Owls to Athens

10

From his station on the raised poop deck of the Aphrodite, Menedemos looked forward toward the bow. “Are we ready?” he called to the rowers waiting at the oars.

No one said no. Two of the crewmen were Athenians, new men hired to take the place of a pair of Rhodians who’d fallen in love with women here and decided not to leave. The newcomers had known enough to bring cushions for the rowing benches, so they probably had a fair notion of what they needed to do. Menedemos’ eyes flicked to the quay. Yes, the mooring lines had been loosed and brought aboard the akatos. And yes, the anchors were raised and stowed near the bow. Satisfied with the last-minute check, he dipped his head to Diokles.

The oarmaster raised his bronze square and the little mallet with which he hit it. “Back oars!” he shouted, and smote the square to set the stroke.

Grunting, the men at the oars got to work. Clang… Clang!.. Clang! The first few strokes hardly moved the merchant galley. Menedemos had expected nothing different, especially with the ship’s timbers heavy with seawater because she hadn’t been dragged up onto the beach and dried out.

As Diokles had been going to sea since Menedemos was a little boy, he’d doubtless expected nothing different, either. He railed at the rowers anyhow: “Come on, you worthless lugs! Put your backs into it! You’re not lotos-eaters any more-no more lying around or drinking or screwing and getting paid for it. Now you’ve got to earn your silver. Let’s see you work, by the dog!”

Little by little, the Aphrodite slid away from the pier, picking up speed with each stroke as she backed out into the harbor. Menedemos glanced over to the quay again to make sure an irate Protomakhos wasn’t rushing up to scream, “Adulterer!” at the last moment. Some women couldn’t keep a secret (neither could some men, but Menedemos chose not to dwell on that). Xenokleia, though, seemed to have stayed quiet long enough.

Harborside loungers and sailors aboard round ships, fishing boats, and some of Demetrios’ war galleys watched the akatos pull away from the quay. Menedemos caught Diokles’ eye. “Let’s give them a little show, shall we?” he said.

“Right you are, skipper.” The keleustes knew what Menedemos had in mind. He raised his voice to carry all the way up to the bow: “At my order, portside rowers keep backing oars, starboard switch to normal stroke. Ready?… Now!”

Menedemos helped the turn with the steering oars. The Aphrodite spun through half a circle almost in her own length, so that her bow faced out to sea and her stern the quays she was leaving. Diokles ordered both sets of rowers to switch to normal stroke as the turn neared completion; Menedemos finished it with the steering oars alone, and guided the merchant galley out into the Saronic Gulf.

A couple of men aboard one of Demetrios’ sixes patrolling the harbor waved to the Aphrodite, complimenting her on a smart maneuver. As soon as his course suited him, Menedemos took his right hand off the starboard steering-oar tiller and waved back. One of those men wore an officer’s cloak. Praise from someone who didn’t have to give it was doubly welcome.

“We’ll do better next time,” Diokles promised, and glowered at the rowers. “Won’t we?” He turned it into a threat.

“I’m sure we will,” Menedemos said. The oarmaster played the villain’s role. Menedemos, by contrast, could be the easygoing one, the one who sometimes took the edge off Dioldes’ strictness. He enjoyed that role more than he would have liked playing the harsh taskmaster himself.

The breeze came from off the land. “Unbrail the sail and let it down from the yard,” Menedemos said. The sailors leaped to obey. Down came the big square sail, brails and bracing lines cutting it into squares. It flapped two or three times before filling with wind. Once it did fill, Menedemos took more than half the men off the oars. Even the ones who stayed at their benches didn’t row; they only waited to make sure the breeze didn’t suddenly slacken. The Aphrodite wasn’t in such a hurry that she needed to speed along under wind and oars both.

“You’re too cursed soft on them, skipper,” Diokles growled as he lowered his bronze square and mallet. He looked back toward Menedemos so the sailors couldn’t see his face; as he did so, he winked. Menedemos couldn’t smile back, not without giving the game away to the men. Instead, he glared at Diokles, much more severely than the remark really warranted. The keleustes winked again, to show he understood what Menedemos was doing.

Salamis and the crowded waters where Great King Xerxes’ fleet had come to grief more than a hundred seventy years before lay to starboard. Only a few fishing boats bobbed in the channel between the island and the mainland of Attica today. Menedemos had no trouble filling it with triremes in his mind’s eye, though. Neither Xerxes’ sailors nor the Hellenes they faced knew how to build anything bigger and stronger back in those distant days. What a few fives and sixes might have done! Menedemos thought.

Had he wanted to know more about Salamis than he did, he could have asked Sostratos, who was doing lookout duty up on the tiny fore-deck. His cousin would have quoted from Herodotos, and probably from Aiskhylos’ Persians as well. Not feeling like being overwhelmed, Menedemos didn’t ask.

Aigina, a larger island, rose from the water almost dead ahead. The Aphrodite had stopped at the polis there a couple of years before. Having seen it, and having seen what sort of business merchants did there, Menedemos didn’t care to pay a second visit. Beyond Aigina, blued and blurred by haze and distance, lay the northeastern corner of the Peloponnesos. Menedemos was content-more than content-to let it stay in the distance.

He pulled the steering-oar tiller in his left hand toward him and pushed the one in his right hand away. The Aphrodite swung gently to port, heading along parallel to the coast of Attica, which ran generally south and east toward Cape Sounion.

Mild chop in the Saronic Gulf made the merchant galley roll a bit. Menedemos wondered if his cousin would lose his breakfast after a long spell ashore, but Sostratos seemed fine. A handful of sailors did lean over the rail to feed the fish, including one of the newly hired Athenians. The rest of the rowers ribbed the men with touchy stomachs. There were always some in every crew.

Menedemos enjoyed the motion. He’d had enough of steady ground under his feet. He wanted to be reminded he was aboard a ship. Going out to sea again felt good. He drew in a great lungful of fine salt air. “Wonderful to get the city stink out of my nose,” he said,

“That’s the truth,” Diokles agreed. “I’m sick of smelling shit.”

The breeze freshened. The sail thrummed, taut with wind. The Aphrodite skimmed over the sea; a long creamy wake trailed out behind her and behind the boat she towed. Menedemos took the last rowers off the oars. When the wind pushed her along like this, he didn’t have to worry about anything more. With a wind like this at her back, even a round ship performed… respectably.

Of course, a round ship trying to make her way up to Athens had to tack against the wind, and had a sorry time of it. The long, sleek merchant galley arrowed past a couple of those unfortunates, who had to make reach after sideways reach to go a little distance forward.

“Even if we were heading the other way, we could fight through the wind,” Menedemos said.

“For a while, anyhow,” Diokles said. “You go straight into the teeth of a stiff breeze for too long, though, and you’ll break your rowers’ hearts.”

Menedemos dipped his head. The keleustes was right. An akatos could do things a round ship couldn’t hope to. All the same, a captain who thought the men at the oars were made of bronze like the legendary Talos, and so would never tire, was doomed to disappointment if not to danger.

The sun slid across the sky. The wind never slackened. Glancing now and then toward the coast of Attica to port, Menedemos marveled at how fast it slid by. Ahead, the Saronic Gulf opened out into the broader waters of the Aegean. The three westernmost islands of the Kyklades lay to the east: Keos, Kythnos south of it, and Seriphos farther south still.

