Over the Wine-Dark Sea

1

Menedemos and his cousin Sostratos walked down toward the Aphrodite in the main harbor of Rhodes. Both young men wore thigh-length wool chitons. Sostratos had a wool chlamys on over his tunic. He didn't really need the cloak, though; it was still late in the month of Anthesterion, before the vernal equinox, but the sun shone warm out of a clear blue sky. Like any men who often went to sea, the two cousins went barefoot even on dry land.

A mild breeze blew down from the north. Tasting it, Menedemos dipped his head in anticipation. "Good sailing weather coming soon," he said. He was little and lithe and very handsome, his face clean-shaven in the style Alexander the Great had made popular twenty years before.

"Sure enough," Sostratos agreed. He'd spent enough years studying in Athens to have a sharper accent than the Doric drawl usual in Rhodes. Careless of fashion, he'd let his beard grow out. He towered more than half a head above his cousin. "Some traders have already put to sea, I hear."

"I've heard the same, but Father says it's too early," Menedemos answered.

"He's probably right." Sostratos, as far as Menedemos was concerned, showed altogether too much self-restraint for someone only a few months older than he was.

"I want to be out there," Menedemos said. "I want to be doing things. Whenever we sit idle over the winter, I feel like a hare caught in a net."

"Plenty to do during the winter," Sostratos said. "It's what you do then that lets you succeed when you can sail."

"Yes, Grandfather," Menedemos said. "No wonder I command the Aphrodite and you keep track of what goes aboard her."

Sostratos shrugged. "The gods give one man one thing, another man another. You're always ready to seize the moment. You always have been, as long as I can remember. As for me . . ." He shrugged again. Even though slightly the older and much the larger of the two of them, he'd had to get used to living in Menedemos' shadow. "As you said, I keep track of things. I'm good at it."

"Well, nobody can quarrel with you there," Menedemos said generously. He raised his voice to a shout and hailed the akatos ahead: "Ahoy, the Aphrodite!"

Carpenters in chitons and naked sailors aboard the merchant galley waved to Menedemos and Sostratos. "When do we go out, skipper?" one of the sailors called. "We've been stuck in port so long, my hands have got soft."

"We'll fix that, don't you worry," Menedemos said with a laugh. "It won't be long now, I promise." His sharp, dark-eyed gaze swung to a carpenter at the poop of the forty-cubit vessel. "Hail, Khremes. How are those new steering oars coming?"

"They're just about ready, captain," the carpenter answered. "I think they'll be even smoother than the pair you had before. A little old bald man sitting in a chair with a cushion under his backside could swing your ship any way you wanted her to go." He waved in invitation. "Come on up and get the feel of 'em for yourself."

Menedemos tossed his head to show he declined. "Can't really do that till she's in the water, not hauled out to keep her timbers dry." Sostratos following him, he walked toward the bow of the ship. The Aphrodite had twenty oars on either side, giving her almost as many rowers as a pentekonter, but she was beamier than the fifty-oared galleys so beloved by pirates: unlike them, she had to carry cargo.

Sostratos tapped the lead sheathing the Aphrodite below the waterline with a fingernail. "Still good and sound."

"It had better be," Menedemos said. "We just replaced it year before last." He tapped, too, at one of the copper nails holding the lead and the tarred wool fabric below it to the oak planking of the hull.

Up at the bow, another carpenter was replacing a lost nail that helped hold the three-finned bronze ram to the bow timbers inside it. He must have heard Menedemos' remark, for he looked up and said, "And I'll bet you were glad you finally could do it year before last, too."

"He's got you there," Sostratos said.

"No, we finally got him and his pals back," Menedemos answered. "For a while there, ordinary Rhodians had a cursed hard time getting carpenters to work for them - everybody was building ships for Antigonos to use against Ptolemaios."

"That was a mistake - helping Antigonos, I mean," Sostratos said. "Rhodes does too much business with Egypt for us to get on Ptolemaios' wrong side."

"You can say that - you were studying up in Athens. You don't know what things were like here." Menedemos scowled at the memory. "Nobody had the nerve to try crossing One-Eyed Antigonos, believe you me."

As terns screeched overhead, Sostratos made a placating gesture. "All right. I wouldn't want to try crossing him myself, since you put it that way." Another screech rang out, this one louder, more raucous, and much closer than the high-flying sea birds. Sostratos jumped. "By the dog of Egypt, what was that?"

"I don't know." Menedemos trotted away from the Aphrodite. "Come on. Let's go find out."

Sostratos flipped his hands in protest. "Our fathers sent us down here to see if the ship is ready to take out."

"We'll do that," Menedemos said over his shoulder. "But whatever's making that noise may be something the Hellenes in Italy haven't seen before. I know I've never heard it before."

The horrible screech rang out again. It sounded more like a bugle than anything else, but it didn't really sound like a bugle, either. "I hope I never hear it again," Sostratos said, but, as he did so often, he followed where Menedemos led.

Since the screeches, once begun, resounded at pretty regular intervals, tracking them didn't require dogs. They came from a ramshackle pierside warehouse about a plethron from the Aphrodite. The owner of the building, a fat Phoenician named Himilkon, came running out, hands clapped over his ears, just as Menedemos and Sostratos trotted up.

"Hail," Menedemos said. "Is that the noise a leopard makes?"

"Or has some Egyptian wizard summoned up a kakodaimon from the depths of Tartaros?" Sostratos added.

Himilkon shook his head from side to side, as Phoenicians did when they meant no. "Neither, my masters," he answered in gutturally accented Greek. Gold gleamed from hoops that pierced his ears. He plucked at his curled black beard, much longer and thicker than Sostratos', to show distress. "That accursed fowl is pretty, but it will drive me mad."

"Fowl?" Menedemos raised an eyebrow at yet another screech. "What kind of fowl? A pigeon with a brazen throat?"

"A fowl," Himilkon repeated. "I do not recall the name in Greek." He shouted back into the warehouse: "Hyssaldomos! Bring out the cage, to show the miserable creature to these fine gentlemen."

"He wants you to buy it, whatever it is," Sostratos whispered to Menedemos. The captain of the Aphrodite dipped his head in impatient agreement.

Hyssaldomos' voice came from within: "Be right there, boss." Grunting under the weight, the Karian slave carried out a large, heavy wooden cage and set it down on the ground by Himilkon. "Here you go."

Menedemos and Sostratos crouched to peer through the slats of the cage. A very large bird with shiny blue feathers and a curious crest or topknot stared back at them with beady black eyes. It opened its pale beak and gave forth with another screech, all the more appalling for coming from closer range.

Rubbing his ear, Menedemos looked up at Himilkon. "Whatever it is, I've never seen one before."

Hyssaldomos supplied the Greek word: "It's a peacock."

"That's right, a peacock," Himilkon said with pride that would have been greater if he hadn't had to talk around a screech.

"A peacock!" Menedemos and Sostratos exclaimed, in excitement and disbelief. Menedemos wagged a finger at the creature and quoted Aristophanes, his favorite playwright: " 'Which are you, bird or peacock?' "

"My slave and I told you it was a peacock," said the Phoenician merchant, who'd probably never heard of the Birds. "And be careful with your hands around it. It bites."

"Where does it come from?" Sostratos asked.

