Over the Wine-Dark Sea

9

On the second day after leaving Laos, the Aphrodite sailed between the island of Kapreai and the Cape of the Sirennousai. As Menedemos swung the merchant galley east toward Pompaia, he pointed to an old, tumbledown temple on the headland of the cape and remarked, "They say Odysseus built that place. And they say some of the rocky islands off Kapreai are the ones where the Sirens lived."

"They say all sorts of strange things," Sostratos answered. "Do you believe them?"

"I don't know," Menedemos said. "I truly don't. There was the whirlpool off Messene, right where Skylle was supposed to be."

"Yes, there was the whirlpool," his cousin said, "but where was the horrible monster sucking in the water to make it? Did you see her? Has anyone since Odysseus heard the Sirens singing on those rocks off Kapreai?"

"I don't know any of that, either," Menedemos said, a little testily. "But if anyone did hear the Sirens singing, they'd lure him to his doom, so how could he come back and say what he heard?" He smiled a smug smile.

But Sostratos wouldn't let him get away with it. "Odysseus figured out a way to do it. With Homer known wherever Hellenes live, don't you suppose some other bold fellow would have put wax in his sailors' ears so he could listen to the song the hero heard?"

"Maybe." Menedemos gave Sostratos a sour look. "Sometimes when you take things to pieces, you take all the fun out of them."

"No." Sostratos tossed his head in emphatic disagreement. "Taking things to pieces is the fun. If you leave them sitting there the way they were when you found them, what have you learned? Nothing."

"Why do you have to learn something all the time?" Menedemos asked. "Why can't something be interesting just because it is what it is?"

"If everyone thought that way, we'd still be sailing pentekonters and swinging bronze swords, the way the men of the Iliad and Odyssey did," Sostratos said.

"How do you know that's what they did?" Menedemos said. "You call the Odyssey nonsense when it suits you, so why do you choose to believe that?"

Sostratos opened his mouth, then closed it again. When at last he did speak, it was in thoughtful tones: "Do you know, I never once wondered about it. The strange pieces are those that seem the hardest to believe, not the homely little details of the heroes' world. We know pentekonters and bronze - we don't know Sirens and Skylle."

"Well, then, you believe what you want to believe and I'll believe what I want to believe, and we'll both be happy," Menedemos said. Sostratos did not look happy about that, but Menedemos didn't worry about it. He'd distracted his cousin, which served almost as well as convincing him, especially since he could cut the conversation short right after that by adding, "I believe we're just about to Pompaia, and I'm going to pay attention to that."

He had to pay more attention to it than he'd expected, for Pompaia lay not on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, as Leptines had led him to believe, but a few stadia up the Sarnos River, on the northern side of the stream. Soldiers - presumably Samnites - peered down at him from the wall as his rowers guided the Aphrodite into place at one of the piers thrusting out into the stream.

As a couple of locals tied the akatos to it quay, Sostratos pointed north. "Look. That mountain there in back of the town has a good deal of the look of Aitne to it, doesn't it? It's not nearly so tall, of course, but it's got the same conical shape."

"So it does," said Menedemos, who, up to that moment, had had no chance to worry about the mountain.

"I wonder if it's a volcano, too," Sostratos said. "What did Leptines say its name was?"

"I don't think he did." Menedemos raised his voice to call out to one of the roustabouts: "Hey! Do you speak Greek?"

"Me?" The fellow pointed to himself. "Yes, I speak some. What do you want?"

"What's the name of that mountain north of your city here?"

"You must be from far away," the roustabout said, "not to know about Mount Ouesouion."

"Ouesouion?" Menedemos echoed, trying to imitate the local's pronunciation. "What an ugly name," he murmured in an aside to Sostratos, who dipped his head in agreement. Menedemos gave his attention back to the Pompaian: "We are from far away - we've sailed all the way from Rhodes."

"Rhodes?" The roustabout had almost as much trouble with the name as Menedemos had with Ouesouion. "Where's that at? Is it down by Taras, where so many of you Hellenes live?"

"It's farther away than that," Menedemos answered. "You have to cross the Ionian Sea to go from Taras to the mainland of Hellas, and then you have to cross the Aegean Sea to go from the mainland of Hellas to Rhodes."

"Do tell," the Pompaian said. "I went over to Neapolis once, I did. Had to walk two days to get there and two days back." Menedemos carefully held his face straight. Then he wondered how many people here had never gone two days' journey from their little town, if this fellow thought doing so was worth bragging about. The roustabout went on, "So what did you bring us from this Rhodes place, wherever it's at?"

Now Menedemos did smile, and launched into his sales pitch: "Fine wine from Khios, fine silk from Kos - "

"What's silk?" the local asked. "I don't know that word."

"It's a fabric, smoother and softer than linen," Menedemos answered. "And we have perfumes from Rhodian roses, and papyrus and ink" - not that we're likely to sell any of those here, he thought - "and . . . peafowl."

"What are peafowl?" the Pompaian said. "Don't know that word, neither."

"Sostratos . . ." Menedemos said, and Sostratos displayed one of the chicks. Menedemos gave a highly colored description of what an adult peacock looked like, ending, "It were not too much to call him the most magnificent bird in the world."

To his surprise, the roustabout burst into raucous laughter. "Tell me another one," he said. "You're going to sell us those ugly birds for half the money in the world, and they'll stay ugly, and you'll be gone. Do you think we're that stupid?"

Oh, a pestilence, Menedemos thought. We've sailed so far, we've come to a place where the people have no idea what a peacock is like. How are we supposed to sell the chicks if no one believes they'll grow up to be beautiful? He hadn't thought of that when he decided to stop at Pompaia.

As Sostratos put the chick back into the cage, he said, "The rich folk here will know what peacocks are, I think. And even if they don't, the Hellenes up at Neapolis will."

"I hope so," Menedemos said. "We'll find out when we go into the market square, I expect."

"Silk and wine will sell," Sostratos said. "Silk and wine will sell anywhere."

"That's true." Remembering that it was true made Menedemos feel a little better. With a small sigh, he said, "I suppose we can sell leftover chicks back in Rhodes, too, but we'll get more for them here in the west - if we can get anything at all for them, that is."

"Shall we go find out?" his cousin asked.

Before answering, Menedemos gauged the sun. It was sliding down toward the western horizon, but would still be a while getting there. "Why not?" he said. "We'll do some business today, I expect, and we'll let word get around tonight."

When he and Sostratos entered Pompaia, they didn't go in alone. They made a procession of it. Menedemos led, his hands free. "Peafowl chicks!" he called in Greek. "Rare wines from Khios! Fine silk from Kos!" Sostratos carried a cage with several chicks in it. Behind them strode sailors with bolts of silk in their hands, and others hauling amphorai of Ariousian between them on carrying poles.

The procession would have been more impressive if Menedemos hadn't had to pause a couple of times to ask passersby how to get to the agora. Not everyone spoke Greek, either, which made things more complicated. Even though the blank housefronts and narrow, winding, smelly streets put him in mind of a polis that had never heard of Hippodamos and his grid, he was acutely aware of having come to a foreign part of the world.