A sailor took Sostratos’ place on the foredeck. Menedemos’ cousin came back toward the stern. He climbed the steps up to the poop and stood a couple of cubits away from Diokles. “Where do you aim to stop tonight?” he asked Menedemos.

“Normally, I’d say Keos or Kythnos,” Menedemos answered. “With this wind… With this wind, I’m tempted to see if I can’t make Seriphos. That wouldn’t be a bad day’s run, would it?”

“No.” But Sostratos sounded less than happy.

“What’s the matter?” Menedemos asked.

“If we put in at Kythnos, we might pick up some cheese there,” Sostratos said. “We could sell it for a profit in Rhodes-Kythnian cheese is famous all over Hellas.”

“Hmm.” Menedemos considered. “Well, all right, my dear, we’ll do that, then,” he said. “We’re not in any enormous rush to get home. And Seriphos isn’t anything much. It’s so rocky, people say the Gorgon looked at it.”

“That’s because it’s connected with Perseus,” Sostratos replied. “It’s supposed to be where he and his mother Danae washed up after Akrisios, her father, put them in a big chest and set them afloat. And he’s supposed to have shown the Gorgon’s head there, too, and turned the people to stone.”

“It’s also supposed to be a place where the frogs don’t croak,” Menedemos said.

“We wouldn’t have heard them at this season of the year, anyhow,” Sostratos said, which was true. He went on, “And we can’t sell frogs, croaking or otherwise, or chunks of rock. Good cheese, on the other hand…”

“I already said yes,” Menedemos reminded him. He changed course a little, till the stempost covered the island of Kythnos from where he stood. “Now I’m aimed straight for it. Are you happy?”

“I’m positively orgiastic, O best one,” Sostratos answered.

“You’re positively sarcastic, is what you are,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head; that was something he could hardly deny.

The wind held all day. The Aphrodite raced past the tiny islet of Belbina, which lay eighty or a hundred stadia south of Cape Sounion. A few sheep ambled over Belbina’s steep, meager fields; except for a shepherd or two, the island was uninhabited, Kythnos still lay dead ahead.

In weather like this, sailing was joy, not drudgery. Rowers hung fishing lines over the side of the ship, some of their hooks baited with bits of cheese-cheap cheese. Every so often, one of them would let out a yip of triumph and haul in a flying fish or a sea bream or a goby: something he could cook over a charcoal brazier and enjoy for his opson,

Kythnos swelled ahead. It was greener than Seriphos to the south, but not much. Sheep and goats wandered the hills in back of the island’s one small town, which faced west, back toward Attica and the Peloponnesos-toward civilization, Menedemos thought unkindly.

Kythnos the town boasted no developed harbor. A visiting ship could either beach herself nearby or anchor in front of the town. At Menedemos’ order, the anchors splashed into the sea. After so long immersed, the Aphrodite wouldn’t gain much from a night or two out of the water. Once back in Rhodes, she would come out of the sea till spring.

“All yours,” Menedemos told his cousin. “Here’s to cheese.”

When Sostratos listened to the people of Kythnos talk the next morning, he felt as if he’d somehow traveled back through time. They spoke Attic Greek, but a very old-fashioned Attic, saying es for eis (into), xyn for syn (with), and any number of other things that had vanished from the speech of Athens itself more than a hundred years before. Hearing them, he might have been listening to Aiskhylos… had Aiskhylos chosen to talk about cheese and the sheep and goats from whose milk it was made.

He supposed the Kythmans spoke that way because, even though they were only a day’s sail from Athens, not many ships bothered coming into the harbor here. The locals were isolated from the wider world. If change came, it came only slowly.

A breeze from off the mainland-not so strong as the one that had driven the Aphrodite here but still brisk enough-ruffled Sostratos’ hair as he made his way toward the agora. After Athens, Kythnos seemed ludicrously small; it might have been a toy town, made for children to play with. That didn’t keep him from getting lost once. There were enough houses to box him in to where he wasn’t sure whether he needed to go right or left to find the market square, and he guessed wrong. He had to give a man with several missing front teeth an obolos for directions, and then had to ask him to repeat himself, for his dialect and the missing teeth made him hard to understand.

In the agora, people displayed fish and woolen cloth and cheeses. The fish were for other Kythnians. The cloth struck Sostratos as nothing special. The cheeses… The cheeses were as fine as Kythnos’ reputation would have led him to believe, than which there was little higher praise.

And the prices proved amazingly low. Sostratos had to work to keep astonishment off his face when a fellow who’d piled wedge after wedge of delicate, creamy goat’s-milk cheese on a little table behind him asked no more than a Rhodian cheesemaker would have for something only a quarter as good. The local, an anxious-looking man with large, rabbity eyes and a wen on one cheek, took his surprise for anger rather than delight. “I can come down a little, best one,” the man said hastily, even before Sostratos made a counteroffer. “Don’t go away, please.”

Sostratos collected himself. “Well, all right,” he said, as if he didn’t really want to stay. “Maybe I won’t, as long as you’re reasonable.”

“I can be very reasonable, sir, very reasonable indeed,” the cheese-maker replied.

He meant it, too. Sostratos was almost embarrassed to haggle with him. It felt like stealing from a helpless child. Sostratos knew he could have forced the Kythnian lower than he finally did. He didn’t have the heart to do it. He consoled himself by thinking he would still make a good profit on the cheese, even if he bought it at this slightly higher price.

Another man two stalls over sold a sharp, crumbly sheep’s-milk cheese for prices similarly small. Again, Sostratos could have bargained harder. He knew Menedemos would have squeezed every obo-los possible from these men, scorning them for fools because they didn’t understand how splendid their cheeses were.

Dickering with some merchants, even most merchants, Sostratos bargained as ferociously as he knew how. Phoenicians, Athenians, that truffle-seller up in Mytilene-they were all out for themselves, just as he was. These men, though… They seemed pathetically grateful that he would give them any silver for their cheeses.

“Owls,” the man with the crumbly cheese murmured, almost in awe, when Sostratos paid him. “Aren’t they pretty? Most of the time, you know, we just swap stuff back and forth amongst ourselves. I get me a few owls, though, and who knows? I may even go across to Attica”-he didn’t say to Athens, which might have been beyond his mental horizon-”and, and buy things.”

“That’s what money is for,” Sostratos agreed.

“It is, isn’t it?” To the Kythnian, it seemed a new idea. A Karian farmer a hundred stadia from the nearest tiny town could hardly have been more distant from the kind of trading Sostratos did than was this fellow Hellene only a long day’s sail from Athens, the beating heart of the civilized world.

Suppressing several sighs, Sostratos went on through the agora. His only problem was choosing the best of the best. One man gave him a sample of a hard yellow cheese that made him raise his eyebrows. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything quite like this,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised, O stranger,” the Kythnian said with modest pride-no one here seemed to display more than modest pride. “It’s made from cow’s milk.”

“Really?” Sostratos said, and the cheesemaker dipped his head. “How… unusual.” Few Hellenes, especially south of Boiotia (whose very name was associated with cattle), kept cows. Sheep and goats were far more common, for they were valuable for their wool as well as for their milk,

“Do you like it?” the local asked.

“It’s not bad,” Sostratos answered; no matter how pitiful he thought the Kythnians, he couldn’t make himself sound too enthusiastic. “What do you want for a wedge?”