"India," Himilkon replied. "Since the divine Alexander went there with an army of you Hellenes, more of these birds have come back to the Inner Sea than ever before. I have the peacock here, and five peahens still caged in the warehouse. They're quieter than he is, Baal be praised."

"From India?" Sostratos scratched his head in bewilderment. "But Herodotos doesn't talk about peafowl in India in his history. He talks about the clothes made from tree-wool, and the enormous ants that mine gold, and the Indians themselves, with their black hides and their black semen. But not a word about peacocks. If they came from India, you'd think he'd say so."

Himilkon shrugged. "I don't know anything about this Hellene, whoever he is. But I know where peacocks come from. And if he didn't talk about them, my bet is he didn't know about them."

With a chuckle, Menedemos said, "You can't argue with that, Sostratos." He enjoyed teasing his cousin, who, he sometimes thought, would sooner read about life than live it. He took another look at the peacock, then asked Himilkon, "What are those feathers piled up on top of it? They don't look like they're growing out of its back."

"No, no, no." The Phoenician made little pushing motions, as if to deny the very idea. "Those are tail feathers. The cage is too small, too crowded."

"All that mess? Its tail?" Menedemos raised that eyebrow again. "You're having me on."

"No such thing." Himilkon drew himself up, the picture of affronted dignity. "I'll show you." He turned to Hyssaldomos. "Open the door and let it out, to show the gentlemen. They may be customers, eh?"

His slave plainly didn't care whether Menedemos and Sostratos were customers or not. "Oh, boss, have a heart!" the Karian wailed. "I'm the one who'll have to herd it back in there afterwards."

"And what else have you got to do?" Himilkon retorted. "It's not going to fly away; its wing is clipped. Go on, you lazy good-for-nothing."

Muttering under his breath, Hyssaldomos squatted and undid the two bronze hooks and eyes that held the cage door closed. Even after he opened the door, the peacock didn't come out right away. "He's stupid," Hyssaldomos said, looking up at the two Hellenes. "I mean to tell you, he's really stupid."

But then, with another screech, the peacock finally seemed to realize what had happened and rushed out of the cage. Menedemos exclaimed in astonishment. He'd seen it was big, but hadn't realized just how big: its body was almost swan-sized, and the tail - Himilkon hadn't lied - at least doubled its apparent size.

"He's beautiful," Sostratos breathed. The sun gleamed metallically from the blue and green feathers of the peacock's body and tail.

Menedemos dipped his head in agreement. "He certainly is. They've never - " He'd started to say they'd never seen the like in Italy, but bit down on the words before they escaped. If Himilkon knew he badly wanted the bird, the price was bound to go up.

"Oh, there he goes!" Hyssaldomos wailed as the peacock started to run. "Get in front of him, young sirs, and head him off!"

Both Menedemos and Sostratos tried to get in front of the peacock, but it dodged them like a flutegirl dodging a drunken, groping reveler at a symposion. And then it was off, running like a racehorse and screeching as it ran. Its legs weren't goose- or swanlike; they put Menedemos more in mind of those of a bustard or pheasant. He and Sostratos pounded after it. Urged on by Himilkon's curses, Hyssaldomos ran after them.

The peacock kept trying to take to the air. It couldn't fly; as Himilkon had said, its wings were clipped. But every flapping, fluttering burst lent it extra speed. "It's - faster - than we are," Sostratos panted.

"I know." Menedemos was panting, too. "We could enter it at the next Olympics, and it'd win the dash." He raised his voice to a shout: "Two oboloi to whoever catches the bird unhurt!"

Sailors and workmen and passersby were already staring at the peacock, or perhaps at the spectacle of three men chasing a peacock. The prospect of a reward sent a double handful of them after the bird, too, converging on it from every angle at once.

A naked sailor grabbed for the peacock. "I've got you!" he cried in triumph. A moment later, he cried out once more, this time in dismay: "Oimoi! Help!" The peacock kicked and raked him with its big clawed feet. It buffeted him with its wings. And it pecked, hard. "Oimoi!" he yelled again, and let go.

"Himilkon told you it could bite off a finger," Sostratos said to Menedemos.

"That wasn't his finger," Menedemos answered. "And he's lucky it didn't bite it off."

From then on, nobody seemed nearly so eager to close with the peacock. From the doorway to his warehouse, Himilkon shouted, "Herd it back over here." People were more willing to try that. Yelling and waving their arms and shying pebbles - and staying at a respectful distance - they managed to turn the peacock so it was running toward the Phoenician merchant instead of away from him.

"It'll trample him if he tries to catch it by himself," Menedemos said, still running after the bird.

"He's brought something else out of the building," Sostratos said. "Looks like another cage."

When they got a little closer, Menedemos asked, "Is that another peacock in there?"

"Not a peacock." Sostratos replied. "See how much plainer it is?"

The peacock had seen the same thing as Sostratos, and more quickly, too. It skidded to a stop, sand and gravel flying up from between its toes. All at once, it might have forgotten the mob of men pursuing it. Noting as much, Menedemos slowed down, too, and waved his comrades to a halt with him.

"What's it doing?" somebody asked.

"Showing off for the peahen," Sostratos answered.

And then everyone, even Himilkon, said, "Ahhh!" as the peacock raised its long tail and spread it wide. The blue spots on the green and yellow plumes caught and held the light. The peacock slowly backed toward the caged peahen, then turned to give her the full magnificent display.

"Argos' eyes," Sostratos said softly.

"There's no myth about Argos and the peacock," Menedemos said.

"Of course not," Sostratos said. "Back in the days when the myths were made, who'd ever seen a peacock? But if people had, that's the myth they would have made."

While they spoke, Himilkon, a practical man, tossed a net over the distracted peacock. It let out a horrified squawk and tried to get away again, but couldn't. Despite its struggles, Himilkon and Hyssaldomos wrestled it back into its cage without incurring more than minor flesh wounds.

"Please don't let it out again any time soon, boss," the Karian slave pleaded, fastening the hooks and eyes that kept the peacock imprisoned.

"Oh, shut up." The merchant drew back his foot as if to kick Hyssaldomos, but relented. "If I have a customer, I'll put the bird through his paces."

"And me through mine, by Zeus Labraundeus," Hyssaldomos grumbled. He scowled at Menedemos and Sostratos. "Besides, who says they're customers? Just a couple of gawkers, if you ask me."

"Oh, we might be interested . . . if the price is right," Menedemos allowed.

In the fight with Himilkon and Hyssaldomos, the peacock had shed one of those astonishing tail feathers. Menedemos plucked it off the ground and admired it. "Three oboloi if you want to keep it," Himilkon said briskly.

"Half a drakhma?" Menedemos yelped. "For a feather?" A drakhma a day could feed and house a man and his family - not in any style, but it would put a roof over their heads and keep them from starving. "That's robbery!"

Himilkon smiled. "I'll deduct it from the price of the bird . . . if you're a customer."

Like any Hellene going out where he might spend some money, Menedemos had a couple of oboloi tucked between his cheek and his teeth. He spat the little silver coins into the palm of his hand and dried them on his tunic. Then he nudged his cousin, who produced another one. Menedemos handed Himilkon the coins. The Phoenician popped them into his own mouth. Menedemos asked, "Well, what do you want for him - and for the peahens, too?"

Some of the men who'd chased the peacock went back to what they had been doing now that it was back in its cage. Others hung around to watch the haggling, which might also prove entertaining.

