Owls to Athens

11

Philodemos couldn’t have looked more disgusted if he’d practiced in front of a mirror of polished bronze. “Waste of silver,” he grumbled. “As if what passes for a government in this polis will do anything worthwhile with the money it mulcts from us. Better we should have kept it.”

“Yes, Father.” Menedemos sounded as resigned as he felt. He’d known his father would be disgusted that they’d had to pay money-changing fees. “We didn’t have to hand over two percent of everything: we managed to hide a good part of the silver.”

“Euge!” But Philodemos sounded sarcastic, not pleased. “You shouldn’t have had to pay any of it.”

“Just the roll of the dice,” Menedemos said. “That officer on the Iskhys warned he was going to check on us. If he followed through and found we hadn’t paid an obolos, that would have been worse.”

“Furies take him!” his father snarled. “Who was the long-nosed snoop, anyhow? Did you recognize him?”

Menedemos tossed his head. “No, I didn’t.” Philodemos rolled his eyes, as if to ask the gods why they’d given him such a purblind son. Stung, Menedemos said, “I’m sorry, Father. Maybe Sostratos did.”

“Maybe so. I can hope he did, anyhow. At least your cousin’s not a blind man.”

That did worse than sting. Nothing else Philodemos did hurt as much as his praising Sostratos. Menedemos knew his cousin had certain virtues he lacked. What his father couldn’t seem to see was that he also had virtues Sostratos lacked. Sostratos himself admitted as much. But Sostratos’ approval wasn’t what Menedemos had been struggling to win since he was a toddler… had been struggling to win, and too often hadn’t won.

Abruptly, his father changed course: “And what do you make of Demetrios son of Antigonos? How dangerous is he?”

“If you’re his enemy, very dangerous,” Menedemos answered. “We should have seen that a couple of years ago, when he raised Ptolemaios’ siege of Halikarnassos for his father.”

“Halikarnassos,” Philodemos muttered, and Menedemos knew his father was thinking of his misadventures there, not Demetrios’ adventures. The older man asked, “Did he restore the Athenian democracy, as we’ve heard here?”

“He restored it, yes, not that the Athenians know what to do with it anymore.” Menedemos told of the extravagant honors the Athenian Assembly had conferred upon Demetrios and Antigonos.

“Those are true? Genuine?” Philodemos demanded. “Not just rumors?

“By the dog, Father, they’re true,” Menedemos said. “I went to the Assembly with the Rhodian proxenos, and I listened to the decrees being passed myself.”

“Disgusting. Disgraceful,” Philodemos said. “I had heard of some of those, and thought they were a pack of lies put out to blacken the Athenians’ name-and Demetrios’, for accepting what he doesn’t deserve. They and he must be blind to shame.”

“I wish they were rumors,” Menedemos said. “I think the Athenians took Demetrios by surprise. I think they turned his head, too. You could almost see him thinking, Oh, I must be marvelous after all!”

“He’s young-he’s around your age, isn’t he?” By the way Menedemos’ father said it, no one of about his age had any business being allowed to run loose without a pedagogue following him around, let alone being entrusted with anything important like captaining a merchant galley or seizing a polis from a powerful foe.

Menedemos wanted to make a hot retort to that. But he was the one who’d said Athenian sycophancy had turned Demetrios’ head. Philodemos hadn’t had to say it, or even to suggest it. I’m doing Father’s work for him, Menedemos thought in dismay. What he did say was, “He’s going to be formidable, Demetrios is. He’s already formidable, as a matter of fact. He took Kassandros’ men by surprise when he brought his fleet to Athens, and he took their fortress by the harbor neat as anyone could want.”

“What do you suppose he’ll try to take next?” Philodemos asked.

“He’ll come east from Athens,” Menedemos said. “He’d almost have to. Antigonos’ two most dangerous foes right now are Ptolemaios and Seleukos, the one in Egypt, the other in Mesopotamia and points east. But which one Antigonos will send him after… Well, old One-Eye may know, but no one else does.”

“I say Seleukos.” Philodemos stuck out his chin. “He’s the upstart amongst the Macedonian marshals. Kassandros and Lysimakhos and Ptolemaios and Antigonos all have their places. Seleukos, though, he’s trying to bring an extra couch into the andron for a symposion. Antigonos won’t let him get away with that if he can help it.”

“Makes good sense to me, Father.” Menedemos would have guessed Antigonos and Demetrios would go after Ptolemaios because he was closer and held lands along the coast of the Inner Sea, on which coast Hellenes clustered like frogs around a pond. But Philodemos’ arguments were also cogent-cogent enough that quarreling about them seemed more trouble than it was worth. Besides… “We’ll all know next spring.”

“So we will.” Philodemos’ chuckle was on the grim side.

“You’ve been asking me questions about Athens and our other stops,” Menedemos said. “What’s been going on here in Rhodes while I was away?”

“Here in Rhodes?” The question seemed to take his father by surprise. Philodemos paused and thought, then said, “Well, I do believe we’ve finally got the last of the damage from the flood repaired. The priests offered a bullock in thanksgiving at the temple of Dionysos near the agora, and I brought home a pretty nice piece of beef.”

“That is good news, Father-that you got some good meat and that things are finally fixed.” Nine years before, Rhodes had suffered through a storm the likes of which not even the oldest citizens recalled. Along with driving rain, hailstones weighing up to a mina pounded the polis. Some people were killed outright when struck by them, others badly hurt. To make things worse, the storm came late in the rainy season. The drains had been neglected, and soon clogged up. That meant the rapidly rising waters couldn’t get out through the city walls.

Rhodes was shaped like a basin, with a good deal of difference between high ground and low. The low ground, by the agora and the temple of Dionysos, went under; even the temple of Asklepios was threatened. People clung to roofs and statues and the tops of shade trees to escape the raging waters.

At last, part of the western wall of the city had given way, allowing the flood to spill out into the sea. Things could have been worse. Had Rhodes been a city largely built of mud brick like Athens, many more houses would have collapsed and many more people on rooftops would have drowned. Even as it was, though, more than five hundred perished.

“Is it really nine years since that happened?” Menedemos asked. “It doesn’t seem so long ago.”

To his surprise, his father laughed. “Well, son, maybe you’re turning into a man after all,” Philodemos said. “That’s one of the signs: when all that’s past starts squeezing together in your memory. You were born half a lifetime ago for me, but there are times when it feels like just a couple of years.” He tossed his head in slow wonder. “By the dog, there are times when it feels like just a couple of months ago.”

“Not to me,” Menedemos said. From his own perspective, his life was very long indeed-what, for a man, could seem longer? If twenty-eight years didn’t equal eternity, what did? And yet somehow, as his father said, the nine years since the great flood had compressed into what felt like not much time at all. As he got older, would twenty-eight years crumple the same way? He didn’t think it was likely, but he wasn’t quite ready to call it impossible, either.

His father took a meditative sip of wine. “Time’s a funny business. Now, if the philosophers wanted to do something useful instead of just standing around listening to each other’s fancy talk, they’d figure out how things like that worked. But don’t hold your breath. It isn’t likely.”

“Sostratos went back to the Lykeion in Athens,” Menedemos remarked.

“Did he?” Philodemos said. “What did he think?”

“His time stretched instead of shrinking-he found he didn’t belong there anymore,” Menedemos answered. “He sold the philosophers papyrus and ink at an outrageous price and made ‘em pay it.”

That made Philodemos grin in approval unalloyed. “Good for him!” he exclaimed. “I can’t think of a surer way to prove you’ve beaten your past.”

