Over the Wine-Dark Sea

8

With the coast of Italy on his right hand, with the Aphrodite's steering oars firm in his grip, with the poop deck rolling gently beneath his bare feet, Menedemos felt at home once more. "By the gods, it's good to get back to sea."

"I suppose so." Sostratos didn't sound convinced.

"You've been sour ever since we left Taras yesterday morning." Menedemos eyed his cousin. "You're pining for that redhead girl. Foolish to get yourself in such an uproar over a slave."

"You're a fine one to speak of foolishness," Sostratos snapped: that had got his notice. "How's your ankle feeling these days?"

"It's doing pretty well," Menedemos answered blithely. "It hardly bothers me unless I turn just the wrong way." That exaggerated his improvement, but not by a great deal. He got in a jab of his own: "At least I never imagined I was in love with Phyllis."

"I wasn't in love with Maibia," Sostratos said. "She hoped I would be, but I wasn't. I'm not so silly as that."

"Well, what is your trouble, then? Was she that good in bed?"

"Never a dull moment - I will say that," his cousin replied. "I do feel bad about leaving her back there to take on all comers again."

"All comers, indeed," Menedemos said, and Sostratos gave him a dirty look. Trying to get Sostratos to show a little common sense, Menedemos went on, "Do you think she thinks you were all that wonderful?"

His cousin turned red. Stammering a little, he answered, "I - I like to think so, anyhow."

"Of course you do. But are you thinking straight? To a girl in a brothel, a man's just another man, a prick's just another prick." Menedemos leered at Sostratos. "Or are you another Ariphrades? He found a way to make the girls in the brothels happy with him." Grinning, he quoted from Aristophanes' Wasps:

Sostratos looked revolted. "I wouldn't do anything like that," he said.

"I did hope not, best one," Menedemos said. "But if this girl was really mooning over you, I wondered if you'd given her some strange sort of reason." He quoted Aristophanes again, this time from the Knights:

"Nor with me." Sostratos raised an eyebrow. "I read the historians, and try to remember things they say that will help us when we trade. You read Aristophanes, and what do you remember? The filthiest parts, that's what."

"If you're going to read Aristophanes, that's the stuff worth remembering," Menedemos said. "And I read Homer, too, and there's nothing filthy about him." He glared a challenge at Sostratos. His cousin was so infected with radical modern ideas, he might even try to argue about that.

But, to Menedemos' relief, Sostratos dipped his head. "Nothing wrong with Homer."

"And nothing wrong with Aristophanes, either," Menedemos said stoutly. "He's just different from the poet." Wherever Hellenes lived - a vast stretch of ground indeed these days, after Alexander opened the whole of the east - Homer was the poet.

"You're looking for a quarrel," Sostratos said. Menedemos didn't deny it. If a quarrel would shake Sostratos out of his funk, Menedemos was ready to give him one. But his cousin just laughed. "I don't really care to squabble today, if it's all the same to you."

"All right," Menedemos said. Whether Sostratos felt like squabbling or not, he sounded a little more like himself. And if he sounded more like himself, he could be used: "Go forward and see how the peafowl chicks are doing. They're still your babies, you know."

"My babies?" Sostratos exclaimed in moderately high dudgeon. "The peacock was welcome to his ladies, as far as I'm concerned. All I ever wanted to do with them was roast them, not screw them." Clicking his tongue between his teeth at the absurdity of the notion, he headed up toward the foredeck.

Menedemos chuckled a little, under his breath. Sostratos did seem a bit happier. And every heartbeat put Taras farther behind the Aphrodite. The longer Sostratos was away from Maibia, the more likely he was to stop brooding about her. Maybe he'd get himself another girl he enjoyed. That would help.

Sostratos had plenty of hands to help him now: a brisk breeze from the north meant the Aphrodite went by sail, with the rowers off their benches and free to chase chicks. Diokles pointed southwest and asked, "Do you aim to put in at Kroton, skipper?"

"I hadn't planned to," Menedemos answered. "It's a good-sized town, I suppose, but it's not a place where much ever happens." The keleustes raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He knew his place; he wouldn't come right out and tell his captain he thought him wrong. But his expression was eloquent enough to make Menedemos pause and reflect. "Oh," he said. "You want to find out how the war is going before we try rounding Italy and heading up through the Sicilian Strait, don't you?"

"Might be a good idea." Diokles' voice was dry.

"Well, so it might," Menedemos admitted. "All right, we will put in at Kroton. Who knows? Maybe we'll sell something."

Kroton boasted the only real harbor between Taras and Rhegion - and to reach Rhegion, the Aphrodite would have to round the south-westernmost tip of Italy and start up into the strait. If the Syracusans or Carthaginians had ships in the neighborhood, that wouldn't be a healthy thing to do.

Menedemos worked the steering oars to change course to the southwest. At his command, the sailors swung the yard to take best advantage of the breeze on the new course. Had he not given the command, they might have done it on their own. They knew what wanted doing, and went about it without any fuss.

The harbor mouth faced northeast, so the men didn't even have to go to the oars to bring the Aphrodite into port. But the water inside the harbor remained choppy, for Kroton wasn't a town with all the latest improvements, and had built no moles to break the force of the sea. A lot of boats and even ships had simply been dragged up onto the beach, too, but Menedemos managed to find space at one of the piers.

"What do you hear from Sicily?" he called to a skinny fellow standing on the quay.

"Who're you, and what news have you got?" the Krotonite returned, his Doric accent much like that of Taras.

"We're out of Rhodes," Menedemos said. He gave his own name, and told of the deaths of Roxane and Alexandros, and of Polemaios' defection from Antigonos, his uncle. The local soaked up the news from the east like a sponge soaking up water. When Menedemos finished giving it, he repeated his own question: "What's the word from Sicily?"

"Well, the Carthaginians still have Syracuse harbor shut up pretty tight," the Krotonite answered. Menedemos dipped his head. He'd expected that; were it not true, he'd have seen more Syracusan ships in Taras. The dock lounger went on, "The barbarians have an army moving to lay siege to the place, too."

"Does it look like falling?" Menedemos asked anxiously; that would be a disaster.

With a shrug, the Krotonite said, "Who knows? They do say Agathokles pulled a fast one on his enemies in town, though."

"Ah?" Menedemos pricked up his ears. "Tell me."

"Rich folks in Syracuse never have fancied Agathokles," the local said. Menedemos dipped his head; he knew that. The Krotonite continued, "He said everybody who wasn't ready to stand siege and suffer should get out of town while the getting was good. Well, a lot of the folk who couldn't stand him upped and left - and as soon as they were gone, he sent a bunch of mercenaries after 'em and killed 'em all. Once they were dead, he confiscated their property and freed all their slaves who he reckoned could fight in his army."

Down in the waist of the Aphrodite, Sostratos let out a soft whistle. "That's one way to get your polis behind you."

"So it is," Menedemos said. "Not the way I'd choose, maybe, but one way. I'll tell you this: nobody who thinks Agathokles is wrong will dare open his mouth to say so, not for quite a while he won't."

