"We shall have to ask Rama's advice. From what he's told me, I imagine glassware, textiles dyed with Tyrian purple, and wine are our best wagers. In addition, he says there's a ready market in India for copper, tin, lead, and antimony—and of course gold and silver coin, which fetch a jolly good rate of exchange."
"How about olive oil? Does the olive grow in India?"
"I don't know, but we might try it"
"And what goods should we try to buy there?"
"We must wait to see what they have to offer; but I think we can get some bargains in silk, cotton, ivory, spices, perfumes, and—ah—precious stones and pearls."
"Besides trading Physkon's cargo, can we do some dealing on our own account?"
"Zeus, no! At least, not if he finds out about it. He says we're just his hired men and shall therefore do no trading of our own. He guards his royal monopoly like a lioness defending her cubs."
"Pest! As usual, the potbellied backer who sits at home gets the loaf, while the fellow who does the work and takes the risk gets the crumbs. Isn't there any way around this silly rule?"
"There may be." He winked. "I'll discuss it with you anon, where there are no walls with ears in them."
BOOK III — Rama the Indian
In the games that Physkon staged, the Kyzikene team stood third in number of firsts, after Athens and Antioch. At last the Persephoneia was over, and I saw the delegates safely sack aboard the Persephone. I intrusted them with several letters, to my wife, my brothers, and other kinsmen, telling of my plans for the Indian voyage. When they had sailed, I settled down to the business of preparing myself, as thoroughly as I knew how, for this enterprise.
In my Scythian wanderings, I had found that books were tactically useless for preparation, because they told so many untruths—for example, that Scythia had a mild, balmy climate. I shall never forget the shock I gave the family when I returned from Pantikapaion wearing a Scythian fur cap and trousers, having been forced to don these barbarous garments to keep my ears and balls from being frozen off. (I had been compelled to spend the winter there by a fall from a horse, which had cost me three broken ribs.)
Moreover, at my age I found it hard to focus my eyes on writing at less than arm's length. And I have always disliked being read aloud to; my mind wanders, and I miss half the message. (In Alexandria I was helped by Ammonios, who lent me a burning glass to read with. This glass was ground to such a perfect curve that, when one looked through it at a piece of writing, the letters appeared twice their true size. But most burning glasses are not so well made, and squinting through one of these things by the hour also tires the eye.)
In the case of India, however, I read the literature because there was so little other information to be had. Even Rama was not of much help. While he knew the ports of the Arabian coast, he had never been inland from his native Barygaza. As he explained:
"You see, Lord Eudoxos, Barygaza is city of reformed religion—religion of Buddha. You are knowing how peoples of India are split into—ah—how you say—colors?"
"You mean those classes, whose members are not allowed to marry or take jobs outside their class? Yes; I've been reading about it. There are seven classes, aren't there?"
"We call them colors. Five colors are: white for priests, red for warriors, yellow for merchants, black for workers."
"That's four."
"Fifth is no color—people who do not belong to any; mostly wild men hunting in woods. In reformed religion of Buddha, color not much matters; Buddha says: 'Any man is Brachman—that is, priest color—who is wise, patient, virtuous, pure, harmless, tolerant, truthful'—and so on—'no matter who his parents were.' But in old Brachman religion, color very important is. Among Brachmanes, a man who sails on sea loses color. Nobody will have to do with him, so he is starving. So we sailors are not visiting cities where Brachmanes rule. Always the Brachmanes are fighting followers of Buddha, and we might get killed."
Hence I read what Megasthemes and Onesikritos and Nearchos had to say about India, and I read about navigation on the African coast. I learnt that, according to Herodotos, a Phoenician fleet had sailed clear around Africa in the time of the Egyptian king Necho. Herodotos disbelieved the story, because the Punics asserted that, when they got to the southernmost parts of Africa, the sun stood to the north of them. But Agatharchides showed me by a diagram how the sun would, in fact, appear to the north at noon, south of the equator; and this claim, which made Herodotos doubt the tale, was really the best reason for accepting it I suppose Herodotos did not know that the earth was round, because in his day this theory was just being broached.
I picked my boatswain with care, since Hippalos was not a professional ship's officer, and I had not captained a vessel for some years. I chose a burly, red-faced salt named Linos, with a bronzen hook in place of his right hand. He said he had lost the hand defending his ship against pirates. I suspected that he had been a pirate himself until his injury forced him into more lawful work.
What with one thing and another, we did not set sail in our refitted merchantman until the fourteenth of Hekatombaion, [* Approx. July 5.] at the start of the fourth year of the 165th Olympiad. The Ourania was the biggest ship in the Red Sea sailing fleet: a beamy 120-footer, like the grain or wine freighters of the Inner Sea. She was, in fact, too big for many of the shallow little coves that pass for harbors in the Red Sea; hence Physkon was easily persuaded to let me have her. She was old but sound. I had personally seen to her cleansing, scraping, caulking, and painting, and I had checked every bit of rope and sail that went aboard, at the cost of furious quarrels with Physkon's officials when they tried to palm off defective equipment on me.
It was a typical midsummer day at Myos Hormos, with a scorching sun glaring down from a steely sky, and the deck so hot that one had to wear sandals to keep one's feet from being burnt. The Ourania lay at the end of a rickety pier that thrust far out into the bay, the water near shore being too shallow for anything deeper than a raft. Anchored farther out were several black-hulled biremes and a few cargo carriers, similar to my ship but smaller, and a couple of little Arab coasters awaiting their turn to unload.
Nearer shore were tethered three elephant barges. A fourth, which had foundered from neglect—now that the Ptolemies no longer kept up a military elephant corps—was being broken up for salvage by a gang of local tribesmen, with black skins and hair in long, greasy braids. They splashed about, naked and yelling, in the shallows with mallets and crowbars, while a Greek foreman screamed orders at them.
In the other direction, a galley had been hauled out on rollers. A couple of workmen, supposed to be cleaning her bottom, slept in the shade of her hull. Further off, on the single shipway, carpenters languidly tapped at the hull of a new trireme.
Standing on the deck of the Ourania, I was checking the cargo of glass, wine, oil, copper ingots, and purple-dyed stuffs as the royal slaves, shuffling slowly along the pier, brought their loads aboard. They moved with all the liveliness of the pointer of a water clock, and even their overseer had not the energy to raise his lash to speed them up. Not trusting any slave to be careful enough, Hippalos and Linos personally carried aboard the gifts, wrapped in sacking, that we took for such kings as we might encounter. Rama the Indian, comfortable in his turban and skirt despite the heat, brought a cageful of small birds on board.