Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 35

They were sharing a pitcher of red wine in our garden one evening the following summer when Eugenios became quite enthusiastic about it.

“Have you any idea how much of this they buy, Aquila? Tons and tons of it! Do you know that during the reign of the emperor Trajan, the Roman tax collectors became so upset with the amount of money that was being wasted on frankincense they actually got the colonial service to intervene and reroute the traffic from the east to a different route just so that they could collect taxes from it. They actually built an enormous road south from Bostra, the capital city of our Syrian province, just to police its movement. It must have cost them a fortune.”

My father was not especially impressed by this. It was too long ago to be relevant. But Eugenios went on.

“And do you know how much they still spend on this frankincense every year? Well, I heard that at the last count it was over a hundred million sesterces. That represents a quarter of the money that Rome spends every year, on anything! It’s truly staggering. And that’s only in Rome. Imagine if you add all the other cities of the empire!”

“Yes, yes!” replied my father. “But believe me the sale of frankincense is all tightly sewn up. I know it can be hugely profitable, but there are some very well established firms in the market and they control the whole thing. There’s a family from

DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS