Over the Wine-Dark Sea

12

"Telos behind us at last," Sostratos said. His cousin made a face at him, for the Aegean island's name sounded nearly the same as the word for at last. Grinning at Menedemos, he pointed eastward. "And there's Rhodes ahead."

"A good thing, too," Menedemos said. "No guessing how much longer decent sailing weather will hold."

"You've been grumbling about that ever since we left Syracuse," Sostratos said. "The weather couldn't have been much better."

"That's true, but it didn't have to stay good," Menedemos replied. "And when have you ever known a sailor who didn't worry about the weather?"

Sostratos didn't answer that. He eyed the birds overhead flying south for the winter. Sure enough, there was a long, straggling line of cranes, bigger than any of the other birds he could see. Aristophanes had had it right. But he was still wrong about Sokrates, Sostratos thought.

If he said that, he would start a real quarrel, and he didn't feel like one now, not with the Aphrodite so close to home. Instead, he chose something he reckoned harmless. "It'll be good to get back to our family."

But his cousin only grunted. "Good for you, maybe," he said at last. "You wait. My father will say he could have done better and made more money."

He's probably right, Sostratos thought. Uncle Philodemos is never satisfied. Aloud, he said, "Why don't you just smile and dip your head and tell him he's bound to know best?"

"Ha!" Menedemos rolled his eyes. "For one thing, he cursed well doesn't know best. And for another, if I told him he did, he'd fall over dead from the shock. I don't want his blood on my hands even by accident, the way Oidipous had Laios'."

And you're just as stubborn as your father, and you won't yield to him even by a barleycorn's breadth. One more thing Sostratos thought it better not to say. He did say, "Whether the two of you argue or not, he'll be glad to see you. We've come back safe, we only lost one man, and we made money. What more could he ask?"

"More money, of course," Menedemos replied.

"Oh, foof!" Sostratos said. "Once we get into port, the family will throw a celebration the polis will buzz about all through the winter. Your father wouldn't do that if he didn't care about you, and you know it. My mother and sister will be green with envy because they aren't men and won't be able to come."

"Maybe." Menedemos did his best not to sound convinced. "I wonder if my father's second wife will even care."

"Of course she will," Sostratos said. "Baukis is young - I remember that from the wedding, though I doubt I've seen her since, naturally. She'll want something she can gossip about with her friends."

"Maybe," Menedemos said again. He turned away from Sostratos, plainly not wanting to discuss it further. Sostratos wondered if he was angry at his father for remarrying after his mother died. If Uncle Philodemos had a son by his new wife, that would complicate the family inheritance.

As the Aphrodite neared Rhodes, the island stretched across more and more of the horizon. "The vines look good," Sostratos said, even though he was too far away to make any real guess about how they looked. It let him talk about something besides the family, which Menedemos plainly didn't want to do. Trying his best to come up with the light chat that his cousin managed as if by nature, he went on, "Not that we'd ever get sixty drakhmai the amphora if we shipped Rhodian to Great Hellas."

"No," Menedemos said, and made a production out of steering the akatos. So much for light chatter, Sostratos thought mournfully.

The fishing boats that bobbed in the blue, blue Aegean didn't flee when their skippers spotted the Aphrodite - most of them didn't, anyhow. The fishermen knew few pirates dared venture into the well-patrolled waters near their island. "We can certainly be proud of our fleet," Sostratos offered.

"Yes. Certainly." Again, Menedemos spoke as if he were being charged for every word he uttered. Sostratos gave up until the merchant galley rounded Rhodes' northernmost promontory, passed the fleet's harbor, and sailed into the sheltered waters of the Great Harbor, from which it had set out that spring.

"It is good to be back," he said then.

"Well, so it is," Menedemos admitted - something of a relief to Sostratos, who'd begun to wonder if his cousin ever intended to speak more than a couple of words to him. Menedemos wasn't shy about talking to the rowers, of whom he had ten on a side at the oars: "Come on, boys - make it pretty. The whole polis will be watching you, and there's not a Rhodian man breathing who doesn't know what to do with an oar in his hands."

Thus encouraged, the rowers showed what a well beaten-in crew could managed, following the stroke Diokles set with perfect precision as Menedemos guided the Aphrodite to an open berth. "Back oars!" the keleustes called, and the men did that as smoothly as everything else. As soon as they'd killed the merchant galley's momentum, he called, "Oöp!" and they rested at their oars.

Sailors heaved lines to men on the wharf, who made the akatos fast. Sostratos tossed an obolos to each roustabout, and another little silver coin to a fellow to whom he said, "Hail, Letodoros. Run to the houses of Lysistratos and Philodemos and let them know the Aphrodite's home and safe. They'll have something more for you there, I expect."

"Thanks, best one. I'll do that." Letodoros popped the obolos into his mouth and went off at a ground-eating trot.

"Won't be long now," Sostratos said to Menedemos.

"So it won't." His cousin still stood between the steering oars, as he had throughout the voyage. Menedemos drummed the fingers of his right hand on the starboard tiller. "It won't be so bad," he said, as if trying to make himself believe it. "We did make a profit, after all, and a good one. Nobody can deny that."

"Nobody will even try to deny it," Sostratos said. "You'll see. And you're the one who claims I worry too much."

Menedemos fidgeted while they waited for their fathers to come down to the harbor. Sostratos paid the sailors what he owed them since he'd last given each of them silver, and wrote down the payments so no one could say he hadn't got his due. Watching Menedemos, he thought, I wouldn't twitch like a man with fleas even if I didn't have anything to do. I might feel like it, but I wouldn't do it.

After he paid off Diokles, he clasped the keleustes' hand and told him, "I hope you'll sail with us again next spring."

"I hope so, too, young sir," the oarmaster answered. "Never a dull moment, was there?"

"Too few of them, anyway," Sostratos said, which made Diokles laugh.

"Oh, by the gods," Menedemos said softly. "Here comes Father." He'd attacked a Roman trireme with no visible trace of fear, but quivered to see a middle-aged man approach the Aphrodite.

Sostratos waved. "Hail, Uncle Philodemos," he called. "We've come back with every man we started out with but one, and with a tidy profit."

"What happened to the one man?" Philodemos rapped out. He aimed the question not at Sostratos but at his own son.

"Hail, Father," Menedemos said. "He died of an arrow wound he took in a sea fight."

"Pirates?" Philodemos asked. "The Italian waters are lousy with 'em. Polluted bastards all ought to go up on crosses." His right hand folded into an angry fist.

"Yes, sir," Menedemos agreed. "But this wasn't a fight with pirates. The Romans sent a fleet of triremes to raid a Samnite town called Pompaia just as we were sailing away from it, and one of the triremes took after us."

Philodemos raised an eyebrow. "And you got away from it? That must have taken some fine sailing. I wasn't sure you had it in you."

Menedemos grappled with that, trying to decide whether it came out a compliment. Sostratos spoke up before his cousin could: "We didn't get away from it, Uncle. We wrecked it - used our hull to break its starboard oars. After we crippled it, then we got away."

"Really?" Philodemos said. Not only Sostratos and Menedemos but also a good many sailors amplified the story. Menedemos' father stroked his chin. "That does sound like a smart piece of work," he allowed.

"There," Sostratos hissed. "You see?" But Menedemos ignored him.

