Chapter 3

After the tipsy little ship had staggered down past the Lapari Islands in the foulest weather of the year, and had tacked gingerly through the perilous Strait of Messina, a smooth sea and a favourable breeze so eased Captain Manius’s vigilance that he was available for a leisurely chat.

‘Tell me something about Minoa,’ urged Marcellus, after Manius had talked at considerable length about his many voyages: Ostia to Palermo and back, Ostia to Crete, to Alexandria, to Joppa.

Manius laughed, down deep in his whiskers.

‘You’ll find, sir, that there is no such place as Minoa.’ And when Marcellus’s stare invited an explanation, the swarthy navigator gave his passenger a lesson in history, some little of which he already knew.

Fifty years ago, the legions of Augustus had laid siege to the ancient city of Gaza, and had subdued it after a long and bitter campaign that had cost more than the conquest was worth.

‘It would have been cheaper,’ observed Manius, ‘to have paid the high toll they demanded for travel on the salt trail.’

‘But how about the Bedouins?’ Marcellus wondered.

‘Yes—and the Emperor could have bought off the Bedouins, too, for less than that war cost. We lost twenty-three thousand men, taking Gaza.’

Manius went on with the story. Old Augustus had been beside himself with rage over the stubborn resistance of the defence—composed of a conglomeration of Egyptians, Syrians, and Jews, none of whom were a bit squeamish at the sight of blood, who never took prisoners and were notoriously ingenious in the arts of torture. Their attitude, he felt, in wilfully defying the might of the Empire demanded that the old pest-hole Gaza should be cleaned up. Henceforth, declared Augustus, it was to be known as the Roman city of Minoa; and it was to be hoped that the inhabitants thereof, rejoicing in the benefits conferred upon them by a civilized state, would forget that there had ever been a municipality so dirty, unhealthy, quarrelsome, and altogether nasty as Gaza.

‘But Gaza,’ continued Manius, ‘had been Gaza for seventeen centuries, and it would have taken more than an edict by Augustus to change its name.’

‘Or its manners, either, I daresay,’ commented Marcellus.

‘Or its smell,’ added Manius, dryly. ‘You know, sir,’ he went on, ‘the crusty white shore of that old Dead Sea is like a salt lick beside a water-hole in the jungle where animals of all breeds and sizes gather and fight. This has been going on longer than any nation’s history can remember. Occasionally some animal bigger than the others has appeared, driving all the rest of them away. Sometimes they have turned on the big fellow and chased him off, after which the little ones have gone to fighting again among themselves. Well—that’s Gaza for you!’

‘But the salt lick,’ put in Marcellus, ‘is not at Gaza, but at the Dead Sea.’

‘Quite true,’ agreed Manius, ‘but you don’t get to the Dead Sea for a lick at the salt unless Gaza lets you. For a long time the lion of Judah kept all the other animals away, after he had scared off the Philistine hyenas. Then the big elephant Egypt frightened away the lion. Then Alexander the tiger jumped on to the elephant. Always after a battle the little fellows would come sneaking back, and claw the hides off one another while the big ones were licking their wounds.’