"He remembered a line Thucydides would pen centuries hence, about the disastrous Athenian military expedition whose last members ended their days in the mines of Sicily. 'Having done what men could, they suffered what men must.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT pp. 293-294.
This was the passage that I remembered but I looked for it in "Star Of The Sea" instead of in "Ivory..." Thanks to regular correspondent, Nicholas D. Rosen, for locating the quotation.
While we are here, I might reread "Ivory..." for its colorful account of King Hiram's Tyre in 950 B.C. The color begins in the opening sentence:
"While Solomon was in all his glory and the Temple was a-building, Manse Everard came to Tyre of the purple."
-op. cit., p. 229.
In the Tyrian harbor:
warm, windless weather;
oars creaking and splashing to a drumbeat;
blue wavelets, glittering, chuckling and swirling;
dazzling water;
Phoenician, Philistine, Assyrian, Achaean and stranger ships;
"...trade through the known world flowed in and out of Tyre." (p. 230);
Captain Mago calls his town "'...queen of the sea...'" (ibid.);
Everard reflects that Tyre was as impressive as New York.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
So THAT'S where the line I vaguely remembered from one of Anderson's stories was to be found! I am a bit chagrined I had not thought of "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks."
I like the list you quoted, and I recall a similar list at the end of the story, where mention was made of an Israelite and Philistine glowering at each other, but careful not to break the peace of King Hiram!
Sean
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