The Sacred Land

“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 cu

“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 ma

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 i