Sostratos noticed something he hadn't: "Look! Some of the signs over the shops must be in Oscan, because that certainly isn't Greek."

"You're right," Menedemos said after a moment. "I hadn't paid much attention to them."

"I hadn't either, not at first," Sostratos said. "A lot of the poleis here in Great Hellas still use old-fashioned alphabets with characters you'd never see in Athens, for instance, but even when I can figure out what all the letters are supposed to sound like, the words they spell out don't make any sense."

"I suppose they do if you're a Pompaian," Menedemos said. "I didn't even know the Samnites could write Oscan. Looks like they can, though."

"So it does," Sostratos agreed. "I wonder if the Romans, up farther north still, have an alphabet of their own."

Menedemos looked back over his shoulder at his cousin. "There are times, O marvelous one, when you find the least important things in the world to worry about."

Sostratos chuckled. " 'O marvelous one,' is it? You sound like Sokrates when he's being sarcastically polite to some poor fool. And I wasn't worried. I was just - "

"Curious," Menedemos broke in. "You always are. But before you start learning to write history in Oscan, remember that we're here to sell things first."

"I know that." Sostratos sounded angry. "Have I ever disrupted anything because I'm interested in history?"

"Well, no." Menedemos admitted what he couldn't deny.

"Then kindly leave me alone about it." Sostratos still seemed hot enough to fire a pot.

Menedemos might have given him a hot answer, too, but they finally came out into Pompaia's agora, and he started crying his wares instead. Not far from the agora stood the temple Leptines had mentioned, its columns and walls cut from the rather dark local stone and the decorative elements brightly painted, just as they would have been in a Hellenic polis.

"Hardly seems like barbarian work," one of the sailors said.

"I was thinking the same thing," Menedemos answered. "The architect was probably a Hellene." Then he raised his voice again: "Perfume from Rhodes! Silk from Kos! Fine Ariousian, the best in the world, from Khios! Peafowl chicks!" He turned to Sostratos. "I wish you did know some Oscan. Then more of these people would be able to understand."

His cousin pointed. "I think we'll do all right." Sure enough, Pompaians were converging on the men from the Aphrodite.

One of them, a plump, prosperous-looking fellow in a toga - a garment Menedemos found very strange and not very attractive - surprised him by going over to the cage with the peafowl chicks and addressing Sostratos in good Greek: "Are these the young of the big, shiny bird with the crest and the incredible tail?"

"Why, yes," Sostratos replied. "How do you know of peafowl? I didn't expect anyone here in Pompaia would."

"As it happens, Herennius Egnatius brought his through the town day before yesterday, on the way up to his home in Caudium," the man said. "Everyone who saw the male was amazed. He said he bought it from a couple of Hellenes in Taras. And so, when I saw you . . ."

"At your service, then," Sostratos said. "I would be lying, though, if I told you I knew which chicks would become peacocks and which peahens." Here in Pompaia, Menedemos might have told that lie. He didn't expect to be back any time soon to be called on it. But Sostratos had forestalled him, so now he had to make the best of it.

The Pompaian didn't seem displeased. "Life is full of gambles, is it not?" he said. "If I bought two of these little birds, I should have a reasonable chance of getting at least one peacock, eh? What is your price?"

Menedemos spoke before Sostratos could: "Two Tarentine minai apiece."

With a cough, the man in the toga said, "That is a lot of silver."

"It's a lot less than Herennius Egnatius paid for his birds," Sostratos put in.

"Which does not make what I said any less true," the Pompaian replied. "Half your price might strike me as reasonable."

"Half my price strikes me as unprofitable," Menedemos said. The Pompaian smiled. He might be a barbarian in a peculiar garment, but he knew the start of a dicker when he heard one.

And it turned out to be quite a quick dicker, too, for he wanted to buy as much as Menedemos wanted to sell. They didn't take long to settle on one mina, sixty drakhmai for each bird. The local spoke a couple of crackling sentences of Oscan to the retainers who stood near him, then returned to Greek: "I shall go to my house to get the money. And when I return, I may have a thing or two to say about your wine, as well."

Menedemos bowed, "Just as you say, O best one. Would you care to talk about the price now, so you'll know how much silver to bring back here to the market square?"

The Pompaian plucked at his graying beard. "Do you know, that is not a bad notion. You Hellenes have a knack for picking smooth ways to do things. How much will you try to steal from me?"

"Sixty drakhmai the amphora," Menedemos said calmly.

"What?" Now the local dug a finger in his ear, as if to make sure he'd heard right. He spoke in Oscan, presumably translating the price. His retainers all made horrified noises. Not a bad ploy, Menedemos thought. The Pompaian went back to Greek again: "You Hellenes say your gods drink something called nectar, is it not so? Have you got nectar inside those jars?"

With a smile, Menedemos said, "You are closer than you think. Any Khian wine is among the best that comes from Hellas, and Ariousian is to common Khian as common Khian is to ordinary wine. It's so sweet and thick and golden, you almost hate to mix it with water."

"As far as I am concerned, you Hellenes are daft for mixing wine with water in the first place." The Pompaian folded his arms across his chest. "I shall not pay even a khalkos, though, before I taste this wine for myself. Peafowl are hard to come by. Wine, now - wine is easy."

At Menedemos' dip of the head, one of the sailors unsealed an amphora. At the same time, one of the Pompaian's men borrowed a cup from a local wineseller. Menedemos poured some of the precious Ariousian into it and handed it to the local. "Here you are. See for yourself."

The Pompaian stuck his forefinger into the cup and flicked out a drop or two onto the dusty ground of the market square to do duty for a libation. He muttered something in Oscan, presumably a prayer to whatever god the Samnites worshiped in place of Dionysos. Then he sniffed the wine, and then, slowly and deliberately, he drank.

He made a good game try at not showing how impressed he was, but his eyebrows rose in spite of himself. After smacking his lips, he said, "Sixty drakhmai is too much, but I can see how you had the nerve to ask for it. I might give you sixty for two amphorai."

Now Menedemos tossed his head. "Again, there'd be no profit in it for me at that price, not when you reckon in the effort it took me to bring the wine from Khios all the way to Pompaia." Sincerity filled his voice, as sweetness filled the Ariousian. He wasn't even lying.

Maybe the local sensed as much. Or maybe he just had more silver than things he could readily buy in Pompaia, for, as with the peafowl chicks, he didn't seem to haggle so hard as he might have. Before long, he said, "All right, then, I'll give you a mina for the two jars."

"Fifty drakhmai the amphora?" Menedemos said, and the Pompaian nodded. Menedemos dipped his head. "A bargain." They clasped hands to seal it. Menedemos asked Sostratos, "How much does our friend owe us altogether?"

"Four minai, twenty drakhmai," Sostratos said at once, as if he had a counting board in front of him. Menedemos could have figured it out, too, but not nearly so fast.

