It had been a long day—and a very long trip—and the captain was tired. He had been so busy that he could barely remember where the journey had started. Was it the teeming port of Miletus on the Anatolian coast, where he had scoured shops for purple cloth, spices, and the city’s special carved wooden beds that rich people loved? Was it the island of Delos, birthplace of the gods Apollo and Artemis, where humans were traded alongside luxury goods in one of the Mediterranean’s largest slave
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