“You’re right,” Menedemos murmured. “Maybe that session at the barracks is going to pay off pretty well after all, even if that abandoned rascal of an Andronikos didn’t do any buying himself.”
Up the pier came the Hellenes. They remained tentative till Menedemos waved and called to them. Then they sped up. One of them said, “You’re the trader with the good oil?”
“That’s me, sure enough.” Menedemos looked from one man to the next. “How do you know about it? I’ve got a good memory for faces, and I don’t think any of you were at the quartermaster’s taste test.”
“No, but we heard about it, and we know what he feeds us,” replied the soldier who’d spoken before. He made a face to show what he thought of it. “We figured we’d club together, buy an amphora of the good stuff, and share it amongst us. Isn’t that right, boys?” The other mercenaries dipped their heads to show it was.
“Fine with me,” Menedemos said. Then he told them what a jar cost.
“Papai!” their spokesman said as the others flinched in dismay. “Can’t you give us a break on that? It’s pretty steep for ordinary mortals.”
“I’ve already sold three jars for that price this morning,” Menedemos answered. “If I sell it to you for less, your pals will come by and say, ‘Oh, you gave it to good old What’s-his-name for twenty drakhmai, so let us have it for twenty, too.’ There goes my profit—you see what I mean?” He spread his hands to show he was sorry, but he held firm.
The soldiers put their heads together. Menedemos ostentatiously didn’t listen to their low-voiced argument. At last, they separated again. The fellow who did the talking for them said, “All right, thirty-five drakhmai it is.
This is supposed to be good stuff, so we’ll pay for it this once.”
“And I do thank you very much, most noble ones,” Menedemos said. “Come aboard, then, and choose the amphora you want.” They were as near identical as one ear of barley to another, but he’d seen before that giving—or rather, seeming to give—customers such choices made them happier. As they picked their jar, he added, “Would you like to buy some ham or some smoked eels?”
Antigonos’ men put their heads together again and then spent some more money on eels. Menedemos ended up happy when they paid him, too. Some of the coins they used were Sidonian sigloi, which he accepted as equaling two Rhodian drakhmai. But others were drakhmai and didrakhms and tetradrakhms from all over Hellas. Athenian owls and turtles from Aigina were considerably heavier than Rhodian coins. To the soldiers, one drakhma was as good as another. Menedemos knew better— and also knew better than to say anything about the extra profit he was making.
Before long, another party of soldiers came up the pier toward the Aphrodite. “You may end up thanking that quartermaster for turning you down, not cursing him,” Diokles remarked.
Menedemos thought about how very many amphorai of olive oil remained aboard the akatos. But then he thought about how large Antigonos’ garrison in Sidon was. If Damonax’s oil became a fad . . . “By the dog of Egypt,” he said slowly, “so I may.”
As Sostratos traveled father into Ioudaia, he began to see why Hellenes knew so little about the land and its folk. The people stuck together, clinging to their own kind and having as little to do with outsiders as they could. And the land worked with them. It was broken and hilly and hot and poor. As far as he could see, the Ioudaioi were welcome to it. Who in his right mind would want to take it away from them?
He knew he couldn’t have been so very many stadia from the Inner Sea. There it lay, off to the west, the broad highway that could swiftly waft him back to Rhodes. But the Ioudaioi turned their backs on it. They had their flocks of sheep and cattle, their olive trees and their vineyards, and they seemed content with those—and with their strange god, whose face no one ever saw.
In every village and town through which he passed, Sostratos had looked for a temple to this mysterious god. He never found one. At last, he’d asked a Ioudaian who’d proved friendly enough over a couple of cups of wine in a tavern. The fellow had shaken his head and looked amused at the question: amused and pitying, as if Sostratos couldn’t be expected to know any better.
“Our god has only one temple, where the priests offer prayer and sacrifice,” he’d said. “That is in Jerusalem, our great city.”
Everywhere in Ioudaia, people spoke of Jerusalem as Hellenes spoke of Athens or Alexandria. Every other town, they said, was as nothing beside it. And they spoke of their temple as Athenians might have spoken of the Parthenon—as the most perfect and beautiful building in the world.