Menedemos didn’t know whether his cousin had beaten his past or simply moved away from it. He didn’t think Sostratos was sure, either. Again, though, he saw no point to contradicting his father. He asked, “How are things here inside the house? Are your wife and Sikon still quarreling whenever you turn your back?”

“Things aren’t perfect there,” Philodemos answered. “Baukis will still give the cook a hard time every now and then. And I’m sure Sikon sometimes buys fancy, expensive fish just to spite her. But they do get on better than they did. They aren’t at war all the time, and they don’t fight so hard when they do lock horns.” By the relief in his voice, he was thoroughly glad of that, too.

So was Menedemos, who said, “Good. I always hated getting stuck in the middle when they started shouting at each other. And they’d both get offended when I didn’t take their side.”

“Oh, yes!” Philodemos dipped his head. “That’s happened to me, too. Hasn’t been so bad lately, though, gods be praised.”

“Good,” Menedemos repeated, and meant it. He asked his father no more about Baukis. Even though they lived in the same house, too much curiosity about the older man’s wife would have been unseemly. It might also have roused Philodemos’ suspicions, and that was the last thing Menedemos wanted.

One of the first things he wanted was Baukis. He’d known as much for years. He hadn’t done anything about it, no matter how much he wanted her-in fact, precisely because he wanted her so much. He hadn’t, and hoped he wouldn’t. He’d been fighting this lonely, silent battle ever since the knowledge of his desire first flowered in him. And I’ll win, too.

It would have been easier-it would have been much easier-to be confident of that, and, indeed, to want to win, if he hadn’t begun to realize Baukis wanted him, too. He gulped down his wine, not that wine would help.

Sostratos felt as if he’d been riding this miserable donkey forever. In point of fact, he hadn’t set out from the city of Rhodes more than a couple of hours earlier. He’d left around noon, and the sun wasn’t even halfway down the southwestern sky. His brain was sure of the time. His backside and his inner thighs would have argued differently.

He’d probably come about eighty stadia, heading south and west. He’d passed through Ialysos not long before. Along with Lindos and Kameiros, Ialysos had been one of the three main settlements on the island of Rhodes before they joined together to build the polis of Rhodes. Ialysos never had been a polis, not in the proper sense of the word. It wasn’t a city, but a community of villages with a well-sited fortress on the nearby high ground. All those villages had shrunk in the hundred years since the polis of Rhodes became the most important place in the northern part of the island-indeed, the most important place on the island as a whole. But they persisted, like an old, decrepit olive tree that kept sending out green shoots whenever the life-giving rains came.

Ahead, the ground rose toward steep hills and then, farther southwest, toward Mount Atabyrion, the highest peak on Rhodes. Damonax’s farm and olive groves-about whose products Sostratos knew more than he’d ever wanted to-lay near the lower edge of the steeply rising ground. It was good country for olives: not so near the coast that flies ruined the crop, but not high enough to let cooler weather damage it, either.

Before Sostratos got to Damonax’s farm, he was glad he’d decided to hire the donkey instead of walking. It wasn’t so much that he’d shifted the pain from his feet to his hindquarters. But when a farm dog came rushing up, yapping and growling, the donkey lashed out with a clever hoof and knocked the dog sprawling. When it got up again, it retreated even more rapidly than it had advanced. Its yelps were music to Sostratos’ ears.

“What a good fellow!” he exclaimed, and patted the donkey’s neck. He didn’t think that meant much to the beast. Getting off and letting it crop the lush green grass by the side of a creek counted for more.

A couple of pigs with ridges of hair down their backs nosed through garbage by Damonax’s farmhouse. A nanny goat tied to a tree had nibbled the grass around it down to the ground and had stood on her hind legs to devour all the shoots and tender twigs she could reach. Chickens scratched and clucked between the farmhouse and the barn.

Out of the barn came a middle-aged, sun-browned man in a short chiton and stout sandals. He scratched at his shaggy beard-a beard worn not in defiance of fashion like Sostratos’ but seemingly in ignorance of it-and crushed something between his thumbnails. Only after he’d wiped his hand on his tunic did he call, “If you’ve come to pick olives, you’re still a few days early, and you know you’re supposed to bring your own pole to knock the fruit off the trees.”

Sostratos’ gaze went to the olive grove. Sure enough, the olives were ripening on the branches, getting darker and fuller of oil. He turned back toward the overseer. “I’m not here for the olive harvest. I’m Sostratos son of Lysistratos, Damonax’s brother-in-law. You must be Anthebas.”

“That’s me, young sir. Hail, and pleased to make your acquaintance,” Anthebas answered. “I beg your pardon for not knowing you by sight. I was, uh, expecting someone grander.” He dug the toe of one of those sandals into the dirt to show his embarrassment.

Someone better groomed and all perfumed, he means-someone like his boss, Sostratos thought without much anger. Sliding down off the donkey, he let out a sigh of relief and rubbed at his hams. Anthebas sent him a chuckle and a sympathetic smile. Sostratos said, “Damonax and my sister and their son are here?” That was what the slaves had said back in Rhodes. If they’d been wrong, or perhaps lied for the sport of it, his fundament would get even sorer on the way back.

But Anthebas dipped his head. He pointed to the farmhouse. “Oh, yes, sir. They’re in there. Would you like me to take care of your donkey?”

“If you’d be so kind.” Sostratos went over to the door and knocked on it.

He’d wondered if his brother-in-law would let him in himself. But Damonax didn’t carry rusticity so far. One of his slaves, a man Sostratos had seen in Rhodes, did the honors. Unlike Anthebas, who spent all his time out here, this fellow recognized the new arrival. Bowing slightly, he said, “Hail, O best one. Welcome, in my master’s name. Please come in.”

“Thank you, Atys,” Sostratos said, and the Lydian slave beamed as he stood aside, proud to have his own name remembered.

Though Sostratos didn’t say so, the farmhouse struck him as cramped and dark, especially compared to the fine home where Damonax lived while staying in the city. It was simply one room after another to form a square; it wasn’t built around a courtyard as all city houses above the level of shanty were. That contributed to the gloom, for the only light in the rooms came through the windows, which were small and partly covered by shutters. Sostratos wondered why anyone would choose to live in such an uncomfortable place when he didn’t have to.

“Hail, most noble one!” There was Damonax, handsome and elegantly turned out as always. “Good to see you.” He stuck out his hand.

Sostratos clasped it. Damonax’s grip said he was holding back strength. Sostratos hoped his said he didn’t care about such petty games. “How’s your son?” he asked. “How’s my sister?” He could ask that, where inquiring after Damonax’s wife would have been rude.

“They’re both very well, thank you,” Damonax replied. “Polydoros seems a very healthy little boy, for which the gods be praised.” He was a man of no great piety-which didn’t bother Sostratos, who wasn’t, either-but spoke with the air of someone taking no chances. Since so many children didn’t live to grow up, Sostratos couldn’t blame him.

A wail from another room declared something had happened that the very healthy little boy didn’t care for. “How do you get used to living with all the noise a baby makes?” Sostratos asked with genuine curiosity.

“It was hard at first, when he cried so often,” Damonax said. “Now, though, his mother or a slave takes care of it, and it doesn’t bother me too much.”

That hardly seemed fair to Erinna. On the other hand, if caring for a baby wasn’t woman’s work, what was? Sostratos muttered to himself, caught between loyalty to his sister and expectations about the way things were supposed to work.

Damonax asked, “And how did you find Athens?”

“Oh, you sail north and west from Cape Sounion, and there it is,” Sostratos answered blandly. His brother-in-law stared, then let out an undignified snort. Sostratos went on, “Seriously, it could be better. You’ll have heard that Demetrios son of Antigonos drove out Demctrios of Phaleron?”

