Owls to Athens

4

“Come on, you lugs,” Diokles called as the Aphrodite slid away from its mooring at Mytilene. “Put your backs into it. It’s not like you’re going to get heatstroke today.”

“You’re right about that,” Menedemos said from his station at the steering oars. The day was cool and overcast, the sky so gray he couldn’t find the faintest trace of the sun. It was, in fact, the sort of weather his father had warned him about while arguing against putting to sea too soon. Once more, he reminded himself he owed Sostratos’ nuisance of a brother-in-law thanks for getting his father to change his mind. That wasn’t something Menedemos himself had ever had much luck doing.

Sostratos said, “If it stays like this, we’re liable to have an interesting time navigating today. Sailing from here to Athens, we’ll be crossing one of the wider landless stretches of the Aegean.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Menedemos said, hoping he was right. “We’ll have Psyra, west of Khios, to sight on as we go west, and Skyros and Euboia should be coming up over the horizon by the time Psyra drops out of sight astern.”

“True-as long as the weather doesn’t get any worse than this,” Sostratos said. “If it starts raining, though, or if a fog rolls in…”

Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic to avert the omen. After a moment, his cousin did the same. Bad weather was the main reason ships seldom put to sea from the middle of autumn to the beginning of spring. Storms were the most dramatic worry, but fog and mist might have been more dangerous. Not being able to tell where you were or to recognize landmarks till too late… What could be more terrifying?

Diokles said, “Even in the fog, we’ve got wind and wave and casting the line to keep us safe. Between knowing how deep the sea is and seeing what sort of stuff the lead brings up when it does touch bottom, we ought to have a pretty fair notion of where we are.”

“That’s right,” Menedemos said loudly, aiming his words not only at Sostratos but at the crew as well. He didn’t want the men worrying he’d end up in Byzantion when he was aiming for Athens. He also didn’t want them worrying he’d tear the belly out of the akatos on a rock he didn’t see soon enough. He didn’t want to worry about that himself, though he knew it could happen if he wasn’t careful.

Maybe Sostratos didn’t want to worry about that, either. He changed the subject, saying in a sly voice, “Are you slipping, best one? You haven’t said a word about either Phainias’ wife or Onesimos’.”

“I never saw Phainias’,” Menedemos answered. “And he gave us girls, so going after her wouldn’t have been sporting of me, would it?”

“That hasn’t always stopped you,” Sostratos observed.

He was right. Not caring to admit it, Menedemos said, “I did get a look at Onesimos’, as a matter of fact. She was about this tall”-he held the palm of one hand flat against his chest, just below the level of his nipples-”and about this wide”-he took both hands off the tillers to stretch his arms wide-”so as far as I’m concerned Onesimos is welcome to her.”

The listening sailors laughed. Sostratos said, “She’d be not far from our age, wouldn’t she? Do you suppose she was that fat when he wed her?”

“I wouldn’t know, and I don’t much care to find out,” Menedemos answered. “More women are like that than you’d think. They can’t get out to the gymnasion to exercise, the way men do. They just stay inside the women’s quarters and nibble all day long. Some men like them that way, too. For all I know, Onesimos is happy with her. But she wasn’t what I wanted.”

A line of pelicans flew by, not far from the ship. Menedemos admired their great white wings. He wondered if one of them would glide down to the water and scoop out a fish with its long, pouched beak, but none did. Sostratos also followed them with his eyes. He remarked, “They really do have heads shaped like axes, don’t they?”

“So they do!” Menedemos said; in Greek, the two words were very close in sound. “I never thought of that before.” He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, wondering why not.

Sostratos said, “I can imagine the first couple of Hellenes who ever saw pelicans. One of them turns to the other and says, ‘What’s that?’ And the second fellow goes, ‘I don’t know, but it’s got a head like an axe.’ And the name would have stuck.”

“Do you suppose that’s how it happened?” Menedemos asked, intrigued.

“I don’t know. I can’t prove it. But I wouldn’t be surprised,” his cousin answered. “Things like that must happen when people run into beasts they’ve never seen before. They have to call them something, and they try to find a name that fits. I’ll bet that’s how those big beasts that live in the Nile got called river-horses.”

“Hippopotamoi,” Menedemos said thoughtfully, and dipped his head. “I’ll bet you’re right.”

Diokles spoke up: “Sometimes people will make a joke of things, too. After all, what do we Hellenes call those big birds that live in the Egyptian desert, the ones that run faster than horses and kick like mules?”

“Strouthoi,” Menedemos and Sostratos replied together. They both started to laugh, for in Hellas the more common meaning for the word that also meant ostrich was sparrow. Menedemos said, “I can just see the first fellow who went down to Egypt and got a good look at one of them. He’d turn to his friend and he’d say, ‘By Herakles, that’s the biggest sparrow I ever saw.’ “

“I think Egypt did that to the first Hellenes who went there,” Sostratos said. “We made up names that kept us from showing how impressed we were. Why else would we have called those tall stone monuments obeliskoi? “

“Well, they do look like skewers, don’t they?” Menedemos said. “We could have called them phalloi instead, easy enough.”

“You’re right,” Sostratos said, “I hadn’t thought of that.” His grin was lopsided and wry. “Maybe it’s just as well they have the name they do.”

The sun didn’t come out. The clouds didn’t go away. Every so often, the Aphrodite made her way through mist or drizzle. Even when Menedemos wasn’t trying to peer through the spatters of moisture, visibility stayed bad. He sent a lookout to the foredeck, doing all he could do avoid unpleasant surprises.

“I wish we still had Aristeidas,” Sostratos said.

“So do I,” Menedemos said. “It’s not your fault we don’t, you know.”

“Whom would you blame, then?” his cousin asked.

“How about the polluted Ioudaioi who tried to rob you?” Menedemos suggested.

“I didn’t shoot enough of them,” Sostratos said morosely.

“My dear, you couldn’t have shot more than you did, not unless you were twins-and maybe not then. If you hadn’t shot as many of them as you did, you and Moskhion and Teleutas would have got killed, too. Would that have made you happier? “

“I didn’t shoot enough of them,” Sostratos said again, and then, very low, “Teleutas.” He looked disgusted.

Menedemos suspected his cousin wouldn’t have been nearly so upset if Teleutas hadn’t come back from the trip to Ioudaia. He’d liked Aristeidas much better than the other sailor himself, too. He couldn’t hash that out with his cousin now, not with Teleutas pulling an oar less than ten cubits away. What he did say was, “You did the best you could. You did the best anyone could. You have no blood-guilt on your head. You committed no sin. You weren’t Oidipous, slaying his father at a crossroads. You should stop tormenting yourself about it.”

Sostratos started to answer, then checked himself. At last, after a long pause, he said, “That makes good logical sense. I try to be a logical man. Therefore, it should make me feel better. Somehow, though, it doesn’t, or not very much.”

“You mind if I say something, young sir?” Diokles asked, not missing a beat as he gave out the stroke.

“Please,” Sostratos said.

“I’m no philosopher, so maybe I’ve got it all wrong,” the oarmaster said. “If I do, I expect you’ll tell me. But it seems to me this logic stuff is only good for what you’ve got in your head, if you know what I mean. When it comes to what’s in your heart and your belly and your balls, logic goes out the window like a full pisspot.”

“Much truth in that,” Menedemos said.

