Looking for a Novel I read many years ago.

[Mackon]

It was very light on the Alternate History and could as easily passed as straight Historical Fiction. Don't remember many details but here goes. The Protagonist was a child slave in ancient Greece who worked his way up to be a semi powerful merchant. (In fact that was what I thought the book was called for a long time 'The Merchant') The story follows the main character pretty closely without much of the wider world impacting on his schemes successes and failures except for how they effect the market.

The book ends with the 'hero' getting caught in the wrong bed and on the edge of losing everything he's built and falling into despair when his wife (the love of his life that has put up with more than a few affairs on his part) slaps around the back of the head to get him into gear again (this is a constant meme through the story of him having a high risk high gain scheme) and they start making plans to relocate their small trading empire on the coast of Africa.

Sorry if the summary isn't that clear must be more than two decades since I read it and my memory isn't the best.

Anyway, any of that ramble sound familiar to anybody?