Over the Wine-Dark Sea

10

Menedemos was like a child with a new toy. "We'll make the family rich with this run!" he said. "We'll throw grain into the Aphrodite till we're down to about a digit's worth of freeboard, and we'll get paid for it as if we were that full of fine wine. What could be better?"

His cousin, predictably, was like a mother watching her son play with a sword he thought was a toy. "What could be better?" Sostratos said. "Not getting sunk could be better. So could not getting caught. Not getting killed. Not getting sold into slavery. Not getting gelded. If you give me a little while, I can probably think of some more things."

"Oh, nonsense." It wasn't altogether nonsense, as Menedemos knew. But he didn't want to dwell on that. Had he dwelt on it, he would have been just like Sostratos. He had trouble imagining a fate less appealing - or, for that matter, a fate less interesting.

As a brisk, hot breeze from out of the north pushed the Aphrodite ahead of it towards Rhegion, Sostratos scowled. Sostratos, in fact, did everything but stamp his foot on the timbers of the poop deck. "It isn't nonsense. What you want to do is senseless. We already have a profit. This is a needless risk."

"We'll be fine." Menedemos did his best to sound soothing. "From what Xenodokos said, there'll be a whole fleet down at Rhegion. The polluted Carthaginians can't nab everybody."

"Why not?" Sostratos retorted. "And you didn't see Xenodokos setting out for Syracuse, did you? Not likely! He went the other way. I wish we would, too."

"You worry too much," Menedemos said. "You were jumping up and down about putting in at Cape Tainaron, too, and that worked out fine. Why shouldn't this?"

"We weren't sailing into the middle of a war when we put in at Cape Tainaron," his cousin answered. "You're just asking for trouble."

"The wind should be with us and against the Carthaginians," Menedemos said. "We'll just slide right into the harbor at Syracuse along with all the round ships - and if the barbarians do get after this fleet, they'll have an easier time catching round ships than they will with us."

Sostratos exhaled angrily. "All right. All right, by the gods. You're going to act like an idiot - I can see that. You lust for this the same way you lusted for that Tarentine's wife. But promise me one thing, at least."

"What is it?" Menedemos asked.

"This: if Xenodokos is wrong, if there is no fleet of merchantmen gathering at Rhegion, you won't load the Aphrodite up with grain and try to sneak into Syracuse all by your lonesome."

"We might have a better chance that way," Menedemos said. Then he saw just how furious Sostratos looked. He threw his hands in the air. "Oh, very well. If there is no grain fleet, we'll head for home. There! Are you satisfied now?"

"Satisfied? No," Sostratos said. "I won't be satisfied till we do sail for home. But that is a little better - a very little better - than nothing."

Menedemos didn't think it was anything of the sort. The more he thought of tiptoeing into Syracuse past the Carthaginian fleet, the better he liked it. A man could dine out on such stories for the rest of his life. But he'd gone and given his word, and he felt obliged to keep it.

I hope there's a fleet at Rhegion, he thought. There'd better be a fleet at Rhegion, because I want to do this. Sostratos was right, and Menedemos was honest enough with himself to admit it: he did lust after going to Syracuse the same way he lusted after some frisky young wife he'd chanced to see.

"Remember," Sostratos said, "whatever else you do, you're not supposed to risk the ship."

"I don't intend to risk the ship," Menedemos snapped, wishing Sostratos hadn't put it quite that way, "and I'm the one who judges when the ship's being risked and when it isn't. You aren't. Have you got that, O cousin of mine?"

"Yes, I have it." Sostratos looked as if he liked it about as much as a big mouthful of bad fish. He stormed down off the poop deck and up toward the bow. Daft, Menedemos thought. Daft as Aias after he didn't get Akhilleus' armor. Anybody who'd rather deal with peafowl chicks than stand around and talk has to be daft.

The peafowl chicks! Menedemos brightened. "Oë! Sostratos!" he called.

Reluctantly, Sostratos turned back toward him. "What is it?"

"How much do you think young peafowl will bring in Syracuse?"

"I don't know," Sostratos answered. "How much do you think they would bring in Carthage?" Having got the last word, he went on up to the little foredeck.

When Menedemos steered the Aphrodite into the harbor at Rhegion, he anxiously scanned the quays. If things looked no busier than usual, he would have to sail on toward Rhodes. He let out a whoop on seeing a couple of dozen large round ships all tied up together. If that wasn't a fleet in the making, he didn't know what was.

His cousin saw the ships, too, and also knew them for what they were. The look he gave Menedemos was baleful. Menedemos grinned back, which, by Sostratos' expression, only annoyed him more.

With a handful of men at the oars to put the merchant galley exactly where he wanted her, Menedemos guided her toward the quays alongside which the round ships floated. "Go somewhere else!" a man called from the stern of the nearest big, tubby merchantman. "We're all together here, loading up on grain for Agathokles."

"That's what I'm here for, too," Menedemos said as Diokles eased the Aphrodite up against the pier.

"You?" The fellow on the round ship laughed loud and long, displaying a couple of teeth gone black in the front of his mouth. "We can carry eight or ten times as much in the Leuke here as you can in that miserable little boat. Take your toy home and sail it in your hip-bath." He laughed again.

"Toy? Hip-bath?" Menedemos was tempted to yell, Back oars!, and then spurt forward to ram the round ship. How much grain would that sneering fellow carry then? But, unfortunately, no. It wouldn't do. Menedemos said, "However much or little we haul, Syracuse'll still get more with us than without us - and Agathokles'll pay us for it, too, same as he'll pay you."

"Well, all right. When you put it like that, I suppose you've got something," the other Hellene said. "And when the Carthaginians come after us, you can be the one who fights 'em off." He laughed again, louder than ever.

But he wasn't laughing by the time the Aphrodite's crew finished screaming abuse and the details of their battle with the Roman trireme at him. He was white with fury, his fists clenched, his lips skinned back from his teeth. He had to stand there and take it, as did the other sailors on his ship. Had they chosen to answer back, the men from the akatos would have made them regret it - for, while the round ship held more cargo, the merchant galley held more crewmen.

A fellow wearing an unusually fine, unusually white wool chiton bustled up the pier toward the Aphrodite. "Are you here to carry grain to Syracuse?" he asked.

"We certainly are," Menedemos answered - this chap, unlike the man aboard the round ship, looked to have some clout. "Who are you, sir?"

"My name is Onasimos," replied the fellow with the fancy tunic. He also, Menedemos saw, had buckles on his sandals that looked like real gold. With a bow, he continued, "I have the honor to be the Syracusan proxenos here in Rhegion, and I'm doing what I can to help the polis I represent."

In normal times, a proxenos looked out for the interests of citizens of the polis he represented in the polis in which he dwelt. He was, necessarily, a man of some wealth and importance in his home town. He might aid in lawsuits. He might, at need, lend money. He got no pay for his services, only prestige and business connections. When the polis he represented was in danger, he might do extraordinary things, as Onasimos looked to be doing now.