"Four minai, twenty drakhmai," the Pompaian repeated. "I shall bring it. You wait here." Off he swept, retainers in his wake. When he returned, he brought back silver coined in most of the poleis of Great Hellas, as well as coins from Italian towns. Menedemos and Sostratos had to pay a jeweler three oboloi for the use of his scale.

Sostratos, as usual, did the weighing and calculating. When he dipped his head, Menedemos gave the Pompaian the birds and the wine. The local went off, seeming well pleased with himself. In a low voice, Menedemos asked, "How much extra did we make?"

"By weight, you mean?" his cousin answered. "A few drakhmai."

"It all adds up," Menedemos said happily, and Sostratos dipped his head once more.

The next morning found Sostratos spending one of those extra drakhmai on the hire of a mule in the market square and Menedemos loudly dismayed about it. "Why do you want to go riding around?" he demanded. "Somebody will knock you over the head, that's what'll happen."

"I doubt it," Sostratos said.

"I don't," his cousin snapped. "I ought to send a bodyguard out with you, is what I ought to do. You're a hopeless dub with a sword or a spear."

"You know that, and I know that, but these Italians don't know it," Sostratos answered. "All they'll see is a big man, one they'd think twice about bothering. And I want to look around a little. Who can guess when the Aphrodite will come back to Pompaia again, if she ever does?"

"All right. All right!" Menedemos threw his hands in the air. "You're more stubborn than that mule. Go on, then. Just remember, I'll be the one who has to explain to your father why I didn't bring you back to Rhodes in one piece."

"You worry too much," Sostratos said, and then started to laugh. "And do you know what else? You sound the way I usually do when I'm trying to keep you out of some madcap scrape. See how it feels to be on the other side?"

His cousin still looked unhappy, but stopped arguing. Menedemos even gave him a leg up so he could mount the mule. Once Sostratos swung aboard the beast - which gave him a resentful stare - his feet almost brushed the ground: he was indeed a large man on a smallish beast. And he did have a sword belted on his hip; he wasn't such a fool as to wander weaponless.

"Sell some more chicks," he told Menedemos. "I'll be back this afternoon."

"Why anyone would want to go wandering around a countryside full of half-wild Italians is beyond me," Menedemos said. "It's not like you've got a pretty girl waiting for you, or anything else worth doing. By the gods, you're just going around for the sake of going around, and where's the sense in that?"

"Herodotos did it." To Sostratos, that was answer enough - more than answer enough, in fact. His cousin just rolled his eyes.

Sostratos booted the mule into motion. It brayed resentfully, but then started to walk. Its motion put Sostratos a little in mind of that of the Aphrodite, though here he was feeling it through his backside rather than the soles of his feet. He picked his way toward the north gate through Pompaia's reeking alleys: he wanted a closer look at Mount Ouesouion. The Aphrodite probably wouldn't go back to Sicily and the environs of Mount Aitne, so this was his best - probably his only - chance to see a volcano.

He had to ask his way to the gate only once, and got lucky when he did: the first man to whom he put the question not only understood Greek but gave directions that proved detailed and accurate. The Pompaian didn't even ask for an obolos before answering. Proves he's a barbarian - any Hellene would have, Sostratos thought.

Once out of town, Sostratos guided the mule in the direction of the mountain. Farms and vineyards filled the rolling countryside. Leptines hadn't exaggerated: the land looked finer and broader than any Sostratos had seen in cramped, rocky Hellas, though the coastal lowlands of Asia Minor might have matched it.

The grainfields weren't planted, not in the heat of summer. When the fall rains came, the farmers would put in their wheat and barley, as they did in Hellas, to be harvested in the spring. But the vines were growing nicely. Sostratos had liked some of the Italian wines he'd drunk. He hadn't found any worth taking back to Hellas with him, but they weren't bad.

A fellow trimming vines not far from the road waved to him. Sostratos lifted a hand in return. The farmer no doubt took him for another Italian. His tunic and broad-brimmed hat were nothing out of the ordinary. He stroked his chin. Had he been clean-shaven like Menedemos, everyone would have known him for a Hellene at once: the fashion for scraping one's cheeks smooth hadn't yet reached the Samnites. He was less likely to find trouble if people didn't take him for a foreigner.

He rode past a couple of grave markers. One of the stelai had writing on it, in the odd-looking local alphabet. Sostratos wondered what the words meant. People were working in the fields a couple of plethra away, but he didn't call to them. Farmers were unlikely either to understand Greek or to be able to read their own tongue.

When he came to a roadside boulder convenient for remounting, he slid off the mule and tied it to a nearby sapling. Then he squatted, not to ease himself but to scoop up some dirt in the palm of his hand. The soil was grayish brown and crumbly; it had almost the look of ashes to it. His eyes went to the slopes of Ouesouion. What was more likely than that a burning mountain should scatter ashes far and wide?

Sostratos sniffed at the dirt, tasted of it. He was a trader, not a farmer, but, like most Hellenes, he knew something about judging soils. If this dirt wasn't rich with brimstone, he would have been astonished. No wonder the grapevines grew so exuberantly.

He led the mule over to the rock and climbed aboard it once more. It let out an amazingly human-sounding sigh, as if to say it had hoped its work was done for the day. But, being a reasonably good-natured beast, it consented to walk on with no more complaint than that.

After a while, Sostratos halted again, this time under the shade of a gray-branched, gray-green-leaved olive tree. The mule nibbled at grass that grew in little patchy clumps in the shade while Sostratos ate barley bread and sheep's-milk cheese and drank from a little jar of some local wine or another. He thought about sleeping for a while in the heat of the day, but tossed his head. Menedemos would say that was asking for trouble, and he'd very likely be right.

And so Sostratos mounted the mule once again - awkwardly this time, because he had no rock handy to give himself a boost, but he managed. The mule protested much more loudly and vehemently than it had before: it was convinced he was extorting an unfair amount of work from it. He had to whack its haunch with the flat of his hand to make it get going again.

He looked back toward the gray stone walls of Pompaia. He had no trouble spotting the town; he'd been riding mostly uphill, so it hadn't vanished behind higher ground. But he was surprised at how many stadia the mule, dismayed braying and all, had managed to cover. A glance at the sun showed noon already gone.

"Time to head back," he told the mule, and turned it toward the Sarnos River once more. It seemed no happier about going downhill than it had about going up-, and almost bucked him off over its head when an ocellated lizard as long as his arm dashed across the road in front of it.

"Hold still, you stupid, gods-detested thing!" Sostratos cried, hanging on to the mule's bristly mane for dear life till he got an arm around its neck. "It's not even a snake. It couldn't hurt you if it bit you." He didn't think the beast believed him.

Some time later, when he was a good deal nearer to Pompaia and the farms clustered more closely together, a large gray-and-white dog of a breed he'd never seen before advanced on the mule from a field. By the dog's fierce, stiff-legged gait and by the way it bared long, sharp teeth, Sostratos wouldn't have been the least surprised to learn it was half wolf.

