The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World (Novels of Ancient Rome) by Steven Saylor Page B

you see those two statues in the center, of a bearded king and his queen?” said Antipater. “They depict King Mausolus and Queen Artemisia, forever side by side, forever gazing out to the sea, greeting every visitor who arrives in the harbor of Halicarnassus.”
    “Extraordinary!” I whispered.
    “When we have a chance to inspect the Mausoleum more closely, and circle the building at our leisure, you’ll see that the four sides are all slightly different. Artemisia hired the four greatest sculptors of her day and assigned each to design and sculpt the decorations for one of the four faces of the monument. She made it a contest. She also sponsored competitions between playwrights and poets and athletes, and awarded generous prizes, all to honor her dead husband.”
    “She must have been very devoted to him,” I said.
    “So devoted that in the end she could not stand to be parted from him. When the time came to inter his remains in the sepulcher of the Mausoleum, Artemisia insisted on keeping some of the ashes for herself. She mixed them with wine and drank them, hoping to quell the pain of her grief. But her grief only grew sharper. Artemisia died before the Mausoleum was completed.”
    “Of a broken heart?” I said.
    “So goes the legend. Her own ashes were placed beside those of Mausolus in the sepulcher, and then a huge stone was used to plug the entrance at the base of the Mausoleum, sealing their tomb forever.”
    “To die for love!” I said. “But surely that’s madness.”
    “Love is always a kind of madness, sometimes mild, sometimes severe. Even when not deadly, its consequences can be drastic. Consider the story we were just talking about, of Salmacis the nymph, and her passion for—”
    But again, as if an impish spirit wished to prevent him from speaking of Salmacis, Antipater was interrupted by the captain, who shouted at us to get out of the way while his men attended to the ropes and sails.
    *   *   *
    “Bitto is the youngest daughter of my late cousin Theo,” Antipater explained as we traversed the city on the back of a mule-drawn cart he had hired on the waterfront to carry our baggage. Normally I would have preferred to walk, but the wide, well-paved streets of Halicarnassus allowed us to ride on the cart without being jostled. We passed through the public square and the markets and then through a succession of residential districts, each finer than the last, as we began to go uphill in the direction of the royal palace. Sitting on the back of the cart, I watched the Mausoleum steadily grow more distant, yet its vastness never ceased to dominate the view.
    “I haven’t seen Bitto in years,” Antipater continued. “Her two daughters are grown and married now, and her husband died a couple of years ago. She must be forty now—a hard age to be a widow. ‘Too young to die and too old to marry,’ as the saying goes. Unless of course the widow inherits a fortune, but that was not the case with Bitto. Her husband was a successful merchant, but he had a run of bad luck toward the end. At least she’s managed to hold on to the house. When I wrote and asked if she could accommodate us, Bitto replied at once and said we’d be very welcome.” He craned his neck and looked ahead. “Ah, but there’s the house. At least I think that’s it. It’s a brighter yellow than I remember. Can it be freshly painted? And the front door, with all those bronze fittings and decorations—I don’t recall it being so ornate. Can it be new?”
    While the carter unloaded our baggage, Antipater strode to the doorstep and reached for the bronze knocker beside the door—then drew back his hand when he realized that the knocker was in the shape of a phallus. He raised an eyebrow, then gingerly took hold of the knocker and let it drop. The heavy metal struck the wood with a resounding noise.
    A few moments later, a handsome young slave opened the door. He was just about to speak when a hand adorned with