Read Online Alexander and Alestria by Shan Sa - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Shan Sa
Tags: prose_contemporary
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attracted the wise from all over the world, and the Achemenides opened the gates of the City of the King to all, offering them positions in their countless ministries. Compared to the number of Persian officials, the Ecclesia in Athens and the Macedonian council were mere child's play, but the Persians had the intelligence to simplify complexity.
The Great Kings made no decisions without consulting the academies of arithmetics and of astrologers.
The Academy of Manners oversaw good relations between different peoples.
The Academy of Architects designed towns and palaces.
The Academy of Sports organized horse races.
The Academy of Agriculture sent its inspectors and specialists to the very limits of the empire.
The Academy of Water was responsible for wells, irrigation, and waterborne trade.
The Academy of Industry built roads and dams.
There were academies of painting, perfumes, lamps, ceramics, slave management, weaving, royal animals, and medicine, each gathering, classifying, devising, and making official its respective specialty.
The Academy of Poets was associated exclusively with royal life. Poets followed the king and, in beautiful calligraphy, had to write poems inspired by every situation: audiences, receptions, banquets, journeys. When men are long gone… poetry remains. It transforms everyday moments into historical fragments. The Great Kings of Persia knew how to make themselves immortal.
The Academy of Music inventoried fashionable tunes and composed official melodies. Wherever the king went, he heard music appropriate to the place and his activities.
Poetry and music are man's most beautiful adornments.
***
The center of Babylon was occupied by dignitaries and the rich; the poor lived around the outskirts of the city, in low-slung houses made of wood and beaten earth. They all had favorite taverns, be they luxurious or tumbledown, where men could meet and talk.
They drank infusions of leaves from the lands around the Indus, and they circulated a long pipe connected to a flask of water.
"Beyond Persian territories lie the lands of the Indus," announced the head of the Order of Merchants, who had invited me into a sumptuous tavern reserved for his personal use.
The merchants were not common stall keepers, I gathered from Mazee, Darius's former general who had become my most fervent servant. Throughout Persian lands, merchants were respected and stall keepers despised. The Persians considered that merchants transported the wonders of this world from one country to another, while stall keepers robbed their own neighbors in the market square.
I drank the infusion and pretended to enjoy his pipe. The smoke made me nauseous, and my head spun, but I decided to please Oibares, the most influential man in Babylon.
In this empire so avid for wealth and exoticism, merchants governed from behind the scenes, and extended their invisible power to the very limits of the earth. The richest of them owned as many as ten caravans, which came and went in rotation to ensure a constant stream of new goods. Supplying kings and satraps, selling weapons and working as spies, with an intimate knowledge of distant inaccessible lands, they knew how to manipulate tribal chiefs and corrupt armies. They brought messages of peace or delivered declarations of war. In order to protect their own best interests, they were affiliated with the Order of Merchants, which controlled the trading routes, set out the laws, and settled disagreements. Every ten lunar years the merchants held a great nocturnal ceremony during which they threw straws into a vase to elect a new leader.
Oibares was forty-five, with shining blue eyes, a fine proud nose, and thin lips. Like all rich Babylonians obsessed with their appearance, he wore a scarlet turban on his shaven head, and had a long beard in which his own hair was blended with extensions. He created magnificent arrangements with it, dying it chestnut brown, curling it with hot irons,
The Great Kings made no decisions without consulting the academies of arithmetics and of astrologers.
The Academy of Manners oversaw good relations between different peoples.
The Academy of Architects designed towns and palaces.
The Academy of Sports organized horse races.
The Academy of Agriculture sent its inspectors and specialists to the very limits of the empire.
The Academy of Water was responsible for wells, irrigation, and waterborne trade.
The Academy of Industry built roads and dams.
There were academies of painting, perfumes, lamps, ceramics, slave management, weaving, royal animals, and medicine, each gathering, classifying, devising, and making official its respective specialty.
The Academy of Poets was associated exclusively with royal life. Poets followed the king and, in beautiful calligraphy, had to write poems inspired by every situation: audiences, receptions, banquets, journeys. When men are long gone… poetry remains. It transforms everyday moments into historical fragments. The Great Kings of Persia knew how to make themselves immortal.
The Academy of Music inventoried fashionable tunes and composed official melodies. Wherever the king went, he heard music appropriate to the place and his activities.
Poetry and music are man's most beautiful adornments.
***
The center of Babylon was occupied by dignitaries and the rich; the poor lived around the outskirts of the city, in low-slung houses made of wood and beaten earth. They all had favorite taverns, be they luxurious or tumbledown, where men could meet and talk.
They drank infusions of leaves from the lands around the Indus, and they circulated a long pipe connected to a flask of water.
"Beyond Persian territories lie the lands of the Indus," announced the head of the Order of Merchants, who had invited me into a sumptuous tavern reserved for his personal use.
The merchants were not common stall keepers, I gathered from Mazee, Darius's former general who had become my most fervent servant. Throughout Persian lands, merchants were respected and stall keepers despised. The Persians considered that merchants transported the wonders of this world from one country to another, while stall keepers robbed their own neighbors in the market square.
I drank the infusion and pretended to enjoy his pipe. The smoke made me nauseous, and my head spun, but I decided to please Oibares, the most influential man in Babylon.
In this empire so avid for wealth and exoticism, merchants governed from behind the scenes, and extended their invisible power to the very limits of the earth. The richest of them owned as many as ten caravans, which came and went in rotation to ensure a constant stream of new goods. Supplying kings and satraps, selling weapons and working as spies, with an intimate knowledge of distant inaccessible lands, they knew how to manipulate tribal chiefs and corrupt armies. They brought messages of peace or delivered declarations of war. In order to protect their own best interests, they were affiliated with the Order of Merchants, which controlled the trading routes, set out the laws, and settled disagreements. Every ten lunar years the merchants held a great nocturnal ceremony during which they threw straws into a vase to elect a new leader.
Oibares was forty-five, with shining blue eyes, a fine proud nose, and thin lips. Like all rich Babylonians obsessed with their appearance, he wore a scarlet turban on his shaven head, and had a long beard in which his own hair was blended with extensions. He created magnificent arrangements with it, dying it chestnut brown, curling it with hot irons,
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