As it came nearer and snarled again and again, he drew the sword that he hadn't needed against robbers. Fighting a dog from muleback was about as close as he cared to come to actual cavalry combat.

But the mule proved not to need his help. The harmless lizard had terrified it. It brayed at the dog - which really could have done it harm - and lashed out with its forefeet. The dog made one little barking rush, then decided it didn't feel like sampling either mule or Hellene after all. It loped off toward a round stone farmhouse with a thatched roof a couple of plethra from the road. The mule seemed inclined to pursue it.

Sostratos yanked back hard on the reins. The mule brayed and gave him a resentful stare. He stared back. "You really are a stupid creature," he told it. "You don't know the difference between what can hurt you and what can't." By the way it tried to pitch him off onto the dirt road again, it believed him no more than it had about the ocellated lizard.

He got into Pompaia a little before sunset, exactly as he'd planned, and succeeded in making his way back to the agora from the northern gate without having to ask directions of anyone. After returning the mule to the local from whom he'd hired it, he walked over to Menedemos: walked with a slow, rolling, bowlegged stride, for he'd done no riding for a long time before this.

His cousin laughed, recognizing the signs. "Don't you wish you'd stayed here with us?" Menedemos asked.

"I do not," Sostratos replied with dignity. "I've gone exploring, and I'm glad I did it."

"Have any trouble?"

"Oh yes - twice." Sostratos dipped his head. He made as if to draw the sword again. "Once I almost had to fight."

"Do you see? Do you see?" Menedemos said, his voice rising in excitement. "I told you it was dangerous out there. You're probably lucky to get back here alive. What happened, by the gods?"

"You're right - the Italian countryside is a rougher place than I ever thought it was," Sostratos said gravely. "The first time, a lizard tried to carry off my mule: that's what the mule thought, anyhow. And then we were assailed again, the second time by a . . . stray dog."

The sailors in the market square with Menedemos laughed. After a moment, so did Sostratos' cousin. He said, "All right, you got by with it. If you want to make me look the fool, I don't suppose I can blame you. But I still say you were the foolish one for going off by yourself."

Sostratos grunted. He'd hoped for more of a rise out of Menedemos. What was the fun of annoying him if he wouldn't get annoyed? Dissatisfied but doing his best not to show it, Sostratos asked, "How did you do here?"

Now Menedemos' face lit up. "I'll tell you, I'm tempted to stay here longer, to the crows with me if I'm not. I sold Ariousian, I sold silk, I sold perfume, I sold a peafowl chick. A lot of these Pompaians look to have more silver than fancy goods to buy with it, so they leap hard when they see something they want."

"Do you think the same won't hold true in Neapolis?" Sostratos asked. "That's a real polis, and the folk there won't have seen the kinds of things we've got any more than the Pompaians have."

"Some truth to that - but only some, I think," Menedemos said. "Ships from Hellas surely come to Neapolis more often than they put in here."

"You may be right," Sostratos said. "Even so, though, I've seen as much of Pompaia and the countryside as I care to."

"Well, yes, but have we seen as much of Pompaia's silver as we're going to? That's the real question, wouldn't you say?"

"You're the captain. I can't tell you when to sail," Sostratos answered. "I'm just thinking that in a small town like this, you do most of your business right at the start, and then it peters out after that." Menedemos looked mulish. Have had all too recent experience with a veritable mule, Sostratos had no trouble noting the resemblance. With a sigh, he said, "Very well, O best one. If you want to stay in Pompaia a while longer, stay a while longer we shall."

"That's right," Menedemos said smugly.

Menedemos glanced out over the agora. He was beginning to hate Pompaians. Over the past two days, he'd sold one amphora of Ariousian, one bolt of Koan silk, and not a single peafowl chick. He wasn't even meeting the Aphrodite's expenses, let alone turning a profit.

His glare reached over to Sostratos. His cousin only smiled back, which irked him further. Had Sostratos said something like, I told you so, they could have had a good, satisfying, air-clearing quarrel. Of course, had Sostratos said something like, I told you so, Menedemos' pride probably would have made him keep the Aphrodite tied up outside Pompaia for another couple of days. He knew that perfectly well. In fact, he was looking for the excuse.

But Sostratos kept his mouth shut. He just went on smiling that irritating, superior smile. As sunset of the second long, boring, empty day neared, Menedemos knew he was beaten. "All right," he snarled, as if Sostratos were arguing with him. "All right, curse it. Tomorrow morning we'll head up toward Neapolis."

"Fair enough," his cousin said. "All things considered, the stop was worthwhile - we did make money here."

"Well, so we did." Menedemos gruffly allowed Sostratos to let him down easy.

Later, he sometimes wondered what would have happened had Sostratos chosen that afternoon to squabble. His life, and his cousin's, would have been very different. He was sure of that, if of nothing else.

In Pompaia, the taverns and brothels lay close by the river. After returning to the Aphrodite, Menedemos sent Diokles and a double handful of sober sailors through them, making sure his crew would be in place and ready to go at dawn. "Tell 'em they can stay with the barbarians here if they don't want to come with you," he instructed the oarmaster.

"Don't you worry about a thing, skipper," Diokles said. "I'll take care of it."

And he did, too, with his usual unfussy competence. He had every sailor back aboard the merchant galley before the night could have been more than two hours old. That was a performance even Menedemos hadn't expected. "By the dog of Egypt, how did you manage?" he asked when Diokles returned with the last two sodden Hellenes.

"Not so hard," the keleustes answered. "All I had to do was listen for real Greek. It would've been a lot tougher job down in one of the towns of Great Hellas."

"All right. Good. You've done everything we've asked of you since we went out from Rhodes, Diokles, and you've done most things better than Sostratos or I would have hoped," Menedemos said. "When we get home, you'll find I haven't forgotten."

"That's mighty kind of you, captain," the oarmaster said. "Me, I'm just doing my job."

"And very well, too." Menedemos looked up to the flickering stars and yawned. "And now you'd better get some sleep. No matter how good a job you were doing, I'd bet you had maybe a cup of wine or two yourself while you were tracking down the boys who'd sooner drink or screw than row."

"Who, me?" Diokles was the picture of innocence. "I don't know what you're talking about." He and Menedemos both laughed. Then he went to perch on a rower's bench and leaned against the planking of the ship, while Menedemos spread his himation on the poop deck and, the night being fine and mild, slept on it rather than under it.

As he usually did, he woke with morning twilight in the air. When he went over to the rail to piss into the Sarnos River, he found Sostratos already standing there. "Good day," his cousin said.

"Good day," Menedemos answered. Having made up his mind to leave, he was already starting to look ahead: "We should squeeze more silver out of Neapolis than we got here - a lot more, with luck."

"Let's hope so," Sostratos said. "We should be there today, shouldn't we?"

"Oh, yes, by Zeus," Menedemos said. "We should be there by noon, or not much later. We'll probably have to row most of the way, though - the breeze feels like it'll be blowing right in our face."

