“I’ll take it,” the skinny man said. “Gi’ me the one, and then follow.”
Follow Sostratos did. The warehouse lay only a couple of streets from the river, and three blocks north of the barge. Psosneus stood outside: a brown, bulky man chewing on roasted squash seeds. Husks under his feet said he’d already eaten quite a few. He spoke fair Greek. Sostratos used Pasos’ name to make sure the skipper got whatever rakeoff he could from the warehouse owner. He paid the tout, who left.
“He good fellow. He send you, I give special price,” Psosneus said.
“Special high or special low?” Sostratos asked, his voice dry. Psosneus laughed, for all the world as if he were joking. They haggled a little, then settled. Psosneus recommended an innkeeper, so he’d get himself a rakeoff, too.
Sostratos hoped to hire carts when he went back to the docks, but none was in sight. He and the rest of the Hellenes had to move the olive oil the hard way. Sostratos cursed Damonax as he lugged each jar. One way or another, he’d pay his brother-in-law back. So he vowed, swearing by his aching back.
“Oh, my dear fellow, I say, but you have some fine vintages there!” a wine merchant named Exakestos told Menedemos in an Attic accent so strong, the Rhodian guessed he was putting it on. “I’d dearly love to get some for the shop. Dearly! What are you asking?”
Menedemos told him. He flinched. “Sorry,” the Rhodian trader said. “I have to turn a profit, too, you know.”
“Yes, yes.” The Hellene gnawed at his thumbnail. “Suppose I offer you a trade instead of sacks of tetradrakhms?”
“What kind of a trade?” Menedemos asked. If he sounded suspicious, that was only because he was.
“Stay right there. Don’t move a muscle. Pretend the sight of Medusa’s head has turned you stone.” Exakestos disappeared into a back room behind the counter. Menedemos stood where he was, not petrified but not walking out, either.
Before too too very long, the wine merchant came forth again. He held both fists closed in front of him, like a conjuror about to make a drakhma appear from nowhere. Menedemos smiled at the drama. “All right, my friend, you’ve interested me. What have you got there?” he asked.
Exakestos opened his hands. One held some whitish globules, the other chunks of hard, resinous-looking stuff. “Go ahead and sniff,” he answered. “Then you tell me. Or I’ll tell you if you’ve not run across it before.”
“If they’re what I think they are ….” Menedemos leaned forward across the counter. Exakestos brought his hands forward. Sniff Menedemos did, first the globules, then the resin. “Frankincense and myrrh,” he said. “They’re worth a good bit—no doubt about that. But how much do you have, and how much will you give me for a jar of Ariousian?”
“I have plenty, my dear. For one thing, I use them in the trade—myrrh especially helps keep wine from going to vinegar. And for another, Alexandria is practically swimming in them these days. The Arabs bring them up the coast…. You do know where Fortunate Arabia lies?”
“I’ve heard of it,” Menedemos said cautiously. “South and east of here, isn’t it?”
“Very good!” Exakestos beamed at him. “There’s another sea, a narrow one, that splits Egypt from Fortunate Arabia. The Red Sea, they call it, though I don’t think it really is red. Anyhow, the Arabs who bring the incenses up their coasts talk about the winged snakes that protect the myrrh and all, and how they have to drive them away to get any.”
“Sounds like a story to keep the price high,” Menedemos remarked.
“It could be, but when they have the stuff and you don’t, what are you going to do?” Exakestos said. “They bring it up the coast till the coast stops, if you know what I mean. That’s not very far from the Inner Sea. If someone could dig a canal ….” He shrugged. “Some goes into Syria from there, and some comes here. Since the Alexander built Alexandria, more comes here.”
“I can see how that would happen, yes,” Menedemos said. Before Alexandria’s creation, the coast of the Delta had been a sleepy backwater, with villages and small towns that lived off fishing and smuggling. Now the Delta had the greatest port on the Inner Sea. The Rhodian scratched his chin. Whiskers rasped under his fingers; he needed a shave. “So how much myrrh have you got, and how much frankincense? How much do you aim to give me for each amphora of Ariousian?”
“The incenses usually sell here for their weight in gold,” Exakestos said.
“That incenses me!” Menedemos barely managed to turn his alarm into a joke. Silver was the usual monetary metal through the Greek world; gold staters were rare, and Persian darics seldom seen. But Egypt had been in Persian hands till a generation before. Thinking in terms of gold might remain common here.
“Let’s do it like this, old chap,” Exakestos said. “We’ll work out the price of a jar in drakhmai. Then we’ll turn that into staters or darics.”
“Twenty drakhmai to the goldpiece?” Menedemos wanted to pin that down before he went any further. The usual rate of exchange between silver and gold was ten to one. Both the Greek stater and the daric weighed twice as much as the drakhma.
“Yes, twenty.” Exakestos dipped his head. “There’s been talk that the Ptolemaios will coin lighter drakhmai for the lands he rules, but it hasn’t happened yet, and gods willing it won’t.”
“Why would he do that?” Menedemos answered his own question before the wine merchant could: “So he can make money changing money—why else? The Ptolemaios is a marvelous man, but he does like his silver.”
“I won’t try to tell you you’re wrong,” Exakestos answered. “It will set Egypt apart from other lands, too. Ptolemaios cares more about hanging on here than grabbing all of Alexander’s empire like Antigonos or Seleukos.”
That thought had crossed Menedemos’ mind, too. It wasn’t his worry, though, as it was the wineseller’s. He said, “Remember, we’re not just talking about Khian here. We’re talking about Ariousian, the best wine Dionysos knows.”
“There are those who would say wine from Thasos is just as good, or maybe even better. Don’t know but what I lean that way myself,” Exakestos said.
Menedemos bared his teeth at him in a predatory grin. “Of course you do. That lets you talk down the price of my wine. I’d sell you Thasian, but I’ve already disposed of most of what I brought.”
“I’m not going to ask you what you got for it and say I’ll pay the same for your Ariousian,” Exakestos said. “That would give you an excuse to invent a price and ruin me.”
“I’d never do such a thing!” Menedemos assumed a look of injured innocence.
“My prokton!” Just for a moment, Exakestos’ actor’s mask of Attic elegance slipped, Then he pulled it at least partly back in place. “I bloody well would, in your sandals.”
“Not wearing sandals.” Like other sailors, Menedemos went barefoot on land as well as at sea. In Alexandria’s warm climate, doing without shoes just meant watching where you stepped. But he did it in winter at home in Rhodes, too. He also seldom threw a himation over his chlamys. Cloaks, as far as he was concerned, were for Thracians and Skythians, who needed them to keep from turning into blocks of ice during barbarous northern winters. That was one more nautical prejudice brought to land.
“You know what I mean, my dear fellow.” Now the wine merchant might have just stepped out of the Parthenon after sacrificing. “Tell me what you do want for a jar of your fancy vintage, and we’ll see how loudly I scream.”
“Half a mina,” Menedemos said easily. That was more than three times the price of an amphora of ordinary Khian, and something like ten times the price of the common stuff a cobbler or a potter might buy in a tavern.