Lion of the Sun by Harry Sidebottom

Author:Harry Sidebottom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780141952291
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2010-06-25T22:00:00+00:00

About three miles down the coast west from Sebaste was the town of Corycus. The most notable thing about it was the island lying offshore. It shared a name with other islets: Crambusa, the dry or parched one. It was indeed waterless, small – no more than two hundred paces by one hundred – and the majority of its shore was rocky. But when the mainland was in enemy hands, its utility to a fleet was immense.

Ballista’s flotilla had sailed down from Sebaste the day before. Arriving, the ships had made a martial display close in to the walls of Corycus – nine triremes, ten liburnians and twenty transport vessels. The latter, to aid the bellicose impression, had been tricked out with military standards, and their decks had been covered with marines seconded from the warships. With luck, the Persians in the town would not realize the roundships were empty except for food and water but would think them packed with troops.

Now, in full sight of the city, the ships were moored off Crambusa. The bare islet gave the rowers of the warships a chance to get away from their cramped benches, to stretch their legs, to cook, eat and sleep ashore. Admittedly, if a storm got up, the fleet would have to run for shelter, either east to Sebaste or west to the delta of the Calycadnus river. But the summer weather looked set fair.

Indeed it was a beautiful night. High, benign clouds, backlit by the full moon. The sea was calm as a millpond, silvered by the moonlight. The ships, black silhouettes, rode easily at anchor.

Ballista stood at the prow of the Lupa, the trireme that carried his standard. He gazed up at the sky. The clouds moving across the face of the moon made it look infinitely distant. In the face of such immensity, mankind seemed very small. It was the trick of most consolations to emphasize the so-called smallness of grief against the enormity of something else. Ballista thought with repugnance of Sulpicius Rufus’s famous letter on the death of Cicero’s daughter. Do not be profoundly affected by your private sorrow when men like us have lost everything we value: our honourable name, patria, dignitas, all our honours. Cicero had written back saying it had helped. How could even the narrow-minded leaders of a failing oligarchy have thought in such disgusting terms?

Much better Plutarch’s consolation to his wife. Despite the tiresome repetition of the necessity of self-control, despite peddling the evident untruth that giving way to grief was as bad as giving way to pleasure, between all the philosophic platitudes, there was the true grief of a father for his lost child: the most delightful thing in the world to embrace, to see, to hear.

Time is a great healer. Every one of them said it. All the great minds – Plutarch, Seneca, all the rest – reduced to the soothing of a nursemaid: there, there, time will make it better. And the sad thing was, it was partly true.

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