Free Departures by Harry Turtledove Page B

world. Besides, he was sure neither the Germans nor the Parthians had weapons that could blow large holes in men’s heads. If they did, they would have used them on Roman soldiers long before. In fact, anyone who had such a weapon could master the world, and surely would have done so by now. It made no sense at all.
    What other foreigners were there? There were nomads south of Roman Africa, and others east of the Germans. There was an island off the coast of Britain, but it was full of savages, too. There was— “Men from Atlantis, perhaps?”
    “My dear Tero, I would be the last to deny Platon was a man of godlike intellect, and the
Timaios
has always been one of my favorite dialogues. Still, as far as I can see, in it he invents Atlantis in order to portray an idealized way of life. And, as Aristoteles said, ‘He who invented it destroyed it,’ for, if you’ll remember, Platon says it sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago.”
    “That’s a pity, because I don’t see how a spy could come from any country we know well.” He explained his reasoning to the doctor, who nodded.
    “Where does that leave us?” Kleandros asked.
    “Right where we started—ramming our heads into a stone wall. A plague on it for now. Did you bring your
Iliad
with you? I’d sooner bend my brain around that for a while.” Slowly but surely, over the course of years, Kleandros was teaching the vigilto read Greek; most cultured citizens of the empire were bilingual. Tero spoke Greek fairly well: though more elastic, its basic structure was much like that of Latin, and there were more than a few similarities of vocabulary as well. But Homer was something else. His hexameters were splendid and his picture of the heroes of the Trojan War supremely human, but his antique vocabulary and archaic grammatical forms often made Tero want to tear his hair.
    Line by line they fought their way through the opening of Book Sixteen, where Patroklos begs Akhilleus to let him borrow his armor and drive the Trojans from the ships of the Akhaians, which they had begun to burn. Akhilleus, hesitant at first, assented when he saw the fire going up, and
    “Patroklos armed himself with shining bronze.”
    “I hate these funny-looking datives,” Tero said, but went on:
    “First he put well-made greaves on his calves;
    They had guards of silver on them.
    Then on his breast he put the cleverly made shining
    Corselet of Aiakos’ swift-footed scion.
    He slung his silver-nailed bronze sword from his shoulder,
    And after it a great stout shield as well.”
    “Bronze, bronze, bronze!” Tero said. “Bronze this, bronze that. One cohort of my legion could have gone through all the heroes of the Trojan War, Akhaians and Trojans both, in about an hour and a half. Ten years? No wonder it took them ten years with tactics like theirs. They run at each other, throw their spears, and then start looking for rocks to fling. And nobody cares about the fellow next to him until the poor sod gets a spear in the groin. Then they fight over his armor, not him.”
    “You have the soul of a turnip,” Kleandros said; he had heard Tero’s complaints many times. “That we are better at killing people than they were in Akhilleus’ day is no cause for celebrating.”
    “Nevertheless, I wonder what shining-helmed Hektor would have thought if one morning he woke up and found my old legion around his walls instead of those Akhaian cattle thieves. Can you imagine it? Earthworks, siege towers, catapults, rams. He couldn’t have held that town three days against us. I think I’d have paid money to see his face.”
    “He probably would have been like Afer, convinced all the gods were angry at him.”
    “And yet we would just have been men with skills he didn’t have, not demigods or heroes. It’s very strange.” Tero returned to his home and plowed on doggedly even after his attention began to wander. The truth was that he did not want to think about Eprius’ corpse, though