“And I’m offering you more Koan silk than the eastern silk I’d get in return,” Menedemos said. In Hellas, Koan silk wasn’t exotic, but it was expensive. Just how much he might get for twelve bolts of these new stuffs… He didn’t know just how much, but he was ever so eager to find out. “Three and a half times by weight leaves me no profit.” He doubted even that, but Zakerbaal didn’t need to know his doubts.
“Three times, then,” the Phoenician said. “Bolt for bolt, Koan silk is heavier than the fabric I have, because yours is so much coarser and thicker.”
They haggled for the next hour, each calling the other a liar and a thief. Menedemos sometimes enjoyed taking on a skilled opponent, even if that meant ending up with a little less than he would have otherwise. By Zakerbaal’s small smile, he felt the same. The closer they came to a bargain, the harder they dickered over tiny fractions. At last, they settled on Koan silk for two and seventeen thirty-seconds the weight of the eastern silk.
“My master, you should have been born a Phoenician, for you are wasted as a Hellene,” Zakerbaal said when they clasped hands.
“You’re a formidable fellow yourself, most noble one,” Menedemos replied truthfully. He resolved to make sure that Zakerbaal weighed both kinds of silk on the same pan of his scales. So skillful a bargainer would surely find a way to make everything possible work for him. But the cloth merchant didn’t even try setting one kind in one pan and the other in the other. Maybe that was a compliment to Menedemos. Maybe it meant Zakerbaal had some other way to cheat. If so, Menedemos didn’t spot it.
The Rhodian’s burden on the way back to the Aphrodite was lighter than what he’d taken from the ship, but he didn’t mind. In fact, he felt like kicking up his heels. No, he didn’t mind at all.
I shouldn’t be doing this, Sostratos told himself. It’s wrong. If Menedemos knew, how he would laugh…
Then he laughed at himself. He was enjoying himself too much to care whether his cousin would mock him.
“Keep going,” he said, panting a little. “Don’t stop there.”
“I don’t intend to, my dear,” Hekataios of Abdera answered. “I was only getting a pebble out of my sandal. The temple of the Ioudaioi is just around this next corner here.”
I should be in the market square, selling whatever I can, Sostratos thought. But Menedemos does know I aimed to learn about the loudaioi, too. Of one thing he was certain: his cousin wouldn’t have minded if he’d stayed away from the market square to bed the innkeeper’s pretty wife. That was how Menedemos would have entertained himself in Jerusalem. If I find my amusement in different places, Menedemos will just have to make the best of it.
Along with Hekataios, Sostratos rounded that last corner. Having done so, he stopped in his tracks and pointed. “That’s a temple?” he said, unable to hide his disappointment.
“I’m afraid so,” Hekataios told him. “Not very impressive, is it?”
“In a word, no,” Sostratos said. He was used to the colonnades, the entablatures, and carved and painted friezes that marked out a sacred place throughout the Hellenic world. Where poleis were rich, the shrines would be built of gleaming marble. Where they were not so rich, or where no more suitable stone was close by, limestone would serve. He’d even heard of temples where tree trunks did duty for columns.
The Phoenicians worshiped their gods with rites different from the ones Hellenes used. And yet, as Sostratos had seen in Sidon, they’d come under the influence of Hellenic architecture, so that from the front their shrines looked much like those to be found anywhere in the Hellenic world from Syracuse to Rhodes. The same held true for other barbarians like the Samnites and Karians and Lykians.
Not here. Seeing this temple in the northern corner of Jerusalem was almost like a blow in the face: it reminded Sostratos just how far from home he was. A stone wall defended the perimeter of the temple precinct. It wasn’t the strongest work Sostratos had ever seen, but it was a long way from the weakest. Laughing, he said, “I thought this was part of the citadel.”
“Oh, no, best one.” Hekataios of Abdera tossed his head and pointed northwest, up toward higher ground. “There’s the citadel, surrounding the governor’s palace.”
Sostratos craned his neck. “I see. It’s well sited. In any fight that breaks out between the governor and the Ioudaioi, the governor and his garrison here have the advantage of the ground.”
“Er-yes.” Hekataios dipped his head. “I hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms, but you’re perfectly correct. The palace, of course, dates back to Persian days, so the Great Kings must have been nervous about trouble from the Ioudaioi even then. An interesting point.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Sostratos said. “How old is the temple?”
“It was built in Persian times, too,” Hekataios answered. “But it’s supposed to lie on the spot where an older temple stood before Jerusalem was sacked.” He shrugged regretfully. “History in these parts is pretty much a blur before the days of the Persians, unless you want to believe all the mad fables about Queen Semiramis and the rest of those absurdities.”
“They are hard to swallow, aren’t they?” Sostratos agreed. “Hard to make any real sense of history when you’re trying to investigate times too distant to let you question the people who shaped events.”
“Just so. Just so,” Hekataios said. “You do understand how these things work, don’t you?”
“I try.” Sostratos realized the older man took him for a merchant and nothing more. With some asperity, he said, “I may have to buy and sell for a living, O marvelous one, but I’m not an ignorant man on account of that. I studied at the Lykeion in Athens under the great Theophrastos. I may not be lucky enough to study full time”-the look he sent his companion was frankly jealous-”but I do what I can in the time I have.”
Hekataios of Abdera coughed a couple of times and turned as red as a modest youth hearing praise from his suitors for the first time. “I beg your pardon, my dear. Please believe me when I tell you I meant no offense.”
“Oh, I believe you.” That wasn’t the problem. The problem was all the assumptions Hekataios had been making. Sostratos didn’t know what to do about those. He doubted he could do anything about them. Hekataios was obviously a gentleman from a privileged family. Like anyone who didn’t have to get his hands dirty, he looked down his nose at men who did. He was polite about it; Sostratos had met plenty of kaloi k’agathoi who weren’t. But the bias remained. With a sigh, Sostratos said, “Let’s go on toward the temple, shall we?”
“Certainly. That’s a good idea.” Hekataios sounded relieved. By talking about the curious customs of the Ioudaioi, he could escape talking- and thinking-about the curious customs of the Hellenes. “We can go into the lower court here-anyone’s allowed to do that. But we can’t go into the upper, inner, courtyard, the one surrounding the temple itself. Only Ioudaioi are allowed to do that.”
“What would happen if we tried?” Sostratos asked-he wanted to get as close a look at the temple as he could. Unlike the shrines in Sidon, this one, he could see even from a distance of several plethra, had been built by men who knew nothing of Hellenic architecture. It was a plain, rather dumpy rectangle of a building, oriented east-west, its face adorned with sparkling gold ornaments, a curtain over the entrance. In front of the temple stood a large altar-ten cubits high and twenty broad, Sostratos guessed-of unhewn white stones.
But Hekataios of Abdera was tossing his head in dismay. “What would happen if we tried? First off, they wouldn’t let us. The priests of the Ioudaioi run things here-Antigonos’ men don’t. Second, if we did manage to sneak into the inner court, they would say we polluted it just by being there. They take ritual cleanliness very seriously. Didn’t you see that in your travels through Ioudaia coming here?”