He made an attempt to guess how much the philosopher might have earned that afternoon. The thirty rows had been roughly two thirds full, and one row seated about 150 people, so there must have been something like three thousand there. Fifteen hundred sesterces. There would have been expenses, like the hire of the theater, and who knows what that would have been: say one third of that, then of course there was the pay of his permanent attendants, which again was hard to assess. The lectica was obviously hired locally; the physician was certainly expensive, and each one of the servants probably cost more to maintain per day than his whole family in Rome.
So, the wretched thief cannot have earned all that big a sum of money if he had to support so many hangers-on. How much would be left for him personally? Not more than two hundred sesterces. Uri’s family could live off of that for months, of course, but it was still a measly remuneration.
He wondered how the clown planned his tours of the Italian provinces. Quite possibly he would make an appearance in some other town every three or four days. In prosperous towns maybe he not only glittered in the amphitheater but was also invited into the homes of the well-off. There were plenty of wealthy people in Syracusa, judging by the villas; who knows, maybe he would be bowing and scraping in private houses tomorrow, and make more from that than he did in the theater. Maybe he even declaimed more serious texts on such occasions.
It was not the sort of thing that Plato or Aristotle went in for.
Uri felt obliged the next day to report to Matthew on the philosopher’s performance. He honestly confessed to having been disappointed that the philosopher had ripped off the works of others.
“I enjoyed it,” said Matthew.
Uri was staggered.
“I was sitting in the back row,” said Matthew. “His voice carried clearly that far off. I saw you sitting in the second row; you kept turning around to look at the audience.”
He’s watching me, Uri thought. Following and watching me. What does he think I am, then? Some sort of spy who had a secret rendezvous with someone in Syracusa’s amphitheater?
“I tried to catch up with you in the crowd,” said Matthew, “but I got stuck at the exit, and by the time I managed to push through you were nowhere to be seen.”
Uri sighed. Once again he had supposed the worst of someone when in reality there had indeed been a big scrimmage on the way out.
In the end, a ship did arrive from Judaea, docking on Friday afternoon, two or three hours before sunset and the onset of the Sabbath.
Valerius happened to be keeping watch at the harbor; he announced that he had already managed to reach an agreement with the captain, who said that he would pick them up at first light on Sunday and would be setting off back to Caesarea. Matthew was none too pleased to have the glory of securing the boat stolen from him; Valerius was elated and described in detail the bireme on which they would be sailing. Uri was astounded at the rich nautical vocabulary Valerius commanded because he had never before so much as heard reference to the various types of masts and sails. Evidently shipping must be a mania for Valerius, assistant to an archisynagogos, and Uri asked him as well whether he had ever sailed before. Valerius replied that yes, he had; a few days ago he had sailed on a ferry from Italia to Sicily. But just wait, just wait, he said, his eyes glittering like a crackpot. Uri was less sanguine: it would take only a stray little storm for them to find themselves on the bottom of the sea. Now that a boat had turned up, he would most willingly have turned back.
The Judaean boat was anchored some two to three hundred feet from the shore, and the huge logs the boat had carried were hauled aloft by an enormous 100- to 120-foot-high pulley rig and lowered onto the smaller craft that had been sculled out to unload the cargo. Matthew said that the reason the boat did not come closer to the shore was so that slaves should not throw themselves into the water and swim off — not that there was much chance of that, seeing as they were chained together, but it did no harm to be careful.
Uri had been struck by the fact that only slaves were working on the boats and on the shore, albeit under the supervision of a few slave drivers, and he even said as much.
Iustus, who had been keeping watch with Valerius, laughed.
“Pity you didn’t see the sailors jumping ashore,” he said, “and the hurry they were in! Racing to be sure that the Sabbath should fall with them in a safe place.”
Matthew also laughed, though he had not even seen them.
“They will be celebrating next door to us,” he said.
Half an hour before the onset of the Sabbath, they arrived at the sawmill to which Matthew led them.
Right up till the sun set, the slaves — whole families: fathers, mothers, and children — ceaselessly rotated, around and around, a huge ribbed wheel, to which a second wheel with a horizontal axis was transversely engaged; a strap attached to the thickened far end of its axle turned a massive circular saw. Others were sawing logs from the new consignment into rectangular planks: a trunk would be tugged onto a table with a slot cut into one end, and at the halfway point the saw would then bite into the wood with a buzzing and howl and split off the surplus bits, which a further detachment of slaves were occupied with chopping up. Uri had seen horses going around in circles in mills and was rather surprised not to see even one such beast here until Hilarus tipped him off that it was cheaper to keep slaves fed than it was to buy fodder for horses.
The logs were seasoned in Judaea because the climate was favorable there; it was not worth trying to work wood that was still wet because later on it would warp and buckle, and not just the builder but also the supplier would be sued on that account if it led to the collapse of a multistory building, an almost weekly occurrence in Rome, as Plotius explained. Besides being able to sell at a higher price when the timber had been processed, cutting it into planks also had the advantage that it was possible to stack more of them together on the next ship that was heading northward, continued Aaron, the sawmill’s owner who had invited them.
“That would be a nice trick,” quipped Matthew, “if trees grew naturally with rectangular trunks.”
“I wouldn’t be too thrilled,” Aaron retorted, “because then I would have to look for a less lucrative trade for myself.”
Uri was amazed that even the sawdust was collected in sacks, but Matthew explained that this was also transported to Rome, where it was scattered on the mud in front of the houses of the rich. Uri was amazed at that as welclass="underline" did that too come from Judaea? He had often seen sawdust being scattered on the mud in Rome but never imagined that a day would come when he had something to do with it.
Sawdust was not much cheaper than wooden beams, Matthew noted; every last scrap of the forests felled in Judaea was turned to profitable use. He himself had transported a huge amount of timber in his own work. When they got to Judaea he would point out the locations of the forests that had been felled in recent decades; due to the dearth of trees the soil was being blown away by the wind and rocks were now jutting out of the ground. On the other hand, what is one supposed to do if there is no demand for much else in the way of exports from Judaea?
“Dates, for example,” Uri stated.
“Up till now it was possible,” said Matthew, “but in recent times they have also been planting them in Italia, unfortunately.”
The slaves left off work at sunset on the dot to resume at first light on Sunday. They withdrew to a large barn-like building a bit like a stables in which they all lived and where they too celebrated their own Sabbath. They were not chained, but their ears were pierced, and, judging by the stone wall of at least ten feet in height, Uri had not the slightest doubt that they were not able to escape. At the sole gate two sentries, shield and spear in hand, stood on guard; they were not Jews and therefore allowed to do duty on the Sabbath.