Himilkon plucked at his fancy curled beard, considering. He put so much into it, he might have been an actor in a comedy using his body to get across what his mask couldn't. At last, elaborately artless, he said, "Oh, I don't know. A mina a bird sounds about right."

"A pound of silver? A hundred drakhmai?" As Himilkon had worked to sound casual, Menedemos worked to sound horrified. Actually, he'd been braced for worse. Peafowl were obviously for the luxury trade. Nobody would raise them in the courtyard like ducks. Like any merchant galley, the Aphrodite specialized in carrying luxuries. She didn't have the capacity to make a profit hauling wheat or cheap wine, the way a tubby sailing ship could.

Menedemos shot Sostratos a glance. A little slower than he should have, his cousin chimed in, "It's an outrage, Himilkon - pure hubris. Half that much would be an outrage, and you know it."

Himilkon shook his head back and forth again, then tossed it as a Hellene would to show disagreement. "No such thing, O best ones. I know you both. I know your fathers. If you buy my birds, you'll take them somewhere far away, and you'll sell them for plenty more than you pay. Tell me I'm wrong." He set his hands on his hips and looked defiantly at the younger men.

"We'll try to do that, no doubt," Menedemos said. "But what if the peacock dies while we're at sea? What do we sell then? I saw the peahen in her cage; she's not pretty enough to bring much by herself."

"Breed her to the cock. Breed all the hens you buy - if you buy any; if you don't go on trying to cheat me - to the cock," Himilkon replied. "Once they lay, you'll have plenty of birds to sell."

Sostratos said, "But only the one peacock shows what anyone who buys a bird from us would want."

Himilkon's smile might have shown off a shark's teeth, not his own, which were square and rather yellow. "In that case, you should pay me more for him, eh, not less."

The hangers-on laughed and clapped their hands at that. Menedemos shot Sostratos another glance, an angry one this time. But Sostratos tossed his head as calmly as if his opponent hadn't landed a telling blow. "Not at all," he said. "A mina is too much for the peacock, and much too much for the peahens."

"Without the peahens, you'll get no more peacocks," Himilkon said. "That's the value in them."

"We'll give you a mina and a half for the peacock and the five peahens," Menedemos said, wondering how loudly his father - and Sostratos' father, too - would scream at him for plunging into this dicker.

No louder than Himilkon screamed now; he was sure of that. "Twenty-five drakhmai a bird?" the Phoenician merchant bellowed. "You're no trader - you're a pirate, robbing honest men. I'd sooner roast the fowl myself than sell them for that."

"Invite us to the banquet," Sostratos said coolly. "A white wine from Thasos would go well with them, don't you think? Come on, cousin." He set a hand on Menedemos' shoulder.

Menedemos didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay and haggle with Himilkon, or possibly punch the Phoenician in the face. But when he angrily rounded on Sostratos, he saw something in his cousin's eyes that gave him pause. He dipped his head in agreement. Sometimes the only way to get a better bargain was to pretend one didn't matter. "Let's go," he said.

They started to walk away. If Himilkon kept quiet, they would have to keep walking. Menedemos didn't want that. What would the rich Hellenes in Taras or Syracuse pay for a peacock? A lot more than a mina, or he wildly missed his guess.

From behind them, Himilkon said, "Because I've dealt with your families before, I might - just might, mind you - let you have six birds for five minai, though I'd not do it for any other men born of woman."

With the best appearance of reluctance they could manage, Menedemos and Sostratos turned back. The little crowd of hangers-on sighed and shifted their feet and made themselves comfortable, ready to enjoy a long, vituperative dicker.

They got one, too. After much shouting and many invocations of gods both Greek and Phoenician, the two cousins settled with Himilkon on fifty drakhmai for each of the peahens and seventy-five for the peacock. Just when everything seemed agreed, Menedemos suddenly tossed his head and said, "No, it won't do."

Himilkon eyed him apprehensively. "What now?"

Holding up the fancy tail feather he'd bought, Menedemos said, "Seventy-four drakhmai, three oboloi for the peacock."

The Phoenician dug his tongue into his cheek, feeling for the silver coins he'd already got from Menedemos. "All right," he said. "Seventy-four drakhmai, three oboloi it is."

"We'll have ourselves an interesting cargo when the Aphrodite sails," Sostratos said, as he and Menedemos walked back from the harbor to their homes, which sat side by side near Demeter's temple in the northern part of the city.

"Father's got those jars of ink in the warehouse," Menedemos agreed, "and the rolls of papyrus with them, and the vials of Egyptian poppy-juice, too. And we'll put in at Khios and pick up some wine." He ran his tongue over his lips. "Nothing finer than Khian. It's thick as honey, and even sweeter."

"Khian's a lot stronger than honey, too," Sostratos observed. "Those are vintages you need to drink well-watered."

With a snort, Menedemos said, "Those are vintages you can drink well-watered, my dear cousin. Me, I like to have some fun every so often."

Sostratos sighed. "I like drinking wine. I don't like swilling it down neat like a barbarian. I don't like getting drunk and breaking things and getting into fights." He was, or at least tried to be, moderate. All the philosophers maintained that moderation was a virtue. By the look on Menedemos' face, he reckoned it not only a vice but a nasty vice at that. Sostratos sighed again. His cousin had all the noteworthy good traits: he was handsome, outgoing, strong, nimble. He could as easily sing a song as guide a ship through a gale without showing fear.

And what about you? Sostratos asked himself. He shrugged. Nobody'd ever written Sostratos is beautiful on the walls when he was a youth. He wasn't a bad haggler, but he got what bargains he got with reason and patience, not by making people like him and go easy or by persuading them black was white. He towered over Menedemos, but his cousin always threw him when they stripped off their clothes and wrestled in the gymnasion.

I have a good prose style. Theophrastos told me that himself, up in Athens, and he doles out even less praise than Aristoteles did when he headed the Lykeion. Everyone says so. I remember what I read, too. And I've always been clever - better than clever, really - with numbers.

It didn't seem enough. Even with moderation and reliability thrown in, it didn't seem enough. Sostratos shrugged again. I can't be Menedemos. I am what the gods made me. I have to make the most of what they gave me.

His cousin laughed and pointed. "Look, Sostratos. It really is getting on toward spring. There's a gecko on a wall."

Sure enough, a gray-brown lizard clung to the gray-brown mud brick of a poor man's house. It walked up the wall as easily as a fly might have done, and snapped up a bug before the insect knew it was there.

Half a block past the house with the gecko, they turned right so as to go north. That was the only turn they'd have to make till they got to their homes. Sostratos said, "Gods be praised, Rhodes is laid out on a grid, the way Peiraieus is up in Attica. Anyone can find his way around here or in Athens' harbor. Athens itself?" He tossed his head. "You have to be born there to know where you're going, and even the Athenians aren't sure half the time. Hippodamos of Miletos was a man of godlike wit."

"I never much thought about it," Menedemos confessed. "But most towns are pretty bad, aren't they? You can't get from the harbor to an inn a bowshot away without asking directions three different times, on account of the streets go wherever they please, not where you need 'em to."

"Of course," Sostratos said musingly, "Peiraieus and Rhodes are new cities; they could be planned. It's what, two years shy of a century since Rhodes was founded? A town that's been there since before the fall of Troy, the streets probably follow the way the cows used to wander."

