Owls to Athens

2

Bright morning sun sparkled off seawater in the Great Harbor at Rhodes. Menedemos stood at the stern of the Aphrodite , steering-oar tillers in his hands. He was ready to leave on the instant, even if the akatos remained tied up at the quay. “We’ve got all our cargo, don’t we?” he asked Sostratos, for the third time since they’d come to the merchant galley at dawn.

“Yes, we’re fully laden,” his cousin answered. “That is, unless Damonax’s slaves come rushing up with a couple of hundred amphorai of olive oil at the last instant.”

“They’d better not, by the dog!” Menedemos said. “Your precious brother-in-law doesn’t think we’re sailing till day after tomorrow, does he? Let his slaves bring the oil then-and let ‘em lug it back when they find out we’re gone.”

“That will be a good joke-then,” Sostratos said. “We’ll hear about it when we get home. Our fathers will hear about it right away, I’m sure.” He sighed. “Family.” By the way he said it, he meant it for a curse.

Up on the quay, Menedemos’ father said, “Looks like your crew is still a couple of men light.”

Family, Menedemos thought, in much the same way as Sostratos had said it. Aloud, he replied only, “Yes, Father.” Turning to his keleustes, he said, “They should be here any moment now, shouldn’t they, Diokles?”

“They should have been here already, skipper,” the oarmaster answered unhappily. Diokles was sun-browned, in his mid-forties, with the broad shoulders and callused hands of a man who’d spent a lot of years pulling an oar. “I told ‘em to show up early. If they’re having a last carouse and holding us up, I’ll make ‘em pay once they do come aboard, you see if I don’t.”

Menedemos wouldn’t have wanted Diokles angry at him. Yes, he was somewhere between fifteen and twenty years younger than the oarmaster, but Diokles had courage to spare and a formidable physique his loincloth displayed to good advantage. Most of the time, Diokles was as good-natured as any man could be. When he wasn’t, though…

“Ahoy, the Aphrodite !” The hail came from the base of the pier. A barefoot man also wearing only a loincloth-surely a sailor-hurried up toward the merchant galley. “Ahoy!” he called again. “Looking for another rower?”

“Hail, Teleutas.” Now Menedemos sounded unhappy. In a low voice, he asked Diokles, “He’s not one of the men you’re waiting on, is he?”

“He sure isn’t,” Diokles answered at once. “He always shows up at the last minute, looking for whatever he can get.”

“Do we want him aboard?” Sostratos said. “He is a thief, even if he hasn’t stolen from his crew, and he’s no braver than he has to be.”

“I know. I know,” Menedemos said. “He works as little as he can get away with, too. But he’s here, and the other fellows aren’t.”

Sostratos gnawed his lower lip. Diokles looked as if he’d bitten into bad fish. Menedemos felt the same way. But neither his cousin nor the keleustes said no. With a sigh, Menedemos waved Teleutas on. The sailor grinned and came down the gangplank and onto the Aphrodite . He had his own pillow to protect his backside from the hard rower’s bench where he’d soon perch.

A quarter of an hour later, one of Diokles’ chosen men wove his way up to the akatos. Watching him, Menedemos hoped he wouldn’t fall off the pier and into the sea. He made it down the gangplank and aboard the Aphrodite , though Sostratos had to grab him to keep him from falling flat on his face on the poop deck.

Up on the wharf, Lysistratos laughed. He’d seen plenty of sailors board their ships in that condition. So had Philodemos, but Menedemos’ father looked disgusted, not amused. The glance he shot his son said he thought Menedemos made a habit of getting that drunk as soon as he put Rhodes under the horizon. That wasn’t fair, or true, but Menedemos knew his father wouldn’t listen if he said so.

He turned his attention to the sailor instead. “Hail, Nikodromos,” he said, his voice as sweet as unmixed Ariousian from Khios. “Take your place, my dear-we’re going to sweat the wine out of you.”

“Whatever you want, skipper,” Nikodromos said grandly. He found an empty rower’s bench and sat down-almost fell down again.

“Maybe we ought to wait for one more man,” Sostratos said. “The shape he’s in, he’ll foul the stroke till noon.”

“We’ll survive it, and so will he,” Menedemos answered. “He’ll sober up faster by working than any other way.” His chuckle was thoroughly nasty. “And he’ll be sorrier about it than he would be any other way, too.”

“We won’t make much of a show leaving the harbor if he’s too sozzled to keep time,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos gnawed on the inside of his lower lip. That got home. He liked to leave Rhodes with every bench manned, and with the oars rising and falling as smoothly as if the Aphrodite were a five in the Rhodian navy. Most of the sailors had pulled oars in a navy five or a smaller trireme at one time or another, so the hope was by no means forlorn. With Nikodromos drunk, though, he wouldn’t be able to look like a warship today.

He was still wondering whether to change his mind when somebody else-not a sailor, but one of the harborside loungers who might be found in any port around the Inner Sea-ran along the pier calling, “I thought you were already loaded here, but there’s a troop of slaves carrying amphorai headed this way.”

Menedemos and Sostratos exchanged glances of consternation. “Damonax!” they said together. So did their fathers, up on the quay. Menedemos realized he’d just had his mind made up for him. “Cast off!” he called, and the linen ropes that bound the Aphrodite to the wharf came in at bow and stern. He dipped his head to Diokles. “Let’s get moving, best one.”

“Right you are, skipper.” The oarmaster held up a small bronze square on a chain and a little mallet with which to strike it. He raised his voice till it carried all the way to the bow: “You ready, boys?” The rowers set themselves at their oars, staring back at him and waiting for the word of command. He smote the square, at the same time calling out, “Rhyppapai!”

The rowers all pulled, even Nikodromos. Diokles clanged the square again, and also used his voice to give the stroke. “Rhyppapai!” At the last syllable, the men pulled. “Rhyppapai!” The Aphrodite slid forward, a little farther, a little faster this time as she began to gain momentum. “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”

“Farewell! Safe voyage!” Lysistratos called from the end of the quay. Menedemos’ father didn’t say anything, but he did wave. Menedemos lifted one hand from the steering-oar tillers to wave back.

Sostratos peered over the Aphrodite ’s stern, back toward the quay she’d just left. “Oh, my,” he said a couple of minutes later. “Here come those slaves-and to the crows with me if Damonax isn’t with ‘em.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” Menedemos said. “I can’t look over my shoulder right now.” The merchant galley shared the calm but crowded waters of the Great Harbor with several fishing boats and a couple of round ships. Menedemos chuckled. “Wouldn’t do to take my eye off where I’m going and ram somebody when I wasn’t looking, eh?”

“I should hope not,” Sostratos said. “The damages a jury would vote if you did something like that…” He shivered at the idea. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Well, neither do I,” Menedemos said, steering toward the narrow outlet at the north end of the harbor. “And we won’t have to-if you do your job and tell me what’s happening back there.”

“All right.” But then, maddeningly, his cousin paused again. “Sorry,” Sostratos said after a moment. “A round ship just passed between us and the quay, so I couldn’t see. Now I can. The slaves have set down their amphorai, and Damonax is saying something to our fathers. Whatever it is, he’s upset-he’s pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand. A teacher of rhetoric couldn’t do it any better.”

“Won’t make an obolos’ worth of difference with my father,” Menedemos predicted.

“Looks as if you’re right,” Sostratos said. “ Uncle Philodemos is just standing there, tossing his head again and again. What’s that line in the Iliad where Akhilleus has been praying to Zeus that Patroklos should drive Hektor away from the ships of the Akhaioi and come back safe himself? Zeus hears, but-?”

“ ‘The father granted him the one prayer, but tossed his head at the other,’ “ Menedemos quoted at once; he knew Homer well.

“Thank you, my dear. That’s just the line I wanted,” Sostratos said. “The only difference is, your father’s not granting any of Damonax’s prayers. And Damonax is getting madder and madder, too. Now he’s cupping his hands in front of his mouth-he’s going to try to shout to us.”

Thin and faint across the widening stretch of water, Menedemos heard, “Ahoy, the Aphrodite ! Come back and pick up some cargo!”

“Shall I answer him?” Sostratos asked. “I could yell back to the pier, I think.”

“Not a word!” Menedemos said. “Put a hand behind your ear and pretend you can’t make out what he’s saying.” Sostratos did. He wasn’t the greatest actor, but across four or five plethra of seawater he didn’t have to be.

Damonax yelled again. This time, Menedemos really did have trouble making out what he was saying. Sostratos kept that hand behind his ear. He started to laugh. So did several of the rowers, who also looked back at where they’d been. “Don’t foul up the stroke, you whipworthy rascals!” Diokles shouted at them. “ Poseidon ’s prick, you’re clumsy enough already.”

“What’s so funny?” Menedemos asked.

“My brother-in-law’s jumping up and down on the wharf, like a three-year-old when you tell him he can’t have another piece of honey cake,” Sostratos answered.

“Somebody ought to give him a good thrashing, the way you do with a three-year-old who has a fit when you tell him he can’t have another piece of honey cake,” Menedemos said.

“That would be nice,” his cousin agreed. “He’s right by the edge of the pier now. Maybe he’ll fall in. Maybe your father-or mine-will help him fall in.” Menedemos waited in eager anticipation. But then Sostratos tossed his head. Disappointment in his voice, he went on, “No such luck. The slaves are picking up the jars of oil and taking them away, and Damonax is going with them.”

“Too bad,” Menedemos said. “I’d have loved it if he went into the drink instead.”

“I just hope he doesn’t take it out on Erinna, that’s all.” Sostratos sighed. “Family.”

“Family,” Menedemos echoed, and gave all his attention back to the Aphrodite . A big, beamy round ship was bearing down on her, great square sail full of the breeze from out of the north, hold full of grain or wine or-irony-olive oil. The round ship was about as maneuverable as an avalanche. Like the Aphrodite , like any ship around the Inner Sea, she had eyes painted at her bow, but how much good did they do when she couldn’t get out of her own way? And Menedemos would have bet the round ship’s goose-headed sternpost had more brains than the man handling her steering oars.

Menedemos pulled the port-side steering-oar tiller toward him and pushed the starboard tiller as far away from him. Graceful as a dancer, the Aphrodite swung to port and slipped past the lumbering round ship. Sailors on the round ship’s deck waved as the merchant galley glided by. Most of the Aphrodite ’s crew were too busy to wave back.

Long fortified moles to the east and north protected the Great Harbor of Rhodes from storms. The opening between them was only a couple of plethra wide. Side by side with a little fishing boat from whose crew Sikon might buy the evening’s opson, Menedemos steered the akatos out of the harbor and onto the open sea.

As Sostratos did every sailing season, he discovered how much the Aphrodite ’s motion changed when she left the calm waters of the harbor and braved the Inner Sea. Before, all he’d noticed was the forward thrust each time her oars bit into the water. Now the light chop made her pitch up and down as her bow rode over the waves and down into the troughs between them.

Sostratos’ stomach felt as if it were lurching in the same way as the akatos. Gulping, he hoped the barley porridge he’d had for breakfast would stay down. He looked forward from the poop deck. A few sailors were similarly greenish, but only a few. That was how things usually went. Sostratos gulped again.

“Use the rail if you’ve got to give it back, boys,” Menedemos said, on the whole in a kindly way. “The bilges get foul enough without adding puke to the mix.” He lowered his voice to ask, “Are you all right, Sostratos?”

“I’ll be all right in a few days,” Sostratos answered. “I wish this didn’t happen every sailing season, but it does. I need a few days to get my sea legs, that’s all.”

“You look a little paler than usual,” Menedemos said.

“I’ll be fine in-” Sostratos stopped, gulped once more, clapped a hand to his mouth, and took two quick steps over to the rail. Breakfast did not stay down, but he put it neatly in the sea. “A pestilence,” he wheezed when he could speak again. “Been a long time since I’ve actually gone and heaved.”

“Happens to a lot of people,” his cousin said, with the ease of one whom seasickness didn’t bother. “Maybe now you’re over it, the way some pregnant women are when they throw up in the morning.”

“I hope so!” Sostratos spat to get the vile taste out of his mouth. Spitting didn’t do much good. He dipped some wine from an amphora carried for the crew. Rinsing his mouth with that helped more. He spat out one mouthful, then swallowed another. His stomach didn’t rise in immediate rebellion, which he took as a good sign.

Once the Aphrodite was well out of the Great Harbor, Menedemos took half the men off the oars, letting them row from every other bench. He’d started out with all forty benches filled for the sake of swank. Out on the open sea, he usually used eight or ten men on a side, and rotated the crew every couple of hours. That way, he could have fresh men rowing when he really needed them: escaping or fighting pirates, pushing forward against a headwind, or clawing away from the shore in case of storm.

The merchant galley rounded the northernmost tip of the polis- and the island-of Rhodes. Sostratos pointed to the marble temple of Demeter, whose gleaming white bulk stood out from the swarm of red tile roofs. “Our houses are somewhere not far from there,” he said. “I wish I could pick out mine, but it’s just another roof from here.”

“I’m not sorry to be gone,” Menedemos said. “I suppose I even owe your brother-in-law a vote of thanks.”

“For what?” Sostratos said, and then, “Oh! You mean for nagging our fathers?”

“I sure do. If he hadn’t got my father good and mad, we’d still be stuck in Rhodes, playing knucklebones and twiddling our thumbs. The biggest reason we got to sail so soon is that our fathers wanted him to shut up and go away.”

“I know,” Sostratos said. “And I’ll give you another reason to be grateful to good old thick-headed Damonax. Without him, we wouldn’t have had a chance to get up to Athens soon enough to catch the Greater Dionysia, and now we do. I tell you, my dear, you haven’t lived till you’ve seen the theater in Athens. There’s nothing like it in any other polis in the world.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Menedemos said. “That is one of the reasons I wanted to sail-not the only reason, mind you, but one of them.”

“The tragedies will probably be revivals,” Sostratos said, “but I keep telling you there are some good comic poets still writing.”

As usual, his cousin said, “Give me Aristophanes any day. I’ll believe anybody can match him when I see it, and not till then.”

That could have started another argument, had Sostratos let it.

Instead, he only smiled and shrugged. Menedemos was loyal to Aristophanes as he was loyal to Homer. Argument wouldn’t change that. In both poetry and drama, Sostratos had more modern tastes. Argument wasn’t likely to change that, either.

Once well clear of the northern tip of Rhodes, Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to port, so that she headed west. Sostratos peered north, toward the haze-shrouded Karian coast. As with Rhodes, the rains of fall and winter had left it bright with greenery. When the merchant galley came back at the end of summer, the sun would have baked it sere and brown. Minor islands-Syme, Khalke, Telos-lay ahead. They too looked green and inviting. Sostratos had trouble imagining duller places to live, though.

“Think this breeze will hold, Diokles?” Menedemos asked.

“Reckon it ought to, skipper, for a while, anyway,” the oarmaster replied.

“Well, let’s get some use out of the sail, then.” Menedemos raised his voice to call out to the crew: “Lower the sail from the yard.”

The men hurried to obey. Using the brails-lines that ran from the top of the merchant galley’s square sail to the bottom-they quickly spread it, then swung the yard from the starboard bow back to the stern at the port side to take best advantage of the wind. The sail, sewn together from small pieces of linen, filled with air. The mast creaked a little as it took the force of the wind. The Aphrodite’s bronze ram, greened from all its time in the sea, dug deeper into the water.

