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As she sets up, Alcestis sees the wool merchant from Euboea anxiously examining the sky.
‘Don’t worry,’ she calls cheerfully. ‘It won’t rain!’
The wool-seller returns her smile, more out of gratitude for her understanding than in appreciation of her weather-forecasting ability. It matters not to Alcestis whether it rains. In fact, she would prefer if it did. But the wool-seller would lose a day’s trade. Wool is sold by the mina (a weight approximating to 22 oz or 630 g) and wet wool gets heavier and therefore more expensive. Stalls in the Agora are open to the sky, so if it rains the wool gets wet, and the market authorities won’t allow the wool-seller to trade at his customers’ expense.
This matters more than usual today because, in the run-up to the Great Dionysia, Athens is teeming with visitors from all over the Greek world. The Agora – the city’s main market area, public boulevard and social meeting space – is packed with traders from all over the Mediterranean who offer top-quality goods to the well-heeled tourist clientele. There’s not a place or time in the world when stallholders have a better chance to make serious money.
The stalls opposite Alcestis run in a long row backing on to the east side of the Street of Panathena. The row stretches half a stade (around 84 metres or 275 feet) from the south stoa to level with the Altar of the Twelve Gods. At a glance, Alcestis can see elegant Persian slippers and gowns of Amorges wool woven so fine as to be shamelessly transparent. Another stall has a rack of red and black Italian cloaks made from the thick wool of Lucarnia, practically dripping in lanolin oil and proof against all but the heaviest shower. Then there’s a stall with little pots of rare Arabian perfumes and unguents, and beside that a tradesman loads his table with stacks of papyrus while he too casts anxious looks skyward.
Alcestis recalls that yesterday someone confronted a pot-bellied little man who was fingering the fine Lycian rugs sold a few stalls down.
‘Ho, Socrates! What brings you here? I thought rush mats were all you needed?’
The man straightened up, and Alcestis saw that his startlingly ugly face was alight with wonder.
‘Oh, I come here often,’ Socrates had said, waving an arm that encompassed the rows of stalls in their entirety. ‘I am constantly amazed at how many things I actually don’t need.’
Well, thinks Alcestis as she sets another hunk of fish on its bed of beet leaves, he doesn’t need my fish, that’s for sure. He’s a smelt-fish eater, I’ll bet. An anchovy or salt-fish man.
That’s an insult but, unlike the rest of Athens, Socrates doesn’t care what fish he eats. Some societies have wine snobs, others judge people by jewellery, clothing or footwear. But footwear hardly matters when even wealthy Athenians often go barefoot, so the city’s folk judge each other by their taste in fish. Small fish, such as sprats and anchovies, are eaten by those who cannot afford better, and by Socrates, who can. Squid is acceptable at any table, and the wealthy look for the best cuts of tuna, grey-head or other large fish.
Several stalls offer such gastronomic delicacies, yet when the bell rings to open the market, the first rush will be to the stall of Alcestis the Syracusan. She sells Messinan eels. It is generally agreed that the prince of fish, the pinnacle of oesophageal delight, is the eel. As the playwright remarks, ‘If I were a god, not a sacrifice would I allow on my altar, unless it came with an eel.’ A regular eel is served with reverence on special occasions. Yet the eel guaranteed to make the server’s social reputation at any dinner is the fish-snob’s golden fleece, the Messinan.
‘That you can put such food to your lips, citizen of Messinia, privileges you above other mortal men … that Eel is the lord of the feast, master of the culinary battlefield.’ So wrote Archestratus in his famous poem The Gastronome, and Athenians enthusiastically agree. When Messinan eels become available Athenians literally fall over themselves to pay silly prices for them. The runners-up are eels from the lakes of Boeotia but, delicious as these eels are, they lack the Messinan cachet of acute scarcity.
Which is why, fifteen days ago in Sicily, Alcestis and her husband loaded Thetis, their little trading ship, with Syracusan cheeses, amphorae of dark, heavy Sicilian wine and above all, barrels of Messinan eels – some salted, some smoked, and some live and twining sinuously at the bottom of the salt-water casks. Alcestis has been selling at the Agora for three days now, deliberately keeping the eel in short supply, so those elegant horse-breeding idiots with their bottomless purses think themselves lucky for the chance to pay her five days’ wages for a single serving.