He was miffed, but only for a moment, for he saw his own father coming down the wharf toward the Aphrodite. He waved again. Lysistratos waved back. "Hail, son," he said. "Good to see you again. How did everything go?"

Uncle Philodemos didn't say it was good to see Menedemos, went through Sostratos' mind. He may have thought it, but he didn't say it. "Hail," he answered. "We're here. We made money. And we got rid of all the peafowl and all of their chicks." Relentless honesty made him add, "Well, almost all the peafowl. One peahen jumped into the sea. That was my fault."

"Many good-byes to them," Menedemos said. "They're gods-detested birds, no matter how pretty the peacock was. The Italiotes and barbarians who bought them are welcome to them, believe you me they are."

"They did make nuisances of themselves in our courtyards, didn't they?" Lysistratos said. "But I'm sure the two of you will be glad to come home and sleep in your own beds again. That was always one of the things I liked best about getting back from a trading run, anyhow."

"I don't know, Father," Sostratos said. "I've spent so much time on the planks of the poop deck, the mattress will probably feel strange the first few days. And then there was the night on the sacks of wheat when we were going down to Syracuse."

"Syracuse?" Lysistratos and Philodemos said together. Menedemos' father went on, "What's the news from Syracuse?" and Sostratos realized the Aphrodite was the first ship coming into Rhodes with word of everything that had happened in the west.

He and his cousin told the story together. Menedemos told more of it. Of the two of them, he'd always had the quicker tongue as well as the quicker feet. Sostratos got his chances to talk after Philodemos' frequent questions, for each one would throw Menedemos off his stride for a little while. Questions from Lysistratos didn't faze Menedemos at all, Sostratos noted.

When the two young men finished, Philodemos clicked his tongue between his teeth. "You took some long chances there, son," he said, his tone suggesting he might have other remarks when not so many people could hear them.

"I know, sir, but we got by with them, and they ended up paying off well," Menedemos replied, with something less than the cheeky brashness he'd shown through most of the journey.

"Just how much money did you make?" Philodemos asked. Menedemos looked toward Sostratos. Sostratos had told his cousin the answer, but Menedemos had no confidence in it. Here in his home port, Sostratos saw no point in keeping it a secret. He told his uncle, and had the satisfaction of watching the older man's jaw drop. "You're joking," Philodemos said.

"And five oboloi," Sostratos added. "No, I'm not joking at all."

"Euge!" his father said, and clapped his hands together to show just how well he thought it was done. "That's . . . splendid is the only word I can find." Lysistratos clapped again. "I'm proud of both of you."

"We also still have a little silk and a little Ariousian and some perfume on board," Sostratos said. "They won't bring so much here as they would have in Great Hellas, but they'll bring something."

Lysistratos beamed. Even Philodemos didn't look too unhappy. Sostratos waved to Himilkon the Phoenician, who was heading over to find out the news. We did it, he thought. We really did it, and now, at last, we're back. It feels even better than I thought it would.

Menedemos sat in the andron in his house, sipping from a cup of wine and wishing he were somewhere, anywhere, else. Even the men's chamber itself left him disappointed. Here in Rhodes, it was pretty fine. Set it next to Gylippos' in Taras, though, and it wasn't so much of a much.

But he wouldn't have minded the andron so much if his father hadn't been sitting a couple of cubits away glaring at him. "You idiot," Philodemos said. "What on earth or under it were you thinking of?"

"Profit," Menedemos answered in a low voice. His father always managed to put him in the wrong. With a flash of defiance, he added, "We got it, too. We got a lot of it."

Philodemos waved that away, as of no account. "You came much too close to getting exactly - exactly, I tell you - what you deserved for such a piece of foolishness. What did your cousin think of it? Was he as mad to put on wax-glued wings and imitate Ikaros flying up toward the sun as you were?"

Menedemos thought about lying, but reckoned he was too likely to get caught. Reluctantly, he tossed his head. "Well, no. Not quite."

"Not quite?" Philodemos put a world of expression into his echo. "What does that mean? No, don't tell me. I can figure it out for myself. Sostratos has some sense, at least - more than I can say for my own flesh and blood."

To cover his feelings, Menedemos took a long pull at the wine. He wished he could get drunk right now, so he wouldn't have to pay his father any attention at all. But Philodemos wouldn't let him forget that, either, and they'd be living in the same house till spring. However much he wanted to, however insulted he felt, he couldn't storm away, either, not unless he wanted to create bad blood that might last till he could sail away again.

What can I do? he wondered. Changing the subject was the only thing that came to him. He said, "We heard on the way back here that the war between Ptolemaios and Antigonos got going for all it was worth. Nobody really expected the peace to last, but even so . . .."

"It's going, all right," his father agreed with a certain gloomy satisfaction. Philodemos was willing to criticize the follies of others besides Menedemos. "Ptolemaios sent his general Leonides up to Kilikia to seize the cities on the coast from Antigonos."

"And he did it?" Menedemos asked.

His father dipped his head. "He did it, all right - till Antigonos heard what had happened. Then old One-Eye sent out his son Demetrios, and Demetrios ran Leonides out of Kilikia and all the way back to Egypt. Ptolemaios sent messages to Lysimakhos and Kassandros, too, they say, asking them for help to keep Antigonos from getting too strong, but he sure didn't get much."

"But Antigonos' nephew Polemaios turned on him," Menedemos said. "That has to be a heavy blow to Antigonos, losing the fellow who was his right-hand man."

" 'Was' is right," his father said. "That's Demetrios' place now, Demetrios' and his younger brother Philippos'. Antigonos sent Philippos up to the Hellespont to take on Polemaios' lieutenant Phoinix, and Philippos whipped him almost as hard as Demetrios whipped Leonides."

Menedemos whistled softly. "I hadn't heard that before. You have to admire Antigonos. He's never at a loss, no matter what happens to him."

"If you're a fat partridge in a bush, do you admire the wolf who wants to eat you?" Philodemos said. "That's how Rhodes looks to the marshals. And the thing about Antigonos is, he frightens all the others enough to make 'em band together to try to pull him down. You mark my words, son: those Macedonians will still be knocking heads together when you're as old as I am."

"Thirty years from now?" Menedemos tried not to sound scornful. He also tried to imagine what he would be like if he reached his father's years - tried and felt himself failing. "That's a long way off."

"You mark my words," Philodemos repeated. "The generals have been going at each other ever since Alexander died. Why should they stop? What would make them stop?"

"One man winning," Menedemos said at once.

His father looked thoughtful. "Yes, that might do it," he admitted. "But if one of them looks like winning, all the others gang up on him, the way everyone is against Antigonos now. That's how it's gone so far. Why should it change?"

"Panta rhei," Menedemos replied

" 'Everything flows'?" Philodemos echoed. "Some philosopher or other, isn't it? I thought you left showing off how much you know to your cousin."

"I'm sorry. I usually do." Menedemos liked his father much better when he was slighting Sostratos than when he was praising him.

Philodemos grunted. "Well, that's not much of an apology, but I suppose it's better than nothing."

You always find fault, Menedemos thought. If I cut my liver out for you, you'd complain that the priest didn't read good omens from it.

But then his father said, "You beat a trireme? And you came home with that much silver? I suppose, all things considered, you could have done worse. Here, let me pour you some more wine." Menedemos was almost too startled to hold out his cup - almost, but not quite. But as Philodemos poured, he asked, "And how many husbands did you outrage in Great Hellas?" Even when he tried to praise, he couldn't do it unmixed with spite.

