baths, an athletic track and exercise rings. In each he sat the horse oblivious to the glares of Alexandrians and ibises, then dismounted to examine the ceilings of the covered arcades and walkways. At the courts of justice he strolled inside, it seemed fascinated by the ceilings of its lofty rooms. From there he rode to the temple of Poseidon, thence to the Serapeum in Rhakotis, the latter a sanctuary to Serapis gifted with a huge temple amid gardens and other, smaller temples. Then it was off to the waterfront and its docks, its warehouses; the emporium, a gigantic trading center, received quite a lot of his attention, as did piers, jetties, quays curbed with big square wooden beams. Other temples and large public buildings along Canopic Avenue also interested him, particularly their ceilings, all held up by massive wooden beams. Finally he rode back down Royal Avenue to the German camp, there to issue instructions about fortifications.
“I'm sending you two thousand soldiers as additional labor to start dismantling the old city walls,” he told his legate. “You'll use the stones to build two new walls, each commencing at the back of the first house on either side of Royal Avenue and fanning outward until you reach the lake. Four hundred feet wide at the Royal Avenue end, but five thousand feet wide at the lakefront. That will bring you hard against the swamp on the west, while your eastern wall will bisect the road to the ship canal between the lake and the Canopic Nilus. The western wall you'll make thirty feet high—the swamp will provide additional defense. The eastern wall you'll make twenty feet high, with a fifteen-foot-deep ditch outside mined with stimuli, and a water-filled moat beyond that. Leave a gap in the eastern wall to let traffic to the ship canal keep flowing, but have stones ready to close the gap the moment I so order you. Both walls are to have a watchtower every hundred feet, and I'll send you ballistas to put on top of the eastern wall.”
Poker-faced, the legate listened, then went to find Arminius, the Ubian chieftain. Germans weren't much use building walls, but their job would be to forage and stockpile fodder for the horses. They could also find wood for the fire-hardened, pointed stakes called stimuli, and start weaving withies for the breastworks—wonderful wicker weavers, Germans!
Back down Royal Avenue rode Caesar to the Royal Enclosure and an inspection of its twenty-foot-high wall, which ran from the crags of the Akron theater in a line that returned to the sea on the far side of Cape Lochias. Not a watchtower anywhere, and no real grasp of the defensive nature of a wall; far more effort and care had gone into its decoration. No wonder the mob stormed the Royal Enclosure so often! This wouldn't keep an enterprising dwarf outside.
Time, time! It was going to take time, and he would have to fence and spar to fool people until his preparations were complete. First and foremost, there must be no indication apart from the activity at the cavalry camp that anything untoward was going on. Potheinus and his city minions like the Interpreter would assume that Caesar intended to huddle inside the cavalry fortress, abandon the city if attacked. Good. Let them think that.
When Rufrius returned from Rhakotis, he received more orders, after which Caesar summoned all his junior legates (including the hopeless Tiberius Claudius Nero) and led them through his plans. Of their discretion he had no doubts; this wasn't Rome against Rome, this was war with a foreign power not one of them liked.
• • •
On the following day he summoned King Ptolemy, Potheinus, Theodotus and Ganymedes to the guest palace, where he seated them in chairs on the floor while he occupied his ivory curule chair on a dais. Which didn't please the little king, though he allowed Theodotus to pacify him. That one has started sexual initiation, thought Caesar. What chance does the boy have, with such
“I'm sending you two thousand soldiers as additional labor to start dismantling the old city walls,” he told his legate. “You'll use the stones to build two new walls, each commencing at the back of the first house on either side of Royal Avenue and fanning outward until you reach the lake. Four hundred feet wide at the Royal Avenue end, but five thousand feet wide at the lakefront. That will bring you hard against the swamp on the west, while your eastern wall will bisect the road to the ship canal between the lake and the Canopic Nilus. The western wall you'll make thirty feet high—the swamp will provide additional defense. The eastern wall you'll make twenty feet high, with a fifteen-foot-deep ditch outside mined with stimuli, and a water-filled moat beyond that. Leave a gap in the eastern wall to let traffic to the ship canal keep flowing, but have stones ready to close the gap the moment I so order you. Both walls are to have a watchtower every hundred feet, and I'll send you ballistas to put on top of the eastern wall.”
Poker-faced, the legate listened, then went to find Arminius, the Ubian chieftain. Germans weren't much use building walls, but their job would be to forage and stockpile fodder for the horses. They could also find wood for the fire-hardened, pointed stakes called stimuli, and start weaving withies for the breastworks—wonderful wicker weavers, Germans!
Back down Royal Avenue rode Caesar to the Royal Enclosure and an inspection of its twenty-foot-high wall, which ran from the crags of the Akron theater in a line that returned to the sea on the far side of Cape Lochias. Not a watchtower anywhere, and no real grasp of the defensive nature of a wall; far more effort and care had gone into its decoration. No wonder the mob stormed the Royal Enclosure so often! This wouldn't keep an enterprising dwarf outside.
Time, time! It was going to take time, and he would have to fence and spar to fool people until his preparations were complete. First and foremost, there must be no indication apart from the activity at the cavalry camp that anything untoward was going on. Potheinus and his city minions like the Interpreter would assume that Caesar intended to huddle inside the cavalry fortress, abandon the city if attacked. Good. Let them think that.
When Rufrius returned from Rhakotis, he received more orders, after which Caesar summoned all his junior legates (including the hopeless Tiberius Claudius Nero) and led them through his plans. Of their discretion he had no doubts; this wasn't Rome against Rome, this was war with a foreign power not one of them liked.
• • •
On the following day he summoned King Ptolemy, Potheinus, Theodotus and Ganymedes to the guest palace, where he seated them in chairs on the floor while he occupied his ivory curule chair on a dais. Which didn't please the little king, though he allowed Theodotus to pacify him. That one has started sexual initiation, thought Caesar. What chance does the boy have, with such
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