Salamis

VII

“Here we is.” Pasos’ Greek, though understandable, was far from perfect. The barge skipper pointed south. “We just about out from what Greeks call Delta. Last two big branches come together soon. After that, just … Nile … for … long, long way.” He threw his arms wide, as if to say that explaining how long the Nile was exceeded his powers.

“Memphis lies not far from the joining? And the Pyramids? And the Sphinx?” Sostratos thought he understood that, but wanted to reassure himself. Egypt wasn’t just another land. Egypt was another world.

But, to his relief, Pasos nodded. “That right. You no worry—we gets there. Maybe not fast, but we do.”

“I could swim faster than this tub crawls,” Thersandros muttered. “It makes one of our freighters look like a pentekonter.”

“It isn’t the stadion sprint at the Olympic Games,” Sostratos answered. “As long as we get there, just when doesn’t matter much.” There was more room on the barge than there had been with the Aphrodite crossing the Inner Sea, but he and the rowers had less to do. He was as bored as Thersandros, even if he tried not to let on.

Pasos mostly ignored the Hellenes when they talked among themselves. Maybe that was his notion of politeness. Or maybe his Greek wasn’t up to following conversations not aimed at him.

A town called Kerkasoros lay at the place where the Nile went from two streams to one. Sostratos didn’t realize right away that that had happened, for a low-lying island in the middle of the river fooled him into thinking it was still divided. Once the barge fought past the island, though, he understood what had happened.

He whistled softly under his breath. He’d seen rivers before, of course. But the Nile might have been the mother of all rivers. How many stadia wide was that mighty, muddy stream?

And he saw a change in the landscape. In the Delta, everything had been lush and green and growing. Even mud bricks sometimes had weeds sprouting from them. Everything alongside the Nile’s single channel was also green and lush … as far as the river’s lifegiving water could be made to flow, and not a digit farther. Beyond that, it abruptly went a sun-blasted yellow-brown.

The Egyptians called everything west of the Nile Libya, everything east of it Arabia. Except for where they lay, Sostratos couldn’t see any difference between the two sides. Desert and desolation were desert and desolation. Hellenes built poleis on the Libyan coast, a long way west of Alexandria. They sold silphium from them, a spice obtainable nowhere else in the world.

One of these days, he thought, we ought to take the Aphrodite there and load up with as much as we can carry. We’d make a fortune. That would have to wait till something more like peace came back to Rhodes, and perhaps to the whole of the Inner Sea, to the whole of the vastly extended Hellenic world, as well.

As they had on the Nile’s branches in the Delta, fishing boats also bobbed in the single channel. Most ships pushed south by the wind stayed on the right hand of the river; most of those letting the current take them north used the other half. That improved traffic without perfecting it. Everyone still had to dodge the little fishing boats, which often didn’t move at all. And crewmen on faster vessels shouted unpleasantries at slower ones while swinging wide to pass them.

Because it was so big and slow, the barge got passed a lot. And a lot of abuse rained down on Pasos and his Egyptians. After a while, the skipper came over to Sostratos and said, “Next time boat go by, maybe you and other Hellenes go to side with spears and show selves.”

Sostratos grinned at him. “I think we can do that.” He relayed the word to the rowers. They grinned, too, and dipped their heads.

Half an hour or so later, they got their chance. A river galley not much smaller than the Aphrodite glided past, using oars as well as sails to get more speed. Sostratos couldn’t understand what the crew shouted at the bargemen, but he recognized the tone. He and his comrades took their places by the rail, spears shown in fine martial array.

Then Pasos and his men started yelling back. It was in Egyptian, of course, so Sostratos followed not a word of it. But, by the way the bargemen pointed at him and his fellow Hellenes, he guessed they were telling the galley’s crew something like You’d better not mess with us! We’ve got the new overlords of the Two Lands on our side!

And the men in the river galley had to take it. They put on a burst of speed to get out of earshot of the barge as quickly as they could, but they didn’t dare answer back. Egypt had been a conquered province for most of the past two centuries. Whatever pride the people here had had in long-gone days was as dead now as one of their mummified corpses.

Sostratos wondered what would have happened if Dareios or Xerxes had led the Persians to victory over Hellas. Would the freedom-loving, free-speaking folk he knew have turned servile like this under foreign domination? He didn’t know—how could you know anything about something that didn’t happen? But he didn’t like the guesses he made.

Pasos’ smile stretched from ear to ear as he clapped Sostratos on the back. “Ha! We show them wide-arsed sons of hippopotamoi a thing or three!” He had a decent—or rather, an indecent—grasp of Greek obscenity, but what he did to the irregular verb to show was a caution.

“Glad to help.” Sostratos even mostly meant it. The rowers were laughing and smiling, too. They understood Pasos’ joke. They’d mocked merchantmen as they glided past them on the Inner Sea. Most of the time, the sailors who manned them had to take the abuse. Today, Pasos had turned the tables on his tormentors.

The Egyptian said, “Pretty quick we come to Pyramids. Just before Memphis, you know. You want I should point for you?” He jabbed an index finger toward the Nile’s western, or Libyan, bank.