“Some truth in it, certainly-but only some, I think,” Sostratos said. “If we don’t use reason to rule our passions, though, what are we but so many wild beasts?” He didn’t add, or so many adulterers, as he probably would have before meeting that Ioudaian innkeeper’s wife. That’s something, Menedemos thought.

“No doubt you’re right,” Diokles said. “But I don’t reckon we can rule everything all the time. We wouldn’t be people if we could.”

“We should be able to,” Sostratos said stubbornly.

“That’s not what Diokles said, and you know it,” Menedemos said.

His cousin sighed. “So it isn’t.” Sostratos looked out to sea, as if he’d had enough of the argument.

Menedemos looked out to sea, too, for different reasons. With the overcast and the spatters of rain, all he had to gauge direction were the waves and the breeze. He couldn’t find the sun, and neither Lesbos nor Psyra rose above his contracted horizon. He hated sailing under conditions like these. Navigation was somewhere between a guess and a bad joke. If the sea had been calm, he could have sailed in circles and never known it. He wasn’t doing that now-he was pretty sure he wasn’t, anyhow-but he hoped he wasn’t veering too far to the west or south. The one would only take him out of his way. The other might cause a meeting he didn’t want with Psyra or even Khios.

“What do you think of our course?” he asked Diokles.

The oarmaster checked the breeze with a spit-wet finger, then looked over the side-the sea, reflecting the gray of the sky, was anything but wine-dark today-to eye the waves. “Feels about right to me, skipper,” he replied at last. “Can’t say much more than that, not with the weather the way it is. Soon as it clears out, or soon as we get close to land, we’ll know where we’re at.”

“That’s true,” Menedemos said. “What I don’t want is to get too close to land too soon, if you follow me.”

“Oh, yes.” Diokles dipped his head. “Grounding a galley to dry out her timbers is all very well, if she’s not too heavily laden to get her afloat again afterwards. But going aground when you don’t want to, or ripping out her belly on a rock you never saw-that’s a whole different business.”

“Yes.” Menedemos wondered what his father would say if he wrecked the Aphrodite. Actually, he didn’t wonder-he knew, at least in broad outline. In something like that, the small details were unlikely to matter.

He tried to look every which way at once: dead ahead; to port and to starboard; astern past the boat, which bobbed in the chop behind the akatos. No suddenly looming land. No piratical pentekonter driving out of the mist and straight toward the Aphrodite. No trouble anywhere. He worried all the same.

When he said that out loud, Diokles dipped his head again. “A good thing you do, too. You’re the skipper. Worrying’s your job. Gods protect me from a captain who doesn’t.”

Sostratos spent a lot of time doing lookout duty up on the Aphrodite’s cramped foredeck. Part of that was expiation for Aristeidas, the best lookout he’d ever known. Part of it was a sensible desire to keep the merchant galley safe, combined with the knowledge that a toikharkhos was just cargo-or, more likely, ballast-as long as she sailed on the open sea. And part of it was the chance to watch birds and fish and other creatures at the same time as he was doing something useful.

Flying fishes leaped from the water and glided through the air before returning to their proper element. A black-capped tern folded its wings, dove into the Aegean, and came out with a silvery fish writhing in its beak. The flying fishes had most likely gone from water to air to keep from becoming prey. The tern had gone from air to water to turn fish into prey.

It didn’t get to enjoy its catch. A gull chased it and made it drop the sprat before it could gulp it down. Moskhion had come up to the fore-deck to check the forestay. He pointed at the gull, which grabbed the stunned fish from the surface of the sea and greedily gobbled it up. “Might as well be a Macedonian.”

“Why?” Sostratos said. “Because he’d sooner live off the work of others than work himself? Me, I was thinking of him as a pirate.”

“Six oboloi to the drakhma either way, young sir,” Moskhion answered. Dolphins leaped from the water and then dove back in with hardly a splash. The former sponge diver’s face showed unalloyed pleasure as he pointed to them. “I love dolphins. I think they’re the most beautiful fish there are.”

“I love dolphins, too. What seafaring man doesn’t?” Sostratos said. “And they are beautiful, no doubt about it. But they’re not fish.”

“What?” Moskhion scratched his head. “What are they, then? Cabbages?” He laughed at his own wit.

Smiling, Sostratos said, “They’re no more cabbages than they are fish.”

The sailor started to laugh again, but the mirth faded from his face as he studied Sostratos’. Moskhion frowned. Some men, when they heard an opinion they’d never met before, wanted nothing more than to wipe it from the face of the earth. So the Athenians served Sokrates, Sostratos thought. Moskhion wasn’t of that school-not quite. But he wasn’t far removed from it, either. He said, “Why, what else can dolphins be but fish? They live in the sea, don’t they? They haven’t got any legs, do they? If that doesn’t make ‘em fish, what does?”

“Being like other fish would make them fish,” Sostratos said. “But as my teacher’s teacher, a lover of wisdom named Aristoteles, pointed out, they aren’t like other fish. That means they have to be some different kind of creature.”

“What do you mean, they aren’t?” Moskhion demanded. “I just showed you how they were, didn’t I?”

“Seaweed lives in the sea and hasn’t got any legs,” Sostratos said. “Does that make it a fish?”

“Seaweed?” As if humoring a madman, Moskhion said, “Seaweed doesn’t look like a fish, young sir. Dolphins do.”

“A statue may look like a man, but is a statue a man? If you ask a statue to lend you a drakhma, will it?”

“No, but half the men I know won’t, either,” Moskhion retorted, and Sostratos had to laugh. The sailor went on, “How is a dolphin different than a fish? Just tell me that, if you please.”

“I can think of two important ways,” Sostratos answered. “You must know that, if you keep a dolphin in the sea and don’t let it come up for air, it will drown. Any fisherman who’s caught one in a net will tell you that. And dolphins bring forth their young alive, the way goats and horses do. They don’t lay eggs like fish.”

Moskhion pursed his lips and scratched at the corner of his jaw. “They’re funny fish, then. You’re right about that much, I expect. But they’re still fish.” He went down from the foredeck into the waist of the ship.

Sostratos stared after him. The sailor had asked for reasons why dolphins weren’t like fish. He’d given them. What had it got him? Nothing-not a single, solitary thing. “Funny fish,” he muttered. Sokrates had crossed his mind a little while before. Now the Athenian sage did again; Sostratos thought, If he had to deal with people like that, no wonder he drank hemlock. It must have seemed a relief.

Moskhion hadn’t been rude or abusive. He’d even gone through the forms of reasoned argument. He’d gone through them… and then ignored them when they produced a result he didn’t like. As far as Sostratos was concerned, that was worse than refusing to argue at all.

From his station at the stern, Menedemos called, “If you’re going to be a lookout, my dear, kindly look ahead, not toward me.”

“Sorry,” Sostratos said, reddening. He gave his attention back to the sea.

He wondered whether, a moment later, he would have to scream out, Rock! and give his cousin just enough time to steer the merchant galley out of harm’s way. If he were telling the story in a tavern-and especially if Menedemos were telling it in a tavern-it would go that way. But he saw no rocks. He saw little of anything: only gray sky above and gray sea below. He wished he could see farther out to sea, but, unless Menedemos’ navigation was far worse than he feared, it mattered much less on this broad reach of the Aegean than it would, say, down in the Kyklades. In those crowded waters, you could spit over the side and hit an island no matter where you were.