"No," Sostratos agreed. "But then, no one would be much inclined to argue with him as long as the Carthaginians are outside the walls. No polis can afford factional strife with an enemy at the gates." His expression went bleak. "Of course, not being able to afford strife doesn't mean one can't have it. I can think of - "

The Krotonite cut short what would have turned into a historical lecture by pointing down toward Sostratos' feet and asking, "What's that funny-looking little bird there? Some kind of partridge? How much you want for it? I bet it'd be tasty, stewed up nice with leeks and cheese."

"It's a peafowl chick," Sostratos answered. "You can have it for a mina and a half." As the birds grew bigger, so did the asking price.

"A drakhma and a half, you say? That's not so . . ..

" The Krotonite's voice trailed off as he realized what Sostratos had really said. His jaw dropped. His eyes bugged out. "You people are madder than Dionysos made Pentheus," he declared, and stalked off up the pier toward dry land with his nose in the air.

"I frightened him off," Sostratos said.

"Maybe, maybe not," Menedemos answered. "Look how he's talking to that other fellow and pointing back towards us. Word will get around. If there are any Krotonites with more money than sense, we'll do all right."

"Always some of those people," Sostratos said. "They just have to decide we're what they want."

To Menedemos' disappointment, no rich merchants or farmers came out to the Aphrodite before sunset. Only a few sailors went into town to drink themselves under the table or find the closest brothel. Most of the men had spent all their silver in the long stay at Taras, and seemed happy enough to stay close to the akatos: Sostratos came up onto the poop deck to spread out his himation. Catching Menedemos' eye, he glanced toward the jumble of buildings that made up Kroton and opened his mouth to speak.

Menedemos cut him off: "Don't even start. I don't know anyone's wife here, and I'm not trying to meet anyone's wife here, either."

"I didn't say a thing." Sostratos sounded innocent, but not quite innocent enough. He lay down on the himation, rolled himself up in it to hold mosquitoes at bay, and kept right on not saying a thing. Menedemos approved of that. He listened to his cousin start to snore. After a little while, he stopped hearing Sostratos, which presumably meant he was doing some snoring of his own.

He jerked awake before sunrise when someone with a loud, harsh voice demanded, "Are those really peacock chicks you're selling?"

"Uh . . . yes," Menedemos said around a yawn. He untangled himself from his mantle and stood up, careless of his nakedness - Hellenes fretted much less about bare skin than most people. "Who are you?"

"I'm Hipparinos," the Krotonite answered, as if Menedemos ought to know who Hipparinos was. "Let me see these birds. If I like 'em, I'll buy a couple. A mina apiece, I hear you want."

"A mina and a half," Menedemos said. Hipparinos bellowed in outrage either real or faked as artfully as a fancy courtesan counterfeited the peak of pleasure. Menedemos went forward and got out a couple of chicks.

Hipparinos glared at them. "Those ugly little things really turn into peacocks? Why haven't you got any grown birds?"

"Yes, they turn into peacocks - or peahens," Menedemos said. "I haven't got any grown birds because I sold them all in Taras - and I got a lot more than a mina and a half apiece for them, too."

Hipparinos scowled. Menedemos would have been disappointed had he done anything else. He said, "Has anybody else in Kroton tried to buy these birds?"

"Indeed not, O best one," Menedemos replied. "And no one else will have the chance, for we intend to sail as soon as it gets light."

"I'll have the only ones, will I?" Hipparinos all but rubbed his hands in glee. He sounded much like Herennius Egnatius, but Menedemos would never have told him so: comparing him to a barbarian might have queered the deal. The Krotonite dipped his head in sudden decision. "I'll take two."

"At a mina and a half apiece?" Menedemos asked, to make sure there was no misunderstanding.

"At a mina and a half apiece," Hipparinos said. He took a leather sack from his belt and hefted it in his left hand. Menedemos went up the gangplank and onto the pier, a chick under each arm. Hipparinos gestured. A man - probably a slave - came up with a wickerwork basket in which to take the birds away. Before Menedemos could call anyone from the Aphrodite, Sostratos came of his own accord. Having equal sides went a long way toward keeping anything unfortunate from happening.

When Menedemos took the sack, it felt as if it weighed about three minai. He chuckled under his breath; Hipparinos had heard what his price was, sure enough. Menedemos handed the sack to Sostratos. "Count this quickly - you're good with numbers."

"As you say." His cousin made piles of silver coins on the pitch-smeared planks of the wharf. He did count money faster than Menedemos could. After a very brief time, he looked up and said, "Six drakhmai short. You can see for yourself." Sure enough, the last pile held only two didrakhms.

Hipparinos laughed. "Are you going to quarrel over six little coins?"

Menedemos had met this sort of small-time chiseler more often than he could count. He dipped his head. "As a matter of fact, yes. We agreed on a price. If you want the birds, you have to pay it."

Muttering under his breath, the Krotonite came up with the missing drakhmai. Menedemos was altogether unsurprised to find him able to. Down the pier Hipparinos went, the slave following him with the basket. In a low voice, Sostratos said, "I hope they both turn out to be peahens."

"That would be nice," Menedemos agreed. "Have you got the money back in the sack? The sooner we leave, the happier I'll be."

As the aphrodite came round Cape Herakleion, the southernmost bit of land in Italy, Sostratos exclaimed in astonishment and pointed west. "Is that really Mount Aitne, across all this distance?" he asked.

"Nothing else but," Menedemos answered, as if he were responsible for putting the volcano there and making it visible long before the rest of Sicily came into sight.

"How far from the mountain are we?" Sostratos wondered.

"I don't know." Menedemos sounded impatient. Where Sostratos found such details fascinating, they meant little to him. He made what was obviously a guess: "Five hundred stadia, maybe more."

"Ah," Sostratos said, in lieu of exclaiming again. "If we were coming from the southeast, where no land would block the view till the last moment, we could see it from much farther away, couldn't we?"

"I suppose so," Menedemos answered indifferently. "That would stand to reason, wouldn't it?"

"Of course it would," Sostratos said. "If we knew just how tall the mountain was and from exactly how far away we could see it, we could reckon up the size of the world."

His cousin shrugged. "So what?"

"Don't you care about knowing things for the sake of knowing them?" Sostratos demanded. He and Menedemos had had this argument a good many times before. He knew about how it would go, just as he knew about what Menedemos would try when they wrestled in the gymnasion. In the gymnasion, Menedemos almost always threw him despite that. When they wrestled with ideas, he had a better chance.

Sure enough, Menedemos said, "If knowing something will get me money or get me laid, I care about that. Otherwise . . ." He shrugged again.

Before Sostratos could tear him limb from rhetorical limb, one of the sailors at the bow yelped and made as if to kick the peafowl chick that had just pecked his ankle. "Oimoi!" Sostratos shouted. "Don't do that, Teleutas! You hurt that bird, it'll cost you just about all the wages you make on this cruise."

"Fine the stinking bird for hurting me, then," Teleutas said sulkily. "I'm bleeding."

