The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus. David Price Williams
the port of Brindisium, Julinianus I think they are called, and they negotiate the lion’s share of whatever frankincense is sold anywhere in Italy. And in any case, I heard that the bulk of their cargo doesn’t travel by sea. It’s transported by land, right across Asia Minor and then from Byzantium along the Via Egnatia through Philippi and Macedonia and over the Illyrian Mountains to Dyrrachium before the family carries it in their own ships to Brindisium. They then carry it on their own carts by road to Rome. We’d never get a look in here in Patara, even if we could find a source for it. We’re too far out of the way.”
He sighed as he thought back to his own trade that he’d built up with the cheaper local terebinth resin.
“There is a small local market for frankincense. It’s all handled by a family in Telmessos up in western Lycia. I met them once and I know they make a good living from it. But again, it’s tied up tight. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
He more or less dismissed the whole idea, before he continued, “It’s an interesting thing Eugenios that I don’t know exactly where it comes from, this frankincense. It’s somewhere very far away, from the other side of the great deserts of Arabia, so people tell me. And the very best quality comes from even further away, somewhere in Africa or even further afield, beyond the edge of the known world. I’ve never met anyone who has ever seen where it originates. Strange isn’t it? I don’t
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even know if it’s gathered in the same way as my terebinth resin, from a tree and if so what kind of tree. And how come it grows in the desert? There’s so much I don’t understand about it.”
But Eugenios was in his cups by now and he wouldn’t let the matter rest. He took a large quaff of his wine.
“You should go and see the family in Telmessos, Aquila. Why don’t you go and ask them where it comes from? They’re Lycians like you and me after all and when they know you’re in the incense business I’m sure you’ll have a lot to talk about. Who knows, they may even open up and let you into a few of their secrets?”
My father gave a shrug and there for the moment the matter rested. But even if Eugenios had not managed to impress my father, he had sown a seed in my mind and I thought a lot about it over the coming years.
* * * * *
My father was considered to be moderately wealthy by now and as I entered my adult life he felt he owed something to the city which had given him his livelihood. So when someone from the Pataran trade association came to him to ask him if he would stand for election to the boulé, the city council, I think he felt it his civic duty to accept. We had a magnificent bouleterion in our city where the council met once or twice a week. It was not too far from the
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harbour, next to the great theatre, and my father spent many an hour there talking over the neighbourhood’s business, everything from town drains to state expenditure. I’m not sure how much he contributed to the more lively debates, but he was very active when it came to port tariffs or import taxes. He drew up long lists of these that the harbour authorities used when trading ships came in from other countries.
I had been drawn into the incense trade since I’d come of age. I remember when I had reached twenty-one, my father had said to me, “You know, Nicholas, you’re already in your twenties. It’s time you were thinking of a job, something where you can earn your daily bread for a change. You’re grown up now and should be preparing for the world. How would you like to join me in the incense trade?”
I said at the time that I wasn’t really sure but did he think I would be any good at it? I had become quite bookish of late and enjoyed my studies of the Greek and Latin classics. But it wasn’t an enquiry. It was more by way of a demand.
“Yes,” he had continued, “you should take yourself off to our warehouse by the harbour and see old Eurymachus there, our storeman. He’ll show you the ropes and tell you what’s what. You know most of it already; you’ve been there often enough over the years. I told him the other day to expect you. You could start tomorrow.”
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So that’s how I’d got involved. From then on, day after day, I would go down through the city by the old familiar streets to the sea and the storage building where my father kept all his supplies. He didn’t go out into the country much these days, except to inspect the trees and select the best ones. Most of the cutting and harvesting was done by farmers he’d recruited. Every few weeks Eurymachus would organise a cart to do the rounds of the various farms to collect the dried pellets of terebinth resin, which would then be graded and packaged back in our warehouse. It was all very straightforward really. Over the years he had refined the system so it worked mechanically. There was nothing to it, apart from making sure our main clients were regularly supplied – the various temples in the city and some of the bigger villas up at the top of the town who engaged in elaborate rituals for their family gods. And there were the undertakers who needed the incense for their funerals. If it was an expensive ceremony, they would use quite a lot of our resin, both in the house of the deceased and in the necropolis when the body was being interred.
The job that I did turned out to be not particularly taxing, just keeping the books in order and making sure the incense was properly graded and packed. Eurymachus was ‘front of house,’ as it were, looking after the customers when they came to place their orders. He loved drinking sage tea with the older men who came to the warehouse. They used to sit outside in the sunshine
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under an awning discussing the world for hours at a time. Now and again my father would come down to the warehouse and after a cursory look around would join Eurymachus and his friends in the shade, watching the general commerce of the harbour and the city pass up and down the quayside. I was paid very little at first, whilst I was ‘learning on the job,’ though I’m sure my father knew there was very little to learn.
* * * *
Politically, where we were on the south-west coast of Lycia very little really happened. Nominally we came under the Governor of Asia, but he rarely if ever deigned to visit our part of his province. He was mainly interested in the really wealthy cities like Ephesus and Miletus on the west coast. We were rather too far away, or perhaps it was because we were surrounded by high mountains, locked away in our own world. We heard about all kinds of goings on in Rome. We had plenty of ships passing through and sailors being what they were they’d make for the wine shops along the harbour front and after a few cups of the local vintage would soon open up and tell us what was happening in the rest of the empire. We heard endless scare-mongering stories of ordinary soldiers being made emperor by their own legions, taking the imperial purple, only to be assassinated a few months later by their officers, or at least imprisoned by the magistrates and never heard of again.
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Our newest emperor had only recently been appointed and was yet another soldier who went by the name of Diocletian. It seems he too had risen through the ranks of the legions like all the others and had finally been proclaimed emperor by his own men. I would have thought it was a fairly risky business, accepting such a position after so many years of uprisings and insurrections, however powerful he might have felt. There had been more than twenty of these so-called emperors in just the last few years. But Diocletian had survived almost ten months already, which was longer than most of the others and he was strengthening his grip on power, that’s what everybody who knew the labyrinthine ways of Rome told us.
Interestingly,