Owls to Athens

7

Sostratos had been to a fair number of symposia in his day. Nothing, though, prepared him for this one down in Mounykhia. He’d heard things about the kinds of parties Macedonians threw. Now he was seeing them at first hand. If he wanted to sell wine to the men from the north who held Athens for Kassandros, he’d discovered, he also had to drink wine with them. If, once he got back to Protomakhos’ house, he remembered a quarter of what was going on around him, he would have stories to dine out on for years to come.

If I get back to Protomakhos’ house, he thought muzzily. If I don’t pass out here, or maybe fall over dead here. Not least because Macedonians were so powerful, everyone accepted that they really were Hellenes, even if a proper Hellene could make out only about one word in three of their dialect. Like the barbarians Demosthenes had accused them of being a generation before, though, they drank their wine neat. And so, perforce, did the people who drank with them.

The symposion wasn’t in a proper andron, but in a big chamber in one of the Macedonians’ barracks halls inside their fortress at Mounykhia. Sostratos’ couchmate was a tetrarkhos-a man who commanded a quarter of a phalanx: an important officer-named Alketas. A black-bearded rowdy of about forty, he was the fellow who’d been interested in buying Byblian.

He gave Sostratos a shot in the ribs with his elbow. “Not a bad bash, eh?” he bawled-he could speak perfectly good Greek when he felt like it (and when he wasn’t too drunk to remember how).

“Well…” Sostratos said, and said no more. He couldn’t even tell Alketas he’d never seen anything like it, because this wasn’t the first Macedonian carouse in the occupiers’ seaside fortress he’d had to attend.

Alketas looked at his cup. “But, my dear, you’re not drinking!” he exclaimed. He shouted for a slave. How the poor slave heard anything through the din filling the room baffled Sostratos, but he did. Alketas pointed to the enormous mixing bowl in the middle of the floor. Why the Macedonians bothered with a mixing bowl was also beyond Sostratos, since they didn’t mix their wine with water. The slave plied the dipper and filled the Rhodian’s cup, then brought it back to him.

Even the bouquet of neat wine seemed plenty to make his head spin. And, under Alketas’ watchful gaze, he had to take a long pull at the cup. The neat wine (not anything he’d sold the tetrarkhos) was almost thick enough to chew, and sweet as honey. He could feel it snarl when it crashed down into his stomach. He didn’t want to get too drunk, but around Macedonians there often seemed little choice.

Two couches over, an officer between Sostratos’ age and Alketas’ had already drunk himself unconscious. He sprawled on his back, his arm, like a corpse’s, dangling down to the floor. His cup sat forgotten on his belly. The fellow who shared the couch with him grabbed for it but missed-he only knocked it over. Wine red as blood soaked the blind-drunk man’s tunic as if he were dreadfully wounded. He never stirred. He’ll feel wounded come morning, Sostratos thought.

Off in a corner, a frightened-looking flute-girl played. She seemed to hope no one noticed her. Considering some of the things that might happen if the Macedonians did, Sostratos couldn’t blame her. A scarred veteran who’d surely marched with Alexander, his skin burnt almost Ethiop black by years of sun, was drumming with bare palms on the table by his couch. His pounding rhythm had nothing to do with the love song the flute-girl was playing.

Another percussive rhythm came from a few couches past the veteran. Two younger Macedonians were sitting face-to-face, taking turns slapping each other. Whap! One’s head would jerk to the side as he was struck. Then he would slap the other fellow. Whap! Every once in a while, they would pause for a bit and, laughing uproariously, drink more wine. Then they would start again. Whap!… Whap!

“Do you Macedonians often play that game?” Sostratos asked Alketas.

“What?” The officer said. Sostratos pointed at the two men matching slap for slap. Alketas eyed them for a little while, then said, “No, I’ve never seen that before.” He watched a little longer. “Looks like fun, eh? Want to try it?”

“No, by the dog!” Sostratos exclaimed. He was willing to do a lot of things to sell wine. Getting his brains rattled again and again, though, went too far.

“Suit yourself,” Alketas said with a broad-shouldered shrug. “I was just trying to liven things up. Pretty dull symposion so far, isn’t it?”

“That’s not the word I’d use, most noble one,” Sostratos replied. With neat wine buzzing through his veins, he had trouble deciding which word he would use, but dull definitely wasn’t it. A soldier had hiked up another flute-girl’s tunic and bent her forward onto the couch. He stood behind her, thrusting hard. That sort of thing could happen at a lot of symposia. Sostratos wasn’t shocked, though he’d never before heard a man shout out a war cry at the moment he spent himself.

Four Macedonians began singing a raucous song in their own dialect. One by one, most of the other men in the room joined them. The swarthy veteran gave up his drumming. The two men who were slapping each other didn’t stop, but they did sing between blows. The din was indescribable-and, to Sostratos, incomprehensible.

Alketas started howling at the top of his lungs. He paused only once, to nudge Sostratos again with his elbow and shout, “Sing!”

“How can I?” the Rhodian answered. “I don’t know the words. I don’t even understand them.”

“Sing!” Alketas said again, and gave himself back to the song. It seemed to go on forever. From snatches Sostratos picked up here and there, he gathered it was a battle song that came from a Macedonian civil war several generations earlier. The irony made him want to laugh, but he didn’t. The civil war the Macedonians were fighting now spanned most of the civilized world. The one they were singing about had been some tribal brawl as likely as not to have gone unnoticed by the true Hellenes to the south.

Of course, it wasn’t as if those true Hellenes hadn’t had plenty of faction fights of their own, both between cities and within them. Sostratos sighed and sipped at his wine; raising the cup gave him an excuse for not singing. Faction fights were the curse of Hellas. All the men, all the groups, all the poleis were so jealous of their rights and privileges, they refused to acknowledge anyone else’s. He wondered what the answer was, and whether there was an answer. If so, Hellenes had never found it.

Four more flute-girls swayed into the room. They wore short chitons-chitons that would have been short even on men-of filmy Koan silk. The silk was thin enough to let Sostratos see they’d singed off the hair between their legs. Alketas forgot his Macedonian war song. Sostratos thought his eyes would bug out of his head.

The flute-girls stayed in the open space in the middle of the room, where none of the symposiasts could grab them without leaping off his couch. A moment later, the din from the Macedonians redoubled, for a troupe of dancing girls followed the musicians, and the dancers wore nothing at all. Their oiled skin gleamed in the light of lamps and torches.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Alketas whooped. He turned to Sostratos. “Things are finally picking up a little, eh?”

“Yes,” Sostratos said politely. Yes, if you like getting blind drunk and rumpling slave girls, he added to himself. By all the signs, the Macedonians liked nothing better. One of the dancing girls did a series of flips. An officer jumped up and caught her in midair-not the least impressive show of strength Sostratos had ever seen. As if they’d rehearsed it, she wrapped her legs around his midsection. To the cheers of his comrades, he carried her back to his couch. They went on from there.

A couple of other Macedonians also grabbed girls for themselves. Dancing was all very well, they seemed to say, but other things were more fun. That deprived the men who would have been content to watch the dancers for a while of some of their enjoyment, but the Macedonians wouldn’t have been what they were if they’d spent much time worrying about other people’s feelings.

The two men who’d got into the slapping match paid no attention to flute-girls, naked dancing girls, or anything else. Whap!… Whap! Sostratos wondered how long they’d stay at it. Till one gave up? In that case, they might be here a long, long time. Whap!… Whap! If they’d had any brains when they started, they wouldn’t by the time they were through.

