My father had a large piece of black cloth draped over his knee when I entered the shop. He looked up as my shadow blocked the light.
"Ah, Arxes. Ready to go shopping, then?"
"Yes, dad."
"Right. Have a look at this, first."
He held up the piece of cloth and I gasped. The dull blackness suddenly gleamed with a sheen of scarlet, almost irridescent to look at18.
"What is it?"
My father grinned. "Tyrian purple, the very best. Hephaeston arrived today and brought this with him."
"Hephaeston is back? What sort of a voyage did he have?"
"Peaceful," Father replied. "Not even a storm worth mentioning. Here, look at what else he brought. I thought I would keep this as a present for your mother."
He put the purple down on the counter and Glaucus, my father's foreman, picked it up carefully and began to fold it. My father reached under the counter and took out a piece of cloth with a coloured pattern, which he opened out before me.
"What do you think?"
I stepped forward and fingered the material. It was a fine woollen cloth and there was more than enough for a dress. I turned it over and held it up to the light. The pattern appeared on the back of the cloth, but there was something curious about it. I peered more closely.
"It's Babylonian19 ," my father said. "Hephaeston picked it up in Byblos from a merchant who had just arrived. Best I've seen for a long time."
"I think she'll love it," I told my father. "It's just the sort of stuff a woman would like."
"Ah well," my father smiled, "you'll be worrying about how to please a woman of your own, soon. Glaucus, you carry on here. If I don't get back, shut up shop at the usual time."
"Yes, lord."
Glaucus had been with my father for so long that you could rely on him to look after things in the shop as if they were his own - and yet my father only paid20 three hundred drachma for him! We walked out of the shop and across the agora towards the Imperial Temple.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Well, I thought we'd try Labrax first; he usually has a good selection. After that we can go on to Charmides."
Labrax did his business in a large house behind the ancient temple of Apollo, one of the few structures to survive the Roman destruction of our city21. Labrax himself happened to be in the building when we arrived and came forward as soon as he heard my father's voice.
"Lycurgus! How are you? What can we do for you?"
"The gods be with you, Labrax. My son is a man now, so we're looking for a girl to keep him company. You know the sort of thing."
"My dear fellow. Of course! I've got just the thing. Come this way. I had a couple of Egyptians this morning," he said over his shoulder, "but they've both gone, snapped up almost as soon as they went on sale."
I glanced around the courtyard at the various men and women sitting or standing in the shade. Now that we were actually at the slave-dealer's I felt even more embarrassed, sure that every one of them knew what we had come for and was staring at me. Labrax led us into a room where two dark-haired girls were sitting on a low bed
"Here we are, fresh from Spain, two young ladies that would be glad to keep your son company as much as he wants. Stand up girls and say hello to the son of Lycurgus."
The girls stood up and stared at us blankly.
"They don't speak much Greek," Labrax apologised. "Still, teaching them can be part of the fun, eh, young man?"
I felt my face blush a fiery red and fastened my gaze on the floor.
"Well, son? What do you think?"
Reluctantly I raised my eyes and glanced at the girls. One looked to be about ten or twelve, a mere kid; the other was at least twenty. I shook my head.
"Perfect beauties," Labrax crooned. "Virgins, both of them. I'll get them to take their clothes off for you22, shall I?"
I hastily shook my head.
"No! Er - no. I - er - no."
"Don't you like them?" my father asked.
"No," I blurted out. "That one's only a kid and the other one's too old."
My father shrugged.
"Sorry, Labrax. He's choosing, not me."
The slave-dealer raised both hands in a gesture of resignation. "Don't worry, old friend. Young men are always particular. Come back tomorrow, I'm expecting a shipment from the east any day now. There might be a couple of Persians or even an Armenian or something. What about a Nubian? There's always something new out of Africa23."
"We'll try a couple of other places today," my father said. "If we don't find anything there we'll be back for sure."