Darkness fell with no special drama. Light oozed out of the sky. At Diokles’ command, the rowers shipped their oars. Men who weren’t rowing brailed up the sail. Anchors splashed into the sea. Menedemos ordered lamps lit and hung from the stempost and sternpost. He said, “If some idiot’s sailing on through the night, we ought to give him at least a chance to see us.”

“Did I argue?” Sostratos replied.

“Not about that.” Menedemos paused to dip up a cup of the rough red wine the crew drank aboard ship. “But Moskhion’s been going on about how you tried to tell him dolphins aren’t fish.”

“By Poseidon’s prick, they aren’t!” Sostratos yelped. “Ask any man who’s studied the issue, and he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Maybe so, O best one, but any sailor, it seems, will tell you you’re out of your mind,” Menedemos replied.

“It’s the Apology of Sokrates all over again: men who know one thing well think they know all things well because of their little piece of knowledge.”

“More than a few of our sailors have been fishermen, too,” Menedemos said. “If they don’t know fish, what do they know?”

“Not much, in my opinion.” But Sostratos spoke in a voice not much above a whisper. He did remember he wouldn’t be wise to anger the men. With an odd mix of amusement and annoyance, he watched his cousin’s relief that he remembered.

He too drank wine, and ate an uninspiring shipboard supper. He almost thought of it as a Spartan supper. Then he remembered the horrid black broth served in the Lakedaimonians’ messes. Contemplating that nasty stuff made an opson of olives and cheese and an onion seem far more palatable.

The clouds and mist remained after full night came. “Too bad,” Sostratos said, wrapping himself in his himation. “I always like looking at the stars before I go to sleep.”

“Not tonight.” Menedemos was also making himself as comfortable as he could on the poop deck.

“I wonder what they really are, and why a few of them wander while the rest stand still,” Sostratos said.

“Those are questions for gods, not men,” his cousin replied.

“Why shouldn’t I ask them?” Sostratos said. “Men should ask questions, and look for answers to them.”

“Go ahead and ask all you like,” Menedemos said. “Getting answers to those questions is a different story, though.”

Sostratos wished he could have quarreled with that. Instead, he sighed and dipped his head, saying, “I’m afraid you’re right. Until we find some way to reach out and touch the stars, we’ll never be able to find out what they are or why they shine.”

“Well, my dear, you don’t think small-I will say that,” Menedemos replied with a laugh. “How do you propose to touch the stars?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I wish I did.” Sostratos yawned. “I haven’t the faintest idea how I’m going to stay awake any more, either.” The next thing he knew, he wasn’t.

When he woke, the sky was getting light. It wasn’t the rosy-fingered dawn of which the poets wrote, though: no pink and gold eastern sky, no sunbeams darting up from the sea. Only a sullen gray like that of the day before made night withdraw.

Menedemos was already up. “Good day, my dear,” he said. “Here you’ve gone and taken away the fun of giving you a good kick, the way I was about to.”

“So sorry to deprive you of your simple pleasures.” Sostratos got to his feet and stretched to work the kinks out of his back. Rubbing his eyes, he added, “I’m feeling pretty simple myself right now.”

Up and down the length of the Aphrodite, sailors were rousing. Diokles had already got up from the rower’s bench where he’d spent the night. He seemed as well rested as if he’d slept in the bedchamber of the Great King of Persia. “Good day, young sirs,” he called to Sostratos and Menedemos.

“Good day,” Sostratos said. “We should pass through the strait between Euboia and Andros before sunset, shouldn’t we?”

“I hope so,” the oarmaster said. “If we’re anywhere near where we ought to be, and if our navigation today’s halfway decent, we ought to manage that.”

“And if we don’t, everyone will blame me.” Menedemos made a joke of it, where a lot of captains would have been deadly serious. Pointing up toward the clue-obscuring sky, he said, “I do have an excuse for not guiding us to within a digit’s breadth of our perfect path.”

“No arguments, skipper,” Diokles said. “I expect you’ll get us where we’re going. If I didn’t think so, I’d be a right idiot to sail with you, wouldn’t I?”

After barley rolls dipped in oil and washed down with watered wine, sailors slowly spun the capstans and brought up the anchors. As soon as they were stowed, the sail came down from the yard. It billowed and flapped and then filled with wind. Menedemos steered the ship west-southwest.

“I hope it’s west-southwest, anyhow,” he said with a wry grin, “It’s my best guess.”

“Warmer than yesterday, I think,” Sostratos said. “Maybe the clouds and mist will burn off as the sun gets higher.”

Little by little, they did. The sun came out, first through clouds still thick enough to let a man look without pain at its disk and then more strongly. The sky went from gray to a hazy blue: still not quite the weather for which Sostratos would have hoped, but definitely better. The horizon stretched as the mist faded.

“Land ho!” a rower called. “Land to port and astern.”

“That’s Psyra, I think,” Sostratos said, shading his eyes to peer east.

Menedemos laughed. “It had better be. Otherwise we’re really lost.”

Not too much later, Sostratos spotted Skyros off the starboard bow. He felt proud of himself. His eyes were no better than anyone else’s- indeed, he knew they were worse than those of several sailors. But knowing where Psyra was let him do a geometry problem in his head and figure out about where Skyros ought to be.

And then, as the day continued to clear and the horizon to extend, several sailors pointed dead ahead at almost exactly the same time. “There’s Euboia!” they called.

“Good,” Menedemos said. “We’re about where we’re supposed to be. If anything, we’re a little farther west than I thought we were. We will get through the strait between Euboia and Andros today, and then it’s on to Athens.”

“On to Athens!” Sostratos couldn’t have been happier if his cousin had said… He thought about that, then grinned. He couldn’t have been happier if Menedemos had said anything else.

As the strait neared, Menedemos ordered weapons and helmets served out to the crew. The men set bronze helms, most of them un-crested, on their heads. The sailors not at the oars hefted spears and swords and belaying pins. The rowers stashed their weapons under their benches where they could grab them in a hurry.

“I hope this is all a waste of time,” Menedemos said. “But a lot of you men were along a couple of years ago, when that pirate tried to board us. We fought off the polluted son of a whore. If we have to, we can do it again.”

I hope we can do it again, he thought. He glanced over to Sostratos, waiting for his cousin to start mourning the gryphon’s skull the pirates had carried away with them. But Sostratos didn’t say a thing. Maybe he’d learned to accept the loss. More likely, he’d learned Menedemos would come down like a rockslide if he started complaining about the gryphon’s skull.

Fishing boats fled the Aphrodite with even more alacrity than usual. Teleutas laughed and said, “With all the ironware and bronze we’re showing, they’re sure we’re pirates now.” His helmet jammed down low on his forehead and a fierce grin on his narrow, homely face made him look like a man who would sooner steal than work.

I know he steals, Menedemos reminded himself. Sostratos caught him at it in loudaia. If he ever steals on the Aphrodite, he’s gone. But Teleutas had never got caught doing that. No one on the merchant galley had complained of a thief. Maybe he had too much sense to steal from his fellow Hellenes. For his sake, Menedemos hoped so.

The channel between the islands was less than sixty stadia wide. Menedemos sailed the Aphrodite right down the middle of it. He was close enough to land to see sheep kicking up dust in the hills above the beach on Euboia, and to see one of those little fishing boats go aground at the mouth of a stream on Andros. He and the whole crew kept close watch on inlets and rocky outcrops-those were pirates’ favorite hiding places.

