"I am about to become a fat time-server myself," he told her. "If I keep attending the banquets you and your brother and the trade associations keep giving in our honor, I'll look like the master of the pearl merchants' guild."
At this she laughed. The merchant chief he had mentioned was among the fattest men in Carthage, the furthest image in the world from the hard, lean Roman. "It would take years of banqueting to do that. I've seen you and your friends exercising every morning on the public drill field. I don't think professional athletes work as hard."
She had been much impressed with the disciplined way the Romans began running on the field before first light, progressing to wrestling and then to weapons practice. From an armorer's shop in the city they had ordered practice shields and weapons and she had learned that these were of double or even triple the weight of real field equipment.
She had been astounded at the ferocity the Romans displayed even in these practice bouts, knocking the wind from one another with the lead-weighted, wooden swords, smashing shield against shield with such violence that men were sometimes thrown backward a dozen paces to land on their backs half-unconscious. They hurled heavy javelins with such force that they often split the four-inch hardwood posts that were used as targets and their aim was unerring. If these were men of the highborn officer class, she thought, what must their legionaries be like?
"I thought you might be interested in a new sort of spectacle this afternoon," she said to him.
"In this city," he said, "my poor head wearies of unending spectacle, but I am game for anything new. What is it?"
"Not something Carthaginian this time. The Egyptian fleet is coming into the harbor. Would you care to come down and see?"
"Decidedly," he said, wondering what this might portend.
As usual, she had brought along one of her huge litters, but this one had room for only two riders. They were carried from the Megara down toward the vast commercial harbor, and as they went, Marcus marveled once again at the wonderful siting of this city. Nearby Utica, another Phoenician colony, was older than Carthage, and nearby Hippo-Zarytus was also a great Punic city, but none of them had the excellent, protected harbor that graced Carthage.
In characteristic fashion, the Carthaginians had improved the natural features of their site with a great seawall and mole, all of them tied into the titanic defenses of the city. Although not as impressive an engineering project as the naval harbor, it was many times larger. Marcus had visited it a number of times, but it always presented a new and lively aspect. Its great plaza was dominated by the outlandish image of Dagon. This deity was depicted with the bearded head and upper body of a man; his lower body that of a fish. He overlooked a scene of unceasing activity and color.
The wharfs were thronged with ships of every nation bringing the world's produce to the greatest city of the west. Everything from foodstuffs to dyes, from ingots of metal to living animals was unloaded in this place. Offshore, anchored vessels waited their turn to moor and unload. Among these smaller vessels were rowed or paddled; the craft of fishermen or the small merchants who sold their wares to the bored crews waiting aboard the anchored vessels.
There were even raft-like boats equipped with cranes. These were salvage vessels, for boats frequently sank in the harbor or its approaches, either from the ravages of their voyages or from a sudden storm in the harbor, for even the finest harbor could not provide complete protection from powerful winds and waves. For this task Carthage had a guild of salvage divers; men like seals who could hold their breaths for a prodigious time. They wore ingenious masks of oiled leather provided with fine lenses of flat-ground mica or crystal.
But on this day even the fascinating sight of the divers drew no one's attention. Coming in through the great harbor entrance, between the huge twin lighthouses that cast columns of smoke high into the heavens, was a line of vessels even more colorful than the ones that sailed from Carthage. They were high prowed and square-sailed, painted in colors of hallucinatory variety and brightness. In the lead was by far the largest vessel Marcus had ever beheld in his admittedly limited experience. He found it difficult to believe that anything so huge could even float, much less move under human guidance. He remarked on this to Zarabel.
"Oh, this is not a great ship," she assured him. "The pleasure-barges of the Ptolemies are the size of towns, with two hulls and decks many stories high. Of course, they are not seagoing vessels, but river craft." She sighed. "In this no one can hope to match them, for no other people have a river as great as the Nile."
"You mean there is something the Carthaginians don't do bigger than anyone else?" he said.
She smiled. "Just this one thing." Then she admitted: "Well, there are others. We don't have a statue as huge as the one at Rhodes, and the lighthouse at Alexandria is even higher than our twin ones. I am told that there are some temples larger than any of ours. You won't see so many marvels in one place, though."
"That I can believe," he said. The line of ships following the huge one seemed endless. "What does the Egyptian fleet bring you?"
"Some of them will carry the products of the interior: black slaves, ivory, feathers of ostrich and other birds, hides of many animals, the animals themselves."
"Have you no access to the interior?" he asked.
She shook her head, making the black hair move in lazy waves over her shoulders. "No. South of here lies a great desert that no one has ever crossed. It is vast. Only Egypt has access, down the river. We send fleets out through the Pillars of Melkarth and south along the coast, but the voyage is long and very hazardous. We lose many sailors to the weather and terrible diseases. It is easier and cheaper to trade with Egypt."
"And what do the other vessels carry?" he wanted to know.
"Most of them bear grain. It is Egypt's biggest export."
"Grain? But the land around you is so fertile. Why do you need to buy imported grain?"
"We sell it. This is as far west as Egyptian ships sail. From here we carry it wherever people need to buy grain. In every year, someone is having a bad harvest. It is not as glamorous as ivory and peacocks, but it is very profitable. Hungry people will trade anything for a handful of wheat."
They watched as the colorful ships dropped anchor in the harbor. A number of the long wharfs were hastily cleared so that at least a portion of the fleet could unload. Crowds thronged the harbor, for this was a considerable spectacle even in Carthage.
Marcus took it all in, but his thoughts were on what the princess had told him, especially the part about Egyptian grain. The glittering, exotic treasures of far lands had their charms, but Romans were at heart farmers. Farmers understood the importance of staple crops. For generations they had traded with Greece for wine and oil. This was something new. From Herodotus and others he had read about the astounding fertility of the Nile valley, but this was solid proof. The river-nation actually produced so great a surplus of grain that it could export vast amounts of it. Most lands were lucky to produce enough for domestic consumption.
This, he thought, could be the key to something great.
Zarabel had them carried to the quay where the flagship of the Egyptian fleet was moored. The slaves bore the litter right up the broad gangplank and set it down on the wooden deck. The ship's officers came running and prostrated themselves on the deck.
Marcus studied the sailors, who looked little different from Greeks, although some of them were darker-skinned than most. Of course, the ruling dynasty of Egypt were Macedonian-Greek, so it stood to reason that their fleet would be manned by men of that famously seafaring land.