A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

an enormous theatre, capable of holding twelve thousand people, was built at the foot of the
Acropolis. The actors, walking on shoes that made them artificially tall, and speaking through
wooden masks that amplified their voices, brought to life again these great dramas of the past, and
the silence was so total that no one missed a word. No wonder this golden age saw the sudden
flowering of science and philosophy, as well as of poetry. Man had at last stumbled upon his most
unique and incredible accomplishment: living in two worlds at once: the real world and the world
of imagination. It was a trick the Spartans never mastered, for they chose the way of obsession. But
Alexander the Great was driven to conquer the world by his imagination, rather than by the
political realism that had driven Sargon the Great and King Minos. He was the first hero who was
conscious of his role as hero; he played the conqueror like an actor on the stage.
Now in a sense, the criminals of this time, the pirates and bandits, continued to belong to that
earlier age of the Trojan war. As far as we can tell, crime had still not entered its sadistic stage - for
we can be sure that, if any pirate or brigand was noted for his cruelty, like the legendary Procrustes
who cut down travellers to fit his bed, his deeds would have been recorded and exaggerated. Our
ancestors loved hair-raising tales as much as we do, and had not yet become sated with horrors.
After the defeat of Athens by Sparta in 400 B.C., piracy returned to the seas and banditry to the
roads, for after so many years of war, the roads were full of wandering soldiers who knew no other
trade. (Ten thousand of them were enlisted by the Persian Cyrus - a descendant of Cyrus the Great,
whom we have already met as a child - and they won many spectacular victories in Persia before
Cyrus was killed in battle and the army had to fight its way back to the sea - passing, en route,
those vast ruined cities of the Assyrians whose names had been forgotten.) In his novel The Golden
Ass, Lucius Apuleius, writing three centuries later, describes the brigands who capture the hero
(who has been transformed into an ass). They burst into the courtyard of the house, armed with
swords and axes, and into the strong room that contains the valuables. They kill nobody, and make
off as quickly as they can, loading some of the valuables on to the hero. In their robbers’ cave, they
wash in hot water, then settle down to a huge meal - cooked by an old woman - washed down with
wine. ‘They bawled songs, yelled obscenities at each other, and played practical jokes on one
another.’ In fact, they sound like the Greek army in front of Troy.
The robber chief makes a long speech after their meal, in which he describes some of their exploits.
These are designed to emphasise the bravery and toughness of their band. Their former leader had
carved a hole in a door, and was groping around inside to find the handle, when the owner of the
house took a hammer and nailed the robber’s hand to the door. To escape, they were forced to hack
off his arm at the elbow. In the chase, he began to lag behind; and since being caught would mean
crucifixion, he committed suicide with his sword. His companions, deeply moved, wrapped his
body in a cloak and consigned it to the river.
Another bandit had got into the bedroom of an old woman and, instead of strangling her, threw all
her belongings out of the window to his companions below. Then he tried to throw out her bedding,
and the old woman tricked him into thinking he had been throwing the goods into her neighbour’s
back yard. The bandit leaned out of the window, and the old woman pushed him out; he broke his
ribs on a block of stone, and coughed up his life. But there is no mention of the other bandits
rushing upstairs to avenge their comrade; they only consign him to the river, like the robber chief.
Later, the bandits go out marauding and capture a beautiful girl. There is no suggestion of rape.
They tell her: ‘You are perfectly safe, madam. We have no intention of hurting you or showing you
any discourtesy...’ It is true that Apuleius’s bandit troupe has a distinctly operatic air; but Apuleius