"How do we get the grain?" Menedemos asked him.

"It's in the warehouses," Onasimos said. "Gods be praised, Great Hellas had a good harvest this past spring. I have plenty of slaves and free men ready to bring it aboard for you."

"Good." Menedemos dipped his head. "Now - about arrangements for payment."

"You've probably heard Agathokles is offering four times the going rate for grain delivered to Syracuse," Onasimos said.

Menedemos tossed his head. "I hadn't heard exactly how much he offered, as a matter of fact. But I have heard a lot of Agathokles himself - including the way he got rid of the Syracusans who weren't of his faction earlier this year. Anyone who could come up with that little scheme wouldn't think twice about going back on a promise to pay a merchant skipper."

The Syracusan proxenos looked pained. "I assure you, my dear fellow - "

But Menedemos tossed his head again. "Don't assure me, O best one. Let me ask some of the other captains and see what I find out."

Had Onasimos called his bluff and told him to go ahead, he might have believed the proxenos' protests. As things were, Onasimos sighed and said, "Oh, very well. I'll pay you the going rate now, and you can collect the rest on delivery."

"I'm sorry." Menedemos tossed his head for a third time. "The going rate isn't enough to make me want to risk the Carthaginian fleet. I know the Carthaginians are supposed to be splendid torturers, but I don't want to find out how they do what they do for myself."

He waited to see what Onasimos would say to that. The proxenos glared at him. He smiled his sweetest smile in return. Onasimos sighed again. "You're one of the canny ones, I see. All right, then - one and a half times the going rate in advance, but not an obolos more. If I give you everything promised ahead of time, you might just sail off with the grain and never go near Syracuse."

Menedemos thought about squeezing the proxenos some more. He glanced toward Sostratos. His cousin ignored him - Sostratos wanted no part of the Syracusan venture. Menedemos sent him a covert dirty look. He wanted to know what Sostratos thought, for his cousin was often better at haggling with these fancy types then he was himself. But Sostratos seemed determined to sulk.

That left it up to Menedemos. Onasimos had a point. Some men, with silver in their hands, would sail away from Syracuse. Not me, of course, Menedemos thought. But Onasimos didn't, couldn't, know that. "All right," Menedemos said. "One and a half times the going rate it is. Sostratos!"

His cousin jumped. "What?"

"You'll keep count of how many sacks of grain Onasimos' men bring aboard the Aphrodite here," Menedemos said. "As soon as we get paid our first installment for hauling them, we're off with the rest of the fleet."

"I'll have a man of my own doing the counting," Onasimos said.

"Good." Menedemos smiled that sweet smile at him. "I'm sure his count and Sostratos' will match very closely, then." The Syracusan proxenos' answering smile looked distinctly forced. He was going to try to cheat me, Menedemos thought. Why am I not surprised?

Muttering under his breath, Onasimos tramped back down the pier. About half an hour later, a line of men carrying leather sacks, each with a talent of grain, came out from the interior of Rhegion. "Where do you want these?" asked the man heading up the line. He carried no sack himself; he was obviously the fellow who would do the counting for Onasimos.

"Sostratos!" Menedemos called, and Sostratos, still seeming just this side of mutinous, went up onto the pier and stood beside Onasimos' man. For that worthy's benefit, Menedemos continued, "Now - I'll want you to start at the stern, just forward of the poop deck, and work toward the bow, one row of sacks at a time, till she holds as much grain as she can."

"Right," Onasimos' man said, and shouted orders at the men he was in charge of. They came down the gangplank and started loading the grain.

By the time they finished, the Aphrodite rode a great deal lower in the water. That worried Menedemos. Not only the extra weight but also the extra amount of hull now in the sea would slow the merchant galley. She didn't need to be slow, not when she might have to flee from Carthaginian warships. But he couldn't blame Onasimos for wanting to put as much grain into her as he could: the proxenos was doing his best to feed the people of the city he served.

"How many sacks of grain did we take on?" Menedemos asked once the last sweating hauler left the akatos.

"By my count, 797 sacks," Sostratos answered.

Onasimos' man sneered. "I reckoned it as 785." Sostratos bristled. Anyone who accused him of inaccuracy was asking for trouble.

Menedemos had no time for that kind of trouble. He said, "We'll split the difference. What does that come to?"

Sostratos counted on his fingers, his lips moving. "It would be 791," he said. "But I still think this fellow - "

"Never mind," Menedemos broke in. He nodded to Onasimos' man. "Tell your master we've got 791 sacks of grain aboard. As soon as we get paid, we're ready to go. Agreed?"

"Agreed," the other said. "Some of these round ships hold more than ten times as many sacks as that, you know."

"Every bit helps," Menedemos replied. Onasimos' man dipped his head and went back into Rhegion as his master had before him: to get money, Menedemos hoped.

Diokles said, "I hope the wind stays with us. The men'll break their backs and their hearts rowing with us laden like this, and she'll handle like a raft - if we're lucky, that is."

"If the wind fails, we're not going anywhere, not with all these round ships," Menedemos said. "They have to sail."

"Mm, that's so," the oarmaster agreed. He flashed Menedemos a sassy grin. "In that case, skipper, maybe we ought to hope for south winds for the next three months, so if Syracuse falls, we don't have to come close to all those Carthaginian war galleys, and we pick up a nice pile of silver anyway."

"You sounds like Sostratos," Menedemos said, and Diokles' grin got wider and even more provocative. Menedemos mimed throwing something at him and went on, "I wouldn't mind getting paid for doing nothing, either - who would? But if we don't get to deliver the grain, they'll just take it off and make us cough up the money again."

"If we were proper pirates, we'd sneak out of the harbor if that looked like happening," the keleustes said. "We're a galley, after all. We could do it."

"We could, sure enough." Menedemos wished Diokles hadn't put the idea in his mind. It was tempting. But he had no trouble finding reasons it wouldn't work. "You said it yourself - we'll be slow as a cart-ox with all this grain aboard. And my bet is, Rhegion would send her navy after us if we made off with the grain and the money. This Onasimos fellow looks to pull a lot of weight here."

"Well, so he does," Diokles said. "All right, then. I'd sooner pray for fair winds than foul, anyway."

"So would I," Menedemos said.

Sostratos thought of himself as a modern, rational man. He'd been embarrassed to spend the past couple of days praying for contrary winds. And he'd been embarrassed all over again to have his prayer fail so ignominiously, for a fine breeze blew from the north this morning. So much for the gods, he thought, and a solid point for rationalism.

Menedemos was up before dawn, too, smiling at the sky. He'd probably been praying for fair winds, so his belief in the gods was bound to be vindicated, too. That thought made Sostratos grumpier than ever. But, instead of gloating, Menedemos just pointed to the thin crescent moon rising a little ahead of the sun. "Another month almost done," he said.

"Sure enough." Sostratos peered into the brightening twilight between that little cheese-paring of a moon and the horizon. "And there's Aphrodite's wandering star."

