Owls to Athens

5

“We thank you again for. Your generous hospitality,” Sostratos told Protomakhos over breakfast the next morning. Menedemos, who was also spooning up barley porridge and sipping watered wine in the andron, dipped his head in agreement.

“My pleasure, best ones.” Protomakhos took a swig from his cup. The wine he served was no Ariousian, but it would do; it was a good deal better than what the Aphrodite carried for sailors to drink. The Rhodian proxenos went on, “I don’t know how much you’ll get done for the next seven days or so, what with the Greater Dionysia starting today. You’ll be paying your rowers for getting drunk in the god’s name.”

Menedemos stirred at that, as if he hadn’t thought of it till now. Maybe he hadn’t. Sostratos had. It distressed his thrifty soul, but the alternative was missing the festival-and missing the plays that went with it. “We’ll just have to make the best of it, most noble one,” he said. “I’m not sorry your house is so close to the theater.”

His cousin almost choked on his wine. Protomakhos chuckled. “Aha! So you did come for the plays. I wondered, but coming right out and asking is rude. Yes, this isn’t a bad place to start from if you fancy drama.”

“I hope Menandros offers a comedy this year,” Sostratos said.

“He’s supposed to be working on one,” Protomakhos said. “I don’t know if he’s finished it.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Sostratos said. “I’m trying to convince Menedemos that comedy doesn’t start and stop with Aristophanes.”

“I laugh at Menandros’ plays,” Protomakhos said. “I don’t see how you can help it, not unless you’re dead.”

Sostratos glanced at Menedemos, to see how his cousin would take that. Menedemos was too polite to come right out and disagree with his host. Instead, he changed the subject: “I’ll enjoy the plays, I’m sure. I’ll also enjoy the rest of the festival for the god’s sake. Nothing wrong with plenty of wine, or with women who have license to be loose for a few days.”

“There’s some of that at this festival, but less than at Dionysiai in other places,” the Rhodian proxenos warned. “In fact, there’s less of it than there was at the smaller festivity last month. I don’t want you fellows to have the wrong idea and get in trouble because of it.”

“I already knew as much, having spent some time here,” Sostratos said. “We do appreciate your care for us.” Menedemos didn’t look as if he appreciated it at all, but Sostratos didn’t remark on that.

Protomakhos said, “If you want to watch the parade into town from the Academy, you’d do well to head for the agora now. It fills up fast, with slaves as well as citizens. If you care to try your luck with women, that’ll be your best chance-unless you feel like going out at night, that is.”

“Shall we?” Menedemos asked.

“Why not?” Sostratos said. “If we’re going to give ourselves to the god, we should do it in fullness.”

“That’s the spirit,” Protomakhos said.

“Will you come, too, best one?” Sostratos asked him.

He tossed his head. “I’ll wait till the procession gets to the temple of Dionysos here to pay my respects to the god. I’m an Athenian, you know, and not a young one. I’ve seen the Dionysia… well, a good many times by now. This part is always the same.”

“All right.” Sostratos nudged Menedemos. “Come on. Hurry up. We don’t want to get there and find out we’re too far away from the Street of the Panathenaia to see anything.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Menedemos turned to Protomakhos. “I’m usually the one who has to hustle him along, you know. But he wants to see this, and so…” He made as if to pour himself another cup of wine. When Sostratos rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh, his cousin laughed and got to his feet.

People were already out in the streets when they left the Rhodian proxenos’ house. A lot of the women looked like respectable wives and matrons: they weren’t all slaves and poor folk by any means. Now Sostratos was the one who laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Menedemos asked.

“You,” Sostratos told him. “You’re so busy turning and looking at them all, you can hardly walk, and you haven’t got any idea which ones to smile at first.”

“I don’t get to see a crowd of them like this very often,” Menedemos answered. “Most honest women who can afford it spend most of their time indoors, so I’m enjoying the… the variety.”

“If you stare any harder, the Athenians will decide you’re a bumpkin from Akharnai who’s never come into the big city before,” Sostratos said. Menedemos made a face at him-Aristophanes had written a comedy about Akharnaians-but kept on looking around at all the pretty, fairly pretty, and even not so pretty women who’d come out to celebrate the festival.

People were already passing cups of wine back and forth. Sostratos drank when somebody thrust one at him. The wine was neat and not very good. He took a small sip, then passed it to Menedemos. After drinking, Menedemos gave a woman the cup. Her smile showed two black front teeth. Menedemos didn’t speak to her after that. He hurried on with Sostratos toward the agora. Phalloi decorated the streets, some of clay, some of wickerwork, some with cloth-covered wicker frames decorated with ribbons.

Athens’ great market square lay on the flat ground northwest of the akropolis. The Street of the Panathenaia, a rutted dirt track, ran through it from northwest to southeast. Athens’ public buildings bounded the southern and western sides: the mint and a couple of fountains on the south, along with a covered colonnade that was not only full of people but had them clambering up to the roof like monkeys. On the west stood the generals’ headquarters, the round Tholos, which housed the rotating executive committee of the Council of Elders; the Bouleuterion, where the whole Council met, and the Royal Stoa, which also had people climbing its columns and up onto the roof.

The agora itself was filling rapidly. Skythian constables, shouting in bad Greek, fought to keep the crowd from packing the Street of the Panathenaia and blocking the procession. Everyone struggled to get as close as he could. Sostratos was an uncommonly large man. Menedemos wasn’t, but he was an uncommonly good wrestler. They got closer than most.

Sostratos pointed northwest, toward the Dipylon Gate and the Academy beyond the wall. “The god’s boat will come from that direction,” he said.

Menedemos dug a finger in his ear. “The god’s what? The noise is dreadful, isn’t it? I thought you said ‘boat.’ “

“I did. You’ll see,” Sostratos said. Someone trod on his toe. “Oimoi!” he exclaimed. Like any sailor, he always went barefoot. That had disadvantages in a crowd.

“Sorry, pal,” said the fellow who’d stepped on him.

“You’re lucky he’s not like some of those harlots,” Menedemos said. “You know the kind I mean: the ones who have FOLLOW ME or something like that written backwards on the bottom of their sandals in metal, so they leave the words in the dust of the street as they walk along. No fun at all if that comes down on your foot.”

“No, it wouldn’t be,” Sostratos agreed. Thoughtfully, he went on, “I imagine the trade they’d bring in would vary from polis to polis, depending on how many men in each place can read. They’d do better here or in Rhodes than up in Macedonia-I’m sure of that.”

“Only you-” Menedemos said, and then had to stop, for he was laughing too hard to go on. He needed some little while before he could continue. “Only you, my dear, could think of a whore and think of how much money she might make and why, and not of how she makes her money.”

“I know how they make their money,” Sostratos said. “The other is something I hadn’t thought about before.” He started to say that made it more interesting, but checked himself. It did, to him, but Menedemos had already show^rn he would make him sorry if he said anything like that.

Flutes and drums and other instruments resounded, out beyond the northern edge of the agora. Heads swung in that direction. An Athenian stepped out into the Street of the Panathenaia to get a better look. One of the Skythian slave constables shoved him back into the crowd, shouting, “What you t’ink you does? How selfis’ is you?” Like a lot of barbarians, he couldn’t pronounce some of the sounds of Greek. Having tried to learn how to say the gutturals of Aramaic, Sostratos had more sympathy for him than he would have before.