"Maybe it'll swing round a bit once we get out onto the sea," Sostratos said.

"May it be so," Menedemos said. "Come on, let's get the men up. The more we can do before the sun gets hot, the happier we'll all be. One thing - " He chuckled. "We've got all the fresh water we'll need for the trip."

"There is that," his cousin agreed.

As they got ready to disembark, Menedemos instructed the crew: "When I give the order to back oars, I want you to row hard. Our boat has to be clear of the next wharf farther downstream before the current pushes us into it. This business of moving is more complicated than it would be if we were moored in an ordinary seaside harbor."

With Diokles calling the stroke, the Aphrodite did get out into the middle of the Sarnos without any trouble. Menedemos swung the ship's bow toward the mouth of the river. He took most of the men off the oars, but kept half a dozen on either side busy to add speed and precise direction to the current pushing the akatos out toward the Tyrrhenian Sea.

A little naked herdboy watering his sheep at the riverbank waved to the Aphrodite as she glided past. Menedemos lifted a hand from the steering oars to wave back. Diokles said, "This is pretty settled country. A lot of places, he'd run from a ship for fear we'd grab him and sell him somewhere."

"That's true. He'd bring two, three minai, even scrawny as he is." Menedemos shrugged. "More trouble than he's worth." He wondered if he would have said the same thing had the voyage not been turning a profit.

At the bow, Aristeidas pointed ahead and called, "Thalassa! Thalassa!"

"The sea! The sea!" The rest of the sailors took up the cry.

Sostratos, on the other hand, started to laugh. "What's so funny?" Menedemos asked.

"That's what Xenophon's Ten Thousand, or however many of them were left alive by then, called out when they came to the sea after they got away from the Persians," Sostratos answered.

"Xenophon was an Athenian, wasn't he?" Menedemos said. When Sostratos dipped his head, Menedemos went on, "I'm surprised he didn't write, 'Thalatta! Thalatta!' instead." He pointed at his cousin. "Some of that Attic dialect has rubbed off on you - I've heard you say glotta for glossa and things like that."

Hearing his tongue mentioned, Sostratos stuck it out. Menedemos returned the gesture. Sostratos said, "As a matter of fact, if I remember rightly, Xenophon did write, 'Thalattta!' "

"Ha!" Menedemos felt vindicated. "I bet his soldiers, or most of them, said it the way Aristeidas just did."

"You're probably right," Sostratos said. "But if you expect an Athenian to give up his dialect just because it doesn't match the way someone actually said something, you're asking too much."

"I never expect anything from Athenians," Menedemos said. "They'll come up with better excuses for cheating you than . . ." His voice trailed away. His cousin's face had gone hard and cold. A few words too late, Menedemos remembered just how much Sostratos had enjoyed his time at Athens, and just how gloomy he'd been when he first came back to Rhodes. Doing his best to sound casual, Menedemos continued, "Well, I'd better keep my mind on sailing the ship."

"Yes, that would be good." Sostratos sounded like a man holding in anger, too. Menedemos sighed. Sooner or later, he would have to make it up to his cousin.

The Aphrodite wouldn't give him a hard time, not on a fine bright day like today, with only a lazy breeze and the lightest of chop ruffling the blue, blue surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Even so, he steered away from land; he wanted a few stadia of leeway between the merchant galley and the shore. You never can tell, he thought. Ashore, with just his own neck to worry about, he took chances that horrified the cautious Sostratos. At sea, with everything at stake . . . He tossed his head. Not usually.

And so when, some time later that morning, Aristeidas called out, "Sail ho! Sail off the starboard bow!" Menedemos smiled and dipped his head. He wouldn't have to change course - that other ship, whatever it was, would pass well to leeward of him.

But then Aristeidas called out again: "Sails to starboard, skipper! That's not just a ship - that's a regular fleet."

Menedemos' eyes snapped toward the direction in which the lookout was pointing from the foredeck. He needed only a moment to spot the sails himself, and only another to recognize them for what they were. "All men to the oars!" he shouted. "That's a fleet of triremes, and they can have us for lunch if they want us!"

Sailors ran to their places on the benches. Oars bit into the sea. Without waiting for an order from Menedemos, Diokles picked up the stroke. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite away from those low, lean, menacing shapes.

They couldn't be anything but triremes: they sported foresails as well as mainsails, which smaller galleys like pentekonters and hemioliai never did. Looking back over his shoulder, Menedemos did his best to count them. He'd got to eighteen when Sostratos said, "There are twenty."

"Twenty triremes!" Menedemos said. "That's not a pirate's outfit - that's a war fleet. But whose?"

"Let's hope we don't find out," Sostratos said. "They're traveling under sail, and they look as if they know just where they want to go. May they keep right on going."

"May it be so," Menedemos said. "They look like they're heading straight for the mouth of the Sarnos. Maybe they aim to raid Pompaia." He spoke before his cousin could: "If they do, it's a good thing we got out of there this morning. If they'd caught us tied up at the pier, they could have done whatever they pleased with us."

"That's true, and I'm glad we're away, too," Sostratos said - as close as he came to I told you so, and not close enough to be annoying. Then he grunted, as if someone had hit him in the belly. "The trireme closest to us just brought out its oars. It's . . . swinging this way."

Menedemos looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, a pestilence," he said softly. Sostratos was right, not that he'd really expected his cousin to be wrong. And when a full crew rowed a trireme, she fairly leaped through the water - she had a hundred seventy men at her three banks of oars, compared to the Aphrodite's forty on a single level. "Pick up the stroke," Menedemos told Diokles.

"We're doing everything we can now, captain," the keleustes answered. "She's faster than we are, that's all." Menedemos cursed. He knew that. He knew it much too well. And if he hadn't known it, the way the trireme got bigger every time he looked at it would have told him.

Sostratos was peering aft with a fascination somewhat less horrified and more curious. "There's a wolf painted on the mainsail," he remarked. "Who uses the wolf for an emblem?"

"Who cares?" Menedemos snarled.

To his surprise, Diokles said, "The Romans do - those Italians who're fighting the Samnites."

"How do you know that?" Sostratos asked, as if discussing philosophy at the Lykeion in Athens.

"Tavern talk," the oarmaster answered, as Menedemos had a few days before. "You hear all sorts of things sitting around soaking up wine."

"How interesting," Sostratos said.

"How interesting that we know who's going to sell us for slaves or knock us over the head and pitch us into the drink," Menedemos said. The trireme was gaining on the Aphrodite at a truly frightening rate. As he watched, the Romans - if they were Romans - brailed up the sails and stowed the mast and foremast. Like Hellenes, they would make their attack run under oar power alone.

They weren't the best crew in the world, nor anything close to it. Every so often, a couple of oars would bang together or a rower would catch a crab. Their keleustes was probably yelling himself hoarse, trying to get more out of them. But they had so many men at the oars, their little mistakes hardly mattered. Against another trireme, they might have, but against an akatos with fewer than a quarter as many rowers? Not likely.