“Seeing all the squares the brails and the seams make on the sail always makes me think of geometry lessons,” Sostratos said. “What can we prove from the figure before us? What is the area of this rectangle or that one?”

“Geometry lessons.” Menedemos shuddered. “All I remember when I think of them is the schoolmaster with his stick. He drew blood sometimes, the polluted rogue.”

“I didn’t get hit all that often,” Sostratos said.

“No-you were the one who always had his lessons straight,” Menedemos said. “The other boys in the class didn’t love you for it.”

“I know.” Sostratos sighed. “I’ve never had any trouble understanding being disliked for doing things wrong. Who wants a bungler around? But having people hate you for doing what’s right, doing what you’re supposed to-that always seemed unfair to me.”

“You made the rest of us look bad,” his cousin said.

“You should have paid attention, too, then,” Sostratos said. “Those lessons weren’t that hard.”

“Not to you, maybe,” Menedemos said. “As far as I was concerned, the master might have been speaking Aramaic. Perimeter and hypotenuse and isosceles and I don’t know what all else.” He took a hand off the tiller and held it up. “And don’t you start explaining them to me, either. I don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

Sostratos’ ears burned. He had been on the point of launching into a geometry lesson. Like most of what he’d studied, mathematics had come easy for him. That it hadn’t for Menedemos and the other boys still perplexed him. But if it wasn’t a matter of their not studying, not paying attention, what was it?

He’d hardly posed the question in his own mind before Menedemos said, “Some of us are good at some things, others at others. You soaked up lessons the way a soft cloth soaks up water. But you won’t claim you’re better than I am at figuring out how people work, I hope.”

“Oh, I might claim it, but it wouldn’t be true,” Sostratos said. “You have the edge on me there.” He plucked at his beard. “I wonder why that should be.”

“People would be boring if everybody were just like everybody else,” Menedemos said. “We’d all go around like this”-he looked very severe and stiffened his body till he almost seemed cast from bronze-”as if we were so many Spartan hoplites all in a line in the phalanx.”

Laughing, Sostratos said, “Why couldn’t you make us all into pretty girls? But if we were all pretty girls, what would be the point of chasing one?”

“There’s always a point to chasing pretty girls.” Menedemos spoke with great conviction. But even joking with Sostratos hadn’t made him stop paying attention to the Aphrodite and the breeze. “Swing the yard forward a little more,” he called to the sailors.

As the men made the adjustment and the stays creaked, Sostratos asked, “Do you think we can go all the way to Knidos today?”

His cousin looked ahead. Knidos lay at the end of a long spit of land jutting west into the sea from the coast of Karia. At last, regretfully, Menedemos tossed his head. “If we’d put to sea earlier in the day, I do believe I’d try it, and sail on by the stars if we weren’t there by sunset.

As things are, though, it’s too much to ask of the sailors on their first day out. We’ll put in at Syme.”

“All right.” Sostratos would have done the same himself. Sometimes, though, Menedemos liked to push things. Sostratos pointed to the little island ahead. “Will you use that bay in the south where we put in a few years ago?”

“No, I was thinking of anchoring at the town on the north coast,” Menedemos answered. “It’s not much of a town, I know, but in a way that’s all the better. The men can go into a tavern without being tempted to run off and desert.”

“Gods know that’s true,” Sostratos agreed. “Nobody in his right mind would want to desert at Syme. No matter what you were trying to escape, what could be worse than staying there the rest of your days?”

Menedemos considered that. He didn’t need long to shudder. “Nothing I can think of,” he replied.

Little fishing boats coming back from their day’s work bobbed around the Aphrodite as her bow anchors went into the sea in front of the town of Syme. The town lay on a sheltered bay of the island with which it shared a name. Most of the fishing boats beached themselves, the men aboard them hauling them farther out of the water than oars could drive them. Menedemos had beached the merchant galley in the sheltered bay of which Sostratos had spoken. He didn’t feel like doing it here. If trouble came, he wanted to be able to get away in a hurry. He couldn’t very well do that with a beached ship.

“These folks are probably all right,” Diokles said, bearing down just a little on the word probably.

“I know,” Menedemos said. “If two or three other ships were here with us, I think I’d run her up onto the sand. This way… no. When fall came and we didn’t get back to Rhodes, somebody could come after us, and they might say, ‘The Aphrodite? Oh, no, she didn’t put in here. She must have come to grief somewhere else.’ Who could give ‘em the lie? I don’t think they’d do that, mind you, but why tempt ‘em?”

“You get no arguments from me, skipper,” the keleustes said. “Why tempt ‘em? is just right, far as I’m concerned.”

Up and down the length of the Aphrodite , sailors stretched and twisted, working kinks out of muscles they hadn’t used all winter. Some of them rubbed olive oil onto their blisters. Teleutas, who happened to be back by the poop deck, rubbed something else on them instead, from a small flask he’d stuck under his bench. Menedemos sniffed. “Isn’t that turpentine?” he asked, his eyebrows leaping in surprise.

“That’s right,” the sailor said.

“Doesn’t it burn like fire?” Menedemos said.

“It’s not so bad,” Teleutas answered. “It hardens the flesh instead of making it soft, the way oil does. I was talking with an Epeirote sailor in a tavern. He said they use it up there, and I thought I’d give it a try.”

“Better you than me,” Menedemos said.

Another rower, a former sponge diver named Moskhion, asked, “Can we take the boat and go ashore, skipper? We can buy ourselves some wine and some better grub than we’ve got on the ship here. Maybe there’s a brothel in town, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” Menedemos said. “This isn’t what you’d call a big place, and ships don’t put in here all that often. But yes, you can go find out, if you have a mind to.”

The merchant galley towed her boat behind her, on a line tied to the sternpost. The boat was new. She’d lost the old one the sailing season before, on the way back to Rhodes from Phoenicia. When two pirate ships attacked off the Lykian coast, a sailor had cut the old boat loose to help the Aphrodite fight them off. And so she had-but she hadn’t been able to go back and recover the boat.

Soldiers pulled the new boat alongside the akatos and clambered down into her. She carried half a dozen oars-small ones, compared to the nine-cubit sweeps that propelled the Aphrodite -and could hold a dozen men. The sailors briefly argued over who would row her back to the ship for the next group, then set off for the town of Syme.

“Are you going ashore?” Sostratos asked.

Menedemos tossed his head and mimed an enormous yawn. “Not likely, my dear. I might never wake up again. What about you?”

“I’m tempted,” his cousin answered. “After all, Syme’s less than a day’s sail from Rhodes. You can see this place any time you look west. Even so, I’ve never been into the town.”

“Yes, and we both know why, too: it’s not worth going into,” Menedemos said.

“Too true.” Sostratos thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I live in Rhodes. I’ve stayed in Athens. I’ve visited Taras and Syracuse- poleis that are poleis, if you know what I mean. I’m sorry, but I can’t get excited about Syme. This is one step up from a village-and a small step, too.”

“That’s the way I feel about it,” Menedemos said. “Well, if we’re going to stay aboard ship, shall we have supper? What Syracusan wouldn’t be jealous of our feast?”

Sostratos laughed. Syracuse was famous for its fancy cooking. Some cooks from the Sicilian city had even written books of their favorite recipes for opson, recipes full of rare, expensive fish, spices from all around the Inner Sea and beyond, and rich cheeses. The Aphrodite carried coarse, hard barley rolls for sitos and olives and onions and hard, crumbly, salty cheese for opson to go with it. If the crew wanted fish as a relish, they had to put lines over the side and catch it themselves.

The rough red wine in the amphorai was a suitable match for the rest of the meal. Menedemos could think of no worse condemnation. “This stuff almost makes you want to drink water,” he said.

“Drinking water isn’t healthy,” Sostratos said.

“You think this wine is?” Menedemos returned. “You can taste more of the pitch on the inside of the jar than you can of the grapes.” He sipped again, and pulled a face. “Of course, considering what the grapes do taste like, maybe that’s just as well.”

“It’s not supposed to be anything special. It’s just supposed to be wine,” his cousin said. “And even if it isn’t the best stuff Dionysos ever made, it won’t give you a flux of the bowels, the way water would.”

“Well, that’s true.” Menedemos flipped a couple of more drops of wine onto the poop deck. “My thanks, great Dionysos, for arranging that we don’t get the galloping shits from wine-for we’d surely drink it even if we did.”

“That’s peculiar praise for the god,” Sostratos said, smiling. “But then, Dionysos is a peculiar sort of god.”

“How do you mean?” Menedemos asked.

“Just for instance, Homer doesn’t say much about him,” Sostratos answered. “He talks much more about the other Olympians-even Hephaistos has a couple of scenes where he’s the center of attention, but Dionysos doesn’t.”

“That’s true,” Menedemos said thoughtfully. “There is that passage in the sixth book of the Iliad, though. You know the one I mean:

‘I would not fight with the gods who dwell in the heavens.

For not even the son of Dryas, mighty Lykourgos,

Could stay at strife for long with the gods who dwell in the heavens.

He once drove off the attendants of madness-bringing Dionysos

Near sacred Nyseion: they all

Let their mystical gear fall to the ground. Dionysos, afraid,

Plunged into the salt sea, and Thetis received him into her bosom

While he feared. For the man put him in great terror through his shout.’“

“Yes, that’s probably the place where the poet talks most about him,” Sostratos said. “But isn’t it strange to have a god who’s a coward?”

“Dionysos did have his revenge later,” Menedemos said.

“But that was later,” Sostratos reminded him. “Can you imagine any of the other Olympians, even Aphrodite, leaping into the sea on account of a mortal man’s shout?”

“Well, no,” Menedemos admitted.

“And Herodotos says Dionysos came from Egypt, and Euripides says he came out of India, and just about everyone says he came from Thrace,” Sostratos said. “None of the rest of the Olympians is foreign. And some of Dionysos’ rites…” He shivered, though the evening was fine and mild. “Give me a god like Phoibos Apollo any day.”

“Dionysos’ rites on Rhodes aren’t so bad,” Menedemos said.

“No, not on Rhodes,” his cousin agreed. “But Rhodes is a tidy, modern, civilized place. Even back on Rhodes, though, they get wilder if you leave our polis and the other towns and go out into the countryside. And in some of the backwoods places on the mainland of Hellas… My dear fellow, Euripides knew what he was talking about when he wrote the rending scenes in the Bakkhai.”

“That’s a play I’ve only heard about,” Menedemos said. “I’ve never seen it performed, and I’ve never read it.”

“Oh, you must, best one!” Sostratos exclaimed. “If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll revive it in Athens while we’re there. It’s… quite something. I don’t think there’s ever been another play that shows the power of a god so strongly.”

“If a freethinker like you says that, I suppose I have to take it seriously,” Menedemos said.

“It’s a marvelous play,” Sostratos said earnestly. “And the poetry in the choruses is almost unearthly, it’s so beautiful. No one else ever wrote anything like it-and Euripides never wrote anything else like it, either.”

Menedemos respected his cousin’s judgment, even if he didn’t always agree with it. “If I ever get the chance, I’ll see it,” he said.

“You should,” Sostratos said. “In fact, you ought to find someone who has a copy and read it. There are bound to be a few in a polis the size of Rhodes -and of course there’ll be more than a few in Athens.”

“If I ever get the chance,” Menedemos repeated. He spat an olive pit into the bay. From the shore came the noise of raucous song. He grinned. “Sounds like the men are having a good time. I hope Syme’s still standing in the morning, what there is of it.”

“It should be,” Sostratos said. “They were in Rhodes yesterday, and they only just put to sea. They shouldn’t have that urge to tear places to pieces-it’s too early in the voyage.”

The crash that followed on the heels of his words could only have been an amphora shattering. Menedemos sighed and said, “Let’s hope nobody broke that over anybody’s head.” He got out his himation. Sailors prided themselves in going about in nothing but a chiton regardless of the weather, but a mantle also made a good blanket. He wrapped himself in the rectangle of thick woolen cloth and lay down on the poop deck.

Sostratos did the same. As he twisted and turned, trying to get comfortable, he said, “We’ve been sleeping in beds all winter long. Bare planks aren’t so comfortable any more.”

“It’s not too bad,” Menedemos said, cradling his head in his arms. “If it were raining, now…” He yawned. He wasn’t really that sleepy; he was trying to convince himself as well as Sostratos. It must have worked, for the next thing he knew the eastern horizon glowed pink and gold. He yawned and stretched. Something in his back crackled. He got to his feet.

Sostratos still lay there snoring. Given the chance, he usually slept later than Menedemos. He didn’t get the chance today-Menedemos stirred him with his foot. Sostratos’ eyes flew open. “What was that for?” he asked blurrily.

“Time to get up. Time to get going,” Menedemos answered. When he was awake, he was awake. “We’ve got a full day’s sailing ahead of us.” Sostratos groaned and pulled the himation up over his head. Menedemos stirred him again, less gently this time. He drew another groan from his cousin, who emerged from the mantle like a tortoise poking its nose out of its shell. “Come on, my dear,” Menedemos said cheerfully. “Like it or not, rosy-fingered dawn has found us.”

Like an old, old man, Sostratos stood up. “I don’t like it,” he said.

Watered wine and barley rolls dipped in olive oil helped reconcile Sostratos to being awake. At Diokles’ command, the rowers backed oars. They pulled hard, as if eager to get the Aphrodite away from Syme as soon as they could. None of them had a bandaged head, so Sostratos supposed that amphora the evening before hadn’t fractured a skull.

“Let’s get in a little practice,” Menedemos said. “At the oarmaster’s command-starboard oars hold the backstroke, port oars forward.”

“Port oars… forward!” Diokles bawled. The rowers obeyed quite smoothly. The Aphrodite spun, turning almost in her own length. When her bow pointed north, out to sea, the keleustes called, “Both sides… forward!” The akatos sped away.

Sostratos spent the first couple of hours of the day’s sailing arguing with Menedemos. “Why do you want to stop at Knidos?” he asked.

“Uh, to trade?” When Menedemos sounded most reasonable, he also sounded most annoying. So it seemed to Sostratos, anyhow.

“Very well, O best one: to trade. And what will they have in Knidos to trade?” Sostratos never stopped to wonder if, when he sounded most like Sokrates, he also sounded most annoying.

“Well, the usual run of things they have there,” Menedemos replied.

“Exactly-the usual run of things,” Sostratos agreed. “If we were going somewhere besides Athens, that might be good enough. But since we are bound for Athens, why waste the time at Knidos? Why not head straight for Kos? Koan silk is special enough to do well anywhere. The rich Athenians will like it, and so will the Macedonian officers in Kassandros’ garrison.”

“Koan silk isn’t so special as we thought it was,” Menedemos said.

“That stuff I got in Sidon last summer, that stuff from out of the east, puts it in the shade. I didn’t think even the gods could weave cloth like that.”

“Neither did I,” Sostratos admitted. “But the trader had only that little bit of it, and we got a good price for it from Ptolemaios’ brother, Menelaos. As far as the Athenians are concerned, Koan silk is the best there is. And so, we ought to stop at Kos.”

“Why not Knidos and Kos?” Menedemos asked.