“Come here, sweetheart!” Alketas beckoned to one of the dancers. She came, probably not least because the meaty, hairy arm with which he’d beckoned had on it a heavy golden armlet. He shifted on the couch so his feet came down onto the floor and splayed his legs apart. “Why don’t you make me feel good?”

“That’s what I am here for, my master,” she said, and dropped to her knees. Her head bobbed up and down. Sostratos wondered what she was thinking. Had she been born a slave and known no other life?

Or had some misfortune brought this fate upon her? She spoke Greek like a Hellene.

Alketas put his hand on her head, setting her rhythm. Her dark hair spilled out between his ringers. He grunted. She pulled away, gulping and choking a little. “That was fine,” the Macedonian said. “Here.” He gave her a fat, heavy tetradrakhm, an enormous fee for what she’d done.

“Thank you, most noble one,” she said. She had nowhere obvious to store the coin, but it disappeared nonetheless.

Alketas pointed to Sostratos. “Take care of my friend here, too.”

“Yes, sir.” She dipped her head, which probably meant she was a Hellene. Looking at Sostratos, she asked, “What would you like?”

“What you did for him,” Sostratos answered with dull embarrassment. He didn’t like performing in public, but he also didn’t want to take the girl outside into the darkness and have Alketas laugh at him. He was, after all, trying to sell the man more wine.

“Shift a little, sir, if you please,” the girl said. Sostratos did. She knelt in front of him and began. For a little while, his embarrassment kept him from rising. That would have made Alketas laugh at him, too; the Macedonians enjoyed sneering at effete Hellenes. But then the pleasure her mouth brought led him to forget embarrassment and everything else except what she was doing. As the tetrarkhos had, he pressed her head down on him and groaned when she brought him to the peak.

Afterwards, he gave her a didrakhm: a compromise between the usual price of such things and his desire not to seem too stingy after the Macedonian’s extravagant generosity. Again, she made the coin vanish even though she was naked.

Sostratos turned to Alketas to talk about Byblian. Before he could, a brawl broke out. This was no game-the Macedonians overturned couches as they pummeled each other. One smashed a cup over the other’s head. More men leaped into the fight, not to break it up but to join it. More crockery smashed. Howls of pain mingled with howls of glee.

Alketas yelled something in Macedonian. He turned to Sostratos and went back to intelligible Greek: “Now we’re getting somewhere!”

“Are we?” Sostratos said. Alketas didn’t even bother answering. He flung himself into the fray, fists and feet flying. A cup whizzed past Sostratos’ head and shattered on the frame of the couch behind him. He wished he were somewhere, anywhere, else. Wishing did as much good as it usually did.

“Good day, best one,” Menedemos said, stepping into Protomakhos’ andron. The sun was just coming up. The day promised to be warm and clear. A roller, a jackdaw-sized bird with a blue-green head and breast and a chestnut back, perched on the roof tiles across the courtyard. Its croaking call put Menedemos in mind of a crow’s, but no crow ever wore such gorgeous feathers.

“And to you,” the Rhodian proxenos replied. He pointed to the mixing bowl. “Have some wine. A slave will bring you porridge in a moment.”

“Thanks.” Menedemos dipped out a cup for himself. He raised it in salute. “Health to you.” When he drank, he raised an eyebrow. “This is a strong mix, especially for the morning. Is there a reason?” Protomakhos didn’t seem the sort of man to start out the day by getting pie-eyed, but more than one cup of this wine would do the trick. Menedemos sipped cautiously. As the proxenos had said, a slave brought him breakfast.

“I should say there is.” Pride rang in Protomakhos’ voice. The pull he took at his cup wasn’t cautious in the least. “I’m going to be a father.”

“Congratulations, best one! That’s very good news indeed. May it be a son.” Menedemos spoke as naturally as he could. Part of the good news he saw was that Xenokleia must have slept with Protomakhos recently enough for him to be sure he was going to be a father. Menedemos wasn’t nearly so sure of that himself, but Protomakhos’ opinion was the one that mattered.

“I hope so. We had a son, years ago, but he died before his first birthday.” Protomakhos’ smile faded. “So many children do. You know you’re taking a chance loving them, but you really can’t help it when they smile at you. And then they sicken, and…” He spread his hands. After another sip of wine, he went on, “We have our daughter, too, who’s married and gone to her husband’s household. Do you know, I think I’ll rear this child even if it turns out to be a girl, too.”

“Good for you,” Menedemos said. “Not many families raise two daughters.”

“I know it’s seldom done,” Protomakhos replied. “But with so many years between the two of them, I can afford it.” He started to raise his cup once more, then stared down into it, a bemused expression on his face: he seemed taken by surprise to find it empty. Even after he filled it, though, the bemusement remained. “Women are funny,” he remarked, apropos of nothing in particular.

“Oh, yes,” Menedemos said. He’d never thought much about the custom of exposing unwanted infants up till now. It was just something people did when they needed to. To put a baby that might be his out for the elements, though… He knew a startling amount of relief that Protomakhos had said he wouldn’t.

If the proxenos hadn’t poured down that first cup of strong wine so early in the day, he might not have gone on. But he did: “For a while now, my wife and I have done what we could to make sure she wouldn’t conceive. Lately, though, she decided to try to have another child. I was glad enough to go along-more fun finishing inside than spilling seed on her belly. More fun than her prokton, too, though I don’t suppose everyone would go along with me there.”

“Some men probably wouldn’t,” Menedemos said. “Me, I agree with you.” Xenokleia hadn’t had him take any of those precautions. A good thing she’d managed to get Protomakhos to abandon them without rousing his suspicions.

“A son,” the Rhodian proxenos murmured. “I’m very fond of our grandson-don’t get me wrong-but a son is something else. I hope I live to see him out of boyhood.” He shrugged. “That’s in the hands of the gods, though, not in mine.”

“Yes.” Menedemos snapped his fingers. “Do you know what, best one? Your grandson will have an uncle or aunt who’s younger than he is.”

Protomakhos stared, then guffawed. “You’re right, by the dog! I hadn’t thought of that.”

Sostratos came into the andron, yawning and looking red-eyed and bleary. “Hail,” Menedemos said. “Another long night with the Macedonians, my dear?”

His cousin dipped his head-cautiously, as if it hurt. “Afraid so. This symposion wasn’t quite so bad as the one a couple of weeks ago where it turned into a free-for-all at the end, but it was bad enough.” A slave poured him a cup of wine. “I thank you,” he said, but he blinked when he raised the cup to his lips. “Have we got swilling Macedonians here today? This can’t be weaker than one to one, and that’s too potent for first thing in the morning.”

“I have my reasons for a strong mix,” Protomakhos answered, and explained what they were.

“Oh.” Sostratos blinked again, this time in surprise of a different sort. To Menedemos’ relief, his cousin had the sense not to look at him. Sostratos went on, “That’s splendid news. Congratulations!”

“For which I thank you.” The Rhodian proxenos raised his cup in salute. “And on account of which I say, drink up!”

Menedemos was happy enough to pour down the rest of his wine. No matter what Sostratos said about him, he wasn’t a man who usually started out the day drinking hard. If he had been, he would have worried more about it. As things were, he knew he could get away with it once in a while.

And Sostratos also drained his cup. He said, “Maybe some more wine going down will ease the headache I have from what I drank last night. By Dionysos, you drink more wine with Macedonians than you can hope to sell them. It feels like that, anyhow.” He held his head in both hands.

“They’re paying our prices,” Menedemos said. His cousin- gingerly-dipped his head. Menedemos went on, “And you’ve sold them some truffles, too. You can’t eat those faster than they buy them.”