He wasn’t surprised when the cheesemaker named a price higher than any of the others had given him. Another reason few cows dwelt in this part of Hellas was that they took more fodder for the amount of milk they yielded. Despite that, for an exotic cheese like this what the Kythnian wanted wasn’t bad at all. Sostratos haggled a little harder than he had with the other men, but only a little. Before long, he and the cheesemaker clasped hands to seal the bargain.

“I thank you very much,” the fellow said. “Some of my neighbors think I’m daft for keeping a cow, but I guess I’ve shown them.”

“Maybe you have.” Sostratos would never have let one relatively small sale go to his head like that, but he was a Rhodian, used to dealing all over the Inner Sea. To a Kythnian, for whom a major journey meant walking from his farm to this little town-it surely didn’t deserve to be called a polis-showing some drakhmai to his neighbors might be a triumph of sorts.

Sailors from the Aphrodite helped Sostratos carry the cheeses back to the akatos. One of them was Teleutas. With a sidelong glance Sostratos’ way, he said, “You’d better get us back to Rhodes in a hurry. If you don’t, we’ll eat up your profits.”

The other sailors laughed. Sostratos didn’t. He knew Teleutas better than he wanted to. “By the dog of Egypt, if even a crumb of cheese goes missing before we get home, you’ll swim back to Rhodes,” he ground out. “Do you understand me?”

“Easy, young sir,” one of the other sailors said. “He was only joking.”

Teleutas’ grin didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s right,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them.”

“It had better not,” Sostratos told him. “Because I’m not joking.”

An oppressive silence cloaked the working party till they got down to the beach. Even the men who rowed them and the cheeses back to the Aphrodite noticed it. “Somebody fart in somebody else’s face?” one of the rowers asked when no one said a word as the boat glided toward the merchant galley.

“You might say so, Moskhion,” Teleutas answered. “Yes, you just might say so.” He eyed Sostratos again, smirking slightly.

Sostratos glared back. “If we need another sailor in a hurry, I expect we can find one even in a gods-forsaken place like this,” he said.

Moskhion looked horrified. He said, “I wouldn’t maroon anybody in this miserable dump.”

“If we had a thief aboard, I’d maroon him anywhere,” Sostratos replied. Moskhion shut up and started rowing again. He’d gone with Sostratos into Ioudaia the year before. He couldn’t very well forget the gold ring Teleutas had stolen from a local there. No one had ever proved-no one had ever even claimed-Teleutas stole while aboard ship. Had that been proved, or even claimed, Teleutas wouldn’t have sailed with the Aphrodite this spring.

He gave no more smirks now. He looked out at the sea and at the akatos and said not a thing. Without a doubt, that was the best thing he could have done. Had he given Sostratos any more lip, he would have gone out of the boat and into the water of the harbor. Sostratos had no idea whether Teleutas could swim. At the moment, he was too angry to care.

When they came alongside the Aphrodite, the sailors in the boat passed chunks of cheese to the men in the merchant galley. “Here, we’ll put them in leather sacks,” Menedemos said. “We’ve got a good many left from the trip up to Athens, and they’ll keep out salt water and vermin.” He grinned. “All the vermin that don’t walk on two legs, anyhow.”

Several sailors aboard the akatos laughed. Nobody from the ship’s boat did. Teleutas looked as if he were about to, but he changed his mind even without a scowl from Sostratos. After all the cheese went onto the Aphrodite , Sostratos and the sailors scrambled up over the rail and into the low waist of the ship.

His cousin waited till the two of them were-mostly-out of earshot of the crew before asking, “What’s wrong, my dear? You look ready to bite a belaying pin in two, but I see you came back with plenty of cheese.”

“Oh, the cheese is fine. The cheese is better than I expected it to be, in fact,” Sostratos said, still seething. “But that polluted Teleutas…” The story poured out of him; he finished, “I wish he never would have come aboard the Aphrodite in the first place.”

“Well, unless he does come right out and steal, we’re stuck with him till we get back to Rhodes,” Menedemos answered. “Next year, though, tell him to go howl when he asks to go with us again.”

“By the dog, I will,” Sostratos said. “I wish I had this spring. He’s nothing but trouble. Even when he doesn’t do anything wrong, he always makes it seem he’s just about to. You have to keep an eye on him every minute.”

“Many goodbyes to him, then,” Menedemos said. “We’ll pay him off when we get home, and that’ll be the end of it. When he comes around whining for work next spring, tell him to bend over and-”

“I understand you, thanks,” Sostratos said hastily.

“Good. That’s settled, then.” Menedemos liked things neat and tidy. He liked them that way so much, he sometimes assumed they were when they weren’t. Here, though, Sostratos agreed with his cousin. Menedemos asked, “Anything else we need to do here on Kythnos?”

“I don’t think there’s anything else to do on Kythnos,” Sostratos said.

“Ha! Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. I know I don’t want their water; we’ve got enough, and I remember how nasty and brackish it was when we stopped here a couple of years ago with Polemaios aboard.” Menedemos turned to Diokles. “Everybody’s aboard and ready to row?”

“Everybody’s aboard, skipper,” the oarmaster answered. “A few of the boys are still nursing headaches from too much wine, but they can probably row.”

“Sweating’ll be good for ‘em,” Menedemos said with the airy confidence of a man who wasn’t hung over at the moment. “Let’s get out of here, then. I don’t think we can make Paros with the daylight we’ve got left, but we ought to get to Syros without much trouble.”

“Sounds about right,” Diokles agreed. He turned and started shouting at the crew. They hurried to take their places at the oars and by the lines that would lower the sail from the yard. “Rhyppapai!” Diokles called. “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” The men began to row. The Aphrodite made her way out of the harbor.

Sostratos was glad to go. To Menedemos, every trading run, every island, every town seemed a new adventure. Sostratos liked the travel for what he could learn, but there wasn’t much to learn about Kythnos. And the more he saw of other places (even Athens, and who could have imagined that?), the better Rhodes looked. Rhodes was home, and they were on their way.

Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to port. Kythnos was longer than it was wide; to go east from the island’s single town, one had to round a headland at either the northern or southern tip of the island. He’d chosen the latter. To catch the wind abeam, the sailors swung the yard from the port bow back. They’d started the motion only a heartbeat after he started the turn, and finished it at about the same time. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t even had to give an order.

“Pretty day,” Diokles remarked as they swung past the headland, and it was. The sun shone warm and bright in the blue, blue sky, though it no longer stood so high as it had at the start of summer. The Aegean was a deeper blue, or rather several deeper blues. Kythnos, on the merchant galley’s left hand, added variety: brown soil, gray rock, streaks of greenery amid sun-dried yellow.

Other islands of the Kyklades dotted the horizon: everything from black rocks with the sea foaming around them, good for nothing but tearing the bottom out of a ship that came upon them unawares, to Syros and Paros and Naxos in the east, Siphnos in the southeast, and rocky Seriphos and Melos beyond it due south.

Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, skrawking and mewing. They often attended ships; what was garbage to men was opson to them. An osprey folded its wings and plunged feet first into the sea two or three plethra from the merchant galley. It came up again a heartbeat later, flapping strongly to get back into the air. Its talons clutched a writhing fish.

“When terns dive in, gulls steal from them,” Sostratos said. “But who’s going to steal from an osprey?”

“No one in these waters, by Zeus,” Menedemos answered.

“I wonder what the fish was,” Sostratos said. “I wonder if the bird chose it because it likes that kind of fish, or just because it chanced to be swimming near enough to the surface to be seen.”