"You'll live," Sostratos said. "Bind some cloth around it if it's really hurt. I doubt it is. I've had the grown birds get me more times than I care to remember, and the chicks don't peck anywhere near so hard." More sulkily still, Teleutas went back to whatever he'd been doing before he was wounded.

My, I sounded heartless, Sostratos thought, listening in his mind to the brief conversation. As Menedemos had, he shrugged. Rowers were easy to come by and cost a drakhma and a half a day. The peafowl chick, on the other hand, would bring in a mina and a half of silver, maybe even two minai.

It had other uses, too. One of the sailors near Teleutas said, "Look - it just ate a scorpion. That would have hurt you worse than the bird did." Teleutas grunted. But he didn't try to kick the chick again.

Sostratos thought about returning to the argument with Menedemos. In the end, he decided not to bother. He made his way up to the foredeck instead, and peered out past the forepost at Mount Aitne. It was blue with distance and pale near the summit, where snow still clung despite the season. No smoke rose from it; no stones and molten rock belched from it, as had happened many times in the past. Sostratos would not have cared to live in the shadow of a mountain that might let loose catastrophe without so much as a warning.

He made his way back to the poop, where Menedemos was turning the Aphrodite's course from southwest to due west to approach the Strait of Sicily. Instead of resuming the argument the peafowl chick had interrupted, Sostratos asked, "Do you really think Polyphemos the Cyclops lived on the slopes of Aitne?"

That question interested Menedemos, even if it didn't involve money or girls. Sostratos had thought it would; his cousin truly cherished Homer. Menedemos answered, "It could well be so, I suppose. People have always put Skylle and Kharybdis in the Sicilian strait, so the Cyclops would have been somewhere nearby."

"But do you think people ought to put the monsters from the Odyssey in the real world?" Sostratos persisted. "No one but Odysseus and his comrades ever saw them."

"Egypt is in the real world, and Odysseus went there, or says he did," Menedemos said stoutly. "Ithake is in the real world, and you know he went there."

"But he doesn't talk about monsters in Egypt or Ithake," Sostratos said. "I think you'll find out where he saw the monsters when you find the cobbler who sewed up his sack of winds."

"I'd like to," Menedemos answered. "If I could pull out a south wind when we sent up the Strait, things'd be easier. As is, we'll have to row."

"Tomorrow," Sostratos said, eyeing the sun as it slid down toward Mount Aitne.

"More likely the day after, or even a day or two after that," Menedemos said. "I intend to put in at Rhegion, too, on the Italian side of the Strait. We may get rid of a couple of baby peafowl there."

Getting rid of peafowl chicks appealed to Sostratos, so he dipped his head. Sunset found the Aphrodite off Cape Leukopetra, which marked the Italian side of the entrance to the Sicilian Strait: the white stones of the bluffs just above the sea had given the cape its name. Menedemos chose to spend the night at sea, and neither Sostratos nor anyone else chose to argue with him, for beaching the akatos here would invite every bandit for tens of stadia around to swoop down on her.

After the anchors splashed into the sea, the sailors had hard barley-flour rolls as sitos, with salted olives and crumbly cheese for their opson. They washed supper down with cheap wine Sostratos had bought in Taras. On dry land, he would have turned up his nose at the stuff. Salt air and a gently rolling ship somehow improved it.

Diokles spat an olive pit over the rail and into the sea. "I don't think the wind will shift," he said.

"Neither do I," Menedemos answered. "If we were in an ordinary merchantman, we'd do a lot of waiting and a lot of tacking. As things are . . . well, this is why we pay the rowers."

The men at the oars grumbled a little the next morning; they'd had an easy time of it since leaving Taras, for the wind had been with them all the way. But Diokles' mallet and bronze square gave them the rhythm they needed. Menedemos set only ten men on each side to rowing: no point in wearing out the crew. The Aphrodite glided into Rhegion's harbor well before noon.

Because Menedemos intended to spend the day in the city, Sostratos went into the agora to let people know the merchant galley had come and to tell them what his cousin and he had for sale. Several men headed for the piers to buy chicks or wine or silk or perfume or some of the other goods the akatos had brought from the east.

And, being who he was, Sostratos also indulged his own curiosity. "Tell me," he said to a potter who looked reasonably bright, "why does this city have the name it does?"

"Well, stranger, I've heard a couple of stories about that, and I have to tell you I don't know which one's true myself."

"Go on," Sostratos said eagerly. "I'm always glad to meet someone who'll admit he doesn't know everything."

"Heh," the potter said. "I bet you it doesn't happen any too often, either." That made Sostratos laugh out loud. The local went on, "Anyway, one tale is that the name comes from the word that means to break, because we have a lot of earthquakes in these parts, and because it looks like Sicily broke off from Italy."

"That makes sense," Sostratos said; Rhegion could easily be derived from rhegnumi. "Aiskhylos says something similar, doesn't he?" he remarked. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "What's the other story?"

"Some people say the name comes from one Italian language or another, because regium or some such word means royal in those tongues," the potter replied.

"Which do you think is true?" Sostratos asked.

"I'd sooner believe we Hellenes named the place ourselves than that we borrowed a word from the barbarians," the potter said. "I'd sooner believe that, mind you, but I can't prove it."

"Fair enough," Sostratos said. "Better than fair enough, in fact." He went off, hoping he would remember that when the day finally came for him to write his history.

That day wouldn't come if he didn't get back to letting the people of Rhegion know the Aphrodite had peafowl chicks for sale. Of course it won't, Sostratos thought: Menedemos will kill me if I don't do my job.

He went back to the merchant galley late in the afternoon. If the folk of Rhegion didn't know about the peafowl by then, it wasn't because he hadn't told them. "Any luck?" he called to Menedemos as he walked up the pier.

"I sold two," Menedemos answered. "Sold 'em to two different men, too, and it was almost like they were bidding against each other to see who could show what a rich fellow he was by paying more. I got close to five minai: you might have thought they each had to have the very last bird."

"That's splendid." Sostratos clapped his hands. "We sold two birds for the price of three, more or less, or earned a couple of extra days' wages for the whole crew."

"Tempts me to lay over here for one more day," his cousin said. "Maybe Rhegion holds some more rich fools - I mean, customers."

"Well, why not?" Sostratos said. "We can afford it now. And even if we only sell at the regular price, we still come out ahead."

"That's true." Menedemos dipped his head. "All right, then. I'll do it."

Sostratos went into the market square at first light the next morning. Not only did he talk about the Aphrodite's cargo, he called, "Men of Rhegion, two of your fellows have already bought peafowl chicks. Do you want them to be the only ones in this polis lucky enough to own these beautiful birds?"

Men rich enough to buy peafowl chicks might not come to the agora themselves, but their slaves surely would. And he'd found that making people jealous of their neighbors was one of the best ways to get them to part with their silver.

After plucking at his beard in thought, he added, "We also have fine perfume made from Rhodian roses. How many women in Rhegion want to make themselves smell sweet for their husbands?" How many want to make themselves smell sweet for somebody else's husband? went through his mind, too, as it surely wouldn't have done had his cousin had a different nature.