“Because we probably won’t find anything in Knidos that’s worth taking to Athens. And because, if we stop at every ordinary polis between here and Athens, we’ll never get there in time for the Greater Dionysia.”

His cousin took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller and wagged a finger at him. “That’s the real reason you want to hurry. You hardly care about trade at all. What kind of merchant does that make you?”

“One who likes drama,” Sostratos said. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do, but I like profit more,” Menedemos said.

“So do I,” Sostratos said. “And I’m telling you there’s not enough profit in Knidos to make stopping there worth our while.”

“I’m the captain, by the dog of Egypt,” Menedemos said. “If I want to stop at Knidos, I cursed well will.”

“I’m the toikharkhos,” Sostratos retorted. “If you won’t listen to me when it comes to cargo and money, why bring me along? “

They went round and round and back and forth. They did it in a low voice, neither showing too much excitement, for neither wanted the crew to know how seriously they disagreed. Every so often, Menedemos would break off to steer the ship or call an order to the men handling the sail. Then he would turn back to Sostratos and start up again. When he said, “I’m the captain,” for the fourth time, Sostratos really did lose his temper.

“Yes, you’re the captain. Euge! for you,” he said. “But what’s the rest of the crew supposed to do when the captain is an idiot?”

“Don’t tell me how to sail the ship,” Menedemos snapped.

“I’m not. I’m trying to tell you where to sail her, which is a different matter altogether. Where has to do with what we buy and sell, and that’s my business. Let me ask it another way: can we make Kos by sundown if this wind holds?”

Menedemos looked as if he wanted to say no. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. Sostratos would know he was lying. They could make Kos even if the wind died, but that would strain the rowers. Sostratos could see why Menedemos wouldn’t want to make them work too hard on the second day out from Rhodes.

“Perhaps you’d sooner go to Halikarnassos-the strait between Kos and mainland isn’t even close to a hundred stadia wide,” Sostratos said sweetly.

His cousin gave him a harried look, and muttered, “Oh, shut up.” Thanks to his affair with that prominent citizen’s wife, he couldn’t set foot in Halikarnassos without the risk-the likelihood-of getting killed. After a moment, though, he glared at Sostratos. “Maybe the fellow got killed in Ptolemaios’ siege summer before last.”

“Yes, O marvelous one, maybe he did,” Sostratos said. “On the other hand, maybe he didn’t. Do you care to take the chance?”

For a moment, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Menedemos took an appalling number of chances, and enjoyed doing it. Here, though, he tossed his head, which only proved how serious the prominent Halikarnassian had been about sending him across the Styx. He glanced longingly in the direction of Knidos, which lay dead ahead, but then pulled the steering-oar tiller in his left hand a little toward him and pushed the steering-oar tiller in his right away from him. The Aphrodite swung slightly to port, so she would skirt the peninsula at whose tip Knidos sat.

“We’ll go to Kos,” Menedemos said. “Are you happy now? Will you quit nagging me? If I had a wife and she pestered me like that, I’d make her sorry for it.”

“I think it’s a good business decision,” Sostratos said.

“I know you do,” Menedemos answered. “I’m not nearly sure I agree with you, but you win this time. You’re stubborn as a donkey, do you know that?” He looked Sostratos up and down. “The resemblance doesn’t end there, either.”

“Thank you so much, my dear,” Sostratos said. His cousin took no notice of him, but concentrated-most ostentatiously concentrated- on steering the ship. Stung, Sostratos made his way past the grunting, sweating rowers and the rest of the Aphrodite’s crew to the merchant galley’s tiny foredeck. Whenever he stood up there, he thought of the peafowl the Aphrodite had carried west to Great Hellas three years before. They’d made good money on the birds from rich Italiote Hellenes, and from a richer Samnite visiting Taras who’d bought the peacock. They’d made good money, yes, but Sostratos hoped he never saw another peafowl as long as he lived.

He also thought of Aristeidas, who’d spent so much time up here doing lookout duty. But the sharp-eyed sailor’s bones lay in Ioudaia. Sostratos pounded a fist down on the rail. The robbers there could easily have killed him, too.

Like most of the cities of southwestern Anatolia, Knidos was nominally free and autonomous. Also like most of them, it held a garrison of Antigonos’ soldiers. A couple of war galleys-big, beamy fives, full of rowers and marines-patrolled in front of the harbor. Sostratos wondered if one of them would come rushing out to investigate the Aphrodite . He wouldn’t have been surprised. Antigonos’ men were no less arrogant than those who followed Ptolemaios or Kassandros or Lysimakhos or, he supposed, Seleukos. The Macedonian marshals ruled the civilized world. Poleis like Rhodes, poleis that really were free and autonomous, were few and far between nowadays.

To Sostratos’ relief, the fives kept prowling back and forth, back and forth. He didn’t think one of their skippers would have been highhanded enough to plunder the Aphrodite . That would have offended Rhodes. He didn’t think so, but he was just as well pleased not to have to find out.

Also to his relief, the wind blew more from the east than from the north as the merchant galley made her way up through the channel between the mainland and the little island of Nisyros to the west. Menedemos kept eight men on each side at the oars to help the sail propel the ship through the water. Had the wind turned against the Aphrodite , he would have had to raise the sail to the yard and put more men on the oars to make any decent headway: either that or tack like a round ship, and almost as slowly as a round ship would have.

I wish there were a way to get closer to the wind than a square sail can, Sostratos thought. After a moment, though, he shrugged. He’d sailed from Sicily to Phoenicia, and he’d never seen any other kind of rig. That was all too likely to mean no other kind was practical. He tried to imagine a different way to mount a sail, tried and felt himself failing.

Kos climbed up out of the sea ahead. Menedemos pointed to some tumbledown ruins on the southwestern coast. “I wish Astypalaia were still the Koans’ main town,” he said. “We’d be almost there already.”

“I wouldn’t want to live in what was left of a polis after a Spartan sack and an earthquake,” Sostratos said. “The town they have now is better situated all the way around-it looks right across the channel to Halikarnassos. And it’s laid out in a sensible grid like Rhodes, so a stranger has some chance of finding his way around. The streets in the old city were probably tracks that wandered wherever they wanted.”

“Every word you say is true, my dear,” Menedemos replied. “But Astypalaia’s right here in front of our noses, and we’ve still got some traveling to do before we get to the polis of Kos.”

Ptolemaios’ galleys prowled in front of Kos. Antigonos’ warships patrolled in front of Halikarnassos. Sostratos supposed they clashed every so often. At the moment, they were leaving one another alone, for which he was duly grateful.

The sun was just setting as the Aphrodite came to the harbor. Before the akatos could enter, one of Ptolemaios’ fives hurried up to look her over. The war galley’s banners displayed the eagle of the lord of Egypt. “Heave to!” an officer at the bow shouted.

“Oop!” Diokles called to the rowers, and they rested at their oars.

“What ship are you?” the officer demanded. “Where are you from, what are you carrying, and where are you bound?”

“We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes and bound for Athens,” Sostratos answered. The war galley’s flank loomed up out of the water like a wooden wall. She had twice the freeboard of the akatos; her deck stood six or seven cubits above the surface of the sea. A ripe stench wafted out of her oarports. She had two rowers on each thranite and zygite oar, a single man on each bottommost, or thalamite, oar. All the rowers were enclosed under the decking that held marines and kept missiles from striking home. It had to be like an oven in there. Sostratos wondered how often they swabbed out the bilges. Not often enough, by the stink.

“A Rhodian, eh?” the officer said. “What firm?”

“That of Philodemos and Lysistratos,” Sostratos said.

The officer turned his head and spoke to some of the men behind him. One of them must have vouched for the firm’s existence, for he grunted and asked, “What’s your cargo?”

“Crimson dye, ink and papyrus, beeswax, embroidered linen, Rhodian rose perfume…” Sostratos replied, thinking, And no olive oil, gods be praised.

“All right. Pass on, Rhodian,” the officer on the war galley said. “You know, you look like a pirate at first glance.”

“Really?” Sostratos raised an astonished eyebrow. “No one’s ever told me that before.” Behind him, half a dozen sailors snickered and snorted. Ptolemaios’ officer scratched his head, as if wondering whether the Rhodian was making sport of him. Too late, Sostratos realized he should have swallowed his sarcasm. Diokles smote the bronze square. The rowers bent their backs. The Aphrodite slid toward the harbor. After a long, worrying moment of sitting quiet in the water, the war galley resumed its patrol.

“Come back here a moment, O best one, if you’d be so kind,” Menedemos called from the poop deck. Sostratos came. He came with all the eagerness of a small boy summoned to a whipping by his father, and for the same reason. But all Menedemos said was, “You’d do better not to crack wise when that fellow’s ship could sink us without even noticing she’d done it.”

“Yes, my dear,” Sostratos said meekly. Still, he couldn’t help adding, “I’m not the only one who’s ever done such a thing, you know.”

“Are you talking about me}” Menedemos demanded in disbelieving tones.

That was too much. “Yes, by the dog, I am talking about you,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos reached out and poked him in the ribs. He jumped and squawked. Menedemos laughed. “Got you!” he said. “Got you twice, in fact. I know I’ve let my tongue run freer than it might have every now and again. That still doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, whether I do it or you do.”

“By the dog,” Sostratos said again, this time in an altogether different tone of voice. “Maybe you’re growing up.”

His cousin looked aggrieved. “Is that a nice thing to tell someone?”

“Some people would think so,” Sostratos answered. “But then, they’d already be grown up, so I wouldn’t need to say it to them.” This time, his cousin looked genuinely affronted, which made him feel a little better.

When Menedemos woke up in a bed, he needed a moment to remember where he was. Hearing Sostratos’ snore coming from another bed no more than a cubit away reminded him the two of them had taken a room at an inn not far from the harbor at Kos. Menedemos yawned, scratched, and sat up. Then he scratched again, more earnestly. He hoped he hadn’t shared the bed with little guests who hadn’t paid for it.

Sunlight slid through the shutters over a narrow window-and poured through a couple of broken slats. Menedemos stood up and used the chamber pot under the bed. Sostratos twisted so that one of those sunbeams fell across his face. He threw up a hand, which sufficed to wake him. “Good day,” he said around a yawn of his own.

“And a good day to you.” Menedemos held out the pot. “Here. I was going to boot you out of bed anyhow, as soon as I finished using this.”

“Thanks. I’m so sorry to disappoint you.” Sostratos used the chamber pot, then carried it over to the window. “Coming out!” he called as he opened the shutters. He poured the slops into the street below. An irate yelp said somebody might not have moved fast enough at his warning. He turned back to Menedemos. “Do you suppose the innkeeper will have bread for breakfast?”

Menedemos shrugged. “If he doesn’t, we can stop at a bakery or buy something from someone on the street. And then-on to Pixodaros’.”

“Pity he couldn’t have seen that silk we sold to Menelaos,” Sostratos said. “I wonder what he would have made of it.”

“He would have made money, that’s what,” Menedemos said. “But he couldn’t have matched that silk. None of the Koan weavers can. If it ever starts coming out of the east regularly, they’ll have to find another line of work, because what they make doesn’t come close.”

“You get no arguments from me. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but I did.” Sostratos headed for the door. “Now the question is, will I see breakfast with my own eyes?”

The innkeeper was munching on a barley roll when the two Rhodians walked into the main room. “No, I don’t sell breakfast,” he said when Sostratos asked. “You can buy some wine from me, though.”

Menedemos tossed his head. “Why do that now and then something to eat later on?” he said. “Come on, Sostratos-we’ll get ‘em both in the same place.” His cousin didn’t disagree. The innkeeper’s glare burned into their backs as they walked out onto the street.

Pixodaros’ house was only a few blocks away, across the street from a brothel full of pretty boys. The slave who opened the door at the silk dealer’s exclaimed in surprise: “The Rhodians!” He bowed very low, then went on in accented Greek, “You not come back last year, master think something bad happen.”

“No, we’re fine,” Menedemos answered. “We sailed east last year instead of west, that’s all. Not much point coming to Kos when you’re bound for Sidon, is there?”

The slave shook his head. “No, sir, none at all. You come in. You both come in. My master, he be glad to see you.” He stood aside to let them through the doorway, then hurried past them into the house, calling, “Master, master! The Rhodians is here!”

“Are they?” Menedemos heard Pixodaros say. He had an accent, too: just enough to make someone notice he hadn’t been born a Hellene. “Well, that’s very good news indeed. Fetch them some wine and something to go with it, Ibanollis.”

“Ibanollis,” Sostratos murmured, fixing the name in his memory. “Ibanollis. Ibanollis.” Menedemos knew his cousin had it now. He relied on Sostratos’ memory more than he cared to admit, even to himself.

Out came Pixodaros: a plump, prosperous-looking Karian with a luxuriant black beard just beginning to show streaks of gray. “Hail, Rhodians,” he said, bowing to Menedemos and Sostratos before stepping forward to clasp their hands. “Very good to see you again. I feared for your safety: going out on the wine-dark sea is a risky business.”

Menedemos smiled. Pixodaros surely used the Homeric epithet to show that, even though he came from barbarian stock, he’d been grafted on to the tree of Hellenic culture. “We’re well, as I told your slave,” he replied; he wouldn’t try to pronounce Ibanollis’ name. “We sailed east last year, that’s all. You seem to be doing splendidly for yourself.”

“I’m lucky,” Pixodaros said with un-Hellenic modesty. But it was true. He went on, “If my master had had children who lived…” He shrugged broad shoulders. Old Xenophanes had died childless and left his business to the slave-a freedman now-who’d been his right-hand man. Had the Hellene had a son-or even a daughter with a husband- Pixodaros would have stayed a slave himself instead of owning slaves. “Come.” He waved the Rhodians toward the andron. “Drink wine with me. Eat olives and cheese and bread. So you went east, did you?”

“Yes, to Sidon, and I went down into Ioudaia from there,” Sostratos said.

“Well, well. You Hellenes have always had itchy feet, haven’t you?” Pixodaros said. “Me, I’m here, and I like being here just fine.” Ibanollis came in with a wooden tray with wine and snacks on it. He poured wine for his master and for the Rhodians. Pixodaros spat an olive pit onto the ground, then asked, “Tell me, O most noble ones, did you see any… unusual silk while you were in Phoenicia?”

Menedemos and Sostratos looked at each other. “You know of the silk that comes out of the east, then?” Menedemos said.

“I have heard of it. I have not seen it,” the Karian answered. “I have heard it is finer than any we make on Kos. Is this true?”

“It is, I’m afraid,” Menedemos said. “It’s so fine and thin and smooth, it might almost be another fabric. Do you know Zakerbaal son of Tenes, the Sidonian cloth merchant?”

“I have heard his name, but I have never done business with him,” Pixodaros replied. “He is the man who had this eastern silk?”

“That’s right.” Menedemos dipped his head. “I bought twelve bolts from him, paying more than two and a half times their weight in Koan silk. And I sold all twelve bolts to Ptolemaios’ brother, Menelaos, at Cypriot Salamis, for a hundred and eight minai of silver.” Had Pixodaros been ignorant of Zakerbaal, he would have been tempted to say he’d given the Phoenician merchant even more. But the truth might get back here, and that truth was impressive enough by itself.

It certainly impressed Pixodaros. “By Zeus Labraundeus!” he muttered- Zeus of the double-headed axe, with his cult center at Labraunda, was a leading Karian god. The silk merchant gathered himself. “I find that hard to believe.”