Today, though, everything seemed as peaceful as if no one had ever thought of taking robbery to sea. When Menedemos said that out loud, Sostratos tossed his head. “Don’t believe it for a moment, my dear,” he said. “Somewhere up in those hills-probably more than one place up in those hills-a pirate lookout is watching us and thinking, No, more trouble than they’re worth. And that’s all that’s keeping us safe.”

Menedemos didn’t need long to decide his cousin was right. He said, “Well, I wish the lookout who loosed that last pirate ship against us in these waters would have thought the same thing.”

“So do I,” Sostratos said. Menedemos cocked his head to one side, waiting for him to say more. Sostratos caught him waiting and laughed. “I’ve said everything I can about the gryphon’s skull.”

“Till the next time you do,” Menedemos gibed.

Sostratos laughed again, on a different note. “Maybe you’re right. I hope not, but maybe. I think we are going to make it out of this channel.”

“It’s not very long,” Menedemos said. “We only seem to take forever going through it.”

“Oh, good,” Sostratos said. “I thought I was the only one who felt that way.”

“No, indeed, best one, and I’m not ashamed to admit it,” Menedemos said. “After all, we’re passing through a place where we’ve already had trouble. If you think I’m not nervous about the passage, you’re daft. I don’t like fighting off pirates any better than you do.”

“You do it well,” Sostratos said. “If you didn’t, we’d be slaves now, or dead.”

“For which I thank you,” Menedemos said, “but I’ve already had more practice than I ever wanted.” He turned his head from one side to the other. Now the coastline of Andros was swiftly falling off to the southeast, that of Euboia to the northwest. “We’re through it now for sure. Anyone who wants to come after us will have a long chase, and we’re not that much slower than a pirate ship.”

Sostratos pointed west. “There’s the headland of Laureion, with Helen’s island in front of it. Attica!”

“Yes, Attica,” Menedemos agreed dryly. “We limped into Sounion at the cape there a couple of years ago, too, if you’ll remember, to bury our dead after the fight.”

His cousin flushed. “So we did. But we’re not limping now. And we haven’t been robbed of what was our main reason for coming to Athens.” He pointed a thumb at himself before Menedemos could speak. “Yes, I know I just mentioned the skull-but it was in the context of what we were talking about.”

“Context.” Menedemos rolled his eyes and addressed some invisible audience: “He takes one look at Attic soil and starts babbling about context. What’ll he be like when we actually set foot in Athens? Odds are, no one will be able to understand his Greek at all.”

“Oh, go howl!” Sostratos pointed back toward the southeast, not at Andros but up into the heavens. “What would you say the phase of the moon is?”

Menedemos looked over his shoulder to see the moon, white and pale in the late-afternoon sky. “First quarter-perhaps a day after.”

“That’s what I thought, too.” Sostratos beamed. “That means it’s the seventh or eighth of Elaphebolion. The Greater Dionysia starts on the tenth. We’re going to make the festival.”

“Good,” Menedemos said. “I like the theater as well as the next fellow-unless the next fellow happens to be you, maybe-but I also know we have to do business. I keep hoping you’ll remember that, too.”

“How could I possibly forget, having you to remind me?” Sostratos spoke with such surpassing sweetness, anyone who didn’t know him would have been sure he meant every word and was grateful.

Menedemos, who knew Sostratos as well as any man alive, was sure his cousin meant every word and wanted to push him over the rail. With a sweet smile of his own, he said, “All right, then. As long as we understand each other.”

“We usually do.” Again, Sostratos sounded altogether acquiescent. Again, Menedemos was not deceived. But then his cousin grew serious. “Do you think we can round Cape Sounion today, perhaps go all the way to Anaphlystos harbor?”

After studying the sun, Menedemos tossed his head. “What I think is, we’ll be lucky to get to Sounion. More likely, we’ll lie up in one of the little bays on Helen’s island.” Sostratos looked as if Menedemos had just kicked a puppy. Relenting a little, Menedemos added, “Even so, we should have no trouble reaching Peiraieus tomorrow.”

Sostratos brightened. Menedemos had known his cousin would. He could have said the ship would spend the night in Persia-or, for that matter, in Tartaros-as long as he also said it would get to the harbor of Athens the next day. Sostratos said, “I wonder why Helen is tied to so many islands. There’s another one, to the west, that’s supposed to be where she first slept with Paris on the way to Troy.”

“That I don’t know,” Menedemos said. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t worried about it much, either. When I think about Helen, I’d rather think about why Paris wanted her than why they remember her on islands.”

“But everyone knows why Paris wanted her,” Sostratos said. “The other question’s much more interesting, because it doesn’t have an obvious answer.”

“That makes it more interesting?” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. They stared at each other in perfect mutual incomprehension.

The Aphrodite reached an inlet at the north end of Helen’s island as the sun slid behind the highland of Cape Sounion. The island ran from north to south, and was much longer than it was wide. No polis stood anywhere on it, nor even a village. Sheep and goats wandered the low, rolling ground, cropping grass and bushes. As darkness spread over sea and land, herdsmen’s campfires glowed like golden stars off in the distance.

No one came up to the ship to ask for news or give any of his own. That saddened Menedemos. “The shepherds think we’ll grab ‘em and sell ‘em into slavery,” he said.

“We wouldn’t,” Sostratos said.

“No, of course not. Couldn’t very well sell ‘em in Athens even if we did grab ‘em,” Menedemos said. “I wouldn’t care to enslave free Hellenes anyway-if the herders are free Hellenes and not already enslaved like Eumaios the swineherd in the Odyssey.”

“They don’t know where we’re from or where we’re bound,” Sostratos said. “For all they can tell, we might be Tyrrhenians who’d sell them in the slave markets at Carthage.”

“I know. That’s what bothers me,” Menedemos said. “Even so close to Athens, people worry about pirates and raiders.”

“These are sorry times, when men think of themselves first and everything else only afterwards,” Sostratos said, but after a moment he ruefully tossed his head. “When didn’t men think of themselves first?

After the Peloponnesian War, the Thirty Tyrants made themselves hateful. And before that, Themistokles had to trick most of the Hellenes into fighting Xerxes by Salamis.”

“Athenians both times,” Menedemos remarked.

“Oh, yes,” his cousin said. “Athens has shown the world more of man at his best and worst than any other polis in Athens. But thinking of yourself first goes back to long before Athens was such a great city. Look at Akhilleus in the Iliad. How many strong-greaved Akhaioi died because he stayed in his tent after his quarrel with Agamemnon?”

“Well, but Agamemnon was in the wrong, too, for taking Brisei’s away from Akhilleus.” Menedemos held up a hand before his cousin could speak. “I know what you’re going to say next. You’ll say that was Agamemnon putting what he wanted ahead of what the Akhaioi needed. And he did.”

Sostratos looked disappointed at not having an argument on his hands. He glanced up at the moon. So did Menedemos. It seemed brighter and more golden now that the sun had left the sky. Sostratos said, “In the city, they’re getting ready for the festival. And tomorrow we’ll be there! I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight.”

He managed. Menedemos had to wake him in the morning. But Sostratos didn’t complain, not when Menedemos said, “Rise and shine, my dear. Today we’re going to Athens.”

“Athenaze,” Sostratos echoed dreamily. Then he said it once more, as if for good measure: “To Athens.”