And Menedemos answered with quick truth when, again, he might have done better lying: "Only one."

His father muttered something under his breath, then sighed and asked, "Where was it this time? Will you ever be able to do business there again, or is it as bad as Halikarnassos?"

"Taras, Father," Menedemos said, and Philodemos grunted as if he'd been hit in the belly. Menedemos went on, "I don't think it's quite so bad as at Halikarnassos." He didn't think Gylippos' toughs had intended to kill him, but only to beat him up. The fellow in Halikarnassos had definitely wanted him dead.

"Not quite so bad." Philodemos looked as if he were sipping vinegar, not wine. "And Taras is an important polis, too, the first one you're likely to come to on the way west from Hellas. What are we going to do with you, son?" Menedemos found it expedient to stay mute. His father grunted again, then said, "Well, at least you don't do things like that here in Rhodes, the gods be praised."

Menedemos didn't answer that, either. His father, fortunately, took silence for agreement.

"I was hoping I might hear my sister had been betrothed when I came home," Sostratos remarked to his father as they sat in the andron.

"And I was hoping I might be able to tell you Erinna was," Lysistratos replied. "I did have some discussions about it with - oh, never mind what his name was: what point to going into the details when these things don't work out?"

"What was wrong with him?" Sostratos asked.

"Not a thing," Lysistratos said. "But he made a match with another family for their daughter who's never been married. They aren't so well off as we are, but the girl's fourteen, not eighteen. He's more likely to breed sons on her than he is on Erinna. You can't blame him for having that uppermost in his thoughts. What are wives for but sons?"

"It's not Erinna's fault - " Sostratos began before checking himself.

"It's not anyone's fault that I can see," his father said. "It's just one of those things that make life difficult for mortals."

Gyges, the Lydian majordomo, stuck his head into the men's chamber. "Master, Xanthos is at the door. He wants to congratulate the young master on the Aphrodite's safe return."

Sostratos rolled his eyes. "Speaking of the things that make life difficult for mortals . . ."

His father laughed, but told Gyges, "Bring him in. He can drink some wine with us. Sooner or later, he'll go away."

"Later," Sostratos predicted, but in a voice low enough to keep his father from giving him a reproving look. A moment later, when the majordormo brought Xanthos into the andron, Sostratos got to his feet and bowed to the older man. "Hail, O marvelous one. How are you today?"

"Hail, Sostratos," Xanthos said. "It's good of you to ask. To tell you the truth, I do marvel that I failed to go down to the house of Hades while you were off in the west. My piles have been torture - and all the worse because I've been so constipated. And my shoulder joints ache whenever the weather gets damp. I dread this winter season, I truly do. I haven't been sleeping well, either. Old age truly is a misery; never let anyone tell you otherwise."

"Here you are, Xanthos." Lysistratos gave the other merchant a cup of wine, no doubt hoping to slow the tide of words. "Drink with us. We have reason to be glad, with the boys home safe and with a tidy profit, too."

"That's good news, very good news, very good news indeed," Xanthos said, flicking a few drops out of the cup for a libation. "Pity your son here couldn't have heard me at the Assembly earlier in the month. I'm immodest enough to say I surpassed even my usual eloquence."

"What did you speak on?" Sostratos asked.

"On how we should conduct ourselves if the fighting between Antigonos and Ptolemaios gets worse," Xanthos replied.

"That is important," Sostratos agreed.

He didn't ask the plump merchant to summarize the speech. He knew better. And Xanthos didn't summarize it. He said, "I believe I can remember how it went," and launched into it, complete with gestures that looked as if they would have been more at home on the comic stage than in the Assembly. His main point was that, since Rhodes did so much business with Egypt, she should stay on Ptolemaios' side provided she could do so without making Antigonos attack her. That made good sense to Sostratos, but he mightily wished Xanthos hadn't taken half an hour to get where he was going.

"Stirring," Lysistratos said when Xanthos finally finished. He poured himself more wine, which showed just how much he'd been stirred. Sostratos held out his cup for a refill, too. His father didn't offer the oinokhoe to Xanthos.

"Tell me the news from Italy," Xanthos urged Sostratos.

"Up north of Great Hellas, the Samnites and the Romans are still fighting," Sostratos said. He started to tell the other Rhodian how the Aphrodite had wound up in the middle of that war, but decided not to. It would only have brought more questions, and maybe, the gods forbid, another speech. Instead, he went on, "And from Sicily, Agathokles has invaded Africa to pay the Carthaginians back for besieging Syracuse." He didn't say anything about how the Aphrodite had been involved there, either.

"Well, well, isn't that interesting?" Xanthos said. He sensed he was being thwarted, and cast about for an opening: "You sold all your peafowl?"

"All but one, which, uh, died before we got to Great Hellas." Again, he said not a word about peafowl eggs or peafowl chicks.

"Ah, too bad," Xanthos said. "That cost you some money, it did, it did." Sostratos gravely dipped his head. He didn't say anything. Much later than Xanthos should have, he began to suspect he'd outstayed his welcome. "Well, I guess I'll wander over and pay my respects to Menedemos and his father."

"Good to see you," Sostratos said. Good to see you go, he glossed silently. He was glad enough to clasp Xanthos' hand as the other merchant took his leave. So was Lysistratos. Son and father looked at each other. When they heard Gyges close the door behind Xanthos, they sighed in unison. "Is there any more wine left in the oinokhoe?" Sostratos asked. "He's windy without eating beans and cabbage."

When his father shook the jar, it sloshed. He poured some into Sostratos' cup, the rest into his own. "He means well," he said.

After hearing every word of Xanthos' speech before the Assembly, Sostratos was not inclined to be charitable. "So does a puppy that piddles on my feet," he said, and drank the wine his father had given him.

"I know what you're thinking," Lysistratos said. "I'll have you know, though, that I suffered worse than you. I've heard his speech twice now."

"Oh, poor father!" Sostratos exclaimed, and put an arm around Lysistratos' shoulder. They both started laughing. Once they started, they had a hard time stopping. It's not the wine. Sostratos thought. We didn't drink that much. It had to be Xanthos' speech. That would have paralyzed a man who'd drunk nothing but water his whole life long.

"We shall have to have a feast to welcome you back," Lysistratos said. "A couple of feasts, in fact: one for your sister and your mother, and the other a proper symposion where you and your cousin can speak at length of your adventures in Great Hellas. Did you truly beat a trireme in the Aphrodite?"

"We wrecked its starboard bank of oars, and that let us get away," Sostratos replied. "Menedemos was telling Uncle Philodemos about it just before you got down to the harbor. I'm sure, at the symposion, he'll make a much more exciting story of it than I ever could."

"Exciting stories are all very well after the wine's gone round a few times," his father said. "I'd also like to have some notion of what really happened, though." Lysistratos' smile was lopsided, the smile of a man who'd learned not to expect too much from the world. "It might even make the stories more exciting."

"I'll tell you everything, as best I remember it," Sostratos promised. "But you should also listen to Menedemos' version, and Diokles' as well. Then you can put them together for yourself and decide where the real truth lies." He laughed at himself. "Anyone would think I wanted to write a history one day. That's how Thoukydides says he went about figuring out just what happened in the Peloponnesian War."

"Seems a sensible way to try to learn things," Lysistratos said.