"Why, so it is," Menedemos said. "Sure enough, your eyes aren't so bad if you can pick it out against the bright sky. The sun's almost up."

"I knew where to look," Sostratos answered with a shrug. "It's been sliding down the morning sky toward the sun for weeks now. Before too long, we'll see it in the evening instead. People used to think the evening appearance was a different star from the morning one - the same with Hermes' wandering star."

"What do you mean, used to?" Menedemos said. "Half our sailors probably still believe that."

"I meant educated people," Sostratos said. "The sailors are fine men but . . .." Most of them thought of little save women (or, with a few, boys), wine, and tavern brawls. How does one talk with such people? he wondered.

"I like 'em fine," Menedemos said.

"I know." Sostratos did his best not to make that sound like a judgment. Still and all, what did it say about his cousin's taste?

Menedemos didn't seem to notice Sostratos' tone, which was just as well. He said, "We'll sail today."

"I know." Sostratos knew how unhappy he sounded, too, but he couldn't help it. "Do you think we'll make Syracuse by nightfall?"

"We would, if we weren't so overloaded," his cousin answered. "These fat scows we'll be keeping company with? Not a chance. We'll put in at one of the Sicilian towns tonight, or spend the night at sea, then go on in the morning."

"All right." Sostratos sighed. "One more night to spend worrying."

"Nothing to worry about," Menedemos said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

Sostratos started to answer. Then he started to splutter. And then he started to laugh. "Oh, no, you don't. You're not going to get me to turn purple and pitch a fit. I'm wise to you, Menedemos."

"A likely story," Menedemos said. They grinned at each other. For a moment, Sostratos forgot how much he wished the Aphrodite weren't sailing for Syracuse.

But he couldn't forget for long. All around the harbor, captains were waking up, tasting the breeze, and realizing it would be a good day to sail. They called orders to their crews and to the longshoremen who came down the wharves to cast off their mooring lines and bring them aboard once more. The sailors grunted and heaved at the sweeps even round ships carried, and slowly, a digit at a time, eased the ships away from their berths so they could make sail and head for Sicily.

Seeing their struggles to get started, Sostratos laughed again. "Our rowers may have to work hard, but not that hard."

"You're right." Menedemos waved to a couple of longshoremen. "Over here, too!"

"You're going to take this little thing to Syracuse?" one of the men said as he tossed a line down onto the sacks of grain in the Aphrodite's waist. "Good idea - you can be a boat for all the real ships." He laughed at his own wit.

That sort of remark was as calculated to make Menedemos furious as Menedemos' crack had been to infuriate Sostratos. But Sostratos' cousin only shrugged, saying, "Onasimos likes us well enough to pay us to haul grain." The longshoreman turned away, disappointment on his face. Menedemos raised his voice: "Come on, boys, let's show these round-ship sailors how to row."

Diokles set the stroke. The men - all of them at the oars - pulled as hard as they had in the fight with the Roman trireme. And the Aphrodite . . . moved as if she were traveling through mud, not seawater. Diokles said, "I think this is about as much as we'll get from her, captain."

"Yes, I think you're right," Menedemos agreed. "I'd hoped for a little more, but . . .." He shrugged.

"She feels different in the water," Sostratos said. "More solid, more as if we were on dry land. She doesn't shift so much underfoot."

"I should hope she doesn't," Menedemos said. "She's carrying twice as much as usual, so the waves don't seem to hit her so hard."

"That's true. We've never really felt what she's like fully laden before, have we?" Sostratos said, and Menedemos tossed his head. The merchant galley didn't have to travel full up to hope for profit, as a round ship did. She carried luxury goods, valuable for their rarity, instead of being a bulk hauler. Now Sostratos got a glimpse of what the usual sailor did on a usual voyage, and found he didn't much care for it.

One by one, the round ships lowered their great sails from their yards. One by one, the sails bellied out and filled with wind. The tubby ships began their southward journey, but not at a pace above a walk. The Aphrodite's sail came down, too, and Menedemos called the rowers off the oars. Before very long, he had to order the men to brail up half the sail; otherwise, the akatos would have shot ahead of the other ships in the fleet despite her load.

When Sostratos let some peafowl chicks out of their cages to exercise, they ran around over the leather sacks of grain as happily as they had over the planking. They picked at spilled wheat as happily as they had at the cockroaches and other bugs that normally infested the Aphrodite - not that loading hundreds of sacks of grain onto the vermin had got rid of them.

Once the crew helped chivvy the chicks back into the cages, Sostratos could take a long look at the scenery. Indeed, he had little choice, unless he wanted to find a place to stand and brood. Considering where the Aphrodite was going and what she was liable to face when she got there, that didn't strike him as the worst idea in the world, but he refused to give in to it.

Because the merchant galley couldn't make anything close to her usual speed if she wanted to stay with the fleet of round ships, Sostratos had plenty of time to admire each bit of scenery as it passed. There was a great deal of Mount Aitne to admire. Now that Sostratos had seen both Aitne and Mount Ouesouion from fairly close range, he realized how much more massive the Sicilian volcano was than the one on the mainland of Italy. The soil on its slopes and around its base, though, had the same grayish, ashy look he'd seen near Pompaia. The Sicilian vineyards looked very rich, too, though the fields lay fallow under the hot summer sun.

Slowly, slowly, the fleet sailed past Taruomenion and Naxos and Akion. Sostratos looked longingly at each inviting little harbor, and sighed as the Aphrodite and the round ships crawled past each one. That summer sun seemed to speed across the sky. Before the fleet reached Katane - the largest polis on the east coast of Sicily except for Syracuse - it set behind the island. Anchors splashed into the water as the captains got ready to spend a night at sea.

"Unless I'm wrong, those merchant skippers wish they were tied up at a quay," Sostratos remarked to Menedemos.

"Well, when you get right down to it, so do I," his cousin answered. "If a storm were to blow up all of a sudden, we'd be in trouble, especially when we're heavy with grain."

"A storm, right now, is the least of our worries." To show what he meant, Sostratos pointed south.

Menedemos tossed his head. "A storm is never the least of your worries, not when you're at sea. If you want to worry about the Carthaginians more, I don't suppose I can stop you."

"I wonder how you say, 'Sail ho!' in the Phoenician language," Sostratos said. "Himilkon would know. I wish I were back in the harbor of Rhodes so I could ask him."

"After we deliver the grain and get paid, we'll be going home," Menedemos answered. "You can find out, if you still want to know by then."

He kept his tone light. If he didn't believe everything would go well when the fleet got to Syracuse, he didn't let on. Some of that, no doubt, was to keep the crew from fretting. The rest, Sostratos was convinced, sprang from his cousin's natural self-confidence - or was it arrogance? Menedemos had never yet found himself in a spot from which he couldn't wiggle out, and so seemed convinced he never would.

Sostratos hoped his cousin was right without believing it. That wasn't how things worked. Hoping Menedemos would prove right this particular time seemed a better bet . . . though not a very good one. We'll know tomorrow, Sostratos thought. He wrapped himself in his himation and lay down on the sacks of grain. They were a little more yielding than the planks of the poop deck, if lumpier.