"Homer doesn't say anything about whether Troy was laid out in a grid," Menedemos said. He paused to eye a slave woman carrying a jar of water back to her house. "Hello, sweetheart!" he called. The slave kept walking, but she smiled back at Menedemos.

Sostratos sighed. If he'd done that, the slave woman might have ignored him - if he was lucky. If he wasn't lucky, she'd have showered him with curses. That had happened to him once, up in Athens. Like a puppy that once stuck its nose into the fire, he hadn't taken the chance of its happening again.

Potters and jewelers and shoemakers and smiths and millers and tavernkeepers and all the other artisans whose work helped keep Rhodes prosperous had their shops in the front part of the buildings in which they and their households also lived. Some of them steadily kept whatever they did for a living. Others made periodic forays out into the street in search of customers.

"Here - look at my fine terracottas!" cried a potter - or would he think of himself as a sculptor? Sostratos didn't know. He didn't much care, either. He hoped the fellow made better pots than burnt-clay images. If he didn't, his wife and children would starve.

"Coming out!" somebody else shouted, this time from a second-story window. Sostratos and Menedemos sprang back in a hurry. So did everyone else close by. The odorous contents of a slops jar splashed down in the middle of the street. Somebody who didn't spring back fast enough - and who got his mantle splattered as a result - shook his fist at the window, whose wooden shutters were now closed again.

More men than women strode the streets. Respectable wives and maidens spent most of the time in the women's quarters of their houses. They sent slaves out to shop and run errands for them. Poor men's wives - the women in families that had no slaves of their own - had to go out by and for themselves. Some were brazen, or simply resigned to it. Others wore shawls and veils to protect themselves from prying eyes.

"Don't you wonder what they look like? - under all that stuff, I mean," Menedemos said after such a woman walked past. "Puts charcoal on my brazier just thinking about it."

"If you did see her, you'd probably think she was ugly," Sostratos said. "For all you know, she's a grandmother."

"Maybe," his cousin admitted. "But for all I know, she could be Helen of Troy come back to earth again, or Aphrodite slumming among us poor mortals. In my imagination, she is."

"Your imagination needs cold water poured on it, like a couple of dogs mating in the street," Sostratos said. Menedemos mimed taking an arrow in the chest. He staggered around so convincingly, he alarmed a donkey with four big amphorai of olive oil lashed onto its back with a web of leather straps. The fellow leading the donkey had several pointed things to say about that. Menedemos took no notice of him.

And Sostratos felt a little guilty, for he too sometimes tried to imagine what women looked like under their wraps and tunics, under their shawls and veils. What man didn't, every now and then? Why did women conceal themselves, if not to spur men's imaginings?

Musing thus, he almost walked past his own doorway. Menedemos laughed and said, "Don't come along with me yet. You need to go in and let your father know what we've done, while I tell mine. Merchants' supper at our house tonight, you know."

Sostratos dipped his head to show he remembered. "I expect we'll have plenty to talk about, too - if our fathers haven't skinned us by then and sold our hides to the tanners."

"We'll make money with those birds," Menedemos said stoutly.

"We'd better," Sostratos said. His cousin winced, then waved and went on to his own house. Nothing got Menedemos down for long. Sostratos wished he could say the same. He knocked on the door and waited for his father or a house slave to let him in.

Gyges, the majordomo, unbarred the doors and threw the two panels wide. "Hail, young master," the Lydian slave said. "How is the Aphrodite shaping?" He knew almost as much about the business as Sostratos and his father.

"Well enough," Sostratos answered. "Is Father home? Menedemos and I bought some goods to take west when we sail, and I want to tell him about them."

"Yes, he's here," Gyges said. "He'll be glad to see you; Xanthos just left."

"He'd be glad to see anybody else, if Xanthos just left," Sostratos said with a laugh. The other merchant was honest and reliable, but deadly dull.

Sostratos walked through the courtyard on the way to the andron - the men's room - where he expected to find his father. His sister Erinna was out there, watering some of the plants in the herb garden with a jar. "Hail," she said. "What's the news out in the city? I think Xanthos had some, but I stayed in till he left."

"Some business I want to tell Father first," Sostratos said. "Other than that, I didn't hear much. The Aphrodite will be ready to sail whenever we decide the weather's good enough."

Erinna sighed. "And then you and Menedemos will be gone till fall." She was eighteen; she'd been married for three years, but had returned to her father's household after her husband died. The dark, curly hair she'd cut short in mourning had finally grown out to close to its proper length.

With a sly smile, Sostratos said, "You know we're only leaving to annoy you."

"I believe it," Erinna said, and went back to watering the herbs. "Well, go on and tell Father whatever you've got to tell him. I suppose I'll hear about it eventually." She made a point of looking put-upon.

If Father reacts the way I'm afraid he will, you'll hear about it right away, when he starts bellowing, Sostratos thought. Taking a deep breath, he went into the andron.

Lysistratos was sitting in a chair, flicking pebbles back and forth on a counting board and muttering to himself. Sostratos' father looked up when the light changed as the younger man came in. Lysistratos was more than a palm shorter than his gangling son, but otherwise looked much like him. His hair had been darker brown than Sostratos' - almost black, in fact - but gray streaked it these days, for he'd seen more than fifty years.

He smiled. His teeth were still good, which helped give him the appearance of a younger man despite the gray. "Hail, son," he said, and waved Sostratos to another chair. "I have news."

"Erinna said you might," Sostratos answered. "So do I, as a matter of fact."

"You go first." They said it together, and both laughed.

"Go on, Father," Sostratos insisted. That was both respect for his father's years and genuine liking; Lysistratos hadn't beaten him more than he deserved when he was a boy, and more than once hadn't beaten him at all when he knew he deserved it.

His father dipped his head in assent. "Xanthos was here a little while ago," he began.

"Yes, I know - Gyges told me when I came in," Sostratos said.

"All right, then. You know how Xanthos is. You have to hear about the state of his bowels, and the speech he made in the last Assembly meeting - which must have been as boring as all the rest he's ever made - and how much worse we are these days than the heroes of the Trojan War." Lysistratos rolled his eyes. "But there's usually a little wheat mixed in with all the chaff, and there was today, too."

"Tell me," Sostratos urged.

"I will. You know the town of Amphipolis, next door to Macedonia?"

"Oh, yes." Sostratos dipped his head. "The historian Thoukydides talks about the place in his fifth book. Brasidas the Spartan beat Kleon of Athens there, though they both died in the battle."

His father looked impatient. "I don't mean Amphipolis in the old days, son. I'm talking about now. You know how Kassandros, the commander in Europe, has been holding Roxane and Alexandros, her son by Alexander the Great, in the fortress there."

"Oh, yes," Sostratos repeated. "Alexandros would be - what, twelve now? I know he was born after Alexander died. He'll be old enough to make a proper king of Macedonia before too long."

Lysistratos tossed his head. "Oh, no, he won't. That was Xanthos' news: some time this past winter, when word would travel slow, Kassandros killed Alexandros - and Roxane, too, for good measure."

Sostratos whistled softly and shivered, as if the andron had suddenly got colder. "Then it's just the generals now, to quarrel over the bones of Alexander's empire. Kassandros in Macedonia, Lysimakhos in Thrace, Antigonos in Anatolia and farther Asia, and Ptolemaios down in Egypt."