“Please!” Sostratos knew he sounded eager. Nothing in Egypt could be more famous or more ancient than the Pyramids. Hellenes with all the silver and time they needed came here just to see them. Herodotos had done it. Now I will, too, Sostratos thought.

“I do, then,” Pasos said. He saw the Pyramids every time he went up and down the Nile. They were just part of the landscape to him. He took them as much for granted as Sostratos did fried squid. Sostratos didn’t know whether to pity or envy him.

For the first time in some little while, Sostratos noticed how very slowly the barge made headway against the titanic flow of the river on which it floated. An Egyptian peasant dipping water out of the Nile with a pot mounted on a pivoted pole might have been nailed in place. After a while, though, the barge did put him behind it. Sostratos laughed at himself. Having a goal just ahead made him notice the journey once more.

The sun had passed the zenith—this far south, almost literally—and was sliding down the western half of the sky when Pasos nudged him, pointed southwest, and said, “You look hard, you see them now.”

Shading his eyes with his hand and wishing again he’d bought a hat like Menedemos’, Sostratos did look hard. Sure enough, three pointed bumps sticking up from the desert could only be …. Looking at the desert and the fertile land between the Pyramids and him, Sostratos whistled softly. “By the gods, they’re huge!” he murmured. Then he laughed again. How many travelers before him would have said the same thing?

“We keep going, they look more bigger,” Pasos said.

“I’m sure they will. Memphis lies beyond them, is that right?”

“Malista.” Pasos used a Greek word and a barbarous nod.

“How far beyond?”

The Egyptian said something in his own language: a distance, presumably. Sostratos spread his hands to show he didn’t know what that distance was. Pasos thought for a moment, then offered, “Two parasangs. Little less, maybe.”

“Ah.” Sostratos dipped his head. The parasang was a Persian measure. It meant how far someone could travel in an hour. It stretched or shrank depending on territory, but was usually about thirty stadia. So the Pyramids lay only a couple of hours’ journey outside Memphis. “I’ll have to visit them while I’m here.”

“You take care. Take water or beer or wine with you,” Pasos said. “You Hellenes, you not know how to live here. Sun bake you dead, you no watch out.”

“Hellas isn’t an oven,” Sostratos said with dignity. Yes, Rhodes got hot weather as summer wore along, but not the kind of relentless heat Egypt saw. He tried to imagine how Pasos would react to snow. He’d seen it only two or three times himself, but he knew what it was. When he did his best to explain it to the Egyptian, he ran headlong into a wall of blank incomprehension.

“Water is … water,” Pasos said. “Not turn to flakes like gods got—” He brushed at his hair; Sostratos realized he meant dandruff. “You Hellenes, you tell funny stories. Or you tell lies, laugh when people believe.”

Hellenes had that reputation among many different kinds of barbarians. Sostratos briefly wondered whether that reflected on them or on his own folk. Only briefly—he needed to answer, and he did: “By the gods, O best one, I’m telling the truth here. In northern lands, snow is real. Water can freeze there, too, the way liquid copper does when it cools. Frozen water—ice, it’s called—is very cold. It’s slippery to walk on. Sometimes, you can see through it. When the weather gets warmer, it turns back into ordinary water again. It melts, we say.”

Pasos laughed at him. The Egyptian had never seen anything like that, so he didn’t believe it could possibly be real. None of Sostratos’ protests or oaths would persuade him. Neither did the way the rowers agreed with Sostratos. “You all Hellenes,” Pasos insisted. “Of course you all say same thing.”

After a while, Sostratos gave up. “Think whatever you want to think,” he growled, and turned away. It was either quit or pitch Pasos into the Nile. That would have meant an all-out brawl between Hellenes and Egyptians, and the barge crew outnumbered his men. He wasn’t even sure he could pitch the barge captain into the river. Pasos might be short, but he had a solid frame and didn’t seem like someone who shrank from trouble.

Slowly, slowly, the barge crawled past the Pyramids and the ramp or causeway that led up to them from the Nile. The closer the look Sostratos got, the more tremendous they seemed. He couldn’t see all of the famous Sphinx nearby, only the upper part. What he could see made him want to see more.

The sun was just about to set when they reached the riverside wharves at Memphis. The city was bigger than Sostratos had expected: not so big as Alexandria, but bigger than any polis in Hellas save possibly Athens. Temples of antiquity unimaginable stood not far from the Nile.

At Egyptian Thebes, farther south yet, the almost-historian Hekataios had told the priests he was sixteen generations removed from a god. They’d laughed at him and shown him the statues of 341 generations of high priest, each of purely human origin. Next to the Egyptians, what were Hellenes but a pack of noisy children?

The sun went down. Aphrodite’s wandering star blazed in the western sky. Pasos said, “We unload with day tomorrow. You all right your cargo stay aboard this night?”

“I think so. That may even work out better for us.” Sostratos did his best not to show how relieved he was. He didn’t want to take the olive oil off the barge till he knew where he could store it.

None of the rowers complained. “Don’t mind a good night’s sleep before I go back to work,” Thersandros said.