He thought he would worry too much to find sleep, but exhaustion proved stronger. Next thing he knew, Menedemos announced the new day like a rooster. Several sailors let out groans and sleepy curses. Sostratos said, "If I were wearing shoes, I'd throw one at you."

"It's a day worth celebrating," Menedemos said, his voice full of the false heartiness some traders used to sell things that weren't worth buying. "Tonight we'll feast in Syracuse, a polis famed for its feasts wherever Hellenes live."

That made some of the sailors cheer up. It did nothing to raise Sostratos' spirits. For one thing, Syracuse was a city under siege. What kind of feast would the Syracusans be able to make? For another, weren't the Aphrodite's crew and those of the rest of the fleet likelier to make opson for the eels and crabs than to feast off seafood themselves?

But all around the fleet captains were shouting their crews awake, even if none of the others chose to crow. There was Aphrodite's wandering star glowing through the twilight in the east, with the very thinnest sliver of moon not far from it. Were it not for the blazing beacon of the wandering star, Sostratos doubted he would have noticed the moon at all.

Menedemos wasn't worrying about either the moon or Aphrodite's wandering star. Like any captain worthy of the name, he was tasting the wind. "Out of the north, sure enough," he said. "As long as it holds, we can slide right into the northern harbor - the Little Harbor, they call it - at Syracuse."

Well, we could if it weren't for the Carthaginian war galleys, Sostratos thought. They're between us and where we want to go, and with oars driving them they don't care which way the wind blows. Those are the things Menedemos conveniently forgets to mention.

His cousin went right on not mentioning them, too. The crew raised the dripping anchors. They lowered the sail from the yard. The round ships' big sails were coming down, too, and filling with the fine breeze that would waft them in exactly the direction they were mad enough to choose to go.

Again, the Aphrodite felt much more solid, much more stable, in the water than usual. And again, she moved through the water much more slowly than usual. Sostratos went up onto the poop deck. "If we had to," he asked Menedemos, "could we have the men who aren't rowing throw sacks of grain overboard?"

"You mean, to lighten ship if the Carthaginians were chasing us?" Menedemos asked, and Sostratos dipped his head. His cousin shrugged. "We could have them do it. I doubt it would help much."

The answer struck Sostratos as honest if uninspiring. He watched Katane come into view and then disappear behind him. It was a good-sized town, bigger than Messene. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. He still thought it would be a good place to pause for, say, twenty or thirty years. But Menedemos didn't care what he thought, and Menedemos was in command. Sostratos wondered why more soldiers led by a bad general didn't simply run away.

He couldn't run away, not in a ship. Katane was too off away to swim to, and a lot of sailors couldn't swim at all. And Sostratos didn't know Menedemos was a bad captain. He did, however, have a strong opinion about that.

His cousin was doing all the little things he needed to do to succeed. He had sharp-eyed Aristeidas in the bow as lookout. And, some time past noon, Aristeidas called, "Ship ho! Ship ho dead ahead!" He pointed south, toward Syracuse. There was the city on the mainland. There was the small island of Ortygia, a few plethra offshore and also heavily built up. And there, worse luck, was the Carthaginian fleet blockading the Little Harbor north of Ortygia and the Great Harbor south of the island.

Aristeidas had spoken with the precision a good lookout needed: he'd called, Ship ho! and not, Sail ho! The Carthaginian war galleys had their masts down; as warships on active duty did, they moved with oars alone, ready to fight at any moment. Only specks in the distance now, they would look bigger all too soon. Sostratos knew that better than he wanted to.

"What do we do now?" he called to Menedemos.

"Hold our course," his cousin answered. "What else can we do?" Run sprang to Sostratos' mind again. But Menedemos went on, "I still think we've got a pretty good chance of sneaking into the Little Harbor. The Carthaginians will go after the round ships before they bother us."

"And how do you know that, O sage of age?" Sostratos demanded.

"For one thing, all the round ships carry a lot more grain than we do," Menedemos answered with surprising patience. "That's what the Carthaginians want to keep from getting into Syracuse. And, for another, we can fight a little bit, and the round ships can't. Why should the Carthaginians make things harder on themselves than they have to?"

All that made a certain amount of sense to Sostratos, but only a certain amount. He pointed toward the oncoming war galleys, which were closing with the fleet of grain carriers at a frightening clip - it certainly frightened him. "Do you really think we can fight those even a little bit?" Some of the galleys had two banks of oars - those would be fours. Others had three banks - those would be fives. All of them dwarfed the Roman trireme the Aphrodite had crippled. And Sostratos could see how smoothly the rowers handled the oars. These weren't half-trained crews, like the one in that trireme.

"Of course we can," Menedemos said, so heartily that Sostratos knew he was lying in his teeth.

Sostratos couldn't even call his cousin on it, not without disheartening the crew. The Carthaginian galleys scurried toward the round ships like so many scorpions. The sternposts that curved up and forward over their poops like upraised stings added to the blance. But the galleys carried their stings at the bow, in their rams. White water foamed from the three horizontal flukes of those rams. Sostratos could see it much more clearly than he would have liked.

But then Aristeidas proved he was indeed a first-rate lookout. "Ships ho!" he sang out. "Ships ho off the port bow!" He'd kept looking around while everyone else thought of nothing but the Carthaginian war galleys, and pointed southeast, where another fleet of warships was rounding Ortygia, heading north as fast as their rowers could take them.

"Are those the Carthaginians who'd been patrolling outside the Great Harbor?" Sostratos asked. "If they are, why aren't they coming after us?"

"How should I know?" Menedemos, for the first time, sounded harassed. He'd seemed ready to deal with one fleet. Two . . .

Sostratos hadn't been ready to deal with even one fleet. He didn't think his cousin had, either, no matter what Menedemos said. But, when he saw something strange, he wanted to find out about it.

And find out about it he did. The Carthaginians had come within three or four stadia before they noticed the compact formation of ships to the east. Then Sostratos heard cries in the harsh Phoenician language. The Carthaginian war galleys forgot all about the fleet of grain ships. They turned their prows to the east, ready to ward off the onslaught they expected from the other ships.

Menedemos whooped for joy. "Those aren't more Carthaginian galleys!" he exclaimed. "Those are Agathokles' ships, sailing out of Syracuse to save us!"

The sailors aboard the Aphrodite cheered. They couldn't have been any happier than Sostratos at the thought of those Carthaginian fours and fives bearing down on the akatos, and could know nothing but relief when the enemy fleet's rams turned in a new direction. But then Sostratos said, "If Agathokles aims to rescue us, why aren't his ships turning in on the Carthaginians?"

He'd expected Menedemos to have an answer ready for him. He wasn't ignorant of the sea himself - few Rhodians were - but his cousin knew as much as a man twice his age. All Menedemos said, though, was, "I don't know."