“Oh, yes, and restored the Athenians’ old democratic constitution, and knocked the fortress of Mounykhia flat. That all sounds promising.”

“I suppose it would. But have you heard how the Athenians paid him back for liberating them?” Sostratos asked. Damonax tossed his head. As Menedemos had with his father, Sostratos told him, finishing, “You see.”

“Oh,” Damonax said, and then, as if conscious that wasn’t enough, “Oh, dear. I’d… hoped for better from them.” If that wasn’t an expression of philosophical restraint, Sostratos had never heard one. Damonax asked, “Did you get out to the Lykeion?”

“Yes.” Sostratos hoped the one-word answer would keep Damonax from asking any more questions about that.

No such luck. His brother-in-law inquired, “And how’s old Theophrastos?”

“He doesn’t seem to have changed much from when I studied there,” Sostratos replied truthfully. “He remembered me.” He could say that with more than a little pride.

“Good. Good.” Damonax set a possibly friendly hand on his shoulder. “And what did he think of your… going into commerce?”

To the crows with you, my dear, Sostratos thought, shaking off the hand. If I weren’t in commerce, if my family didn’t make a good living from it, you wouldn’t have been able to use Erinna’s dowry and the money we made from your oil last year to pay off the debts on this land. The way you talk, though, I might have been keeping a brothel full of pretty boys.

He caught himself before any of that passed the gate of his teeth. He didn’t want to quarrel with Damonax (though he had to remind himself he didn’t): not only would it ruin this visit to the farm, but it also might make life harder and less pleasant for Erinna. That being so, he smiled back and answered, “He said he understood it was necessary for me to help support my family.” Now, with a certain malice, he set his hand on Damonax’s shoulder, as if to say his brother-in-law was part of the family he supported.

“Er-yes.” Damonax’s smile went fixed. He took the point-took it and didn’t care for it. Sostratos had hoped he wouldn’t. Damonax changed the subject in a hurry: “Let me show you to your room.”

That was unexceptionable. Sostratos dipped his head and followed his brother-in-law. The chamber was small and cramped, with barely enough room for a bed. It did boast a south-facing window, though, which made it lighter than most of the house. Through the window, Sostratos could look out at some of the olive trees on the farm. Indeed, narrow, silver-green leaves from one of the closest trees would probably blow into the room when the wind came from the south.

“Very nice, best one. Thank you.” Again, Sostratos remembered he didn’t want to quarrel with Damonax. He might have, if he didn’t fear locking horns with him would cause trouble for his sister. Since he did, he tried to walk soft.

His brother-in-law also took a moment and visibly composed himself before saying, “If you like, you can rest here before supper, and I’ll have a slave wake you if you’re not up by then.”

Now Sostratos’ smile was broad and genuine. “By the dog, I’ll take you up on that. One of the nuisances of life aboard ship is that you can never grab a nap in the afternoon. After a while, you get used to going without it, but I like one when I have the chance.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Damonax slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him. Sostratos used the chamber pot under the bed, then lay down. The mattress was thinner and lumpier than the one back home, but far softer than the Aphrodites planking. And travel had taught him to sleep nearly anywhere. He dozed off almost as soon as he closed his eyes.

Next thing he knew, someone was knocking on the door and saying, “Supper is ready, most noble one,” in accented Greek.

The noise went on till Sostratos said, “I’m up. I’ll be there in a moment.” He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair and beard. He knew he wouldn’t be so elegant as Damonax come what may. That being so, he didn’t try too hard.

Because he was Erinna’s brother, she and the baby dined with him and Damonax. “Good to see you, my dear,” he told her. “And my goodness, but Polydoros is getting big.” His nephew rewarded him with a smile wide enough to show top and bottom teeth.

“He’s a good boy.” Erinna smiled, too. She looked tired. Even though Damonax’s slaves did a lot of the work of raising Polydoros, a mother had to do quite a bit, too, and it told on her.

“Here’s the sitos,” Damonax said as a slave carried in snowy-white barley rolls and olive oil in which to dip them. Proudly, he added, “All of it grown right here on the farm.”

“That’s good,” Sostratos said. Then he tried one of the rolls, still warm from the oven. “Mm! That’s very good.”

“I’m so glad you like the oil.” Damonax’s voice had an edge to it.

“My dear, I never said I didn’t like it. I merely said the Aphrodite wasn’t the right ship to carry it, and Athens wasn’t the right place to take it.”

Erinna said, “Let’s enjoy the supper, shall we, and not squabble over it?” Both her brother and her husband dipped their heads.

Cheese and olives appeared for opson. They too were products of the farm. Sostratos wondered if they would be all the opson there was. That would make a rustic supper, all right-more rustic than he really cared for. But then a slave brought in a ham on an earthenware platter; the platter, ironically, was decorated with pictures of fish, a far more common fancy opson.

Damonax did the honors with a carving knife not much smaller than a hoplite’s shortsword. He hacked off a generous chunk close to the shinbone that stuck out from the meat and gave it to Sostratos. “We raised the pig here, too,” he declared, “and smoke the meat with our own wood.”

“It’s delicious,” Sostratos said after he took a bite. “Do you eat meat here as often as you’d eat fish in town?”

“Not quite,” Damonax answered, at the same time as Erinna said, “No.” He sent her a hard look. She flushed and stared down at the ground. He’d wanted to give Sostratos the impression of greater abundance than he really had, and she’d spoiled it for him. It’s your fault, not hers, Sostratos thought. She just told the truth.

The wine that went with dinner was severely ordinary. Sostratos praised it anyway, asking, “Is this also from the farm?”

“It certainly is,” Damonax answered; as Sostratos had hoped, the question put him in a better humor. “As a matter of fact, I crushed some of the grapes myself.”

Had Menedemos said something like that, Sostratos would have made a crack about being able to taste his feet. But his brother-in-law didn’t take gibes like that in stride, and so he refrained. No matter how angry I get at Menedemos, there’s no denying he can laugh at himself. Damonax? No.

“So you’ll want to visit the Valley of the Butterflies tomorrow?” Damonax asked.

“If it’s not inconvenient, yes,” Sostratos answered. “I’ve heard of it since I was small, of course, but I’ve never had the chance to see it.”

“We’ll go, then,” Damonax said. “It’s not inconvenient. I told you I’d show it to you if you came out here. You’re back from Athens a little sooner than I thought you would be, so I’m sure they’ll still be there.”

“Good.” Sostratos manufactured a yawn to show he was tired and didn’t much feel like talking. “I look forward to it.”

Damonax dipped his head. Something in Erinna’s eyes glinted. His sister knew him too well, and knew he wasn’t so tired as all that. She didn’t give him away, though. When Damonax went out of the room to tell a slave to bring in lamps, Sostratos grinned at her. Erinna smiled back.

“Is everything all right?” Sostratos asked her in a low voice.

“Everything is fine,” she answered. “I’ve had a son, and I haven’t caused any scandal. How could things be better?”

Did she sound bitter, or just matter-of-fact? Sostratos couldn’t tell, and didn’t dare ask. He’d never worried about how Hellenes treated women. He still didn’t, not in any general way. But he worried a lot about how Damonax treated Erinna.

His brother-in-law came back. The slave followed a couple of minutes later. The lamps he set out fought the gloom without vanquishing it. As twilight deepened, their small yellow pools of radiance seemed weaker and more fragile by the moment. Sostratos yawned again, this time in earnest.