"And Polyperkhon over in the Pelopennesos, and that Seleukos fellow who's squabbling with Antigonos in inner Asia," Lysistratos said. "I wonder how long the peace your four made last summer will last. No longer than one of them sees an advantage in breaking it, or I miss my guess."

"You're bound to be right." Sostratos shivered again. He wondered what Thoukydides would have thought of the world as it was nowadays. Nothing good; he was sure of that. In the historian's day, each polis in Hellas had been free to go its own way. Now almost all the Greek city-states danced to the tune of one Macedonian warlord or another. Rhodes remained free and independent, but even his own polis had had to throw out a Macedonian garrison after Alexander died.

Lysistratos might have been thinking along similar lines, for he said, "Being a polis these days is a lot like being a sardine in a school of tunny. But what's your news, son? I hope it's cheerier than mine."

"So do I," Sostratos said, wondering how his father would react. Well, he'd soon know. He brought it out in a rush: "Menedemos and I bought a peacock and five peahens from Himilkon the Phoenician, to take to Italy in the Aphrodite."

"A peacock!" Lysistratos exclaimed. "Do you know, I've never seen a peacock in all my life. I don't blame you and your cousin one bit. If I haven't seen a peacock, you can bet none of the Hellenes in Italy has, either. They'll pay through the nose." His gaze sharpened. "And what did you pay?"

Sostratos told him. He waited for his father to burst like a lidded pot left too long on the fire, to thunder like Zeus of the aegis.

But Lysistratos only stroked his gray beard, a gesture Sostratos had copied from him. "Truth to tell, I haven't the faintest idea what a peacock's worth, or a peahen, either," he confessed. "I suspect nobody else does, either. What you lads paid doesn't sound too bad, not unless the birds die on the way and you have to throw them into the sea - the peacock especially."

"That's what we thought, too," Sostratos said. "It's one of the reasons we were able to beat Himilkon down as far as we did."

"He's a man to be reckoned with in a dicker." Lysistratos stroked his beard again. "Tell me . . . Is the peacock as splendid as everyone imagines?"

"He's more splendid than I imagined," Sostratos answered, almost stammering in his relief that things had gone so much smoother than he'd expected. "When he spread his tail to show off for the peahen, I'd never seen anything like it."

"All right," his father said. "When we go next door to supper tonight, we'll find out what your uncle Philodemos has to say about it."

"Yes, that will tell the tale," Sostratos agreed. Philodemos was Lysistratos' older brother, and the senior partner in their trading operation. He was also a man of less certain temper than Lysistratos, just as Menedemos was touchier than Sostratos. Now Sostratos dipped his head to his father. "If you'll excuse me . . ."

He went up the wooden stairs to his bedroom on the second story. One of the house slaves, a redheaded girl about Erinna's age called Threissa, was coming downstairs. By her looks and the name she'd been given - it simply meant the Thracian - she'd probably been captured not too far from Amphipolis. Sostratos smiled at her. He'd summoned her to his bed a couple of times. As a bachelor, he could get away with such things, where his father would have had trouble: keeping a wife and a mistress under the same roof was a recipe for trouble and scandal.

Threissa nodded back, polite but no more than that. She'd pleased him; he feared the reverse wasn't so true. Of course, he had to worry about her opinion only if he chose to.

The bedroom was sparsely furnished: a bedstead with a woolstuffed mattress, a chamber pot under it, a chair beside it, and two cypresswood chests, a smaller atop a larger. The larger one held Sostratos' tunics and mantles. The smaller held his books. While in Athens, he'd had complete sets of Herodotos and Thoukydides copied out for him.

When he opened the smaller chest, he smiled at the spicy scent of cypress. Like the more expensive cedar, it helped keep insects away from wool and linen and papyrus. He went through the rolls of papyrus till he found the one that held the fifth book of Thoukydides' masterful narrative of the Peloponnesian War. The battle of Amphipolis began the book.

Like most literate Hellenes, Sostratos murmured the words on the papyrus to himself as he read. Halfway through the account of the battle, he paused, shaking his head in wonder. No matter how often he read Thoukydides, his admiration never flagged. Father Zeus, if you are kind, one day let me write half as well as that man did. Let me think half as well as that man did. It was, he supposed, a peculiar sort of prayer, but no less sincere for that.

Menedemos hurried into the kitchen. "I trust we'll have something specially luscious tonight, Sikon," he said.

"Well, I hope so, young master," the cook answered. "I do my best, no matter how hard things are." He complained all the time.

From everything Menedemos had seen, that and petty thievery were diseases of cooks. Even the comic poets agreed with him. Trying to soothe Sikon's ruffled feathers, he said, "I know the sitos will be splendid. It always is. Nobody in Rhodes bakes better bread with wheat or barley than you do. But what have you got for the opson?" The relish course of a supper wasn't so thoroughly under the cook's control as the staple. If the fishermen had had an unlucky day, the opson would suffer.

"Well, there's always salt-fish. We've got plenty of that, on account of it keeps," Sikon said. "And I did manage to get my hands on some sprats - a few, anyhow. I'll fry 'em in olive oil and serve 'em slathered with cheese. Add in some pickled olives, and it shouldn't be too bad."

"Salt-fish? Sprats? Olives?" Menedemos' voice grew more horrified at every word. "For opson? For a proper supper? With guests?" He clapped a hand to his forehead. "We're ruined. Father will kill me, and then I'll kill you." Sostratos would have pointed out the logical flaw in that; Menedemos was sure of it. He didn't care. This was disaster, nothing less.

Only when the cook brought a hand up to his mouth to try to stifle laugher did Menedemos realize he'd been had. Sikon said, "Well, maybe these will do better, then," and swept the damp cloth off the seafood lying on the slate countertop.

"What have we here?" Menedemos murmured, and then answered his own question: "Prawns. Some lovely squid. Eels. And . . . a Rhodian dogfish. Oh, lovely, lovely!" He might almost have been talking about a hetaira who'd finally doffed her undertunic of silk from Kos and let him see her naked. "The gods will envy us tonight. All we feed them is thighbones wrapped in fat - and there's no telling what sort of meat people will bring home from a sacrifice, either. But fish, now - with fish, you know what you're getting ahead of time."

"And you pay for it, too," Sikon grumbled, for all the world as if he'd spent his own money and not the household's. Menedemos also had no doubt that he'd squirreled away for his own enjoyment some of the seafood he'd bought. Who in the history of the world had ever seen a skinny cook?

But all that was by the way. Menedemos clapped Sikon on the shoulder. "You have what you need. I know you'll do us proud tonight."

"I'll do me proud tonight," Sikon said. "Maybe somebody won't be happy with his own cook, and he'll hire me to do up some feast of his. Every obolos I stick in my mouth brings me that much closer to buying back my freedom."

"If you ever should, I'm afraid everyone in the house would starve," Menedemos said. He let it go at that; like most slaves, Sikon worked better in the hope of eventual liberty.

Satisfied the supper wouldn't suffer on account of the food, Menedemos went back to the andron to let his father know. "A dogfish?" Philodemos said once he'd heard the report. "Out to bankrupt us, is he? You can eat it once and die happy, but who could afford to eat it twice?" Still, he didn't sound altogether displeased. He wasn't an opsophagos, someone who ate the relish at a feast as if it were bread, but he enjoyed a fine opson as well as any man.

So did Menedemos. "And the eels . . ." His mouth watered in anticipation.