Unlike the Athenian, Sostratos was not only close to the Street of the Panathenaia but also tall enough to see over the crowd. Beside him, Menedemos twisted to look past the few people in front of him and now and then jumped in the air to get briefly above them. Once he too came down on Sostratos’ toes. “Papai!” Sostratos said in pain and annoyance. “Have you got FOLLOW ME on the bottoms of your polluted feet?”

“Sorry.” His cousin didn’t sound sorry at all. He jumped up again. This time, he missed Sostratos when he landed.

“Here they come!” The words raced through the crowd.

Some of the dancers at the head of the procession were dressed as satyrs, with tight-fitting goatskin costumes, horsetails, erect phalloi as long as a man’s forearm, and snub-nosed masks that put Sostratos in mind of the way Sokrates was said to have looked. They shouted lewd suggestions at the pretty women they saw, sometimes aiming their phalloi at them like spears. Some of the women shouted lewd suggestions of their own; the Dionysia, even in the toned-down version of it celebrated at Athens, was a time when restraint went out the window.

Behind the satyrs came maenads in torn, ragged tunics that suggested they’d been running wild on the mountainsides. Some of them carried thyrsoi, the ivy-tipped wands of Dionysos. Others bore smoky, crackling torches. Still others had tambourines. To the accompaniment of that jingling music, they called, “Euoiii! Euoiii!”-the cry of the god’s followers.

Menedemos nudged Sostratos. “By the god of wine, what’s that?”

“I told you,” Sostratos answered. “That’s the boat of Dionysos.”

The ancient wooden image of the god, slightly above life size, was indeed pulled down the Street of the Panathenaia in a boat by a team of captering satyrs. The planking almost concealed the four large wheels on which the landboat rolled. Except for those wheels, it seemed perfect in every respect, from painted eyes and ram at the bow to goose-headed sternpost. Two more satyrs, these playing flutes, shared the boat with the image of Dionysos. A wreath of leaves crowned the god’s head, as if he were enjoying a symposion. His right hand held more greenery, symbolic of fertility and renewal.

“That’s… very strange to see,” Menedemos said as the boat drew near. “What’s the point to this parade, anyway?”

“You mean, besides just celebrating the god?” Sostratos asked, and his cousin dipped his head. Sostratos said, “Back about two hundred fifty years ago, the little town of Eleutherai, up on the border with Boiotia, became part of Attica. To symbolize the joining, they paraded this very statue from Eleutherai to the temple at the foot of the Athenian akropolis-it has to be more than two hundred stadia from Eleutherai down to here. Now they just take the image out of the temple and up to the Academy, a little outside the walls, the day before the Dionysia and then have this procession bringing it back on the day the festival starts.”

Rattling and creaking, the boat went by. The image of Dionysos smiled its secret smile. Sostratos had seen that expression on old statues of youths here in Athens and elsewhere around the Inner Sea. The smile seemed particularly fitting for a god whose rituals were so wrapped in mystery.

Behind the boat came a chorus of boys singing Dionysos’ praises. Their leader walked backwards in front of them, directing the hymns. He’d come all the way from the Academy like that. Sostratos wouldn’t have wanted to try it; he feared he would have fallen on his fundament, probably right about here, where the most people could see him do it and laugh. That thought had hardly crossed his mind before one of the boys, a very handsome one, coughed loudly from the dust the boat of Dionysos kicked up. He went scarlet to the roots of his hair. The leader of the chorus pulled a horrible face, which could only have made the boy feel worse. People would remember a public mistake like that for years.

“Poor fellow,” Menedemos murmured. “I wouldn’t mind consoling him.”

“I’ll bet you wouldn’t, and I know just how,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos laughed. “The festival of Dionysos is for things like that.” He looked around. “I’d rather do it with a woman, though.”

“I expect you’ll have your chance,” Sostratos said. “You’ll have your chance to gorge on meat today, too. Here come the sacrificial animals.”

Guided along by herdsmen, cattle and sheep shambled down the Street of the Panathenaia. Sheep bleated. Cattle lowed and swung their heads from side to side, uneasy in the presence of so many people. Once Dionysos’ image returned to its temple, the god would get the beasts’ fat-wrapped thighbones while the spectators shared the rest of the meat.

More big phalloi ended the procession. As the men who carried them went by, the Skythian constables stopped holding back the crowd. Men and women streamed down the Street of the Panathenaia after the parade. Some of them waved jars of wine and passed them back and forth. Others sang snatches of Dionysiac hymns.

“Come on,” Sostratos said. “Let’s head for the temple. We can get our share of beef or mutton, and take it back to Protomakhos’ house.”

“Or even piggy,” Menedemos said, and Sostratos made a face at him for the vulgarity.

One constable after another stood aside. The whole packed agora tried to funnel itself into the Street of the Panathenaia. The result, of course, was that nobody moved very fast. Sostratos said, “Well, Menedemos, we won’t get to the temple in a hurry… Menedemos?” He looked around. That might have been his cousin kissing a woman ten or twelve cubits behind him. On the other hand, it might not. Quite a few couples were embracing in the crowd, and those ten or twelve cubits were so packed with humanity that he got only a very partial glimpse of that one. He shrugged and took a few steps south and east, toward Dionysos’ temple. Sooner or later, he’d get there. As for Menedemos-he could celebrate the Dionysia any way he chose.

A fairly pretty woman breathed wine fumes up into Sostratos’ face as she tilted her head back to get a good look at him. “Are you really as tall as that?” she asked, and hiccuped.

“Of course not,” he answered gravely. “I’m standing on stilts. I always do.”

She looked down at his feet to see if he was joking. How much wine has she had? he wondered. A couple of beats slower than she should have, she laughed. “You’re a funny fellow,” she said. “And you’re tall.” She might have noticed it for the first time. Sending him a look intended for alluring but in fact more bleary, she added, “I like tall.”

If he wanted his own Dionysiac adventure, he suspected he could find it. He didn’t, or not with her. He said, “Look at that big, handsome Macedonian over there. He’s got his eye on you.” When the woman turned her head, Sostratos pushed his way through the crowd, as far from her as he could go. By the time she looked back, he wasn’t there anymore. He feared she would come after him. If she did, though, she never caught up.

A step here, three there, half a dozen there, he made his way back into the built-up part of Athens. A young man who’d already poured down too much wine leaned over a low wall puking it up again. A man and a woman-no, they weren’t Menedemos and anyone, Sostratos noted with relief-ducked into a house, or perhaps an inn. A woman whirled through the crowd, dancing and clicking castanets. She stood on tiptoe to kiss Sostratos on the cheek, then spun away before he could put his arms around her.

Even before he got to the temple, Sostratos heard the frightened lowing and bleats from the animals as they smelled the blood of those already sacrificed. Soon he could smell it himself: a heavy, rusty odor that penetrated all the other stinks of the city.

More slave constables kept things orderly in the temple precinct as people queued up to get their gobbets of meat. The butchery was crude. The only requirement was for all the pieces to be of about the same size, so that one person in line didn’t take away more than another. Some people got a fine chunk, some a piece full of gristle and fat. That was just luck, luck and where one happened to stand in line.

Flies buzzed all around, more of them every minute as the stream of sacrifices yielded ever more offal and blood. If they’d lit only on refuse, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But, of course, they came to rest wherever they pleased. One landed on the soft flesh between Sostratos’ left eyebrow and eyelid. He tossed his head like a spooked horse. The fly hummed away. He swatted at it with the palm of his hand, but missed. A moment later, another bit him on the back of the calf. He slapped his leg. The fly squashed under his fingers. He wiped his hand on his chiton and took a step toward the temple, feeling a little better for having killed one bug.