“I wish I could, for they’re better than food has any business being,” Sostratos said. “But I am glad I’ve made the sale. Demetrios of Phaleron does seem to be annoyed enough at us not to want to buy any more of what we’ve got.”

“I told you that would happen,” Protomakhos said.

“It’s not Demetrios,” Menedemos said. “He probably wouldn’t know our names if you gave him over to a Persian torturer. It’s that polluted Kleokritos-he’s paying us back by not paying us anymore.”

“Many goodbyes to him!” Sostratos said. “A man who thinks he’s been cheated because we caught him cheating us… I’m just as happy not to deal with a man like that.”

“No one has challenged Kleokritos in a long time,” Protomakhos said. “He’s not used to it. Demetrios of Phaleron has held Athens for Kassandros for ten years now. We’ve spoken of this-he hasn’t been so harsh as he might-but he might, and no one wants to find out if he would. I admire your courage for standing up to his man.”

“That didn’t even occur to me,” Sostratos said. “I just wanted things to be right. Too many cheats running around loose. We fall foul of these petty chiselers every trading run, it seems. They try to gouge us out of a few drakhmai here and a few drakhmai there, and then when we catch them at it they seem surprised-no, not surprised, angry-we’re making a fuss. But if anybody tried to do them out of half an obolos, they’d scream bloody murder.”

Menedemos rose from his stool and set a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Well, my dear, we spoiled Kleokritos’ fun, and we’re unloading the things he might have bought on the Macedonians. I’d say that’s a good revenge.”

“Good enough,” Sostratos agreed. “But I’d be happier if we didn’t need to take revenge on him.”

“I’m going back to the storeroom and get myself some more perfume,” Menedemos said. “Then to the agora. No drunken Macedonians have been buying what I peddle.”

“You haven’t brought back any lewd tales for us,” Protomakhos said. “Not much luck with the hetairai?”

With a shrug, Menedemos answered, “Well, best one, there’s luck, and then again there’s luck. I’ve sold a lot of perfume, and sold it at good prices. But I’ve dealt with the women through their slaves, and I haven’t lain with any of them. Who knows, though? I may yet.”

He hurried off to get the perfume. Behind him, Sostratos’ voice floated out of the andron: “If Menedemos sees a pile of horse turds, he’s sure he’ll find a team hitched to a chariot around the next corner, just waiting for him to hop on and ride.”

Protomakhos laughed. Menedemos started to turn around and shout at Sostratos for talking about him behind his back. But then he checked himself. What his cousin had said wasn’t an insult, and was true. Menedemos always did hope for the best. Why not? Some people expected the worst, to shield themselves from disappointment. As far as Menedemos was concerned, that wasn’t living; it was only existing and waiting to die. He wanted to go through life aiming higher than that.

A slave barred Protomakhos’ front door after he left. By now, he knew the way to the agora well enough not to need to look up at the great frowning bulk of the akropolis to get his bearings. Turn here, turn there, don’t go down the street with the baker’s shop at the corner because it’s a dead end and you’ll only have to turn around, pick up a rock before you come by the shoemaker’s place so you can fling it at his polluted hound if the beast runs up snarling again.

The sun was already shining on the agora by the time Menedemos got there. He’d put on his petasos. The wide-brimmed hat would help keep Helios from cooking his brains inside his skull. That wasn’t why he grumbled. Showing up later than he had been doing meant other hucksters had already staked claims to the choicest spots.

Well, no help for it. He found a place not far from the Painted Stoa, on the north side of the agora. “Fine perfume from Rhodes!” he called, holding up a jar. “Sweet rose perfume from Rhodes, the island of roses!”

Even as he made his sales pitch, though, his eyes kept going to the paintings and other memorials in the shadows under the covered colonnade. No one but people who couldn’t afford it seemed interested in his perfume. About halfway through the morning, curiosity got the better of him. It’s like the Parthenon, he told himself. Not much point coming to Athens if I don’t see this.

Most famous of the paintings on wooden panels was the one of the battle of Marathon by Polygnotos. There were the Athenians (and the Boiotians from Plataia) driving back the Persians toward their ships, which were manned by bearded, long-robed Phoenicians. Other panels showed Athenians fighting Spartans; Theseus and more Athenians fighting the bare-breasted Amazons in ancient days; and the Akhaioi just after the fall of Troy, with the Trojan women, Kassandra among them, captive before Aias. Shields preserved against time and verdigris by a coat of pitch hung between the panels-they came from the Spartan citizens who’d surrendered on the island of Sphakteria when the Peloponnesian War had been going well for Athens.

After seeing what there was to see, Menedemos bought a little fried octopus and a cup of wine. Then he went back to crying the virtues of Rhodian perfume. He didn’t sell any all that day. Somehow, though, he cared much less than he’d thought he would. Seeing the Painted Stoa had given him a profit of a different sort.

Sostratos winced when he left Athens by the people’s gate and headed east toward the base of Mount Lykabettos, Up till now, he’d never gone back to visit a lover after leaving. Returning to the Lykeion, though, felt exactly like that. He’d spent the happiest days of his young life there. Then he’d had to go. Now he was coming back, yes, but he wasn’t the same person as he had been when he reckoned the place the center of his life. Herakleitos had had it right. You couldn’t step into the same river twice. The river wasn’t the same the second time, and you weren’t the same, either.

As they had for at least three centuries, youths learning the use of arms and armor paraded on the flat land of the Lykeion, between the olive groves. Some of them, probably, were young men who’d received their panoplies in the theater at the Dionysia now recently past. A drill-master’s voice pursued the epheboi: “Left!… Left!,.. No, you clumsy fool, that’s not your left!… Left!” Sostratos smiled. Those same irate shouts had been part of the background while he studied here.

After a moment, his smile faded. Would the Athenian phalanx ever amount to anything again? Or would Athens be nothing more than a counter Kassandros and the rest of the Macedonians shoved back and forth across their gaming board? Things weren’t as they had been a hundred years before, when this polis came close to becoming the lord of Hellas-and when Macedonia was full of backwoods bumpkins who battled among themselves and were hardly ever seen in Hellas proper.

Macedonia, of course, remained full of backwoods bumpkins who battled among themselves. Now, though, they did it over almost the entire reach of the civilized world, from Hellas east all the way to Persia and beyond. Sostratos dimly remembered having a similar thought at one symposion or another. Was this an improvement? He formed that question intending the answer to be, certainly not. But if the Macedonians weren’t battling among themselves, wouldn’t Hellenes be doing it in their place? From everything the Rhodian knew of his people’s history that seemed altogether too likely.

He got a glimpse of other men walking about, too, those under and among the olive trees rather than out in the open. They weren’t marching under the direction of a drillmaster, either, obedient to a single will. They all traveled together, all searching-as free men should-for knowledge and truth.

“Peripatetics,” Sostratos murmured. That was what Aristoteles had called the men who studied with and under him, for they walked about-peripateo was the verb in Greek-discussing one philosophical topic or another. The name lived on under Theophrastos, Aristoteles’ nephew and successor.

Seeing the scholars, Sostratos suddenly wanted to turn and run back towards Athens, / studied here, he thought. I studied here, and now I’m coming back as a tradesman. The leather sack of papyrus he carried in his left hand all at once seemed to weigh fifty talents. They’ll recognize me. They’ll remember. Won’t they think of me as respectable women think of a widow who’s had to turn to whoring to keep food on the table for herself and her children?