Again, women who might buy Rhodian perfume for themselves - whether respectable matrons or rich hetairai - didn't frequent the agora, but their slaves did. Sostratos pitched that call to the slave women there. He smiled to himself when a couple of them hurried out of the market square. For good measure, he put some extra emphasis on the Koan silk, too.

He returned to the merchant galley at sunset, as he had the day before. "How did we do?" he called to Menedemos as he walked down the gangplank into the ship.

"Didn't sell any more birds." But Menedemos seemed happy enough, and explained why a moment later: "We had a run on silk and perfume, though. One fancy hetaira came herself, veiled up like a rich man's wife. When she took off her veil to haggle . . ." His eyes went big and wide. "Aphrodite, she was gorgeous! If she'd given me some of what she had under her chiton, I'd've let her have the perfume for free."

"I believe that," Sostratos said tartly. "I also believe I'd have let you explain to your father how it came to be that we ended up not having this perfume and not getting any money for it."

His cousin's expression changed to one of horror. "You're a nasty fellow, do you know that?"

"Thank you," Sostratos said, which did nothing to improve Menedemos' temper.

They left Rhegion the next morning. Sostratos expected Menedemos to go up the Italian coast, but his cousin chose to cross the Strait of Sicily to Messene instead. "Why not?" Menedemos said when Sostratos shot him a curious look. "We did well in Rhegion. No reason we can't do it there as well."

"No, I suppose not," Sostratos said, but then he added, "so long as the war in Sicily hasn't come that far north."

"We would have heard in Rhegion," Menedemos replied, which was probably true. He couldn't resist a gibe: "You always fuss."

"If you'd listened to my fussing back in Taras, your ankle would be better off," Sostratos retorted, and Menedemos mimed taking a wound.

From his usual station in the bow, Aristeidas pointed to starboard and called, "Something funny there." A moment later, he found a word for it: "Whirlpool!"

A few sailors exclaimed in alarm. More who weren't rowing hurried to the rail to get a look for themselves. Diokles said, "You get 'em in these waters now and again. It's the current, I expect. Most of 'em don't amount to anything much."

"They can pull a ship down to the bottom of the sea in less time than it takes to tell," a young rower quavered.

"Sure, a big one can," the oarmaster said. "But that one there? Don't be silly. It's not much more than you get when you mix water and wine in the jug called a dinos." That eased the sailors' worries and made several of them smile; the very name of the vessel meant spinner. Sostratos admired Diokles' quick wits.

After Menedemos saw that it wouldn't alarm the men, he began reciting from the twelfth book of the Odyssey:

The nervous young sailor pointed toward the whirlpool and asked, "Skipper, d'you think that's the real Kharybdis?"

Before Menedemos could speak, Sostratos did: "If it is, she's been washed in hot water once too often, because she's shrunk." That got a laugh from the men, and drew a grin and a wave from Menedemos. Sostratos mentally patted himself on the back for coming up with the right thing to say at the right time rather than two days too late. He prided himself on such moments, and wished they happened more often.

The Aphrodite passed within a couple of plethra of the whirlpool. Had it not been for Aristeidas' sharp eyes, nobody would have known it was there. An hour or so later, the merchant galley glided into the little sickle-shaped bay on whose south side the town of Messene sat.

Once the ship lay alongside a pier, Sostratos mentioned the whirlpool to one of the longshoremen who was making a rope fast. The fellow dipped his head. "You're lucky you came away with your lives," he said. "There's plenty of ships been sucked down to the bottom prow-first. They wash up, all broken to pieces, on the shore south of here."

Some of the sailors looked worried again. Sostratos said, "Sounds to me like a story to frighten strangers." The longshoreman gave him a sour stare. He concluded he was right.

As happened at any port around the Inner Sea, a small crowd of curious men gathered on the wharf by the Aphrodite. Menedemos began extolling the goods the akatos had brought to Messene. He also threw in tidbits of news from out of the east. In turn, the Messenians told him what they knew of the war raging farther south on the Sicilian coast. Unfortunately, they knew no more than the folk of Rhegion had.

Sostratos asked, "What will you do here if the Carthaginians do take Syracuse?"

That produced an unhappy silence in the crowd. At last, a skinny, gray-haired man said, "Hope they'll let us pay tribute and not put in a garrison."

"Not me!" a younger man said. "If it looks like the Carthaginians are going to take over all of Sicily, I'm getting out of here. I'm not taking any chances with those whoresons, not me. You know what happens when they sack a city?" He gave a melodramatic shudder.

Without a doubt, the Carthaginians did dreadful things when they took a city. So did Hellenes. Sostratos thought of what Alexander had done to Tyre not long after he was born. That story had been circulating for a generation now, and hadn't shrunk in the telling. Sostratos did a little discreet shuddering himself. Like every other Rhodian, he hoped none of Alexander's surviving generals would cast a covetous eye toward his polis.

As Hellenes had a way of doing, the Messenians standing on the pier divided into factions and started arguing with one another. Before long, they were paying hardly any attention to the Aphrodite: their own quarrel seemed more entertaining. Sostratos nudged Menedemos. "Why don't you run out the gangplank? I'll go into the agora and see if I can drum up some business."

"Good idea," his cousin said.

By the time Sostratos got up onto the pier, the locals were shouting insults at one another. A couple of them had hands on knife hilts, though nobody'd yet drawn a weapon. But with the shouts of "Traitor!" and "Liar!" flying back and forth, how long before someone did? Sostratos carefully picked his way around the edge of the crowd and headed up the pier toward dry land.

He hadn't been on that dry land more than a few heartbeats before he realized he'd have trouble finding the agora. Hippodamos and his ideas had never come to Messene. Streets and alleys and lanes didn't run in straight lines or intersect at right angles. They did exactly as they pleased, curving and twisting and doubling back on themselves. Had Sostratos gone out of sight of the harbor, he would have been lost in moments.

He was glad he figured that out before it happened. "How do I get to the agora?" he asked a man in a grimy chiton leading a donkey festooned with very plain clay pots.

The man didn't say anything. He just stopped in the middle of the street - incidentally blocking Sostratos' path - and waited. Sostratos wiggled his tongue to dislodge one of the oboloi he'd stashed between the inside of his cheek and his lower teeth. "Thanks, pal," the fellow with the donkey said as Sostratos handed him the wet, gleaming little coin. "What you do is, you . . ."

Sostratos made him go through it twice, then repeated the directions back to make sure he had them straight. "Is that right?" he asked when he was done.

"Sure is, pal," the Messenian said, and then added the words so often fatal to a stranger's hopes: "You can't miss it." Sostratos felt like spitting into his bosom to avert the omen. But that would have offended the local, who guided his donkey over by the mud-brick front of a house so Sostratos could squeeze past.

"Second right, third left, first right," Sostratos muttered, and, for a marvel, found the market square. He wondered if he could get back to the harbor again, and looked back into the alley from which he'd just emerged. "First left, third right, second left," he said, and then repeated it a couple of times so it would stick in his memory.