“You must be tired,” his sister said-she could take a hint, even if Damonax seemed to have trouble.

“A bit,” Sostratos admitted. “The nap helped less than I’d have liked.” A slave with a lamp led him to his room. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep right away, but there wasn’t much else to do. He hadn’t brought a book, and reading by lamplight was an unsatisfactory business anyhow. He stretched out on the bed and looked up at the beams of the ceiling. A little gecko with sticky feet scurried along upside down, on the prowl for moths and mosquitoes and spiders.

The next thing Sostratos knew, the room was dark except for a thin, pale strip of moonlight slanting in through the window. The smell of hot oil still lingering in the air said the lamp hadn’t gone dry long before. Yawning, Sostratos reached under the bed and pulled out the pot. After easing himself, he lay down again. He watched the moonlight creep across the floor for a little while. Then sleep claimed him once more.

He woke with the morning sky going from deep blue toward predawn gray: early, but not impossibly so. Noises from the rest of the house said he wasn’t the first one up. From the days when he was a boy and Erinna a baby, he remembered that infants woke up whenever they wanted to, not when anyone else wanted them to.

Sure enough, when he made his way to the dining room, he found a slave woman there feeding Polydoros bits of barley roll and heavily watered wine. A lot of the wine dribbled down the baby’s chin. “Hail, sir,” the woman said. “I hope he didn’t bother you.” If Polydoros had bothered Sostratos, she might get in trouble.

But he tossed his head. “No, I woke up on my own. Can you bring me some rolls and oil and wine for my breakfast, or tell me where to get them for myself? “

“I’ll get them for you, sir,” the slave said. “Will you make sure he doesn’t wiggle off this chair while I’m gone?”

“Of course.” Sostratos stuck out his tongue at his nephew. The baby’s eyes widened. He gurgled laughter-and then he stuck out his tongue, too.

Sostratos was halfway through his breakfast when Damonax came in. “Hail,” his brother-in-law said. “Ready for an early start, are you?”

“I’d rather travel in the morning than in the heat of the day,” Sostratos answered. “Will we go by donkeyback or walk?”

“I was planning to walk.” Damonax eyed Sostratos’ feet. “Do you want to borrow a pair of shoes? Mine might fit you, or Anthebas’ if they don’t.”

“Kind of you, best one, but don’t put yourself to the trouble,” Sostratos said. “I’ve spent too much time at sea, and fallen into the habit of staying barefoot wherever I go.”

Damonax shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a breakfast much like Sostratos’. He ate quickly, so he finished not long after his guest. Rubbing crumbs off his hands, he said, “Shall we be off, then?”

“Lead the way. I’ll stay with you.”

When Sostratos went outside with Damonax, he saw the sun shining to the north. Damonax’s farm remained shadowed a little while longer, for the mountain to the east shielded it from sunrise. Damonax set a brisk pace, heading up toward the peak. He seemed surprised when Sostratos had no trouble keeping up with him. “Your feet really don’t trouble you,” he blurted.

“No, not at all.” Sostratos tried to hold amusement out of his voice. “I can’t recall the last time I wore shoes, and my soles are hard as leather. I’d say we could race, but you know where you’re going and I don’t. Even if I knew, you’d probably win; I’ve never been a fast runner.”

Damonax cocked his head to one side, plainly having trouble believing that. “But didn’t you fall just short of going to the Olympic Games a few years ago?”

“Me?” Sostratos laughed at the absurdity of the notion. Then he snapped his fingers. “1 know why you think so. That wasn’t me-that was Menedemos.”

“So you say.” Damonax kept waiting for him to start to sprint, or to offer a bet about which of them could run faster, or something of the sort. Only when Sostratos just kept placidly ambling along did it seem to occur to his brother-in-law that he might be telling the truth.

Several streams from the mountains ran down toward the sea. Most of them dried out in summer, leaving their beds nothing but rock-strewn gullies. One, though, kept a trickle of water even at the driest season of the year. A hare bounded away as Sostratos and Damonax came up.

Pointing upstream, Sostratos asked, “Does a spring feed this river?”

“That’s right.” Damonax dipped his head. “We follow it now, until we get to the Valley of the Butterflies.”

They flushed another hare a few minutes later. Damonax sighed, perhaps wishing he had dogs along so he could hunt. A mouse skittered into the bushes. A hedgehog rolled itself into a ball. A lizard on a boulder by the stream stared at the Rhodians out of beady black eyes. It stuck out its tongue, as if in derision.

After a while, Damonax stooped and dipped some water from the stream with his hand. “Warm work,” he remarked.

“Yes.” Sostratos drank a little water, too, and splashed some on his face. It felt good.

They went on. The stream bent a little more toward the north. “There!” Damonax said. “You see those treetops? The trees themselves are growing down in the valley, or you’d be able to spy the rest of them. We’re almost there.’

The Valley of the Butterflies was long and narrow. Sostratos wondered how long the stream had taken to carve it from the hard gray stone. Branches from the trees on either side met above the gurgling stream, shading and cooling the valley. Sostratos sniffed. A faint, almost familiar spicy smell filled his nostrils. “What is that?” he asked, sniffing again.

“Styrax,” Damonax answered. “They make incense from the gum. The butterflies seem to like the fragrance, too.”

“The butterflies…” As Sostratos’ eyes got used to the shade, he saw them, and let out a soft, marveling sigh. They were everywhere in the valley: on the rocks, and covering the trunks and branches of the trees. Their favorite spot seemed to be a big, mossy rock next to a little waterfall at the far end of the valley. Mist swirled around them; perhaps they especially liked the moisture there. “How marvelous!” Sostratos exclaimed. “Thank you so much for bringing me here!”

“My pleasure,” Damonax said, as if he’d created the valley for Sostratos’ benefit.

Sostratos reached out and delicately plucked an insect from a branch. Its body was about as long as the last joint of his thumb, though far thinner. Its upper wings were brown, almost black, and streaked with yellow. When it fluttered for a moment, lackadaisically trying to escape, it revealed lower wings of a rich crimson with a few dark spots. Then it seemed to resign itself to disaster and sat quiet in his hand.

After examining it a little longer, Sostratos turned to Damonax. “I’m sorry, best one, but this isn’t a butterfly.”

“No?” His brother-in-law raised both eyebrows. “What would you call it, then? A stingray? An olive, maybe?”

Though Sostratos smiled at the sarcasm, he answered, “A moth.”

“By the dog, what’s the difference?”

“Ah. Theophrastos must have skipped that lecture while you were at the Lykeion. Butterflies rest with their wings up over their backs, while moths let them lie flat-as this one does. And butterflies have slim, clublike antennae, while moths have thick, hairy ones-like these. If it has the characteristics of a moth, what else can it be?”

“Nothing else, I suppose,” Damonax replied. “But would you have wanted to come here if I’d invited you to see the Valley of the Moths?”

“Me? Probably. I’m curious about such things. Most people would stay away, though, I admit.” Sostratos put the moth back where he’d got it. It wriggled in among the others, then held still. He asked, “How is it that the birds don’t come here and feed till they burst?”

“That I can tell you, for I’ve seen birds take these butterflies- moths, I mean.” Damonax corrected himself before Sostratos could. “They take them, yes, but they don’t swallow them. The… moths must taste nasty.”

“How interesting!” Sostratos said. “And so they stay here undisturbed all through the summer? “

Damonax dipped his head. “That’s right. When the rains come in the fall, they mate-some of them even fall in the stream while they’re coupling-and then they fly away, so you might see them all over the island. But when things dry up in spring, here they are again.”