He made himself keep walking toward the gray-branched, pale-leaved olive trees. Some of the Athenian epheboi would have a harder time going into battle than he did going forward now.

The man doing most of the talking there under the trees was a dapper fellow in a fine chiton with a himation elegantly draped over one shoulder. His hair and beard were white, his back still straight and his eyes still sharp and keen even though he had to be well up into his sixties. When Sostratos saw him, he almost fled again. Oh, by the gods, that’s Theophrastos himself! Too soon, too soon! I wasn’t ready yet.

Theophrastos was saying, “And speaking of the ridiculous, there is the phrase, ‘A big fish is a poor nobody.’ This is said to have first been used by the kitharist Stratonikos against Propis of Rhodes, who sang to the kithara. Propis was a large man, but one without much talent. It packs a lot of insult into a few words, for it says that Propis was large, was no good, was a nobody, and had no more voice than a fish.”

A couple of the younger men with Theophrastos scribbled notes on waxed tablets. Stratonikos’ insults were famous wherever Greek was spoken. Not so long before, in Cyprian Salamis, one of them had cost him his life.

“We should, however, commonly distrust what people commonly say,” Theophrastos went on. “I know for a fact that, while the gibe did indeed originate with Stratonikos, it was in fact aimed at Simykas the actor, and taken from the old saw, ‘No rotten fish is large.’ Now one moment, my friends, if you please.” He turned to Sostratos, who was coming up through the olive trees. “Yes, my good fellow. You wish…?”

I can’t run away. They’ll all laugh at me if I do. Only that thought nerved Sostratos to keep walking forward. “Hail, Theophrastos, wisest of men,” he said, and knew some small pride that his voice wobbled only a little.

“Hail.” Theophrastos cocked his head to one side. “I’ve heard your voice before, friend-to the crows with me if I haven’t. And I do believe I’ve seen your gangling frame as well. You’re a Rhodian. You studied here. You were interested in… let me see… history and natural philosophy, as I recall. You’re… Sostratos son of…” He snapped his fingers in annoyance. “Your pardon, please. I’ve had too many students over too many years. I can’t recall your father’s name.”

“It’s Lysistratos, sir,” Sostratos answered. Some of the young men who’d been with him at the Lykeion were still here, still learning. How he envied them!

“Lysistratos, yes.” Theophrastos dipped his head, “I was sad when you had to leave us. You had a good head on your shoulders.” Sostratos blinked. Suddenly he felt as if he were walking on air. Theophrastos.,. said that… of him? The older man went on, ‘‘Do you now hope to return to your studies, then? You would be welcome.”

“Thank you,” Sostratos whispered. “Thank you more than I can say, most noble one, but no.” That last word was one of the hardest he’d ever had to say, for all of him wanted to scream, Yes! “I have come to sell you-”

Several of Theophrastos’ students giggled. A couple of them laughed out loud. Sostratos’ cheeks felt afire. Of course these bright young men would mock anyone who had to make his living by trade. Their wealth let them spend all the time they wanted here, without worrying about making a living. Unfortunately, Sostratos did need to worry about that.

“Let him finish, please,” Theophrastos said. “A man must live. Yes, Sostratos? You are selling…?”

Was that courtesy harder to bear than the students’ scorn? Sostratos didn’t know. But if the ground had opened beneath his feet and dropped him down to the house of Hades, he wouldn’t have been sorry to escape the dreadful moment. He had to force out the answer through lips that didn’t want to say it: “Papyrus, O best one.”

“Papyrus?” Now Theophrastos forgot all about the young men who’d been strolling with him. He hurried forward, an eager smile on his face. “Are you really? By the dog of Egypt, that’s wonderful news! We were running low, and I wondered when we’d ever see any again.

You are a friend in need!” He stood on tiptoe and kissed Sostratos on the cheek.

Several of his students hurried up, too, all of them exclaiming about how much they needed papyrus. “Have you got ink, too?” one of them asked.

“Yes, I do.” Sostratos hoped he didn’t sound too cold: that young man had been one of those who’d laughed hardest when he said he’d come to the Lykeion on business. Now that he turned out to have something this rich, pampered fellow wanted, he rated politeness-at least till his back was turned.

I don’t belong here anymore, Sostratos realized, and the pain of that realization tore into him like knives, like fire. They’ve gone their way, I’ve gone mine, and I can turn around, go back, and pick up where I left off. If I write my history-no, when I write my history, it will have to be from the perspective of a man of affairs, not from that of a lover of wisdom.

Tears stung his eyes. He turned away for a moment, to keep Theophrastos and the others from seeing them. I could have done this. Even Theophrastos thinks I might have done well if I had. I could have-but I won’t.

Theophrastos tugged at his arm. “Come back to the residence, my dear,” he said. “I don’t want to let you get away. Let’s make this deal as quickly as we can, so that, if we find anything worth knowing, we will be able to set it down for posterity.” He waved to his students. “We are done for the morning, my friends. We shall return to the nature of the ridiculous another time.”

“I was almost here a couple of years ago, in a different capacity,” Sostratos said, and told Theophrastos about the gryphon’s skull and its loss.

His old teacher seemed less impressed, less interested, than he’d expected. With a shrug, Theophrastos said, “These peculiar bones do turn up now and again, I admit. My own view of them, though, is that they are more the province of temples and priests than of students of philosophy.”

“Why?” Sostratos asked. “Isn’t learning that the gryphon was in fact a real beast and not something out of a legend a worthwhile addition to natural philosophy?”

“It would be, yes, if the bones demonstrated that beyond conceivable doubt,” Theophrastos said dismissively. “But, since they are so often ambiguous-to say the least-and since we don’t have them here before us, this is surely but one of many possible interpretations. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He smiled, as if sure Sostratos couldn’t do anything but agree. Without the gryphon’s skull in hand, Sostratos could only smile back. Had he had the skull, Theophrastos might have said the same thing. What old bones meant didn’t seem to interest him much. If Theophrastos had said the same thing, Sostratos would have been tempted to break the skull over his head.

As things were, he had to get his revenge another way. They walked back to a medium-sized house where the Lykeion had its home; it was not far from the house of the polemarkhos, the Athenian official in charge of military affairs-a man whose job was much less important than it had been in days gone by. A slave brought wine as they sat on a stone bench in the courtyard. Theophrastos said, “And what do you want for the papyrus you were kind enough to bring us?”

He’d already made the mistake of admitting the Lykeion badly needed the writing material. And he’d made the mistake of putting Sostratos’ back up. The sympathy Sostratos might have felt-had felt-for the place where he’d studied flickered and blew out when Theophrastos showed no interest in even hearing much about his stolen gryphon’s skull. And so he answered, “Four drakhmai a roll, most noble one.”

“What?” Theophrastos yelped. “That’s robbery! A lot of the time, it costs only a third of that.”

“I’m sorry, best one,” Sostratos replied. “I confess I was robbed by the supplier who sold it to me”-which was true-”and I can’t hope for a profit on less”-which was less than true.

“Robbery,” Theophrastos repeated.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Sostratos said. “I do have to live, as you said yourself. If you can’t meet my price, I’d better talk to the folk at the Academy. I wanted to come to you first, out of the affection I felt for this place, but…” He shrugged.

“The Academy?” Theophrastos looked like a man smelling bad fish when he heard the name of Athens’ other leading school. “You wouldn’t deal with them? Nothing they turn out is worth writing down, anyhow.” Sostratos only shrugged. Theophrastos glowered at him. “Well, it’s plain to see you haven’t kept all the ideals we tried to inculcate in you.”