It is interesting that meat is less popular in the city, despite the huge meat-laden feasts enjoyed by the heroes of Homer’s poetry. One reason is that most Athenians get meat through sacrifice. Through an ancient bargain with the gods, the deity receives the life of the sacrificial beast and the skin, bones and horns (if any). Humans get the meat. Yet because of the communal nature of sacrifice, all involved get an equal share. So meat allocated after a sacrifice is usually a hunk of flesh, innards and gristle, hacked out of the carcass with little regard to the location of the best or even most suitable cuts.
Furthermore, there’s the matter of image. Most fish is sold in the markets of the Agora or Piraeus, so fish is essentially an urban dish. Those out in the country have beards greasy with pork fat. The city sophisticate dines delicately on white, flaky fish.
Today is the last day that Alcestis will set her stall. She has advertised the fact and expects to be sold out within the hour. Thereafter, she will spend the day haggling for goods that will make her a profit back home: bolts of silk, vials of purple Tyrian dye – the only colour-fast dye in the known world – Athenian vases and, hopefully, an advance script of the new work by Euripides. The playwright is hugely revered in Syracuse and a first edition of his latest work will go for a fortune.
The Athenian and Eastern merchants in the Agora will scowl at the indignity of dealing directly with a woman. No respectable female east of the Peloponnese would dream of bargaining in the market. Alcestis has seen, and secretly despises, aristocratic Athenian women so swaddled in veils that they are practically walking tents. Their purchases are made by servants into whose ears the women discreetly mutter. Alcestis does her business personally, and does it well.
Let the traders blanch at her naked face. Soon enough they’ll be looking at the silver in her hand. They also know that a woman so uninhibited in her appearance will be every bit as shameless in demanding the lowest price – and she’ll get it. Alcestis has spent the first part of the week researching her fellow stallholders. She knows the break-even sale point of every item she’s after.
A FISH-SELLER AND HIS CUSTOMER
Her husband would do the job, but he’s at the Piraeus getting Thetis ready to sail, with an olive-branch club and two hired dockyard thugs to protect the cargo already in the hold. Apart from the perils of the port, there’s still the fraught journey back to Italy. After a gentle voyage past Aegina towards Corinth, there’s the Peloponnese and the terrifying tack around the deadly promontory of Cape Malea.
Then the little merchantman will run up towards Corcyra, hugging the coast while the crew pray to avoid the sleek Luburnian pirate vessels that sneak down the coast from Albania. Then, provided no late spring storms wreck the ship on its sprint across the Adriatic to the Italian port of Brundisium, Alcestis can look forward to a leisurely cruise down the craggy coastline. A quick hop across the strait of Messina, en route offering the region’s patron god, Zeus Ithomatas, a libation in thanks for all the eels. Then home to haven in Ortygia, the main port of Syracuse.
Now the crowds gather at the rope barrier that holds back customers until the market is formally open. Alcestis completes her preparation by setting a little stack of weights next to the balance she obtained from the Agoranomists. Agoranomists oversee the market from their offices in the Stoa of Zeus, which is appropriate enough as Zeus is the god of order.
To ensure that goods are sold in true measure, market weights must conform to the official standard. Woe betide the trader who is accused before the Agoranomists if his weights are placed in the balance and found wanting. Regular stallholders have weights stamped with a little owl (the semi-official seal of Athens) to show that they – literally – measure up. Visitors such as Alcestis find it easier to rent the entire set from the market authorities. That way, if disgruntled customers complain about getting short weight she can simply refer them to the officials in the stoa.
Thinking of this, Alcestis looks briefly over her shoulder at the olive-oil dealer in the row behind. On the first day that she was at the Agora that stallholder was accused of selling short measures. The oil seller does not have a set of weights and measures because his high-legged table has a succession of bowls embedded in the surface. At the bottom of the bowl is a tap.
So when someone wants – for example – 12 kyathoi of oil (just over half a litre or just under a US pint), the dealer pours the amount into that bowl and when the bowl is filled, he opens the tap at the bottom into whatever container the customer provides. On this occasion a customer had suspected that the line that marks a ‘full’ bowl had been drawn lower than it should be.
Two market officials had come marching out of the stoa, their way cleared by one of the burly Scythian bowmen who keeps order in the Agora. The officials carried a vase with markings up the side. This they solemnly filled with oil to the precise 12 kyathoi mark and then poured it into the stallholder’s bowl. The result proved that, if anything, the stallholder had been over-generous – the full measure of oil came short of the marking by a finger’s width.