“My cousin speaks the truth,” Sostratos said. “Give us any oath you please, and we will swear it. You know us well enough to know we don’t swear lightly, either.”

By Pixodaros’ expression, he did know that, and didn’t like it. His next question was one that had also occurred to Menedemos: “How much of this new eastern silk will come to the lands around the Inner Sea?”

“I don’t think anyone can say yet,” Menedemos answered. “Till I got to Sidon, I hadn’t even heard of it. I suppose that, since you sell silk yourself, word would have come to you sooner than to most people.”

“Yes, I would think so.” The Karian emptied his cup, then filled it again. A sigh made his wide shoulders sag. “All I can do is keep selling what I make. No matter how fine this other stuff may be, I know mine is good, too. Anyone who wants it will still have to pay the proper price.” He looked a challenge at the two Rhodians.

“Well, best one, when we were here two years ago, we worked out a bargain for silk and dye and perfume,” Menedemos said. “That suited us well enough. How did your side of it work out?”

“Not bad,” Pixodaros said. “Will you expect the same rates again?”

“Certainly,” Sostratos said.

“Why shouldn’t we?” Menedemos added.

“Because, if you went to Phoenicia, you got the crimson dye yourselves,” Pixodaros answered. “You paid less for it than you would have if you’d bought it in Rhodes.”

“But we had the cost of bringing it back ourselves,” Menedemos countered. “That isn’t cheap, not with the Aphrodite .”

“And we got attacked by pirates off the Lykian coast,” Sostratos said. “The dye almost didn’t get here. We almost didn’t get here.”

“Oimoi!” Pixodaros exclaimed. “Tell me your story.”

Menedemos and Sostratos told it together. As usual, Menedemos did most of the talking. He couldn’t be quite so dramatic as he would have liked, for he knew his cousin would add a dry correction or two if he strayed too far from the facts. Even without embellishment, the story was a good one.

When the Rhodians finished, Pixodaros clapped his hands and said, “Euge! I am glad to see both of you here and safe.”

“Believe me, we’re glad to be here and safe,” Sostratos said. “But now you see why we charge what we charge for the crimson dye.”

Although Menedemos dipped his head in agreement, he sent Sostratos an annoyed look. This wasn’t the time to start banging away at business again. Sostratos should have smiled and told another story, or a joke, or something of the sort. Menedemos reached for the oinokhoe and poured his winecup and his cousin’s full again. Dickers had a rhythm to them, no less than tunes on the kithara. Make one go too fast and it would come out wrong, just as a tune would. Sostratos didn’t always have a feel for that.

To make sure this bargain went as it should, Menedemos asked, “Has any news from Athens reached Kos this sailing season?”

Pixodaros hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat before tossing his head. Menedemos had seen that response before from barbarians who wanted to seem as Hellenic as they could. Their first impulse was to shake the head, as most foreign folk did, and they needed that tiny moment to catch themselves and remember Hellenes did things differently. The Karian answered, “No, not yet. Ships are only beginning to put to sea this spring, and none from Athens has come here yet.”

Sostratos asked, “Has any ship bound for Athens been here to buy silk?”

That was a legitimate question. Menedemos would have asked it if Sostratos hadn’t beaten him to it. This time, Pixodaros tossed his head without hesitation. “No, you are the first,” he replied, and smiled a sly smile. “Maybe I should charge you more, because I know you’ll make more there.”

Sostratos jumped as if stung by a wasp. “That’s not just!” he exclaimed.

“He’s joking, my dear,” Menedemos said. “He wanted to startle you, and he did.”

Pixodaros’ smile got wider, showing strong, white teeth-he didn’t look as if he were one who’d suffer miseries on that account as he got older. “I know it is not just, my friends, and I would not do it. But startling a friend every now and again-you should have seen the look on your face.” He laughed out loud.

“Oh.” Sostratos looked foolish. But then he managed a small, self-deprecating laugh. He didn’t get angry, or at least didn’t show anger, for which Menedemos was glad. In his own way, Sostratos was a good bargainer, but he could forget himself. Not here, though.

“Shall we see some silk now?” Menedemos asked, his voice casual. “If it’s up to your usual standard-and I’m sure it will be-shall we forge the same sort of bargain as we did two years ago?”

“I think so,” the Karian freedman replied. “I made money on it, and I gather you gentlemen did, too.” He raised his voice. “Ibanollis! The Rhodians are ready to look at the silk now. Bring the best we have.”

“I do,” Ibanollis said. “You wait one little bit.”

The silk was very good, some of the finest and most transparent Koan weavers made. But it could not match the eastern cloth Menedemos had got from Zakerbaal the Sidonian. Merchants always looked disappointed at the quality of goods they were offered: that was part of the role they played. Here, though, Menedemos and Sostratos had no trouble seeming unimpressed, and Menedemos knew they would have had a hard time acting blase about this silk if they hadn’t seen the other.

Pixodaros sensed they weren’t putting on their indifference, too. He said, “You remind me of men going home to ugly wives from the house of a beautiful hetaira. Is this eastern silk really that splendid?”

“I’m afraid it is, O best one,” Menedemos said soberly. “For its kind, though, what you have here is excellent.” He felt like a man praising an ugly wife for the way she managed a home.

With a sigh, Pixodaros said, “Well, I can hope the eastern silk stays in the east for the rest of my life.” He suddenly looked anxious. “You do still want to make this bargain, don’t you?”

“We wouldn’t have come here if we didn’t,” Sostratos reassured him. “For now, Koan silk is the finest cloth we can get, and it will have a ready market in Athens.”

“For now,” the Karian muttered under his breath. Menedemos wished his cousin hadn’t tacked that on, even if it was true-perhaps especially because it was true. Pixodaros made himself straighten his shoulders, as a Hellene might have done. “I do still have the finest silk made around the Inner Sea.” He spoke as if reminding himself as well as the Rhodians.

“Of course you do,” Menedemos said soothingly. “We’re always pleased to do business with you. Sostratos said it-that’s why we’re here.” Pixodaros smiled. Even so, he had to be wondering how long he and his could stay prosperous. Through his son’s lifetime? Through his own? Or only another year or two? Menedemos thought it would be longer than that, but he didn’t know. He wouldn’t have wanted to do business with that kind of risk hanging over him. By all the signs, neither did Pixodaros. But he didn’t have that worry, and the freedman did.

When they left Pixodaros’ house, maybe that sense of relief was part of what made Menedemos look across the street. “You know what I’m going to do?” he said. “I’m going to have a go at the boy brothel there. Want to come along?”

“No, thanks,” Sostratos said. “I don’t much fancy boys.”

“Neither do I, usually,” Menedemos said. “I feel like it today, though.”

“Have fun. I’ll see you back at the inn, then,” Sostratos said.

The brothelkeeper was a fat Phoenician with a curled beard. His Greek held a guttural accent. “At your service, my master,” he said. “Take your pick.” He waved at the youths in the main room. Had they been women, they would have been spinning to earn him extra money. Some of them wore silk tunics, as women might have (Menedemos wondered if it was Pixodaros’ silk). Others were naked.

Menedemos pointed to a youth of about fifteen with less paint on his face than most of the boys wore. “Him, I think.”

“Hearkening and obedience,” the whoremaster said with a bow. “Sadyattes, go with the man.”

A Lydian, Menedemos thought as the slave got to his feet. “Come with me,” the boy said, sounding more resigned than alluring. The room to which he led the Rhodian was small and gloomy, with no furniture but a bed, a stool with a small jar on it, and a chamber pot. It smelled of sweat. Sadyattes pulled his chiton off over his head. He was a little pudgier and a little hairier than Menedemos had expected. Perfection is for the gods, Menedemos thought. He’ll do. Still sounding resigned, Sadyattes asked, “What do you want?”

“Nothing fancy-just the usual,” Menedemos said.

“All right.” Instead of bending over straightaway, the slave reached for the jar. “Will you use some olive oil first? It’s… easier that way.”

Menedemos pulled off his own chiton. “Well, why not?” he answered. “Go ahead-put some on me.” The brothel boy obeyed, gently pushing back his foreskin as he rose. Sadyattes’ fingers were skilled and knowing. “Now turn around,” Menedemos said after a little while. The boy did. Menedemos took his pleasure. Sadyattes gave no sign of taking any of his own, but boys seldom did. Menedemos patted him on the backside, then gave him an obolos. “Here. You don’t need to tell that fellow with the fancy beard you got this.”

“I thank you, most noble one.” The slave put the little silver coin in his mouth.

Whistling, Menedemos left the boy brothel, which was more than Sadyattes could do. When he got back to the inn, Sostratos asked, “How was it?”

He thought a moment, then shrugged. “Nothing fancy,” he said. “Just the usual.”

“Rhyppapai!” Diokles called. “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” The rowers bent their backs; some of them grunted with effort at each stroke. Sostratos looked toward the Anatolian mainland, which slowly crawled past to starboard. Then, deliberately, he looked to port again.

A smooth horizon seemed to rise and fall less than a corrugated one. As if to show how much he approved of that, he said, “I don’t like the Ikarian Sea.”

“No, eh?” Menedemos grinned at him. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Because it’s got some of the roughest water anywhere in the Inner Sea?” Sostratos suggested. He gulped and silently told his stomach to stay where it belonged. For the moment, it seemed willing to listen to him.

His cousin chuckled. “And all the time I thought it was because you sympathized with Ikaros, who came crashing down somewhere around here.”

“As a matter of fact, I do sympathize with Ikaros,” Sostratos said. “I sympathize with Daidalos, who after all made his son’s wings, even more. What’s wrong with pursuing knowledge, I’d like to know?”

“People ought to pursue good sense first,” Menedemos said.

“Really?” Sostratos raised an eyebrow. “And how can a man have any idea of what good sense is without knowledge? Suppose you tell me that.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Menedemos tossed his head. “You’re trying to lure me into a philosophical discussion. No thanks, my dear; I don’t want to play.”

“Not even when you started it?” Sostratos made a reproachful clucking noise. “For shame. You remind me of a man who starts arguments in taverns and then ducks out before the fists fly.”

“I’d rather talk about where we put in next,” Menedemos said. “That has money attached to it.”

“So it does.” Sostratos pointed north. “We’re bound for Samos and then, I thought, for Khios. With the fine wine they make there…”

“As a matter of fact, I was thinking of passing up Khios altogether and going straight on to Lesbos,” Menedemos said.

“You were?” Sostratos gaped. That came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. “By the dog of Egypt, why? We can bring Ariousian from Khios to Athens and make a splendid profit. There’s no better wine in the world than Ariousian.”

“Yes, and don’t the Khians know it?” Menedemos replied. “With what they charge, we have to bump up our prices so high, hardly anyone can afford to buy from us.”

“That’s the point of having an akatos,” Sostratos said. “For bulk goods, we could take out a round ship and not have to pay all our rowers.”

“Lesbos makes good wines, too,” his cousin said. “Not quite up to Ariousian, I admit, but plenty good enough for the Aphrodite to carry. And Lesbos has something Khios doesn’t.”

“What?” Sostratos demanded; he couldn’t think of anything.

But Menedemos could: “Truffles. They grow close by Mytilene, and they’re always best in the springtime. Tell me the rich Athenians and the Macedonian officers in the garrison won’t want truffles.”

Sostratos couldn’t, and he knew it. “Truffles,” he murmured, intrigued in spite of himself. “Isn’t that interesting? I have to hand it to you, my dear-they never would have occurred to me. Still… I hate to spend the extra time on the way.”

“On account of the Greater Dionysia?” Menedemos asked, and Sostratos dipped his head. Menedemos took a hand off the steering-oar tiller to shake a reproachful finger. “Profit first, best one. Profit first, drama second.”

“Normally, that’s a good rule,” Sostratos said. “But the Greater Dionysia is special.”

“I’ll tell you what’s special,” Menedemos said. “The clink of the owls the Athenians’ll lay down for truffles and good Lesbian wine is special, that’s what.”

“I know we have to make money.” Sostratos said it with more than a little shame in his voice. A kalos k’agathos, a proper Hellenic gentleman, lived off the land he owned and looked down his nose at trade. Damonax professed being that kind of gentleman. As Sostratos had seen, though, his brother-in-law didn’t despise the money from trade, especially when his family needed it-which they did a lot of the time.

“Well, then, act like you enjoy it.” Menedemos didn’t mind being a merchant-or, if he did, he hid it well, perhaps even from himself. “If it weren’t for people like us, all the kaloi k’agathoi would be sitting around on bare floors scratching themselves, because who’d sell ‘em all the things that make life worth living? Nobody, that’s who.”

“Getting the chance to see strange places is part of what makes being a merchant worthwhile,” Sostratos admitted. “And I’ve never been to Mytilene, so”-he dipped his head-”all right. If that’s what you want to do, we’ll do it. You know, that polis wouldn’t be here today if the Athenians hadn’t changed their minds during the Peloponnesian War. ”

“When did the Athenians ever do anything but change their minds?” Menedemos asked, more than a little scornfully.

“They would have massacred the city after it rose up against them, and they sent off a trireme with orders to do just that,” Sostratos said. “But then they had second thoughts, and they sent another ship after the first. The rowers on the first ship dawdled; they didn’t like what they were doing. The other ship hurried. Even though it started a day behind, it got there just in time to stop the slaughter. Mytilene’s worth seeing, just on account of that.”

Menedemos laughed. “If that’s what interests you, all right. The other thing that makes me want to go to Lesbos is the word of mouth.” He leered. Diokles chuckled.

Sostratos said, “Is it true, what they say about Lesbian women? Did they really invent that particular vice there? From what I’ve heard of Sappho ’s poetry, she doesn’t talk about it.”

“With that funny Aiolic dialect they speak there, half the time it’s hard to tell what they’re talking about,” Menedemos answered. “But if you mean, did they invent sucking a man’s prong, well, Aristophanes sure thinks so.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” Sostratos said. “ Aristophanes says all sorts of things that aren’t so.”

His cousin ignored him. Menedemos seldom wasted a chance to quote from the comic poet, and proved no exception now: “ ‘You seem to me to be the lambda among the Lesbians,’ he says. And there’s that modern poet, what’s-his-name-Theopompos, that’s it-too:

‘Not to mention this old method, repeated Through our mouths Which the children of the Lesbians Found.’ “

“That’s not proof-it’s only assertion,” Sostratos said.

“You want proof, find a friendly girl on Mytilene,” Menedemos answered. “She’ll measure the hypotenuse on your triangle. See, I remember some geometry after all.”

He and Diokles both found the joke very funny. For some reason Sostratos couldn’t fathom, he did, too. He tried to think rationally about a pretty girl from a brothel drawing triangles in the sand and talking in learned tones about the theory the godlike Pythagoras had proved-and the harder he tried, the harder he laughed.

“You’re absurd,” he told his cousin.

“Thank you,” Menedemos answered, which for some reason made them both laugh more than ever. At last, Menedemos said, “On to Lesbos, then.”

“On to Lesbos,” Sostratos agreed. After a while, he asked, “What are truffles supposed to cost? Have you got any idea?”

Menedemos tossed his head. “Whatever we have to pay, we charge more in Athens, that’s all. So far as I know, they don’t grow truffles there, so they’ll pay.”