Menedemos laughed. “I wonder, O best one, if there’s any limit to how many questions you can dream up. If there is, you haven’t touched it yet.”

His cousin looked wounded. “What’s wrong with curiosity? Where would we be without it? We’d be living in mud huts and trying to knock hares over the head with rocks, that’s where.”

“Two more questions,” Menedemos said, “even if you did answer one of them.” He wondered how angry-and how entertaining-Sostratos would get at the tweaking. He didn’t tease his cousin as much as he had when they were younger; Sostratos had got better at holding his temper, and so offered less amusement now.

He held it this morning, saying, “I have one question more: what difference does it make to you?”

“None, really. I was just curious.” Menedemos made a face, realizing he’d delivered himself into Sostratos’ hands.

“Thank you, my dear. You just proved my point for me.” Sostratos could have said more and worse. That was small consolation to Menedemos. What his cousin had said was plenty: plenty to make his ears heat, plenty to make Diokles laugh softly. For the next little while, Menedemos gave exaggerated attention to steering the ship-which, at the moment, needed little steering. He’d lost the exchange; he knew he’d lost it; and he hated losing at anything. That he’d lost it through his own foolish choice of words only made losing more annoying.

But he couldn’t stay irked for long, not with the breeze filling the sail and thrumming in the rigging, not with the gentle motion of the ship and the soft splashing as the ram at her bow cut through the water, not with…

Thinking of the ram brought him up short. “Serve out helmets and weapons to the crew, Diokles,” he said. “More pirates in these waters, Furies take ‘em, than fleas on a scavenger dog. If they want us, we’d better make sure they get a hard fight.”

Since the akatos had had to fight off pirates each of the past two sailing seasons, Diokles couldn’t very well disagree. In fact, he dipped his head and said, “I was going to do that anyway pretty soon.”

Before long, with bronze pots on their heads and swords and spears and axes in their hands, the men on the Aphrodite looked piratical themselves. The merchant galley was beamier than a pentekonter or hemiolia, but the crews of fishing boats and round ships weren’t inclined to make such fine distinctions. They never had been. Now, though, they fled with as much haste as Menedemos had ever seen. Fishing boats smaller than the neat little craft the merchant galley towed behind her rowed away with the men in them pulling as hard as if they crewed a war galley charging into battle. Two different sailing ships heeled sharply to the south as soon as their sailors spied the Aphrodite . They wanted to get as far away from her as they could, as fast as they could.

“If standing behind the sail and blowing into it would help them go faster, they’d do that, too,” Menedemos said with a laugh.

“They’ll be hours beating their way back up to their old course against the wind,” Sostratos said.

“Too bad for them,” Menedemos said.

“Hard to blame them,” Sostratos said. “When taking chances can get you sold into slavery or murdered and tossed over the side, you don’t do it. If we believed in taking chances, we wouldn’t have armed ourselves.”

He wasn’t wrong. Even so, Menedemos said, “You know, there are times when you squeeze all the juice out of life.”

“There are times when I think you want just enough juice to drown yourself,” Sostratos replied.

They scowled at each other. Menedemos yawned in Sostratos’ face to show how dull he thought Sostratos was. Sostratos turned his back, walked over to the rail, and pissed into the wine-dark sea. Maybe that was general contempt; maybe he was getting rid of juice. Menedemos didn’t inquire. Sostratos set his chiton to rights and stalked up to the foredeck, back very stiff.

Diokles clucked in distress. “The two of you shouldn’t quarrel,” he said. “The ship needs you both.” He used the dual, implying Menedemos and Sostratos were a natural pair.

Menedemos was steering the ship. He couldn’t turn his back on Diokles, no matter how much he wanted to. At the moment, he would sooner have given his cousin a good kick in the fundament than been yoked to him in the Greek language as part of a pair. Sanctimonious prig, he thought.

For the rest of the day, none of the sailors seemed to want to come near either him or Sostratos. The men walked on tiptoe, as if the Aphrodite ’s planking were covered with eggs and they would be whipped if they broke one. Songs, jokes, the usual chatter-all disappeared. Only the sounds of wind and wave remained. The merchant galley had never been so quiet.

Too stubborn and too proud to make any move toward Sostratos, Menedemos stayed at the steering oars the rest of the day. Slowly, slowly, the island of Syros drew near. It was even more desiccated than Kythnos. The Aphrodite had stopped here, too, a couple of years before. Menedemos remembered the verses from the Odyssey wherein Eumaios the swineherd praised the island from which he’d come. He also recalled Sostratos’ comment: that the praise proved Homer a blind poet.

He angrily tossed his head; he didn’t want to think about Sostratos at all. Doing his grim best not to, he steered the merchant galley around the northern tip of the island (which, like Kythnos, was taller than it was wide) and down toward Syros town on the eastern coast. The town sat inside the curve of a little bay. The harbor was fine; had the island of Syros had more in the way of water and people and crops, the harbor could easily have supported a real city. As things were, it mattered about as much as nice eyebrows on an ugly girl.

Because only a few fishing boats and the occasional ship going from somewhere else to somewhere else used the harbor, no one had bothered to improve it with moles and piers. The Aphrodite sat in the bay a couple of plethra from the town. Her anchors plopped into the water to hold her fast.

By the sun, an hour or so of daylight remained. Sostratos called for sailors to row him ashore. “Where do you think you’re going?” Menedemos demanded.

“There’s a temple to Poseidon here,” Sostratos answered. “There’s supposed to be a sundial in it made by Pherekides, who taught Pythagoras. It may be the oldest sundial in Hellas. While we’re here, I’d like to take a look at it. Why? Are you planning to sail off without me?”

“Don’t tempt me.” But Menedemos gestured gruffly toward the boat. “Go on, then. Be back by dark.”

Sostratos pointed to the handful of houses that made up the town. “If you think I’d stay there, you’re-” He broke off.

You’re even stupider than I thought you were. That was what he’d been on the point of saying, that or something like it. Menedemos’ resentment flared anew; he conveniently forgot all the equally unkind thoughts he’d had about Sostratos. “On second thought, stay away as long as you please,” he snapped.

He watched the boat take his cousin to the shore, watched Sostratos talk with an elderly local and take an obolos out of his mouth to give the fellow, watched the graybeard point uphill and to the north, and watched Sostratos hurry off in that direction. He also watched the men who’d rowed Sostratos ashore disappear into a wineshop.

“Skipper, what will you do if the young gentleman has trouble?” Diokles asked. “Going off on your own in a strange place isn’t always the smartest thing you can do.”

“How could there possibly be a problem?” Menedemos answered. “Sostratos seems sure it’s safe, and he knows everything. If you don’t believe me, just ask him.”

Diokles gave him a reproachful look. “Most of the time, the two of you”-he used the dual again, perhaps to drive home his point, perhaps to annoy Menedemos-”have pretty good sense. But when you don’t, you really don’t.” Most of the time, he would have added something like, meaning no disrespect. Today, he didn’t bother.

Menedemos pointed to the boat, which lay on the beach. “What am I supposed to do when that’s there?”

Unfazed, the oarmaster replied, “Find some sailors who can swim, and make sure they’re good and ready.”

That made better sense than Menedemos wished it did. Muttering under his breath, he strode the length of the galley, asking men if they could swim. Less than half the crew could, which didn’t surprise him, though he knew how himself. “We’ll wait till half an hour after sundown,” he said. “If Sostratos isn’t back by then…”

But he was. Menedemos spied his long, angular form with a curious mixture of resentment and relief. After brief confusion when Sostratos didn’t see the sailors, he went into the wineshop and brought them out. They weren’t too drunk to row him back to the Aphrodite .