Ancient, gnarled olive trees gave shade from the warm spring sun as the queue snaked forward. The trees were surely at least as old as the temple itself-and it was in such bad repair, a new building would have been needed to do Dionysos justice. A northerly breeze rustled through the gray-green leaves overhead. Peeping birds hopped and fluttered from branch to branch. Sostratos hoped they were eating some of the flies.

“In the name of the god, here is meat from the sacrifice,” a priest said, and handed a piece to the woman in front of Sostratos.

“In the name of the god, I thank you for it,” she replied, and carried it away.

Sostratos took her place. The priest gave him a piece of about the same size. “In the name of the god, here is meat from the sacrifice.” He sounded bored. How many times had he said the same thing today?

“In the name of the god, I thank you for it,” Sostratos said. How many times had the priest heard that? As many as he’d spoken his own ritual phrase, surely.

As Sostratos took his chunk of meat away, the priest turned to the next man. “In the name of the god…” Sostratos did a little surreptitious poking and prodding at the meat. It seemed a pretty good piece. He took it back to Protomakhos’ house. On the way, he heard a scuffle, an angry shout, and then the rapidly fading sound of running feet. Someone probably wouldn’t get to eat the sacrificial portion for which he’d stood in line so long.

The proxenos’ cook was a Lydian named Myrsos. He too poked at the meat, more assuredly than Sostratos had done. “This is a good piece, most noble one,” he said in almost unaccented Greek. “It is better, I think, than the one my master brought home. Will your-cousin, is it?-also bring me a chunk?”

“My cousin, yes. I don’t know. We got separated in the crowd,” Sostratos answered. If Menedemos had found a woman who pleased him, he might not come back for some little while. To put that thought out of his mind, Sostratos asked, “What will you do with the meat you have?” That he seldom ate meat made him more curious.

“I shall make a kandaulos, a Lydian dish,” Myrsos told him. “The ingredients are boiled meat, bread crumbs, Phrygian cheese, anise, and a fatty broth in which to simmer them all. It is a famous delicacy among my people, and you Hellenes have come to relish it, too.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Sostratos said. “Doesn’t Menandros mention it in The Cook’? How does it go?

‘Rich fool of an Ionian, making his thick soups-

Kandaulos, food that rouses lust.’ “

“It is a thick soup, yes, sir,” Myrsos answered. “I hadn’t heard those verses before, and I don’t think it rouses lust.”

“If Menedemos thought it did, he’d bring you back a whole cow,” Sostratos said.

The Lydian smiled. “He’s a young gentleman-and so are you.” His own hair held more than a little gray. He went on, “Whether it rouses lust or not, it is tasty. And, after I serve the master and you Rhodians,

I’ll be going out into town myself tonight, to see if I can find a friendly lady. I’d do the same thing even if I weren’t eating kandaulos, too.”

“Yes, anything can happen on the first night of the Dionysia, can’t it?” Even if the festival wasn’t so wild here as elsewhere, Sostratos had some warm memories of his own earlier stay in Athens. He said not a word about Myrsos’ supper plans. Cooks always ate as well as the people for whom they worked.

Menedemos came back to Protomakhos’ house late that afternoon. He did contribute a piece of meat to the kandaulos. He smelled of wine and looked pleased with the world. “Protomakhos can say what he wants. It’s a Dionysia, all right,” he declared, splashing water from the fountain in the courtyard on his face and over his head. “If you can’t find a woman today, you’re not trying very hard. I wonder how many babies born this winter won’t look like their mothers’ husbands.”

“Sometimes it’s better not to ask a question,” Sostratos observed.

“You say that? You?” Menedemos gave him an owlish, half-sozzled stare. “The fellow who never once leaves off asking things?”

“I say it, yes. Some questions should be left quiet. If you don’t believe me, think about Oidipous, lord of Thebes. His flaw was following the truth too far. It’s possible. It’s not common, but it’s possible.”

“All right, my dear. I’m not going to argue with you now, that’s for sure. I’m in no shape for it. You’d tear me limb from limb.” Menedemos belched softly.

“Was that you I saw kissing a woman in the agora, just after the parade went by?” Sostratos asked. “The crowd had already swept us apart, so I wasn’t sure. If it was, you didn’t waste any time at all.”

“Yes, that was me,” Menedemos answered. “We found someplace quiet-well, out of the way, anyhow-and had a good time. And then I met a slave girl with hair as yellow as a golden oriole’s feathers. You probably would have liked her, Sostratos; you seem to fancy barbarians who look out of the ordinary.”

“I do like red-haired women,” Sostratos admitted. “I gather you liked this blonde pretty well.”

“About this well.” Menedemos held his hands a couple of palms apart. Sostratos snorted. His cousin went on, “And I had a bit of wine- well, maybe more than a bit-so I thought I’d come back here, lie up for a while, have some supper, and then go see what things are like tonight. They’ll be wilder, or I miss my guess.”

“Probably,” Sostratos said. “Do remember, though, the theater opens tomorrow morning as soon as it’s light. Three days of tragedies, then one of comedies.”

“Yes, yes.” Menedemos mimed an enormous yawn. “I’ll probably have to use twigs to prop my eyelids open, but so it goes.” He paused to sniff. “Mm-that must be the kandaulos. I’d rather smell it cooking than the dogs next door, by Zeus. And… I wonder if Sikon knows how to do up a kandaulos. With meat from a sacrifice, that would be a fancy dish he could fix without making my father’s wife yell at him because the ingredients are so expensive.”

“They do quarrel, don’t they?” Sostratos said.

“It’s better than it used to be, but even so…” Menedemos rolled his eyes. The yawn that followed looked genuine. “I am going to sleep. Have one of Protomakhos’ slaves bang on the door before supper, will you?” Without waiting for an answer, he headed off toward the room the Rhodian proxenos had given him.

He automatically thinks I’ll do what he tells me. Sostratos kicked at a pebble in the courtyard. Menedemos had always thought that, ever since the two of them were children. Most of the time, he’d been right. That gift for getting other people to do what he wanted made him a good skipper. It could also make him very annoying. Sostratos did tell a slave to wake his cousin before supper. Then he went to the kitchen and dipped out a cup of wine. Maybe drinking it would soothe his feeling of being used.

He was sitting on an olive-wood bench in the courtyard when Protomakhos came downstairs. The Rhodian proxenos looked smug and happy. Were you celebrating the Dionysia with your wife? Sostratos wondered. That wasn’t the sort of license the festival ordained, but it somehow seemed more satisfying.

“Hail,” Protomakhos said. As Menedemos had, he sniffed. “Ah, kandaulos. Smells good, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does,” Sostratos said.

They ate supper just before sundown, with lamps brightening Protomakhos’ andron. To Sostratos’ disappointment, Menedemos had emerged before the slave came to rouse him. Sostratos wouldn’t have minded his cousin getting bounced out of bed. Menedemos looked toward the kitchen. “If that Lydian soup tastes as good as it smells…” he said.

It did. If anything, it tasted even better than it smelled. Sostratos couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything so rich and filling. “If we had meat all the time, we’d get too fat to show ourselves in the gymnasion,” he said, “but oh, wouldn’t we be happy?”