"Hail, stranger!" somebody called from behind a basket filled with dried chickpeas. "Where are you from, and what are you selling?"

Having sung his song in Rhegion the day before, Sostratos started singing it again. He traded news with the Messenians, though, as on the pier, they gave him none he hadn't already heard. Here, even more than in Rhegion and much more than in Taras, the people, while interested in what was going on in the east and in the struggles among Alexander's marshals, had other, more immediate, things on their minds. "D'you suppose there's a chance this Ptolemaios or Antigonos'd come west and put paid to the gods-detested Carthaginians once for all?" asked a fellow selling fried squid.

"I doubt it," Sostratos answered honestly. Everyone's face fell. He wished he'd been more diplomatic. Menedemos surely would have been.

A middle-aged man in a chiton of very fine, very soft wool came up to him and said, "Did I hear you say your ship had perfume on board?"

"You certainly did, perfume from the finest Rhodian roses." Sostratos studied the Messenian. The man had a sleek, prosperous look: just the sort of fellow to keep a mistress with expensive tastes. "If you like, you can tell your hetaira it came straight from Aphrodite. You don't have to say that's the name of my ship."

By the way the local started, Sostratos knew he'd made a good guess. "You're a clever chap, aren't you?" the Messenian said. "How much are you asking for this precious perfume?"

"For that, you need to go back to the harbor and talk to my cousin," Sostratos replied. "Menedemos is much more clever than I am." He didn't really think so, not when it came to most things, but Menedemos was at least as good a bargainer. And Sostratos had an ulterior motive: "Maybe she'd like a peafowl chick, too, or maybe you'd like to buy one for your own house to keep your wife happy even if you do give your hetaira a nice present."

The Messenian rubbed his chin, which was shaved very smooth: another sign of wealth, and also of fastidiousness. "You are clever," he said. "You look young to be married, so how do you know such things?"

"No, I'm not married," Sostratos agreed, "but I'm not wrong, either, am I?"

"No, though I wish you were. A peafowl chick, eh? That would keep Nossis quiet for a while."

Of course it will, Sostratos thought. Before long, the bird will make more noise, and worse, than even the most shrewish wife. He kept that to himself; the Messenian would find out soon enough if he bought. All Sostratos did say was, "Well, there you are, then," as if it were settled. By the way the Messenian strode out of the agora and off in the direction of the harbor, maybe it was.

Sostratos went right on extolling the goods aboard the Aphrodite till the sun sank toward the hills in back of Messene. Then he headed back toward the merchant galley. Trying to find his way through a strange polis in the dark was the last thing he wanted to do. He remembered the turns the fellow in the ragged chiton had given him, and didn't get lost in a maze Minos might have envied.

There was the harbor, the wine-dark sea beyond dotted with fishing boats, almost all of them making for port now. There was the akatos, big and lean enough to frighten a fisherman out of his wits. And there, waving as Sostratos came down the pier toward the ship, was Menedemos. Sostratos waved back and asked, "How did it go?"

"Better than I expected," his cousin answered. "Sold a peafowl chick and some perfume and some Koan silk, all to a smooth fellow who wasn't too smooth to cough up more silver than he might have."

"If he's the man I think he is, he bought the perfume for a hetaira and the chick for his wife." Sostratos grinned. "I wonder who gets the silk."

"Not my worry - he can sort that out himself," Menedemos said. "I also sold some papyrus and ink to a skinny little man who told me he aimed to write an epic poem on the war between Syracuse and Carthage."

"Good luck to him," Sostratos said. "If the barbarians win and head north toward Messene here, he won't have much leisure for his hexameters. And if Agathokles somehow manages to beat back the Carthaginians, well, Syracuse isn't shy about throwing its weight around, either."

"True." Menedemos dipped his head. "But I can't think of anything much Agathokles could do. Can you?"

"No," Sostratos admitted. "Still, when Xerxes invaded Hellas, I don't suppose he thought the Hellenes could do anything against him, either."

"That's also true enough," Menedemos replied. "Just the same, I'm not sorry we'll be sailing north, and away from that war. Trying to fight off a four or a five with our little akatos is a losing bet." He spat into his bosom to avert the omen. Since Sostratos agreed completely, he did the same.

Cape Pelorias, above Messene, marked the northeasternmost point of Sicily. With it falling astern and to port of the Aphrodite, Menedemos gave all his attention to the Tyrrhenian Sea ahead. Just because he'd escaped the war between Syracuse and Carthage didn't mean he or his ship was home free. He probably wouldn't fall foul of great war galleys here. But the Tyrrhenian Sea, not least because no great naval power lay anywhere near, swarmed with pirates.

"Keep your eye peeled," he called to the lynx-eyed Aristeidas at the bow. "Sing out if you spy any sail or mast." The sailor waved to show he understood. Menedemos turned to Sostratos, who was doing lookout duty at the stern. "The same goes for you."

"I know," his cousin said in injured tones.

"Well, see that you remember," Menedemos said. "Don't let your wits go wandering, the way you . . . do when you start thinking about history." He'd started to say, The way you did when the peahen jumped into the sea, but checked himself. If he hadn't thrown that in Sostratos' face when it happened, doing so now hardly seemed fair. By the sour look his cousin sent him, Sostratos had a pretty good notion of what he hadn't said.

To starboard, the Italian coast baked brown under the summer sun. Menedemos wore a broad-brimmed hat to help keep himself from baking likewise. Even so, sweat ran down his face. More sweat trickled down his torso, and down his arms to leave wet, dark patches where he gripped the steering-oar tillers.

He steered the Aphrodite farther out to sea, till the coastline receded to a brown blur low on the horizon. That would make him harder to spot. Some of the fishing boats bobbing in the chop between the merchant galley and the shore didn't notice him: his sail was brailed up tight against the yard as the galley traveled north under oars. If I were a pirate and I wanted you, you'd be mine, he thought. A few boats did spot the Aphrodite and got away from what they thought to be danger as fast as they could.

He was swinging northeast toward the harbor of Hipponion - not a splendid anchorage, but the best he could hope to find - when Aristeidas called out, "Sail ho! Sail ho to port!"

Shading his eyes against the late-afternoon sun, Menedemos peered out to sea. With more and more sailors pointing, he soon spotted the sail. It was of a good size, which warned him it might belong to a pirate. And it was of a color somewhere between sky blue and sea green, which argued that the captain of the ship to whom it belonged did not much want it seen.

"I'll show him, the son of a whore," Menedemos muttered to himself. He raised his voice to a shout: "All hands, grab your weapons and then to your oars!" As soon as the rowers had swords and knives and clubs ready to hand, he swung the Aphrodite toward the strange ship and told Diokles, "Up the stroke."

"Right you are, skipper," the keleustes replied. "You going to try and run him off, the way you did with that pirate back in the Aegean?"

"That's just what I'm going to do," Menedemos said. "And if he wants a fight, well, by the gods, we'll give him one."

Before long, he could see the pirate's hull as well as his sail. That the sail always came into sight before the hull made some people think the world was round. Menedemos had his doubts about that. If it were round, wouldn't all the water run off? He'd never found an answer to satisfy him there.