“And why not?” Sostratos gazed around the valley in awe tempered by affection. “After all, they’re Rhodians, too.”

Menedemos watched his father go over the accounts Sostratos had kept during their journey to Athens. “Almost a pity to take the rowers along,” Philodemos remarked. “Their pay ate up a good chunk of profit. If you’d gone in a round ship instead-”

“We wouldn’t have got there till later,” Menedemos said. “As things were, we had the market in our goods to ourselves for quite a while. Who knows how it would have gone if we’d come in second? And we’d surely have had to carry Damonax’s olive oil then.”

“I suppose so.” But Philodemos still sounded unhappy. He had other reasons to sound that way, too: “I wish your cousin would write larger. When you have to read at arm’s length the way I do, these little squiggles drive you mad.”

“Sorry, Father, but I can’t do anything about that now,” Menedemos said.

A slave came into the andron. “Excuse me, sir, but a man is here to see you…” Philodemos started to get to his feet. The slave said, “No, sir. To see the young master.”

“Me?” Menedemos said in surprise.

“Some husband catch you going after his wife?” his father asked. I hope not, Menedemos thought. Before he could say the words or so much as toss his head, Philodemos told the slave, “Bring this fellow here. I want to see this for myself.” Menedemos couldn’t even contradict the order. Miserably, he watched the slave hurry back to the entry hall.

When the caller appeared, though, his heart took wing with relief. “That’s Admiral Eudemos!” he said, adding, “And in case you’re wondering, I haven’t had anything to do with his wife.” His father only grunted.

Eudemos was in his mid- to late forties, burned walnut-brown by the sun, with a gray beard, a beaky nose, and hard eyes that seemed to see everything at once. “Hail, Philodemos,” he said as he strode into the andron. “Need to talk to your son for a minute. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Nothing that won’t keep, most noble one.” Philodemos could be polite; he just didn’t bother while talking to Menedemos.

“Good.” Eudemos turned to the younger man. “So you’re back from Athens a little sooner than you thought you’d be.”

“That’s right, sir,” Menedemos said, wondering why the admiral cared.

Eudemos was not the sort to keep a man hanging. With a brisk dip of the head, he said, “How would you like to take the Dikaiosyne out on a sweep after pirates? Seems a shame you weren’t her first skipper, seeing as you were the one who came up with the idea for the class, but I know you’ve got to make a living. Still, anyone who can captain a merchant galley can captain a war galley, too, and anyone who can captain a merchant galley should captain a war galley, too. The more people who know how to do that, the better off the polis is. What do you say?”

“When does she sail?” Menedemos blurted. He wanted to burst with pride. He turned to see how his father responded: here was the Rhodian admiral acclaiming him not only as a seaman but also for inventing the trihemiolia. Philodemos, though, might have been carved from stone. Menedemos sighed quietly. He didn’t suppose he should have expected anything different.

“Tomorrow at sunrise,” Eudemos said. “You’ll be there?”

“Yes, O best one. I’ll be there,” Menedemos said.

“Good. Farewell, then. Nice to see you, Philodemos.” The admiral turned and left. Like any seafaring man, he went barefoot and wore only a chiton, though his was of very fine white wool.

“They want you to skipper one of those newfangled war galleys, do they?” Philodemos said.

“Yes, Father.”

“Not bad.” From the older man, that was the highest praise Menedemos got. “I was about your age when I first captained a trireme for the city. It’s getting close to the end of the sailing season. I hope you have good luck catching pirates, and give them what they deserve.” On that subject, Philodemos’ views coincided perfectly with those of his son.

“I’ve fought them off in the akatos,” Menedemos said. “Now I’ll have the edge.”

He woke while it was still dark. He’d been sure he would. The only question in his mind had been whether he would sleep at all, or whether excitement would keep him up all night. But excitement had faded after he lay in darkness for a while. Now he ran his fingers through his hair-no time to scrape whiskers from his chin-and hurried to the kitchen to snag a chunk of bread to eat on his way down to the naval harbor.

He was heading out to the front door when someone behind him called, “Farewell, Menedemos.”

That voice stopped him in his tracks. “Thank you, Baukis. What are you doing up so early?”

“I wanted to say goodbye to you,” Philodemos’ wife answered. After a moment, she added, “Your father is very proud of you, you know.”

“Is he?” Menedemos said tonelessly. To his way of thinking, a grudging not bad didn’t translate into anything approaching great pride.

But Baukis dipped her head. “Yes,” she said. “And so am I.” She took a couple of steps toward him, then stopped nervously and looked around to make sure no slaves were awake to hear and see the two of them.

Menedemos understood those jitters. He had them himself. “I’d better go,” he said, and did. But he might have been wing-footed Hermes as he made his way down through the night-silent streets of Rhodes toward the naval harbor. He didn’t think his feet touched the hard-packed dirt at all. Baukis was proud of him! She’d said so! Each bite of rather stale bread suddenly seemed ambrosial. Yes, love was a disease, of course it was, but oh! what a sweet one!

Actually, the streets of Rhodes weren’t so very silent after all. Though morning’s gray light was just coming into the eastern sky, the sounds of drunken song floated up from the direction of the temple of Apollo in the southwest. Those were surely symposiasts reeling home after a night-a long night-of debauchery. Menedemos smiled and chuckled. He’d come home at this hour once or twice, and roused the whole household with his songs. He laughed again, remembering how splutteringly furious his father had been.

A night watchman with a torch patrolled the naval harbor. “Excuse me, O best one, but which shipshed houses the Dikaiosyne?” Menedemos asked.

“Who wants to know?” the watchman asked. Menedemos smelled wine on his breath, too, though he hadn’t passed the night in revelry.

“I’m Menedemos son of Philodemos, and I’m her captain this trip out.” The pride he’d felt when Eudemos named him captain rang in his voice.

The night watchman pointed to one of the sheds on the western side of the harbor. Those were the narrow buildings that housed triremes and now trihemioliai as well. The shipsheds on the southern side of the harbor were broader, to accommodate fives and other bigger, beamier war galleys. A galley with dry timbers was lighter and therefore faster than a waterlogged ship, and so the naval vessels spent as much time as possible dragged up out of the sea and into the sheds.

Three or four men carrying oars and pillows made their way toward that shed without bothering to ask the watchman. Menedemos trotted after the rowers. He didn’t have to be the first one there, but he wanted to get there ahead of most of the crew.

He got his wish. Only a couple of dozen men had boarded the Dikaiosyne. That would have been a big part of the Aphrodite’s complement, but was only a fraction of the trihemiolia’s. Like a trireme, she carried 170 rowers plus a squad of marines, although her oarsmen in the rear part of the thalamite bank would join the marine contingent once their benches were stowed.

A burly man with a bald pate came up to Menedemos. “You’re going to be the captain on this run?” he asked. When Menedemos dipped his head, the bald man went on, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Philokrates son of Timokrates, and I’m your keleustes. Is it true you were the one who had the idea for this class of ship?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Menedemos answered.

Philokrates stuck out his hand. Menedemos clasped it. The oarmaster said, “Some god must have put the notion into your head, for she’s smooth and sweet as piggy.” His grin showed a missing front tooth. Menedemos smiled back; Philokrates reminded him of Diokles. The older man asked, “You ever skipper anything this big before?”

“No. The past few years I’ve captained the Aphrodite : twenty oars on a side.”

“Oh, sure. I know her.” Philokrates banged himself on the side of the head with the heel of his hand, annoyed at forgetting. “Well, all right. Big difference between this ship and that one is that not everybody on the Dikaiosyne may hear you when you yell-she’s too big, and a lot of her rowers are down below. We’ll use pipes and drums to set the stroke, and you’ll want to rely on your mates to pass orders. Remember ‘em and count on ‘em. They’re both good men.”

