Chapter 1

There was no city anywhere quite like Petra. Nobody knew its origin or its age; a thousand years, perhaps. It was known to have sheltered at least four successive civilizations, and had borne as many names. For the past three centuries it had belonged to a wealthy colony of fugitive Greeks, who had expensively bestowed upon it an incomparable beauty. It was Athens minus the slums and the smells.

Petra was more than a city; for it embraced not only an exquisitely contrived municipality, distinguished for the architecture of its baths, theatres, forums, temples, and stately residences, but a broad, enveloping valley whose green meadows and fertile fields were nourished by innumerable gushing springs.

Nature had also made provision for the defence of this self-contained little city-state by encircling it with a ring of precipitous stone mountains, converting it into a natural fortress. Petra could be entered only through two gateways: on the west, where a deep-worn camel-trail began its ambling toward distant Gaza and the coast-road north to Damascus, and on the south, leading to the Red Sea. These approaches were made through narrow, high-walled defiles which a handful of guards could—and often did—defend against bands of reckless marauders. It had been a long time since the city had had to repulse a serious invasion: never, indeed, since its occupation by the Greeks.

Naturally, it had been, through the ages, a much coveted stronghold, populated and repopulated with rich traders of various tints and tongues, whose dynasties successively fattened and fell, each of them leaving monuments and tombs which their victors wrecked to make room for the more extravagant memorials of their own.

According to what passed for history in Arabia, which had never gone to much bother about keeping records, the most recent invasion of this territory had been made by their own tribesmen, some five hundred years ago, who had thought it their turn to enter and sack the rich old city, then in the hands of a decadent generation of Nabataeans. At small cost to themselves, the Arabs had driven out all the inhabitants who were left from a ruthless slaughter, had carried off everything of any value, and then had wondered what to do with their new acquisition; for they were nomads and had no use for cities.

After an interval of a couple of centuries, during which only the bats and hyenas were in residence, one Andrakos, fleeing for refuge from a Roman invasion with a large company of well-to-do Athenians, offered King Retar of Arabia a great price for the deserted city. Much gratified to have, as neighbours, a new kind of people, who had seen much too much of warfare and might be expected to behave themselves, Retar promised the Greeks that they would never be molested by the Arabians, and published a decree warning his own people that Petra was not to be violated. This injunction they had scrupulously obeyed, not only because King Retar was held in high regard but because the penalty for annoying Petra was a public stoning. Arabia had kept the peace-pact; and, with this comforting guarantee of security, Petra had built the most beautiful city in the world.

As for the current relations of Petra and Arabia, it could hardly be said that they had any at all. In the opinion of the Arabs, the Greeks were a queer lot of people who spent their time carving figures out of stone, painting pictures, and reading old scrolls written long ago by men as idle as themselves. Such preoccupations, however unprofitable, were harmless enough, and if the citizens of Petra wanted to fritter away their lives in this manner, it was agreeable with realistic and illiterate Arabia. All that Petra knew about the Arabs was that they raised and rode the most beautiful and high-spirited horses to be found anywhere on earth, that their magnificent camels—too expensive for draught duty—were bred for showy parades in which they marched accoutred with silver ornaments, that the long-fibred wool of the high mountains was eagerly sought by the most famous weavers of Caesarea, Corinth, and Rome, and that their interest in anything artistic was completely non-existent. Aside from the fact that the bodily temperature of the Greeks and Arabs was maintained at approximately the same level, they had nothing in common and regarded each other with a condescension not unmixed with pity.

Upon the accession of Aretas to the Arabian throne (a venerable cedar chest covered with the spliced white pelts of two long-haired goats), a richly caparisoned deputation from Petra had come to pay neighbourly respects. For all parties concerned it was a pleasant visit. The pundits from Petra were shown every available hospitality. Their gift to the young King was a richly illuminated scroll containing Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War; and, to show his appreciation, Aretas sent the aged Governor of Petra home on a tall, sleek, snobbish camel named Retar, in honour of the Arabian king who had had such amicable dealings with the Greeks in an earlier day. When, some weeks after the coronation, it was amusingly reported to Aretas that Retar had proved unmanageable, he replied, ‘That makes us even.’

Chief Councillor Ilderan, who had something of an instinct for statesmanship and was canny enough to take a long view of international relations, had sometimes urged Aretas to pay a visit to Petra.

‘The time may come, sire,’ Ilderan had said, ‘when it might be to our advantage to have had a closer acquaintance with these people.’

‘Very well, Ilderan,’ Aretas had replied. ‘Sometime we will do that.’ But the young king had plenty of pressing problems on his hands. He had never found time to visit Petra, nor had he any inclination to place himself at a disadvantage in the company of men whose manner of life and thought was so foreign to his own. One day Ilderan, still nourishing the hope for a closer friendship with the Greeks, remarked that Herod and his sons were said to be frequent visitors in Petra.

‘That makes me even less eager to go there,’ Aretas had replied almost gruffly. ‘If the King of the Jews has found favour with the Governor of Petra—all the more reason why we should keep our distance.’

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