Sostratos snapped his fingers. "Diokles!" he exclaimed. "I do want to put in a good word for him. We couldn't have had a better oar-master. Honest, sensible, brave when he needs to be - I'd love to sail with him as keleustes again next spring, but he'd make a good captain, too."

"I've always thought well of him, ever since the days when he first started pulling an oar," Lysistratos said. "I'll tell you what I do. When we have our symposion here, I'll invite him. I'm sure he can tell some stories of his own, and that will also let him talk with some other men who might want to offer him command of a ship."

"That would be very good, Father." Sostratos enthusiastically dipped his head. "It might be our loss, but Diokles deserves the chance."

"I should say so," Lysistratos agreed. "Considering how much silver you brought home, anyone who helped you earn it deserves a hand up from us. A man should lift up his friends and put down his enemies as he can, eh?"

"So Hellenes have said since the days of Akhilleus and Agamemnon," Sostratos answered. And so Hellas has seen endless factions and feuds, too, he thought, and then, I wonder if that would make sense to any of Alexander's marshals. Probably not, worse luck, or they wouldn't be at one another's throats.

Lysistratos pointed. "There's your sister, watering the garden. She'll be glad to see you."

Sostratos had heard water splashing from a hydria, too, but sat with his back to the courtyard. He'd guessed the slave girl, Threissa, was doing the work. "I'm always glad to see her," he said, getting to his feet. He walked out of the andron and called, "Hail, Erinna."

His sister squeaked, put down the water jar, ran to him, and threw herself into his arms. "Hail, Sostratos!" she said, and kissed him on the cheek. "When that wharf rat came yelling with news the Aphrodite was back, I almost veiled myself up and ran down to the harbor myself to come get a look at you as soon as I could." She grinned wickedly. "Wouldn't that have been a scandal?"

"It's not something girls of a good family do very often," Sostratos said diplomatically.

"I'm not exactly a girl of good family any more," Erinna answered. "The rules are a little looser for a widow."

"I suppose so," Sostratos said. "Father tells me you almost had a match this summer."

"Almost," Erinna agreed bitterly. "But then they decided to wed their son to a maiden instead. Look at me, Sostratos!" His sister seized his hands and held them. "Is my back bent? Is my hair gray? Are my teeth turning black and falling out?"

"Of course not." Sostratos answer was automatic. "By Zeus, you're still my little sister, and I'm a long way from an old man."

"Well, that other family treated me like an old woman," Erinna said. "When the other match came along, they dropped me as if they thought I'd be a shade in the house of Hades day after tomorrow. How am I supposed to have a family if no one wants to marry me any more?"

"You're always part of our family," Sostratos said.

His sister impatiently tossed her head. "I know that, but it's not what I meant, and you know it isn't. I meant a family of my own."

"Don't worry," Sostratos said. "You'll have one." If we have to make your dowry bigger, then we do, that's all. We can afford it better than we could have before this voyage. The silver we made in Syracuse will come in handy, no matter how much I wish Menedemos hadn't taken such a chance to get it.

"I hope so," Erinna said. "Childlessness is a terrible thing." Her smile seemed to Sostratos a deliberate effort of will, one that sprang from purposely turning her back on her troubles. She made her voice bright and cheerful, too: "Tell me about the voyage. Even if I am a widow, I'm a respectable woman, so I hardly get out of the house except to festivals and such, but you - you get to go across the sea. You know I'm jealous."

"You have less to be jealous of than you think," Sostratos said. "If you feel crowded and closed in here, imagine spending a night at sea aboard an akatos, where most of the men don't even have room to lie down to sleep."

"But you see something new every day, every hour!" Erinna sighed. "I know every bump and scratch on the walls of the women's rooms upstairs, every knot in the planks of the roof beams. Even coming out here to the courtyard feels like a journey to me."

He wanted to laugh, but he didn't. Men and women lived different lives, and that was all there was to it. So he spoke of meeting Ptolemaios' five in the Aegean, of the little earthquake while they were at Cape Tainaron, of Herennius Egnatius' toga in Taras, of seeing Mount Aitne and Mount Ouesouion, of his muleback excursion from Pompaia toward Ouesouion, and of the eclipse of the sun at Syracuse. He couldn't have had a more attentive audience; his sister hung on his every word.

Erinna sighed again when he finished. "When you tell me about these things, I can almost see them in my mind. How marvelous it must be to see them in truth."

"I'm just glad I saw the volcanoes when they were quiet," Sostratos said.

"Well, yes," Erinna admitted. "But even so." Her gaze sharpened. "When the man came running up here from the harbor, he was shouting about sea fights. You didn't talk about any sea fights."

"We really had only one," he said, and told her the story of the clash with the Roman trireme.

This time, his sister clapped her hands when he was done. "That was exciting," she said. "Why didn't you tell me about it before?"

Sostratos chuckled sheepishly. "Because it wasn't exciting while it was going on, I suppose," he answered. "It was terrifying. And seeing the Carthaginian fleet coming at us outside of Syracuse was worse. If that had turned into a sea fight, we couldn't possibly have won."

"Why did you let Menedemos go on, then?" Erinna asked.

Sostratos' mouth twisted into a wry, lopsided smile. His laugh was similarly sour. "My dear, it wasn't a question of my letting him do any such thing. I'm toikharkhos. He's the captain. The choice was his. I tried to talk him out of it." I thought he was a fool. I thought he was a reckless idiot. "When he said we were heading for Syracuse, what could I do? Leave the ship and swim home? It turned out well."

"Luck," Erinna said, and then, "Why are you laughing now?"

"Because you sound just like me," he told her. "But it wasn't all luck. Menedemos turned out to be right about that. Agathokles used the grain fleet to lure the Carthaginian ships away from the harbor and give his own navy the chance to get out and make for Africa."

"Can he take Carthage?" Erinna asked.

"I don't know," Sostratos answered. "Nobody knows - including the Carthaginians, I'm sure. But I do know they can't be anxious to find out. No one's ever tried to take the wars in Sicily to their country before."

"Alexander conquered the barbarians in the east," his sister said. "Why shouldn't Agathokles conquer the barbarians in the west?"

"I can think of two reasons," Sostratos replied. Erinna raised a questioning eyebrow. He explained: "First, the Carthaginians are still strong. And second, Agathokles isn't Alexander, no matter how much he wishes he were."

"All right." Erinna hugged him again. "It's so good to have you home. No one else takes me seriously when I ask questions."

"Well, if your brother won't, who will?" Sostratos kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be home till spring, so you'll have plenty of chances to ask them. But now I'm going upstairs." With obvious reluctance, she dipped her head and let him go. As he headed for the stairway, she picked up the hydria and went back to watering.

He was halfway up the stairs when Threissa started down them. "Hail, young master," the redheaded slave girl said in her oddly accented Greek. "Welcome home."

"Hail. Thank you," he said, and went up another couple of steps. The Thracian slave wasn't so pretty as Maibia had been. But Maibia was back in Taras while Threissa was here - and Sostratos had gone without a long time. "Come to my room with me," he told her.

She sighed. She couldn't say no, not when she was as much property as the bed on which he intended to have her. But she said, "All right," in a way that promised she would give him as little enjoyment as she could.

He considered ways and means. "I'll let you have a couple of oboloi afterwards."

He didn't have to do that, not with a family slave. "All right," Threissa said, but this time in a different tone of voice. "Maybe even three?"

