“In the map, it was nothing but a little blotch coloured pink, so it’s not surprising if you have no idea what _I_ see, when I remember Rhodes as I knew it nearly three thousand years ago. I’ll describe the vision that rises before me now. “First of all, my own home. It is a big white house with pillars at the entrance, and a flat roof, standing in a garden full of roses that slopes down almost to the harbour of the town of Rhodes. The harbour is full of ships—our own, and those from Tyre and Athens and Smyrna, and all the great seaports on the Mediterranean—ships with curious curved sails, some of them purple and embroidered with strange devices.” (“Like the ships from Tyre I saw at Babylon,” thought Rachel, though she did not care to interrupt.) “Beyond the great harbour with its crowded shipping and merchandise of green and purple figs, heaps of dates, bales of fine muslin and linen, chests—some full of spices, others of gold and ivory—lies the sea, blue as the bluest sapphire, over which, going and coming from every harbour of every country whose shores touched the Mediterranean, ships go sailing. That is the picture I have in my mind when I think of Rhodes as I knew it ages ago. “My name in those days was Cleon, and I had a beautiful mother, and a little sister called Penelope. “But before I go on, I must tell you that by the time I came into the world, Athens, our mother city, where my father had been born, was no longer so great and powerful as it had been in the days a hundred years before my time. All sorts of trouble had come to Greece. It had been conquered by a certain king called Alexander the Great, who died just before I was born, and all the time I was a child, the generals of his army were quarrelling among themselves—each one trying to get the largest share of all the great kingdoms their master King Alexander had won. You will ask what that had to do with Rhodes, and with my beautiful home, and with the happiness of everyone I loved. It had all too much to do with us, as I will explain. “Our island had indeed been conquered by Alexander the Great, but fifty years before I was born we had regained our liberty, had become a republic and also the greatest sea nation in the world. But now, though the great conqueror himself was dead, one of his generals, jealous of our power, determined to subdue us and make us slaves again. This man’s name was Demetrius, and, because he had become so famous in war, he was generally called Demetrius, the Besieger of Cities. “I was twelve years old when the news came that this dreaded Demetrius had declared war on Rhodes, and was coming to besiege us, and never shall I forget the speech my father (who was Governor of Rhodes) made to the citizens that day! “‘We are Greeks,’ he said, ‘and worthy children of Athens, our mother city. Never will we yield to Demetrius! Let us prepare for the greatest siege that has ever been known.’