Sostratos shrugged again. Theophrastos turned red. Sostratos got his price.

Protomakhos waved a farewell to his house slaves, and to Menedemos and Sostratos. “Hail, all,” he said. “I’ll be back eventually, with wreaths and ribbons on my head and a torchbearer lighting my way home. My head will ache tomorrow morning, but the time T have tonight should make it all worthwhile.” Out the door he went.

One of his slaves said to another, “And he’ll wake everybody up when he gets home, banging to be let in.”

“Isn’t that how it always goes?” the second slave replied. They both used Greek. Maybe they’d been born into slavery and knew no other tongue, or maybe they came from different lands and had only Greek in common.

Menedemos didn’t care how much noise Protomakhos made when he came reeling home after a symposion. He cared only that the Rhodian proxenos was leaving the house and wouldn’t be back for hours. With any luck at all, he could sneak up to Xenokleia’s room.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sostratos whispered as they stood in the courtyard.

“I wouldn’t think of being stupid,” Menedemos answered, also in a low voice. “Stupid people get caught.”

“What can you get from her that you can’t get in a brothel?” Sostratos asked.

“Enthusiasm-and you know it,” Menedemos replied.

His cousin turned away. Menedemos took that to mean that Sostratos did indeed know it. Whether it might also mean that Sostratos didn’t approve regardless of whether he knew it or not… Menedemos didn’t bother worrying about that. He ran his hand along the side of his jaw. He’d shaved in the morning, so his face was smooth. That was good. If he rubbed olive oil on his cheeks now and started scraping away, the house slaves would be bound to wonder why.

Protomakhos’ cook served the Rhodians nice white barley rolls for sitos and some sort of fish baked in cheese for opson. The cheese helped obscure what sort of fish it was, which probably meant it wasn’t anything fancy. After supper, Menedemos said, “Myrsos wouldn’t have tried getting away with that if his master were here.”

“It wasn’t bad,” Sostratos said.

“No, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t up to what we’ve been getting when Protomakhos eats with us,” Menedemos said. “The cook got to put a few oboloi into his own mouth. Or else dear Protomakhos said, ‘I’m not going to be here tonight, so don’t bother spending much on supper.’“

“He wouldn’t do that!” Sostratos exclaimed in dismay. “I don’t think he would, anyhow. No, he wouldn’t-the wine was the same as we always have here.”

“Was it?” Menedemos considered. “Yes, I suppose it was. But if he had an open jar, dipping some out is nothing.” Their couches sat close together in the andron; they could talk without fear of being overheard.

“You’re just looking for reasons to dislike him so you’ll feel better about sneaking upstairs to lie with his wife,” Sostratos said.

Now Menedemos turned away. That held more truth than he cared to admit. He yawned and spoke in a loud voice, one he wanted Protomakhos’ slaves to hear: “I’m going to bed early tonight. I had a busy day in the agora, and I’m beat.”

“Suit yourself,” Sostratos said, and then, in lower tones, “Shall I bar your door-from the outside?”

“Funny. Very funny,” Menedemos said sourly, “You should write comedies. You’d run your precious Menandros straight out of business.”

“I have no more idea how to write a comedy than… than I don’t know what,” Sostratos said. “What I don’t want to have to do is figure out how to write a tragedy.”

Having got the last word, he went to his own room. He didn’t slam the door behind him. That might have shown the slaves he and Menedemos had been quarreling. Menedemos knew his cousin wasn’t showing restraint for his sake. Sostratos was showing it so they wouldn’t get in trouble doing business in Athens. But the reason didn’t matter much. That Sostratos was showing restraint did.

Menedemos went to his own room and closed and barred the door. He blew out the lamp. No one outside could tell he wasn’t going to bed. He even lay down on the wool-stuffed mattress. The bedframe creaked, taking up his weight. He caught himself in a yawn. If he really did fall asleep here… Sostratos would be delighted, he thought, but Xenokleia wouldn’t.

Not wanting to give his cousin the chance to gloat would have been reason enough to stay awake, even without the other. He waited and waited and waited. He wished moonlight spilled under the door to help him gauge the passage of time, but the room faced the wrong way and the moon hadn’t risen anyhow. And, for this, darkness was better.

When he judged enough time had gone by to leave him likely the only one awake down here, he got out of bed and tiptoed to the door. Halfway there, he paused to yawn. Everyone else might be-had better be-asleep, and he was sleepy. Then why are you doing this? he asked himself. Why don’t you just lie down again and get up in the morning?

He stopped in the middle of the dark room. He’d never really wondered about why before. That sort of question was much more likely to occur to Sostratos than to him. The answer that formed in his mind was, Because I can. Because I always have when I saw the chance.

Was that reason enough? Sostratos, surely, would have said no. But Sostratos lay in the room next door. He was probably tight-lipped with disapproval even in his sleep. Menedemos thought of Xenokleias waiting arms. He hoped Protomakhos’ wife wasn’t asleep. If she was… If she is, I’ll feel like a proper idiot when I sneak back down the stairs. And oh, how Sostratos will laugh when he finds out in the morning!

Menedemos silently slipped the bar from the brackets that held it in place. He opened the door. It scraped a little as it swung on the dowels that held it to the lintel and to a flat stone with a mounting hole set into the rammed-earth floor beneath it. Menedemos stepped out into the courtyard, closing the door behind him. He looked around. Everything was quiet and still. After the absolute darkness inside his bedchamber, starlight seemed full-moon bright.

Heart thudding in the mix of anticipation and fear he always found so intoxicating, he tiptoed toward the stairs. Up he went. One, two, three, four, five… The sixth step creaked. He’d almost frightened himself to death discovering that the first time he sneaked up to Xenokleia’s bedroom. Now he took a long step up from the fifth stair to the seventh and went on his way, silent as a lion stalking its prey. No lions on Rhodes, of course, but they still prowled the Anatolian mainland not far away.

The upper landing. To the right around the corner. His heart pounded harder than ever. If anyone discovered him here, no excuse could be good enough. His prokton puckered. How big were those radishes with which Athenians were allowed to punish adulterers?

But then he forgot about radishes, forgot about fear, forgot about everything. For faint, flickering yellow lamplight spilled out from under Xenokleia’s door. She had been waiting for him! He hurried forward and tapped on the door, ever so lightly, with the nail of his forefinger.

Footsteps inside. Xenokleia opened the door. Menedemos’ jaw dropped. She stood there naked and smiling, holding the lamp. “Come in,” she whispered. “Hurry.”

As soon as he did, she blew out the little flame. Darkness descended like a thick blanket. “I wanted to see more of you,” Menedemos murmured.

“Too dangerous,” Xenokleia answered. He muttered, but she was doubtless right. She reached out, found his hand, and set it on the soft, firm flesh of her breast. “Here l am.”

“Oh, yes, darling,” He squeezed.

She hissed and took an involuntary step back. “Be careful,” she said. “They’re sore. I remember they were the other times I got pregnant, too.”

“Sorry.” Menedemos pulled his chiton off over his head. “I’ll be very careful. I promise.”

Xenokleia laughed, but only for two or three heartbeats. Then she said, “We’d better hurry. We can’t know for sure when he’ll come home.”

“I know.” Menedemos remembered jumping out a window in Taras when a husband who’d quarreled with his brother returned from a symposion hours before he should have. The Rhodian found the way to Xenokleia’s bed even in the dark. Why not? He’d been there before.