“0цP!” DIOKLES CALLED, and the Aphrodite’s rowers rested at their oars. Sailors tossed lines to longshoremen in loincloths, who made the akatos fast to the quay. Just hearing the harbor workers brought Sostratos a thrill. What educated man didn’t want to sound as if he came from Athens? And here were these probably illiterate laborers, using the dialect of Plato and Euripides. They were speaking commonplaces, but they sounded good doing it.

Or so Sostratos thought, anyway. In the broad Doric of Rhodes, one of the sailors said, “Who do those fellows think they are, anyhow? Slaves could do their jobs, but they talk like a bunch of toffs.”

Menedemos pointed up one of the long, straight streets of Peiraieus. “At least this town is laid out sensibly,” he said.

“This is one of the first places Hippodamos of Miletos designed,”

Sostratos answered. “Perikles had him do it. That would have been thirty years or so before he laid out the polis of Rhodes.”

“Did he do anything with Athens proper?” Menedemos asked, peering toward the great buildings of the Athenian akropolis thirty-five or forty stadia inland.

“I’m afraid not,” Sostratos said. “I wish he would have. The streets there are the wildest tangle anybody’s ever seen. The Athenians take pride in being able to find their way around-except when they get lost, too.”

His cousin pointed to the base of the pier. “Here comes an officer to question us.” Indeed, the fellow looked splendid in crested helm and crimson cloak thrown back over his shoulders-as splendid as Antigonos’ man, almost identically dressed, had at Mytilene. Menedemos went on, “Now, for half a drakhma, is he a Macedonian or an Athenian?”

Sostratos looked the man over. He was of average height, on the lean side, with dark hair, an olive complexion, a thin face, and ironic eyebrows. More than anything else, those eyebrows decided Sostratos. “Athenian.”

“We’ll know in a moment,” Menedemos said. “Wait till he opens his mouth. If we don’t have any trouble understanding him, you win. If he starts spewing Macedonian at us, I do.”

“What ship are you, and where are you from?” The officer asked the usual questions in perfectly intelligible Attic Greek. Menedemos grimaced. Sostratos hid a smile.

“We’re the Aphrodite, out of Rhodes,” he answered, as he seemed to do whenever the akatos pulled into a new port.

“Ah. Rhodians.” The officer brightened. “You’ll be friendly to Ptolemaios, then.”

Kassandros, who’d ruled Athens for the past decade through Demetrios of Phaleron, was friendly to Ptolemaios. Sostratos dipped his head, not wanting to disagree openly. “We try to be,” he answered. “But then, we’re neutral, so we try to be friendly to everybody.”

“I see.” The Athenian looked less happy. “Where did you stop on your way here?”

“Kos,” Sostratos said, which pleased the fellow-Kos belonged to Ptolemaios-and then, “and Samos and Khios, both briefly, and then Lesbos. We have Lesbian wine for sale, and Lesbian truffles, too.”

“I… see.” The officer’s pinched face was made for frowning. The last three islands belonged to Antigonos, with whom Kassandros was anything but friendly. After a moment’s sour thought, the man decided to make the best of it, asking, “What’s the old Cyclops up to? Did you see anything interesting along the way? “

“I didn’t.” Sostratos turned to his cousin. “Did you, Menedemos?”

“Can’t say that I did,” Menedemos answered. “He has war galleys in the harbors and on patrol, but then he would, especially after Ptolemaios took so much of the southern coast of Anatolia away from him a couple of years ago. Ptolemaios laid siege to Halikarnassos, too, remember, but it didn’t fall.” He sounded disappointed.

Sostratos knew why. The officer didn’t. He said, “Yes, I do recall that. It was Antigonos’ son Philippos who relieved the town, wasn’t it?”

“No, the other son, the older one-he’s named Demetrios, too,” Sostratos said.

That got a grunt from the Athenian. He served Demetrios of Phaleron. Maybe he didn’t love him. After the grunt, he asked the next inevitable question: “What are you carrying besides wine and truffles?”

“Koan silk,” Sostratos said. The officer approved of Kos.

“Rhodian perfume,” Menedemos added. That was safe, too.

“Papyrus and ink,” Sostratos said. Papyrus came from Egypt, while the ink was Rhodian.

“Beeswax,” Menedemos said. Beeswax could come from anywhere under the sun. “Embroidered cloth. And crimson dye from Sidon.”

Sidon belonged to Antigonos, but he didn’t say the Aphrodite had been there. He let the officer assume the Rhodians had got it in their home polis rather than going to Phoenicia themselves-which, in connection with their stops at other places belonging to Antigonos, might have made the fellow more suspicious. As things were, the officer said, “All right. I hope you have a profitable time trading here. You do know you’ll have to change your silver for Athenian owls?”

“Yes, best one,” Sostratos said, at the same time as Menedemos was saying, “Yes, most noble one.” Neither of them looked at the other. Money-changers charged a fat commission for their services. They kept some for themselves; the polis got the rest. Both Rhodians intended to evade Athenian law as much as they could. Plenty of people in any polis worried more about the weight of the silver they got than whether it bore the Athenian owl or the rose of Rhodes.

As the officer turned to go back down the pier, Sostratos said, “Excuse me, best one, but is Iphikrates son of Leon still the Rhodian proxenos here?”

The Athenian tossed his head. “No, he died two, maybe three years ago. Protomakhos son of Alypetos represents your polis here these days.”

“Not a name I know,” Sostratos said. Menedemos dipped his head in agreement. Sostratos went on, “Is his house here in Peiraieus, or does he live up in Athens?”

“He’s in Athens, not far from the theater,” the officer replied, which made Sostratos’ heart leap with joy and, by Menedemos’ expression, made his cousin fight back laughter. The Athenian added, “He deals in marble and other stone himself. He has a good name in the city.”

“Glad to hear that,” Sostratos said.

As the soldier did leave the quay, Menedemos’ swallowed snickers broke free. “The proxenos has a house by the theater!” he said. “I’m sure your heart’s breaking because we’ll have to walk all the way into Athens to meet this Protomakhos. A pig dreams of swill, a sheep dreams of clover, and you-you dream of a house by the theater in Athens. And now your dream’s come true.”

Sostratos wanted to tell him he was talking nonsense-wanted to, but knew he couldn’t. He gave back a rather sickly smile. “We really ought to go meet the fellow, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.” Menedemos sounded both judicious and dubious. “I was thinking of selling our goods at the marketplace right here in Peiraieus, and so we won’t-”

“What?” Sostratos yelped. “Are you out of your mind? They sell timber and oil and wheat here, not the kind of…” He fumbled to a stop when his cousin started laughing again, this time harder than ever. Sostratos sent him an aggrieved stare. “Oh. You’re having me on. Ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha.” That wasn’t laughter. He repeated the empty syllables to show how funny he thought the joke was.

Menedemos set a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, my dear. I truly am. I just couldn’t resist. The look on your face-”

“Couldn’t resist?” Sostratos said. “You didn’t even try.”

“Well, maybe not.” Menedemos gauged the sun. “Do you think we’ve got time to go into town today and find this Protomakhos, or would we do better waiting till tomorrow? “

Sostratos looked at the sinking sun, too: looked at it and let out a long, mournful sigh. “Tomorrow would be better,” he said, “and you have no idea how much I wish I could tell you otherwise.” And then, suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “No, I take it back-we’d better go now.”

“And how have you talked yourself into that?” Menedemos asked, amused.