“Nothing satisfies like it,” Menedemos agreed. “Well, nothing you can eat, anyhow.”

Myrsos brought out a honey-cake full of layers of flaky dough for a sweet. It too was very fine. As he set the cake before the men in the andron, he said, “I’m off to join the festival, master.” He wasn’t asking permission. He was telling Protomakhos what he intended to do.

“Enjoy yourself. I’ll see you in the morning,” Protomakhos replied. A man who tried to keep his slaves at work all the time and didn’t let them make merry now and again would have trouble with them in short order. The Rhodian proxenos plainly knew as much.

Menedemos got to his feet after finishing a piece of cake. “I’m going to see what’s out there in the night, too,” he said. “How about you, Sostratos? Never know what sort of girl you might run into on a festival night.”

“I know. Every other comedy, it seems, uses that in the plot these days,” Sostratos said. “A young man meets a girl when she’s out of the house for a festival-”

“When else is he likely to meet her?” Protomakhos said. “When else is she likely to be out of the house?”

“True enough, O best one, but it’s done so often, it’s getting trite,” Sostratos said. “Either he meets her when she’s out, or he gets her alone and has his way with her without even realizing she’s the girl he loves, or-”

The Rhodian proxenos broke in again: “These things do happen. That happened with a cousin of mine, as a matter of fact, and Menandros and the other comedians didn’t dream of half the mess it caused between his family and the girl’s.”

“Oh, yes. Certainly,” Sostratos said. “If it didn’t happen, you couldn’t write plays about it and expect anyone to take you seriously. But doing the same thing over and over again shows a lack of imagination. That’s what I think, anyhow.”

“What I think is, you still haven’t said whether you’re coming out with me,” Menedemos said.

“Not right now, anyhow,” Sostratos answered. “Maybe I’ll go out into the streets later on. Maybe I’ll go to bed, too. You snoozed this afternoon. I didn’t.”

“I intend to go to bed,” Protomakhos said. “I’ve got too many years on me to head out after wild revels.”

Menedemos’ raised eyebrow said Sostratos was a young man behaving like an old one. Sostratos’ raised eyebrow said he didn’t care what his cousin thought. He waited to see whether Menedemos would mock him out loud and start a quarrel. Menedemos didn’t. He only shrugged and started out of the andron.

“Shall I have a slave get you up in time to go to the theater tomorrow?” Protomakhos called after him.

After a long pause in the doorway for thought, Menedemos reluctantly dipped his head. “Yes, most noble one, please do,” he said, and then left.

Protomakhos did go off to bed a little later. Sostratos sat by himself in the andron, now and then sipping wine and listening to Athens enjoy itself around him. Off in the distance, several women called out, “Euoiii! Euoiii!” and then burst into drunken laughter-playing at being maenads. Much closer, a man and a woman moaned and then gasped. By the soft thumps accompanying those sounds, they were probably making love up against a wall.

I wish I could go out and have a good time like Menedemos, without second thoughts, instead of staying off to one side and observing. Sostratos picked up his cup once more, only to find it empty. Sometimes I can-every once in a while. Why not now? He shrugged. The only answer he could find was, he didn’t feel like it. If I don’t feel like doing it, I wouldn’t be having a good time if I did.

A woman giggled, right outside the house. “Come on, sweetheart,” a man said. “We can lie here on my himation.”

She giggled again. “Why not?”

Why not? Sostratos could almost always find reasons why not. Finding reasons why came harder for him. He couldn’t find one now, and so he stayed where he was, listening to songs and laughter and revelry- and the dogs next door howling-as Athens celebrated the Dionysia. At last, with a shrug, he went back to the little room Protomakhos had given him. With the door closed, not much of the noise outside came in.

Drifting toward slumber, Sostratos thought, No wonder I want to write a history one day. What else am I but a dispassionate observer, watching from the edge of the action? Herodotos had been like that, with a passion only for indulging his curiosity. Thoukydides and Xenophon, on the other hand, had made history as well as writing it. Maybe I will, too, one of these days. With that hope filling his mind, he fell asleep.

It was still dark when a slave pounded on the door the next morning. The racket made Sostratos spring out of bed, his heart thuttering, afraid he’d been caught in the middle of an earthquake. Still naked, he’d taken two steps toward the door before reason routed blind panic. “I’m awake,” he called, and the pounding stopped. He went back to the bed to put on his chiton. The pounding started again, this time one door over. Sostratos smiled. His cousin would like it no better-indeed, would probably like it less-than he had.

He opened the door and walked to the andron, where Protomakhos was breakfasting on bread and oil and watered wine. “Good day,” the proxenos said. “Have something to eat, and then we’ll go over to the theater. We’ll get there before sunup, which ought to mean choice seats.”

“That seems good to me,” Sostratos said. A slave moving with the slow, quiet care of a man with a hangover brought him bread and oil and wine, too.

Menedemos came into the andron a couple of minutes later. He moved much as the slave had. “Good day,” he said softly, as if the sound of his own voice might pain him.

“Good day,” Sostratos and Protomakhos said together. Sostratos asked, “And how was your night of roistering?”

“Enjoyable-then. I’m paying for it now,” Menedemos answered. When the slave brought him breakfast, he picked at the bread but gulped down the wine. After a little while, he dipped his head. “That’s better, by the dog of Egypt. Takes the edge off the headache.”

Protomakhos rose from his stool. “Good. Let’s head for the theater, then.” Sostratos followed eagerly. Menedemos followed, too, but with a small groan.

They picked their way through the morning twilight. The entrance lay only a few blocks north and east of Protomakhos’ house. People streamed towards it from all over the city, even this early. Accents far from Attic said more than a few of them had come a long way to see the day’s plays.

When they got to the theater, Protomakhos handed the attendant a drakhma, saying, “This is for the three of us.”

“Certainly, best one,” the man said, and stood aside to let them by.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Sostratos protested. “We wanted to buy your seat, to show in a small way how grateful we are for your kindness.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Protomakhos replied. “What is a proxenos for but to show his guests the sights of his own polis?”

“Thank you very much,” Sostratos said. Menedemos dipped his head as if afraid it would fall off if he weren’t careful. He hadn’t said more than two or three words since leaving the proxenos’ house. He did look better than he had when he first came into the andron. Along with the wine, the cool, crisp air of early morning was helping revive him.

The two Rhodians and Protomakhos made their way down toward the orkhestra, the outthrust, semicircular area where the chorus danced and sang. The narrow stone aisle had transverse grooves cut in it to help keep feet from slipping. The slope was one in eight, steep enough to make falls a danger.

“This should do pretty well,” Protomakhos said, and stepped off the aisle to sit down on a stone bench. Sostratos and Menedemos followed. The benches were all the same, with a raised portion for spectators’ backsides and a lower part behind it where the people in the next row back could rest their feet.

Women had their own section in the theater, off to the left by the Odeion. That area had been added on after the Odeion was built, for it fit around the corner of Perikles’ great structure. Looking toward the women seemed to make Menedemos recover better than wine or fresh air had done, even though many of them wore veils against the prying eyes of men.

Protomakhos looked that way, too. “In my great-grandfather’s day, this was a place for men only,” he remarked.

“I like it better this way.” Yes, Menedemos was coming back to life.

Sostratos asked, “Do you know, best one, just when they did begin to admit women to the theater? “

The proxenos tossed his head. “They’ve been coming as long as I can remember. That’s all I can say for certain.”

“Someone ought to know something like that.” Sostratos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I wonder who.”