They were only barbarians, and provincial barbarians at that, so Sostratos did discount a fair amount of what he heard. Even so, he wasn’t prepared for his first sight of Jerusalem, which he got from a rocky ridge a couple of hours’ travel north and west of the city.
He pointed ahead. “That’s it,” he said. “That has to be it. But is that all there is? That’s what all the Ioudaioi we’ve met were swooning over?”
“Doesn’t look like so very much, does it?” Aristeidas said.
“Now that you mention it, no,” Sostratos answered. The allegedly great city of the Ioudaioi straggled along a rise between a sizable valley to the east and a smaller, narrower ravine to the west. It might have been half a dozen stadia long; it was nowhere near half a dozen stadia wide. Some more homes—suburbs, though they hardly deserved the name—dotted the rise west of the narrow ravine. Smoke hung above everything: the unfailing mark of human habitation. Giving the place the benefit of the doubt, Sostratos said, “There are poleis that are smaller.”
“I can’t think of any that’re uglier,” Teleutas said.
Sostratos didn’t find that quite fair. The walls around Jerusalem and the bigger buildings he could see were built from the local stone, which had a golden color his eye found pleasing. He couldn’t make out any details, not at this range, and doubted even lynx-eyed Aristeidas would be able to. “One of those big buildings will probably be the temple the Ioudaioi talk about.”
“I don’t see anything that looks like a proper temple, with columns and all,” Aristeidas said, leaning forward to peer at the distant city on the hill.
“They’re barbarians, and peculiar barbarians at that,” Moskhion said. “Who knows if their temples look the way temples are supposed to?”
“And they worship this silly god nobody can see,” Teleutas added slyly. “Maybe they’ve got a temple nobody can see, too.”
“It could be,” Sostratos said. “The Kelts worship their gods in groves of trees, I’ve heard.” He looked around. “I admit there are bound to be more trees in the land of the Kelts than there are here.” After a little more thought, he went on, “I take it back. I do think one of those buildings is the temple, for the Ioudaioi wouldn’t have talked about the place the way they have if it were only a sacred grove—or, for that matter, if it weren’t there at all.”
He stopped, pleased by his logic. But when he looked from one of his escorts to another to find out if it had impressed them, too, he caught Teleutas muttering to Aristeidas: “By the dog, I can’t even make a joke without getting a lecture back.”
Sostratos’ ears burned. Well, you wanted to find out what they thought, he told himself. Now you know. He hadn’t intended to lecture. He’d just been making a point. Or so he’d thought, anyhow. He sighed. I have to watch that. I really do need to be careful. If I’m not, I’ll end up boring people. That’s the last thing a merchant can afford to do, because—
He broke off. He did some muttering of his own, some fairly pungent muttering. He’d started lecturing himself about not lecturing. “Let’s go,” he said aloud. That was brief enough and enough to the point that not even Teleutas could try to improve it.
The road to Jerusalem meandered through olive trees and fields that would have been richer had they not gone uphill at such a steep slope. The closer the Hellenes got to the city, the more impressive its fortifications looked. The walls cunningly took a
dvantage of the ground. The northern part of the place had especially strong works. Even Teleutas said, “I wouldn’t want to try storming this place.”
“No, indeed.” Aristeidas dipped his head. “You’d have to try to starve it out. Otherwise, you could throw away an army in nothing flat.”
On approaching the western gate, Sostratos found some of the guards to be Hellenes and others—who carried spears and shields and wore helmets, but had no body armor—swarthy, hook-nosed Ioudaioi. One of the Hellenes stared at the short chitons Sostratos and the sailors from the Aphrodite had on. He nudged his comrades. They all pointed toward the newcomers. The man who’d first noticed them called out, “Hellemzete?”
“Malista.” Sostratos dipped his head. “Of course we speak Greek.”
“Poseidon’s prick, man, what are you castaways doing in this gods-forsaken place?” the gate guard asked him. “We have to be here, to keep Moneybags in Egypt from taking this town away from Antigonos again, but why would anybody in his right mind come here if he didn’t need to?”
