Zabbai was a typical Eastern merchant, rich and polite and oily as an old lamp. Arabia Felix owed its happy title to its geographical location, a place where the land routes from the Far East met the Red Sea, with all its African coastal trade, at the spot most convenient for transshipment of goods to the nearby Mediterranean coast.
His clerk rose from a little table and bowed deeply when I entered. “How may I serve you, master?” He didn’t know me by sight, but he knew an official when he saw one.
“Summon Zabbai,” I instructed him. Minutes later, the man himself emerged from a curtained back room, grinning and clasping his hands together. He wore flowing robes of splendid material and a silken headcloth. His beard was long and drawn to a sharp point. He was an exotic creature, but it was a relief to see an Easterner who was not trying to be a Greek.
“My friend Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, what honor you do me, how your presence brightens my day, how I rejoice …” and so on, for quite some time. Oriental effusiveness is a bore to a Roman, but I daresay Easterners consider us churlish and uncultured in our direct bluntness.
“My esteemed friend Zabbai,” I said when he paused for breath, “I come today not on business, but on a matter of state.”
“Ah, politics! Do you stand for the quaestorship?”
“No, I won’t be eligible for another six years. This is not a matter of domestic politics, but of foreign policy. With your wide travels and far-flung contacts, and most especially your constant dealings with ships and shipping, I thought you the best man to consult.”
He was vastly flattered, or pretended to be. Flinging his arms wide, he said, “Anything! Anything to be of service to the Senate and People of Rome! How may I serve? No, but first, let us be comfortable. Please, follow me.”
We ducked through the curtain and passed through a storeroom in which thin sticks of incense burned constantly to protect the bales of precious silk from the damage of dampness or insects. Beyond that, we emerged into a beautiful courtyard. It was laid out in the traditional Roman manner, with a fountained pool at the center, but with the Eastern addition of flower boxes, which sported a few winter blossoms. Arabs come from a desert country, and they love water and growing things even more than do Italians.
Near the pool stood a low table of precious wood with a colorful tiled top, where we seated ourselves on cushions stuffed with feathers and spices. Only an Oriental would think of a luxurious touch like that. Servants brought us dishes of nuts and dried fruits and candied flower petals, along with an excellent wine that had been heavily watered, as befitted the early hour.
When I had partaken enough of his hospitality to satisfy politeness, I got down to business. “Now, Zabbai, my friend, I would like for you to share your knowledge of the pirates who infest our sea.”
Zabbai stroked his beard. “Ah, the pirates. I deal with those difficult businessmen many times in a year. What do you wish to know of them?”
“First, some general knowledge. How do you go about your yearly transactions with these romantic fortune-seekers?”
“Like most merchants whose goods move by sea, I find it most convenient to pay a yearly tribute, rather than have to negotiate separately over each seized cargo or factor to be ransomed.”
“Yet you say you must deal with them many times each year. How is that?”
“While the greater fleets cooperate, and in most cases a single payment made at Delos is sufficient to buy them all off, yet there are small, independent fleets that obey no master. These are a special nuisance in the western sea, especially near the Pillars of Hercules, the coast of southern Spain and the northern African coast near Old Carthage. These rogues will take my cargoes and agents, then give me a certain time in which to ransom them. Failing that, they will be taken to Delos and sold. It is a great nuisance.”
“Spain, you say?” I mused, speaking half to myself.
“Truly, most of the sea west of Sicily. This is a mere nuisance, since the great bulk of all trade and shipping, perhaps as much as ninety percent, is to the east of Rome. After all, what great cities exist in the West since the destruction of Carthage? Only Rome. To the east, there are many great cities and rich islands, all in relatively close proximity. There you will find Antioch, Alexandria, Pergamum, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Crete and Cyprus, Rhodes and all the other islands. That is where the commerce is, and so therefore that is where the pirates are most numerous and best organized.”
“But to the west,” I persisted, “there are independent fleets. Are these numerous or powerful?”
Zabbai made a very eloquent gesture of the hands, indicating the mutability of all matters pertaining to human affairs. “It is not as if these things were established by constitution, or even by guild rules or the solemn agreements of a consortium of businessmen. These pirates are individualistic and whimsical in the extreme. A group of them will decide to cruise off such and such a stretch of coast, while others will insist upon betaking themselves to a strait between two islands, fancying that the commercial traffic there will be especially heavy and rich in this season. There is no formal arrangement of fleets.”