Pointing to a stone chair in the center of the very first row, Protomakhos said, “That’s where the priest of Dionysos Eleutherios sits. If anyone could tell you when the custom changed, he’s probably the man.”

Sostratos started to get up and go down to him then and there, but Menedemos took hold of his arm, saying, “He has other things to worry about right now, my dear.”

“I suppose so,” Sostratos admitted. “But I’m liable to forget if I don’t ask when something first occurs to me.”

“You?” Menedemos laughed. “You don’t forget anything. If you ever found out the name of Perikles’ dog, you’d remember it till the end of time.”

He was right. But when Sostratos said, “That’s different,” he knew he too was right, though he would have been hard pressed to explain the difference between the two kinds of memory.

But Menedemos was also right in saying the priest had other things on his mind. The gray-bearded gentleman kept bouncing out of his chair to talk with one or another of the magistrates sitting in the first row, and with the high-ranking Macedonian officers who also got some of those prime seats-a sure sign of how much, or rather how little, Athenian freedom and autonomy were worth these days.

Protomakhos said, “If you’re interested, there’s Demetrios of Phaleron.” He pointed to one of the dignitaries in the front row. The Athenian who served as Kassandros’ governor was younger than Sostratos had thought him on his previous stay in Athens-about forty-five. He was also strikingly handsome; that Sostratos had recalled accurately.

With a chuckle, Menedemos said, “Even if we’re not interested, he’s still Demetrios of Phaleron.” Protomakhos blinked. Sostratos groaned. Yes, his cousin was starting to feel better, and he half wished Menedemos weren’t.

In came the chorus of boys, singing the same hymns they had during the procession the day before. Following them, this time on a small cart instead of the wheeled boat in which it had ridden down the Street of the Panathenaia, was the ancient wooden statue of Dionysos.

As he did every year, the god would watch the plays put on in his honor.

A couple of dozen youths coming of age this year marched out into the orkhestra behind the chorus. A magistrate presented each of them with a suit of hoplite’s armor. They were the sons of Athenians who’d died in battle for their polis. That custom went back a long way. The youths got loud applause as they took their seats at the front of the theater. Most of their fathers would have fallen fighting the Macedonians who dominated the polis now. Cheering them was one way to show what people felt about the occupiers.

“Look!” This time, Protomakhos pointed up at the great buildings of the akropolis behind them. “The sun has risen. Won’t be long before its rays get down here, too.”

“One more argument the world is round,” Sostratos said to Menedemos. “If it were flat, the sun would rise at the same time everywhere. But naturally a high spot on the sphere catches the light coming around the edge of the curve before a lower one can.”

“I’m sorry, best one, but that’s much too much like thought for so early in the morning,” Menedemos replied. Sostratos sniffed.

Menedemos waved to a wineseller. The fellow waited in the aisle till Menedemos drained the little earthenware cup, then refilled it from the jar he carried at his side like a sword. Other hucksters went up and down the aisles with raisins and dried figs and little honey cakes and sausages and onions and chunks of cheese. Sostratos said, “The worse the play is, the better the business the men with the food will do.”

“Seems only fair.” Menedemos peered down toward the raised skene behind the orkhestra. “We’re close enough to the stage to hit the actors with onions if they’re very bad.” Then he looked over his shoulder at all the thousands of people sitting behind him. “And we’re close enough to the skene for all of them back there to hit us with onions if the actors are very bad.”

Protomakhos laughed. “Anyone would know you’ve gone to a few plays in your time, most noble one, even if you’ve never come to the theater at Athens before.”

“Are they going to put on revivals the first day?” Sostratos asked. “That’s how they did it when I was a student here.”

The proxenos dipped his head. “Yes, that’s right; that custom hasn’t changed. They’re reaching back a long way this year, too. This is Aiskhylos’ series of Theban plays-Semele, Xantriai, Pentheus, and the satyr play, Dionysos’ Nurses.”

Sostratos whistled. “Those must go back more than a hundred fifty years-before Perikles’ day. The Pentheus treats the same episode as Euripides’ Bakkhai, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Protomakhos dipped his head again. “Euripides’ play has put all the others about Dionysos in the shade. But Demetrios of Phaleron is khoregos for these. Not only is he rich enough to do a first-class job, he’s also an antiquarian, so it’s no surprise that he’d put on something nobody’s seen for a long time.”

“This should be interesting.” Sostratos leaned forward on the bench.

So did Menedemos. For a moment, that surprised Sostratos. But his cousin, after all, was the one who didn’t have modern tastes. And Aiskhylos, with un-Hellenic modesty, had called his own work crumbs from the banquet of Homer.

Out came the first actor, to set the scene: a messenger, talking about the report that Kadmos’ daughter Semele was with child-the child who would be Dionysos. A townsman of Thebes answered him. They went back and forth. “Only two actors,” Menedemos whispered to Sostratos.

“Yes, that’s right,” Sostratos whispered back. “Sophokles introduced the third speaking part.”

“Aiskhylos, they say, introduced the second,” Protomakhos put in. “Before his time, it was just one man going back and forth with the chorus.” Sostratos dipped his head; hypokrites, the word that meant actor, came from the verb meaning to answer.

A chorus of the women who would wash the newborn child after its birth danced out into the orkhestra, singing. The performers were, of course, male, as was the actor who portrayed Semele; women did not take part in plays. With masks and the actors’ remarkable control over their voices, Sostratos did not feel or even notice the lack.

He did notice how stiff and formal and old-fashioned the chorus’ steps and gestures were. Sure enough, Demetrios of Phaleron was an antiquarian, and was doing his best to stage the play as it might have appeared in Aiskhylos’ day. Even the musical accompaniment seemed unusually slow and spare. That fascinated Sostratos, and made him feel as if he’d been swept back in time. Aiskhylos’ splendid poetry didn’t hurt there, either. But not all the audience reacted the same way.

A shout rang out from the back of the theater: “Come on, you stupid geezers! Shake a leg!”

Protomakhos laughed. “Everyone’s a critic, or thinks he is.”

The second choral interlude brought more catcalls. Apparently a good many people, used to things as they were, didn’t care about-or for- things as they had been. Everything stays in the present in their minds, Sostratos thought sadly. No wonder it took so long before Herodotos came up with the idea of investigating the past in any systematic way.

Semele ended with the death of Dionysos’ mother under the thunderbolt of Zeus -and with the apparent death of the god, too. Xantriai, which followed, took its name from the chorus of wool-carding women who defended Semele’s name against the gossip and slander about her union with Zeus. Hera, Zeus’ consort, appeared to stir up the Thebans against Zeus’ newest offspring and the infant god’s mother.

“Here’s something out of the ordinary,” Sostratos murmured to Menedemos: “an outraged wife.” His cousin made a face at him.

Aiskhylos’ Pentheus did cover the same ground as Euripides’ Bakkhai: the return of the full-grown god to Thebes, King Pentheus’ attempt to suppress and arrest him, and Pentheus’ horrible death-his rending-at the hands of Dionysos’ maenads, who included Agaue, the king’s own mother. Sostratos thought Euripides’ play, which he knew well, did more interesting and thought-provoking things with the old familiar story; the Bakkhai hadn’t become famous for nothing. But Aiskhylos was a magnificent poet in his own right, too.