“We’re here to trade,” Sostratos said. “We’re bound for Engedi, to buy balsam there, but we’ll do business along the way, too.”
“Not much business to do in these parts,” another guard said, which did nothing to gladden Sostratos’ heart. But then he went on, “What there is of it, though, you’ll do in Jerusalem.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Sostratos said. He gave the Ioudaioi at the gate a polite nod, aping barbarous manners as best he could, and switched to Aramaic: “Peace be unto you, my masters.”
The Ioudaioi exclaimed in surprise. So did the Hellenes. “Listen to him make bar-bar noises!” one of them said. “He can talk with these polluted Ioudaian maniacs. He doesn’t have to point and do dumb show and hope you can find one of them who’s picked up a few words of Greek.”
“Where’d you learn this language, pal?” another Hellene asked.
“From a Phoenician merchant on Rhodes,” Sostratos answered. “I don’t speak all that much of it.”
“Better than I can do, and I’ve been out here a couple of years,” the guard told him. “I can ask for a woman—they don’t like you to ask for a boy, on account of they say their god doesn’t go in for that—and for wine and bread, and I can say, ‘Hold still! Hands up!’ And that’s about it.”
In Aramaic, Sostratos asked the Ioudaioi if they spoke Greek. They all shook their heads. By the way a couple of them had looked back and forth when he and the guard were talking, he suspected they understood more than they let on. “Why do they share this duty with you?” he asked the Hellenes.
“Because they shared it with the Persians,” one of them answered.
“That’s the deal we’ve got here—whatever the Ioudaioi had under the Persians, they’ve still got under us. They say Alexander went through here and set that up himself.”
“Bunch of drivel,” another Hellene said. “Like Alexander would come to the middle of nowhere while he was on his way to Egypt. Fat chance! But we smile and play along. It saves trouble, you know what I mean? As long as we don’t mess with their god, everything’s fine. You know about that? You can get into a lot of trouble awful quick if you’re not careful to be nice to their god.”
“Oh, yes,” Sostratos said. “I do know about that. My men and I did well enough coming down here from Sidon, anyhow.”
“All right, then,” the guard said. He and his friends stood aside. “Welcome to Jerusalem.”
Such as it is, Sostratos thought. But he kept that thought to himself, not knowing whether the Ioudaioi with the Hellenes had picked up any Greek. He was perfectly willing to insult Ioudaia in general and Jerusalem in particular, but he didn’t care to do it where the locals might understand. That was bad business.
What he did say was, “Thank you.” After a moment, he added, “Where is the market square in the city, and can you recommend an inn not too far from it?”
“It’s not far from the temple, in the north end of town,” the guard answered. “You know about the temple?”
“Some.” Sostratos dipped his head. “We were trying to spot it as we came up to the town. I’d like to, and to have a look around the place when I get the chance.”
“You can do that.” The guard who’d spoken tossed his head. “I take it back—you can do some of that. But only the outer parts are open to people who aren’t Ioudaioi. Whatever you do, don’t try going where you’re not supposed to. For one thing, the barbarians are liable to murder you. For another, if they don’t, we’re liable to. Poking your nose in where it doesn’t belong is bound to start a riot, and the Ioudaioi get excited enough as things are.”
“All right.” Sostratos hid his disappointment; he’d looked forward to poking his nose in wherever he could. “What about the inn?” he asked again.
“Ask these fellows.” The Hellene pointed to the Ioudaian guards. “You can make the funny noises they do, and they know this miserable place better than we do.”
“Good idea.” Sostratos switched to Aramaic: “My masters, can you tell me where to find an inn near the market square? “
That almost touched off a riot by itself. Every Ioudaian seemed to have a cousin or a brother-in-law who ran an inn. Each of them praised his relative’s establishment and scorned all the others. Their snarling gutturals got louder every minute. They began to shake fists and brandish weapons.
Then one of them said, “My brother-in-law already has an Ionian staying at his inn.”
“What is your brother-in-law’s name? How can I find his inn?” Sostratos asked. The chance to speak his own language with someone else at the inn struck him as too good to pass up.