“Simple. Tomorrow’s either the ninth or the tenth of Elaphebolion.” His gaze swung to the ripening moon, which announced the date. “I think it’ll be the tenth. If it is, it’s the first day of the Dionysia. There’ll be a big parade and all sorts of other things going on, and nobody will want to do any business. That’s why we ought to meet Protomakhos today.”

His cousin thought it over. “Well, when you’re right, you’re right. We’d better go. Diokles, keep enough men on board and sober tonight to make sure none of these clever, light-fingered Athenians walks off with the akatos.”

“I’ll take care of it, skipper,” the oarmaster promised. “You can count on me.”

“I know. I do,” Menedemos said. “And now I’d better get moving. Look at Sostratos there, shifting from foot to foot like a comic actor about to shit himself.”

“I am not!” Sostratos said indignantly, and made sure he did not rise up onto the toes of his left foot. “I’m just.. eager.”

“That’s what boys say when they shoot too soon the first time they visit a brothel,” Menedemos retorted. Sostratos yelped again, even more indignantly than before. His cousin laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go, then.”

Even setting foot in Peiraieus was enough to excite Sostratos. He made himself hurry past the long colonnade that housed the harbor-side market. Most of the port wasn’t worth looking at: nondescript houses and shops, mud-brick with red tile roofs. Some of them were whitewashed, rather more weren’t. The goods on display were of the cheap, flashy sort he might have seen in any good-sized polis around the Inner Sea. But the people were speaking Attic Greek. Even the barbarians in business in Peiraieus, of whom there were a good many, spoke Attic flavored by their foreign accents. Hearing it made Sostratos smile.

Menedemos pointed. “What’s that temple? It sure stands out amongst all this boring stuff.”

“That’s the sacred enclosure of Athena and Zeus,” Sostratos answered. “Both deities are portrayed in bronze. Athena’s holding a spear; Zeus has a rod in one hand and a Victory in the other. There’s also a fine painting of Leosthenes and his family by Arkesilaos. That’s new; the statues aren’t.”

“Leosthenes?” Menedemos frowned. “I can’t place the name.”

“The Athenian general who fought the Macedonians right after Alexander died, when we were just going from boys to youths,” Sostratos said. “He beat them a couple of times up in Boiotia, but they won the war.”

“All right. I remember that,” Menedemos said. “I couldn’t have come up with his name if you’d handed me to a Persian torturer, though.” He pointed off to the right, toward the east. “And what’s that big thing?”

“That’s the fortress at Mounykhia, the harbor next door,” Sostratos told him. “It’s full of Kassandros’ Macedonians.”

“It would be, wouldn’t it?” Menedemos said.

“What? You don’t suppose the Athenians would line up with Kassandros if he didn’t hold them down?” Sostratos did his best to sound artfully shocked. His cousin chuckled. He went on, “If there weren’t any Macedonians around, Athens-and all the other poleis in Hellas- would go back to squabbling amongst themselves, the way they did before Philip put his foot on them.”

“Not all the other poleis.”

“What do you mean?”

“Thebes isn’t there anymore. Alexander destroyed it.”

“That’s true,” Sostratos said. “I’ve heard people are starting to live on the site, though. One of these days, it’ll be a city again.”

“I suppose so,” his cousin said. They walked on through Peiraieus and up toward Athens through the Long Walls joining the port to the great city. Menedemos nodded to the soldiers on the walls. “They’d be more Macedonians, wouldn’t they?”

Sostratos eyed the men. “Probably. They’re bigger and fairer than most Athenians, anyhow. But Demetrios of Phaleron is the glove to Kassandros’ hand: what Kassandros wants done, Demetrios does. So they may be Athenians doing the Macedonians’ bidding.”

“I thought these walls would be more impressive,” Menedemos said. “They aren’t that tall, and they aren’t that strong.”

“They were first built in Perikles’ day, and generals then knew less about besieging cities than they do now, so the works didn’t have to be that strong to serve,” Sostratos answered. “They were strong enough to keep the Spartans out. Athens wasn’t stormed at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The Spartans starved her into surrender, and then made the Athenians pull down a stretch of the walls afterwards.”

Menedemos looked around. “Built up again,” he observed.

“Oh, yes,” Sostratos said. “The Athenians did that as soon as they thought they could get away with it.” His gaze went this way and that, too. The road up from Athens wasn’t much to look at: only a dirt track, with grass and bushes on either side. Even so… “Walking this road, Menedemos… Walking this road is special. Perikles traveled on this road. So did Aiskhylos and Sophokles and Euripides. So did Thoukydides-and Herodotos, too, though he wasn’t born here. Sokrates walked this road, and Platon, and Aristoteles. And now – Sostratos and Menedemos.”

Menedemos went off behind a bush to ease himself. When he came back, he said, “Aristophanes might have pissed on that very same bush. What an honor!” He batted his eyes like a youth playing coy.

“To the crows with you,” Sostratos said. “I try to talk about what coming to Athens means to me, and what do I get? Filthy jokes!”

“Aristophanes lived here, too, and the other comic poets, though you didn’t bother mentioning them,” Menedemos said. “Are you going to tell me comedy isn’t part of what Athens stands for?”

“There’s a time and place for everything,” Sostratos replied, a weaker comeback than he’d thought he might give. Reluctantly, he dipped his head to his cousin. “All right. You have a point-of sorts.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much!” Menedemos cried.

“Enough,” Sostratos said. His cousin only laughed at him. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. He might have known that would happen.

But Menedemos wasn’t a complete scoffer. Pointing up to the akropolis, he said, “That’s the temple to Athena the Maiden, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s the Parthenon, sure enough,” Sostratos answered. The sinking sun shone brilliantly on the white marble and on the painted blues and reds and yellows of the Panathenaic frieze.

“I’ve seen a lot of temples in my time,” Menedemos said, “but that one’s as fine as any.”

Sostratos dipped his head. “I think so, too. We’ll have to make a trip up there so you can see the cult statue. It’s all gold and ivory, five or six times as tall as a man. There’s nothing like it except the great Zeus at Olympia-and Pheidias made that image, too.”

“All gold and ivory.” For a moment, Menedemos sounded as piratical as any Lykian. Then his thoughts turned to those a trader might have: “I wonder how much of the gold stuck to Pheidias’ fingers.”

“Perikles’ enemies charged Pheidias with that, and with putting his own face on one of the details of the ornamentation of the statue of Athena, and all manner of other things, for Perikles, of course, was his patron, and by striking at Pheidias they could embarrass the man through whom he did what he did,” Sostratos said.

“Well? What happened?” Menedemos sounded interested in spite of himself.

“He didn’t steal any of the gold. Perikles had warned him he might be challenged, so he made the gold plates for the statue easy to remove. When the Athenians took them down and weighed them, they found that none of the metal entrusted to him was missing. But then they started shouting, ‘Impiety!’ when they found out he’d put his portrait on one of the warriors on Athena’s shield-that’s what I was talking about before.”

“Men do that sort of thing all the time nowadays,” Menedemos remarked.

“I know, but this was more than a hundred twenty years ago, and they didn’t then,” Sostratos said. “And some say Perikles’ face was there with his. Some say Pheidias had to leave Athens. Others say he was made to drink hemlock, like Sokrates later.” He shuddered. So did Menedemos. They’d watched a man die of hemlock. It wasn’t so neat and tidy as Platon made it out to be. Sostratos went on, “I don’t think they killed him, but I can’t prove it. Too long ago now-no one who knew the truth is left alive.”