Diokles undoubtedly knew more about the sea than Menedemos. He too sounded baffled. "They're rowing north right on past us, fast as they can go. What are they doing?"

"I haven't the faintest notion," Sostratos said. Menedemos dipped his head to show he didn't know, either.

Agathokles' fleet kept on heading north, at the best speed the rowers could make. Again, Sostratos heard shouts from the closest couple of Carthaginian war galleys. He wished he understood the Phoenician tongue. Before long, though, the Carthaginians' actions showed what was in their minds: they began to row after the ships from Syracuse, forgetting about the round ships they'd been on the point of capturing or sinking.

"They're more worried about Agathokles than they are about us." Menedemos sounded affronted.

But Sostratos said, "Wouldn't you be? Those ships can fight back. This fleet can't."

He waited for Menedemos to tell him the Aphrodite certainly could fight back. His cousin only sighed, dipped his head again, and said, "But what's Agathokles doing? He's sailing out of the harbor where he's safe, he's sailing away from Carthage, not toward it . . .." His voice trailed off.

What had to be the same thought struck Sostratos at the same time. "If they go along the north coast of Sicily . . ." His voiced faded away, too.

Menedemos took up the idea for him: "They can make for Carthage that way. If that's what Agathokles is doing, he's got balls and to spare." He let out an admiring whistle.

"Look at the way the Carthaginians are chasing him," Sostratos said. "They have to think that's what he's after."

"I do believe you young gentlemen are right," Diokles said. "At least, I can't think of anything else Agathokles'd be up to. And he's a son of a whore who's always up to something, if half the stories you hear about him are true."

"That's the truth," Sostratos said. "Look at how he let his enemies leave the polis and then got rid of them."

"He's ready for anything, sure enough," Menedemos said. "Now we've got to get ready to get into Syracuse ourselves."

"We've got to get ready for more than that," Sostratos said.

"How do you mean?" his cousin asked.

"We've got to get ready to see if we get paid."

"Yes, I suppose that does matter," Menedemos agreed.

"Matter?" Sostratos said. "Matter? Now that we've come all this way without getting killed or captured, making what we were promised would almost make up for the fear we went through getting here. Almost - though I can't think of anything else that would even come close."

Menedemos grinned at him and said, "You worry too much." He pulled back on one steering oar and forward on the other, guiding the Aphrodite toward the waiting, welcoming harbor ahead.

"Yes, of course you'll be paid," the Syracusan official said - officiously - as slaves carried sacks of grain off the Aphrodite and down the quay into hungry Syracuse. "Come to the palace on Ortygia tomorrow, and you shall have every obolos owed you. So Agathokles promised, and so shall it be."

He spoke as if the sun wouldn't rise if Agathokles broke a promise. Menedemos wondered how the Syracusan tyrant's political enemies felt about that. A moment later, he stopped wondering: being dead, they doubtless felt nothing at all.

No matter how bold a front he'd put up for Sostratos and the akatos' crew, he knew he'd stuck his head in the lion's mouth by sailing down to Syracuse. Now he was going to have to put his head there again. If Agathokles - or rather, Agathokles' brother Antandros, who was in charge of the city while the tyrant led the fleet to Africa - didn't feel like living up to the bargain Onasimos the proxenos had made in Rhegion, what could anyone do about it? Not much, as Menedemos knew too mournfully well.

Some of the sweating slaves taking grain off the Aphrodite and the round ships were big, pale, fair-haired Kelts. Some were stocky Italians of one sort or another (Menedemos hoped there were plenty of Romans among them, but couldn't tell by looking). Most, though, had the swarthy, hook-nosed look of Carthaginians.

"Plenty of Hellenes enslaved in Carthage, too," Sostratos said when Menedemos remarked on that. "If you get captured instead of doing the capturing, that's what happens to you. We were lucky, you know."

"Maybe we were." Menedemos could admit it now that they were tied up in the Little Harbor. "But Tykhe is a strong goddess."

"Fortune is a fickle goddess, too," Sostratos said. "Remember what happened to the Athenians who came here a hundred years ago. Most of them would have been lucky with anything so light as lugging sacks of grain."

"I think I've heard you tell that story before," Menedemos said. "Me, I'm more worried about what will happen tomorrow than what happened a hundred years ago."

He'd hoped that would annoy his cousin. It did, but not quite enough to suit him. Instead of going off in a huff, Sostratos answered seriously: "What happens tomorrow will happen in part because of what happened a hundred years ago. How can you understand the present if you don't understand the past?"

"I don't know, and I don't much care," Menedemos said. That did affront Sostratos. He stalked toward the bow, dodging men with sacks of grain on their shoulders. Menedemos smiled behind his back.

The slaves weren't the only people on the pier. A tavern tout called, "First two cups of wine free for all the sailors who brought us grain when we needed it so bad. Come to Leosthenes' place, right off the harbor."

A cheer went up on the Aphrodite. The cheers that rose from the round ships were smaller - they carried fewer sailors. Menedemos said, "Diokles, I'm going to want half a dozen men on board through the night. Two days' bonus pay for anybody who's willing not to drink and screw himself blind tonight."

He hadn't tried to keep his voice down, on the contrary, he wanted the sailors to hear and to volunteer to pick up an extra three drakhmai. Along with the sailors, Sostratos also heard. He whirled in alarm: he hated spending extra silver. Menedemos thought he would protest out loud, which wouldn't have been good. But Sostratos proved to have sense enough not to do that. Menedemos beckoned him back to the stern as Diokles found volunteers.

"Don't worry," Menedemos told his cousin. "Once Antandros pays us, a few drakhmai won't matter one way or the other."

"They always matter," Sostratos said primly, "and I always worry. One of the things I'm worrying about now is, suppose Antandros doesn't pay us?"

"His man said he would," Menedemos said, that being the strongest reply he could make. He was worried, too, and doing his best not to show it. "And even if he doesn't, we still got half again the going rate up in Rhegion - and we're in Syracuse, by the dog of Egypt! We've got a fresh chance for top prices on peafowl chicks and silk and Ariousian - and a fresh chance to unload what's left of our papyrus and ink. If we can't sell 'em here, we can't sell 'em anywhere this side of Athens. And everybody takes them there, so nobody gets a good price for them."

He waited to see if his cousin would stay mulish. Most men would have.But Sostratos was uncommonly reasonable - sometimes, as far as Menedemos was concerned, too reasonable for his own good. Instead of growling, he stopped and thought. At last, grudgingly, he dipped his head. "Fair enough, I suppose. You were right about coming here, as things worked out. Maybe you'll be right again. I hope so."

"Me, too," Menedemos said. And then, because Sostratos had gone halfway toward healing the quarrel, he tried to do the same himself: "I'd have had more faith myself coming down here if I'd known ahead of time that Agathokles would pick that moment to sally forth. Good luck, like we said before."

Sostratos snapped his fingers in annoyance. "By the gods, I'm an idiot! Why didn't I see that before?"

"If you'd asked me, I could have told you you were an idiot," Menedemos said cheerfully. Sostratos glowered. Menedemos went on, "But what didn't you see?"