Like any satyr play, Dionysos’ Nurses let the audience recover from the full force of the tragedies they had just watched. It was loud and lewd and foolish, with satyrs with jutting phalloi in pursuit of the women who had reared the infant Dionysos. Comedy had sprung from the same roots, but grown in a different direction. Satyr plays, indeed, had grown very little, changing hardly at all from the days when drama was something new in Hellas.

After the satyrs capered off the stage for the last time, the actors in the company and in the chorus came out to take their bows. The applause was loud and generous; they’d delivered their lines and danced and sung as well as anyone could want. Then Demetrios of Phaleron stood up; the production had been his. He looked up and out at the vast crowd and bowed as the performers had done.

He also drew cheers from those who had liked the plays-and louder ones here and there, cheers Sostratos suspected of coming from members of his claque. But, unlike the actors and chorus members, he didn’t come off unscathed. “Don’t serve us stale fish the next time!” shouted someone not far from the Rhodians.

“Your plays were even more boring than you are on the stump!” another man yelled from far up in the theater. He had lungs like a smith’s goatskin bellows, for Sostratos heard him plainly.

Some of the jeers that rained down on Demetrios had nothing to do with the plays he’d just presented. “How does it feel being Kassandros’ catamite, you wide-arsed effeminate?” an Athenian shouted.

“He won’t answer-it’s like farting at a deaf man,” somebody else said. That jerked a startled laugh out of Sostratos; the usual phrase, of course, was shouting at a deaf man. Somehow, though, the theater precinct seemed to give license to everyone, not just the performers.

“To the crows with Kassandros!” another man cried. “Athens should be free!” Those words brought shouts of agreement from the crowd. Here and there, men shook their fists at Demetrios.

“He has nerve,” Menedemos murmured.

Sostratos dipped his head. Despite the insults raining down on him, the lord of Athens stood there smiling and waving and bowing to the crowd, as if they were nothing but praise. “Of course, he also has the Macedonian garrison behind him,” Sostratos observed.

“Yes, you’re right,” Protomakhos said. “We’ve already spent too many lives and too much treasure. If we rose against Demetrios of Phaleron, Kassandros’ men would slaughter us. And the truth is, the Macedonian could have a much nastier puppet. So… We yell, but that’s all we’re likely to do.”

The Rhodian proxenos was right. After getting the abuse out of their systems, the Athenians filed from the theater peaceably enough. The sun had traveled across the sky, and was low in the west. Menedemos said, “My rear end is as petrified as that lump of wood turned to rock you bought in Mytilene, Sostratos.” He rubbed at his haunches, and he was far from the only man doing so.

“Sitting on a stone bench will make you feel it,” Sostratos agreed. He turned to Protomakhos. “Meaning no disrespect to your stock-in-trade, O best one.”

“My bottom’s sore, too,” Protomakhos said. “No such thing as soft stone.”

“Will there be another trilogy tomorrow, or will the modern tragedies be separate from one another?” Menedemos asked.

“Almost certainly single plays,” Sostratos answered. He turned to Protomakhos. “Who was the last tragedian who tried a trilogy?”

“To the crows with me if I remember,” the proxenos said. “Nobody writes them these days, because all the tragedians know they’d never find a khoregos who could afford to produce a whole trilogy. Demetrios of Phaleron can, but you have to know he’s spending his patron’s silver, not just his own. Finding a khoregos who can afford to put on even one tragedy is hard enough, but three and a satyr play?” He tossed his head.

“Say what you will about Demetrios, but I enjoyed the plays,” Sostratos said. “I enjoyed the staging, too. That has to be what it was like in the old days.”

“Yes: splendid and a little clumsy at the same time,” Protomakhos said.

“They knew they were splendid. They didn’t know they were clumsy, didn’t know and didn’t care,” Sostratos said.

“But we know,” Menedemos said. “That makes watching the plays different for us from what it would have been for them. We know what they turned into. By the dog, we are what they turned into.”

Sostratos started to answer that, but then checked himself. After a few steps, he started over: “You’d better be careful, my dear. Every once in a while, you say something that shows you’re much more clever than you usually let on.”

“Who? Me?” Menedemos was used to mockery from Sostratos. He didn’t seem to know what to make of praise. After a startled blink, he turned it into a joke, saying, “Believe me, I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

Protomakhos laughed. “Anyone can see at a glance you two like each other pretty well.”

That offended both Sostratos and Menedemos. They both indignantly denied it-so indignantly, they started laughing, too. Sostratos said, “Oh, yes. We get on fine… whenever I don’t feel like strangling this thick-skin, which I do about half the time.”

“Only half?” Menedemos bowed to him. “I must be getting better. And I haven’t said a word about how often I wish I could pitch you over the rail.”

They came down the little street south of the temple of Dionysos, the one that opened onto the street where Protomakhos lived. A couple of women came up the street from the other side of the theater. They had been chattering. When they saw the Rhodians and Protomakhos, they drew their veils up higher and fell silent.

One of them hurried past the men. The other turned down the same street. She walked on without a word. In a low voice, Protomakhos murmured, “My wife.”

“Oh.” Sostratos discreetly didn’t look at her. He did glance at Menedemos. To his relief, his cousin had developed an apparently absorbing interest in some swallows circling overhead. Chance meetings after festivals were the wine and opson of the plots of modern comedies. In real life, though, they were liable to cause trouble-especially with Menedemos’ taste for adultery.

Protomakhos knocked at the door. A slave opened it. Protomakhos’ wife went through first. The men followed. Now Menedemos couldn’t look up at birds. Was he eyeing the woman’s hindquarters and the way she moved her hips when she walked? Or was he simply looking straight ahead, as anyone might do? Sostratos would have believed that of anyone else. Put his cousin, even accidentally, around a married woman, and who could say what might happen?

Protomakhos’ wife behaved with perfect propriety: she pretended the men with her husband didn’t exist. Menedemos didn’t watch her as she went over to the stairway and, presumably, up to the women’s quarters. Sostratos was jumpy enough to mislike the way Menedemos didn’t watch her.

“I’ll go see how Myrsos is doing with supper,” Protomakhos said, and headed for the kitchen.

Menedemos let out a small, soft sigh. Sostratos felt ice run up his back. He was as frightened as if he’d heard an owl in daylight: more so, in fact. He could, if he worked at it, dismiss his fear about the owl as superstition. But he knew what that sigh meant. Out of the side of his mouth, he hissed, “She’s our host’s wife. Do try to remember that.”

“Yes, my dear,” Menedemos said in a way that proved he’d barely heard. “Doesn’t she have the most exciting walk you ever saw? With a walk like that, she must be a handful and a half in bed.”

“You’re a handful and a half all the time,” Sostratos replied in something not far from despair.

Menedemos only smiled at him. Protomakhos came out with a smile on his face, too. “Oysters, Myrsos said,” the Rhodian proxenos reported. Menedemos’ smile got wider. Now Sostratos’ despair was unalloyed. Why had the cook chosen this of all nights to do up a supper widely thought to be aphrodisiac?

As dusk fell, the sounds of revelry again floated over the walls and into Protomakhos’ house. The Athenian scooped another oyster out of its shell. “I may go out myself, see what kind of a good time I can find,” he said. “I’ve been sitting in the theater all day. I don’t want to sit all night, too. How about you boys?”

“Us?” Menedemos said. “We’re just a couple of stick-in-the-muds tonight, I’m afraid. We’ll all go to the theater tomorrow, though, eh?”