“And how was your precious sundial?” Menedemos asked after his cousin scrambled back into the akatos.

“It seemed remarkably like… an old, decrepit sundial.” Sostratos looked and sounded sheepish.

“Eat some supper and then lay your old, decrepit bones down on the planks.” Menedemos spoke gruffly, like a father annoyed at a wayward child. That was how he felt. Again, how Sostratos felt about him never entered his mind.

Resentment sparked in Sostratos’ eyes, but he seemed to decide he couldn’t disobey sensible advice like that without looking a proper fool. He wrapped himself in his himation. Before long, he was asleep. If he spoke very little to Menedemos… I don’t much want to talk to him right now, either, Menedemos thought, just before sleep also overtook him.

Sostratos looked down at the waxed wooden tablets on which he’d kept the accounts of the trading run to Athens. As long as he paid attention to those, he didn’t have to worry about Menedemos. That, at the moment, suited him fine.

Clang! Clang! The keleustes’ bronze square beat out time for the rowers. The wind had died. The sail was brailed up tight to the yard. The Aphrodite glided east from Syros across a dead-calm sea, propelled by ten grunting, sweating rowers on each side: every other bench had a man in place.

“Sail ho!” called the lookout on the foredeck. “Sail ho off the port bow!”

That made Sostratos look up from his accounts. The lookout was pointing northeast. Sostratos stood up to see farther. Before long, he spied the sail, too. He shaded his eyes with his hand to cut the glare from the morning sun.

Nor was his the only head to swing that way. After a few heartbeats, a sailor said, “That’s a round ship. Nothing to worry about.” He was right. That huge sail and broad, beamy hull could only belong to one of the merchantmen that hauled grain and lumber and cheap wine and oil and other bulk commodities around the Inner Sea. The only way a round ship could endanger the akatos was by colliding with her.

Once the sailors saw the ship to the northeast was no threat, they went back to whatever they’d been doing. Sostratos was tired of going over the accounts. He already knew them well. Keeping an eye on the round ship also let him avoid having anything to do with his cousin.

Because the Aphrodite?, sail was brailed up against the yard, the round ship’s crew needed longer to spot her than they would have otherwise. When they did, they swung their bow away from her. They couldn’t very well run, not on this windless day. Their ship would have had trouble outrunning a clam.

From his place on the poop deck, Menedemos said, “If I were ever tempted to turn pirate, a time like this would do it. That fat sow can’t flee, can’t fight, and can’t hide. She’s just sitting there, waiting to be taken.”

“I wonder how much loot she’s got,” Teleutas said wistfully-or was it hungrily? Sostratos couldn’t tell, though he was always ready to think the worst of the sailor.

Menedemos spoke sharply: “We’re Rhodians. Remember it. We knock pirates over the head when we get the chance. We don’t play that game ourselves.”

“Only kidding, skipper,” Teleutas said. “You were the one who brought it up, you know.”

And so Menedemos had-but he’d made it plain he was talking about something contrary to fact. He wasn’t really tempted to turn pirate. Was Teleutas? Sostratos wouldn’t have been surprised. But Teleutas, as usual, had an excuse just plausible enough to keep him out of trouble.

Sostratos stowed the account tablets in a leather sack. Then he went back to the poop deck. “Hail, young sir,” Diokles said, not changing his rhythm a bit as he beat out the stroke for the rowers. Menedemos didn’t say anything. He kept his hands on the steering-oar tillers and his eyes on the sea. Sostratos might not have been there.

But Sostratos finally had something he could talk about without starting a fight. “That Teleutas,” he said in a low, angry voice. He couldn’t stand the sailor, but was grateful to him in a curious way.

And, sure enough, Menedemos dipped his head. “He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” he agreed. “You were right about that. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been a pirate now and again.”

“Neither would I,” Sostratos said. “I will turn him away if he tries to sail with us next year.”

“Suits me.” Menedemos suddenly seemed to realize he was talking with Sostratos instead of shouting at him. He tried to glue the scowl back on his face, but had less luck than he might have wanted. Instead, he gave Sostratos an odd, grudging half smile. “Hail.”

“Hail, yourself,” Sostratos answered in those same grudging tones.

“We’re… stuck with each other, aren’t we?” Menedemos said.

“We seem to be,” Sostratos said. “If we were married, we could divorce. Since we’re tied by blood… well, you said it. We can make the best of it or the worst, but we are stuck.”

“I saw you going over the accounts,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. His cousin went on, “Just how well did we do?”

“Do you want it to the obolos, or will the nearest drakhma do?” Sostratos asked in turn. “If it’s to the nearest drakhma, do you want it in Athenian owls, or shall I convert it to Rhodian currency?”

Menedemos stared at him. Sostratos looked back, deadpan. Menedemos took a hand from the steering-oar tillers to point an accusing forefinger at him. “Oh, no, you don’t. You can’t fool me, you abandoned rogue. You almost did, but not quite. You’re having me on, and I’m smart enough to know it.”

Sostratos named a sum in Athenian drakhmai. Then he named a larger sum in lighter Rhodian drakhmai. He added, “That assumes we can convert currency without paying any fees, the way we did in Athens. Silver is silver, no matter what the people who run a polis think. If we do have to pay the fee, what we make goes down by two percent, in which case it would amount to”-he named one more sum-”in Rhodian drakhmai, of course.”

“You aren’t having me on. You couldn’t be making that up.” Now Menedemos sounded uncertain. For his part, Diokles looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“Go through the accounts yourself if you don’t believe me,” Sostratos said, knowing Menedemos wouldn’t. He couldn’t resist adding another barb: “Our fathers will, of course.”

“So they will.” Menedemos seemed disenchanted with that prospect, too. He said, “When we get back to Rhodes, we’re Philodemos’ son and Lysistratos’ son again. One of the reasons I like going to sea is that I can be my own man away from Rhodes, not just my father’s son.”

“Something to that, I suppose.” But Sostratos spoke more for politeness’ sake and to keep from starting another quarrel than from conviction. His own father was more easygoing than Uncle Philodemos.

Of that he had no doubt, or that Philodemos tried much harder to run Menedemos’ life than his own father did with him. Still, Sostratos remained convinced Menedemos would have had a smoother time of it if he didn’t push back so hard against Uncle Philodemos. He’d tried saying as much now and again, but Menedemos, as usual, didn’t want to listen.

“I can’t wait till next spring,” Menedemos said now. “I want to get away, to be free, to be myself.”

Sostratos had never had any trouble being himself in Rhodes. If the number of wives Menedemos had seduced in the polis was any indication, he hadn’t had all that much trouble there, either. One more thing his cousin wouldn’t want to hear. Sostratos did say, “I can see why you’re eager to be gone, but I’m glad you don’t sound desperate, the way you did when we left Rhodes a couple of years ago.”

He’d thought that safe enough. No matter what he’d thought, he proved wrong. Without warning, Menedemos’ face turned into a slammed door. Sostratos’ cousin suddenly started talking in monosyllables-when he talked at all. For most of the next two or three hours, he just kept quiet. Sostratos didn’t think Menedemos was angry at him again, but Menedemos was plainly angry about something.

Partway through that unnerving silence, Sostratos asked, “What did I say that was wrong? Tell me what it is, and I’ll apologize for it.”