Slaves are mercenary creatures, Sostratos thought. But then they have to be. "Maybe," he answered. Threissa waited for him at the top of the stairs. They went down the hall together to his room. He closed the door behind them.

"Come on," Menedemos said as he and Sostratos made their way toward the gymnasion in the southwestern part of Rhodes, not far from the stadium and the temple dedicated to Apollo. "It'll do you good. We've been away too long."

His cousin accompanied him only reluctantly. "What you mean is, it'll do you good to show you can still outrun me and throw me when we wrestle. I don't know why you bother. We both know how that will come out."

"That's not the point," Menedemos said, which was at least partially true. "The point is, a proper Hellene doesn't let himself go to seed."

"I can think of quite a few things you do that a proper Hellene doesn't," Sostratos said tartly. "Why shouldn't I get to pick and choose, too?"

Since Menedemos knew he had no good comeback for that, he didn't bother trying to find one. Instead, he repeated, "Come on," adding, "No point in going back now. Look, you can already see the theater and the southern wall beyond it."

"And if I went back home, I could see Demeter's temple," Sostratos retorted. "Did you drag me out here to see the sights? I don't mind that so much. Going to the gymnasion is a different story."

"Quit complaining," Menedemos said, beginning to lose patience. "You can let yourself get all hunched-up and flabby, like a shoemaker stuck at his bench all the time or a barbarian who doesn't care what he looks like because he never takes off his clothes, or else you can try to be as much of a kalos k'agathos as you can."

"I have much more control over whether I'm good than I do over whether I'm good-looking," Sostratos said. Despite his grumbles, he accompanied Menedemos into the gymnasion. They stripped off their chitons - being seamen, they didn't bother with sandals - and gave an attendant an abolos to keep an eye on the clothes while they went out and exercised.

Some of the men running on the track or grappling with one another in the sandy wrestling pits plainly didn't get to the gymnasion often enough. But others . . . Menedemos pointed. "There's a pretty boy, fourteen or fifteen, and handsome enough to have his name scrawled on the walls." His own name had gone up on more than a few walls when he was that age; Sostratos', he remembered rather too late, hadn't.

All his cousin said now, though, was, "Yes, and doesn't he know it? If he sticks his nose any higher in the air, he'll get a crick in the neck."

"When you look like that, you can get away with a few airs," Menedemos said. Sostratos only grunted.

They ran a few sprints to loosen up. Menedemos savored the feel of the breeze against his skin, the grass at the verge of the track flying by as he strained to get every bit of speed from himself he could. He also savored leaving Sostratos in his wake, hearing his cousin's panting breath fade behind him time after time.

"You're a pentekonter, sure enough," Sostratos said. "Me, I'm just a round ship."

Menedemos' turn of speed drew the notice of a fellow a couple of years younger than he who also had the lean, muscular build of a runner. "Try yourself against me?" the younger man said. "I'm Amyntas son of Praxion."

"Pleased to meet you." Menedemos gave his own name, and introduced Sostratos, too. "I'd be pleased to run with you. My cousin will call the start."

"Good enough," Amyntas said. "Would you care to put a drakhma on the race, just to make it interesting?"

"Interesting, eh?" Menedemos raised an eyebrow. "All right, if it pleases you. Sostratos, turn us loose." He took his position on the track beside Amyntas.

"Ready?" Sostratos called. "Set." Both runners tensed. "Go!"

Amyntas went off like an arrow from a bow. Menedemos stayed shoulder to shoulder with him till they were within twenty-five or thirty cubits of the end of the stadion course, but Amyntas pulled away and won by five cubits or so. "I can do better than that," Menedemos said. "Try it again, double the stake to the winner?"

"Why not?" Amyntas said, not quite hiding a predatory smile as they walked back to the beginning of the course. Several men gathered to watch them now. Menedemos wondered if Sostratos would give him a fishy stare for gambling on his legs. But his cousin only shrugged and called the start again. He's probably glad not to be running himself, Menedemos thought, leaning forward to get the best start he could.

"Go!" Sostratos said, and Menedemos and Amyntas shot away once more. Again, Menedemos stayed close to the younger man till the race was almost over. Again, he couldn't quite keep up at the end. Again, he kicked at the dirt in frustration.

"That's two drakhmai you owe me," Amyntas said, not bothering to hide his grin now that he'd won.

"Let's double it one more time." Menedemos sounded like a man determined to win his way back to prosperity no matter how long it took - and no matter if it broke him first.

"Just as you say, best one," Amyntas replied as they walked back toward the starting line.

"Give us a start one more time," Menedemos called to Sostratos. "I'm going to whip this fellow yet, and I've doubled the bet to prove it." Some of the men who stood at the side of the track watching murmured among themselves. Amyntas' grin got wider; he had witnesses, in case Menedemos didn't feel like paying up.

They took their marks. "Ready?" Sostratos said. "Set . . . Go!"

Amyntas and Menedemos flew down the track side by side. As before, Menedemos hung at the younger man's shoulder till they were about thirty cubits from the end of the course. Then Amyntas, leaning forward for his final sprint, let out a startled grunt. Menedemos went past him as if his feet were suddenly nailed to the dirt, and won by three or four cubits.

"That's four drakhmai you owe me," he said cheerfully. "Or would you like to double the bet again?"

"Oh, no." Amyntas tossed his head. "I know what I just saw. You held back the first two runs to draw me in, didn't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Menedemos' voice was arch. "Besides, how can I be sure you weren't trying to fool me there?" But he knew. Amyntas had been running flat out, and he hadn't been good enough. Menedemos chuckled. If he'd been fast enough to go to Olympia a couple of years before, Amyntas would have remembered his name. Nobody recalled the also-rans, but a man nearly fast enough to represent his polis at the Olympic Games was plenty fast to beat a fellow who picked up a little extra silver betting on his legs now and then.

"Why haven't I seen you round the gymnasion more?" Amyntas asked sadly. "I would have known better than to take you on."

"I just got back from Great Hellas," Menedemos replied, and the other man rolled his eyes in sorrow and chagrin.

They walked back toward Sostratos by the start line. Amyntas peeled off toward the building where the men left their tunics. "I hope he's not going to get dressed and skip out without paying you," Sostratos said. To him, it was the principle of the thing more than the money.

"I doubt it," Menedemos said. "He couldn't show his face here again for shame if he did - too many people watching. Shall we throw javelins while we wait?"

"Something to that," his cousin allowed. "Javelins? Why not? I'm not hopeless with them, anyway." And he wasn't. With his long arms, he threw fairly well - as Alexidamos had painful cause to know - though he would never be graceful. He matched Menedemos for distance, and almost matched him in accuracy throwing at a bale of straw.

Amyntas did come back. He gave Menedemos a fat, massy tetradrakhm with Apollo on one side and the rose of Rhodes on the other. "That'll teach me," he said.

"You'll win it back." Menedemos was willing to let him down easy. "Who knows? You may even use the same trick yourself one of these days."

"Why, so I may." Amyntas sounded surprised, as if that hadn't crossed his mind. Maybe it hadn't. Menedemos sighed. Amyntas didn't notice, as he hadn't noticed Menedemos holding back. Sostratos did, and contrived to look amused without smiling.

Having paid what he owed, Amyntas hurried away, as if afraid Menedemos would inveigle him into some other contest he was bound to lose. Menedemos turned back to Sostratos. "Want to wrestle?"