Menedemos met them moments later. Xenagoras was tall and thin, with a broken nose. Menedemos turned out to know the second mate, Nikandros, already: they’d run against each other, Menedemos usually having the better of it.

By then, the rowers crowded the shipshed and spilled out onto the walkway on either side. Real dawn had come. Before long, the rising sun would shine into the mouth of the shed. Philokrates said, “Looks like we’re ready.” Menedemos dipped his head. The oarmaster waited, then snapped his fingers. “That’s right-you haven’t done this before. The command you give is, ‘Take her down!’“

“Take her down!” Menedemos shouted, and waited to see what happened next.

With a roar, the rowers and marines pushed the Dikaiosyne down the sloping ramp of the shipshed and into the water. The Aphrodite’s crew had trouble manhandling her. The swarm of sailors on the trihemiolia made it seem easy. Down the way she went, into the water of the naval harbor. They scrambled aboard her. The mates, the keleustes, and Menedemos were not behindhand.

The Dikaiosyne had a higher freeboard than the merchant galley. Standing at the stern, steering-oar tillers in hand, Menedemos felt able to see as far as a god. “You’ll handle her yourself?” Philokrates asked.

“Yes, by the dog,” Menedemos answered. “1 want to find out how she feels. I’m not some gilded popinjay-I know how to steer.”

“All right. Let’s go, then.” Philokrates beat out the stroke. The rowers began to pull. The Dikaiosyne glided across the harbor toward the outlet in the north.

A fresh breeze in his face, Menedemos grinned enormously. He felt like a man who’d been riding donkeys all his life and suddenly found himself on the back of a Nisaian charger. This ship moved. She was made for speed, and delivered it.

Once they cleared the mouth of the harbor, he swung the trihemiolia east, intending to cruise along the Karian coast looking for pirates-or for ships that could be pirates. “This is the first time I’ve skippered one of these patrols,” he said to Philokrates. “What are the rules if we spy a pentekonter or a hemiolia going along minding her own business?”

“About what you’d expect,” the oarmaster replied. “We go up to her, we question her crew, and we sink her if we don’t like the answers we get. A captain or an owner who thinks we made a mistake can complain to the Rhodian government.”

“If he hasn’t drowned, of course,” Menedemos said.

Philokrates dipped his head. “Well, yes. There is that.”

Right away, Menedemos noticed one difference between the Aphrodite and the Dikaiosyne. Fishing boats and round ships fought shy of the akatos, fearing she might be a pirate ship. But sailors of all sorts waved toward the trihemiolia. A three-banked oar-powered ship had to be a war galley, a hound dedicated to hunting down the wolves of the sea.

“You don’t want to get too close to land and let the wide-arsed catamites playing watchman for the pirate crews get a good look at you,” Philokrates said.

“I understand,” Menedemos answered. “You know what, O best one? It might be fun to send a round ship or a merchant galley close enough to the coast to be easy to spot, with the Dikaiosyne out far enough to see the decoy, but too far out to be seen from shore. Then, when the pirates come out for the nearer ship, this one could dash in and swoop down on them.”

The oarmaster contemplated the scheme. A slow grin spread over his leathery features. “Fun, you say, do you? By Poseidon ’s trident, I like your notion of fun. You ought to talk with Admiral Eudemos when we get back to Rhodes. He’s the one who’d have to give the orders to bring off something like that. Don’t forget, now, because I think it could work.”

“I won’t forget,” Menedemos said. “Even if I did, you could tell the admiral.”

“You thought of it. You deserve the credit,” Philokrates said, which went a long way toward making him a friend for life. He added, “You are a clever fellow, aren’t you? First the notion for this class of ship, and now a pretty trap? Not bad. Not bad at all.”

Menedemos was much more used to hearing Sostratos called clever than to having the word applied to him. He almost denied it-almost, but not quite. He had thought of trihemioliai, and he had come up with the decoying scheme. He would have praised anyone else who’d done such things. Didn’t it follow that he deserved praise, too? He liked it as much as anybody else: more than some people he could think of. His father was sparing of praise, but that didn’t mean other people had to be.

With its countless headlands and little bays and streams running down from the hills into the Aegean, the Karian coastline was a pirate’s ream. It offered myriads of places to wait in ambush till a tempting target sailed by. A quick dash, and the victim was caught. It offered even more places to hide a pirate ship against the prying eyes of the Rhodians. Menedemos knew patrols like this didn’t, couldn’t, stop piracy altogether. But making it difficult, dangerous, and expensive was worth doing.

“Ship ho off the port bow!” the lookout bawled.

Menedemos swung the trihemiolia to the north. He told Philokrates, “Up the stroke, if you please. Let’s see what she can do if the men put their backs into it.”

The keleustes dipped his head. “Right you are, skipper.” The tempo of the drumbeats he gave the rowers picked up. “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” he shouted, using his voice to emphasize the change. The piper matched his piercing note to the one Philokrates played on the drum.

And how the Dikaiosyne responded! The galley seemed to bound across the Aegean toward the other ship. And that other ship didn’t hang around waiting to be questioned. She turned and fled toward the shore as fast as she could go. “Pentekonter!” the lookout said. “Probably full of cutthroats right to the gunwales.”

“Not full enough, by the gods,” Philokrates said. “No pentekonter ever made could outrun this ship. We outrun triremes. We run down hemioliai, by Zeus! A pentekonter? This for a stinking pentekonter!” He spat on the deck.

Sure enough, the Dikaiosyne ate up the distance between the two ships, plethron by plethron, stadion by stadion. But the Karian coast also drew closer with every surge from the oars. “Marine archers forward!” Menedemos shouted. When they didn’t seem to hear him, he sent Xenagoras up to them, adding, “Tell ‘em to shoot as fast as they can. The more rowers we hurt, the better our chance of catching them before they can beach.”

Philokrates grinned. “You know your business. A lot of first-time skippers, you have to hold their hands and show ‘em what to do. Not you.”

“You and the mates know this ship better than I do,” Menedemos answered. “But I’ve fought pirates before, too. Then they had more men and faster ships than I did. I’ve got the edge now, and it feels good-you’d best believe it does.”

As the marine archers hurried forward, they put the trihemiolia down by the bow and slowed her just a touch. Menedemos ordered other men back toward the stern, restoring her trim. The archers began to shoot.

A couple of pirates went to the pentekonter’s stern to shoot back, but her poop deck was even smaller and more crowded than, say, the Aphrodites; it would hold no more. One of the bowmen on the pirate ship reeled back, clutching at his chest, as a shaft from the Dikaiosyne went home. Another man took his place. Then a rower on the pentekonter took an arrow in the shoulder and fouled the man in front of him. Again, another pirate pulled him away, but the pentekonter needed some little while to straighten out her stroke.

Even so, the pirate ship made the beach. Menedemos had known she would. She rode half her length up onto the soft, golden sand. Rowers jumped off her and ran inland as fast as they could. “Do you want to go after them?” Nikandros asked. “We’ve got a lot more men. We could catch some of the rogues.”

Menedemos had had time to think about that on the chase. Regretfully, he tossed his head and told the mate, “No. No telling how many pals the abandoned villains have back in the hills. We’ll burn their ship. That’ll put them out of business for a while.”

Burn her they did. And the pentekonter made such a pyre, it was plain her timbers had been kept dry as carefully as a war galley’s. Black smoke rose high into the sky. “Good riddance,” Philokrates said. “Pity they weren’t all in her.”