“It isn’t anything,” Menedemos said tightly. “It isn’t anything at all.”

He wasn’t telling the truth. He didn’t even come close to telling the truth. That couldn’t have been more obvious. Just as obvious, though, was that he didn’t want Sostratos poking and prodding at whatever he hid. Most of the time, Sostratos would have kept on poking and prodding anyhow. Being who and what he was, he might not even have noticed that Menedemos was holding something back. After the quarrel with his cousin, though, he found himself more alert to Menedemos’ moods, and pushed it no further.

He did send an inquiring glance Diokles’ way. Maybe the oarmaster had some notion of what was troubling Menedemos. But Diokles, after making sure Menedemos wasn’t looking at him, only shrugged a tiny shrug. Maybe he knew and couldn’t say with Menedemos listening. More likely, Sostratos judged, he wasn’t sure what troubled him, either.

Little by little, as Menedemos realized Sostratos wasn’t going to pry any more, he came out of the shell into which he’d retreated. He smiled. He laughed. He cracked jokes. But he gave no hint of why he’d gone into the shell in the first place.

Paros and Naxos, which lay side by side, were the two largest and wealthiest islands in the southern Kyklades. They were both much better watered than the barren, rocky islands farther west in the chain. Vineyards, olive groves, and fields of wheat and barley-fallow at this season-flourished on them. And they both enjoyed great mineral wealth, too. Parian marble was famous all around the Inner Sea. The stone of Naxos had a smaller reputation, but it was also quarried on the western slopes of the mountains that jutted up at the heart of the island.

Menedemos brought the Aphrodite in at the polis of Naxos, on the northwestern coast. The crew moored the merchant galley next to a round ship that was taking on blocks of marble bigger and heavier than a man could carry. A wooden crane was carefully swaying them aboard the ship. Menedemos watched in fascination; if the fellow in charge of the crane made a mistake, or if a rope broke, one of those blocks would tear right through the ship’s bottom. It would end up on the floor of the harbor and the round ship would end up sunk.

“Easy! Easy!” the boss called to the workers-probably slaves- straining at the capstan. “Lower away! A little more… A little more… Hold on! Now once more, a quarter of a turn… There!”

The block went down into the round ship’s hold. Sailors down below there must have freed it from the securing lines, for one of them called up something to a man on deck, who waved to the crane operator. At his command, the crane swung back to another block waiting on the quay. Its crew made the block fast. Before going any further, the boss carefully checked the rope that would lift the chunks of marble. That block could wreck the quay if it fell, too, or smash a man to a red rag.

Only after the last block had swung into the hold did Menedemos call, “Euge!” to the man in charge of the crane.

“Thanks, friend,” the fellow replied. His shoulders sagged for a moment as he allowed himself a sigh of relief. Then, straightening, he went on, “And thanks even more for not bothering me when I was busy there.”

“You’re welcome,” Menedemos said. “I could see you needed to pay attention to what you were doing.”

“Some people don’t care. By the dog, a lot of the whipworthy rascals don’t care.” Anger blazed in the boss’ voice. “They’ve seen you, and that matters to them, so of course the thick-heads think it must matter to you, too. And if something goes wrong and you wreck a ship or crush a man, what do they do? They point and they gape and they laugh, that’s what. To Tartaros with all of them!” He spat on the quay.

More fire to him than I thought. Menedemos asked, “How did you get into your line of work?”

“About how you’d expect: I learned it from my father, same as he learned it from his,” the Naxian answered. “Some of the things Grandpa did, and his father…” He tossed his head. “We know a lot more about pulleys now than we did a long time ago, I’ll tell you that.”

“You’re right.” Menedemos’ gaze went to the top of the Aphrodite s mast, where a pulley block helped sailors raise and lower the yard. Little fishing boats, still made the way they had been from time out of mind, offered no such advantages. Aboard them, raw muscle power was the only thing that counted.

“Good talking to you, friend. Safe trip to wherever you’re going.” With a wave to the Rhodian, the crane boss turned back to his crew. At his shouted directions, they broke the crane down into lengths of lumber and ropes and carried the pieces back into the polis of Naxos. Menedemos hadn’t realized the big, impressive device was so easily portable.

“I wonder how much a crane could lift,” Sostratos said.

“Why didn’t you ask the man in charge of that one?” Menedemos said.

“You seemed more curious than I was,” his cousin answered.

Menedemos thought nothing much of that till he remembered how his complaints about Sostratos’ unending curiosity had helped spark their quarrel. He supposed he could have started another one if he’d risen to the remark. Instead, he answered, “Watching somebody who really knows what he’s doing-no matter what it is-is always a pleasure.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Sostratos agreed. “Are you planning to stay and do business here in Naxos?”

“It would only be luck if we found anything worth hauling back to Rhodes,” Menedemos answered. “I do want to refill our water jars, though. This is the place to do it. What we’ve got is hot and stale and hardly worth drinking, and I’ve never heard of anybody coming down with a bad flux from drinking the water here.”

The sailors he sent into town with the water jars laughed-giggled, in fact-as they went. Some of them patted at their hair or dragged wood or bone combs through it. Carrying water was usually women’s work. That accounted for the sailors’ silliness. Hoping they’d meet pretty women at the wellhead accounted for their primping.

In due course, the sailors came back with fresh water. “Hail, girls!” someone called from the waist of the Aphrodite . Menedemos thought it was Teleutas, but he wasn’t sure. Whoever it was, he infuriated the men with the jars. They didn’t seem sure who’d called out to them, either, which was probably lucky for him.

One of the water-carriers said, “Go ahead and laugh, you polluted catamite. We saw real women, honest women, women who aren’t whores. We didn’t just see ‘em, either. We talked with ‘em, and they answered back.”

The other sailors with jars up on their shoulders dipped their heads in agreement. Menedemos didn’t know how the jeering sailor felt about that. As for him, he was inclined to be jealous. Hellenes didn’t get many chances to meet honest women to whom they weren’t related. By the way the sailors acted, they’d made the most of this one.

“Where will we pass the night tomorrow?” Sostratos asked.

Menedemos shrugged. “I was thinking of spending it at sea. There’s no good stopping place halfway between Naxos and Rhodes. We’ve been this way before. You know the choices as well as I do-some really miserable little islands.”

He waited for his cousin to grumble and complain, but Sostratos only shrugged. “All right with me. I don’t mind a night on the planks, especially when we’ll probably be home for good the next night.”

“Oh.” Menedemos knew he sounded almost disappointed. Am I looking for another quarrel with Sostratos? he wondered, I hope not. “Home for good.” He tasted the words, finding them not altogether to his liking. “I won’t be sorry to sail away when spring comes back.”

“I don’t suppose I will, either.” Sostratos looked west and a little north-back in the direction of Athens. “And yet…” He sighed. “Visiting Athens, seeing it again, after I had to leave, reminds me that Rhodes really is my home. Too late to make a philosopher out of me; I’ve been chasing profit too long.”

“Nothing wrong with profit,” Menedemos said. “Without it, merchants couldn’t operate. And without merchants, where are philosophers? Squatting there straining to take a shit, that’s where.” He wasn’t sure whether Aristophanes had said that about men who loved wisdom, but it was something the comic poet might have said.

“Oh, yes. I had that same thought in Athens, though I didn’t put it so… elegantly,” Sostratos said.