"It probably wasn't just good luck," Sostratos answered.

"What wasn't?" Menedemos hated it when his cousin got ahead of him. Sostratos thought too well of his thinking as things were.

"Agathokles' sally, of course," he said now. "It all fits together, don't you see? Agathokles had to use something to break the Carthaginians' blockade if he was going to get his own fleet loose. What would be more likely to make the Carthaginians move than a gaggle of nice, fat grain ships?"

Menedemos stared. It did fit together, provided . . .. "That Agathokles must be one sneaky rogue." He held up a hand; this time, he was running even with Sostratos. "We already know he is, from the way he treated his enemies."

"We can't prove any of this, you know," Sostratos said. "I wonder if Antandros would tell us."

"If you ask him, I'll hit you over the head with the biggest pot I can pick up," Menedemos said. "How can you be clever enough to see plots and schemes and foolish enough to want to get in trouble sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong, both at the same time?"

"Hmm." Sostratos pondered again. "Well, maybe you're right."

"I should hope so!" Menedemos said. "Are you going to stay aboard the Aphrodite tonight?"

"I think so," Sostratos replied. "Why?"

Menedemos grinned. That was the answer he'd wanted to hear. "Why? Because, O best one, I intend to go into Syracuse and celebrate getting here without getting sunk the way such things ought to be celebrated."

"You're going to have a couple of girls and you're going to get so drunk you won't remember having them," Sostratos said with distaste.

"Right!" Menedemos said. His cousin rolled his eyes. Menedemos couldn't have cared less about his cousin's opinion.

As the oarsmen rowed the Aphrodite's boat across the narrow channel separating the Sicilian mainland from the island of Ortygia, Sostratos took a certain somber satisfaction in Menedemos' condition. His cousin's eyes were red, his face sallow. He shaded his eyes from the sun with the palm of his hand. Even though the sea in the Little Harbor was calm as could be, he kept gulping as if he were about to lean over the gunwale and feed the fish.

"I hope you had a good time last night," Sostratos said sweetly.

"I certainly did," Menedemos answered - not too loud. "This one girl - by the gods, she could suck the pit right out of an olive. But . . ." He grimaced. "Now I'm paying the price. If my head fell off, it'd do me a favor."

Sostratos hadn't had the pleasure, but he didn't have the pain, either. As he usually did, he thought that a good bargain. The boat slid up to one of the quays on Ortygia. The fellow standing on the quay looked more like a majordomo than the usual harborside roustabout, but he made the boat fast. As he did so, he asked, "And you are . . .?"

"I'm Menedemos son of Philodemos, captain of the merchant galley Aphrodite," Menedemos told him, still speaking softly. He pointed to Sostratos. "This is my toikharkhos, Sostratos son of Lysistratos."

"You will be here for payment, I expect?" the Syracusan servitor said.

Menedemos dipped his head, then winced. Carefully not smiling, Sostratos said, "That's right."

"Come with me, then," the servitor said, and walked off toward a small, metal-faced gate in the frowning wall of gray stone that warded the rulers of Syracuse from their enemies. Over the past hundred years, those rulers had had a good many foes from whom they needed protection. Not only had the Athenians and Carthaginians besieged the city, but it had also gone through endless rounds of civil strife. I don't always remember how lucky I am to live in a place like Rhodes, Sostratos thought. Coming to a polis that's seen the worst of what its own people can do to one another ought to remind me.

Inside the grim wall, Ortygia proved surprisingly lush. Fruit trees grew on grassy swards that sheep cropped close. The shade was welcome. So were the perfumes of oleander and arbutus and lavender. Sostratos breathed deeply and sighed with pleasure.

So did Menedemos. "I'm glad to be here," he said. "The light doesn't hurt my eyes nearly so much as it did before."

"That's because you're in the shade now," Sostratos said: only tiny patches of sunlight dappled the path along which they were walking.

"No, I don't think so," Menedemos replied. "I guess my hangover is going away faster than I thought it would."

Sostratos scarcely heard him. He was staring at those little sundapples, the places where light slid through gaps in the leaves above. They should have been round. They should have been, but they weren't. They were so many narrow crescents, as if the early moon had broken into hundreds or thousands or myriads of pieces, each shaped like the original.

He looked into the morning sky. It did seem dimmer than it should have, and more so by the moment. Alarm and something greater than alarm, something he belatedly recognized as awe, prickled through him. "I don't think it's your hangover," he said in a voice hardly above a whisper. "I think it's an eclipse."

The sky kept getting darker, as if dusk were falling. The chatter of wagtails and chaffinches died away. The breeze caressing Sostratos' cheek felt cooler than it had. But his shiver when he peered up toward the sun had nothing to do with that. Like the shadows, it too had been pared to a skinny crescent.

"By the gods!" Menedemos was whispering, too. "You can see some of the brighter stars."

So Sostratos could. And seeing them, oddly, touched a chord of memory in him. Speaking a little louder than he had before, he said, " 'In the same summer, at the time of the new moon - since, indeed, it seems to be possible only then - the sun was eclipsed after noon and was restored to its former size once more: it became crescent-shaped, and certain stars appeared.' "

"It's not after noon," the Syracusan servitor said, his voice raucous in the sudden, uncanny gloom. "It's only about the third hour of the morning."

Menedemos knew his cousin far better than the stranger did. He asked, "What are you quoting from?"

"Thoukydides' history, the second book," Sostratos answered. "That eclipse happened the year the Peloponnesian War broke out, more than a hundred and twenty years ago. The world didn't end then, so I don't suppose it will now." He shivered, hoping he was right. In the face of something like this, rationality came hard, hard.

Screams - from women and men both - showed that a lot of people weren't making the least effort to stay rational. "A horrible monster is eating the sun!" someone howled in accented Greek.

"Is he right?" the servitor with Sostratos and Menedemos asked anxiously. "You fellows sound like you know something about it."

Sostratos tossed his head. "No, he's mistaken. It's a natural phenomenon. And look - it's one that doesn't last long. See? It's already getting lighter."

"Gods be praised!" the servitor said.

"I can't make out the stars any more." Menedemos sounded sad.

Birds started singing again. The clamor that had echoed through Ortygia - and, no doubt, through all of Syracuse - ebbed. The small speckles of sunlight on the ground and walls remained crescent-shaped rather than round, but the crescents seemed wider to Sostratos than they had when the eclipse was at its height.

"Well, that's something I can tell my grandchildren about, if I live to have any." Agathokles' man - Antandros' now - recovered his aplomb quickly.

So did Menedemos. "Lead on, if you would," he told the fellow.

Following them both, Sostratos thought, I should be making notes, or at least standing still and remembering all I can. When will I see another eclipse? Never, probably. But he kept on after his cousin and the servitor. With a sigh, he strode into the palace from which Agathokles had ruled Syracuse and in which his brother now held sway for him.