"Not especially," Sostratos answered. Menedemos' face must have fallen, for his cousin went on, "But I will, at least for a little while."

They dusted their arms and torsos with sand, to aid in getting a grip. Then they stood face to face, waiting. "Ready?" Sostratos asked. Menedemos dipped his head. Sostratos sprang at him. They grappled, grunting and heaving, each straining to throw the other off his feet. Sostratos' height did him no good in wrestling. If anything, the compact Menedemos had the advantage there, being closer to the ground. He got Sostratos on his hip, twisted lithely, and threw him down.

"Oof!" Sostratos said; he'd landed pretty hard. He was rubbing his right buttock as he rose. "I'm going to be sore about sitting down for the next couple of days."

"You made me work for it," Menedemos said. He did mean it; he often won a fall from Sostratos much more easily than he had there. And he wanted to keep him wrestling, too.

Before he could ask for another fall, his cousin said, "Shall we try it again?"

"Yes, if you like." Menedemos tried to hide his surprise. He couldn't remember the last time Sostratos had proposed such a thing. They squared off and grabbed each other, as they had before. Indeed, the second bout went very much as the first one had, right up to Sostratos' mistake. As Menedemos slid in to take advantage of it, he wondered if his cousin would ever learn.

He got his answer sooner than he expected. Instead of going up on his hip and then down in the dirt, Sostratos kept one of his long legs on the ground. Before Menedemos quite realized what had happened, his cousin had got round behind him, slipped an ankle in front, and shoved hard. Next thing he knew, he sprawled in the dirt himself.

He spat some out of his mouth, then said, "Well, well," as he got to his feet. Sostratos' face wore a grin as wide as that of a child with a toy chariot or a hetaira with a new gold necklace. He didn't throw Menedemos very often. Menedemos bowed, giving him credit for it. "Very nice. I thought I had you again, but I was wrong."

"I was hoping you would make the same move twice," Sostratos said. "I tried to steer you into it, the way you held back with that fellow who thought he was fast."

"Did you?" Menedemos said, and Sostratos delightedly dipped his head. Menedemos clicked his tongue between his teeth. He tasted more dirt, and spat again. "I'm never going to be able to trust you any more, am I?"

"I hope not," Sostratos told him.

They wrestled twice more. Menedemos won both times, but neither win came easily. He felt himself slower than he should have been. Instead of just wrestling, he was thinking about his moves before he made them, wondering, If I do this, what does Sostratos have waiting for me? Against an opponent who was skilled as well as clever, he probably would have lost both falls.

Sostratos noticed. As they rubbed themselves down with olive oil and scraped if off with curved bronze strigils, he said, "I had you looking over your shoulder there, didn't I?"

"As a matter of fact, you did." Menedemos mimed sorrow verging on despair. "A terrible thing, when I can't trust my own cousin."

"Trust me to go down like a sacrifice after its throat is cut, you mean," Sostratos said. "Maybe I'll be able to give you a real contest now."

"Maybe," Menedemos said. "Or maybe I'll find more tricks of my own." To his relief, Sostratos didn't look so happy about that. They finished cleaning themselves off and went back to reclaim their chitons. Then they left the gymnasion and headed up toward their homes in the northern part of the city.

Sostratos said, "Remember, my father's symposion is evening after next."

"I'm not likely to forget." Menedemos rolled his eyes. "And even if I did, you don't suppose my father would?" He didn't bother trying to hide his annoyance.

"If you looked on your father a little more tolerantly, he might do the same for you, you know," Sostratos said.

"Ha! Not likely," Menedemos answered. "If he looked on me a little more tolerantly, I might do the same for him. I'm not saying I would, mind you, but I might." His cousin sighed and said no more about it. That suited Menedemos fine.

Garlanded for a symposion, Sostratos always felt like something of an impostor. Most men donned gaiety with the wreaths and ribbons, as if it naturally accompanied them. He'd never been able to do that. And yet, a man who wasn't jolly at a symposion was an object of suspicion. There were times when he had to pretend to what he didn't feel, which did make him feel like a hypocrite.

Still, he might have been more at ease than Diokles. The oarmaster didn't come from a circle where symposia came along very often, if at all. His chiton and himation were good enough, but, a seaman to the core, he'd arrived at Sostratos' house barefoot. And he kept fidgeting on his couch, trying to find a comfortable position in which to recline.

To Sostratos' relief, the symposiasts had chosen his father as symposiarch. "Let it be five parts of water to two of wine," Lysistratos declared. No one could possibly complain about that, and no one did: it was the perfect mixture, not too strong, not too weak.

On the couch next to Sostratos and Menedemos reclined an olive farmer named Damophon. Like any prosperous landowner, he took symposia for granted. He didn't grumble at the mixture, but did chuckle and say, "I'll bet you boys drank stronger than that in Great Hellas. When the Italiotes put on a revel, they don't do it by halves. That's what everybody says, so I expect it must be true."

"Shall we talk of what people say and what is so?" Sostratos asked. But, at the same time, Menedemos also spoke up: "I'll say we did. This one affair in Taras" - the only symposion they'd been to in Great Hellas, but he didn't mention that - "it was one of wine to one of water till nobody could see straight."

Damophon paid no attention to Sostratos, but whistled at Menedemos' words. "One to one will do that, all right, and do it fast." Slaves passed out cups of the mixed wine. The olive grower sipped. He whistled again. "That's mighty fine stuff, that is - mighty fine."

Several other symposiasts were saying the same thing. Lysistratos smiled. He coughed a couple of times to draw men's eyes to him, then said, "That's Ariousian brought from Khios by my son and my nephew. We should thank the Italiotes and the Italian barbarians for being too ignorant to buy quite all of it, and for leaving this amphora for us to enjoy tonight."

The cheers that rose from the couches in the andron were louder and more fervent than might have been expected for so early in the evening and so mild a mixture. "Euge, Sostratos! Euge, Menedemos!" Xanthos called. "As I was saying in the Assembly the other day - "

Sostratos' father overrode the fat bore: "Since we've gathered together here to drink and to welcome Sostratos and Menedemos back to Rhodes after their safe and prosperous journey to the west" - more applause interrupted him - "my thought was that tonight we would speak of others who are on journeys or have returned from them, so that the long absent may be called to mind again."

Menedemos chuckled. "No dirty stories, not when your father's running things."

"If you need that sort of thing at every symposion, my dear, go off and live in Great Hellas," Sostratos answered. Neither spoke loud enough for Lysistratos to notice.

As was the custom, the guests began at the far end of the semicircle from the couches Sostratos and Menedemos and their fathers shared. Diokles, by then, had drunk enough wine to blunt his shyness at drinking with men more prominent than he. He told a fine tale of shipwreck and rescue on the Lykian coast. Another man spoke of a brother who'd set off with Alexander and come back years later short an eye and three fingers on his right hand. Xanthos gave forth with an endless story that seemed to have no point whatsoever. Damophon told of ransoming his father, who'd been captured on a trading voyage by pirates from Crete.

And then it was Sostratos' turn. He rose. Dipping his head to Damophon, he said, "I don't think any man here would shed a tear if Crete sank into the sea, as the divine Platon says the island of Atlantis did in days gone by." No one contradicted him. Several men clapped their hands. He went on, "You meet Rhodians all over the Inner Sea. Menedemos and I ran into one on our journey to Great Hellas. Instead of making a long speech" - Xanthos wouldn't get the point of that, worse luck - "I was wondering if anyone here could tell me more about a soldier named Alexidamos son of Alexion."