Outside the house my father put his arm over my shoulder.
"Try not to be so embarrassed, Arxes. They're only slaves, you know. Look at each girl carefully, try to assess her personality24 , but remember, if you don't like her we can always trade her in for another one."
The house of Charmides was up by the Lecheae Gate near the gymnasium. A slave opened the door to us and led us into the courtyard. He listened to my father's request and then called for the steward.
"Gentleman wants a young girl for his son, sir. What about the Gauls?"
The steward nodded and beckoned us to follow him up the stairs.
"We keep the most valuable ones up here, gentlemen. Makes it harder for 'em to get away, if they're that way inclined. We had a shipment in from Gaul just this morning, they've only just come up from Lecheae. One's a real beauty, but judge for yourselves."
He threw open a door and gestured for us to go into the room that was light and airy with a good view of the sea through the barred window. There were five or six young women in the room, though the one that grabbed my attention, a girl of about my own age, was standing over by the window gazing out at the scene. The light made her long, fair, curly hair seem like a halo about her head.
"Stand up, girls," the steward ordered, and the girls stood and faced us. "They don't speak much Greek, I'm afraid, though that one there, with the yellow hair, has picked up a few words. Here, you, what's your name?"
"My name is Cartimandua," the girl said, with a musical accent that turned the common Greek25 into an incantation.
"I'll have that one," I said.
"Look at the others first," my father cautioned. "Don't be led astray by pretty hair."
Obediently I glanced at the others. Their skins were pale, but nearly all of them had hair as black as a Greek's. The exception was a girl with dark red hair which looked ugly and unnatural. In addition, she had green eyes like a cat, that stared at me so intently that I feared the evil eye and crossed my fingers behind my back to avert any ill-luck she intended.
"No, I want her." I pointed at the fair-haired girl.
"Well," my father said, "it depends on the price. How much?"
As you would expect, the bargaining went on for quite some time. After a while the steward, who had been insisting that my father was wanting to rob his master, declared that he would have to go and consult someone and the two men went downstairs, leaving me in the room with the girls.
"You are buy me?" the fair-haired girl asked me.
"Yes, I think so," I replied.
She said something to the others and at once they began to wail noisily and take it in turns to jump up and hug and kiss her.
"What did you say to them?" I demanded, appalled at the noise.
"I say that I must going from them," the girl explained. "We are friends."
The noise continued unabated until finally my father and the steward came back into the room. The steward shouted at them and put his hand to the whip in his belt and at once the girls fell silent.
"All right. It's settled," my father said to me.
The fair-haired girl, who up until then had seemed quite calm, suddenly burst into tears and said something else to the other girls. They all stood up and she embraced and kissed each of them and then came over to me, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands.
"I ready now."
"Ok, ok." My father sounded impatient. "Let's go. We've got to take this girl home, then have a bath and get changed and there's only an hour or so until dark. Come on!"
"Do you want some chains or a rope?" the steward asked.
We stopped and my father looked from him to the girl, considering. The girl reached out and took my hand.
"I come," she said quietly, "No chain."
"It's ok, Dad," I said. "She'll not cause any trouble."
"Well, if you're sure. Just keep a tight hold on her, she cost a lot of money26."
The Lecheae Road was just at the end of the lane in which Charmides had his business. We hurried down to the road and turned right towards the agora. I kept a firm hold of the girl's hand, partly because of what my father had told me, but mainly because it felt good to hold it. I felt really grown up: I was a slave-owner at last - although everyone called Petosirus mine, really he belonged to my parents - and she was a beautiful girl. Lucias and Alexander were going to envy me when I told them about the colour of her hair. I might even let them see her: I hadn't made up my mind about that.