“Well, yes, certainly,” Sostratos said. “But I’ve never traded for them before. I’d like to have some idea of how to tell good ones from bad, and how much I ought to pay for each grade. The more I know beforehand, the better the bargains I can hope to make.”

“Ask at some of our stops on the way up to Mytilene,” Menedemos suggested. “The closer we get to Lesbos, the more likely the merchants in the market squares are to have dealt in ‘em.”

“That makes good sense,” Sostratos said. “Yes, that makes very good sense. How did you come up with it?”

“Talent,” Menedemos said airily. “Pure talent.”

Few things irked Sostratos more than having his cousin refuse to rise to one of his gibes. “There must be a rational explanation instead,” he said.

Menedemos blew him a kiss. “You’re so sweet,” he purred. “Sweet as vinegar.”

“Oh, lesbiaze,” Sostratos said. The verb, derived from the alleged proclivity of Lesbian women for such things, set him and Menedemos- and Diokles, and some of the rowers, too-laughing all over again.

Menedemos steered the Aphrodite toward the harbor at Mytilene. Part of the polis sat on a little island in the middle of the harbor. The rest lay on Lesbos proper, to the north of the islet. A modern wall of gray stone protected the portion of Mytilene on the Lesbian mainland. Like Rhodes, that part of the city was built on a grid; a glance told Menedemos the streets on the little island, the older part of Mytilene, ran every which way.

“I keep waiting for a war galley to come boiling out and ask what we’re doing here,” Sostratos said.

“That happened at Samos, but not at Khios,” Menedemos said. “My guess is, we’re far enough inside Antigonos’ dominions that people don’t worry so much about a lone galley.”

“People in Antigonos’ dominions don’t worry so much about whether we’re pirates, either,” Sostratos said. “They might want to hire us if we turn out to be raiders, but they don’t care about sinking us.”

“From everything I’ve seen and heard, old One-Eye cares about himself first, last, and always, and to the crows with everything else,” Menedemos said. “If he can get some use out of pirates, he’s all for them. If he can’t, he doesn’t worry one way or the other.”

Diokles pointed to a quay not far from the bridge joining the old part of Mytilene to the new. “There’s a good place to tie up, skipper,” he said.

“Yes, I see it,” Menedemos agreed, and swung the merchant galley slightly to port. He eased her up alongside the jutting pier, then dipped his head to the oarmaster.

“Back oars!” Diokles called. A couple of strokes killed the bit of forward momentum the Aphrodite had left. The keleustes grunted in satisfaction. “Oцp!” he said, and the rowers rested. “Ship oars!” he added. As they obeyed, sailors tossed lines to waiting longshoremen, who made the akatos fast to the pier.

“What vessel? What cargo?” asked one of the men on the quay. In Aiolic fashion, he put the accent on each word as far forward as it could possibly go.

“We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes,” Menedemos answered. His Doric drawl seemed even more foreign here than it did in the Ionic-speaking towns the merchant galley had visited on her way north. “We’ve got Rhodian perfume, papyrus and ink, Koan silk, crimson dye and beeswax and balsam and embroidered linen from Phoenicia- things of that sort.”

“And what are you looking for here?” the local asked.

“Wine, of course,” Menedemos said, and the fellow dipped his head.

Sostratos added, “And truffles. Can you give us the names of a couple of dealers?”

The Mytilenean looked elaborately blank. “By the gods, Hellenes are a greedy folk,” Sostratos muttered. He took an obolos out of his mouth and tossed it to the longshoreman.

As soon as the fellow caught it, his manner changed. “I can give you one sip right now,” he said. A sip? Menedemos wondered, and then remembered that Aiolic used s instead of t in front of i. The longshoreman went on, “And that’s steer clear of Apollonides. He adulterates what he sells.”

“Thanks, friend,” Sostratos said. “Knowing whom to stay away from is as important as knowing whom to go to.”

“Try Onetor,” the local suggested, “and after him Neon. Onetor’s brother, Onesimos, sells wine. Neon and Onetor are both honest, more or less, but Onetor is more likely to have the best truffles than Neon is.”

Now Menedemos gave him an obolos. The longshoreman was effusive in his thanks. In a low voice, Sostratos said, “We’ll do some more checking before we deal. This fellow may not know what he’s talking about, or else he may be Onetor’s cousin, or Neon’s, and get a cut of whatever business he brings in.”

“I know that,” Menedemos answered, also quietly. “We’ll ask around in the agora. Still, we’ve got a place to start.”

Like sparrows scattering when a jay fluttered down to peck at seeds, the longshoremen drew back as a swaggering soldier in a swirling red cape strode up the quay toward the Aphrodite . He was wide through the shoulders, at least as tall as Sostratos, and looked taller because of the crested and brightly polished bronze helm he wore. His eyes were gray; his close-cut beard had big red streaks in it. When he spoke, the Macedonian that poured from his lips made Aiolic dialect seem straightforward by comparison.

Menedemos stood there dumbfounded, wondering how to tell him he was speaking gibberish. Sostratos undertook the job: “I’m very sorry, O best one, and I do not mean to offend you, but I cannot follow what you say.” He made his own speech as Attic as he could: that was the dialect people who learned Greek were most likely to follow, and to use.

After an incomprehensible Macedonian oath, the soldier tried again. This time, he managed intelligible Greek, asking, “What ship be ye here? Where be ye from? What might ye carry?” Menedemos told him. He followed Doric Greek about as well as Sostratos’ almost-Attic, and asked another question: “Whither be ye bound?”

“Athens.” Sostratos spoke before Menedemos could. By the way his tongue caressed the city’s name, he longed for it as Menedemos might have longed for one of the women who lived there.

“Athens, eh?” The Macedonian dipped his head, smiling a little, and said something more in his native speech. He turned and marched down the pier, his rawhide boots thudding on the sun-baked, bird-splashed planks.

“What was that last bit?” Menedemos asked Sostratos.

“It sounded like, ‘Maybe I’ll see you there,’ “ his cousin answered.

“It sounded like that to me, too, but that’s not likely, is it?” Menedemos said. “He’s Antigonos’ man, and Athens belongs to Kas-sandros.”

“They don’t love each other,” Sostratos agreed.

“We probably heard it wrong,” Menedemos said. “I’d almost rather listen to a Thracian than a Macedonian. At least Thracian’s a real foreign language, and you know ahead of time it won’t make any sense to you. When you hear Macedonians talking, you pick up a word now and then, and you hear other bits that sound like they ought to make sense, but then you listen a little longer and you realize you don’t know what in Tartaros they’re talking about.”

“Usually it’s something like, ‘Surrender right now. Give me your silver,’ “ Sostratos said. “Macedonians aren’t very complicated people.”

As unobtrusively as he could, Menedemos kicked him in the ankle, saying, “You’re pretty simple yourself, to scoff at them where the Lesbians might hear you and blab. We want to do business here, not get in trouble.”

“You’re right, my dear. I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.” Sostratos was much more ready than most Hellenes to apologize when in the wrong. That made Menedemos have a hard time staying angry at him, but also roused faint contempt. Did his cousin have no self-respect?

Diokles asked, “Are you young gentlemen going to an inn tonight, or will you sleep aboard ship?”

“Good question.” Menedemos turned to Sostratos. “How about it? Do you feel like a bed tonight, with maybe a slave girl in it to show us what women in Lesbos are famous for?”

“We’d probably get better lodgings at the house of the Rhodian proxenos here.” Sostratos eyed the setting sun. “Too late to send anybody to his house this evening. Tomorrow would do better for that, and so I’d just as soon sleep here tonight.”

After a moment’s thought, Menedemos dipped his head. “You make good sense,” he said. “All things considered, you usually do.”

“Thanks-I think,” Sostratos said. “I am fairly good at being right. One of the things I’ve found, though, is that it’s much less useful than people think.”

“That’s a what-do-you-call-it-a paradox,” Menedemos said. “What’s wrong with being right?”

“For one thing, a good many questions aren’t important, so whether you’re right or not really doesn’t matter very much,” Sostratos said seriously. “For another, being right annoys people a lot of the time. They think you think you’re better than they are, when all you truly think is that you’re more accurate.”

Menedemos had watched Sostratos look down his nose at him and at other people too many times to be altogether convinced by that. Saying so, though, would have sparked a quarrel. Instead, he got himself a couple of barley rolls, some olives, and some dried fish. “Why don’t you pour us some wine?” he said. “This won’t be much of a supper, but it’ll keep us going.”

His cousin got out their cups. “We’ll eat better at the proxenos’ house than we would at an inn,” he said. “The only thing innkeepers know how to do is to fry whatever you bring them in hot oil.” Sostratos dipped wine from an amphora of the rough red the crew drank, then diluted it with water from another jar.

“You’re bound to be right about that,” Menedemos said as Sostratos gave him his cup. “I’ve had some ghastly suppers in inns.”

“Who hasn’t? Only men who never travel,” Sostratos said. “And this is another one of those places where, even if I am right, so what?” He took a sip of wine, then fixed a supper for himself. “You see? My being right didn’t even get you to bring out any food for me, though I poured your wine.”

“Well, now you’ve embarrassed me,” Menedemos said, which was true; he knew he should have taken sitos and opson for Sostratos as well as himself. “I’m just lazy and useless, that’s all.” He hung his head.

“If you were on the stage, they’d throw cucumbers and squishy apples at you, the way you overact,” Sostratos said. Menedemos snorted, though Sostratos was probably right again.

When Sostratos woke up on the Aphrodite’s poop deck, he needed a moment to remember in which city’s harbor the ship lay. Kos? Samos? Khios? No, this was Mytilene, on Lesbos. The wind blew from the north, and carried the city stink of dung and smoke and sweat and garbage from the part of the polis on Lesbos proper straight into the harbor. When Sostratos was inside a city, he stopped noticing the smell after a while. Going out to sea, though, reminded him of it whenever he came back to port.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The eastern sky, the sky above the Anatolian mainland, was gray with advancing dawn. Menedemos still snored beside him. That seldom happened; more often than not, Menedemos woke before him. And Diokles still slept sitting up on a rower’s bench, leaning against the planks of the ship’s side. Sostratos rubbed his eyes again, wondering whether to believe them-he couldn’t remember the last time he’d got up ahead of the keleustes.

He got to his feet and walked, naked, to the rail to ease himself. Even one man moving about gave the merchant galley a small but perceptible motion, enough to rouse both Menedemos and Diokles. “Hail,” Menedemos said. “Not such a sleepyhead as usual, eh?”

“Oh, go howl!” Sostratos said. “Sleeping later than you do doesn’t make me a lazy wretch.”

“No, eh? Since when?” Menedemos got out from under his himation. He too didn’t bother with clothes while sleeping: he used his wadded-up chiton for a cushion. He came over and stood beside Sostratos.

Diokles stood up and stretched. Sostratos said, “I still think you’d be more comfortable if you lay down when you slept.”

The oarmaster tossed his head. “That may be fine for other people, but not for me. I got used to sleeping sitting up when I pulled an oar, and nothing else has felt right since. I have no quarrel with what anybody else does, and I don’t see why anyone else should have a quarrel with what I do.”

“I have no quarrel with it,” Sostratos said. “It just seems strange.”

Menedemos grinned impishly. “And when you have a girl, Diokles, do you sit up and put her on your lap?”

“Sometimes,” Diokles replied, unruffled. “It’s as good that way as any other, don’t you think?”

“It’s pretty good any which way.” Menedemos turned to Sostratos. “Now that would be something useful for philosophers to do, my dear: figure out which way it’s best, I mean.”

“It’s as Pindaros says-custom is king of all,” Sostratos answered. “Besides, what one man likes most, another likes least. So who can say what best is?”

“If you go to a brothel, the girls charge you most for riding you like a racehorse,” Diokles said. “They must think that’s the best.”

“Not necessarily,” Sostratos said. “They might charge more because they have to do the most work that way. If they just bend forward, the man behind them is thrusting home with his spear, and they don’t need to do much at all.”

Menedemos laughed. “Well, this is an interesting way to start the morning. More fun than breakfast, I will say.”

From gray, the eastern sky went to pink, and then to gold. The sailors who’d spent the night on the Aphrodite instead of going into Mytilene to drink and wench got up one by one. Before long, they were arguing about the best way to do it. They got no answer that would have satisfied a scholar at the Lykeion, but they had fun, too.

After a barley roll dipped in olive oil and a cup of watered wine, Sostratos said, “Shall we find the agora and see what we can learn about wine merchants and truffle sellers?”

“Sounds good to me.” Menedemos tilted his head back and emptied his cup. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Let’s go.”

They walked up the gangplank and down the quay. As they passed a longshoreman, Sostratos asked him where the market square was. The Mytilenean might have been stricken with an advanced case of idiocy. He scratched his head, pulled at his lower lip, frowned, and generally gave the impression of a man who had a hard time remembering his own name, let alone anything harder. Sostratos didn’t need to have read Hippokrates to know how to cure that malady. As he had with the other longshoreman, he gave the man an obolos. Sure enough, silver proved the proper drug. Intelligence blossomed on the Mytilenean’s face. He pointed north into the part of the polis on Lesbos and gave quick, confident directions, finishing, “You can’t miss it.”

“I hope not,” Sostratos muttered as they crossed the bridge.

“Up this street here, did he say?” Menedemos asked.

“That’s right,” Sostratos answered. He could see the grid of the city in his head, and see which way they should go. He’d needed years to realize most people couldn’t do that.

The wind blew strongly out of the north. Menedemos said, “A good thing we’re not coming up to Lesbos today. We wouldn’t get anywhere fast.”

“No, we wouldn’t.” Sostratos stopped and rubbed at his eyes: the breeze had blown a speck of dust into them. More dust swirled past. “Here’s a town where the Hippodamian grid isn’t everything you wish it were,” he said, rubbing again. “They shouldn’t have made the streets all run north-south and east-west. The north wind just races down these long, straight avenues.”

“If you’re going to have a grid-” Menedemos began.

Sostratos tossed his head. “No, no. If they’d rotated it through half a right angle, then it would be fine; the wind would be blocked. The way things are, though, it’s… unpleasant.”

“It sure is.” Now his cousin paused to rub at his face and get some grit out of his eye. “Miserable wind. I’m glad we don’t live here all year around.”

“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but Rhodes,” Sostratos said, counting street corners so he’d know when to turn.

“Not even Athens?” Menedemos asked slyly.

Sostratos had to think about that. He had to think so hard, he almost lost track of the corners. At last, though, he tossed his head. “No, my dear, not even Athens. It’s a wonderful place to study, and the theater is the finest in the world, but it’s not what it was in the time of Perikles and Sokrates and Platon. The people have lost too many wars, and they know it. They still call themselves free and autonomous, the way so many poleis do these days, but it’s nothing a Rhodian would recognize as freedom. And what they call democracy…” He tossed his head again. “Demetrios of Phaleron runs things for Kassandros, and there’s a Macedonian garrison to make sure nothing unfortunate happens.”

“And if anyone says anything Demetrios doesn’t like, he disappears?” Menedemos asked.

“Sometimes-not always, I admit,” Sostratos replied. “Demetrios studied philosophy himself, and he makes a mild tyrant-a tolerable tyrant, if you don’t mind the contradiction. Things could be worse there. But they could be a lot better, too. And we turn… here, I think. This must be the temple to Hera that fellow in the harbor was talking about.” He swung to the left.