Not likely if we keep running, anyhow - they'll just run us down, Menedemos thought. His men were rowing as if possessed, sweat streaming down their bare torsos. They couldn't hold such a pace much longer, and even this pace wasn't doing anything but putting off the inevitable.

If we keep running, they catch us. But what can we do except keep running? All of a sudden, Menedemos laughed out loud. It was a slightly crazed laugh, or perhaps more than slightly - both Sostratos and Diokles sent him sharp looks. He knew just what it was: the laugh of a man with nothing to lose.

"Port side!" he called, and the heads of the rowers on that side of the ship swung toward him. "Port side!" he sang out again, so they would be ready for whatever command he gave them. Then he shouted once more, and this time he gave the order: "Port side - back oars!"

He felt like cheering at the way the men on the oars obeyed him. He had a good, tight crew, one of which he could be proud. Most of the men had pulled an oar on a Rhodian warship at one time or another, and his work and Diokles' had, as the saying went, beaten them into a solid, steady unit. The Romans behind them, he was sure, would have made a hash of the maneuver.

He hauled back on one steering-oar tiller and forward on the other, aiding the Aphrodite's turn back toward her pursuer. As she spun on the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea, he called out to the handful of sailors not on the oars, "Get the sail brailed up to the yard!" They too leaped to do his bidding.

It was a godlike feeling, sure enough - and would have been even more so had he not known just how bad the odds against him still were. Sostratos said, "You're not going to attack them?" His voice broke like a youth's on the word he had trouble believing.

"They'll run us down and ram us if we flee," Menedemos answered. "That's certain sure. This way, we have a chance."

"A small chance," Sostratos said, which reflected Menedemos' thoughts altogether too well.

He bared his teeth in what only looked like a smile. "Have you got a better idea, O cousin of mine?" After a long moment, Sostratos tossed his head.

No sooner had he done so than Menedemos forgot about him. All his attention focused on the Roman trireme and on the rapidly narrowing stretch of water between them - down to a few stadia now. He raised his eyes from the trireme for an instant to look at the rest of the Roman fleet. The other ships were unconcernedly sailing on toward the mouth of the Sarnos. Their captains thought one trireme was plenty to chase down a merchant galley.

They're liable to be right, Menedemos thought. No, by the gods - they're likely to be right.

But then he tossed his head. He couldn't afford doubt now, not if he was to have even a small chance against that much larger ship. If Sostratos were at the steering oars now, would doubt paralyze him? Menedemos tossed his head again. He didn't have time to wonder, either.

He watched the Roman trireme. It was cataphract - fully decked - as a bigger ship, a four or a five, would have been. Marines in bronze helms and corselets and nearly naked sailors ran about on the deck. Some of them pointed toward the Aphrodite. Faint across the water, he heard their shouts.

They wonder what in Tartaros I'm up to. Maybe they think I've lost my mind. I wonder, too. Maybe I have.

On came the trireme, looking bigger and fiercer with every heartbeat. Its ram, aimed straight at Menedemos' ship, sliced through the sea as smoothly as a shark's snout. Its oars rose and fell, rose and fell, with almost hypnotic unity. Almost - sure enough, that crew either hadn't been together long or wasn't well trained. Menedemos' rowers were much more professional - but, again, he measured forty men against the Roman captain's one hundred seventy. That gave the barbarian a lot of room for error . . . and Menedemos none whatever.

More Roman marines came up on deck. The two ships were close enough now for Menedemos to see they carried bows. They were as jumpy as anyone else on either galley - they started shooting well before the ships were in range. One after another, their arrows splashed into the sea in front of the Aphrodite.

But that wouldn't last, and Menedemos knew it. "Anyone who's wounded," he called, "get up from your oar if you're too badly hurt to keep rowing. You men who aren't at the oars, jump in as fast as you can. And everyone, by the gods! Listen for my commands and obey them the instant you hear them. If you do, we can beat that big, ugly, clumsy trireme. We can!"

The rowers raised a cheer. Before Sostratos said anything, he came up close to Menedemos, which showed better sense than he sometimes used. In a low voice, he asked, "How can we beat that big, ugly, clumsy trireme?"

"You'll see." Menedemos did his best to show the confidence he was also doing his best to feel. He patted his cousin on the arm. "Now do get out of the way, best one, if you'd be so kind. I have to be able to see straight ahead." For another wonder, Sostratos moved aside without argument.

Arrows started thudding into the Aphrodite's planking. The two ships were only about three plethra apart now, and closing fast. Menedemos wished he had a catapult up on the foredeck, not cages full of peafowl chicks. A few of those darts would give the Romans something to think about! Of course, the catapult would also make the akatos bow-heavy as could be; not even a trireme could afford the weight of such an engine. A rower howled with pain. He sprang up from his bench, an arrow transfixing his right arm. Another sailor took his place. The Aphrodite scarcely faltered. Menedemos let out a silent sigh of relief.

Each heartbeat felt as if it came about an hour after the one just past. Menedemos' gaze fixed on the Roman trireme's ram. He could read the other captain's mind. If these mad merchants want a head-on collision. I'll give them one, the barbarian had to be thinking. My bigger ship will roll right over theirs and capsize it, sure as sure.

Menedemos didn't want a head-on collision: that was, in fact, the last thing he wanted. But he had to make the Roman captain think he did up till the last possible instant, which was just about . . . now.

Another wounded rower screamed, and another. Menedemos ignored them. He ignored everything, in fact, but the onrushing bulk of the enemy trireme and the feel of the steering-oar tillers in his hands.

He tugged on the tillers ever so slightly, swinging the Aphrodite to port just before she and the trireme would have smashed together. At the same time, he cried out in a great voice: "Starboard oars - in!"

As smoothly as they had in practice farther south, the rowers brought their oars inboard. Instead of ramming the Roman trireme, the Aphrodite glided along beside her, close enough to spit from one ship to the other. And the merchant galley's hull rode over the trireme's starboard oars and broke them as a man's descending foot would break the twigs of a child's toy house.

Rowers aboard the Roman ship screamed as the butt ends of the oars, suddenly propelled by forces much greater than they could generate, belabored them. Menedemos heard two splashes in quick succession as Roman marines fell into the sea. Their armor would drag them down to a watery grave. His smile was fierce as a wolf's. He wanted to wave good-bye to them, but couldn't take his hands off the tillers.

The Aphrodite slid past the crippled trireme. "Starboard oars - out!" Menedemos shouted, and his ship, undamaged, pulled away from the Roman vessel. He looked east. The rest of the Roman fleet had headed up the Sarnos. He was all alone with this ship that had tried to sink him. Now he did turn and wave to the man at the trireme's steering oars. The fellow was staring back over his shoulder at the merchant galley, his eyes as wide as any man's Menedemos had ever seen.

"You can ease back on the stroke now, Diokles," Menedemos told the oarmaster. "Let us get a little distance between our ship and that polluted barbarian, and then . . ."