‘I am the market-inspector,’ said Pythias. ‘If you have come to shop for food, let me help you.’
‘Thanks, but no. I’ve already purchased fish for supper.’
Pythias took my basket and shook it around to examine the fish more thoroughly. ‘How much did you pay for these sprats?’ he enquired.
‘It took some bargaining, but I beat the man down to twenty copper coins.’
Outraged by this information, he pulled me back to the Agora by my hand. ‘Which of these vendors sold you that trash?’ he demanded.
Once I had pointed out the little old man as he squatted in his corner, Pythias descended on him in the full wrath of his office. ‘ You rogue – how dare you cheat a friend so mercilessly … I will show you how villains such as yourself are kept in their place while I’m in charge here!’
He emptied the basket on the ground, and ordered one of his attendants to trample the fish into paste. After this, he smiled, content with the rigour with which he had fulfilled his duties. ‘That is punishment enough, Lucius,’ he said. ‘We have shamed the old scoundrel.’
He waved at me to depart, which I did, stunned and speechless, without my dinner or money to buy another.
‘PUNISHING’ A FISH-TRADER, APULEIUS THE GOLDEN ASS 1.25
Alcestis uses a handful of thin, straight twigs to keep the ever-present flies off her fish, so as the market opens they look fresh and ready. Yet the first customer does not buy at once.
Instead he looks over her products and opines loudly, ‘I would watch that smoked eel. The other night young Chryshippos ate eel like that, and has not been off the privy since. As to the fresh, they do say fresh eel should not be eaten before June. It affects the bodily humours.’
Alcestis eyes the loudmouth. ‘I have salted eel also,’ she remarks. The man recoils, beard twitching in agitation.
‘Not the salted! Why, the last salted eel I ate was almost all salt. Afterwards I drank so much water I was in danger of becoming a fish myself. Indeed, I can still taste that salt, though I never recall being able to taste the fish.’
‘Tell me,’ an unamused Alcestis enquires, ‘does that old trick still work on anyone? You stand back and badmouth the product until a naive stallholder either drops her prices or offers you a discount to go away. That’s not working. Either you buy now, at full price, or I swear by Hermes, the god of merchants, you do not buy at all from me. Not even if I take everything home unsold.’
The two match stare for stare, while other buyers watch the stand-off. Finally, the loudmouth says, unabashed, ‘In that case, I’ll take those two sections of smoked eel over there, if you please.’
Alcestis briskly prepares the order, but before handing it over she says, ‘Oh, and there’s a critic’s fee of three obols. Cough up, or this fish goes to the gentleman behind you for a half-drachma discount.’
Without hesitation, the former critic uses his tongue to dig the surcharge from his mouth. Athenian coins are tiny. An obol is half the size of a fingernail and weighs very little. A coin-purse makes one a walking invitation to theft, and Athenian tunics have no pockets. So the easiest way to carry the tiny coins is to slip them between gums and lip into the little pouches that nature seems to have designed for the purpose.
Without comment, Alcestis drops the coins into the saucer of water that serves as her cash register. Then the rush is on, with customers elbowing each other aside, each furiously trying to outbid his neighbour. Prices soar as the stock diminishes and, as predicted, the table is cleared in under an hour.
Alcestis is cleaning up her stall when a perspiring middle-aged man rushes over. ‘The eel! Is there any eel left? Any at all?’
They’ll bring baskets of eels … and we will all rush to buy them, squabbling for possession with Morychus, Teleas, Glaucetes and every other glutton. When Melanthius comes to market last of all, they’ll tell him. ‘Sorry, no eels. They’re sold out.’
And he will groan and start into that monologue of his from Medea. ‘Alas, I perish, I’m dying. Oh, woe, that I have let those hidden in the beet leaves escape from me!’
ARISTOPHANES THE PEACE L.1002
Alcestis shakes her head. The man stands, gasping. He has evidently rushed here as fast as he could from whatever delayed him. ‘You know me, don’t you? Melanthius, the tragic playwright. I’m famous. You must have something set aside for special customers. I’ll pay double.’ The playwright starts digging desperately through the beet leaves on Alcestis’ table in the hope of finding an overlooked fillet.
He stops at the sound of a snigger from behind him. A well-dressed young man with a sallow complexion stands there smirking. Melanthius throws up his hands in horror. ‘Aristophanes, no! I’ve lost my eels, and you’re going to tell the world. You wouldn’t, would you? Not even you …!’