"Out to bankrupt us," Philodemos repeated. Like his son, he'd been a handsome youth, but the years had left his mouth narrow, his nose sharp, and his eyes cool and hard. When he turned that embittered gaze on Menedemos, his son braced himself for a beating, though it had been several years since his father hit him. "Sikon won't get the chance to bankrupt us," Philodemos said. "You and your cousin will beat him to the punch. Peafowl!"

"If they live, we'll make a good profit," Menedemos said.

"And if they don't, you might as well have pissed away better than three minai of silver on wine and women and . . . and dogfish," his father said. "You act as if we were made of money, not as if we had to go out and make it."

"Shall I go tell Himilkon he can keep the miserable birds, then?" Menedemos asked.

As he'd known his father would, Philodemos tossed his head. "No, no. You made the bargain. You can't go back on it." He was a canny merchant, but one of stern rectitude. "You made the bargain. I only wish you hadn't."

"Wait till you see the peacock, Father," Menedemos said. "Wait till you see him fan his tail out. Then you'll understand."

"I saw the feather you brought home. I can imagine the bird," Philodemos said. His attitude was so cut-and-dried, Menedemos was convinced he missed a lot of the juice of life. For his part, Philodemos was at least half convinced he'd raised a wastrel. He went on. "I wonder how the birds would do boiled and stuffed with olives."

"I don't know," Menedemos said. "I'll tell you this, though, sir: finding out would make dogfish look cheap."

"Heh." His father got to his feet. He was lean and leathery and still strong for a man of his years. "We'd best clear out and let the slaves get the andron ready for tonight."

Sure enough, the slaves started bringing in the couches on which Lysistratos, Sostratos, and the other guests would recline, two to a couch. They set them up around the edge of the andron. Philodemos didn't clear out; he fussed at them till they got the couches exactly as he wanted them. Menedemos had to work to keep from scowling as he listened to those orders. His father had treated him just the same way till he finally grew to manhood - and still did, in absentminded moments or when he thought he could get away with it.

Once all seven couches were placed, Philodemos rounded on Menedemos. "You did arrange for the flutegirls and the acrobat?" he said anxiously. "It wouldn't be much of a symposion after the feast if we had no entertainers."

"Yes, Father," Menedemos assured him. "Gyllis is sending over Eunoa and Artemeis. They both play well, and they're both supposed to be lively in bed."

His father sniffed. "That's why I left those details to you. I was sure you would know all about them."

"And why not?" Menedemos said with a smile. "I'd rather laugh at Aristophanes and drink some wine and boff a flutegirl than sit around moping and wishing I'd get sent into exile so I could have the time to write history, the way my cousin does." He snapped his fingers. "Where was I? Oh, the acrobat. Her name is Phylainis, and I saw her perform before I told Gyllis to send her. She can twist herself up like a braided loaf of bread. You could probably find ways to do it with her that'd break a regular woman in half."

"Gods preserve an estate from a cockproud son," Philodemos said. "You'll spend it all on flutegirls and acrobats, and leave your son nothing but debts to call his own."

"May you live many years, Father," Menedemos said. "I'm in no hurry to inherit anything. And I'm still years younger than you were when you married the first time, so I'm going to enjoy myself a little."

Philodemos raised his eyes to the heavens. "What is this new generation coming to? It's not worth half of mine."

His generation included Alexander the Great. He was, no doubt, about to say as much. Menedemos forestalled him: "Nestor complained about the new generation in the Iliad, too, but they were heroes even so."

"The older I get, the more sense I think Nestor makes," his father answered. "And as for you, it's a wonder you're not singing the praises of Thersites."

"Homer makes Thersites a loudmouthed fool," Menedemos said. Then, seeing the gleam in his father's eye, he retreated in a hurry.

Sostratos wrapped his himation around himself and over his left shoulder. He peered down, trying to study the effect. He was hoping for philosophical; his beard would help there. But a true philosopher wouldn't have worn a tunic under the himation, or else wouldn't have put the wrap on over a chiton. Sokrates had gone about in nothing but his tunic in all kinds of weather. Sostratos shrugged. He wasn't Sokrates. He felt the chill.

Someone knocked on the door. His father: Lysistratos said, "Are you ready?"

"Yes, Father." Sostratos opened the door. His father inspected him like an officer looking over a soldier in his phalanx. Sostratos flushed. "I won't disgrace us."

"No, of course not," Lysistratos said, though he didn't sound completely convinced. "Come on, it's sundown. Let's grab a torch and go on over to my brother's."

They needed the torch; this late in the month, the moon wouldn't rise until a little before sunup. More guests, also carrying torches, were rapping on Philodemos' door as they walked up. One of the men turned to Sostratos and Lysistratos and said, "Hail, best ones. Is it you that bought peafowl from Himilkon the Phoenician?"

"I didn't, Lykon," Lysistratos answered. "My son made the bargain, along with his cousin Menedemos."

Lykon shot questions at Sostratos as if he were a slinger shooting lead bullets. As Sostratos was answering them, another merchant, a plump fellow named Telephos, came up to the doorway and started asking some of the same ones over again.

To Sostratos' relief, he didn't have to answer them twice, for the door opened and Philodemos said, "Welcome, my friends. Hail, Lysistratos. Hail, Sostratos. Come in, all of you." He sniffed. "By all means, come in. You can already smell the opson cooking, and it will be ready soon."

The odor of frying seafood came wafting out through the doorway. The guests jostled one another, each more eager than the next to get inside. Sostratos dipped his head in greeting to Philodemos. "Hail, Uncle," he said.

"Hail," Philodemos said again, his voice more sour than not. "I thought, when you went down to the Aphrodite, you would keep Menedemos out of mischief. Instead, I find you joining in. Three hundred twenty-five drakhmai. Pheu!"

"Three hundred twenty-four and three oboloi, actually," Sostratos replied. "And we'll bring back more from Italy. I truly think we will." He was also truly annoyed Philodemos should reckon him hardly better than a pedagogue, a slave who took a boy to and from his teacher's and kept an eye on him to make sure he stayed out of mischief on the way.

"I hope you do." By the way his uncle said it, he might hope, but he didn't expect.

Menedemos stood in the entranceway to the andron, silhouetted by the torches and lamps within. "Hail," he said as Sostratos came up.

Sostratos sniffed again. The ambrosial aromas from the kitchen weren't all he smelled. "Roses?" he asked.

"And why not?" Menedemos replied. He'd always been something of a dandy. "Rhodes is the city of the rose. There's a rose stamped onto the port side of the Aphrodite's ram, along with far-shooting Apollo on the other. I thought I'd deck myself out with scented oil tonight." He lowered his voice: "I hoped it would help sweeten Father, too, but no luck there. What did he say to you on the way in?"

"Nothing too good," Sostratos said, and his cousin winced. He went on, "But the bargain stands. We still have the chance for the last laugh - as long as the birds don't take sick." Menedemos spat into the bosom of his chiton to avert the evil omen. Sostratos asked, "Where will you have us reclining?"

"Almost all the way over to the right, of course, on the couch next to Father and me," Menedemos said. "Why? Did you think we would slight you?"

"Not really," Sostratos said.

He must have sounded hesitant. His cousin said, "Father may be angry at you and me, but he'd never insult Uncle Lysistratos by moving him, and he can't very well move you alone and give your father a new couchmate. As far as the outside world knows, all's well - mm, well enough - among us."