“I’d say so,” Menedemos agreed, and followed him. He pointed down the long, straight street. “And I’d say that’s the agora ahead.”

“Looks like it. Sounds like it, too.” Sostratos couldn’t help smiling. All over Hellas, market squares were the same, even if they looked different. The agora was the beating heart of a polis, not just the place where men bought and sold things but also where they gathered to gossip and trade news. “Sidon and Jerusalem weren’t like this.”

“I don’t know about Jerusalem-I wasn’t there-but Sidon certainly wasn’t, and not just because I didn’t speak the language,” Menedemos said. “The Phoenicians didn’t care about gathering and talking things over the way we do.”

“Neither did the Ioudaioi.” Sostratos ran his fingers through his hair and flicked at his beard to get rid of any crumbs that might have clung there. “But now we’re among Hellenes.”

“You bet we are.” Menedemos threw back his shoulders and strutted into the agora as if all the Mytileneans-none of whom had ever seen him before-should have known exactly who he was. Hurrying along behind him, Sostratos couldn’t help laughing softly. His cousin always made a procession, even if it was a procession of one. This will be a procession of two, Sostratos thought, and also put his best foot forward.

And people did look up from their buying and selling and arguing when the two Rhodians walked into the market square. “Hail, friends!” Menedemos said loudly, his Doric accent helping him stand out when most other men spoke sibilant, oddly stressed Aiolic. “We’re off the Aphrodite , the akatos from Rhodes that came in yesterday. We’re bound for Athens, and we’re looking for fine wine and truffles and whatever else we can find that the rich Athenians might like.”

Half a dozen hands shot up. “Here, come see what I’ve got,” merchants called. As Sostratos and Menedemos made their way through the crowd towards a wineseller’s stall, a fellow whose main stock in trade seemed to be linen goods thrust something at them and said, “What do you think of this?”

“A rock?” Sostratos said. At the same time, Menedemos said, “A chunk of wood?”

That made them both stop and take a closer look. Sostratos took the chunk-it was a little smaller than a man’s fist-from the linen-seller and hefted it. “It is stone,” he said. “But you’re right, Menedemos-it looks like wood.”

Chuckling, Menedemos said, “Well, that gryphon’s skull we found a couple of years ago was bone that seemed turned to stone. Maybe this is what it ate.”

Sostratos didn’t laugh now. He dipped his head. “Maybe it is.” He turned to the Mytilenean who’d shown it to them. “This came from the western part of your island, isn’t that so?”

“Why, yes, best one,” the local said in surprise. “But how did you know that?”

“Theophrastos, with whom I studied in Athens, comes from Lesbos. He talks about this wood turned to stone, though I’ve never seen it before. He’s even written a book called On Petrifaction.”

“By the dog!” Menedemos said. “I’ve heard of books about some odd things, but that may be the strangest one yet.”

“Would you like to buy this chunk of, ah, petrified wood?” the linen-seller asked. “Five drakhmai doesn’t seem like much, does it?”

“For a rock?” Sostratos said. “You’re joking, O marvelous one.” Thinking of the gryphon’s skull pained him, as it always did. But it wasn’t the sort of pain a rock that looked like-or perhaps was-a chunk of wood could assuage.

Sensing as much, the Mytilenean looked disappointed. “The way you were throwing those big words around, I figured you’d think five drakhmai was cheap.”

“Well, friend, you’d better try some new figuring,” Sostratos said. “I might buy it if you name me a halfway reasonable price. On the other hand, I might not, too. A lump of woody rock isn’t something you have to have unless you’re planning on bashing in a rascally linen-seller’s brains.”

“Ha!” Menedemos said. “I like that.”

By the way the local chuckled, he thought it was funny, too. “You’re a clever fellow, Athenian. What do you say to three drakhmai, then?”

“I say two things,” Sostratos answered. “The first is, I’m no Athenian.”

“You talk like one,” the linen-seller said.

“I studied there, but I’m from Rhodes.” Sostratos was more pleased than not that his accent could be taken for Attic. He wasn’t pleased enough to pay three drakhmai. “The other thing I say is, farewell.” He and Menedemos started on their way.

“Wait!” the linen-seller said. “What would you pay?”

“I might give you three oboloi, if I happened to feel generous,” Sostratos said. “I certainly wouldn’t give you any more than that.”

“Three oboloi!” The Mytilenean looked as if he’d just taken a big swig of vinegar, thinking it wine. Sullenly, he thrust the lump of wood that was also a lump of stone toward Sostratos. “Take it, then, if you want it. Have a good sime.”

Sostratos wondered if he ought to take it at any price. But it left him too curious to walk away. He gave the linen-seller three little silver coins and took the wood made stone from him. The Mytilenean looked much less dour with money in his hands. “What will you do with that?” Menedemos asked as they went through the agora.

“I don’t know. I’ll probably take it back to Rhodes and keep it as a curiosity,” Sostratos answered. “Not much point showing it off in Athens-as I said, Theophrastos and the other natural philosophers already know about this kind of thing.” He plucked at his beard, considering. “That means I’ll put the three oboloi on my own personal account, not the firm’s.”

“I wasn’t worrying about that,” Menedemos said. “Nobody’ll get excited about half a drakhma.”

“Oh, I know. But it’s only fair,” Sostratos said. “If you bent a woman forward for three oboloi, you wouldn’t charge that to the firm. You’d better not, anyhow.”

“I might, if I didn’t have somebody like you watching me,” Menedemos said.

“Better I should catch you than your father,” Sostratos said, at which his cousin looked as sour as the linen-seller had a little while before. He went on, “Let’s see if we can find out about wine merchants and people who sell truffles, shall we? That’s why we’re here, after all.”

They had to spend a drakhma and a half, an obolos at a time, to find out what they needed to know. That bothered Sostratos less than it might have, for he’d expected nothing different. They also spent a few oboloi for fried octopus: a fellow with a brazier emitting an irresistible smell strolled through the agora.

Collecting names wasn’t hard. Two Sostratos heard often were those of Onesimos and his brother, Onetor. From that he concluded the longshoreman at the quay probably had been doing his best to talk about men who might actually help. That left him relieved and a little surprised. He’d spent far more than two oboloi other places and achieved far less.

The Rhodians also got one more name: that of Phainias son of Poseides, the Rhodian proxenos at Mytilene. Sostratos gave a youth an obolos to go tell Phainias they would like to call on him and to bring back his reply. A quarter of an hour later, the youngster found him and Menedemos in the agora. Panting a little, he said, “Best ones, he already knew your ship was here. He invites you to supper this evening, and says you may sleep at his home if you care to.”

Beaming, Sostratos gave him another coin. Beaming, the youth ran off. Beaming, Menedemos said, “He knows how to sound like a proxenos, by Zeus. Now we’ll see what sort of table he sets.”

When one of his house slaves led Menedemos and Sostratos into his courtyard, Phainias bowed himself almost double. “Welcome, welcome, three simes welcome, most noble ones!” he exclaimed. He was about forty, his hair thinning at the temples, though his smooth-shaved face helped him look younger. He’d probably been a striking youth; now a double chin and the beginnings of a pot belly said he didn’t get to the gymnasion often enough. Bowing again, he went on, “You’re intrepid, the two of you. I didn’t expect to see Rhodians so early in the sailing season.”

“If we go out first, we’re more likely to reap the profit,” Menedemos said. Politely, he added, “Is there anything of yours we can take on to Athens?”

Phainias tossed his head. “Thank you. That’s most kindly meant, but no. I deal in olive oil, after all, and there’s not much point shipping that there.”

Menedemos shot Sostratos a glance that said, This fellow can see that. Why can’t your polluted brother-in-law? By Sostratos’ expression, he was thinking the same thing. Menedemos looked around the courtyard. “Handsome place you have here,” he said. Bees buzzed above flowers and herbs in the garden. A fountain splashed gently. A bronze Artemis, half life size, stood on a column drawing a bow.

“You’re too kind, best one,” Phainias said. As he spoke, a slave woman came out of the kitchen and picked some chervil from the garden. Menedemos smiled at her. Maybe Phainias would tell her to keep his bed warm tonight.

Sostratos didn’t seem to notice the woman. His mind still on business, he said, “Another reason we’re out early is to get to Athens before the Greater Dionysia.”

“Ah, you want to go to the theater, do you?” Phainias smiled. “I don’t blame you a bit. As long as you’re bound for Athens, you may as well have a good sime.” As Sostratos spoke a Doric flavored with Attic, so Phainias’ Aiolic dialect had the same overlay: he was plainly an educated man. Every so often, though, his own speech pattern showed through. He went on, “I’ll do everything I can to send you on your way quickly.”

“You’re a prince of proxenoi, O best one,” Menedemos said- flattery, yes, but flattery with a lot of truth in it. Like any proxenos, Phainias represented and helped another polis’ citizens in his native city. That could entail considerable effort and expense. Some men took on the job for the sake of its prestige and then scanted it. Phainias looked to want to do it right.

He bowed again at Menedemos’ compliment. “You’re very kind, most noble one, as I told you a moment ago. Come into the andron, if you please. We’ll have some wine, some supper, some more wine-not a real symposion, mind you, but you can go to bed happy if that’s what you’re looking for. Does it please you?”

“It pleases very much.” Menedemos answered quickly, before Sostratos could. His cousin’s shoulders went up and down in a tiny shrug. Sostratos seldom cared to go to bed happy with wine. Well, too bad, Menedemos thought. I feel like it, and he can go along.

“This is a very fine andron,” Sostratos said when they stepped up into it-like most, it was raised half a cubit or so above the level of the courtyard and the other rooms. Slaves were taking away stools and setting out couches for a more formal supper. A mosaic of colored pebbles decorated the floor. The walls were painted red up to the height of a man’s shoulder, and ocher above that. Several lamps-some pottery, others bronze-hung from bronze chains fixed to the beams of the ceiling. Menedemos didn’t think he’d seen anything fancier this side of Taras, and the Italiote Hellenes indulged themselves far more extravagantly than did their cousins who lived round the Aegean.

“Stretch out. Relax. Make yourselves at home,” Phainias said, and leaned on his left elbow on one of the couches.

Again, Menedemos and Sostratos exchanged glances. At home, they almost always ate sitting on stools. So did most Hellenes. So did Phainias himself, or he wouldn’t have had to move couches into the andron for the supposed pleasure of the Rhodians.

The wicker frame of Menedemos’ couch creaked under his weight as he settled himself on it. For a moment, he thought he would go right through it and end up on the floor with a bump. That would have been a lovely way to ingratiate himself with his host. But the couch held. He smiled at the Rhodian proxenos. “Very nice.”

“Very nice indeed,” Sostratos echoed. He sounded a little too hearty, like a usually prim man paying inexpert court to a hetaira. As he leaned on his elbow, he looked out of place, too.

Two slaves brought in wine, water, a mixing bowl, and cups. Phainias asked, “Well, gentlemen, does one of wine to two of water suit you, or would you like some other mix?”

“That’s fine,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. Menedemos added, “We thank you again for your kindness.” One of wine to two of water was a little on the strong side, but only a little- not even Sostratos could possibly object to it, as he might have if Phainias had proposed a one-to-one mixture.

Phainias and the two Rhodians poured out small libations before drinking. Sostratos raised his cup in salute. “To our host!” he said, and drank. So did Menedemos. Sostratos took another, more thoughtful, sip. “This is very fine. Is it Lesbian?”

“It is indeed,” Phainias answered. “You’re in the market for wine, aren’t you?”

“We sure are,” Menedemos said. “From whom did you get it?”

“Why, from Onesimos son of Diothemis,” the proxenos said. “He lives two doors down from me.”

“He’s the Onesimos whose brother sells truffles?” Menedemos asked, and Phainias dipped his head. The Rhodian asked, “Does One-tor also live close by here?”

“On the next street north,” Phainias said.

“Would it put you to too much trouble to invite them here so we could get to meet them?” Menedemos asked. “If it would be difficult, best one, just tell me no. I don’t want to impose on your kind hospitality.”

“No bother to me,” Phainias said. “I like Onesimos fine. I don’t know Onetor so well, but he seems a good enough fellow. Let me go ask my cook if he can add a couple of guests at the last minute. You know how it is, I’m sure: the man who runs the kitchen thinks he runs the house, too.”

“Oh, yes.” Menedemos dipped his head, thinking of Sikon. So did Sostratos, though his family’s cook wasn’t such a domineering tyrant.

The proxenos got to his feet and left the andron. A moment later, a shriek came from the direction of the kitchen. Menedemos and Sostratos grinned at each other. Phainias returned a couple of minutes later, looking somewhat the worse for wear. “It’s all settled,” he declared. “I’ve sent slaves out to invite the two brothers.” He dipped a fresh cup of wine from the mixing bowl. “Now what will happen is, neither of them will be able to come on such short nosice, and Kandaules will brain me for making him cook too much.”

“My experience is, there’s no such thing as too much opson,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos looked alarmed at that forthright announcement of gluttony, but Phainias only smiled. “Yes, I’ve seen that myself,” he said. “Here, would you like some more wine?”

“Thanks, best one.” Menedemos held out his cup.

So did Sostratos. Phainias was dipping wine out of the bowl for him when a slave hurried to the front door. “Master, Onesimos is here,” he called.

“Good, good,” Phainias said. “Bring two more couches into the andron-quick, quick, quick. His brother’s coming, too, or I hope he is.”

Onesimos son of Diothemis was a tall, dour man of middle years, with a long face, a big nose, one front tooth that had gone black, and some of the hairiest ears Menedemos had ever seen. “Good to meet you both,” he told the Rhodians, his voice a rumbling bass. “If I remember right, I did business with your fathers ten or twelve years ago.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, most noble one,” Menedemos said. “Lesbian wine is famous, and our firm has always liked to carry the best.”

A pair of harassed-looking slaves brought in couches. Onesimos had just reclined on one when somebody rapped loudly on the front door. Onetor son of Diothemis came in a minute later. He was a couple of digits shorter than his brother, and shiny bald where Onesimos’ iron-gray hair, like Phainias’, was only just beginning to recede at the temples. But for that, they looked much alike; Menedemos wouldn’t have cared to guess which was the elder.

“Nice to meet you, Rhodians,” Onetor said. His voice was deep, too, but not quite so deep as Onesimos’. He dipped his head to Phainias. “And very nice of you to invite me. We should get to know each other better.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Phainias replied. “And supper and wine and maybe some business thrown in make a pleasant excuse for doing exactly that.”

“We might do business ourselves, you know, you and I,” Onetor said. “Truffles can give olive oil their flavor if they soak in it.”

“That’s an interessing thought,” Phainias said.

“That is an interesting thought.” Menedemos and Sostratos spoke together. Menedemos wondered how much rich, jaded Athenians might pay for oil with such an exotic flavoring. Sostratos must have been thinking the same thing, for he said, “We might do business with you, too, Phainias.”

“I’d like that, best one-as long as you don’t haggle too hard.” The proxenos chuckled. The slave woman at whom Menedemos had smiled brought in a tray with loaves of wheat bread on it. He smiled again. She gave him a quick smile in return as she set a loaf on the low table in front of his couch. Phainias said, “That can wait, though. For now, we should enjoy our supper without worrying about such things.” Another slave set bowls of oil on the table to go with the sitos.