“Oh, yes.” Menedemos dipped his head. “But let’s keep pushing east a little while longer now.”

Before answering, the oarmaster glanced toward the sun. Menedemos did the same. It was somewhere right around noon. Philokrates said, “If we go much farther east, most noble one, we won’t get back to Rhodes before sundown.”

“I know that,” Menedemos said. “But don’t you think pirate crews know it, too? Wouldn’t they be likely to base their ships out a little farther from Rhodes than our patrols usually go? They’d think they were likely to be safe. Maybe we can give them a surprise. And if we have to, we can find our way home by the stars or spend a night at sea. I’ve done it plenty of times in my akatos.”

“An akatos isn’t such a crowded ship as a trihemiolia,” Philokrates pointed out. That was true. The war galley was bigger than the Aphrodite , but she wasn’t four times as big, and she carried four times the crew-that was why she could go so fast. Menedemos wondered how real his command of the Dikaiosyne was: if he gave an order Philokrates didn’t fancy, would the keleustes and the crew obey him or ignore him? He didn’t find out here, for Philokrates grinned and said, “Let’s try it. You make a good point, and we’d have a lot to be proud of if we came back to Rhodes after we’d skinned a pair of pirates.”

The rowers dug in without a grumble. Catching and burning the pentekonter left them in a good mood. Catching pirates was why they went out on patrol in the first place, and Menedemos knew they didn’t score even one triumph every time out. Far from it. The oars rose and fell, rose and fell, in smooth unison. If Rhodians weren’t the best oarsmen around the Inner Sea, Menedemos had no idea who would be. So many of them made their living from the sea, they all had a good idea of what they were doing. From what Sostratos said, a hundred years before the same thing had been true in Athens. No more. If the Athenians ever built and tried to man the triremes for which Demetrios had said he would provide the timber, they’d have to pay foreigners to pull most of the oars. And a lot of the foreigners they paid would be Rhodians. Menedemos’ countrymen also served in every Macedonian marshal’s fleet.

By the time Menedemos ordered the Dikaiosyne to turn around, she was well into Lykian waters. He saw plenty of fishing boats and more than a few round ships, but none of the lean, vicious galleys he sought. He kicked at the timbers of the deck. He wanted that second pirate ship, wanted her bad enough to taste it. He wanted to show Admiral Eudemos and the rest of Rhodes ’ high naval officials that he could make something out of a command even if he wasn’t rich enough to serve aboard a war galley all through a sailing season. And commanding a trihemiolia, a type that had sprung from his imagination as Athena sprang from Zeus’ forehead, made this patrol all the sweeter.

But the gods gave what they chose to give, not what any mortal wanted. As the sun sank in the west, the Dikaiosyne glided back toward Rhodes. Menedemos kept looking over his right shoulder toward the rugged coast, hoping to spy a hemiolia, perhaps painted sea-green or sky-blue to make her harder to spot while on the prowl. But all he saw were golden sands rising swiftly to rugged, forested hills: perfect places for pirates to take refuge.

And then, only a couple of hundred stadia from Rhodes, the lookout cried, “Ship ho!”

Menedemos lifted a hand off the steering-oar tiller to wave to Philokrates to increase the stroke. The oarmaster waved back. The drum beat faster. The piper matched the rhythm. The rowers responded magnificently. They’d been at the oars all day, to push the Dikaiosyne out as far from Rhodes as they could. Menedemos would never have worked the crew of a merchant galley so hard, not without a pirate on his heels. But they upped the stroke when Philokrates ordered it. Menedemos showed his teeth in a fierce grin. He didn’t have a pirate on his heels this time. He was on the pirate’s heels now, or hoped he was.

That other ship certainly behaved like a pirate. When the crew spotted the trihemiolia, they didn’t stop and wait to be questioned. Instead, they sped north toward the Karian coast as fast as they could go. A long, creamy wake streamed out behind their ship-a hemiolia, for she had two banks of oars. She was fast-but the Dikaiosyne was faster.

Menedemos sneaked an anxious glance toward the sun. It was sinking fast, descending toward the sea that would quench its light. His gaze swung back to the scurrying, scuttling hemiolia. Would he have enough daylight left to finish the chase? He didn’t know, but he intended to find out.

As before, he ordered marines to the bow to shoot at the fleeing ship. She wasn’t in range yet, but he wanted to be ready ahead of time. Philokrates grinned and dipped his head to show he approved. “We’re gaining on them!” the keleustes shouted for the benefit of the hardworking rowers, who were looking away from the chase. “Keep at it. We may catch ‘em before they can beach.”

If the Dikaiosyne could do that, if she could ram or come alongside, grapple, and board, the pirates wouldn’t last long. Menedemos watched the hemiolia as the war galley came up on her. Her captain posted archers at the stern, too-posted them there and then started quarreling with them. Menedemos could guess why. A hemiolia was the fastest galley on the Inner Sea… except, now, a trihemiolia. The skipper and his crew couldn’t have expected to get overhauled, and were probably blaming one another.

But the Karian coastline was coming closer with every stroke of the oars, and the Dikaiosyne wasn’t much faster than her quarry. Getting within arrow range took longer than Menedemos had hoped it would. And then the pirates put on a mad spurt of rowing that would have burst their hearts if they kept it up for long. The oarsmen on the trihemiolia matched it, but the smaller ship slid up onto the beach. Men streamed from her, some naked but for weapons, others gaudy and glittering in finery and gold no doubt stolen. A few stayed close to the hemiolia to shoot at the Dikaiosyne. Most, though, ran for the nearest trees without looking back.

“Do we land and go after ‘em, sir?” Philokrates asked.

Menedemos eyed the sun again. The flattened ruddy ball hung just above the horizon. Regretfully, he tossed his head. “No. No point to it, not when we’ll be fumbling around in the dark. We’ll burn the ship and go home.”

No one argued with him. The hemiolia went up in flames, as the pentekonter had earlier in the day. “A pretty fair patrol,” Philokrates said. “Yes, sir, pretty fair. Far as I’m concerned, O best one, you can take the Dikaiosyne out any time you please.” Both mates grinned and dipped their heads.

“Thank you,” Menedemos said. The words didn’t come close to showing how delighted he was, but they were the best he had. He used them again: “Thank you, friends.”

Sostratos went to the gymnasion more from a dogged sense that he really should than from any real enjoyment he got there. He wasn’t ashamed to take off his clothes and exercise. He’d never had the kind of body a sculptor would choose as a model for Zeus or Ares, but he’d never let himself go soft or get fat, either. Looking down at his angular, knobby frame, he sometimes wondered if he could get fat, even with the most diligent effort. He didn’t care to find out. Like most Hellenes, he believed no man had any business letting himself go to seed that way.

And so, dutifully, he exercised. He ran sprints, his bare feet kicking up the dust. Menedemos wasn’t here; at least he didn’t have to eat his cousin’s dust along with his own. He threw javelins at canvas targets stretched across bales of hay. He shot arrows at the targets, too, grunting with effort because he’d chosen a bow he could barely draw. He was a tolerable-better than a tolerable-archer, which had helped more than once aboard the Aphrodite .

And he dusted his oiled body with sand and got into the wrestling pits to grapple with his fellow citizens. There he came close to having a good time, because he could hold his own with most of them. He didn’t have the lizard-quick reactions that would have made him one of the very best wrestlers, but he used his long limbs to good advantage, he was stronger than he looked-because he was tall and lean, his muscles didn’t bulge the way a squatter man’s would have-and he was always one to come up with new holds and variations on old ones. He used his head when he wrestled, not just his arms and his back.