"The outside world certainly knows about the peafowl," Sostratos said. "I hope Himilkon hasn't been going through the wineshops boasting of getting the better of us. That'd be all we need."

Menedemos made as if to spit into his bosom again, but refrained. "Go on in," he said. "We'll eat, then we'll drink, and we'll have fun with the flutegirls and the acrobat. And tomorrow is another day, and we'll drink our morning wine fast and eat raw cabbage to ease our sore heads."

To Sostratos' way of thinking, the best way to ease back into things after a night of excess was to drink well-watered wine the next day. That didn't seem to cross Menedemos' mind. Sostratos' cousin had never been one to do things by halves.

"Go on in, boys, go on in," Telephos said. "If you stand in the doorway, a hefty fellow like me can't squeeze by." He patted his paunch and wheezed laughter.

If you spent more time at the gymnasion and less with a bowl of sweetmeats beside you, you'd have no trouble fitting through a doorway, Sostratos thought. But he and Menedemos went into the andron, and Telephos followed. Menedemos' father, bustling about like a goose trying to keep track of all her goslings at once, escorted the plump merchant to the couch he'd chosen for him.

Cushions rested on all the couches. Sostratos took his place beside his father on the couch next to that of their hosts. Lysistratos, being the elder, leaned on his elbow at the head of the couch. Sostratos reclined farther down, so that his feet hung off the edge.

He prodded his cushion, trying to get comfortable. It wasn't easy. In a low voice, he told his father, "I'm not what you'd call fond of fancy dinners. My arm goes to sleep, and I always spill food on my clothes."

Lysistratos shrugged. "It's the custom, and custom - "

"Is king of all," Sostratos finished, quoting Herodotos quoting Pindaros. His father dipped his head in agreement.

"All right, where's Kleagoras?" Menedemos said when only one space on one of the seven couches remained unfilled. "Late again, I see."

"Kleagoras would be late to his own funeral," Philodemos said sourly.

"Well, there are worse things," Sostratos' father remarked. "I wouldn't mind being late to mine, to tell you the truth." That drew chuckles from the three sides of the open-frontect rectangle in which the couches were arranged.

"Yes, Uncle, but at your funeral you wouldn't be waiting to eat Sikon's good fish and hoping it didn't burn," Menedemos said.

Kleagoras came bustling in just then. He always moved as if in a hurry, but somehow never got anywhere on time. "A thousand pardons, best ones," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Very good to be here, very good indeed." He was panting as he slid down onto his couch. He might have run all the way from his house to this one, but running hadn't done him much good.

"You made it at last, Kleagoras, and I'm glad you did." Philodemos sounded welcoming and annoyed at the same time. Kleagoras' answering smile was sheepish. Philodemos turned to a slave who hovered by his couch. "Go to the kitchen and tell Sikon we can begin." The young man trotted away.

A moment later, more slaves came into the andron, setting a low, small table in front of each couch. They brought out bowls of pickled olives and onions to start the meal. Sostratos took an olive with his right hand and popped it into his mouth. When he'd worked off all the tart flesh, he spat the pit on the floor. After the feast was over and before the symposion began, the house slaves would clear away the debris.

Bread came next, with olive oil for dipping. Like everyone else, Sostratos ate the bread with his left hand. From his couch over on the far side of the andron, the long-winded merchant named Xanthos said, "Did you know - I have it for a fact, certain sure - that Kassandros murdered Alexandros and Roxane? Killed them both, I tell you, sent their souls down to the house of Hades. They're dead. Both of them are dead, dead as salt-fish, no doubt about it."

That got exclamations from everyone who hadn't already heard it. The exclamations got Xanthos to tell the news over again. He took longer the second time through, but, as far as Sostratos could see, he added no new details. The other feasters seemed to notice the same thing, for they quickly stopped asking him questions. That, of course, didn't stop him from starting to give the news a third time.

Lysistratos leaned over toward Philodemos and asked, "Did you have to invite him?" He yawned behind his hand.

But Menedemos' father dipped his head. "Unfortunately, I did. I heard from someone who ought to know that he's got some new perfumes we ought to have aboard the Aphrodite. I think he'll let me have them, because his ships stick to the Aegean and don't risk the longer trips west."

"All right." Sostratos' father sighed. "The things we do in search of profit."

A moment later, though, Xanthos fell silent: the slaves brought in baskets of rolls dusted with poppy seeds and plates of shrimp fried in their shells. "The opson!" someone said reverently.

Sostratos and his father, like Menedemos and his, had no trouble sharing from the plate set before their couch. Sostratos took each shrimp with his right thumb and index finger; had he been eating salt-fish, he would have used his middle finger, too. He couldn't remember when he'd learned the rules - sitos with the left hand, opson with the right; one finger for fresh fish, two for salt. But, like anyone with manners, he had. He wondered if some of the feasters did have manners. Where the two men on a couch were just acquaintances, they seemed to race to see who could eat the shrimp faster.

Sostratos savored the garlic and pungent silphium from Kyrene that flavored the shrimp. "Sikon's done it again," he told Menedemos, tossing an empty shell to the plastered floor after getting the last of the meat from the tail.

Out came more rolls, with squid to accompany them. Then the slaves brought in flat sheets of barley bread, and chunks of eel cooked in cheese with leeks to serve as their relish.

"Truly our host is a prince of generosity!" said portly Telephos. He plainly thought the eel the last course of opson. So did Sostratos, who joined in the applause when the dogfish came in afterwards. "A king of generosity!" Telephos cried, and no one contradicted him.

Some of the feasters left their bread all but untouched to concentrate on the opson. Not Sostratos; to him, the relish was relish, and the sitos the staple. Sokrates would have approved, he thought, even if he got rather less fish than some others.

Honey cakes and dried fruit finished the meal. Slaves brought in little bowls of water so the guests could wash their fingers, then carried the tables out of the andron. They returned to sweep away the shells and fish bones and scraps of bread that littered the floor.

When they came back, they brought garlands and ribbons for the feasters to put on their heads. And they brought shallow, long-handled, two-eared drinking cups, along with jars of wine, jars of water, a great mixing bowl, a pouring jug, and a ladle. Sostratos eyed the preparations for the symposion with an odd mixture of anticipation and dread. Dionysos' ocean of wine could be as stormy as Poseidon's watery sea.

The first cup of wine at a symposion was always drunk neat, and the last bit of it poured out as a libation for Dionysos. Menedemos savored the sweet, rich, potent goodness of the golden Khian vintage. Letting the god have any seemed a shame and a waste, but he poured his libation onto the floor along with everyone else and sang Dionysos' hymn.

"Now," his father said, "we'll need a symposiarch, to guide us through our night together. Who will lead us over the wine-dark sea?"

Everybody smiled at the allusion to the Iliad. Xanthos promptly put up his hand. Everyone pretended not to see him; he was even less interesting drunk than sober. Sostratos also raised his hand. That was what made Menedemos decide to put up his. He liked his cousin, but he felt like getting properly drunk tonight, and he knew Sostratos would order the wine well-watered and drunk from shallow cups all night long.

"Let it be Menedemos," Telephos said. "We've all seen he knows how to have a good time." Amid laughter and clapping, he was elected.

Sostratos leaned toward him and said, "My father and I are close enough to get home clinging to the wall like that gecko we saw this morning, but the gods help our friends who live farther away."