The question didn't worry him for long. Taking the measure of the enemy was much more urgent. "He's a pentekonter!" Sostratos called from the waist.

Menedemos dipped his head. "I see," he answered. The pirate had fifty rowers, then, to his own forty, and a hull shark-long and wolf-lean. The other ship sliced through the water like a knife. Menedemos saw at once that it had a better turn of speed than the Aphrodite.

But does he have the stones for a fight? Menedemos was betting his ship, his cargo, his freedom, his life, that the pirate didn't. Most sea raiders wanted nothing more than to rob victims who couldn't resist. What was better than profit without risk? If this pirate turned out to be an exception, though, he might end up naked and chained in a slave market in Carthage . . . or down at the bottom of the sea, with little crabs crawling in through the eyeholes of his skull to feast on whatever they could find inside.

Over in the pirate ship, men shouted and shook their fists at the oncoming Aphrodite. Some of the shouts were in Greek, others in one local language or another. The Aphrodite's sailors shouted curses and obscenities in return. A naked pirate stood up on his bench and flapped his private parts at the Aphrodite's crew, as if he were a man in the agora making himself disgusting to the slave women and poor farmers' wives who came there to shop and gossip.

"I've seen bigger pricks on a mouse!" Diokles yelled, not missing a stroke with mallet and bronze. The exhibitionist pirate sat down abruptly; he must have understood enough Greek for that shaft to strike home.

And then all the Aphrodite's crew erupted in cheers: just out of bowshot, the pirate ship heeled hard to starboard as it turned away from the merchant galley. It headed north in a hurry, the sail coming up to lie against the yard. "Ease back on the men," Menedemos told Diokles. "Not a chance we'll be able to catch 'em. We saw that back in the Aegean, too."

"Right again," the oarmaster said. "The way he's running, you'd think he had a five on his tail."

"The way he's running, a five wouldn't catch him, either," Menedemos said. "A hemiolia might, or a trireme. But a five's too beamy and heavy and slow, just like us." He shook his fist at the receding pentekonter.

"I'd like to see everybody aboard there nailed to a cross," Diokles said. "Come to that, I'd like to see every pirate everywhere nailed to a cross."

"So would I, but I don't think it's going to happen," Menedemos answered. "For one thing, you'd run out of trees before you made enough crosses to put all the pirates on."

The oarmaster grunted and spat into the sea. "Heh. That'd be funny if only it was funny, you know what I mean?"

"Don't I just?" Menedemos raised his voice to call out to all the rowers: "Well done, men! We scared off another vulture. Now - portside back oars, starboard side forward." Almost in her own length, the Aphrodite spun to port. When her bow pointed back toward Hipponion, Menedemos took half the rowers from each side off the oars and headed toward the harbor, now a few stadia more distant than it had been when Aristeidas first spotted the pentekonter.

"Never a dull moment," Sostratos said, mounting the steps that led up from the waist to the poop deck.

"Did you expect there would be?" Menedemos asked. "If you wanted things dull, you should have stayed back in Rhodes."

"They're liable not to be dull even there," Sostratos said. "Who knows what the Macedonians are up to while we're out here in the west?"

"You're right," Menedemos said after a moment. "I could wish you were wrong, but you're right."

"I hope the generals aren't doing anything," his cousin said. "If they are doing something, I hope they're doing it to one another, not to Rhodes. But when you live in a polis in an age full of marshals, you can't help worrying."

"No, you can't." Menedemos thought about coming back to a Rhodes garrisoned by Antigonos' soldiers, or Ptolemaios'. He imagined mercenaries swaggering through the streets, with rich families hostages for the good behavior of the city as a whole. His own family was far from poor. Not for the first time, he wished Sostratos hadn't made him think so much.

Looking ahead to the Italian coastline bathed in the rays of the setting sun helped him not think about what might be happening far away to the east. Maybe Sostratos was doing his best not to think about that, too, for he pointed toward the shore and said, "It's greener by the town than it is most other places."

"Some people say Persephone used to come over there from Sicily to gather flowers," Menedemos answered. "I don't know whether that's true or not, but the girls from Hipponion go out to those meadows and make themselves flower garlands for festivals and such."

"How do you know that?" Sostratos asked. "You've never been here before."

"Tavern talk," Menedemos told him. "You miss a lot of things like that, because you don't like sitting around and chatting with sailors."

"I don't like going through a talent's weight of talk for half an obolos' worth of something interesting," Sostratos said tartly.

"But you never know ahead of time what will turn out to be interesting," Menedemos said.

Sostratos tossed his head. "No. You never know if anything will turn out to be interesting. Usually, nothing is. Most tavern talk is people lying about fish they say they caught and men they say they killed and women they say they had. I don't know how Persephone's name ever came up in a tavern, unless you were drinking with Hades."

That jerked a laugh from Menedemos. "I wasn't talking about Persephone, exactly. I was talking about Hipponion, and what the anchorage is like." He pointed ahead. "It's nothing much, is it?"

"No." Sostratos tossed his head again. "You almost wonder why anyone ever decided to build a polis here."

"You do. You really do," Menedemos agreed. "No proper bay to shelter a ship - just a long, straight stretch of coastline. The Hipponians haven't done anything to improve what they found here, either, have they? No mole to protect ships from waves and weather, hardly any quays. If Odysseus did sail up this way, he'd still feel right at home nowadays."

"If Odysseus did sail up this way, he did it in a pentekonter," Sostratos said. "Most of the Danaans who sailed to Troy went in pentekonters, if the Catalogue of Ships is right. To the Trojans, they were probably nothing but the biggest pirate fleet in the world."

Menedemos stared at his cousin. "Do you know something?" he said at last. "I care for Homer more than you do, I think."

"I'm sure you're right," Sostratos said. "He's a great poet, but he's not the man I turn to first."

"I know that," Menedemos said. "Still and all, though, you just made me look at the Iliad in a way I never did before. Who would have thought of trying to see things from the Trojans' point of view?"

He kept right on marveling as Diokles brought the Aphrodite to a stop not far offshore and the anchors at the bow splashed into the deep-blue water of the Tyrrhenian Sea. When Priamos and Hektor peered out from the windswept walls of Troy, how did they look at Agamemnon and Menelaos and Akhilleus and Odysseus? As a pack of gods-detested bandits who all deserved to be crucified? Menedemos wouldn't have been a bit surprised.

Sostratos might have been thinking along with him. He said, "I wonder how the Iliad would sound if Troy hadn't fallen."

"Different," Menedemos said, and they both laughed. Menedemos went on, "I'm sure it's better the way it really is." The effort holding that other perspective too quickly became too much for him. Sostratos didn't disagree. When morning comes, Menedemos thought as he stretched himself out on the poop deck, my mind will work the way a proper Hellene's ought to again.

When morning came, Sostratos' mind was still buzzing with the notion he and Menedemos had had the night before. "When Alexander invaded Persia," he said, "Dareios probably thought the Macedonians were a horde of barbarians, too. And from what I've seen of Macedonians since, he probably had a point."