Before they came into Antandros' presence, more servitors patted them most thoroughly to make sure they carried to weapons. Sostratos thought himself more likely to want to kill someone after that sort of indignity than before it, but kept quiet.

Antandros sat on what wasn't quite a throne. He was older than Sostratos had expected; he'd lost much of his hair, and gray streaked what remained. When a steward murmured to him who Sostratos and Menedemos were, he leaned toward the man with a hand cupped behind his ear. "What was that?" he asked. The steward repeated himself, louder this time. "Oh," Antandros said. "The chaps from the akatos." He turned his gaze on the two Rhodians. "Well, young men, between the Carthaginians and the eclipse, I'd bet you've had more excitement the past couple of days than you really wanted."

We certainly have! Sostratos thought. But before he could speak, Menedemos said, "I always thought a quiet life was a boring life, sir."

Antandros held his hand behind his ear again. "What was that?" As the steward had, Menedemos repeated himself. Antandros said, "My little brother would agree with you. Me, I don't mind sleeping soft in my own bed with a full belly every now and again, and that's the truth."

I'm with you, Sostratos thought. But Antandros' homely desires went a long way toward explaining why Agathokles ruled Syracuse and his older brother served him.

"How many sacks of grain did you bring into the polis?" Antandros asked.

Menedemos looked to Sostratos, trusting him to have the number at his fingertips. And he did: "It was 791, sir," he replied, loud enough to let the man in charge of Syracuse hear him the first time.

Antandros' smile showed a missing front tooth. "Paying you won't even hurt. A merchant galley doesn't hold much next to a round ship, does she?"

"She wasn't built to haul grain, sir," Sostratos agreed, "but we were glad to help your polis as best we could." Menedemos was, anyhow.

Amusement sparked in Antandros' eyes. Sostratos got the feeling Agathokles' brother knew he was lying. But all Antandros said was, "You'll be glad to get paid, too, won't you?"

"Yes, sir." Sostratos wouldn't deny the obvious.

"You will be," Antandros said. "No, you aren't made for hauling grain, sure enough. What other cargo have you got aboard?"

"Rhodian perfume, Koan silk, Ariousian from Khios, papyrus and ink - and peafowl chicks," Sostratos answered.

"What was that last?" Hearing something unfamiliar, Antandros hadn't got it.

"Peafowl chicks," Sostratos said again. "We sold the grown peacock and peahens earlier, mostly in Taras."

"Can't let the polluted Tarentines get ahead of Syracuse," Antandros exclaimed. "Now we have plenty of grain to feed birds, too - plenty of grain to feed everyone. We went from hungry to fat in one fell swoop when the fleet got in. What do you want for these chicks? And how many have you got?"

"We have seven left, sir." Sostratos flicked a glance toward Menedemos. His cousin's lips silently shaped a word. Sostratos fought back the urge to whistle in astonishment. Menedemos didn't do things by halves. But Sostratos had, in a way, asked, and the gamble struck him as good, too. In a calm voice, he went on, "We want three minai apiece."

The steward looked horrified. Privately, Sostratos didn't blame him a bit. "I'll take all of them," Antandros said. "To the crows - no, to the peafowl - with the Tarentines. As soon as I get the chance, I'll send one on to my little brother in Africa."

"Ahh!" With the pleasure of curiosity satisfied and a guess confirmed, Sostratos forgot about the dismayed steward. "So that's what Agathokles was up to! He is sailing around the north side of Sicily, then?"

"That's right." Antandros dipped his head. "Up till now, all the fighting in this war has been here in Sicily. But my brother decided it was time for the Carthaginians to see how they like war among their wheatfields and olive trees. No one has ever invaded their homeland - till now."

"May he give them a good kick in the ballocks, then," Menedemos said. Sostratos thought the same thing. The Macedonian marshals littering the landscape in the east of the Hellenic world were bad enough. Having barbarians overrunning poleis in Great Hellas struck him as even worse.

A moment later, he wondered why. What could the Carthaginians have visited on Syracuse that Hellenes hadn't already inflicted on other Hellenes? The question struck him as no great compliment to Carthage, but rather a judgment on what Hellenes had visited on one another.

Antandros spoke to the steward: "Take them to the treasury. Pay them for the grain and for these birds."

"Yes, sir," the steward replied, though he looked as if he would have said something else had he dared. He turned to Sostratos and Menedemos. "Come with me, O best ones." He didn't sound as if he meant that, either.

Can it be this simple? Sostratos wondered as he followed the steward out of what would have been the throne room had Agathokles called himself a king. Will Antandros really just pay us for the grain and the peafowl and send us on our way? Nothing this whole voyage has been that simple.

Seeing the treasury did nothing to reassure him. Ortygia was a fortress. The rulers of Syracuse stored their silver and gold in a fortress within a fortress, behind massive stone walls, gates whose valves seemed to Sostratos as thick as his own body, and a veritable phalanx of soldiers: some Hellenes, others Italians and Kelts. Sostratos tried to imagine what those soldiers would have done had he and Menedemos approached them without the steward's protective company. He wasn't sorry to find himself failing.

But the steward, whatever he thought, did not dare disobey Antandros. The clerk to whom he spoke looked surprised, but asked no questions. How long would a man who asked questions last in Syracuse? Sostratos couldn't have gauged it by the water clock, but thought he knew the answer nonetheless: not long.

Instead of asking those dangerous questions, the clerk started bringing out leather sacks. When Sostratos hefted one, he asked the fellow, "A mina?" The clerk dipped his head and went back for more silver. By the time he was done, what seemed like a small mountain of sacks stood on the broad stone counter that separated him from the two Rhodians.

Solemnly, Menedemos said, "We have just made a profit."

"So we have," Sostratos said. "I ought to count the drakhmai in a few of these sacks." Cheating by one part in twenty, maybe even one part in ten, would be easy if the treasury clerk didn't offer the use of a set of scales to weight the silver, something he showed no sign of doing.

The silence that came crashing down was so very frigid, it put Sostratos in mind of snow: only a word to most Rhodians, since none had fallen on his island in all the days of his life, or, for that matter, his father's, but he'd seen the stuff in a hard winter in Athens. Now Menedemos spoke quickly: "I think we're all right."

"But - " Sostratos was the sort of man who liked to see everything pegged down tight, so there could be no possible doubt about where it lay.

"I said, I think we're all right." As if trying to get something across to Antandros, Menedemos spoke louder than he had to. He spoke so loud, in fact, that his voice echoed from the stone walls and ceiling of the treasury.

Hearing those echoes reminded Sostratos of exactly where he was. It also reminded him of his earlier thought about what happened to Syracusans who asked questions. That thought led to another: what would happen to a stranger who asked questions in Syracuse? Sostratos decided he didn't really want to find out the answer to that one.

"Well, I suppose we are, too," he said, with what he hoped wasn't too sheepish a smile. Menedemos' sigh of relief was loud enough to raise echoes, too. The steward and the treasury clerk relaxed.