Was that praise, or was he being snide? Menedemos couldn’t tell. He wondered whether his cousin was sure. With a shrug, he clapped Sostratos on the shoulder. “Stuck with being a trader, eh? And stuck with being a Rhodian? Well, I suppose there are worse fates.” He could think of plenty of them. What he didn’t know was if any were better.

Sailors who hadn’t hauled water began clamoring to go into Naxos. Unlike Kythnos and Syros, this was a real city, with plenty of taverns and plenty of brothels to choose from. Like an indulgent father-not a breed with which he was personally familiar-he waved them away from the Aphrodite .

“Some of them will come back to Rhodes without an obolos to put in their mouths,” Sostratos said.

“Shall I tell them not to drink and roister?” Menedemos asked. “Would they listen if I did?”

“I can think of more than one family back home that would thank you if you did.” But Sostratos sighed. That wasn’t what Menedemos had asked, and he knew it. With another sigh, he went on, “No, they wouldn’t heed you. That’s too bad.”

“No doubt, but I don’t know what to do about it,” Menedemos said. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of going into a tavern myself tonight.”

“You were?” Sostratos sounded as if he were confessing to some particularly nasty vice. “By the dog, why?”

“Always a good idea to pick up some news of what lies ahead,” Menedemos replied. “If pirates are out in force in the waters east of here, I’d sooner find out in a wineshop than the hard way. And besides”-he grinned at Sostratos-”I’m sick and tired of the wine we’ve got on board.”

“Your second reason’s a disgraceful excuse, and I hope you know it,” his cousin said severely. “Your first one, on the other hand… I’ll come with you. Two sets of ears might pick up something one misses.”

They set out just before the sun dipped below the western horizon. The twelve daylight hours shrank every day as summer waned, while those of the nighttime stretched. The wineshop they chose lay only a couple of streets in from the harbor. A dried grape vine hung over the door said what kind of place it was. So did the raised voices and discordant snatches of song floating out through the doorway. Some men hadn’t gone to the tavern for gossip. They’d gone to squeeze what merriment they could from wine.

Menedemos and Sostratos both coughed when they went inside. Torches filled the room with smoke. Soot stained the mud brick of the walls and the rafters above those torches. Olive-oil lamps on a few tables and on the stone-topped counter at the back of the room added the stink of hot grease to the smoke. And-Menedemos wrinkled his nose-someone in the not too distant past had given back his wine. That stink wasn’t strong enough to drive the Rhodians out of the tavern, but it was there.

“Hail, friends!” The man who ran the place had the falsely jovial air so many tavernkeepers assumed. He was a scrawny little fellow with enormous ears. When he didn’t remember to smile and be cheerful, his narrow face relaxed into what looked like a permanently sour expression. Menedemos had seen the like on other taverners, on men who ran brothels, and on those who made their living overseeing slaves. This fellow put the smile back on and asked, “Where are you boys from?”

“ Rhodes,” Menedemos answered.

“We’re on our way back there now from Athens,” Sostratos added.

“Wine?” the tavernkeeper said. Menedemos and Sostratos both dipped their heads. The Naxian set two big, deep mugs on the counter. A round opening cut in the gray stone let him plunge his long-handled dipper into the amphora waiting below. He filled the cups, then held out his hand. “Two oboloi each.”

The Rhodians paid. Menedemos sloshed out a small libation. When he drank, he sighed. As far as the wine went, he could have done better staying aboard the Aphrodite . He felt Sostratos’ ironic gaze on him, but refused to acknowledge it.

“Out of Athens, are you?” a gray-haired man with a big nose said. “What’s really going on there? We heard Demetrios was out, and then we heard Demetrios was in. Somebody doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that’s plain.”

“There are two different Demetrioi,” Menedemos said.

“That’s right.” Sostratos dipped his head. “Demetrios of Phaleron is out; he’s fled to Kassandros. And Demetrios son of Antigonos is in. He’s knocked down the fortress of Mounykhia that Kassandros’ men were using, and he’s given back-he says he’s given back-the Athenians’ old constitution.”

“Is that what’s happened? No wonder I was confused,” the gray-haired man said. Menedemos was ready to take him for a fool, but then a shrewd look crossed his face and he asked, “What have the Athenians given him, if he’s given them their old laws?”

Now Sostratos was the one who didn’t want to go into detail. “They’ve voted him many honors,” he said, and would have let it go at that.

Even here in the middle of the Aegean, he doesn’t want to embarrass Athens, Menedemos thought with amusement. He didn’t care if he made the polis they’d left look bad. Since he didn’t, he told the men in the tavern some of the sycophantic degrees the Athenian Assembly had passed.

Some of them laughed. The gray-haired man with the big nose said, “You’re making that up. They’d never sink so low. This is Athens we’re talking about, not some miserable little polis in the middle of nowhere.”

“By Zeus, by Athena, by Poseidon, I’m telling you the truth,” Menedemos said.

“He is.” The melancholy in Sostratos’ voice made him sound all the more convincing. “We were in the Assembly with the Rhodian proxenos when many of these decrees were proposed, and we saw and heard them passed. I wish I could tell you otherwise, O men of Naxos, but to do so would be a lie.”

Menedemos thought such philosophical-sounding language would put the Naxians’ backs up. Instead, it seemed to impress them. “Who would’ve reckoned the Athenians, of all people, would turn out to be wide-arsed?” the tavernkeeper muttered-an epitaph for the polis if ever there was one.

The gray-haired man dipped his head. “That’s right. We didn’t wiggle our backsides at Antigonos like that when he brought is into his Island League. Sure, there’s a cult for him on Delos now, but that’s only polite these days. The rest of the nonsense the Athenians did… Pheu!” He turned away in disgust.

Sostratos started to say something in response to that, then visibly checked himself. What could he say? The Naxian hadn’t said anything he hadn’t thought himself. Instead, he gulped down his wine and shoved the cup across the counter to the taverner. That worthy held out his hand. Not till Sostratos paid him did he refill the cup.

“Hearing news like that out of Athens makes me want to pour it down, too,” the tavernkeeper said. “Not that Demetrios and Antigonos are bad,” he added hastily (after all, they still ruled Naxos), “but it’s a shame to see a city that was so great grovel like a cur dog.”

“Grovel like a cur dog,” Sostratos echoed bitterly, and took a long pull at the wine he’d just bought.

“He’s trying to make you want to get drunk,” Menedemos said in a low voice.

“He’s doing a good job of it, too,” Sostratos said. But he didn’t upend the cup to drain it as fast as he could. Every so often, his natural urge toward moderation served him well.

Menedemos’ natural urges did not run in that direction. As the captain of a merchant galley, though, he had to be prudent regardless of his natural urges. He asked, “Has anyone come into Naxos from the east in the past few days? What are things like between here and Rhodes? Is it quiet, or are pirates prowling the seas?”

The gray-haired man spoke up again: “It’s been pretty quiet, from what I’ve heard. My brother-in-law’s a fisherman, and he’s headed that way lately hoping for tunny. He hasn’t had a whole lot of luck with the fish, but he’s never said anything about spotting trouble on the sea.”

“Thank you, friend,” Menedemos said. “I’ll gladly fill your cup for you again, if you like.” The Naxian dipped his head. Menedemos gave the taverner two oboloi. The fellow plied his dipper. The gray-haired man lifted the newly full cup in salute. Menedemos politely returned the gesture. They both drank. Menedemos knew he wasn’t sure to be safe on the way back to Rhodes, not till he came within sight of the polis. But he was also glad to be sailing with good news and not into the teeth of bad.

