“I don’t seem to be able to buy anywhere else,” Sostratos said. “If I could, I would, believe me. But no one else has any, so I have to come to you.” He glowered at the merchant from Byblos. “You knew the Aphrodite would go to Athens this season.”
“You didn’t keep it a secret, most noble one,” Himilkon replied. “As soon as you came back from Phoenicia last fall, you started talking about how you planned to go to Athens and sell some of the goods you’d got. And even if you hadn’t, how smart would I have to be to figure out that you would want to go west instead of east this time?”
Every word of that was nothing but truth and common sense. None of it made Sostratos any happier. If anything, he got more upset, saying, “You have no right to hold us for ransom like a pirate.”
“For ransom? No, indeed.” Himilkon shook his head. “I do not want to kill you if you do not pay. I do not want to burn down your house. All I want to do is what any merchant wants: I want to make a profit.”
“You know Athens uses more papyrus than any other place in the world except maybe Alexandria-and they grow the stuff in Egypt,” Sostratos said. “You want me to pay you your ridiculous price for it so the Aphrodite can sell it in the Athenian agora.”
The Phoenician gave him a sly smile. “You can raise the price you charge for it, too.”
“Not that far,” Sostratos said. “We won’t be the only ones selling it, you know. If we have to ask twice as much as anybody else just to get our silver back, we won’t do a whole lot of business there.”
“It won’t be so bad,” Himilkon said. “Remember, most papyrus comes through Rhodes -and if it came through Rhodes lately, I bought it. You’ll have less competition than you think.”
“But papyrus is always a luxury item. People don’t have to have it,” Sostratos said.
“Of course. But that’s true of anything you’d carry on an akatos, wouldn’t you say?” Himilkon tugged on the gold hoop he wore in his left ear, as if settling it more comfortably. He scratched at his curly black beard. “I fear the reason you are most upset with me, O best one, is that 1 have the advantage in this dicker.”
Sostratos feared he was right. The Rhodian wasn’t about to admit it. “No, indeed,” he said. “We’ve made plenty of bargains where you had the advantage. Remember the peafowl a few years ago?”
“Oh, yes, I remember them very well,” Himilkon replied. “And when you sailed to Great Hellas with them, how much of a profit did you squeeze out of the Italiote Hellenes?”
“Peafowl were unique, though. Papyrus is anything but,” Sostratos insisted.
Himilkon’s only response was a shrug. “If you don’t care for the price I set, my master, you are welcome to sail for Athens without papyrus.”
“All right.” Sostratos got to his feet. He automatically ducked his head as he rose from his stool; Himilkon’s ramshackle harborside warehouse had shelves that stuck out at odd angles and a low ceiling. On the shelves lay packets and bales and jars of goods from all around the Inner Sea and from lands far to the east and north: the Phoenician dealt in many things besides papyrus. Sostratos, at the moment, didn’t care. He said, “Always a pleasure talking with you, O marvelous one. Farewell.”
He turned to go. Sometimes the best bargains were ones you didn’t make. He’d taken several steps toward the door before Himilkon, in a voice full of pain, called, “Wait.”
“Why?” Sostratos asked. “What more do we have to talk about?” He’d hoped the Phoenician would stop him, but he hadn’t counted on it. Sometimes the only way to keep a dicker alive was to show you weren’t afraid to kill it, too. Sometimes. Judging when… Judging when was what made a merchant.
“If you’re going to be… difficult, I suppose I can get by with less than three drakhmai, three oboloi for a roll of twenty sheets,” Himilkon said. “A little less, mind you.”
“I should hope so,” Sostratos said. “One drakhma, two oboloi is a more usual price-that’s only a bit more than a third of what you were trying to squeeze out of me.”
“That’s the price when everyone is bringing lots of papyrus into Athens,” Himilkon said. “Since most Egyptian shipping comes through Rhodes, and since I’ve been buying up the stock since last fall, it isn’t likely to be so cheap this season.”
“So you say now,” Sostratos said. “But all we need to worry about is one round ship from Alexandria sailing straight for Athens. Their main cargo is always grain, but their captains carry other things, too, to make extra on the side, and papyrus is something that always brings them a nice profit.”
“It could bring you a nice profit, too,” Himilkon said, doing his best to make the idea sound tempting.
Sostratos refused to show he was tempted. “It could,” he said pointedly, “if you gave me room to move on the price. Otherwise…” He tossed his head.
The Phoenician clapped both hands to his face in melodramatic dismay. “And you called me a thief! I suppose you expect me to lose all the profit I expected to make from getting the papyrus in the first place.”
“You won’t get any if you make it too expensive to be worth my while,” Sostratos said. “And you have to leave me room to push up the price and make my own profit in Athens. If I can’t charge a halfway decent price for it, nobody will buy any from me. I might as well not bring it if I can’t sell it.”
Himilkon said something pungent in Aramaic. Sostratos said something else, just as pungent, in the same language to remind Himilkon he understood. They yelled at each other in Greek. Himilkon edged his price down by a couple of oboloi. Sostratos laughed scornfully. The Phoenician, looking harassed, came down again.
That made Sostratos come up-by an obolos a roll. Himilkon bawled as if a branding iron were searing his flesh. Sostratos ignored the theatrics, which only made Himilkon more theatrical. “You want my wife and my children to starve!” he shouted.
“You want me to starve,” Sostratos retorted.
Himilkon came down again-and then again. He was discovering the papyrus he’d bought did him less good than he’d expected. If he didn’t sell it to Sostratos, to whom would he sell it? Rhodes boasted only two or three scribes, who among them wouldn’t use in five years what he’d accumulated. As long as Sostratos made it plain he would go to Athens without papyrus if the Phoenician didn’t meet his price, he had a good chance of getting it.
And he did. In the end, Himilkon sold him the writing material for one drakhma, four oboloi the rolclass="underline" less than half of what he’d first proposed. Sostratos knew he would still have to hope papyrus was in short supply in Athens. That would let him bump up his selling price to the point where he made decent money. If it wasn’t…
If it’s not, he thought, the Aphrodite might as well be carrying Damonax’s olive oil, for all the profit we’ll show on papyrus. But then he tossed his head. Olive oil was heavy and bulky and took up lots of room. Papyrus wasn’t, and didn’t. And I’d sooner haggle with scribes and writers than with oil merchants any day.
2
Bright morning sun sparkled off seawater in the Great Harbor at Rhodes. Menedemos stood at the stern of the Aphrodite, steering-oar tillers in his hands. He was ready to leave on the instant, even if the akatos remained tied up at the quay. “We’ve got all our cargo, don’t we?” he asked Sostratos, for the third time since they’d come to the merchant galley at dawn.
“Yes, we’re fully laden,” his cousin answered. “That is, unless Damonax’s slaves come rushing up with a couple of hundred amphorai of olive oil at the last instant.”
“They’d better not, by the dog!” Menedemos said. “Your precious brother-in-law doesn’t think we’re sailing till day after tomorrow, does he? Let his slaves bring the oil then-and let ‘em lug it back when they find out we’re gone.”