Aristeidas didn’t seem to share his opinion. The sailor got to his feet. “I’ll see you later, young sir,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll still be around whenever I come back.” He left before Hekataios perched on a stool.
Perched, Sostratos thought, was the operative word. Hekataios of Abdera-a polis on the southern coast of Thrace-was a birdlike man: small, thin, sharp-featured, quick-moving. “How are you?” he asked Sostratos, speaking Ionic Greek with a strong Attic overlay. Sostratos’ Doric accent had that same overlay, so the two of them sounded more like each other than less educated, less traveled men from their home cities would have.
“Well, thanks,” Sostratos answered.
Zilpah came up. “What would you like, my master?” she asked Hekataios.
“Wine. Bread. Oil,” he replied in extremely rudimentary Aramaic.
“I would also like bread and oil, please,” Sostratos told the innkeeper’s wife.
As Zilpah went off, Hekataios returned to Greek: “I’m jealous of you. You really speak the language. I didn’t think I’d need to when I started traveling through Ioudaia, but Hellenes are so thin on the ground here, I’ve had to start learning ‘ow to go bar-bar-bar myself.” Every once in a while, but only every once in a while, he would forget a rough breathing, as Ionians usually did.
“I’m not fluent,” Sostratos said. “I wish I knew more.”
“I’d have an easier time with my researches if I could make those funny grunting noises, but I do seem to manage even without them.”
Zilpah came back with the food and drink. As Sostratos dipped a chunk of brown bread in olive oil, he said, “Jealous? Speaking of jealous,
0 best one, you have no idea how jealous I am of you. I have to buy and sell as I go. I can’t travel about the countryside for the sake of love of wisdom.” He was also jealous of the wealth that let Hekataios of Abdera do exactly that, but kept quiet about that bit of envy. To him, the other was more important.
Hekataios shrugged. “When I was in Alexandria, I got interested in the Ioudaioi. They’re such a peculiar people.” He rolled his eyes. “And so I decided to come here and find out about them for myself.”
“You’re lucky Antigonos’ men didn’t decide you were spying for Ptolemaios,” Sostratos said.
“Not at all, my dear fellow.” Hekataios tossed his head. “I had written out for me a safe-conduct stating that I was a lover of wisdom traveling for the sake of learning more about the world in which I live, and so was not to be harassed by mere soldiers.”
“And it worked when you got to the frontier?” Sostratos asked.
“Plainly not. Plainly I was seized and tortured and crucified,” Hekataios answered. Sostratos coughed and flushed. He could be sarcastic himself, but he’d met his match and then some in Hekataios of Abdera. The older man relented: “As a matter of fact, Antigonos’ officers ‘ave been more than a little helpful. From everything I’ve heard and seen, Antigonos himself is a man of learning.”
“I suppose so,” Sostratos said. “I know Ptolemaios is. But I wouldn’t want to have either one of them angry at me, and that’s the truth.”
“There I cannot argue with you in the least,” Hekataios agreed. “Then again, however, the weak are always wise not to fall into the clutches of the strong. So it has been since the gods-if gods there be-made the world, and so it shall remain as long as men stay men.”
“It’s a good thing you said that in Greek, and that Ithran wasn’t here to understand it,” Sostratos observed. “Let a Ioudaian hear ‘if gods there be’ and you’ve got more trouble for yourself than you really want. They take their own invisible deity very, very seriously.”
“I should say they do!” Hekataios dipped his head. “They always have, as best I’ve been able to determine.”
“Tell me more, if you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. “This sort of thing is meat and drink to me. I wish I had the chance to do what you’re doing.”
1 wish I didn’t have to worry about making a living, was what that boiled down to. Hekataios’ family had to own land out to the horizon up in Abdera, or to have got wealthy some other way, to let him spend his life traveling and learning.
He smiled what struck Sostratos as a superior smile. But that half sneer didn’t last. What could be more attractive than somebody who was interested in what one was doing? “As I was telling you the last time we talked,” Hekataios said, “these Ioudaioi came here from out of Egypt.”
“Yes, you did say that; I remember,” Sostratos answered. “You were telling me some sort of pestilence there made them flee the country? “
“That’s right.” Hekataios smiled again, this time without a trace of superiority. “You were paying attention, weren’t you?”
“Of course I was, best one. Did you doubt it?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. When you discover how few people have the least interest in the past and how it came to shape the present, you eventually begin to believe no one but yourself has any interest in such things at all. Being proved wrong is always a pleasant surprise.”
“You’ve found me,” Sostratos said. “Please do go on.”
“I’d be glad to.” Hekataios paused to sip his wine and gather his thoughts. Then he said, “When this plague arose in Egypt, the common people there believed some divinity had caused it.”
“That’s not surprising,” Sostratos said. “They wouldn’t have known of anyone like Hippokrates who might have offered a different explanation.”
“No, indeed not.” Hekataios of Abdera dipped his head. “Now Egypt at this time-it would have been about the time of the Trojan War, I believe-was full of all sorts of foreigners, and-”
“Excuse me, most wise one, but how do you know that?” Sostratos broke in.
“For one thing, the Egyptian priests say so,” Hekataios answered. “For another, the Ioudaioi have a legend that they themselves came ‘ere to this country from out of Egypt. Does that satisfy you?”
“Thank you. Yes, it does. But history is only as good as its sources and the questions you ask of them. I did want to know.”
“Fair enough. You do understand the finer points, don’t you?” Hekataios said, and Sostratos wanted to burst with pride. The Abderan went on, “All these foreigners, naturally, worshiped their own gods and had their own rites. The native Egyptians’ rituals were being ignored and forgotten. The Egyptians-I suspect that means their priests, but I can’t prove it-feared their gods would never have mercy on them in respect to the plague unless they expelled the foreigners from their land.”
“And so they did?” Sostratos asked.
“And so they did,” Hekataios agreed. “The most outstanding foreigners banded together and went to places like Hellas: Danaos and Kadmos were some of their leaders.”
“I’ve also heard Kadmos was a Phoenician,” Sostratos said.
“Yes, so have I. Perhaps he stopped in Phoenicia on his way up to Hellas from Egypt. But most of the exiles ended up here in Ioudaia. This isn’t far from Egypt, and in those days no one at all lived here, or so they say.
“I see,” Sostratos said. “But how did the customs of the Ioudaioi become so strange?”
“I am coming to that, O best one,” Hekataios answered. “Their leader at this time was a man outstanding for courage and wisdom, a certain Mouses. He refused to make any images of the gods, because he did not think his god was of human form.”
“The Ioudaioi have kept that custom ever since,” Sostratos said. “I’ve seen it.”
“One could hardly help seeing it-or not seeing it-in this country,” Hekataios said, a little superciliously. “That is the reason the sacrifices this Mouses established differ from those of other nations. So does their way of living. Because of their expulsion from Egypt, he introduced a way of life that was rather antisocial and hostile to foreigners.”
“I don’t know if they’re truly hostile to foreigners, or if they simply want to be left alone,” Sostratos said. “They haven’t treated me at all badly. They just don’t want me trying to tell them about the way we Hellenes live.”