You’re no stick-in-the-mud, Sostratos thought. You just don’t feel like leaving the house to hunt. Protomakhos noticed nothing amiss. “Yes, the theater,” he said. “I’ll be the one with the thick head come morning, I expect.”

The proxenos left, a hunter’s smile on his own face. Menedemos yawned. “I think I’ll go to bed,” he said.

“Do you?” Sostratos said tonelessly.

“Yes. I’m tired.” His cousin sounded perfectly innocent. That only made Sostratos more suspicious.

But what could he do except go to bed himself? He intended to stay awake as long as he could, to listen and make sure Menedemos stayed in his own room. Sleep sneaked up on him, though. The next thing he knew, a slave was pounding on the door. “Time to get up for the theater, sir,” the man said.

“To the crows with…” But Sostratos, by then, was resigned to being awake. He got out of bed, eased himself, and went to the andron for breakfast. Protomakhos and Menedemos were already there. “How are you today?” Sostratos asked.

“Well, thank you,” the proxenos replied.

“Just fine,” Menedemos added with a smile. That could mean anything or nothing. Sostratos devoutly hoped it meant nothing.

He perched on a stool. The slave who’d awakened him brought him barley porridge and watered wine. “Eat up,” Protomakhos said, showing no ill effects from whatever carousing he’d done the night before. “The sooner we get to the theater, the better the seats we’ll have.”

Sostratos watched his cousin as he spooned up the porridge. Menedemos showed nothing out of the ordinary. Had he gone upstairs and tried to seduce Protomakhos’ wife? If he’d tried, had he succeeded? Whatever had happened, the woman hadn’t gone to her husband with a tale of rape or attempted rape. That was something. But what had Menedemos done? Were they in danger of being summarily evicted or worse? Menedemos’ bland expression was proof against Sostratos’ curiosity.

As soon as Protomakhos finished breakfast, he got up. So did Menedemos. Sostratos joined them. Protomakhos said, “Well, now we’ll see how our modern poets stack up against Aiskhylos.”

“Bet on Aiskhylos,” Menedemos said.

“I like some of the modern work,” Sostratos said. Protomakhos dipped his head.

Menedemos said, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re both welcome to it. Most modern tragedians think they have to be different to be clever, and most of the differences are no good. That’s how I see it, anyhow.”

“Some truth to that, certainly,” Protomakhos said. “Only some, though, I think, O best one. Some of the poetry that’s written nowadays is very fine.”

Sostratos went into the theater prepared to agree with the proxenos. This time, despite Protomakhos’ protests, he and Menedemos paid for their host’s seat. Protomakhos responded by chasing a honey-cake seller up an aisle to buy some of his wares for the Rhodians. As soon as he was out of earshot, Sostratos said, “Please tell me you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Yes, Menedemos was too innocent by half.

“You know what. Make a play for the proxenos’ wife. You know you were eyeing her. You admitted it. Her walk!” Sostratos clapped a hand to his forehead.

“All right. I’ll tell you I didn’t make a play for her.” Menedemos leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “But, my dear, am I telling you the truth?”

Before Sostratos could find any answer for that, Protomakhos came back with the honey cakes. Sostratos sat there eating and licking his fingers… and worrying. He didn’t stop worrying even when the plays started. Maybe his own glum mood made him less receptive to them than he would have been otherwise-or maybe Menedemos had a point, and they really weren’t very good. Over that day and the next, about half the tragedies he saw imitated old models so closely, he wondered why their poets had bothered setting pen to papyrus. The others were definitely new, which did not, to his ear, mean they improved on their predecessors.

One of those innovative plays, a Dolon by an Athenian named Diomedon that ran on the third day of the tragedies, left Menedemos furious. “That was an outrage,” he kept saying as Sostratos and he and Protomakhos left the theater. “Nothing but an outrage.”

“How? In the way the poet treated Odysseus?” Sostratos thought he knew what was bothering his cousin.

And he proved right. Menedemos dipped his head. “The way he mistreated Odysseus, you should say. You know the story in the Iliad, I hope?”

“Yes, my dear,” Sostratos said patiently. “I haven’t your passion for Homer, but I do know the poems. Odysseus and Diomedes are out spying for the strong-greaved Akhaioi, and they run into Dolon, who’s spying for the Trojans. They run him down, he begs for his life, but they kill him instead of holding him for ransom.”

“That’s close, but it’s not quite right, and the differences are important.” Menedemos was still fuming. “In the Iliad, Dolon begs Diomedes for his life, and Diomedes is the one who sends him down to the house of Hades. But what did this so-called tragedian do? He made Odysseus into the villain, that’s what. He had him string Dolon along, swear a false oath to him that he wouldn’t be hurt if he talked, and then, once he told all he knew, what does the poet have Odysseus do? He makes him turn to Diomedes and say, ‘Truth is wasted on the foe,’ and then Diomedes kills Dolon! That isn’t right.”

Protomakhos said, “Best one, poets have been showing Odysseus as a treacherous conniver at least since the days of Sophokles. And you can’t deny that that’s part of his character in the epics.”

“I don’t deny it,” Menedemos said earnestly. “That is part of his character. But it’s not the only part, and the tragedians do him wrong by making it out to be all of what he is. Odysseus is sophron: he gets the most out of the wits he has. He’s not so great a warrior as Akhilleus, but he has more sense in one toe than Akhilleus does in his head.”

“That isn’t saying much,” Sostratos put in.

“Well, no,” Menedemos agreed. “Odysseus, though, is the man who can do everything well. He outwits Polyphemos the Cyclops, he can build a boat or a bed, he fights bravely whenever he has to, he can plow a field, and he’s the one who, at Agamemnon’s assembly, keeps the Akhaioi from giving up and sailing home.”

“You admire him,” Protomakhos said.

“Who wouldn’t admire a man like that?” Menedemos said. “Except a tragedian who thinks he knows more about him than Homer does, I mean.”

“Don’t you think modern poets are entitled to take what they need from the Iliad and Odyssey?” Sostratos asked. “We’d be missing a lot of our tragedy if they didn’t, you know.”

“Taking what they need is one thing. Of course they can do that,” Menedemos replied. “Deliberately twisting what they take, though, turning it into the opposite of what it was… That goes too far. And I think that’s what this Diomedon did. You notice the judges didn’t give him a prize. Maybe they felt the same way.”

“Your cousin has strong views,” Protomakhos said to Sostratos.

“He’s a free Hellene. He’s entitled to them,” Sostratos replied. “We don’t always agree, but we have fun arguing.”

“What did you think of Dolon?” the proxenos asked him.

“I’d forgotten it was Diomedes who killed him in the Iliad” Sostratos confessed. “That being so, I think this poet may have gone a bit too far myself.”

“Ah, well,” Protomakhos said with a shrug. “You Rhodians have been luckier in your government lately than we have. I can see how an Athenian might want to write a play about a clever, devious politician who stops at nothing to get what he wants.”

“Oh!” Sostratos’ eyes widened. “You’re telling me this isn’t just about Odysseus. It’s about Demet-”

Menedemos stepped on his foot. “If it is about Demetrios of Phaleron,” he hissed, “how big an idiot are you for shouting it to the housetops? Do you want Macedonians breaking down Protomakhos’ door in the middle of the night to haul you away and see how many interesting things they can do to you-and to our host-and to me?” To him, plainly, the last was most important.

But he was just as plainly right. Sostratos admitted as much, adding, “Even so, it does make me more inclined to forgive Dolon.”