18 Pliny, in his Natural History IX.lxii devotes several pages to describing the purple produced by the Murex shellfish. "For Tyrian purple the wool is first soaked with sea-purple for a preliminary pale dressing and then completely transformed with whelk dye. Its highest glory consists in the colour of congealed blood, blackish at first glance but gleaming when held up to the light; this is the origin of Homer's phrase, 'blood of purple hue'." It would be snobbery that made Tyrian purple so valuable in Corinth: Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece III.xxi remarks, "Except for the isthmus of Corinth, the whole Peloponnese is surrounded by sea and the Lakonian coast has the best sea-shells in the world for purple dye, excepting only the Phoenician sea." Return
19 Pliny, in his Natural History VIII.lxxiv says, "Weaving different colours into a pattern was chiefly brought into vogue by Babylon, which gave its name to this process." It is ironic to think that Aachan died for a tartan! Babylonian cloth was well known in Corinth; Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece II.vi, describes a shrine in a town near Corinth: "The statue of Health is the same: you cannot see even that at all easily for the masses of women's hair consecrated to the goddess and the masses of Babylonian clothing." Return
20 In Xenophon's The Estate Manager Socrates is trying to find out how best to run an estate. "'What do you do when you need a foreman, Ischomachus?' I asked. 'Do you watch out for a man with the right skills and then try to buy him, (just as I'm sure that, when you need a builder, you would watch out for a skilled builder and then try to get hold of him)? Or do you train your foremen by yourself?'" (p. 331) Return
21 Corinth was captured and destroyed by L. Mummius in 146 BC. Pausanias remarks in his Guide to Greece II.vi, "Since the Romans devastated Corinth and the ancient Corinthians perished, the old local sacrifices are no longer a tradition, nor do the boys cut their hair for Medea's daughters or wear black clothes." The city was refounded by Julius Caesar. As Plutarch says, in his Life of Caesar: "He gratified his soldiers by founding new colonies, the most important of which were at Carthage and at Corinth. It so happened that these two cities had, in earlier days, both been captured at the same time and now they were both restored at the same time." Return
22 In The Twelve Caesars Suetonius tells us that Augustus' "friends used to behave like Toranius, the slave-dealer, in arranging his pleasures for him. They would strip mothers of families or grown girls of their clothes and inspect them as though they were up for sale." (p. 92) Return
23 This proverb has a curious origin, as Pliny makes plain in his Natural History VIII.xvii. "This is most observed in Africa, where the shortage of water makes the animals flock to the few rivers. There are, consequently, many varieties of hybrids in that country, either violence or lust mating the males with the females of each species indiscriminately. This is, indeed, the origin of the common saying of Greece, that Africa is always producing some novelty." Return
24 This was a two-way affair. Plutarch, in his essay On the Avoidance of Anger, tells us that: "It is noticeable that the first thing slaves try to find out about their new owner, after they have been bought, is not whether he is liable to superstition or envy, but whether he has a temper." (p. 196) Return
25 Koine or Common Greek, the language of the New Testament, was for long thought to be a special "Holy Spirit" Greek because of its many differences from classical Greek. Discoveries of first century documents, mainly in Egypt, have shown that it was the ordinary language of the time. Return
26 Slaves varied in price. A former slave boasts in Petronius' the Satyricon that he paid 4,000 sestertii for himself (p. 69) while in his Natural History VII.xxxix Pliny records, "The highest price hitherto paid, so far as I have ascertained, for a person born in slavery was when Attius of Pesaro was selling a skilled linguist named Daphnis, and Marcus Scaurus, Head of the State, bid 700,000 sesterces. . . . In truth, when Clutorius Priscus bought one of Sejanus' eunuchs Paezon for 50,000,000, this was the price of lust and not of beauty." A more realistic estimate is given by Xenophon in his Memoirs of Socrates, where he has the philosopher say, "For instance, one slave, I suppose is worth two minae and another not as much as half a mina, and another five minae and another ten minae; and they say that Nicias the son of Niceratus bought an overseer for his silver mine for a talent." (p. 118) A mina was 100 drachma while a talent was 6,000 drachma. Return