He kissed her. He caressed her. He teased her breasts, and didn’t do much more than tease them. His hand glided down between her legs. When they joined, she rode him like a racehorse. That kept his weight from coming down where she was tender. He went right on stroking her secret place after they joined. Some women found that too much; others thought it was just enough. By the way Xenokleia arched her back and growled deep in her throat, she was one of the latter.

Her final moan of delight was almost loud enough to make

Menedemos clap a hand over her mouth. He was glad he’d roused her. He didn’t want her rousing the household slaves. But then his own pleasure burst over him, and he stopped worrying about that or anything else.

She sprawled down onto him, careless of her sore breasts. He ran a hand along the sweat-slick curve of her back. After a kiss, he asked, “Is the baby mine?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Xenokleia answered. “I did what you said-that was clever, and I can’t say it wasn’t. So I can’t know-but I can tell you which way I’d bet.”

“Ah.” So far as Menedemos knew, he hadn’t left any cuckoo’s eggs in other nests before. He still didn’t know, not for sure. But if his seed wasn’t stronger than that of a man more than twenty years older… Then it wasn’t, and Protomakhos would have himself a legitimate child.

Xenokleia kissed him again. Then she said, “You’d better go downstairs.”

“What I’d rather do is-”

She tossed her head. “That would take a while now, and we may not have the time.” She was right-right that it would be risky, and right that his lance would need a bit to stiffen from boiled asparagus to iron. If we’d met five years earlier… But then, how long did Protomakhos need between rounds? Days, certainly. Poor old fellow, Menedemos thought with a young man’s heartlessness.

The Rhodian found his chiton by the door and slipped it on. He opened the door. “I hope we find more chances,” he whispered as he stepped out.

“So do I,” Xenokleia called after him. He shut the door. She barred it after him. As he tiptoed downstairs-again skipping the creaky one-he thought, Good. At least I kept her sweet. She won’t tell tales to her husband. Her being pregnant will help keep her quiet, too. She won’t want him wondering whether the baby’s his.

He looked out across the courtyard from the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. All quiet. Quick as a lizard, he scurried to his room and closed the door behind him. A long sigh of relief. No Sostratos here now. No Protomakhos lying in wait, either. I got away with it again.

He lay down on the bed. He hadn’t fallen asleep before someone- no, not someone; Protomakhos-pounded on the front door. “Let me in! Let me in!” he shouted-no, sang. How drunk was he? Drunk enough, evidently. How lucky am I? Menedemos wondered. Lucky enough, evidently. And Xenokleia had been right-a second round would have been a disaster. It would have been fun anyhow, Menedemos thought as a slave padded across the courtyard to open the door for Protomakhos. In came the proxenos, still singing loudly, if not very well. Despite the racket, Menedemos yawned, twisted, stretched… slept.

A cloth merchant tossed his head. “Sorry, friend,” he said, and his regret seemed genuine. “That’s very pretty work you’ve got there, and very fine work, too. I don’t say anything different, so don’t you get me wrong. But to the crows with me if I know who would want it, and I don’t care to buy what I’m not sure I can sell. I don’t want to get stuck with it. I’d have thrown my silver away.”

“Thank you for looking at it,” Sostratos said, carefully refolding the embroidered linen he’d bought on his way to Jerusalem. He’d heard the same response from several other cloth dealers. He’d bought the linen because the embroidery work-a hunting scene with hares crouching beneath thornbushes and red-tongued hounds trying to get them out-was astonishingly vivid and colorful, far better than anything of the sort he’d seen in Hellas. The Phoenician who’d sold it to him told him it came from the east, from Mesopotamia. Because it was so beautiful, he hadn’t imagined he would have any trouble selling It. But it was also unusual, which made some people leery of it. Sostratos asked, “Do you know of someone in your business who might be more inclined to take a chance?”

“Sorry,” the cloth merchant repeated, and tossed his head again. “You know what I would do if I were you, though?”

“Tell me.”

“I’d try to sell it to some rich man who likes hunting. He’d have the money to buy it, and he might figure out something to do with it- hang it on the wall of his andron, maybe, so his friends could admire it at his symposia.”

That was a good idea-or it would have been a good idea for an Athenian merchant. A local man would have dealt here for years. He would have customers in mind when he saw something like the cloth.

Sostratos didn’t. He was a stranger here, and the Athenians were strangers to him. “Strangers…” he murmured.

“What’s that?” the cloth merchant asked.

“Nothing, O best one, nothing really,” Sostratos answered. “But I thank you very much for your suggestion.”

“I hope you can unload that. It’s very pretty, no doubt about it,” the Athenian said. “But it wouldn’t come cheap for me, and I don’t want to spend my owls on something where T might not get ‘em back.”

“All right. Hail.” Sostratos walked out of the fellow’s shop and into the brilliant sunlight of the very first days of summer. It would have been even hotter in Rhodes, but it was plenty warm enough here. Sostratos’ shadow was a black puddle around his feet. Down in Egypt, he’d heard, shadows got shorter still at solstice time, till they all but disappeared. If you measured the difference in the angle of a noontime shadow on the same day here and at Alexandria, and if you knew exactly how far it was from here to there, you could use geometry to figure out how big the world is.

You could,.. if you knew. But no one did, not with the needed precision. Sostratos sighed. So many things we don’t know.

One of the things he still didn’t know was where he would sell the embroidered cloth. But now, thanks to the dealer, he had an idea. He was glad he’d put on his petasos before visiting this fellow. Otherwise, he would have wanted to double back to Protomakhos’ house to get one. If he walked down to the seaside with his head uncovered, his brains might cook before he got there. He hadn’t cared to go to Peiraieus in the rain, squelching through mud. He didn’t much care for a long walk in baking heat, either.

He laughed at himself. You want it to be sunny but mild all the time. After a moment’s thought, he dipped his head. Yes, that is what I want. Nothing was wrong with wanting it, as long as he understood that wanting it didn’t mean he’d get it.

He wasn’t bound for Peiraieus today, but for Mounykhia, where the great fort housing Kassandros’ men dominated the skyline. “What do you want?” demanded a guard with a long spear. That was what Sostratos thought he said, anyhow; he used Macedonian dialect so broad as to be almost unintelligible to someone who spoke one of the more usual varieties of Greek.

“I want to see Alketas the tetrarkhos, if you please.” Sostratos answered as dearly as he could, and did his best to use Attic-the guard would be more used to that, and more likely to understand it, than Sostratos’ native Doric.

And the fellow dipped his head to show he did follow. “Who be you?” he asked.

“Sostratos son of Lysistratos, a Rhodian. I’ve sold Alketas wine. I have something else here he might care to see.”

“Wait. No go. No come. Wait.” The Macedonian tapped the ground with the iron-shod butt of his spear to make sure Sostratos got the message. Then he disappeared into the bowels of the fortress. Sostratos waited. Sweat dripped off him. A bee buzzed close. He took off his hat and whacked at it. It flew away. He put the hat back on, first carefully checking to make sure the bee wasn’t inside. Just as he was starting to grow impatient, the sentry returned. “Now you come,” he said.

He led Sostratos past an exercise yard where soldiers were practicing under the watchful eye and iron lungs of an underofficer. “Lower-spears!” the man bellowed. Down they came. They were so long, several ranks of spearheads projected out past the first rank of men-one reason a phalanx was so hard to oppose. How did a foe get through that hedgehog of spears to the soldiers behind it? The Persians never had found an answer, not from Marathon all the way to Alexander’s time. The closest they’d come was hiring Hellenes to fight for them. In the end, that hadn’t worked, either.

