Phoenician Myths, Zeljko Prodanovic [the beginning after the end read novel .TXT] 📗

‘But, Seleucus,’ he said, ‘Gordius only promised me Asia, and I want to have the whole world! Besides, I want to see the beautiful prophetess with a tear in her eye,’ he added and went to Baalbek.
‘As far as I can see, Alexander,’ the prophetess said, ‘fortune will favour you for the most part of the way. You will conquer many lands, from Egypt in the west up to the big river in the east, which is, by the way, the end of the world. In short, the world will tremble under your feet.’
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to hear!’ Alexander thought.
‘But,’ she went on, ‘I also see a dangerous sign. At one point the way is suddenly interrupted.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alexander asked.
‘I will tell you only this,’ the prophetess replied. ‘I see an old man carrying his house on his back, like a tortoise does. And your fate is in a mysterious way connected with his fate. Therefore, when you meet him – and you will meet him, don’t doubt at all! – don’t scorn or humiliate him. And one more thing: don’t realize all this too late!’
Alexander laughed. ‘Don’t worry, my beauty,’ he said. ‘I will certainly beware of the mysterious old man who carries his house on his back, like a tortoise.’ Then he left. ‘What a pity!’ he thought while leaving Baalbek. ‘How pretty she is, but what nonsense she talks!’
Alexander spent the next few years realizing his big goal – conquering the world. First he conquered Egypt and in the sacred oasis on the Nile the Egyptian priests proclaimed him pharaoh and son of the god Amon. Then he went to Babylon and ordered that the Hanging Gardens be rebuilt. Through Persia he swept like a storm and declared himself the king of kings. Finally, he came to the big river in the east, which, he thought, was the end of the world. Then he went back home.
When he arrived in Greece, the Greeks welcomed him as the greatest conqueror and the indisputable master of the world. They proclaimed him son of Zeus and Poseidon.
But one man took a different view of Alexander. He called him ‘the conqueror of the knot and Asian fog’. It was Diogenes, the famed philosopher-cynic from Sinope. That same Diogenes who lived in a tub and stated that wisdom was frail but power even more so. And Alexander, of course, went to see him.
‘I know, Diogenes,’ Alexander began, ‘that you cynics despise us – ordinary mortals. But yet you could leave your tub for a while, at least to let the sun shine on you.’
Diogenes laughed. ‘But even if I got out, Alexander,’ he said, ‘what good would that do, when you are so great that you shield the entire sun.’
‘You’ve put it nicely, Diogenes,’ Alexander said. ‘But I’ve heard that you call me the conqueror of the knot and Asian fog. What do you mean by that?’
‘It’s a metaphor, Alexander,’ Diogenes replied.
‘A metaphor!’ Alexander shouted. ‘To you it’s a metaphor! Do you, philosopher, know that I did what nobody has ever done – I conquered the world! In Egypt I became pharaoh and son of the god Amon. In Persia I was crowned king of kings and here they call me the son of Zeus and Poseidon! And to you I am the conqueror of the knot and Asian fog. And yet you call it a metaphor!’
‘But Alexander…’ Diogenes said.
‘Listen to me, philosopher!’ Alexander interrupted him. ‘Do you want me to pierce your tub with my spear, like a melon? Or do you want me to go up to the Acropolis and pierce your heart from there with my golden arrow! Tell me, which do you prefer?’
They looked at each other for a while, then Alexander turned around and left. ‘When I return to Athens,’ he told his general Seleucus, ‘I don’t want to see that lunatic here any more!’
A few days later Alexander left Athens and went to tour his empire. He made a stop in Babylon and ordered that girls be brought to him and the old wine from Phoenicia. ‘At last, I can have some fun,’ he thought, ‘and start living as it befits me – as the king of kings and the most powerful man under the sun!’
Soon, Seleucus arrived with tidings from Athens. ‘What’s the news?’ Alexander asked.
‘Everything is in perfect order, sir,’ Seleucus answered. ‘You won’t see the lunatic from Sinope ever again.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Oh sir,’ Seleucus said, ‘you should have seen it. When we came to take him with us, he refused to leave his tub. ‘This is my house,’ he said and burdened it upon his shoulders, and carried it so, on his back, as a tortoise carries its house. We later threw his tub into the sea and him we sold to a tyrant from Corinth. But, only a few days later, he died.’
‘You’ve done it well, Seleucus,’ Alexander said, ‘very well.’
Seleucus then left, and the face of the pretty prophetess from Baalbek began to hover before Alexander’s eyes. He heard her whisper to him, ‘When you meet an old man carrying his house on his back, like a tortoise, don’t scorn or humiliate him… And don’t realize this too late!’
He tried to understand what had gone wrong. He tried to discover the invisible thread, which, in a mysterious way, connected his fate with the fate of the strange philosopher from Sinope. For six days he sat in the splendid rooms of the Hanging Gardens, drinking the old wine from Phoenicia and thinking it over… But the answer he couldn’t find.
And at dawn of the seventh day, his motionless body was found beside the statue of the immortal god Zeus.
Thus, the same summer in the year 323 of the ancient era, the great philosopher Diogenes from Sinope and the great conqueror Alexander from Macedonia died. As far as I remember, Diogenes’ soul went to Baalbek and turned into a cypress tree, and what became of Alexander’s soul, I don’t know.
After all, we are not dealing with the souls of ordinary mortals here.