“Well… maybe,” Menedemos said grudgingly. “I still don’t care for what it did, but our kind host has shown a reason why.”

“Comedies tomorrow,” Sostratos said. “You won’t have to worry about ferreting out nasty political messages there.”

“I wouldn’t have had to worry about ferreting them out in Aristophanes’ day, either,” Menedemos said. “He came right out and shouted them in people’s faces.”

“We can’t get away now with what he did then,” Protomakhos said. “He couldn’t get away with it, either, by the end of his career. Look at Ploutos. It’s about wealth, but it’s not about, or not very much about, the people of the time. It looks forward to the kinds of comedies poets write nowadays, in fact.”

“The kinds of comedies people write nowadays…” Menedemos muttered.

“He’s not much for them,” Sostratos told Protomakhos. “I told him to wait till he’d heard one by Menandros. I certainly hope he’s finished the piece you said he was working on.”

“I don’t know one way or the other,” the Rhodian proxenos replied. “We’ll find out tomorrow.”

“So we will.” Sostratos sounded cheerful.

“So we will.” Menedemos sounded anything but.

At supper that evening, Protomakhos made no remarks about going out to celebrate the Dionysia. Menedemos didn’t urge him to go out or ask questions about whether he would. Sostratos hoped that meant his cousin really hadn’t seduced or tried to seduce the proxenos’ wife. Menedemos enjoyed making him nervous almost as much as he enjoyed adultery.

The next day dawned chilly, with a nasty wind whipping down from the north. Protomakhos wrapped himself in a himation before heading for the theater. It was cold enough to tempt Sostratos to do the same, but he didn’t. Menedemos acted as if the weather had nothing to do with him. “Aren’t you fellows going to freeze?” Protomakhos said.

“We’re sailors,” Sostratos replied. “When was the last time you saw a seafaring man in anything but his chiton?”

“Have it your way,” Protomakhos said. “But if your teeth chatter too loud to let me hear the lines, I’ll be annoyed at you.”

They got splendid seats. The cold weather kept lots of people indoors till after sunup. Sostratos’ teeth did chatter. He clamped his jaw tight as he could to keep Protomakhos from noticing.

Out swaggered the actors for the first comedy. They didn’t wear big phalloi strapped to their waists, as they would have done a couple of generations before. Their masks were more realistic, less burlesqued, than they would have been in earlier times, too. Indeed, little except the play itself distinguished them from tragic actors, and some performers worked in both types of drama.

Their play, unfortunately, did not distinguish itself. The verse limped-a couple of times, badly enough to make Sostratos wince. Even by the loose standards of comedy, the plot was stupid. And the jokes fell flat. As the dancers of the chorus twirled out to separate one act from another-they didn’t also sing, as they would have in Aristophanes’ time-Menedemos turned to Sostratos and said, “How does a play this bad ever get produced?”

“I don’t know,” Sostratos answered. “But I’ll give you an even more frightening thought, if you like.”

“What’s that?” Menedemos sounded as if he doubted Sostratos could come up with one.

But Sostratos did: “Just remember, only Dionysos knows how many worse comedies were written, comedies not even a maniac would want to bring to the stage.”

His cousin shuddered. “You’re right. That is frightening.”

As the play dragged on, the audience grew more and more restless. People shouted at the actors. They threw onions and squash and cabbages. One of the actors, after nimbly dodging a squash, turned to face the crowd. In smoother verse than the comic poet had given him, he said,

“If you think these lines are hard to listen to,

Remember-we have to bring them out.”

He got a bigger laugh for his own words than he had for the poet’s. The vegetables stopped flying.

“So much for this comic poet’s reputation,” Sostratos murmured.

“Yes, but the other question is, how much has the actor hurt himself with his quick tongue?” Protomakhos said. “Some people won’t want to hire him now, afraid he’ll step out of character again.”

At last, mercifully, the comedy ended. The one that followed was better-but then, bad wine was better than vinegar. Menedemos said, “I don’t think Aristophanes has much to worry about this year.”

Sostratos would have liked to argue with him. He knew he couldn’t, not by what they’d seen so far. But then the herald announced the third and final comedy: “Kolax, by Menandros!”

“Now you’ll see something worth seeing,” Sostratos said.

“Not a bad title: The Flatterer,” Menedemos said. “But what will he do with it? If he makes a hash of it the way these last two fellows did…” He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, as if challenging Menandros to impress him.

To Sostratos’ vast relief, the poet did not disappoint. His portrait of a flatterer was alarmingly realistic; the strutting soldier against whom the title character played came from a breed all too common since Alexander’s time. And his cook might have been Sikon, straight from Menedemos’ household.

He certainly sounded as full of himself as Sikon did:

“A libation! You-the one following me-give me the sacrificer’s portion.

Where are you looking?

A libation! Come along, my slave Sosias. A libation!… Good.

Pour! Let us pray to the Olympian gods

and Olympian goddesses: to them all, male and female.

Take the tongue! On account of this, let them give salvation,

Health, enjoyment of our present good things,

And good fortune to us all. Let us pray for that.”

Everything ended happily, as it was supposed to in comedy, with the flatterer arranging for the soldier to share the girl’s favors with her neighbor. The play got more applause than the other two put together. Turning to Menedemos, Sostratos asked, “What did you think?”

“That… wasn’t bad.” Menedemos sounded oddly reluctant, as if he didn’t want to admit it but couldn’t help himself. “No, that wasn’t bad at all. It wasn’t Aristophanes -”

“It’s not supposed to be Aristophanes,” Sostratos broke in.

“I was going to say that very thing, if you’d given me the chance,” his cousin said with some irritation. “It’s not Aristophanes, but I enjoyed it. You were right. There. Are you happy now?”

“Yes,” Sostratos said, which disarmed Menedemos. He went on, “I was pretty sure I would like it-I’ve always enjoyed Menandros’ comedies. But I could only hope you would. I’m glad you do.”

“If it doesn’t win the prize for comedy, someone’s been spreading silver amongst the judges again,” Protomakhos said.

“We’ve had that happen a few times at Rhodes, too,” Sostratos said. Menedemos made a nasty face to show what he thought of it. Sostratos asked, “How common is it here? I remember rumors in my student days.”

“I’ve seen more really bad choices these past ten years than I can ever remember before,” the Rhodian proxenos answered. “I suspect that has to do with…” He shrugged. “Well, you know what I mean.”

Sostratos didn’t, not at first, but he also didn’t need long to figure out what Protomakhos meant. “Lots of things for sale these days?” he asked casually, not mentioning Demetrios of Phaleron by name: he’d learned his lesson.

Protomakhos dipped his head. “You might say so. Yes, you just might say so.”

But then the head of the panel of judges cupped his hands in front of his mouth and called, “The winner of the prize for comedy this year is The Flatterer, by Menandros!” People who hadn’t left the theater cheered and clapped their hands. A thin man of about thirty-five sitting in the second row stood up, waved rather sheepishly, and then sat down again.

“He can do better than that,” Protomakhos said, clucking in disapproval. “He’s been winning prizes for ten years now. He ought to show that he thinks he deserves them.” He shrugged. “Well, no help for it. And we’ll be going back to our regular lives in a couple of days. The Dionysia comes only once a year.”

“I’m glad we got here in time for it, though,” Sostratos said. “Now Menedemos and I can start thinking about making enough profit to cover all these idle days.” He looked north and west, toward the agora. “We’ll do it.”