Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 18

anyone dressed in such finery. Who would ever be able to afford such luxury where we lived?

There were other expensive cargoes. Every now and then a ship would be carrying spices from India – pepper, ginger and turmeric. They came in small wooden drums and when they had been offloaded they were lined up in rows on the flag-stones to be auctioned. Another cargo which fascinated yet frightened me a bit were the wild animals - the elephants, giraffes and other exotic beasts from Africa. They were sold to Rome to be killed in the arena for entertainment on public holidays, to celebrate the emperor’s birthday or some other festival; we Greeks would never indulge in such barbaric sport as killing animals for amusement.They looked so dejected, being forcibly dragged off the ships to be kept in pens outside the city. I didn’t much like the men who traded in these animals either. They always looked untrustworthy somehow and they were so cruel to their charges it’s a wonder any of the animals survived the journey. But being boys it didn’t stop us going out to the pens now and again to see if they had acquired anything we hadn’t seen before.

But mostly the shipments with which the men on the quaysides were busiest were commodities being exported from our valley - timber, animal hides and agricultural produce from the fields of the Xanthos Valley to be sold to Rome and the other big Italian cities. There were forests of tree trunks which were

THE JOURNEY