"Aye aye, skipper!" Diokles said. Menedemos had never heard so much respect in his voice. And I earned it, too, by the gods, he thought proudly.

"What are you going to do?" Sostratos asked.

"I'm going to ram that wide-arsed catamite, that's what." Menedemos' voice was savage as a maenad's. "Romans don't sail any too bloody well. Let's see how good they are at swimming."

"I wish you wouldn't," Sostratos said.

"What?" Menedemos stared. He wondered if he'd heard correctly. "Are you out of your mind? Why not? You treat your friends well and your enemies badly, and if these bastards aren't enemies, what are they?" He tugged on the steering-oar tillers to bring the akatos' bow around to bear on the trireme. The Romans were starting to shift oars from their undamaged port side to starboard. That would eventually let them limp away, but it wouldn't let them escape a vengeful Aphrodite.

"They're enemies, all right," Sostratos said. "But think - wasn't it wildest luck that we hurt them in the first place?"

"Luck and a good crew," Menedemos growled. He still hungered for revenge.

"Agreed. Agreed ten times over," Sostratos said. "But now that we've been lucky once, wouldn't another run at that cursed big ship be hubris? Suppose the ram stuck fast. All those marines - except for the ones we knocked into the drink, I mean - and all those rowers would swarm aboard, and that would be the end of that."

Menedemos grunted. He wanted to tell his cousin there wasn't a chance in the world of that happening. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Such mishaps were all too common; ramming could be as hard on the attacking ship as on the victim. And if that did happen here, it would be as deadly to the Aphrodite as Sostratos said. He took a deep breath and let it out, then blinked a couple of times almost in surprise, like a man suddenly lucid again after a ferocious fever broke.

"You're right," he said. "I hate to admit it - you have no idea how much I hate to admit it - but you're right. Let's get out of here while the getting's good."

"Thank you," Sostratos said softly.

"I'm not doing it for you," Menedemos said. "Believe me, I'm not doing it for myself, either. I'm doing it for the ship."

"This far from home, that's the best reason," Sostratos said. Menedemos only shrugged, despite watching Diokles dip his head. He'd made his decision. That didn't mean he had to like it.

The Romans on their trireme's deck gawked at the Aphrodite as she passed safely out of arrow range. Menedemos thought some rowers were gaping out through the oar ports, too. "Got a little lesson today, didn't you?" he shouted at them; though they were a long way off and probably didn't speak Greek anyhow. His rowers were much less restrained. They blistered the Romans with curses they'd picked up all over the Inner Sea.

"I don't suppose we're heading up to Neapolis any more," Sostratos remarked.

"What? Why not?" Menedemos said in surprise.

As if to an idiot child, his cousin answered, "Because how do we know that that's the only Roman fleet around? Suppose four triremes come after us the next time. What do we do then?"

"Oh." Menedemos blinked. He rubbed his chin as he thought. At last, he said, "Well, best one, you're right again. Twice in one day - I didn't think you had it in you." He grinned at Sostratos' splutters, then went on, "I hadn't thought it through. I was too busy dealing with that one bastard."

"And you did it splendidly," Sostrastos said. "I thought we were doomed."

So did I, Menedemos thought. Aloud, he answered, "If you've got only two chances - one bad, the other worse - you do the best you can with the bad one." He raised his voice to call out to the sailors: "Lower the sail from the yard. We're heading back down south, and the wind should be with us most of the way."

Men leaped to obey. They'd leaped ever since Aristeidas first spotted the Roman triremes. Then it had been out of fear. Now . . . Now it's because they admire me, Menedemos thought. And after what I did, they should.

One of the sailors said, "Pity we can't land and set up a trophy to remember this by."

That only made Menedemos prouder. He showed it in an offhand way: "The barbarians wouldn't know what it meant, anyhow, and they'd just plunder it. We have our trophy, perfect in memory forever."

"That's right, by the gods," Diokles said. "And we've got a story we can drink on in every wineshop from Karia to Carthage, too."

"Truth," Menedemos said.

But Sostratos tossed his head. "I don't think so."

"What? Why not?" Menedemos demanded.

"Wrecking a trireme with an akatos?" Sostratos said. "Be serious, O cousin of mine. Would you believe a story like that if you heard it?" Again, Menedemos thought for a moment. Then he too solemnly tossed his head.

Sostratos was glad to sail south past the island of Kapreai. He doubted whether any Roman fleet, no matter how aggressive, would ever dare to come deep into Great Hellas. And, after beating a trireme, he didn't worry nearly so much about piratical pentekonters as he had before.

Two of the sailors Roman arrows had hurt quickly began to heal. The third had taken a wound in the belly. Even though the injury didn't look too bad, he began to run a high fever. It soon became clear he wouldn't live.

The men began to mutter among themselves. Few ritual pollutions were worse than having a corpse on board. "What are we going to do?" Menedemos murmured to Sostratos, not wanting anyone else to hear. "It's as if they're forgetting we beat that trireme."

"Let's put him in the boat," Sostratos answered. "He's too far gone to care what happens to him, and that way the Aphrodite won't be polluted when he dies. We can either have a priest cleanse the boat when we put in at a polis or else, if we have to, just buy a new one."

Menedemos stared at him, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "Those brains of yours are good for something after all - every once in a while, anyhow."

"Why did you add that last little bit?" Sostratos asked.

"To keep you from walking around with a swelled head," his cousin answered with a wicked grin.

"Thank you so much," Sostratos said, which only made Menedemos' grin wider. A couple of sailors eased the man with the belly wound down into the merchant galley's boat. Sure enough, he was so lost in his battles with demons only he could see, he hardly noticed being moved. They rigged an awning with sailcloth to keep the sun off him. Every so often, someone went down into the boat to give him watered wine from a dipper. He drank a little, but spilled more.

"Sail ho!" Aristeidas sang out. "Sail ho off the starboard bow!"

Everyone jumped. Sostratos' heart began to thud in his chest. The last time the lookout spied a sail, they'd been lucky to escape with their lives, let alone their freedom. Along with the whole crew - since they were moving under sail, they didn't have anyone facing backwards at the oars - he anxiously peered southward.

After only a few minutes, relief flowered in him. "That's a round ship's sail," he said. "It's bigger than anything a galley would carry."

One after another, the sailors dipped their heads. "If we have to run from a merchantman, we're really in trouble," Diokles said. The laughter the oarmaster got was louder than the feeble joke deserved. Relief, nothing else but, Sostratos thought. He certainly felt it himself.

"He's not running from us," Sostratos remarked after a while.

"No, he's not," Menedemos agreed. "He's tacking his way north - if he turns and runs before the wind, he'll take three or four times as long beating his way back as he would to flee. And, since we're really not pirates, he wins his gamble."

Sostratos wondered if he would have risked life and freedom against convenience. He hoped not. But then, after a longer look at the merchantman, he said, "I don't think he's gambling. I think he recognizes us, and I think I recognize him, too. Isn't that Leptines' ship?"

