We were given a small house in the section of the city where the army was quartered, not far from the palace. The men quickly learned about the king’s harem and joked about how they would relieve the loneliness of so many women who had to wait upon the pleasure of one man.
“You mean he has a couple of hundred wives?” asked one of my men at dinner our first night there.
“They are concubines,” explained Ketu. “Not true wives.”
“But they’re his?”
“Oh yes, they are certainly his.”
“All those women for the king alone?”
“It is death for them even to see another man.”
Another shouted across our dining table, “Can we get them to keep their eyes closed?”
“If a man is found among them,” Ketu said, very seriously, “he is dismembered, a little at a time, over many, many days. They start by cutting off his testicles.”
That silenced their jokes, but only for a few moments.
“Might be worth it,” one of the men muttered, “if you can work your way through forty or fifty of ’em before they catch you.”
“Yah,” said another. “By then your balls would be all worn out anyway.”
To my surprise, Ketu asked me to come with him when he was granted his audience with the Great King.
“I want Dareios to see the kind of men that Philip has serving him,” he told me. Then his face relaxed into a warm smile. “Besides, my friend, I think you are burning with desire to see the man who rules this mighty empire.”
I had to admit that he was right. Another blow to my progress along the Eightfold Path.
Three days after we had arrived in Parsa, we were called to the great audience chamber of the hundred pillars. Ketu wore his best and most colorful robe, a striking pattern of bright red against lemon yellow. I had polished my bronze breastplate until it glowed like the sun. No weapons were allowed in the presence of the Great King, although I wore my dagger beneath the skirt of my chiton almost without thinking of it, it had become such a part of me.
There was enormous formality to an audience with the Great King. All morning one of the king’s masters of protocol, an elderly man with shaking, palsied hands, instructed us on how we were to prostrate ourselves before the throne, how we were not to look directly at the Great King, what forms of address we were to use. Actually, I was to use no form of address at all; Ketu was to do all the talking.
We were marched to the great audience hall by a full squad of soldiers, gleaming with gold and silver. At the enormous double doors, four times higher than my head, heralds announced us, an honor guard in golden armor formed up ahead and behind us, and we paraded through that forest of obsidian pillars toward the distant throne. A throng of noblemen stood watching, their robes resplendent, pearls and jewels gleaming from necklaces and earrings and bracelets. Most of them wore rings on every finger of both hands, even their thumbs.
As we walked the endless distance toward the throne, I saw that it was of carved ivory in the form of a peacock, with jewels in its tail glinting in the sunshine from the great skylight above it. The man sitting on it seemed small and slight against that magnificent throne. His robe was heavy with gold thread, jewels bedecked him, and he wore a massive crown of gold and still more glittering gems. His black beard was curled and oiled. His slippered feet rested on a special stool, since the Persians believed their king’s feet must never touch the ground.
Once we reached the foot of the throne the chief herald, standing to one side of the dais, spoke our names aloud once again. On that cue, we laid ourselves face down before the Great King. It rankled me to abase myself, but I reasoned that when in Parsa one does as the Persians do. I smelled great decadence here; all these jewels and formalities and shows of pomp spoke of the trappings of power rather than power itself. Philip’s court, in contrast, was about as formal as a group of friends meeting to discuss the price of horses at the marketplace.
“The Great King Dareios Codomannus, lord of all the world from the rising to the setting of the sun, conqueror of…”
It took the chief herald several minutes to speak all the titles and honorifics of the Great King. His voice was powerful, and he gave each title a dramatic intonation. At length he said to us grandly, “You may rise and gaze on his magnificence.”
Of course we had been instructed specifically not to look directly at the Great King. I clambered to my feet and gazed slightly off to his left, close enough to see him clearly.
Dareios III appeared much younger than Philip, although that might have been because he had led a much more comfortable life. His beard was so black that I thought it might have been dyed; it was curled and oiled like a woman’s locks. His face seemed to be powdered; it was noticeably whiter than any of the other Persians I had seen. Sitting on his massive throne of ivory and inlaid teak he looked somewhat small, as if the throne had originally been designed for a much larger man. His robes were so stiff and heavy that it was impossible for me to tell much about the body beneath them. But I would not have been surprised if Dareios were soft and pot-bellied. The jeweled crown he wore must have been much heavier than a battle helmet.
No queen sat beside him. There was not a woman in the entire vast audience hall. Off to his left, however, sat a dozen older men, some of them in soldier’s uniforms, others in robes: the king’s advisors and generals, I surmised.
Dareios leaned slightly toward the chief herald and spoke in a near-whisper, “Ask my ambassador for his report.”
The herald called out in his clarion voice, “Your report, ambassador of the Great King.”
I understood their language as easily as I understood the tongue of Philip and Demosthenes. Why did the Great King tell his herald to ask for Ketu’s report? Ketu spoke their language fluently. Then I realized that the Great King was considered too lofty to speak directly to his ambassador, or—horror of horrors—to have the ambassador speak directly to him. The chief herald was the go-between.
Bowing low, Ketu told the herald of Philip’s desire for peace, and his demand that the Greek islands and the cities of Ionia be granted their freedom. He phrased it all very diplomatically, using words such as “dearest wish” and “friendly request” instead of “offer” and “demand.” The chief herald relayed to Dareios exactly what Ketu had said, almost word for word, as if the king were deaf or his ears not attuned to hearing voices from the foot of his throne.
“Tell the ambassador that we thank him, and will in due time prepare a fitting answer for him to bring back to the Macedonian.”
“The Great King, munificent and all-glorious, thanks his servant the ambassador and will, in due time, present him with his gracious and sagacious command to the Macedonian royal house.”
I almost broke into a laugh at that word, “command,” thinking how Philip would react to it.
The king mumbled something more to the herald, who turned to me and announced, “The Great King, ruler of the earth and leader triumphant of battle, demands to know the name and origin of the barbarian presented with the ambassador.”
I was startled. He was referring to me. With only a moment’s hesitation, I said to the herald, “I am called Orion, in the service of Philip, king of Macedonia.”
Apparently my size had impressed the Great King, which may have been the real reason Ketu brought me with him to this audience. The Persians were not small men, but few of them had my height or the width of shoulder that I have. The king and chief herald buzzed briefly, then I was asked:
“Are you a Macedonian?”
“No,” I said, unable to hide my grin, “I am from one of the tribes conquered by the Macedonians.”
The Great King’s eyes widened. I laughed inwardly at his brief loss of self-control, hoping that he truly realized that Philip’s army was not afraid of size.
Inadvertently I looked directly at Dareios. Our eyes met momentarily, then he looked quickly away, blushing. And I knew in that instant that the man was a coward. We were instructed not to look directly at him, not because it would rouse his imperial wrath, but because he did not have the courage to look at men eye to eye.
The chief herald dismissed us. Bowing, we backed away from the throne for the prescribed distance, then were allowed to turn our backs and walk like men from the hall.