Menedemos started to say something, then checked himself. Sostratos had only named Alexidamos; he hadn't told anyone what the mercenary had done, or even that he'd done anything. After stopping to think, Menedemos whispered, "Sly."

Sostratos bent down and whispered back: "You know me - I always want to find out."

"Alexidamos son of Alexion?" Damophon said. "A good-sized fellow a little older than you are, Sostratos, with a scar across his nose?"

"That's the man," Sostratos agreed, and didn't say anything about how he'd drastically revised Alexidamos' nose in Kallipolis.

"Alexion died five or six years ago," Damophon said. "I used to buy fish from him. Instead of taking his father's boat out, Alexidamos sold it and used the silver he got to buy his weapons. He said soldiering had to be an easier way to make a living than fishing. Where did you meet him?"

"Cape Tainaron," Sostratos answered. "We took him across to Italy. With all the wars in those parts, a soldier wouldn't have any trouble finding work."

From the couch Philodemos shared with Sostratos' father, he said, "With all the wars everywhere these days, a soldier has no trouble finding work."

"Wherever Alexidamos draws his drakhma a day and his rations, he'll likely lay his hands on more somehow or other," Damophon said. "His father was reliable, but I stopped buying from Alexidamos even before he sold the boat. He was the sort who'd drench yesterday's fish in seawater to make them look fresh. Any man can have that trick played on him once, but only a fool lets it happen twice." He glanced over to Sostratos. "Did he give you trouble?"

"Nothing we couldn't handle," Sostratos said, and Menedemos dipped his head.

When Sostratos reclined once more, Menedemos rose from the couch and said, "I'll give you the most famous return of all - Odysseus' return to Ithake, and to his own home town. Here's how Homer tells it:

Menedemos recited from the Odyssey for some time. As always, the ancient tale drew in all who listened to it, no matter how well everyone knew it. Even Sostratos, sophisticate though he was, found himself falling under Homer's spell. How does he do it? Sostratos wondered. The same question occurred to him whenever he read Herodotos or Thoukydides. They were all writers he, like most Hellenes, despaired of matching.

When Menedemos took his place on the couch once more, his father rose from the adjoining one. Sostratos hoped Philodemos might say something graceful about the return of the Aphrodite, but he didn't. Instead, he spoke of how the Rhodians had ousted the Macedonian garrison in the city after news of Alexander's death arrived, and "how we had our freedom restored to us, and nothing for a polis is more important than its freedom. May we keep it in the future as we regained it in the past."

He reclined again. The symposiasts clapped their hands, Sostratos among them - and Menedemos, too, he noted. Philodemos had struck an important chord, all the more important because Ptolemaios and Antigonos were fighting again. When giants clashed, how could a dwarf like Rhodes stay safe? That comparison made Sostratos smile.

Host and symposiarch, Lysistratos got to his feet last of all. "I'll be brief, for we've got people waiting in the courtyard," Sostratos' father said. "A voyage to Great Hellas is always a risk. I thank the gods that my son and my nephew and almost all the crew came home safe. That's the most important thing. You always have another chance if it's true, even if the business end of things didn't go so well. But when they not only sailed west but came back with one of the biggest profits an akatos ever brought home - well, my friends, all I can tell you is that I'm proud to be kin to both of them. Euge, Sostratos! Euge, Menedemos!"

"Euge!" the symposiasts shouted, and clapped their hands and raised their cups in salute. "Euge! Euge!"

"Thank you all," Sostratos said. "A man who deserves special praise is our bold keleustes Diokles there. You couldn't hope to find a better sailor. Euge, Diokles!"

"Euge!" the symposiasts echoed. Diokles' lined features wore the bashful, proud grin of a boy praised for his beauty for the first time.

"Now everybody here will try to hire him away from us," Menedemos said.

"Tell me he hasn't earned the chance," Sostratos said, and Menedemos only shrugged. He couldn't do it, and they both knew as much.

Lysistratos beckoned to Gyges. He spoke in the majordomo's ear. The Lydian slave hurried out into the dark courtyard. As Sostratos' father had said, the entertainers were waiting there. A moment later, a couple of flutegirls in chitons of thin, filmy Koan silk pranced into the andron and began to play. The symposiasts whooped and cheered. A couple of them reached out to try to grab the girls, but they had no luck. Only a very raw slave would have let herself become a plaything so soon.

And then the men in the andron stopped reaching for the girls. There would be plenty of time for that later, and they'd done it plenty of times before. They whooped again, on a different note this time, and howled laughter, for into the room behind the flute girls bounded a naked dancing dwarf. His head and genitals were the size of a normal man's, his body and limbs sadly shrunken.

"Think I'm pretty funny, don't you?" he said in a light, true tenor as he spun in time to the music. "I'll tell you something, friends - if everybody looked like me, you'd be the monsters."

That made most of the symposiasts laugh harder than ever. Menedemos choked on his wine, and all but drowned. Sostratos had been laughing, too. He'd known his father had hired the dwarf; that was what had touched off his thought about the large realms Antigonos and Ptolemaios held, with little Rhodes doing her best not to get crushed between them.

But, though the dancing dwarf had made his gibe to amuse the symposiasts, it also made Sostratos think. Most people reckoned dwarfs less intelligent than normal men, but this fellow sounded bright enough. How did he feel, when he was able to make his living only by showing himself off for others to laugh at?

Sostratos thought about asking the little man. He thought about it, but not even his own sharp curiosity gave him the nerve to do it. After all, what was he but one more fellow who reminded the dwarf of his freakishness?

Instead, he got very drunk, even with his father's well-watered wine and shallow drinking cups. Maybe some of the symposiasts did end up rumpling the flutegirls. If they did, Sostratos didn't see it. They might have taken the girls out into the dark courtyard, or the symposion might just have stayed on the decorous side. After a while, he was dozing on his half of the couch.

What roused him was Menedemos's talent for quoting Homer. His cousin started to recite the section from the Iliad where lame Hephaistos bustled around serving wine to the other gods, who laughed at him despite his labor. "No," Sostratos said. "Find some other lines. Leave the little man here alone."

Menedemos gaped. "That's why he's here: to be the butt of our jokes. Look at the silly capers he's cutting." Sure enough, the dwarf was waggling his backside like a coy courtesan, and he was funny.

But despite, or perhaps because of, the wine he'd drunk, Sostratos found the distinction he wanted to make: "Laugh at what he does, not at what he is."

"Why?" Menedemos said. "What he does isn't always worth laughing at. What he is, is."

Sostratos ran out of logical arguments. That was the wine. "If you can't find any other reason, don't mock him as a favor to me."

"All right, best one," Menedemos said, and kissed him on the cheek. "You're my cousin, and you're my host, and as a favor to you I will keep quiet. You see? I deny you nothing tonight."

"Thank you, my dear. You've made our homecoming perfect." Sostratos yawned. That was the last he remembered of the symposion, for he really did fall asleep then.

After the symposion at his uncle and cousin's house, several days of rain kept Menedemos close to home. What point to going to the gymnasion to try to run through mud or, worse, wrestle in it? What point to going to the agora when hardly anyone would be buying or selling or gossiping?