To his disappointment, Menedemos didn't feel like exploring the idea any further. "The Persians had it coming to them," was all he said.

Sostratos dipped a barley roll into olive oil. "I suppose you'll say the Trojans had it coming to them, too," he said, and took a bite.

"Well, of course they did," Menedemos answered with his mouth full; his breakfast was the same as Sostratos'.

"Why is that, O best one?" Sostratos asked with honey-sweet venom. "Because Paris ran off with Menelaos' wife?"

"Why else?" Menedemos answered. Then he must have realized Sostratos hadn't been talking only about the Trojan War. Sostratos enjoyed the dirty look his cousin gave him. "Funny," Menedemos said. "Very funny. If I see Gylippos in a fast pentekonter, then I'll start to worry."

"When we're going back toward Rhodes, do you plan on putting in at Taras?" Sostratos asked.

Menedemos gave him another dirty look. Sostratos didn't enjoy this one nearly so much, because his cousin looked harried, too. "Don't ask me things like that right now," Menedemos said. "It depends on how much we've still got to get rid of by the time we're heading back from Neapolis. I suppose it also depends on just how angry with me Gylippos really is."

"How many toughs did he send after you?" Sostratos asked. "Nine?"

"Only seven," Menedemos told him.

"Excuse me," Sostratos said. "I do like to have the details straight. I would say that sending even seven toughs after you is a pretty good sign you won't be welcome in Taras again any time soon."

"I'd have to be careful in Taras, no doubt," Menedemos said . . . carefully. "No way to tell yet if things will be as bad there as they are in Halikarnassos. I hope they won't."

"They'd better not be," Sostratos said. "I'm not sure you could bring a ship into the harbor at Halikarnassos without getting it burned to the waterline - which is a shame, because the family's done a lot of business there over the years."

Menedemos walked over to the rail, hiked up his tunic, and pissed into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Looking back over his shoulder, he answered, "Believe me, I've had this conversation with my father a good many times."

Then why didn't you listen to him? Sostratos wondered. Why didn't you try to look at things from the point of view of the man whose wife you were enjoying? He knew the answer well enough. Because when your lance stood, that was all you cared about. Some men were naturally bestial, and needed no Kirke to turn them into swine. But Menedemos wasn't really like that. He could think, and think quite well. Sometimes, though, he didn't bother.

He did handle the Aphrodite with his usual competence, sending her north up the coast. "No good anchorage tonight," he told the crew. "No proper harbor, I mean. Plenty of beaches, but do you really want to risk putting her ashore?"

Almost as one man, the sailors tossed their heads. Italy was a populous land, swarming with Samnites and other barbarians. Nobody was eager to give robbers a chance to swoop down on the ship.

"Sensible fellows," Menedemos said. Sostratos wondered what he would have said had the sailors wanted to beach the Aphrodite. Something interesting and memorable: of that Sostratos had no doubt. As things were, his cousin continued, "Since we don't have to hurry to make a port tonight, we're going to spend some more time pretending we're a war galley."

That didn't produce unanimous agreement from the crew. Sostratos hadn't thought it would. Practicing naval maneuvers was hard work, much harder than just sailing the akatos north would have been. And, of course, there was no guarantee the sailors would need what they were practicing. If they didn't, they would have put in all that effort for nothing.

Of course, if they didn't practice and ended up needing to fight, that would carry its own penalty, too: a penalty worse than blistered hands and weary backs. Sostratos could see that as plainly as he could look down and see his feet on the deck. He wondered why it wasn't obvious to everyone.

But the grumbling wasn't too bad. Before long, the Aphrodite zigged first one way, then the other. She spun in her own length, moving much faster than she had when turning back toward Hipponion after the pentekonter sheered off. "Starboard oars - in!" Diokles shouted, and the rowers on that side of the ship pulled their oars inboard at the same time.

The oarmaster glanced at Menedemos, who grinned back at him. "I've seen triremes where they didn't do it so smoothly," Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head.

"Same here." Diokles turned back to the rowers. "Resume!" The starboard oars went back into the water in the same unison with which they'd left it. The keleustes let the men row for a few strokes, then shouted, "Portside oars - in!" This time, the maneuver proved less successful; a couple of oars came in slower than they might have.

"That's not so good." Sostratos and Menedemos spoke together.

"I know it isn't." The oarmaster sounded angry and chagrined. When he yelled, "Resume!" this time, he didn't try to hide that annoyance. He went right on at an irate bellow: "Now listen to me, you worthless lugs - if we ever need that command, we'll need it bad. If you're late, it's your arms that'll get wrenched out of their shoulder sockets. We're going to keep working on this till we get it right - right, do you hear me?"

All the portside rowers were, of course, looking straight back toward the keleustes on the poop deck. Like Epimetheus in the myth, rowers had a perfect view of where they'd been and none of where they were going. Sostratos eyed their sweaty faces more openly than he could have most of the time, because they were paying him no attention at all, but were listening to Diokles' tirade. Most of them, especially the ones who'd been slow, looked embarrassed and angry - not at the oarmaster, but at themselves for failing him.

To Menedemos, Sostratos murmured, "If I talked to them like that, they'd throw me over the side."

"They'd do the same to me," his cousin answered. "They'll obey me; sure enough, but a skipper shouldn't scream at his sailors. That's what makes mutinies happen: they think you're a gods-detested whoreson. But they respect a tough keleustes - the fellow in that job's supposed to have a hide thick as leather."

Sostratos pondered that. Menedemos had the knack for getting men to do what he wanted because they liked him. Diokles was ready to outroar anyone who presumed to stand against him. And what about me? Sostratos wondered. Neither of those ways seemed open to him. When people did what he wanted, it was because he'd persuaded them that that was the right thing to do under the circumstances. Such persuasion had its uses, but not, he feared, in emergencies.

Again and again, Diokles shouted, "Portside oars - in!" After a while, Sostratos thought the rowers had the maneuver down cold, but the keleustes kept drilling them. When at last he relented, it was with a growled warning: "We'll do it again tomorrow, too. We're talking about saving your necks, remember."

At sunset, the anchors splashed into the sea. The Aphrodite bobbed in light chop, well off the Italian coast. Even if a storm blew up, the ship had plenty of leeway - and galleys were far less vulnerable to being driven ashore by hostile wind and wave than were ships that relied on sails alone.

The evening meal was about as frugal as breakfast had been. Sostratos ate bread and oil and olives and cheese. Menedemos bit into an onion pungent enough to make Sostratos' eyes water from three cubits away. He washed it down with a sip of wine. Catching Sostratos' eye, he said, "It's not what we got at Gylippos' supper, but it fills the belly."

"What you got at Gylippos' supper was trouble," Sostratos replied. "How's your ankle today?"

He'd meant that as a gibe, but Menedemos answered seriously: "Standing at the steering oars all day long doesn't do it any good, but it's healing. It would be worse if I had to run around a lot."

"You did that back in Taras," Sostratos pointed out.

"Yes, O most beloved cousin of mine," Menedemos said, so poisonously that Sostratos decided he'd pushed things about as far as he could go.

