Excitement tingled through Sostratos. “The one god, you say?” he asked, and the old man nodded. Sostratos went on, “Then I have come to the land of Ioudaia?”
“Yes, this is the land of Ioudaia,” the old man said. “Who are you, stranger, that you need to ask such a thing?”
Bowing, Sostratos answered, “Peace be unto you, my master. I am Sostratos son of Lysistratos, of Rhodes. I have come to trade in this land.”
“And to you also peace. Sostratos son of Lysistratos.” The local tasted the unfamiliar syllables. After another long pause, he said, “You would be one of those Ionians, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Sostratos said, resigned to being an Ionian in these parts despite his Doric roots. “What is your name, my master, if your slave may ask?”
“I am Ezer son of Shobal,” the old man replied.
“Is all well here?” Sostratos asked. “No pestilence, nothing like that?”
Ezer had formidable gray eyebrows and a beaky nose. When he frowned, he looked like a bird of prey. “No, there is no pestilence. May the one god forbid it. Why do you ask?”
“Everything is very quiet here.” Sostratos waved his arms to help show what he meant. “No one works.”
“Works?” Ezer son of Shobal frowned again, even more fiercely than before. He shook his head. “Of course no one works today. Today is the sabbath.”
“Your slave prays pardon, but he does not know that word,” Sostratos said.
“You did not learn this tongue from a man of Ioudaia, then,” Ezer said.
Once more, Sostratos had to remember to nod instead of dipping his head. “No, I did not. I learned from a Phoenician. Truly you are very wise.” Yes, flattery seemed built into Aramaic.
“A Phoenician? I might have known.” By the way Ezer said it, he had as much scorn for Phoenicians as Himilkon had for Ioudaioi. “The one god commands us to rest one day in seven. That is the sabbath. Today is the seventh day, and so… we rest.”
“I see.” What Sostratos saw was why these Ioudaioi had never amounted to anything in the wider world, and why they never would. If they wasted one day in seven, how could they keep up with their neighbors? He marveled that they hadn’t already been altogether swept away. “Where can my men and I buy food?” he asked. “We have come a long way today. We too are tired.”
Ezer son of Shobal shook his head again. “You do not see, Ionian. Sostratos.” He carefully sounded out the name. “I told you, this is the sabbath. The one god decrees we may not work on this day. Selling food is work. Until the sun sets, we may not do it. I am sorry.” He sounded not the least bit sorry. He sounded proud.
Himilkon had warned that the Ioudaioi had set ideas about their religion. Sostratos saw he’d known what he was talking about. “Will someone draw water from the well for us?” he asked. “You have a well, I hope?”
“We have a well. No one will draw water for you, though, not till after sunset. That is also work.”
“May we draw water ourselves?”
Now Ezer nodded. “Yes, you may do that. You are no part of us.”
No, and I wouldn’t want to be any part of you, either, Sostratos thought. He wondered how he would live in a land where religious law so closely hemmed in everything these people did. His first thought was that he would simply go mad.
But then he wondered about that. If he’d been raised from childhood to find that law right and proper and necessary, wouldn’t he come to believe it was? Even in Hellas, thoughtless people blindly believed in the gods. Here in Ioudaia, it seemed, everyone believed in their strange, invisible deity. If I’d been born a loudaian, I suppose I would, too.
The more Sostratos thought about that, the more it frightened him. He bowed to Ezer. “Thank you for your kindness, my master.”
“You are welcome,” the old man replied. “You cannot help it that you are not one of us, and so cannot know and obey the sacred laws of the one god.”
He means that, Sostratos realized in astonishment. Ezer son of Shobal was as proud to belong to his narrow little backwoods tribe as Sostratos was to be a Hellene. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. I wish I could show him how ignorant he is. Sostratos had had that same urge with Hellenes, too. With his own folk, he could act on it. Sometimes he managed to convince them of the error of their ways. More often, though, even Hellenes chose to cling to their own ignorance rather than accepting someone else’s wisdom.
“What are you and this big-nosed old geezer going on about?” Teleutas asked.
Ezer didn’t change expression. No, of course he doesn’t speak Greek, Sostratos told himself. All the same… “You want to be careful how you talk about people here. You never can tell when one of them may understand some of our tongue.”
“All right. All right.” Teleutas dipped his head with obvious impatience. “But what is going on?”
“We can’t buy any food till after sundown,” Sostratos answered. “They have a day of rest every seventh day, and they take it seriously. We can get water from the well, though, as long as we do it ourselves.”
“A day of rest? That’s pretty stupid,” Teleutas said, which was exactly Sostratos’ opinion. The sailor went on, “What happens if they’re in a war and they have to fight a battle on this special day of theirs? Do they let the enemy kill them because they’re not supposed to fight back?”
“I don’t know.” That intrigued Sostratos, so he turned it into Aramaic, as best he could, for Ezer.
“Yes, we would die,” the Ioudaian answered. “Better to die than to break the law of the one god.”
Sostratos didn’t try to argue with him. Ezer sounded as passionate as a man who was busy wasting his inheritance on a hetaira and didn’t care if he ruined himself on her behalf. A man who wasted his inheritance on a hetaira at least had the pleasure of her embraces to recall. What did a man who wasted his life on devotion to a foolish god have left? Nothing Sostratos could see. Such mad devotion might even cost a worshiper life itself.
He didn’t care to point that out to Ezer son of Shobal. The Ioudaian had made it plain he could see it for himself. He’d also made it plain he was willing to take the consequences. How could a man’s devotion to a god be greater than his devotion to life itself? Sostratos shrugged. No, it made no rational sense.
The Rhodian did find a rational question to ask: “My master, where is the well? We are hot and thirsty.”
“Go past this house here”-Ezer pointed-”and you will see it.”
“Thank you.” Sostratos bowed. Ezer returned the gesture. However mad he might be in matters pertaining to his god, he was polite enough when dealing man to man. Sostratos went back to Greek to tell the sailors with him where the well was.
“I’d sooner have wine,” Teleutas said.
That wasn’t quite pure complaint, or it might not have been pure complaint, anyhow. Aristeidas dipped his head, saying, “So would I. Drinking water in foreign parts can give you a flux of the bowels.”
He was right, of course, but Sostratos said, “Sometimes it can’t be helped. We are in foreign parts, and we have to drink water by itself now and again. The country isn’t swampy or marshy. That makes the water likelier to be good.”
“I don’t care how good it is. I don’t care if it’s water from the Khoaspes, the river the Persian kings used to drink from,” Teleutas said. “I’d still sooner have wine.” He hadn’t cared about his health, then-only about his palate and the way wine would make him feel. Why am I not surprised? Sostratos thought.
As Hellenes often did, the Ioudaioi had circled the well with rocks to the height of a cubit or so, to keep animals and children from falling in. They’d also put a wooden cover over the top of the well. When the sailors took it off, they found a stout branch lying across the opening, with a rope attached to it.