Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

captivity

along with. But on the other hand, a grammateus was well paid, twice as much as a teacher and four times as much as a limeburner. True, a glassblower was much better paid, and the more shrewd merchants made even more, but a grammateus was a good prospect and could take his pick of the girls. By the time he was twenty, virtually every Jewish young man in Rome was married, so Uri still had a year. As a grammateus he would have free choice of single girls older than twelve, and there were lots of those, and every father dreaded that his daughter would remain a spinster. Uri loathed the thought of marriage, but he conceded that it was a fate he could not escape. For days he was thrilled to have his choice among potential brides; he would cast a leisurely eye over girls, sizing up their charms,

and at nights he would have such terrible dreams that he would have to quickly rinse out his tunic in the morning. Neither Sarah nor Joseph made any remark about the tunic that was left out to dry on the line, as if they had not noticed. One even i ng Joseph announced furiously that Honoratus wanted to put up his idiot son of sixteen for the post of grammateus, even though he could barely write and knew no other language but Greek and could not count either. Honoratus was a rich and influential man, the owner of three tenement buildings in the Syrian quarter, and his wife was a cousin of the banker Tullius Basileus. The only sort of person who might knock Honoratus’s son off his perch was someone like Uri. Uri said nothing, just nodded.

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