The motion had looked smooth enough to Sostratos, but the underofficer flew into a rage, screaming abuse at the men in Greek and then going into Macedonian when he ran out. Sostratos didn’t get all of that, but it certainly sounded inflammatory. The soldiers looked hot and tired and resigned-even amused-about the underofficer’s curses.

“You come,” the guard said again. He lowered his spear from vertical to horizontal so he could take it down a corridor, A slave coming the other way yelped and flattened himself against the mud-brick wall to keep from getting spitted. The Macedonian laughed. The corridor opened out onto another, smaller, yard. The guard pointed. “There.”

In the courtyard, Alketas stood talking with Dionysios-the commander of the fortress-and two other officers. He waved when he saw Sostratos. “Hail, Rhodian!” he boomed.

“Hail,” Sostratos replied. “How are you today?”

“Couldn’t be better,” the Macedonian replied. “What have you got today? Have you come up with more wine from interesting places?”

In a way, Sostratos hated selling fine wine to someone like Alketas. Like as not, he’d pour it down neat, and get his tongue too numb to savor it after the first couple of gulps. A man who drank to get drunk and not to enjoy what he was drinking deserved to swill something one step above vinegar. Selling him Lesbian and Byblian was almost like pouring them straight into a chamber pot. On the other hand, as Sostratos couldn’t ignore, it was much more profitable.

Today, that issue didn’t arise. “Not wine,” Sostratos answered. “I’ve got something to decorate your quarters, if you’re interested.”

“Oh-ho!” Alketas made curving motions with his hands. “Is she a blonde?” The Macedonians with him laughed.

Sostratos gave back a dutiful smile. “Something, I said, O best one, not someone. No, what I have is… this.” He unfolded the embroidered cloth and spread his arms to display it.

All four Macedonians stared in admiration at the hunting scene. Dionysios said, “That comes out of Mesopotamia, doesn’t it? “ He was the oldest man there, his hair thin on top and more gray than brown.

“Yes, most noble, it does. I got it in Ioudaia, farther west,” Sostratos replied. “How did you know?”

“I saw the like going through that country with the Alexander,” Dionysios said. Greek could show a man’s special status by tacking the article on in front of his name. And who better deserved special status than Alexander?

If he were alive today, he wouldn’t even be fifty. Sostratos thought for a moment, then dipped his head. That was right, even if it seemed unbelievable. He’d been thirty-three when he died, and he was sixteen years dead. This graying general, certainly not a young man but still far from ancient-he was probably younger than Sostratos’ father-had likely been older than the King of Macedonia he’d served. That was a very curious thought.

“What do you want for it?” Dionysios asked now. “Those things don’t come cheap, I know-not unless you steal ‘em. But that’s a fine one, and I wouldn’t mind having it on my own wall.”

“He brought it for me,” Alketas said indignantly. Macedonians stood on very little ceremony among themselves.

“I wouldn’t mind having it, either,” said a third soldier, a fellow with only three fingers on his left hand. And the fourth officer, a foxy-faced, auburn-haired man who looked more Thracian than Macedonian, also dipped his head.

“I’ll give you fifty drakhmai for it,” Dionysios said. “I know you wouldn’t take less.”

In fact, Sostratos would have been glad to get so much. The Phoenician trader had added the cloth to a lump of beeswax to get an extra bottle of Rhodian perfume. But the foxy-faced man waited only a heartbeat before saying, “I’ll give you sixty.”

“Sixty-five, by Zeus!” Alketas exclaimed.

“Seventy!” said the officer with the missing fingers. The Macedonians glared at one another.

Sostratos? Sostratos smiled.

The soldiers kept bidding up the price of the embroidered hunting scene. In between the numbers they shouted, they yelled abuse at each other, first in Greek and then, as their tempers kindled, in the broad Macedonian dialect they’d grown up speaking. As with the underofficer in the other courtyard, Sostratos understood little of that; what he could make out seemed fouler than any insults in common use in Greek.

In due course, the officer with the missing fingers said, “One mina, eighty drakhmai.” He waited. Sostratos waited. The other Macedonians glowered, but none of them bid again. The officer beamed. He made a fist with his good hand and thumped his chest with it. “Mine!” He might have been three years old.

Sullenly, Alketas said, “I don’t care how pretty it is. Nothing’s worth that kind of silver if it doesn’t have a smooth little piggy to screw.” Since his last offer had been only ten drakhmai lower, that struck Sostratos as a case of the fox’s complaining the grapes were sour after he found he couldn’t get them,

“Mine!” repeated the officer with the missing fingers. He reached out to take the cloth from Sostratos.

The Rhodian didn’t give it to him. “Yours when I have my silver,” he said.

“Wait,” the fellow told him, and hurried away. He came back carrying a leather sack, which he thrust at Sostratos. “Here. Go ahead and count them.”

Sostratos blinked. He couldn’t remember the last time a customer gave him that kind of invitation. He hefted the sack. It felt about right. With a shrug, he replied, “Never mind, most noble one. I trust you.” The Macedonian beamed. Sostratos gave him the square of embroidered linen. His smile got wider. He was happy. Sostratos was happy, too. The only unhappy people were the other three Macedonians, the ones the officer had outbid. And they, Sostratos knew, would get over it.

Adrastos the dyer was a fat Phrygian who wore a saffron chiton with a crimson border, as if to show what he could do. His shop was in Peiraieus-not far from where the Aphrodite was tied up, in fact. When he glowered at Menedemos, his bushy eyebrows came together to form a single black bar across his forehead. “You have crimson dye for sale?” he said suspiciously, his Attic Greek good but flavored by the guttural accent of his Anatolian homeland. “I have never seen anyone but Phoenicians selling it up till now-unless you bought it from them and plan to gouge me to make up for what you paid.”

“Not at all, my good fellow,” Menedemos answered, doing his best not to wrinkle his nose against the stink of stale piss clinging to the dyeshop. They all smelled that way; no one knew a better bleach than urine. Menedemos went on, “I did buy my dye from a Phoenician, as a matter of fact.”

“Ha! I knew it,” Adrastos said.

Menedemos held up a hand. “Please, O best one-you didn’t let me finish. I bought it from a Phoenician dyemaker in Sidon when I took my akatos east last year. Because of that, I can charge what the Phoenicians usually do-no middleman’s markup, as you feared.”

“From Sidon, eh?” The dyer still sounded suspicious. “What dye-maker did you deal with there?”

“Tenashtart son of Metena,” Menedemos answered. “Do you know him?”

“I have never met him. I have not traveled to Phoenicia, and I do not think he has ever come to Athens, though I’ve heard he’s traveled to Hellas,” Adrastos said. “But I know of him, and of his firm.” He tugged at his curly black beard. “If you had not dealt with him, I do not think you would know of him.”

“Here is a jar of dye I bought from him.” The Rhodian set it on the counter between them. “I can sell you about as much as you want, at prices as good as you’ll get from any man of Sidon or Byblos.”

The Phrygian picked up the jar, holding it on one plump palm and slowly turning it with his other hand. “Truly, this is the very style of jar Tenashtart uses.” He yanked out the stopper and sniffed. The dye had a nasty reek from the shellfish of which it was made, though Menedemos marveled that Adrastos could smell anything through the pungent odor of urine permeating his shop. The dyer nodded, and then, as if to show he really had learned Hellenic customs, dipped his head, too. Menedemos hid a smile; he’d seen other barbarians do the same. Adrastos said, “It does appear to be the true crimson dye. May I test it with a scrap of cloth?”

“Please do, most noble one,” Menedemos told him. “That’s why I brought it.”