Like any Hellene with manners, Menedemos and Sostratos ate bread with their left hands. Sostratos said, “Good oil, most noble one-and I know a little about what makes good oil, for my sister’s husband exports it from Rhodes.”

But not this year, not with us, Menedemos thought.

“I wouldn’t give guests anything but my best,” Phainias said.

“Very good oil,” Onetor agreed. “If you were to steep truffles in an amphora or two of this oil, you could pour it into little lekythoi afterwards, and sell each one for a nice price.”

“So you could.” Menedemos gave the Mytilenean a thoughtful nod. “Meeting you may be a profitable pleasure for all of us.”

“You certainly know the right words to say.” Onetor seemed less intense than Onesimos, who concentrated on his food to the exclusion of everything else. “Kaloi k’agathoi look down their noses at profit, but the world would grind to a halt without it, and soon, too.”

“My cousin and I were saying the same thing not long ago,” Sostratos said.

“Just because you’ve got a fancy pedigree, that doesn’t mean you’re not a fool,” Onetor said.

“Here comes the opson,” Phainias said. If anything could distract from talk of profit, that was likely to do the trick. As a slave brought in a big tray, the proxenos went on, “Kandaules has baked belly-pieces from a lovely great tunny he bought at the fish market this afternoon.”

“Oh, Demeter.” Onesimos could speak after all-and reverently, too.

“I wish I were like that fellow from Kythera,” Menedemos said. “What’s his name, Sostratos? You know the one I mean-the chap who used to stick his hand in boiling water and drink hot things all the time so he could snatch opson from the platter and eat it when it was still too hot for anybody else to touch.”

“Philoxenos,” Sostratos said.

“Philoxenos! That’s who he was, all right,” Menedemos said. “You must be doing well for yourself, Phainias-there’s some poet or other who says belly-pieces from a fat tunny are something a poor man never sees.”

“That’s Eriphos, I think.” Sostratos came up with the name even when Menedemos hadn’t asked for it.

Phainias said, “I am doing pretty well for myself, thanks. Good of you to nosice.” Few Hellenes who were doing well hid it or failed to boast of it. The only reason Menedemos could see for modesty was fooling a tax-collector.

Savory steam rose from the tunny. Menedemos didn’t-quite- burn his hand when he took a piece from the platter. He didn’t- quite-burn his mouth when he tasted it. When he said, “Mm, that’s good,” he did talk with his mouth full. All the other compliments that rose were similarly muffled, so he knew not the least embarrassment. The only complaint he might have made was that he got a little less tunny than he would have liked. But he understood that, too: Kandaules suddenly had to feed more guests than he’d expected.

But then a slave came in with a bowl of stewed eels wrapped in beet leaves, and he stopped worrying about getting enough opson. Sostratos said, “Surely Rhodes has no finer proxenos in any polis around the Inner Sea!” He was talking with his mouth full again, but nobody seemed to mind.

A honey cake sprinkled with walnuts finished the supper. Onetor said, “You’re a prince of hospitality, Phainias. You can put me in a cart and roll me home, because I’ve eaten too much to walk.”

“Glad you enjoyed it, my friends,” Phainias said as the slaves cleared away what little hadn’t been eaten. They brought in wine and water and the mixing bowl once more.

“Did you get that jar from me?” Onesimos asked.

“Of course, best one,” Phainias said. “Would I serve anything else? Before supper, the Rhodians and I were drinking one-to-two. Does that please you?”

Onesimos dipped his head. Onetor said, “Anything stronger and rolling me home wouldn’t do. You’d have to carry me instead.”

Since it wasn’t a formal symposion, they didn’t bother with the small taste of neat wine first or the prayer to Dionysos that went with it. There were no flute-girls or other entertainers. The Rhodians and Mytileneans just drank and talked and drank and talked. Phainias’ slaves poured wine for them, kept the mixing bowl full, and added oil to the lamps.

Much of the talk, not surprisingly, revolved around politics. Phainias and Onetor admired Antigonos, whose garrison held Lesbos. Onesimos, by his occasional comments, despised all the Macedonian marshals. “Unfortunately, they won’t go away,” Sostratos said.

“Maybe they’ll all kill each other off, with not one of them left alive,” Onesimos said. “Gods grant it be so.”

“Even if it is, some cousin or lieutenant general will rally their armies, and the wheel will start to turn again,” Sostratos predicted. “Such things will go on as long as there are men and battles.” That made Onesimos look more dour than ever.

It didn’t make Menedemos particularly happy, either, but he thought his cousin was right. He said, “I wish I could like Antigonos more than I do.”

“He’s the best of the Macedonians, far and away,” Phainias said.

“It could be, most noble one, and I would not quarrel with my host even if his kindness were far less than you’ve shown Sostratos and me,” Menedemos said. “Still, I’d be lying if I said I was altogether happy with old One-Eye. He’s too friendly with pirates to let a seaman be comfortable praising him.”

“They don’t trouble us,” Onetor said.

That was the answer, right there in a nutshell. Menedemos knew as much. The Mytileneans overlooked evil that didn’t touch them. But then he realized he and Sostratos did the same thing. He hadn’t worried much about brigands on land till his cousin had to cross Phoenicia and Ioudaia to get to Engedi by the Lake of Asphalt. Thinking about troubles that didn’t usually touch one was more trouble than it was worth for most people.

After a while, Onesimos got to his feet, saying, “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Rhodians. I hope we can do some business. I’d better head on home now.” Gait a little unsteady, he made his way toward the front door.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Phainias spoke in a low voice: “His wife nags him if he stays out too late.”

Onetor chuckled. “My brother’s wife nags him even if he doesn’t stay out too late. From what he says, that’s all she ever does.”

“I wonder what she would say,” Sostratos remarked.

“Who cares?” Onetor said. “She’s only a woman, after all.” He drained his cup. “I’d better go home, too, though, while I sill remember the way.”

“Shall I send a slave along with a torch?” Phainias asked.

“Not when I’m just going around the block. Thanks for the kind offer, though, best one, and thanks for invising me over,” Onetor said. “You and the Rhodians should think about truffle-flavored oil.”

“We will,” Phainias said, and Menedemos and Sostratos both dipped their heads.

Once Onetor had left, Menedemos told Phainias, “I don’t think we’ll last much longer, either.” Sostratos’ yawn showed he agreed.

“Here-we’ve got beds waising for you, most noble ones,” the Rhodian proxenos said. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.” He took a lamp off its chain to light his way to the back part of the house. Menedemos and Sostratos followed. Menedemos planted his feet with care, not wanting to step in a hole he didn’t see and fall down. Phainias pointed ahead. “These two rooms here.”

Menedemos suspected they’d been storerooms till the Mytilenean’s slaves brought in the beds. That didn’t bother him. Phainias was doing the Rhodians a favor by putting them up at all. He wasn’t an innkeeper; he didn’t have guests often enough to keep rooms permanently ready for them.

Now lamplight spilled out from under the doors. Phainias said, “The night’s a little on the chilly side, my friends, so I hope you sleep warm. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He headed for the stairs. “Which room do you want?” Menedemos asked Sostratos.

“I’ll take the one on the left,” his cousin answered, and went in.

When Menedemos opened the other door, he wasn’t surprised to find a slave woman sitting on the bed. He did grin to find he’d ended up with the woman he’d noticed before. “Hail, sweetheart,” he said. “Are you supposed to help me sleep warm?”

“That’s right, sir,” she answered, her Aiolic accent flavored with something else-she wasn’t a Hellene by birth.

“What’s your name?” Menedemos asked.

“People here call me Kleis,” she said. “It will do. I’m used to it. They can’t say the one I was born with.”

She would have come from somewhere on the Anatolian mainland, Menedemos guessed. She had a round face, a strong nose, very black hair and eyes, a bit of dark down on her upper lip. He thought she was two or three years older than he-just on the other side of thirty.

“Well, Kleis,” Menedemos said, “is it all right?” Some slave women hated giving themselves to men. Menedemos knew a few men who enjoyed taking them all the more because they hated it. To him, they were more trouble than they were worth.

But Kleis nodded-another proof she was no Hellene. “Yes, it’s all right,” she said. “What else have I got to do for fun?” She stood up and pulled her long chiton off over her head. Her breasts were full and heavy, with big, dark nipples.

Menedemos took off his tunic and bent his head to them-first one, then the other. She made a small, wordless noise, down in her throat. Smiling, Menedemos straightened. “I hope it’ll be fun.” He slid an arm around her waist, which was surprisingly slim. “Let’s find out.” They lay down on the bed together.

Sostratos dreamt something had fallen on him, so that he couldn’t move his legs. Had he been in an earthquake? Had sacks of grain, piled high waiting to go aboard a round ship, toppled and pinned him down? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. He only knew he was trapped.

He opened his eyes-and stared into the face of a sleeping woman, only a palm or so from his own. Her bare thigh, warm and soft, was draped over his. No wonder he couldn’t move-but he hadn’t been dreaming about such a pleasant trap.

Her eyes opened, too. They were greenish blue, the hair that framed her freckled face foxy red. Like Threissa back on Rhodes, she came from the lands north of the Aegean. “Good day, Gongyla,” Sostratos said. “Did I make a noise and wake you? I was having a strange dream.”

She shook her head. “No, sir. I don’t think so.” She sounded like Threissa, too, though she was several years older. “I just woke up, I think.”

“All right.” Sostratos shifted on the narrow bed. Gongyla took her leg off his. His hand brushed her breast. He let it rest there, and idly, hardly even noticing what he was doing, began to tease her nipple with thumb and forefinger.

“So early?” she said, frowning a little.

He hadn’t really been thinking about having her, but he was still on the randy side of thirty. Her question decided him. “Yes, why not?” he said. A slave woman never had an answer to that. Sostratos did his best to warm her up. He wasn’t sure his best did the job, as he had been the night before.

She still sulked even after he gave her a couple of oboloi. Menedemos would either have ignored that or jollied her into a better mood. Sostratos, not callous enough for the one, tried the other, saying, “You have a pretty name.”

“Not mine,” Gongyla said. “You Hellenes took mine, gave me this one.” By the way she scowled at Sostratos, he might have done it personally.

“But it’s a famous name among us,” he said.

“Famous? How?” Her eyes called him a liar.

“Gongyla-the first Gongyla I know of-was a friend of the great poet Sappho, here on Lesbos perhaps three hundred years ago.” Sostratos wasn’t sure exactly when Sappho had lived, but this Gongyla wouldn’t know, either.

“Who remembers so long? How?” the slave woman asked.

“People wrote down Sappho’s poems,” Sostratos answered. “That’s how they remember them-and the people in them.”

“Squiggles. Marks.” Gongyla couldn’t read. Sostratos would have been astonished had she proved literate; even among Hellenes, few women were. She brushed back a lock of coppery hair that had fallen down onto her nose. Not least for its strangeness, red hair fascinated and attracted Sostratos. Gongyla frowned in thought. “But these squiggles, these marks, they make this name remembered?”

“That’s right.” Sostratos dipped his head.

“Maybe something to wrising after all,” the Thracian woman said; her Greek had an Aiolic accent, too. “I just thought it was for keeping track of oil and money and things like that.” She hesitated, then asked, “Is Kleis in this Sappho ’s poems, too?”

“Yes-she was the poet’s daughter.”

“A woman poet?” Gongyla noticed the feminine endings.

“That’s right,” Sostratos said again.

“How funny.” Gongyla got out of bed, pulled the chamber pot out from under it, squatted over the pot, and then put on her chiton. Sostratos also pissed into the pot. Then he got dressed, too. He noticed Gongyla eyeing him as he might have examined some bird he’d never seen before that chanced to perch in the Aphrodite’s rigging. “You know strange things. Many strange things,” she remarked.

“Yes, that’s true,” Sostratos agreed. Most people noticed; not many noticed it as soon as Gongyla had.

Someone knocked on the door. “You in there, my dear?” Menedemos called. “You doing anything you don’t want to stop just now? “

“No, we’ve taken care of that,” Sostratos replied.

“Have you? How… efficient,” Menedemos said. “Well, in that case come out and have some breakfast.”

“All right.” Sostratos’ stomach growled. Waking up in bed with a woman had kept him from noticing how hungry he was. Appetites and appetites, he thought.

He opened the door. When Menedemos got a look at Gongyla, he started to laugh. “Now I understand,” he said. “You’ve got a weakness for redheads. I saw as much with that Keltic girl of yours back in Taras a few years ago.”

“I wouldn’t call it a weakness,” Sostratos said with dignity. “More of a… taste.” He waited for his cousin to make an Aristophanic pun on that.

But Menedemos just said, “Come on. Have some porridge and some wine. Then we can go talk to Onesimos and Onetor. Do you want to go together to each of them in turn, or shall we beard them separately?”

“I’d just as soon do them separately, if it’s all the same to you,” Sostratos answered as they walked toward the andron. “We’ll save time that way. You can haggle over wine as well as I can, and I’ll dicker with the truffle-seller.”

Menedemos chuckled. “I might have known you’d want to split things like that. Don’t spend so much time asking Onetor questions about truffles that you forget to buy any.”

Phainias was already eating breakfast in the men’s chamber when Sostratos and Menedemos walked in. “Hail, best ones,” the proxenos said. “Good day to you both.” He used the dual number in talking about the two Rhodians. It seemed natural in his speech, but would have been hopelessly old-fashioned on Rhodes. “I hope you passed pleasant nights.”

“I bent Kleis like a lioness on a cheese grater,” Menedemos said.

Phainias laughed. Sostratos wondered where his cousin had come up with that figure of speech, then realized it probably came from Aristophanes. He said, “I enjoyed myself with Gongyla, too. Do you name all your slave women after people from Sappho ’s poems?”

“You’re clever for spotting that,” Phainias said. “Not everyone does.”

“I didn’t,” Menedemos said. “But you’re right, most noble one-he is a clever fellow.”

The Rhodian proxenos went on, “As a matter of fact, I do. Makes it easier for me to remember what to call them. I don’t think I’m the only one on Mytilene who does the same thing, either.”

“It’s efficient,” Sostratos said, borrowing Menedemos’ word. “Makes perfectly good sense to me.” A male slave came in with porridge for him and Menedemos. Salt fish and bits of chopped olive livened up what would otherwise have been a bland bowl of barley mush. Sostratos dug in with a horn spoon. Between bites, he asked, “You said Onetor’s house was around the block from you?”

“That’s right,” Phainias answered. “Go one street north, then turn left, Onetor lives in the third house on the left-hand side of the street.”

“One street north, left, third house on the left.” Sostratos dipped his head. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

“He will, too,” Menedemos said. “And if we come back here next year, he’ll still remember it then.” He sounded half proud, half wary about Sostratos’ memory.

“I’m not a trained monkey,” Sostratos said. “You don’t need to show me off.”

“Nothing wrong with keeping track of things in your head,” Phainias said. “I only wish I were better at it.”

Once Sostratos had finished breakfast, he said, “I’m going to head over to Onetor’s. We’re up and the sun’s up, so he ought to be up, too.”