The walls of the polis of Athens loomed ahead. They were taller and more formidable than the Long Walls. All the traffic coming up from Peiraieus and going down to the port funneled through a single gate. A man leading a donkey with half a dozen amphorai lashed to its back came out of Athens toward Sostratos and Menedemos. An old man leaning on a stick went into the city ahead of the Rhodians. Guards asked him a question or two, then waved him forward.

One of the guards held up a hand. Sostratos and Menedemos dutifully stopped. In purest Attic, the guard said, “Who are you? What’s your business here?”

“We’re merchants from Rhodes,” Sostratos answered. “We hope to do business in Athens. Right now, we’re looking for our polis’ proxenos.”

“Pass on.” The gate guard stood aside.

“This isn’t quite the city proper,” Sostratos said, pointing ahead after they went through the gate. “There’s another wall up there, perhaps ten or twelve plethra farther along.”

“Yes, I see it over the roofs of the houses and shops,” Menedemos said.

“We have two choices for a gate there. One will bring us into the city north of the Pnyx, the other to the south,” Sostratos said.

“What’s the Pnyx?” his cousin asked. “Is it worth seeing?”

“It’s where the Assembly meets-or rather, where it did meet till a few years ago,” Sostratos replied. “These days, the people come together at the theater.” He didn’t point out-no telling who might be listening-that the Assembly’s meetings were much less important than they had been during the great days of Athens. These days, Demetrios of Phaleron or Kassandros’ officers or the Macedonian marshal himself decided what went on here. The people’s voice was stifled.

“Doesn’t sound that interesting, not to look at,” Menedemos said. “Let’s use the south entrance-that’s the shorter way to the akropolis and the theater, isn’t it?”

Sostratos dipped his head. “That’s right. You do remember your way around.”

“Some,” Menedemos said. “It’s been four or five years-that trading run where I met the charming lady in Halikarnassos, remember?”

“I’m not likely to forget,” Sostratos said. “It wasn’t the lady who was so memorable-”

“It was to me,” Menedemos broke in.

Sostratos overrode him: “It was her husband. I don’t know whether she will or not, but he’ll never forget you.”

“I’m probably not the only one he’s got to worry about.” Menedemos stepped up the pace. “Come on. There’s the gate. I can see it. Hurry up, won’t you? We do want to find the proxenos’ house before the sun goes down.”

You do want to change the subject, Sostratos thought. You don’t like getting reminded about outraged husbands. You didn’t even mention him-only his wife. Whose wife will you go after here? That was one question whose answer he hoped he wouldn’t learn. He caught up with his cousin. They reached the gate side by side. A yawning guard waved them through without a word. On they went, into Athens.

Menedemos did his best not to stare like a back-country farmer coming for the very first time into a town big enough to boast a wall. It wasn’t easy. On his last visit to Attica, he’d spent most of his time in Peiraieus. He’d been determined not to seem impressed there, too. Sostratos had almost had to drag him up to Athens to look around.

The first thing that struck him was how big a polis it was. Rhodes was a good-sized city in its own right, but it didn’t come close to this one. Syracuse, in Sicily, was supposed to have been a match for Athens years before, but endless civil strife had taken its toll there. These days, only Alexandria deserved mention in the same breath-and Alexandria drew its wealth from all of Egypt, while Athens relied on Attica alone… Attica, and the wits of its citizens.

And, large as it was, Athens seemed even grander and more impressive. Menedemos’ eyes kept rising to the akropolis. “They put everything they had into this, didn’t they?” he murmured.

“That’s what Thoukydides says,” Sostratos answered. Plainly quoting, he went on, “ ‘For if the city of the Lakedaimonians were deserted, but the temples and the foundations of the buildings were left, after a long time had gone by there would be great disbelief at their power.’ Then he says, ‘But if this same thing happened to the Athenians, their power would likely be reckoned twice what it is, from the visible appearance of their city.’ “

“Well, I’ve got to hand it to the old boy,” Menedemos said. “He hit that one square in the middle of the target. This place is”-he looked around again, trying to come up with a phrase that fit-”a possession for all time.” Sostratos smiled at that. “What’s the matter now?” Menedemos asked indignantly. “Did I say something funny? I didn’t mean to.”

“Not funny, O best one-just… fitting,” his cousin replied. “That’s what Thoukydides intended his history to be: a ktema es aei.” He said the words for possession for all time in a very old-fashioned way; Menedemos supposed that was how Thoukydides had written them. Sostratos added, “His history is a hundred years old now, so it looks as if he’s getting what he wanted.”

“That’s true,” Menedemos said. “Here’s hoping somebody remembers us after we’re a hundred years gone.”

“Yes. Here’s hoping.” Sostratos’ voice had an edge to it.

Menedemos wondered what he’d done to irk his cousin. He didn’t want to offend Sostratos without meaning to; that took the fun out of it. Then he remembered Sostratos aspired to write history, too. Clapping him on the shoulder, Menedemos said, “Don’t worry about it, my dear. A hundred years from now, they’ll be talking about Sostratos and Thoukydides, not the other way round.”

“You’re a splendid flatterer. I hope I have wisdom enough to know when I’m being flattered, though,” Sostratos said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Menedemos said. Sostratos snorted. Menedemos turned serious again: “When should we start asking Athenians where the proxenos’ house is?”

“Not yet, by the dog,” Sostratos replied. “Wait till we get to the theater. Then we have some chance of getting a straight answer. If we ask now, most of these abandoned rogues will take our oboloi, spin us a pretty set of directions that lead nowhere, and go their way laughing at how they suckered the hicks from out of town.”

“Charming people,” Menedemos said.

“In many ways, they are,” his cousin said. “In many ways, mind you, but not all. They’re out for themselves, first, last, and always. So are most Hellenes, of course-”

“I was just going to say that,” Menedemos put in.

“Yes, but you wouldn’t tell a stranger fancy lies for the sake of an obolos and a laugh,” Sostratos said. “A lot of them would. They take being out for themselves further than most Hellenes do. They take almost everything further than most Hellenes do, for good and for ill. You don’t have to be fast to live in Athens, but it helps.”

“How did you manage, then?” Menedemos asked. His cousin was a great many things, but never fast, not the way he’d meant.

“For one thing, I learned to talk more like an Athenian,” Sostratos answered. “For another, I kept company with lovers of wisdom, who are-mostly-a different breed.”

“Oh,” Menedemos said. That made a certain amount of sense, but only a certain amount. “Why are the philosophers different? Have they figured out how to live without money?”

“Some of them have, by choosing not to care about a lot of the things most men go after money to buy,” Sostratos said. Menedemos tossed his head. That way wasn’t for him. He liked his comforts too well. Sostratos continued, “But a lot of men who can study philosophy and history their whole lives long are the ones who can afford to do that from the start. They don’t need to worry about an obolos here and an obolos there, because they come from rich families. They’ve got more silver than they can spend if they live to be ninety.”

That edge returned to his voice. Menedemos remembered how bitter he’d been when his father called him home from Athens. “Well, my dear, if we get rich enough, you can walk away from the trading business and spend all your time at the Lykeion again,” he said.

“Too late for me,” his cousin said. “I’ve been out in the world too long; I could never be indifferent to money-or take it for granted, the way a lot of philosophers do. And do you know what really irks me?”