“He is Ithran son of Akhbor,” the guard replied. “His inn is on the Street of Weavers, near the Street of Coppersmiths.”
“I thank you,” Sostratos said, and gave him an obolos.
One of the Hellenes said, “You paid him too much. Around here, the governors coin these little tiny silver bits, so small it takes ten or twelve of ‘em to make a drakhma. They don’t even bother counting ‘em most of the time—they just weigh ‘em. One of those would have been about right.”
With a shrug, Sostratos said, “I’m not going to worry about an obolos.” He had some of those tiny silver coins, but hadn’t known whether giving the Ioudaian guard so small a gift would have been reckoned an insult. He waved to the sailors. “Come on,” he told them, and booted his mule into motion. They passed into Jerusalem.
In one way, the place seemed more like a polis than Sidon had. Unlike the Phoenicians, the Ioudaioi didn’t build so high as to seem to scrape the sky. Their homes and shops and other buildings had only one or two stories, like those of the Hellenes. In another way, though, Jerusalem was startlingly different from any Hellenic city. Sostratos didn’t notice that himself; Aristeidas did. After the Rhodians had got about halfway to Ithran’s inn—or so Sostratos thought, anyhow—the sharp-eyed sailor said, “Where are all the statues?”
“By the dog!” Sostratos exclaimed in surprise. “You’re right, Aristeidas. I haven’t seen a one—not a Herm, not a carved face anywhere.”
Even the meanest, poorest polis would have had Herms—carved pillars with Hermes’ face and genitals—in front of houses for luck. It would have had images of the gods, too, and of figures from myth and legend, and, these days, perhaps of prominent citizens as well. Sidon had been similar. The statues had been of a different style and had commemorated different gods and different legends, but they’d been there. In Ioudaia, though . ..
Slowly, Sostratos said, “I don’t think we’ve seen a single statue since we came into this country. Do any of you boys remember one?”
After some thought, the three sailors tossed their heads. Moskhion said, “I wonder why that is. Pretty strange, you ask me. Of course, everything in this polluted land is pretty strange, you ask me.”
He used such comments to keep his curiosity from getting loose. Sostratos wanted his to run free. When a plump, p
rosperous-looking Ioudaian came up the street toward him, he spoke in Aramaic: “Excuse me, my master, but may your humble slave ask a question without causing offense?”
“You are a foreigner. Your being here causes offense. I do not wish to speak with you,” the Ioudaian answered, and pushed on past him.
“Well, to the crows with you, friend,” Sostratos muttered. He and the sailors pressed on toward the inn. A couple of blocks later, he asked another man if he could ask.
This fellow also looked at him as if he was less than welcome in Jerusalem, but said, “Ask. If I do not like the question, I will not answer it.”
“Well enough, my master,” Sostratos said. When he tried to ask what he wanted to know, he discovered he had no idea how to say statue in Aramaic. He had to describe what he meant instead of simply naming it.
“Oh,” the Ioudaian said after a little while. “You mean a graven image.”
“Thank you,” Sostratos told him. “Why no graven images here in Jerusalem? Why none in Ioudaia?”
“Because our god commands us not to make them—it’s as simple as that,” the Ioudaian answered.
I might have known, Sostratos thought. But that didn’t tell him all he wanted to know. And so he asked another question: “Why does your god command you not to make graven images? Again, my master, I mean no offense.”
“Our god made mankind in his own image,” the Ioudaian said. Sostratos dipped his head, then remembered to nod instead. Hellenes believed the same thing. The Ioudaian went on, “We are forbidden to make graven images of our god, so how can we make them of ourselves, when we are made in his image?”
His logic was as pure as any a Hellenic philosopher might have used. His opening premise, on the other hand, struck Sostratos as absurd. Even so, the Rhodian said, “My thanks.” The Ioudaian nodded and went on his way. Sostratos scratched his head. The fellow had shown him a flaw in logic he hadn’t thought enough about: if the premise from which it began was flawed, everything springing from that premise would be worthless, too.
Sacred Land Page 24
