belongings and went to take our leave of Cicero. There was also the matter of collecting my fees, not only for finding Archimedes's tomb, but for exposing Agathinus's killer.
From the atrium, I could hear Cicero in his office. He was dictating a letter to Tiro, no doubt intending for me to deliver it when I got back to Rome. Eco and I waited outside the door. It was impossible not to overhear.
"Dear brother Quintus," Cicero began, "the fellows I was so strongly advised to cultivate here in Syracuse turned out to be of no account-the unsavory details can wait until we meet again. Nonetheless, my holiday here has not been entirely unproductive. You will be interested to learn that I have rediscovered the lost tomb of one of our boyhood heroes, Archimedes. The locals were entirely ignorant of its location; indeed, denied its very existence. Yesterday afternoon, however, I set out with Tiro for the old necropolis outside the Achradina Gate, and there, sure enough, peeking out above a tangle of brambles and vines, I spied the telltale ornaments of a sphere and cylinder atop a column. You must recall that bit of doggerel we learned from our old math tutor:
A cylinder and ball atop a column tall mark the final stage of the Syracusan sage.
"Having spotted the tomb, I gave a cry of 'Eureka!' and ordered a group of workers with scythes to clear the thicket all around. Now the tomb of Archimedes can be seen and approached freely, and has been restored to its rightful status as a shrine to all educated men."
Cicero did not mention the cube and cone, I noticed. They had been removed along with the thicket, lest someone else meet Agathinus's fate.
Cicero cleared his throat and resumed dictating. "Ironic, brother Quintus, is it not, and sadly indicative of the degraded cultural stan-dards of these modern Syracusans, that it took a Roman from Arpinum to rediscover for them the tomb of the keenest intellect who ever lived among them?"
Ironic indeed, I thought.