When he went north from Phainias’ house, the breeze blew straight down the street and straight into his face. He was glad he had to walk only one block before turning. Then the houses on the north side of the east-west street shielded him from the worst of the wind. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to look as neat as he could.

At the third house on the left, he knocked on the door. “Who’s there?” someone called from within.

“Is this the house of Onetor son of Diothemis?”

“That’s right. Who are you?”

“I’m Sostratos son of Lysistratos, one of the Rhodians Onetor dined with last night. I’d like to talk business with him.”

“Wait a minute.” The door soon opened. A redheaded Thracian slave-a man-stood aside to let Sostratos in. “My master is finishing breakfast in the andron. He asks if you’ve eaten.”

“Yes, thanks,” Sostratos replied. The Thracian led him through the entry hall and into the courtyard. Onetor put down a winecup to wave to him. He waved back, saying, “Hail, most noble one.”

“Hail.” Onetor raised the cup to his lips once more. “I’ve got a headache from last night,” he said. “A little more wine will take the edge off it. Are you hungry? We have plenty.”

“I ate with Phainias,” Sostratos said. “I hope I’m not too early for you.”

“Oh, no. Don’t be silly, best one.” Onetor tossed his head. “The sun’s in the sky, so anybody who’s not ready for business has only himself to blame. I’m no pampered Persian slugabed, to crawl out from under my blanket at noon. My wife was working in the garden sill you knocked. I’m sure she’s finding something to do upstairs now.”

“Good. That’s all right, then… Oh, thank you.” A slave came into the andron with a cup of watered wine for Sostratos. He took a sip, then went on, “Tell me about truffles, if you’d be so kind.”

“What do you want to know? Grades, prices, that sort of thing?”

“Not yet. I was hoping you’d just tell me about them. They don’t grow on Rhodes, and I’d like to know as much as I can, both so I can tell my customers more and because I’m a curious sort myself.”

“Yes, I nosiced that at Phainias’ last night,” Onetor said. “You’ve got that Attic way of talking. Did you study at the Academy? “

“No, at the Lykeion, under Theophrastos,” Sostratos answered. “That’s another reason I’m interested: Theophrastos makes a specialty of plants, so I always like it when I get the chance to add to what he taught me.”

“Well, all right,” Onetor answered. Sostratos would have been surprised if he’d refused; few people could resist talking about what they did for a living. The truffle-seller continued, “You may or may not have heard they grow underground.”

“Yes, I did know that,” Sostratos said. “I’ve also heard they grow best after rainy seasons where there’s plenty of thunder.”

“I’ve heard that, too, but I don’t believe it,” Onetor replied. “I’ve never seen it make one bit of difference. If there isn’t much rain in a rainy season, that’s another story. They don’t do so well then, but what crop does?”

“Fair enough,” Sostratos said. “That certainly stands to reason. What sort of soil do they prefer?”

“Sandy, usually-you often find them close by the seashore.”

“How do you find them?” Sostratos asked. “You can’t just dig at random on a beach.”

Onetor hesitated, then seemed to decide it was safe to answer. “If there were truffles on Rhodes, I don’t think I’d tell you,” he said. “You might turn into a compesitor. But I’ve never heard of them there, either, so I suppose I can say something about that, anyhow. For one thing, there’s a certain kind of grass-we call it truffleleaf-that grows above them. That gives me a clue where to look.”

“What does this grass look like?” Sostratos asked. Onetor smiled and didn’t say a thing. “All right, all right-forget I wanted to know,” Sostratos told him. “You said that was one thing. What’s another?”

“When I’m out hunsing truffles, I have help,” Onetor said.

“What kind of help?”

Again, Onetor didn’t answer. Sostratos realized he’d learned about as much as he was going to. A dog wandered into the andron: a flop-eared mutt with its tongue lolling out. Onetor scratched it under the chin and behind those floppy ears. Its tail wagged frantically.

“Friendly beast,” Sostratos remarked.

“Porpax? Yes, I’d say so.” Onetor scratched the dog again. It tried to jump up into his lap. “Careful, you silly thing,” he said, fending it off. “You’ll make me spill wine on myself.”

“You named him after the handle of a shield?” Sostratos said. It was a fairly common name for a dog. “Does he shield your house from burglars?”

“He makes a good enough watchdog, yes,” Onetor said. As if to prove it, Porpax barked, though he didn’t seem to want to go after Sostratos. The Rhodian, in fact, wondered if he was too friendly to make a proper watchdog, if he wouldn’t fawn on the thieves when he was supposed to bite. Onetor said, “He has other uses, too.”

“Such as?”

Sostratos didn’t mean anything by the question; he was just making conversation. But, once more, Onetor declined to answer. The smug way he didn’t answer made Sostratos wonder if Porpax was somehow connected to the truffle trade. That struck him as unlikely, though- why would a dog want anything to do with fungi? Porpax ran off, yapping.

The slave came back, this time with a bowl of barley porridge and a spoon. Sostratos tossed his head. “No, thanks,” he said. “As I told your master, I had breakfast before I came here.”

But Onetor said, “Try this anyhow, most noble one. It has some shaved truffles in it, to give you a notion of the flavor.”

“In that case, I will,” Sostratos said. The first thing he noticed was the rich, almost meaty aroma rising from the porridge. When he tasted it, his eyebrows flew upwards. He knew he shouldn’t show how impressed he was. Sometimes, though, a man simply couldn’t help himself. If he’d said he didn’t care for the flavor, Onetor would have known he was lying, “That’s… very fine,” he managed at last, and ate up the porridge as fast as he could.

“Glad you like it,” Onetor said. “I wouldn’t want you to buy without knowing what you’re gessing.”

“I can see why,” Sostratos said, a little ruefully, or maybe more than a little. He’d known truffles were expensive. Now he understood the reason. He wondered just how much Onetor would try to squeeze out of him.

“Do you think you’d be interested in taking my goods to Athens?” the truffle-seller asked.

“I’m sure I’d be interested,” Sostratos answered. “Whether I can afford them is likely to be a different question.”

Onetor grinned at him. He could grin; he wasn’t nearly so gloomy as Onesimos. He said, “For top grade, I charge three simes the truffles’ weight in silver. I don’t haggle. If you want them, that’s what you’ll pay. You won’t find anybody cheaper in Mytilene, and you won’t find anybody with better goods.”

Any trader could say that. From the frequency with which Onetor’s name had come up in the agora, he was the leading truffle dealer in town. Sostratos supposed he could charge six or eight drakhmai in Athens for each drakhma’s weight of truffles. But there might be a better way. “Do you have to have silver?” he asked. “Or can we trade goods for goods, and both resell at a profit?”

“That depends,” Onetor said. “What have you got?”

“Papyrus and ink from Egypt…” Sostratos began. Onetor tossed his head. Sostratos said, “I did expect those would do better in Athens. I’ve also got Koan silk, which is worth its weight in silver, too.”

“It’s pretty stuff, but I’m not interested in it,” the truffle-seller said. “Kos isn’t that far from here; silk’s fairly common on Lesbos.”

“All right, best one,” Sostratos said. “I have fine beeswax from Ioudaia-”

“Anyone can find beeswax,” Onetor broke in. “All you have to do is know how not to get stung.”

“The Aphrodite carries fine wine from Byblos, with a bouquet as sweet as Ariousian’s,” Sostratos said. “I’m not making that up. We carried Ariousian to Great Hellas a few years ago, and this wine has a nose to match it.”

“Let everything be as you say, most noble one, and it sill wouldn’t matter much to me,” Onetor replied. “Onesimos is the wine merchant in the family. He might be interested in this vintage from far away, but I’m not, except maybe to taste a cup. What else have you got on that akatos?”

“Embroidered linen cloth from Mesopotamia,” Sostratos said. “Fine perfume from Rhodes, the island of roses. And genuine balsam from Engedi on the Lake of Asphalt in Ioudaia, the finest balsam in the world.”

“Balsam, eh?” Onetor scowled. “What do you want for that? It’s something I might be able to get rid of here on Lesbos.”

“They sell it in Ioudaia for twice its weight in silver,” Sostratos answered.

“Somesimes they sell it here in Hellas for twice its weight in silver, too,” Onetor said pointedly.

“Not always,” Sostratos said, just as pointedly. “And if I paid twice its weight, and I did, I’m not going to let it go for no profit. If you buy it from me, you won’t sell it at your buying price, either.”

“All that may be true-if you paid what you say you paid. But who knows about that?” Onetor sent Sostratos a sour stare. “Merchants are born liars.”

“No doubt you would know, being one yourself,” Sostratos said. Onetor’s expression got blacker. Sostratos gave him a polite seated bow. “We can go on insulting each other, best one, or we can do business. Which would you rather?”

Now the Mytilenean frankly stared. “You’re a cool customer, aren’t you?

“I try to stay cool, and I would like to be a customer,” Sostratos replied. “Shall we talk about balsam and truffles, or shall we go on and on about what a thief each of us thinks the other one is?”

To his surprise, Onetor started to laugh. “You are a cool customer, Furies take me if you’re not. All right, my dear, let’s talk about trading truffles for balsam, and just how much balsam you’ll give for a drakhma’s weight of my fungi. Maybe perfume, too, now that I think of it.”

Sostratos hadn’t expected anyone to be interested in balsam till he got to Athens. But he had a good notion of the most he could hope to get for it there. That, clearly, was less than he could get for truffles. Because Onetor had annoyed him, he named an outrageous price to open the dicker. As he’d hoped, the truffle-seller bawled like a castrated colt. Sostratos came down, but, because he’d started so high, he came down to a price he still liked.

Onetor had made a mistake, setting the value of his truffles so firmly as the dicker started. He’d made it plain he wouldn’t come down, but he couldn’t very well go up from the three drakhmai of silver for each drakhma’s weight of truffles, either. Sostratos was more flexible, and took advantage of that when haggling over both the balsam and the perfume. At last, he and the Mytilenean settled on prices that left neither of them too dissatisfied.

“While we’re talking here, my cousin is dickering with your brother,” Sostratos remarked.

“I hope Onesimos comes out of the deal with all his fingers and toes,” Onetor said. “If Menedemos is anywhere near as sharp as you are, best one, he’s too good for us poor fellows who stay in one polis all our days.”

“You give me too much credit, most noble one,” Sostratos murmured, not at all displeased at Onetor’s flattery. “And,” he went on truthfully, “you don’t give yourself enough. I think this is a bargain where we’ll both end up showing a nice profit.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Onetor said. “For a while there, I thought you were going to talk me out of my skin and sell it in the Athenian agora.”

“Who’s your prettiest hetaira here? I’d get a better price for hers,” Sostratos said. Onetor laughed. The Rhodian asked, “Can you have your truffles ready this afternoon? I’ll have sailors bring the balsam and perfume here then, if that pleases you.”

“It pleases me fine. And if you’re going to get an amphora or two of Phainias’ oil and flavor it with truffles, you might also want to arrange to buy lekythoi here in Mytilene so you can sell the oil from the small jars. Kallikrates son of Kalligenes can probably sell you enough of them to do the job without making you wait.”

Sostratos wondered if this Kallikrates would give Onetor a kickback, but getting away in a hurry did matter. “I’ll talk with him,” he said. “Where’s his pottery?”

“Not far from here. Phainias can give you directions; he buys all his amphorai from Kallikrates,” Onetor said. That made Sostratos feel better. If the Rhodian proxenos bought from Kallikrates, the man was likelier to be reputable.

When he and Menedemos met at Phainias’ house, he found his cousin jubilant. “We’ll take Lesbian to Athens along with the Byblian,” Menedemos said. “Do you know what I did? Do you know?” He was almost beside himself with glee.

“No,” Sostratos replied, “but I suspect you’re going to tell me.”

“I traded him ten jars of Byblian for thirty of his best,” Menedemos said. “Ten for thirty! Can you believe it?”

“Euge!” Sostratos and Phainias both spoke together. The proxenos went on, “How did you pry such a bargain out of Onesimos? He’s one of the singiest men I know.”

“You won’t tell him?” Menedemos asked.

“By Zeus, best one, I won’t,” Phainias promised. “It would go against my duty as proxenos-and besides, Onesimos should deal in vinegar, he’s so sour.”

“Well, I thought so, too,” Menedemos said. “We were talking about wine, and I made sure we tried his Lesbian before he sent a slave down to the harbor to bring back my sailors with a jar of Byblian for him to sample. We’d had quite a bit of his wine before then, in fact. He thought he was getting me drunk and pliable. I had something else in mind, though.”

“I think I know what,” Sostratos said. “You are a sly rascal.”

“Why, thank you, my dear.” Beaming, Menedemos turned back to Phainias. “When the slave and the sailors got back with the Byblian, we broached the amphora. What you need to know about Byblian is, it has the most wonderful bouquet in the world. Maybe Ariousian is as nice on the nose coming out of the jar, but I can’t think of any other wine that is.” He sniffed and smiled and went on, “When Onetor got a whiff of it, he was so excited, he almost looked happy.”

“He must have been excited,” Phainias said.

“Oh, he was, all right. He was practically panting to make the deal, as a matter of fact. And then we tasted the Byblian, and that didn’t queer things, the way I feared it might.”

The Rhodian proxenos still wore a puzzled expression. Sostratos explained: “Byblian is a funny wine. It’s much nicer to the nose than it is to the palate. But if Onesimos had drunk a lot of his own Lesbian beforehand-”

“That’s right. That’s exactly right,” Menedemos broke in. “Once you’ve had a few cups of wine, it all tastes pretty much the same unless it’s real donkey piss. And Byblian’s not that bad; it just doesn’t have a flavor to match its bouquet. So when I sipped and praised it to the skies, Onesimos couldn’t tell I was giving it more than it deserved.”

“He usually deals in local wines, not ones from as far away as Byblos, so he wouldn’t know that about your vintage,” Phainias said.

“Which is what I was hoping for, and which is what happened,” Menedemos said happily. “He knows plenty about his own little corner of the business, and so he thought he knew everything about all of it.”

Sostratos said, “When Sokrates was defending himself before the Athenians, that was his complaint about artisans generally.”

“Since his jury was probably full of them, he was foolish to complain about them to their faces,” Menedemos said. Before Sostratos could rise to that, his cousin continued, “Me, I don’t want to get tangled up with the law in Athens any which way. Things are more complicated there than anywhere else in Hellas, I think.”

“It’s a big polis, far bigger even than Rhodes,” Sostratos said. “It’s no wonder everything’s more complicated there.” Having said that, he couldn’t very well go back and start a quarrel over Menedemos’ gibe about Sokrates. Menedemos grinned at him. He pretended not to notice, which only made Menedemos grin more.

Phainias said, “You people who do business in so many poleis are a wonder to me. How do you keep everything straight?”

“I don’t even try,” Menedemos said. “I just count on Sostratos. He knows what all the various laws and customs are, who coins heavy drakhmai and who light, what’s good in each town and what’s not worth having, and so on.”

“I already said he was a clever fellow,” the proxenos replied. “I would say you’re not bad yourself, and I would be right about that, too.”

“Menedemos is so clever, he even thinks he can talk me into doing his share of the work,” Sostratos said. “But I’m clever enough to see that, and not to let him get away with it… too often.”

“Too bad!” Menedemos said with great feeling.

“Go howl,” Sostratos replied. He and his cousin and Phainias all smiled. After a good day of trading, why not?