The Sacred Land

“Four blocks up, two to the right, and then one more up? Is that right?” Sostratos asked.

“Yes, of course. What did you think I said?” the Ioudaian asked.

“I was not sure,” Sostratos answered truthfully. He gave the man one of the tiny silver coins the local governors issued. The loudaian put it in his mouth, as a Hellene might have. It was so small, Sostratos wondered if he would swallow it without noticing.

Ithran’s i

“A room for me. A room for my men,” Sostratos replied. “And stalls for the animals.”

Ithran bowed again. “It shall be just as you require, of course,” he said. He was a few years older than Sostratos, tall and lean, handsome in a swarthy way, with a scar on one cheek that vanished into his bushy black beard.

Sostratos snapped his fingers, remembering something. “Is it not true, sir, that another Ionian is here?” When the i

“Speak little bit,” Ithran answered in the same language. “Was soldier for Antigonos before wound.” He touched his face to show what he meant. “Learn Greek from soldiers.” Had he not told that to Sostratos, his accent would have. It was one of the strangest the Rhodian had ever met: half guttural Aramaic, half broad Macedonian. If he hadn’t already heard foreigners mangle Greek a lot of different ways, he wouldn’t have been able to make head or tail of it.

“How much for the lodgings?” he asked.

When Ithran told him, he thought he’d misheard. The Ioudaian had replied in Aramaic. Sostratos went over to Greek again, but the answer didn’t change. He did his best not to show how astonished he was. He haggled a little for form’s sake, but he would have been content to take the first price the i

Once he and the sailors from the Aphrodite got to their rooms, he remarked on that. He all but chortled with glee, as a matter of fact. But Teleutas put things in perspective. “Of course rooms are cheap here,” he said. “You go to Sidon or Rhodes, those are places people really want to visit. But who in his right mind would want to come to this miserable sheep turd of a town?”

Sostratos considered what he’d seen walking through Jerusalem’s narrow, winding, smelly streets. He heaved a sigh. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he admitted, “but to the crows with me if I can tell you you’re wrong.”

A Macedonian trooper too far down on the social scale to care about whether he did his own work lugged an amphora of olive oil and a Lykian ham off the Aphrodite, down the pier, and back into Sidon. As soon as he was off the ship, Menedemos stopped paying much attention to him. Instead, the Rhodian merchant looked down at the gleaming silver that filled his hands: a mixture of Sidonian silver and coins from all over Hellas.

“By the dog, I really am almost starting to think that pimp of an Andronikos did us a favor when he wouldn’t buy our whole shipment of oil,” he said. “ Garrison troops just keep coming in and taking it away a jar at a time.”

“And paying a lot more per jar than he would have,” Diokles said.

“Sure enough,” Menedemos agreed. “We won’t have to unload all the oil to come back to Rhodes with a decent profit.” He laughed. “I never would have said anything like that half a month ago-you’d best believe I wouldn’t.”

He wouldn’t have laughed half a month before, either. He’d been sure he would end up stuck with every last amphora of Damonax’s olive oil. He’d unloaded much more of it by now than he’d ever thought he would after Antigonos’ quartermaster turned him down.

A Phoenician came up the quay toward the akatos. The man wore gold hoops in his ears and a massy gold ring on one thumb; he carried a gold-headed walking stick. “Hail! This ship is from the island?” he said in accented but fluent Greek.

“That’s right, best one,” Menedemos answered. “What can I do for you today?”

“You sell olive oil, fine olive oil?” the Phoenician asked.

Menedemos dipped his head. “Yes, I do. Ah, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you know?”

The Phoenician smiled a thin smile. “You Hellenes can do many marvelous things. You have astonished the world. You have overthrown the Persians, who ruled their great kingdom for generation upon generation. You have cast down the mighty city of Tyre, a city any man would have thought could stand secure forever. But I say this, and I say true: there is one thing you Hellenes ca

He was probably right. As a matter of fact, from everything Menedemos had seen, he was almost certainly right. The Rhodian found no point to arguing with him. “Would you care to come aboard and sample the oil, ah…?” He paused.

With a bow, the Phoenician said, “Your servant is called Zimrida son of Luli. And you are Menedemos son of Philodemos, is it not so?” He walked up the gangplank, his stick tapping against the timber at each step.

“Yes, I am Menedemos,” Menedemos answered, wondering what else Zimrida knew about him and his business. By the way the Phoenician spoke, by the amused glint in his black, black eyes, he was liable to have a better notion of how much silver was aboard the Aphrodite than Menedemos did himself. Trying to hide his unease, Menedemos drew the stopper from an already-open jar of oil, poured out a little, dipped a chunk of barley roll in it, and offered the roll and oil to Zimrida.

“I thank you, my master.” The Phoenician murmured something in his own language, then took a bite.

“What was that?” Menedemos asked.

“A… prayer we use over bread,” Zimrida answered, chewing. “In your tongue, it would be, ‘Blessed be you, gods who made the universe, who make bread come forth from the earth.’ In my speech, you understand, it is a poem.”

“I see. Thanks. What do you think of the oil?”

“I will not lie to you,” Zimrida said, an opening that immediately made Menedemos suspicious. “It is good olive oil. It is very good, in fact.” As if to underscore that, he dipped the barley roll again and took another bite. “But it is not worth the price you are getting for it.”

“No?” Menedemos said coolly. “As long as I am getting that price- and I am-I would have to tell you you are wrong.”

Zimrida waved that aside. “You are getting that price for an amphora here, for two amphorai there. How much oil will you have left when you must leave Sidon? More than a little, is that not so?”

“Then I’ll sell the rest somewhere else,” Menedemos answered, again trying to sound unworried. Sure enough, Zimrida was liable to know the last obolos lurking half forgotten between a sailor’s cheek and gum.

“Will you?” the Phoenician said. “Perhaps. But perhaps not, too. Such things are in the hands of the gods. You will surely know that.”

“Why should I sell to you for less than what I’m getting?” Menedemos demanded once more.

“For the sake of getting rid of all your cargo,” Zimrida answered. “You would have sold it to Andronikos for a good deal less than the seventeen and a half shekels you are getting… Excuse me, I should say sigloi in Greek, eh? You would have sold it to Andronikos for less, I tell you again, and so, if I buy a lot of what you have, you should also sell to me for less. It only stands to reason.”

“But I couldn’t make a bargain with Andronikos,” Menedemos reminded him.