On the second evening out from Hipponion, the Aphrodite reached the town of Laos, which lay at the mouth of a river of the same name. Laos' harbor was rather better than that of Hipponion, and the merchant galley tied up at one of the piers. Hardly any of the longshoremen and loafers spoke more than a few words of Greek: they talked among themselves in one Italic language or another.

Across the pier was a sailing ship from Rhegion. Her skipper, a tubby, gray-haired fellow who gave his name as Leptines, ambled by to look over the Aphrodite. "I envy you your oars," he said. "I've been crawling up the coast - crawling, I tell you - tacking all the way. I'll be a month getting to Neapolis, maybe more. How am I supposed to make ends meet if I can't get from here to there?"

Sostratos poured him some of the same wine he was drinking himself and asked, "Why didn't you sail south, to take advantage of the winds?"

"I usually do." Leptines gulped the wine. "Ahh, that's good. I usually do, like I said, but not this year. Too big a chance of somebody's navy snapping me up if I went along the Sicilian coast."

Sostratos dipped his head. The Aphrodite hadn't tried sailing down to Syracuse, either. Menedemos gave Leptines an engaging smile. "Any special ports we should know about on the way up the coast?"

Leptines didn't directly answer that. Instead, he returned a question for a question: "What are you carrying?"

"Peafowl chicks and perfume, papyrus and ink, fine Khian wine, Koan silk, perfumes - things like that," Menedemos replied. "How about you?"

"Wool and timber and wheat and leather," Leptines said. "I should've known a merchant galley from out of the east would only come here for the luxury trade. If we were competing, I wouldn't give you the hour of the day, but you won't do my business any harm even if you will get up north ahead of me."

"Well, then?" Menedemos asked in his most ingratiating voice. Sostratos hoped his winecup hid his own snicker. His cousin sounded as if he were trying to talk a girl into bed. Had he sounded that way with Phyllis? Sostratos wouldn't have been surprised.

His tone certainly worked on Leptines. "There's one place by the coast south of Neapolis where there's more to it than you'd think," the trader from Rhegion said, "provided you don't mind doing business with Samnites, that is."

Menedemos glanced at Sostratos. Sostratos shrugged. Menedemos said, "When we were in Taras, we sold our peacock to a Samnite. He paid what he said he would. I'd do it again."

"What is this town?" Sostratos asked.

"It's on the Sarnos River," Leptines answered. "You can go a ways farther up the river, too, if you're really feeling bold. But this place I have in mind does duty as the port town for Nole and Noukeria and Akherrhai, too. Those places are all fat, fat, fat - some of the richest farming country in the world in those parts."

"Sounds promising," Sostratos agreed. "But you still haven't told us the name of this place."

Leptines snapped his fingers in annoyance at himself. "You're right, I haven't. It's called Pompaia."

"I never heard of it," Sostratos said. "What about you, Menedemos? You know more about Italy than I do."

"I think the name sounds familiar," Menedemos said. "I've never been there, though, and I don't know anyone who has."

Leptines tapped his own chest with a forefinger. "You do now. I'm telling you, the place is worth a visit. And the Pompaians are mad for anything from Hellas, too. They've got a Doric-style temple there that's kind of old-fashioned nowadays, but you wouldn't be surprised to see it in a real polis even so."

Sostratos eyed Menedemos. "What do you think?" Such decisions, in the end, were up to his cousin.

"I don't know." Menedemos rubbed his chin. Bristles rasped under his fingers; with the Aphrodite at sea the past two days, he'd had no chance to shave. "I hadn't planned to put in there; I was just thinking of heading on up to Neapolis."

"Don't listen to me, then - it'll be your loss," Leptines said. "I'm telling you, with the farms they've got up there, the rich men make a nice pile of silver. They'd be able to afford whatever you've got, and a lot of them speak Greek."

"That's good," Sostratos said. "We certainly don't speak Oscan, or whatever language they use there."

"Oscan, sure enough," Leptines said. "No, you wouldn't need to, not coming out from Rhodes the way you do. I've learned some over the years. It comes in handy now and again, if you do a deal of trading in Italian waters."

"Yes, I can see that it would," Sostratos agreed, and looked toward Menedemos again.

His cousin rubbed his chin once more. Then he reached out to Leptines. "Let me have your cup." He poured it full, and refilled his and Sostratos' as well. Then he raised his in salute. "To Pompaia!"

"To Pompaia!" Sostratos and Leptines echoed. Sostratos drank. Menedemos had watered the wine only a very little.

Leptines noticed that, too: the trader from Rhegion appreciatively smacked his lips. "Glad to help my fellow Hellenes," he said, "especially when I don't have to hurt myself to do it. If you boys were carrying wheat and wood, too, you couldn't pull the name out of me if you gave me to a Carthaginian torturer."

"Back in Rhodes, we'd speak of a Persian torturer," Sostratos said.

"All boils down to the same thing." Leptines tipped his head and his cup back. "Obliged to you boys for your hospitality. If you hang around in Pompaia for a bit, you'll eventually see me there. How much do you pay your rowers, anyway?"

"A drakhma and a half a day," Sostratos answered.

Leptines made a horrible face. "And you've got what, twenty-five rowers on a side?"

"Twenty."

"Even so. That's a lot of silver to have to lay out every day." Leptines chuckled. "I think about having to spend money like that and all of a sudden I stop caring so much that I don't get places in a hurry. Hail." He went back to his own ship.

"He's a piker," Menedemos said, but in a low voice so the other skipper wouldn't overhear. "He worries about money going out, but he doesn't think about how to bring lots of money in." He grinned. "All the better for us."

"I should say so," Sostratos answered. "And if this Pompaia place is even half as rich as he makes it out to be, we ought to do well for ourselves there."

"Worth a try," Menedemos said. "I don't expect it to reward us the way Aphrodite rewarded Paris, but worth a try."

"What would we do with Helen if we had her?" Sostratos pointed at Menedemos. "I know what you'd do, you satyr. But that's not profitable. Wouldn't you rather be rewarded as Kroisos the Lydian king rewarded Solon of Athens? He let Solon into his treasury to carry out as much gold as he could hold, and Solon went in wearing baggy boots and a tunic too big for him and even greased his hair with olive oil so gold dust would stick to it."

Menedemos laughed. "No, I wouldn't mind that. But I don't mind women, either. Why can't I want everything at once?"

"You can want everything at once," Sostratos said. "But you can't be too disappointed when you don't get it. How many men do?"

"Some must," Menedemos insisted.

"Some, maybe, but only a handful," Sostratos said. "When Kroisos asked Solon who the happiest man in the world was, he thought Solon would name him. But Solon picked Athenians who'd lived long and died well. Kroisos was offended, but Solon turned out to be right in the end, for the Lydian king first lost his son in a hunting accident and then lost his kingdom to the Persians. Was he happy at the last? Not likely."

"But he had plenty of good times before that last," his cousin said.

Sostratos sighed. "You're incorrigible." Menedemos gave him half a bow, as if at a compliment. Sostratos sighed again.