Peering east from the foredeck, looking for the first sight of Rhodes, Sostratos jerked as if stung. “Ship ho!” he called urgently. “Ship ho, dead ahead! I just see a hull and rowers-no sail!”

That meant, or could mean, trouble. Sostratos waved toward the stern to make sure Menedemos had heard him. Menedemos waved back to show he had. He ordered a full complement to the oars.

Sostratos stared out to sea. Whatever the other ship was, she was drawing closer in a hurry. She’d probably spied the Aphrodite’s sail- which sailors were now brailing up-before anyone aboard the akatos noticed her. That she was some sort of a galley had been plain from the moment Sostratos set eyes on her. The question now was, what sort? A hungry pirate ship would come bounding across the waves like that. So would a Rhodian war galley, patrolling against pirates. The Aphrodite’s lean lines didn’t fool only fishing boats and round ships, which sometimes proved embarrassing.

Still, I’d rather clear things up with a Rhodian war galley than fight off a hemiolia full of cutthroats, Sostratos thought. He anxiously peered ahead. So did all the sailors not straining at the oars.

Suddenly, painfully, Sostratos wished Aristeidas still lived. The lynx-eyed sailor would have known exactly what to make of that other galley. Sostratos and the rest of the men with only average eyesight had to wait till she came nearer-which meant, till she became more dangerous if she was a pirate.

“I think…” A sailor spoke hesitantly, then with growing conviction: “I think she’s showing three banks of oars.”

Sostratos squinted. He pulled the skin at the outer corner of one eye taut, closing the other. That sometimes helped him see farther and more clearly. Sometimes… The galley did have more than one bank of rowers. Did she have three?

“I… think you’re right,” Sostratos said after a few more heartbeats. He let out a sigh of relief, and the heartbeats after that didn’t come faster on account of fear. A ship with three banks of oars was bound to be a war galley, not a piratical hemiolia or bireme. He watched the sailors relax their grip on weapons, too. They wouldn’t have to fight for their lives and their freedom today.

From the stern, Menedemos asked, “Is that the Dikaiosyne, come to pay us another call?” The Justice was the Rhodian navy’s first trihemiolia, an idea Menedemos had had. She was lighter and swifter than an ordinary trireme, just as a hemiolia was lighter and swifter than an ordinary ship with two banks of oars. Both classes could quickly remove the thranite rowing benches aft of the mast, and could stow the mast and yard on the decking where they had been.

After another glance across the narrowing gap of water, Sostratos tossed his head. “No,” he answered. “She’s an ordinary trireme.” Her mast was down, but he could see that all three banks were manned from bow to stern.

“Ah, well,” Menedemos said. “One of these days, I’d like to take a trihemiolia out and see what she can do. Seems only fair, when there wouldn’t be any if I hadn’t thought of them.”

The officer who’d captained the Dikaiosyne had done so not least because he was rich enough to have the leisure to go pirate-hunting without needing to worry about making a living. Here, for once, Sostratos fully sympathized with his cousin. Just as having to work for a living had kept Menedemos from command of a trihemiolia, so it had kept Sostratos himself from finishing his studies at the Lykeion. I am what I am now, and I’ve made the best of it, he thought. But still I persist in wondering-what would I have been, what would I have become, if I could have stayed?

An officer in a red cape strode up along the trireme’s deck to the bow. He cupped both hands in front of his mouth and shouted across the blue, sun-sparkled sea: “Ahoy, there! What ship are you?”

“We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes and bound for home,” Sostratos shouted back.

“The Aphrodite, eh? Tell me what firm you belong to and where you were headed when you left this spring.”

“We sail for Philodemos and Lysistratos,” Sostratos answered, reflecting that Rhodes wasn’t too big to keep everyone from knowing everyone else’s business. “And we went to Athens. We’re on our way back from there now. You do know Demetrios Antigonos’ son has run Demetrios of Phaleron and Kassandros’ garrison out of Athens?”

“Yes, we’ve heard that,” the officer said. As his ship came up alongside the Aphrodite , Sostratos spied her name-Iskhys-painted above one of the eyes at her bow. Strength was a good name for a war galley.

Thanks to the trireme’s greater freeboard, the Rhodian officer could peer down into the merchant galley. “You haven’t got much aboard there. What’s your cargo?”

“Well, we’ve got honey from Mount Hymettos and cheeses from Kythnos,” Sostratos told him. “Mostly, though, we’re bringing back a fine crop of Athenian owls.”

“You’ll change them back to Rhodian coins, of course,” the officer said.

“Of course,” Sostratos agreed, hoping he wouldn’t have to. He would rather have seen the two percent Rhodes took on changed money go into the coffers of the firm of Philodemos and Lysistratos.

“Safe journey back to Rhodes,” the man on the Iskhys said. Sostratos waved his thanks, thinking the trireme would go on its way. But before it did, the fellow added, “I’ll check with the customs men to make sure you got back all right.”

He waved to his keleustes, who got the war galley moving again. As she glided away, the stench from her rowers, who worked in the closed-in area below the deck, filled Sostratos’ nostrils. But the stench from the officer’s words revolted him even more. The man had sounded polite enough, but what he meant was that he would check up on the Aphrodite after the Iskhys got back from her patrol. And that meant Sostratos would have to change his money, or some large part of it, or else face endless trouble from the Rhodian authorities. Two percent of the gross-a considerably larger part of the profit-had just taken flight.

“Would you come back here, my dear?” Menedemos called. He sounded polite, too, but Sostratos wasn’t deceived. His cousin left most of the financial arrangements to him, but Menedemos wasn’t altogether ignorant of the way money worked. He couldn’t be, not if he wanted to make a living as a merchant. He knew what the conversion fee would do to their profits.

“What was I supposed to tell him?” Sostratos asked as soon as he ascended to the poop deck. “He could see we weren’t carrying wine or oil or statues or slaves or anything of the sort. He’d figure out we had silver instead.”

“Cursed money-changers are worse than vultures,” Menedemos grumbled. “They sit behind their tables and flick the beads on their counting-boards with eyes cold as winter. I don’t think there’s one of them who has a soul. And they’ll try to steal more than two percent if we don’t watch them like hawks, too.”

“I’ll watch them,” Sostratos promised. “I know their tricks. No false weights; no thumbs on the scales; none of their games. I promise.”

“That’s better than nothing.” Menedemos’ tone suggested it wasn’t good enough. He didn’t snarl at Sostratos the way he might have, but he didn’t sound delighted, either. Since Sostratos himself was less than delighted, he couldn’t blame his cousin. Menedemos went on, “Hide as much of the silver as you possibly can. If we’re paying two percent on part of it, that’s better than paying two percent on all of it.”

“I already thought of that,” Sostratos said.

“Good. I wasn’t sure you would. Sometimes you’re… more honest than you need to be.”

“I’m honest with our customers, especially the ones we deal with year after year,” Sostratos said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s only good business.” It also fit who he was, but he didn’t make that argument; Menedemos would have jeered at it. He did add, “Anyone who lets the government know exactly how much silver he has is a fool, though.”

“I should hope so,” Menedemos said. “We’ve earned it. Those bunglers would only squander it.”

Sostratos dipped his head. Then he ducked under the poop deck. There wasn’t much room to hide things on an akatos, but still, if you knew what you were doing…