This morning, he cast down a fellow named Boulanax son of Damagoras, a man of about his own age. Boulanax spat dirt out of his mouth and said, “I didn’t see that coming at all. Show me what you did.”

“Certainly.” Sostratos liked to teach. “When you came at me, I twisted and jerked and threw you over my hip. Do it again, slowly, and I’ll show you just how I got the hold.”

“All right.” Boulanax did. Sostratos went through the throw at half speed this time. “I see.” Boulanax dipped his head and smiled. His body could have been the model for a young Zeus. And he was handsome, too, handsome enough to have been almost as popular as Menedemos when they were youths. But he didn’t seem offended to have lost, as some men did when Sostratos threw them. Instead, he said, “Well, I’ll surprise the next fellow I take on, by the dog. Did you come up with that yourself? “

“As a matter of fact, I did.” By Hellenic standards, Sostratos was modest, but not modest enough to keep from taking credit for what was really his.

“Good for you, then.” Boulanax clapped his hands together in approval. “Why aren’t you in the gymnasion more often?”

“I spent most of the spring and summer in Athens,” Sostratos replied.

“That’ll do it,” the other Rhodian agreed. As Sostratos hoped he would, he took that to mean Sostratos had been studying there, not that he’d been engaging in commerce. Boulanax himself drew the sort of income from his lands that Damonax wished he did. He said, “So you were there when Antigonos’ son drove out Demetrios of Phaleron?”

“Yes, I was,” Sostratos said.

“What do you think of him?”

“He’s formidable, no doubt about it,” Sostratos answered. “Charming, too-I met him.”

“Did you?” The other man’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Wait. Aren’t you the son of Philodemos the merchant?”

Oh, well, Sostratos thought. Now he won’t believe I was studying in Athens. But he answered with the truth: “Philodemos is my uncle. I’m the son of Lysistratos, his younger brother.”

“That’s right. It’s Menedemos who’s Philodemos’ son.” Boulanax’s voice had a certain edge to it. Did he still think of Menedemos as a rival because they’d both been popular as youths? Maybe he did, for that edge remained when he asked, “And how is your cousin doing these days?”

“Very well, thanks,” Sostratos said, pretending not to hear it. “He’s just back from skippering the Dikaiosyne on a patrol against pirates. They burned two pirate ships when they were out there. Admiral Eudemos took him out drinking after he brought the trihemiolia back to Rhodes.” He and Menedemos often chafed each other when they were together, but they presented a united front against the world.

“Two pirate ships?” Boulanax’s eyes widened again. “Euge! That’s fine work. Many goodbyes to them.” No Rhodian would say a word against someone who hurt pirates, even if he didn’t care for the man.

“Menedemos was the one who suggested building trihemioliai in the first place,” Sostratos added, twisting the knife a little. “They’re so fast, they’ve been giving pirates a hard time in these waters.”

“Good.” Boulanax hesitated, then went on, “I hope you’ll excuse me, O best one, but I… just recalled I’m late for an appointment. Good day. Farewell.” He hurried off.

Sostratos suspected that the appointment was mythical, that Boulanax had heard as much good news about Menedemos as he could stand. Selling truffles or wine or crimson dye in Athens wouldn’t have impressed him; that was commerce, and commerce was vulgar. But thinking of a new type of war galley and burning pirate ships- things like those were a different story. They helped the polis, something every Rhodian citizen aspired to do. Boulanax couldn’t look down his nose at Menedemos for them, no matter how much he might want to.

After glancing around in vain for another wrestling partner-the men he saw were too small to make a fair match-Sostratos went back to the javelin range and got in a few more throws. Then he rubbed himself down with fresh olive oil and scraped it from his sandy, sweaty skin with a curved bronze strigil. He put on his chiton and left the gymnasion.

The agora lay close by. It was smaller and less storied than Athens’, but to Sostratos it was home. He’d come here with his father or with a pedagogue since he was a little boy. Here Rhodians gathered to spread and talk over the news of the day. And here Rhodians and all sorts of foreigners gathered to buy and sell and trade.

Even so late in the sailing season, Sostratos heard Hellenes speaking several different dialects: Dorians from Rhodes; Ionians with their dropped rough breathings; Athenians, who called the tongue glotta instead of glossa and the sea thalatta instead of thalassa; old-fashioned Cypriots; the buzzing, lisping sounds of those who used Aiolic; and Macedonians, whose native tongue was hardly Greek at all.

Phoenicians flavored Greek with their own harsh, guttural accent. Swaggering Keltic mercenaries turned it musical. Lykians spoke sneezingly. Karians and Lydians did their best to beat Hellenes at their own game. And-Sostratos eyed the fellow with interest-there was an Italian in a toga: a Samnite, or perhaps even a Roman from farther up the peninsula. Sostratos had no use for Romans. On the Aphrodites last trip west, three years earlier, a Roman trireme had almost sunk her.

He strolled through the market square, mostly listening or watching, now and then pausing to examine merchandise or to gossip or to spend an obolos for a handful of chickpeas fried in olive oil. The name of Demetrios son of Antigonos was on a lot of men’s lips. With his youth and energy-and with his spectacular swoop on Athens-he seemed to have eclipsed his father in many people’s minds. “What will Demetrios do next?” was a question Sostratos heard again and again.

He heard it so often, in fact, he finally lost patience and said, “ Demetrios will do whatever Antigonos tells him to do, that’s what. He’s Antigonos’ right arm and right hand, yes, with his brother Philippos the left, but Antigonos is the brain and the heart.”

“And how do you know so much about it, O marvelous one?” sneered the last What will Demetrios do next?-sayer, a man who stood behind a table full of painted terra-cotta statuettes.

“Because I got back from Athens less than a month ago,” Sostratos answered. “Because I heard Demetrios speak in the Assembly, and heard how he always gave credit to his father for everything he did. Because I had supper with him, when my cousin and I sold him truffles and wine. And because Antigonos has been an important marshal for more than thirty years now-since the days of Philip of Macedon- and he’s not going to disappear like so much dandelion fluff.”

The man with the table next to the statuette-seller’s laughed. “Guess he told you, Lapheides.”

Lapheides remained unquelled. “Huh!” he said. “Antigonos is as old as Zeus by now.”

“He’s almost as sly as Zeus, too,” Sostratos said. “Forget Demetrios. Would you want Antigonos for an enemy? Would you want Rhodes to have Antigonos for an enemy? I know I wouldn’t.”

“I’d rather have him than Demetrios,” Lapheides said stubbornly.

Sostratos wondered how some people could be so blind, and how Rhodes could hope to survive if they were. The only answer occurring to him was that other poleis also had their share of such fools, and so things evened out. That left him imperfectly reassured. “Don’t you see?” he said, almost pleading. “You can’t have Demetrios without Antigonos, because Demetrios doesn’t do anything his father doesn’t tell him to.”

“He screws pretty women-lots of ‘em, by what people say,” Lapheides replied.

Was he changing the subject? Or did he honestly think that was a real comeback to what Sostratos had said? Sostratos wasn’t sure, but suspected the worst. He said, “The best thing that could happen to Rhodes would be for both Antigonos and Demetrios ”-he used the dual number to show the two of them made a natural pair-”to forget all about her.”

Grammatical subtleties were lost on Lapheides. The statuette-seller stuck out his bristly chin and said, “I’m not afraid of ‘em.”

“You’re surely swift-footed Akhilleus come again,” Sostratos said. Taking the sarcasm for a compliment, Lapheides preened. Sostratos sighed. He’d feared the statuette-seller would.