Herodotus has a description of how the Carthaginians conducted trade without a common language.
I remember this because Robert Heinlein used the method for Interstellar trade on one planet in his novel Citizen of the Galaxy.
Probably took awhile to work out the protocol, though. I doubt it would be feasible in a busy port where everybody else is already wheeling and dealing with the aid of verbal communication.
Not really. It would have been rare to have that many ships in at once. One ship would have satisified the trade needs for two or three goods for months at least.
Uh… maybe in the original remote beachfront Libyan setting that Herodotus describes, but the OP was asking about the ancient port cities of extensive trading empires.
You try arranging your merchandise tidily along the harborfront of a major port city and then going back to your boats and waiting for the natives to set out some gold to exchange for it, and see where that gets you.
Concur. Plus, the trip to make offerings at the Temple in Jerusalem was mandatory for evey Jew. Although not yet in the Diaspora per se, even at that time Jews came from distant countries. They are not going to shlep a calf for sacrifice these distances; the money-changers were essential to the practice/liturgy at that time.
My take is that the Jesus story reflects the entire Temple-era rejection by the early Christians. The only Sacrifice is Jesus Himself.
(Post diaspora Rabbinical thought has obviously had to deal with the inability to slaughter cute little calves with no place to do it.)
No, I knew exactly of what I spoke. Ships did not constantly travel in and out of port - for one thing, you could often get only one voyage a year, so ships spent a lot of time in port. For another, the port wasn’t the center of bustling markets, but the gateway to major markets. For a third, cities with large ports have plenty of space.
The idea that you couldn’t do business in a perfectly commonplace manner just because the port was busy is utter nonsense. If someone wants to buy what you’ve got, you could do business.
I think the Herodotus story is a way to expand your trade empire. It shouldn’t take many decades before there is enough of trust before the traders to meet in person. They will soon learn the names of the most popular items in each others language and soon there’ll be half-blooded babies too. After that, the Phoenicians will start planning a port facility and many of their colonies were nothing more, in contrast to Greeks who were mainly just solving overpopulation with them.
The Phoenicians were notorious slave traders (=kidnappers), so it must have been a somewhat tedious process to make the locals come close.
There was no such thing as a “nation” 2000 years ago. The idea of nation-states is a relatively modern one, originating sometime around the 1800s.
As has been pointed out, at that time pretty much any part of anything around the Mediterranean would have been Rome. There was Rome, Roman allies (socii), and barbarian lands. There were no “other nations”. So the real question is: are you a Roman citizen, a subject of a Roman territory/ally, or a barbarian? That’s going to make a very big difference as to how you are treated/received.
So they weren’t called nations, but there was numerous Kingdoms, Empires and City States. See here for a list:
This was a technique developed for dealing with uncivilized people beyond the straits of Herakles. Anywhere in the Mediterranean after the time of Alexander you could probably get by using Koine. In the east, Aramaic might be more useful. If all you are doing is trade, you can usually get along with less than 500 words and a lot of hand gestures.