He wouldn't have minded so much being cooped up if he and his father could have walked past each other without growling. But they didn't get along, and being at close quarters only made things worse. Menedemos tried to stay out of Philodemos' way by taking one of the slave women into his bedroom and not coming out for most of a day, but that didn't work, either. When he and the slave did emerge, Philodemos grumbled, "She didn't do any work at all yesterday, thanks to you."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Father," Menedemos answered blandly. "She got very sweaty by the time we were through."

His father rolled his eyes. "I've got a cockhound for a son. Everything I've work so hard to get will end up in some hetaira's hands when I'm dead."

"With what I brought home from Great Hellas, I could keep three of the greediest hetairai in the world happy for a long time, and the family would still be ahead," Menedemos said.

"That's what you think," Philodemos said. "You have no idea how greedy and grasping a woman can be."

"What I have no idea of right now is why I bothered coming home," Menedemos snapped. "It seems everything I've ever done is wrong."

"You said it. I didn't." Philodemos stalked out of the andron, his spine stiff with triumph. Menedemos made a face at him behind his back. Then he headed off to the kitchen; satisfying one appetite in his room had left him with another unslaked.

He took some olives and cheese. The cook warned him, "If you touch one scale - even one scale, mind you - on the mullet I've got there for supper, I'll snatch you baldheaded. I mean it. This is my domain, by the gods."

Laughing, Menedemos said, "All right, Sikon. Till you work your magic on that mullet, I don't want it anyway. Maybe a starving man would eat a raw fish, but I wouldn't."

He stood in the doorway, out of the rain, while he ate his snack. Sikon kept railing at him with the license a skilled and privileged slave enjoyed. Menedemos laughed. With Sikon yelling, he could afford to laugh. The cook's barbs didn't get under his skin and rankle, the way his father's did. He spat an olive pit out into the courtyard. It landed in a puddle with a splash. He ate another olive and spat again, seeing if he could make this pit go farther than the one before. When he spat a third pit, he wanted it to go farther than either of the other two.

I wish Sostratos were here, he thought. We could bet oboloi. I'd beat him, too, even if I had to make silly faces so he'd laugh and spit badly. If he got into any kind of contest, he wanted to win it. Imagining how furious Sostratos would be if his antics ruined a spit made him smile. The next time they ate olives together . . .

His good mood quite restored, he looked across the courtyard. He could probably go back to his room without running into his father. Probably. He hung around in the kitchen, enduring Sikon's insults, for a while longer. He didn't want to risk that better mood, and it wouldn't survive another meeting with Philodemos.

What do I do when I get to my room? he wondered. Play the lyre, maybe? He shrugged. He was no marvelous musician. The lyre had hardly come off its pegs on the wall since his school days; the kitharist who'd taught him had been too free with the switch to give him any love for the instrument.

After a while, he squelched across the courtyard and started up the stairs. At the same time, someone else started down them. He cursed under his breath. If that was his father . . . But it wasn't; the voice that said, "Hail, Menedemos," was thin, light, and feminine.

"Oh," Menedemos said. "Good day, Baukis." He hoped his father's wife hadn't heard the curse; she might think it was aimed at her. He probably should have said, Good day, stepmother, but that seemed ridiculous when he was ten years older than she. He didn't have anything in particular against her. If she had children by his father, that might be a different story, for his own inheritance would shrink, but for now she was only a girl learning what being a wife was about.

Baukis came down the stairs towards him. She was young, her figure still almost boyish though she wore a woman's long chiton. She said, "It's not a very good day, is it?" Then she paused, as if waiting for him to contradict her. When he didn't, she went on in a rush: "I'm awfully tired of the rain."

"So am I," Menedemos answered. "I want to go out into the polis, to stroll in the agora, to exercise in the gymnasion, to see my friends and chat with them . . .."

"I just want the sun to shine again, to lighten up the women's quarters and dry out the courtyard, and to let me see farther than Lysistratos' house from my window." As a proper wife, especially one wed to an older, more conservative man like Philodemos, Baukis wouldn't get out of the house much. Being a man, Menedemos could go where he would. This little space was Baukis' world.

He hadn't thought about that before complaining of being shut up here. He changed the subject in a hurry: "Sikon has a fine mullet in the kitchen."

Her expression sharpened. She wasn't particularly pretty - she had buck teeth like a hare's, and pimples splashed her cheeks - but no one who spoke with her for even a moment would ever have thought her a fool. "A mullet? What did he pay for it?" she asked.

"I don't know," Menedemos said. "I didn't even think to find out."

"I'll have to," Baukis said fretfully. "Too much, unless I miss my guess. Sikon spends silver as if it grew on trees."

"What with the profit the Aphrodite made, we have plenty," Menedemos said.

"We do now," she said. "But how long will it last if we throw it to the winds?"

"You sound like Sostratos." Menedemos didn't mean it altogether as a compliment. With luck, Baukis wouldn't know that.

She just sniffed. "I don't think any man really knows, really cares, about money." Menedemos let out an indignant yelp, but Baukis went on, "Men don't have to manage a household, but wives do. Money and children. We'd better be good with those. We don't get much chance to deal with anything else."

"Well, of course," Menedemos said, and didn't stop to wonder if it felt like of course to Baukis. He'd heard similar things from the bored wives he'd seduced. That was probably why some of them had let him bed them, in fact - to get something out of the cramped and ordinary into their lives.

"I'd better go talk to him," Baukis said. "A mullet? That can't have been cheap. Excuse me, Menedemos." She slipped down the stairs past him and walked across the courtyard, raising a hand to her face to keep the rain out of her eyes.

Menedemos turned to watch her go. Her breasts weren't much more than a maiden might have had, but her hips and her walk were a woman's after all. What does she think about such things, being married to my sour graybeard of a father? Menedemos wondered. Is she bored already? I wouldn't be surprised.

He went up the stairs in a hurry, taking most of them two at a time. He trotted down the hall to his room, then went inside and closed the door behind him. For good measure, he barred it, too, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done that. But what he ran from was in the room with him.

So was a good deal of darkness. The slave girl had wanted the shutters kept closed, and he'd humored her. He opened them, which turned things gray. He stared blindly out at the rain. Now he had another reason to wish it would stop. He wanted to flee the house as he'd fled up the stairs to this refuge that wasn't. He wondered if going out would do any good. He doubted it. Wouldn't he take his troubles with him, as he'd brought them here?

And then he started to laugh. It wasn't really funny - not to him, though a comic poet might have disagreed - but he didn't know what else to do. My father would kill me if he knew what went through my mind. He laughed again, more bitterly than before. He'd had that thought many times, ever since he was a little boy, when things went wrong. His shiver had nothing to do with the chilly, nasty weather. This time, it might be literally true.

But oh, wouldn't that pay him back for everything?

"No," Menedemos said aloud. He kept talking, too, in a soft voice no one in the hall could have heard: "This once, my dear, you're going to have to be like your cousin and use your head. It's not always the best part of you, but it's the only one that will do right now."

Next spring, I'll sail away and not have to worry about it for half a year. Meanwhile, I've got plenty of silver. I can have as good a time as I please. Even my father won't complain too much more than he usually does. That should cure me. It has before, plenty of times.

He heard Baukis on the stairs. After she'd returned to the women's rooms, he went downstairs for some wine. Dionysos' gift brought ease from all cares.

Even so, Menedemos could hardly wait for spring.