Hannibal ante Portas

‘Here, Gargamel, is how it all began…
‘One day the Romans arrived in Sicily and captured the Phoenician city of Messina. When the Carthaginians asked them why they did it, the Romans told them that the Phoenicians from Messina allegedly raped some girls from Neapolis and so they came to Sicily and out of revenge sacked Messina. The Carthaginians accepted this as a reasonable explanation.
‘But shortly after that, the Romans sacked another Phoenician town, then another. Then they began to intercept our galleys and in the end they began calling the great Mediterranean Sea – that, as you know, belongs to all of us – Mare Nostrum or ‘our sea’.
‘And the prophetess from Baalbek sent us the message: ‘Get ready, Carthaginians! Your enemy, the beast with the wolf’s eyes, is tightening a noose around your neck. And it would be wise to cut it on time!’
‘The Carthaginians realized that things had become very serious, so they decided to build an army. A certain Anaxagoras, a descendant of the famous general Ptolemy, who with Alexander the Great conquered Persia and Egypt, was brought in from Alexandria and he began teaching Carthaginians the art of war. At that time I was nine years old.
‘One day Anaxagoras gave me a spear and said, ‘Play with this until you learn to kill a flying falcon with it!’ He then gave me a sabre and said, ‘Don’t leave it until you learn how to cut the enemies’ heads as if they were sunflower stalks. If you want to surpass Alexander the Great – and we all know that a greater warrior never lived – then you will have to learn all this and much more.’
‘And when my father Hamilcar was killed in a battle against the Spanish bedouins, I took the lead of the Carthaginian army. I was twenty-five years old.
‘One day the Romans crossed the river Ebro and captured our city of Alcanar. I did not hesitate much. I ordered my soldiers to take Alcanar back and throw the Romans into the river. They did so and the Romans could barely wait for it: they immediately declared war on us.
‘I must say that I took all this very calmly. I was young and did not know what fear was. So, I mounted my elephant and with sixty thousand mercenaries and sixty elephants first crossed the Pyrenees and, a few months later, the Alps as well. In the spring of the following year, the famed general Cornelius Scipio waited for me at Trebia. He claimed that I would end up like the Persians at Marathon but, as you know, he was terribly wrong. I defeated him utterly and he barely managed to escape alive.
‘In autumn of the same year, at Lake Trasimene, Gaius Flaminius appeared before my elephants, but it would have been better for both him and the Romans if he had not. The Romans suffered another crushing defeat and Flaminius, in an attempt to run away, drowned in the lake.
‘And the next year, in the great battle at Canae, I won a brilliant victory. Fifty thousand Romans burnt in the flash of my sword, and a few days later – at the head of my army and on the back of my elephant – I emerged on the hill beside the Tiber. And so, Gargamel, after twenty years, I finally arrived in Rome.’
‘Oh, oh!’ exclaimed the Bithynian king Gargamel. ‘And what did you do then, Hannibal?’
‘Of course, I could have done whatever I wanted. At the same moment I could have descended to Rome and levelled her to the ground, as the Romans had done with our cities. I could have gone to the senate and told those hawks why I had come. I would have told them, ‘Well, Romans… I was a child when I left Carthage and I have not seen her for twenty years. For twenty years I roamed the Spanish forests and chased the bedouins like hares. I learnt how to cut men’s heads like sunflower stalks and I am safer on an elephant’s back than in a woman’s arms. And do you know why?
‘Because you are mean and think that everything under the sun should be solved by force and meanness. Because nothing is sacred to you and because you have nothing else to do but plunder our cities and kill our children. And yet you think that you are better and stronger than others! But what now, Romans?’
‘Or should I wait a bit longer, I thought, and let them tremble before me, like birch trees in the young wind? I remained on the hill above the Tiber for some time, watching the eternal city disappear in the gentle dusk, then I ordered that the tents be pitched and the fires lit.

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