Menedemos said, "Could we have two large leather sacks and a couple of guards to take us back to the Aphrodite's boat? This is a lot of silver, and all of Ortygia knows by now that we're getting it."

When the steward hesitated, Sostratos said, "If you like, they could come across to the akatos with us, and bring the peafowl chicks and their cages back for Antandros."

"All right." The steward dipped his head. "That does make sense."

Sostratos felt like cheering. The peafowl had been a weight on his back like the world on Atlas' ever since he first heard the peacock screech in the Great Harbor at Rhodes. Now, at last, after spring and most of summer, he would be free of it. He hadn't known just how heavy it was till he faced the prospect of having it lifted from him.

And he gave a sigh of relief of his own when the guards the steward summoned proved to be Hellenes. Had he had a couple of tall, beefy Kelts for an escort, he would have worried that they might set on Menedemos and him. Of course, Hellenes could be light-fingered and murderous, too, but he chose not to dwell on that.

"How much money have you got there?" one of these fellows asked in interested tones.

"As much as Antandros wanted us to have," Menedemos answered before Sostratos could come up with a reply to a question with so many implications. He admired the one his cousin had found.

From somewhere or other, the rowers in the Aphrodite's boat had got hold of a jar of wine. When they took the Syracusan soldiers across the narrow channel to the merchant galley's berth in the Little Harbor, their stroke suggested that this was the first time they'd ever handled oars in their lives. Sostratos was embarrassed. Menedemos, plainly, was mortified. He couldn't even yell at the men without making them all look even worse to the Syracusans than they did already.

Menedemos cursed in a low voice as he boarded the Aphrodite. But Sostratos' exasperation melted away as sailors loaded the peafowl chicks and their cages into the boat. He even tossed the two Syracusans a drakhma each, more in sympathy with them for having to deal with the birds than as a tip for getting him and Menedemos back to the akatos unrobbed.

"Thank you kindly, O best one," one soldier said. The other waved and grinned. The boat's crew took them back to Ortygia. The channel between mainland and island was narrow enough to let them escape misfortune.

As the crew returned - still rowing most erratically - Sostratos said, "It's a good thing they didn't have to do anything difficult."

"What's so good about it?" Menedemos growled. He screamed at the men in the boat: "You idiots! If you're on your own polluted time, I don't care what you do, you whipworthy rogues. I'll do it right alongside you, as a matter of fact. But you've got no business - none, not a dust speck's worth - getting drunk when you know you're going to have to do something important in a little while. Suppose Sostratos and I had been running for our lives. Could you have got us away safe? Not likely!"

The rowers wore wide, wine-filled, placating smiles, like so many dogs that had somehow angered the leader of their pack. One of them said, "Sorry, skipper. That eclipse knocked us for a loop, it did. And everything worked out all right." His grin got wider and more foolish.

Sostratos thought that a fair excuse, but not his cousin: "No, it didn't, the gods curse you." Menedemos' voice rose in both volume and pitch. It got so shrill, in fact, that Sostratos dug a finger in his ear. "You wide-arsed simpleton, you made the ship look bad. Nobody makes my ship look bad - nobody, do you hear me?"

Half of Syracuse heard him. By the way he was shrieking, Sostratos wouldn't have been surprised if Agathokles, somewhere off the north coast of Sicily, heard him. He tried to remember the last time he'd seen Menedemos so furious, tried and failed. It's been a long time since anyone embarrassed him in public, he thought.

If the sodden rowers had had tails, they would have wagged them. "Yes, skipper," said the one who felt like talking. "We are sorry, skipper - aren't we, lads?" All of them solemnly dipped their heads.

But Menedemos, like a Fury, remained unappeased. "Sorry? You aren't sorry yet!" He spun toward Sostratos. "Dock every one of those bastards three days' pay!"

"Three days?" Sostratos said - quietly. "Isn't that a bit much?"

"By the gods, no!" Menedemos didn't bother lowering his voice. "One day because they've wasted a day's work with their antics. And two more to remind them not to be such drunken donkeys again."

Instead of getting angry themselves, as they might have done, the men in the Aphrodite's boat looked contrite, as if they were sacrificing their silver in place of a goat in expiation for their sins. That too was the wine working in them, Sostratos judged. "It'll never happen again, skipper," their spokesman said. "Never!" A tear rolled down his cheek.

Sostratos nudged Menedemos and spoke one word out of the side of his mouth: "Enough."

He wondered if his cousin would listen to him, or if Menedemos' anger, like that of Akhilleus in the Iliad, was so great and deep as to leave him beyond the reach of common sense. For a moment, he feared passion held complete sway over Menedemos. But at last, gruffly, Menedemos said, "Oh, very well. Come aboard, you clods."

The drunken sailors scurried away from him. Another Homeric comparison occurred to Sostratos. In a low voice, he asked, "How does it feel to be Zeus, father of both gods and men?"

Menedemos chuckled, the rage finally ebbing from him. "Not bad, now that you mention it. Not bad at all."

"I believe you," Sostratos said. "You don't often see anybody put men in fear like that."

"Every once in a while, a captain needs to be able to do that," Menedemos said seriously. "If the men don't know they have to obey, know it down deep, you won't get the most out of them. Sometimes you need to - when a trireme is coming after you, for instance."

"I suppose so," Sostratos said, "but wouldn't it be better if they obeyed you out of love? As the godlike Platon said, an army of lovers could conquer the world."

His cousin snorted. "Maybe it would be better, but it's not likely. Try to make your rowers love you, and they'll just think you're soft."

Sostratos sighed. Menedemos' words had the hard, clear ring of probability to them, like silver coins dropped on a stone counter. As for an army of lovers . . . The soldiers of Philip, Alexander the Great's father, had killed the Theban Sacred Band - made up of erastoi and their eromenoi - to the last man, after which Alexander went out and conquered the world without them. Platon hadn't lived to see any of that. Sostratos wondered what he would have had to say about it. Nothing good, he suspected.

Platon had come here to Syracuse, to try to make a philosopher out of the tyrant Dionysos' worthless son. That hadn't worked, either. Sostratos sighed again. People seemed harder to change than lovers of wisdom wished them to be.

Menedemos changed the subject like the captain of a round ship swinging the yard from one side of the mast to the other to go onto a new tack: "Now all we need to do is a little more business here, maybe, and then get our silver home. Even my father won't have much to complain about."

"It'll be a shorter trip, or it should," Sostratos said. "We won't have to stop at nearly so many places." He coughed delicately. "And we'd do better not to stop at Taras after all, wouldn't we?"

"What if we would?" Menedemos said. "We can visit Kroton again, and then sail across the gulf there to Kallipolis. Old what's-his-name in Taras won't hear about us till we're gone."

"You hope Gylippos won't," Sostratos said. "Was Phyllis worth it?"

"I thought so then," Menedemos answered, shrugging. "A little too late to worry about it now, wouldn't you say?"

"A lot too late." But Sostratos didn't sound amused or indulgent. "When will you grow up?"

Menedemos grinned at him. "Not soon, I hope."