“Tell me,” Menedemos urged. Every so often, Sostratos had to let out what ate at him or go wild.

“They don’t know how lucky they are,” he said now. “Remember, I told you I met that Hekataios of Abdera in Jerusalem when we were in the east last year? He was writing a history in Alexandria, and he found out the Ioudaioi had a role to play in it. So what did he do? He headed for Jerusalem to see what he could find out about them. He didn’t worry about the money-he just did it. I was so jealous, I wanted to wring his scrawny neck. There I was, worrying about what I could sell and what I might buy, and he took his own sweet time wandering around asking questions-when he found someone who spoke Greek to answer them, that is.”

“You’re the one who learned Aramaic,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos answered in that language, something so harsh and guttural and evil-sounding that three or four passersby spun around to stare at him. Menedemos didn’t think Sostratos noticed. Returning to Greek, he went on, “Yes, I’m the one who learned Aramaic, and I probably learned more about the Ioudaioi than Hekataios did, too. And much good it did me, because he’s the one who gets to write the book and be remembered.”

Slyly, Menedemos said, “You’re the one who laid the innkeeper’s wife.”

His cousin gave him a bleak laugh. “So I am. That didn’t work out, either. Afterwards, we both ended up unhappier than we would have if we’d never gone to bed together.”

“Yes, I know. That’s too bad. It’s not supposed to work that way.” The only times Menedemos hadn’t enjoyed adultery were the ones when the woman’s husband had found out.

Sostratos didn’t answer him now. They walked on through the narrow, winding, smelly streets of Athens. When Menedemos couldn’t see the magnificent buildings of the akropolis or those at the edges of the agora off to the northwest, the city seemed just another polis, an oversized one, but nothing out of the ordinary in the way most of its people lived. After doubling back from yet another dead end, he wished it, like Peiraieus, boasted a neat Hippodamian grid of streets.

No such luck, though. He and Sostratos had to scramble out of the way when a woman called, “Coming out!” from a second-floor window and emptied a chamber pot into the dirt street below. Flies started buzzing around the stinking puddle. A man wearing a himation in front of the Rhodians shouted curses at the woman, for the slops had splashed him. When she ignored the hard words, he flung a rock at the window. It rattled off a wooden shutter, breaking two of the slats. He went on his way, contented. From the safety of the upstairs room, the woman screeched her own curses at him. Now he ignored her.

“Welcome to life in the big city,” Sostratos said with a wry chuckle, although a scene like that could have happened in any Hellenic polis, regardless of size.

“It missed us, and we didn’t walk in it afterwards,” Menedemos said. “Past that, who cares?” They walked on for a little while, then turned onto a wider street that went more directly east. Menedemos pointed ahead. “Those curved rows of seats ahead-that has to be the theater.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Sostratos dipped his head. “And do you see the big stretch of tile roof beyond them?”

“Not very well. You’re taller than I am.” Menedemos jumped in the air, which made a couple of Athenians goggle. “All right-yes, it’s there. What is it?”

“That’s the Odeion,” his cousin answered. “Perikles had it built to house the musical contests at the Panathenaic Games. It’s so big, it has ninety pillars inside holding up the roof. People say it’s modeled after the tent Xerxes lived in when he invaded Hellas, but I don’t know if that’s true or just a story.”

“If it’s not true, it’s a good story,” Menedemos said. “Can’t ask for more than that.”

“I can ask for the truth,” Sostratos said, a little stiffly. “Whether I can find it after more than a hundred years is liable to be another matter.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Menedemos said. His cousin walked on without answering. I’ve gone and put his back up, Menedemos thought unhappily. Sostratos got much too touchy much too fast when it came to historical questions, though in other areas he would put up with more than most Hellenes did. Instead of trying to jolly him along, Menedemos waved to a passing Athenian. “Oк! You, there!”

“What do you want?” the fellow asked.

“Can you tell us how to get to the house of Protomakhos the marble merchant? He’s not far from the theater, is he?”

“Yes, I know where his house is,” the Athenian said, and said no more. Menedemos had expected nothing else. He gave the man an obolos. Popping the coin into this mouth, the Athenian continued, “It’s close by the temple of Dionysos, at the southwestern corner of the theater precinct. It’s on the left side of the street as you go south. I forget whether it’s the second or third house there, but you can knock on doors and find out.”

“Thanks,” Menedemos said.

“Any time, buddy.” The Athenian stuck his tongue in his cheek, as if to say, Any time you pay me: he might have been going after the obolos he’d just got.

“Can we find it with those directions?” Menedemos asked as the local went on his way.

“We can find the right street, I think, or at least narrow it down to two or three,” Sostratos answered. “And somebody on one of those streets ought to know where to find Protomakhos’ house. We might not even have to spend any more silver.”

“Ha! I’ll believe that when I see it,” Menedemos said.

A gray stone wall around the holy precinct kept him from getting more than a glimpse of the roof of the temple of Dionysos. That roof was of red tiles, like those of most of the nearby houses. These, though, were faded by the sun and cracked and weathered by who could say how many freezes and rainstorms. The temple had stood there a very long time.

Menedemos pointed to a street that headed south just beyond the temple. “Shall we try this one?”

“Why not?” Sostratos replied. “If we’re wrong, we can’t be far wrong. The Athenian said second or third house down, didn’t he?”

“That’s right,” Menedemos said. When they came to the second house, he knocked on the door.

Several dogs inside the house started howling: not little yapping lap-dogs, but Kastorian hunting hounds with big, deep voices. Menedemos found himself hoping whoever was in there wouldn’t open the door. He let out a sigh of relief when all he got was a hoarse shout: “Who’s there? What do you want?”

“Is this the house of Protomakhos son of… uh…?”

“Alypetos,” Sostratos supplied.

“No,” the voice said over the baying of the hounds. “He lives next door, one house down.”

“Artemis be praised for that,” Menedemos muttered as they went on to the next house. “If they’d opened the door to that last place, those dogs might have eaten us alive.”

“We wouldn’t have been alive for long,” Sostratos said, relentlessly accurate. “And how would you like to live next door to that racket all the time? I like my peace and quiet. If it were me, I’d be tempted to throw some poisoned meat over the wall and get rid of a few of those beasts.”

“It’s not just the racket, either.” Menedemos held his nose. “I know cities can’t help being smelly places, but I don’t fancy dog shit in my nostrils all day long. There’ll be more flies, too, especially when the weather warms up.”

“Would you rather stay at an inn, then?” Sostratos asked.

Menedemos sighed and tossed his head. “No, we’re here.” He knocked on the door. Again, someone on the inside asked who he was. He gave his name and Sostratos’, adding, “This is the house of the Rhodian proxenos, isn’t it?”

The door opened. The man standing there had to be Protomakhos himself. He was about fifty, broad-shouldered, a little thick in the belly but still vigorous, with a face that would have been strikingly handsome but for a nose that had met a mishap somewhere and bent to the left. “Come in, friends,” he said. “Use my house as your own for as long as you’re in Athens. I’ve heard of your fathers. If you match them, you won’t be doing bad. Try to ignore the smell from next door; Demotimos raises hunting dogs.”

“Thank you very much,” Menedemos and Sostratos said together. Protomakhos stood aside to let them in. A beginning, Menedemos thought. In he went, Sostratos at his heels.