His cousin squinted to peer across the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. "By the gods, I believe it is," Menedemos said. "All that reading you do hasn't shortened your sight yet, anyhow. Maybe I'll put you up at the bow instead of Aristeidas."

"Don't!" Sostratos tossed his head. "He's a regular lynx - I know his eyes are better than mine. Most of the time, yours are, too, I think - you just weren't paying any attention." If his cousin gibed at him, he was going to return the favor.

Menedemos tugged on the steering-oar tillers, swinging the Aphrodite's bow to starboard, toward Leptines' round ship. "I want to get within hailing distance and warn him off," Menedemos said. "Wouldn't do to have him sail up the Sarnos to Pompaia and right into the jaws of those Roman wolves."

If that wasn't Leptines, and if he hadn't recognized the Aphrodite, then he was a prime fool to let the akatos approach his ship so closely. But, before long, Sostratos saw the tubby skipper with his hands on the steering-oar tillers for his tubby ship.

Leptines lifted one hand from a steering oar to wave. He shouted something Sostratos couldn't make out. Sostratos cupped a hand behind his ear to show as much. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Menedemos doing the same thing.

Leptines tried again. This time, Sostratos understood him: "How was Pompaia?"

"Pompaia was fine," Menedemos yelled. "We did some good business. But you don't want to go there."

"What? What's that you say?" Leptines asked. "Why not?"

"Because there's a Roman fleet attacking the town and the countryside right now, that's why," Menedemos answered. "If you sail up there, you're just sticking your head in the wolf's mouth."

"Herakles!" Leptines exclaimed. "A barbarian fleet? Not pirates? Are you sure? How did you get away?"

He asked more questions than one man could conveniently answer. Sostratos said, "They were Romans, all right - they all had the Roman wolf on their sails," at the same time as Menedemos replied, "One of their triremes chased us, and we crippled it, that's how."

"What?" Leptines said, and he didn't mean he had trouble making sense of two voices at once. "How could you beat a trireme with that puny little akatos of yours? I don't believe a word of it."

"I told you so," Sostratos murmured to Menedemos. His cousin made a horrible face at him.

But the sailors wouldn't let Leptines get away with thinking Menedemos a liar. They still reckoned themselves heroes, and shouted out the details of what they'd done. If they'd been pirates and not the crew of a real, working merchant galley, it would have gone hard for the round ship's skipper and his sailors. For a moment, Sostratos wondered whether it would go hard for Leptines and his men anyway; the sailors from the Aphrodite were in no mood to be slighted.

Leptines didn't need long to figure that out for himself. "All right! All right!" he called. "I do believe you!" By then, the two ships lay only ten or fifteen cubits apart. Had Menedemos or his crew chosen to turn pirate, the other captain could have done nothing to stop him. "Where will you go now?" he asked Menedemos.

"I'd had in mind heading up to Neapolis," Menedemos said. "You know about that - I told you when we were in port together. But who knows how many Roman ships are prowling that stretch of the Tyrrhenian Sea right now? Better to head back south, I figured, so that's what I'm doing."

"You figured?" Sostratos said under his breath. This time, Menedemos didn't hear him, which might have been just as well. By the way his cousin spoke, Menedemos was convinced coming south had been his own idea and no one else's. Sostratos knew better.

Or do I just remember differently? he wondered. After a moment, he tossed his head. He knew what had happened there after he talked Menedemos out of ramming the Roman trireme. But his cousin sang another song altogether.

If - no, when - I write my history, how will I be able to judge which of two conflicting stories is the true one? he thought. Both men will be certain they have it right, and each will call the other a liar. How did Herodotos and Thoukydides and Xenophon decide who was right? The next time he looked at their works, he would have to think about that.

Meanwhile, Leptines was saying, "That's smart, getting out of there. Polluted barbarians are everywhere these days. They might as well be cockroaches. We Hellenes should have squashed them before they got so strong." A few days before, he'd extolled the Pompaians. Would he remember that if Sostratos reminded him of it? Not likely, and Sostratos knew it full well.

"Pity you had to work so hard just to turn back," Menedemos said.

"Maybe so, but I thank you for your news," Leptines replied. "Going forward would have been a bigger pity."

"Have a safe trip south," Sostratos said. Leptines waved to him. So did a couple of the round ship's sailors. He waved back. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to catch the wind once more. She began to glide over the waves. Leptines' ship wasn't nearly so handy. Sostratos looked back past the sternpost for some time before he saw the other ship also heading away from trouble instead of toward it.

Even though the round ship's sail was far bigger than the akatos',and even though the breeze filled it well, the Aphrodite easily pulled away. When Sostratos remarked on that, Menedemos said, "I should hope so, by the gods. If that pig outsailed us, I think I'd go home and drink hemlock."

"It still seems strange," Sostratos said.

"Nothing strange about it," Menedemos insisted. "War galleys are faster than we are, because we're beamier than they are. They cut the water like a sharp knife. We cut it like a dull one. And as for that polluted round ship - won't even a dull knife cut water better than a drinking cup?"

"Sokrates couldn't do better, O best one," Sostratos said. "I find no flaws in your logic."

"Thank you very much." Menedemos looked smug.

Sostratos wasn't about to let him get away with that. "Why do you only think so straight when you've got ships on your mind? Why do you start acting like a madman as soon as you smell perfume?"

"I don't know," Menedemos answered.

"Well, at least you don't deny it," Sostratos said.

"Ships aren't women, though," his cousin said. "Even if we give them feminine names, they aren't. Most of the time, a ship will do what you want. Oh, you can make a mistake, but you usually know what's what. But with women . . . My dear fellow! You can't know what a woman will do next, for she usually doesn't know herself. So what's the point to logic?"

Sostratos stared at him. "That's the most logical argument for illogic I've ever heard," he said at last.

"And I thank you again." Menedemos grinned. He'd won that round, and he knew it.

When they got down to the little town of Laos once more the following evening, a ship so like Leptines' was tied up at a quay, Sostratos wondered if the plump merchant skipper had somehow stolen a march on the Aphrodite. But the skipper of this round ship proved to be a scrawny fellow named Xenodokos. He said, "If you've got more greed than brains, you might want to think about getting down to Rhegion quick as you can."

Sostratos hoped he had more brains than greed. Because of that, a certain amount of horror went through him when he heard Menedemos ask, "Oh? Why?"

"Because Agathokles of Syracuse has men getting up a fleet of grain ships there," Xenodokos answered. "He's going to try and sneak 'em past the Carthaginian fleet so his polis doesn't starve. He'll pay gods only know how many times the going rate, even for a load from a skinny little ship like yours."

"And what will he pay if the Carthaginians catch us?" Sostratos asked.

"Syracuse," Xenodokos said.

Sostratos looked at his cousin. He didn't care for the gleam in Menedemos' eye. "The ship," he said pointedly.

"I know, the ship." Menedemos sounded impatient. "Remember, we have to go by Rhegion anyway." Sostratos remembered. His heart sank.