Adrastos poked the corner of a rag into the jar, then pulled it out. He studied the deep red color. “Yes, that’s Sidonian crimson, sure enough. It’s not as good as what Tyre used to make before Alexander sacked the town. Tyrian crimson was brighter, and wouldn’t fade no matter what. Such a color! I was just a youth getting started in my father’s business-you would have been a little boy then. You don’t see the like any more. The men who knew how to make it are dead, or else they’re slaves doing something that’s got nothing to do with dye. This isn’t bad for what you can get nowadays, but it doesn’t come up to Tyrian.” He sighed.

Menedemos would have thought he was trying to beat the price down, but other men who knew about the dyes the Phoenicians made had told him the same thing. “Is it good enough for you to want it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Adrastos said. “As long as I can get a decent price, that is.” He named one.

“That’s not decent. That’s indecent!” Menedemos yelped. “You want me to give it away.” He named his own, considerably higher, price.

Adrastos howled like a wolf. “Any Phoenician tried to charge me that, I’d fling him into a vat of piss.” He sent Menedemos a speculative look, as if wondering how the Rhodian would look all wet and dripping.

“Some people,” Menedemos remarked, “think they’re the only ones who work a trade. In a polis the size of Athens, I can always sell to someone else.”

“Sell, certainly. Steal from honest folk with your prices? Not likely!” Adrastos said.

They traded more insults. The Phrygian came up a little. Menedemos went down a little. They both knew ahead of time about where they would end up. As they drew closer to that point, they haggled harder. Finally, Menedemos said, “Have we got a bargain?”

“Yes,.Rhodian. I think we do.” The dyer stuck out his hand, which was stained with crimson and saffron and woad and other dyes. Menedemos clasped it. Adrastos asked, “And how soon can I have the dye?”

“My ship is tied up here in Peiraieus,” Menedemos said. “Let me walk over, and I’ll get it for you. You’ll have the silver waiting?”

“Oh, yes. The world would squeak to a stop if not for silver,” Adrastos answered, “I pay what I say I’ll pay. You don’t need to worry about that.”

When some men told Menedemos he didn’t need to worry, he worried harder than ever. The Phrygian didn’t strike him as being one of that sort, though. Yes, Adrastos dressed gaudily, but how else was a dyer supposed to show off his skill? The man’s shop was neat and clean. He couldn’t help the way it smelled, not in the business he was in. And the owls he gave Menedemos wouldn’t stink. With a smile at that conceit, Menedemos said, “All right, O best one. I’ll be back in a little while with the dye, then.”

He hurried toward the quays, dodging past a fisherman carrying a basket of sprats, some of them still wiggling a little; another fisherman with a basket of eels for customers who could afford better than sprats; a naked sponge diver, his eyes blood-red from staying open in the sea, a couple of sponges under his arms; a gray-haired, unveiled woman selling little cheese pies; a shaven-headed Egyptian sailor coming out of a brothel with a sated smirk on his face; and a net-seller or -mender all draped with his wares. Flies buzzed. Sparrows hopped around, pecking at this and that. A dog with half its left ear missing gnawed a length of pig gut a sausage-seller must have thrown away. It growled when Menedemos walked by. He raised a leg to kick it if it tried to bite, and it shrank back in fear.

As Menedemos neared the pier to which the Aphrodite was tied, someone called his name. He turned. There was Sostratos, waving. Menedemos waved back and said, “Hail! What are you doing here? I thought you’d be up in the city.”

“I sold some ink to a fellow who thinks he’s the next Euripides, and then found I’d got rid of all the jars we’d brought up to Protomakhos’ house.” Sostratos looked disgusted with himself. “I hate making mistakes like that.”

“Reminds me you’re human,” Menedemos said.

By his cousin’s expression, Sostratos didn’t care to be reminded. But he also recalled enough humanity to stay polite, which he didn’t always. He asked, “How about you?”

“I just sold some crimson dye to a dyer whose shop can’t be more than three or four plethra from the Aphrodite,” Menedemos said. “Got a decent price for it, too.”

“How much?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos told him. He dipped his head, “Yes, that’s not bad,” he agreed. “Nothing to make Kroisos the Lydian king jealous, but not bad.”

“Kroisos collected taxes and tribute,” Menedemos said. “We have to earn our money.”

“So we-” Sostratos broke off and pointed out to sea. “By the dog of Egypt!” he whispered. “Will you look at that?”

Menedemos looked. There approaching the harbor was an immense fleet of war galleys and transports. He started to count them, but rapidly gave up. There had to be well over a hundred. He and Sostratos weren’t the only ones who’d spotted them, either. Everywhere, people on the street and on the quays stopped whatever they were doing and pointed out to sea like Sostratos.

“Who do you suppose they are?” Sostratos asked in a small voice.

“You said it yourself-’by the dog of Egypt,’“ Menedemos answered, “They have to belong to Ptolemaios. Otherwise the Athenians and Kassandros’ men would be trying to shut the harbor against them and beat them back, and they’re not.”

They certainly weren’t. A couple of Kassandros’ Macedonians waved to the officers on the deck of an approaching war galley-an immense ship, at least a six, with two men per oar on all three banks of oars. One of the men on the galley waved back. His red cloak clung to his shoulders; the breeze blew from off the sea.

Blowing from off the sea, it carried the stench of the galleys to the shore. Menedemos made a face. “Pheu!” he said in disgust. “That’s a worse reek than the one I came away from at Adrastos’ dyeshop.”

“A lot of men packed close together on a lot of warships, without much water for washing.” Sostratos, as usual, wanted to get to the bottom of things. Usually, that was a virtue. Today, it irritated Menedemos.

“I know, my dear,” he said. “No matter what you may think, I’m not a fool. And whatever the reason, that’s a horrible stink.”

Transports started tying up wherever there was room along a pier. Naked sailors tossed lines to longshoremen; who made the ships fast. Gangplanks thumped out onto the quays. Soldiers tramped along the gangplanks, up the quays, and onto dry land. They wore their helmets and corselets and carried both spears and shields. The longshoremen got out of their way as fast as they could.

“They look ready for business, don’t they?” Sostratos said.

“They sure do,” Menedemos answered.

“I don’t understand,” Sostratos said, “Is Ptolemaios going to help Kassandros garrison Athens? If he is, will Kassandros move some of his men somewhere else? To the north, say, to fight against Lysimakhos? There’s been no rumor about any of this.” By the way he sounded, he took that as a personal affront.

But he wasn’t the only one puzzled. The Macedonians who’d waved to the approaching fleet came up to the closest column of soldiers. One of them asked a question. Menedemos couldn’t make out the words, but it had to be something like, What’s going on here?

Quite casually, an oncoming soldier lowered his long spear-it was more than twice the height of a man-and thrust it into the Macedonian’s gut. His companion stared in astonished disbelief. Before he could do anything but stare, another soldier speared him. Both men let out bubbling wails of anguish as they crumpled, their blood spilling into the dust. They died without ever knowing why.

“Forward, men!” called an officer with the soldiers. “Now we take hold of this place.”

Forward they came, sandals thumping. And, as they came, they shouted out their war cry: “Demetrios son of Antigonos! Eleleu! Demetrios son of Antigonos!”

Menedemos and Sostratos gaped at each other as the column pounded past. That wasn’t Demetrios of Phaleron the soldiers were shouting for. It was Demetrios the son of Antigonos the One-Eyed, Macedonian marshal and deadly foe to Ptolemaios and Kassandros both. However he’d done it, his men were swarming into Pekaieus-and, for all Menedemos knew, into Mounykhia, too-in what looked like overwhelming numbers.