Before Menedemos could answer that, his father tapped him on the shoulder. "There are better reputations to have than that of a roisterer," Philodemos said.

"Everything in its place," Menedemos replied, as philosophically as if he were Sostratos. "When it's time for business, business. When it's time for a symposion, wine." He waved to a slave. "Are the flutegirls and the acrobat here?"

"Yes, sir," the man answered. "They got here a little while ago."

"All right, good. We can bring them on after we've had a couple of rounds." Menedemos felt like a general arraying his army as he reckoned best. He clapped his hands together. All the feasters - the symposiasts, now - and the slaves looked his way. "Let the wine be mixed." Everybody leaned forward. As symposiarch, he set the strength. "Let it be . . . three parts water and two of wine."

"I thought you were going to say even measures, and have us as drunk as Macedonians in nothing flat," his father said. "Even three to two is a strong mix."

Menedemos grinned. "The symposiarch has spoken." No one but Philodemos was complaining. Even Sostratos just leaned on his elbow, watching a slave mix wine and water in the big krater in the center of the andron. Maybe he'd expected Menedemos to order equal measures, too.

I should have called for neat wine, Menedemos thought. But he tossed his head, rejecting the idea. That would make everyone fall asleep too soon. He wanted to feel the wine, yes, but he wanted to enjoy himself other ways while he was doing it, too.

When the wine was mixed, the slave filled the oinokhoe from the krater and used it to fill the symposiasts' cups. He started at the couch farthest from Menedemos and his father and worked his way toward them.

When Menedemos' cup was full, he lifted it by the handles. Even watered, the wine was sweet and strong. Everyone drank along with him. Where he led, they would follow. When he'd emptied the cup, he pointed to the slave, who filled the oinokhoe from the krater and then refilled the cups.

Before drinking this time, Menedemos said, "Let's have a bit of a song or a speech from everyone." The speeches ran in the same direction the wine had. As soon as Xanthos began to declaim, Menedemos knew he'd made a mistake: the merchant delivered, word for word - and there were a great many words - the speech he'd presented to the Assembly not long before.

"I've heard it today twice now," Lysistratos said, draining his own cup faster than was required of him.

"I'm sorry, Uncle," Menedemos said. "I didn't expect - that."

Sostratos gave Brasidas' speech at Amphipolis, explaining, "Great things happened there before Kassandros' day."

Lykon said, "That's an Athenian writer putting words in a Spartan's mouth, or I'm an Egyptian. Spartans aren't used to speaking in the Assembly, and they grunt and stammer instead of coming out with everything just so."

"It could be." Sostratos courteously dipped his head to the older man. "No one but Thoukydides ever knew how much of what was really said went into his speeches, and how much of what he thought men should have said."

"And what will you say, Uncle?" Menedemos asked Lysistratos.

Sostratos' father took a lyre down from the wall and accompanied himself as he sang a poem of Arkilokhos', in which he promised the girl he was seducing that he would spend himself on her belly and pubic patch, not inside her. The symposiasts loudly clapped their hands. "Sure, you always tell 'em that beforehand," somebody called, and everyone laughed.

Lysistratos waved to Menedemos. "Your turn now."

"So it is." Menedemos got to his feet. "I'll give you the Iliad, the section where Patroklos kills Sarpedon." The Greek he recited was even older, and more old-fashioned, than that which Arkilokhos used:

Menedemos didn't get the chance to say what Sarpedon had told Glaukos, for Xanthos burst out, "By Zeus of the aegis, the Argives didn't kill enough Lykians during the Trojan War. We've still got too many of the stinking pirates no more than a stone's throw from Rhodes."

"Not even Herakles could throw a stone from here to Lykia," the literal-minded Sostratos said, but heads all around the andron dipped in agreement with Xanthos. Lykia lay less than eight hundred stadia to the east, and every Lykian headland was liable to have a pirate crew's swift pentekonter or even swifter hemiolia lurking behind it, waiting to swoop down on an honest merchantman.

Instead of going on, Menedemos dipped his head to his father, who also chose Homer: the passage in the Odyssey where Odysseus, with his comrades, blinded Polyphemos the Cyclops after first cleverly giving his name as Nobody. When the other Cyclopes asked him what was wrong, he blamed Nobody - Outis, not Odysseus. The symposiasts smiled at the wordplay.

"Another round," Menedemos told the slave tending the krater. "Deeper cups this time, and then bring on the flutegirls and the acrobat." He raised his voice: "Drink, my friends! We've plenty of wine still ahead of us."

The deeper cups were businesslike mugs. They weren't nearly so pretty as the shallow, high-footed cups with which the symposion had begun, but they held more than twice as much. Menedemos poured the wine down his throat. Since he was the symposiarch, the rest of the men had to follow his lead.

In danced Eunoa and Artemeis, both playing a drinking song from Athens on their double flutes. The flutegirls wore silk chitons filmy enough to show they'd singed away the hair from between their legs with a lampflame. The symposiasts whooped and cheered. A moment later, those cheers redoubled, for Phylainis the acrobat followed the flutegirls into the andron walking on her hands. She was naked; her oiled skin gleamed in the lamplight.

Philodemos nudged Menedemos as the symposiasts' cheers got louder yet. "The girls are pretty enough," the older man said. "I can't very well deny that."

"I'm glad you're pleased," Menedemos answered. His father was a hard man, but fair. "I hope the racket won't bother your wife, up in the women's quarters." Menedemos' mother was dead; his father had married a young bride a couple of years before, and was hoping for more children.

"We've had symposia here before," Philodemos said with a shrug. "She can put wax in her ears if the noise gets too bad, as Odysseus' men did sailing past the Sirens." He cocked his head to one side, listening to the music. "They don't play the flute badly, either."

"One of them can play my flute in a while," Menedemos said. "They're good at that, too." His father chuckled. Then they both laughed out loud. After a series of cartwheels across the andron, Phylainis had ended up in Sostratos' lap. Instead of feeling her up or starting the lovemaking then and there, Menedemos' cousin dumped her off as if she were on fire.

"She doesn't bite, Sostratos," Menedemos said. "Not unless you want her to." He threw back his head and laughed; he could feel the wine, all right.

Sostratos shrugged. "She picked me because I'm young, and she hoped I'd fall head over heels for her." He shrugged again. "I'm afraid not."

"All right - someone else will put his mortise in her tenon before long," Menedemos answered, as if talking of the shipwright's business rather than Aphrodite's. Sostratos seemed to stay sober even when drunk. Poor fellow, Menedemos thought.

Sure enough, Phylainis soon pressed herself against Xanthos, who started talking a great deal. Are you going to bore her or bore her? Menedemos wondered. With wine in him, that seemed very funny. He ordered the slave to go round and fill the symposiasts' cups again. Telephos let Artemeis drink from his mug. As she gulped wine, the merchant ran his hand up under her tunic. "What a smooth little piggy you've got," he said, fondling her.

"It's even smoother inside," she said, and took hold of the side of the couch and stuck her backside in the air. Telephos got behind her and put her words to the test.

Menedemos waved to Eunoa. He was the host's son. He'd hired her and the other girls. She hurried to him. "What would you like?" she asked. He sat up on the couch. She squatted in front of him on the floor, her head bobbing up and down, then, at his gesture, got up onto the couch and squatted on him. Her breath was sweet with wine fumes. And she was smooth inside, too.