“Been sleeping aboard so much this trip, I may buy me a little fishing boat and live on her when we get back to Rhodes,” Leskhaios added.

They had beer and cheap wine on the barge. They hadn’t been aboard it so long, they felt an urgent need to go whoring. It was less comfortable than a bed ashore, but not much less. And they were used to living rough anyhow. If they hadn’t been, they never would have signed on with the Aphrodite.

Sostratos had an easier life ashore than the other Hellenes did. Money shaded you from misfortune the way a roofed colonnade shaded you from the sun. As long as you had some silver and you kept your health, life looked good.

He curled up on the planking like an Egyptian cat, closed his eyes, and soon fell asleep. Even a straw pallet would have been softer, but he didn’t worry about it. He had more room to toss and turn here than he did in the cramped confines of the akatos.

He was awakened in the night to do his turn as watchman. When it ended, he pissed into the Nile and slept again. Next thing he knew, twilight turned the eastern sky a red that soon brightened to gold. Some of the bargemen were already awake. One gave him a chunk of barley bread and a mug of beer. They had no words in common, but Sostratos let the fellow know he was glad to have breakfast.

When Pasos got up soon after, Sostratos asked him, “What god does that temple near the river serve?”

“Osiris,” the barge skipper answered.

“Ah.” Sostratos dipped his head. It wasn’t just a name to him. He remembered from Herodotos that Osiris was for the Egyptians what Zeus was for Hellenes: the chief god, the most powerful one. Were they two names for the same deity, or were two different gods doing the same job in different parts of the world? He had no idea how to answer that. He also wondered whether the question meant enough to matter.

What did matter was getting the amphorai of oil out of the barge and onto the riverbank. Sostratos joined the rowers in taking them out of the barge. Menedemos probably would have let them do the work, and from him they probably would have accepted that. Sostratos had less of the air of the kalos kagathos about him; he couldn’t play the nobleman the way his cousin did.

Egyptians and Hellenes gathered to watch the show. Nothing gave men so much pleasure as watching other men work. Sostratos took a couple of oboloi from his belt pouch. He pointed at a skinny little Hellene who looked like a tout. “Do you know the way to Psosneus’ warehouse?” He’d got the name from Pasos.

“Malista, my master!” the man said.

“An obolos for you now, and another when you’ve taken me to him,” Sostratos said.

“Such generosity,” the Hellene said sourly. “Slow with your silver, aren’t ye?” By his accent, he sprang from Thessaly or somewhere else in the north.

“I can always give the job to someone else,” Sostratos said. Sure enough, two other Hellenes and an Egyptian who followed Greek were waving their hands.

“I’ll take it,” the skinny man said. “Gi’ me the one, and then follow.”

Follow Sostratos did. The warehouse lay only a couple of streets from the river, and three blocks north of the barge. Psosneus stood outside: a brown, bulky man chewing on roasted squash seeds. Husks under his feet said he’d already eaten quite a few. He spoke fair Greek. Sostratos used Pasos’ name to make sure the skipper got whatever rakeoff he could from the warehouse owner. He paid the tout, who left.

“He good fellow. He send you, I give special price,” Psosneus said.

“Special high or special low?” Sostratos asked, his voice dry. Psosneus laughed, for all the world as if he were joking. They haggled a little, then settled. Psosneus recommended an innkeeper, so he’d get himself a rakeoff, too.

Sostratos hoped to hire carts when he went back to the docks, but none was in sight. He and the rest of the Hellenes had to move the olive oil the hard way. Sostratos cursed Damonax as he lugged each jar. One way or another, he’d pay his brother-in-law back. So he vowed, swearing by his aching back.

“Oh, my dear fellow, I say, but you have some fine vintages there!” a wine merchant named Exakestos told Menedemos in an Attic accent so strong, the Rhodian guessed he was putting it on. “I’d dearly love to get some for the shop. Dearly! What are you asking?”

Menedemos told him. He flinched. “Sorry,” the Rhodian trader said. “I have to turn a profit, too, you know.”

“Yes, yes.” The Hellene gnawed at his thumbnail. “Suppose I offer you a trade instead of sacks of tetradrakhms?”

“What kind of a trade?” Menedemos asked. If he sounded suspicious, that was only because he was.

“Stay right there. Don’t move a muscle. Pretend the sight of Medusa’s head has turned you stone.” Exakestos disappeared into a back room behind the counter. Menedemos stood where he was, not petrified but not walking out, either.

Before too too very long, the wine merchant came forth again. He held both fists closed in front of him, like a conjuror about to make a drakhma appear from nowhere. Menedemos smiled at the drama. “All right, my friend, you’ve interested me. What have you got there?” he asked.

Exakestos opened his hands. One held some whitish globules, the other chunks of hard, resinous-looking stuff. “Go ahead and sniff,” he answered. “Then you tell me. Or I’ll tell you if you’ve not run across it before.”

“If they’re what I think they are ….” Menedemos leaned forward across the counter. Exakestos brought his hands forward. Sniff Menedemos did, first the globules, then the resin. “Frankincense and myrrh,” he said. “They’re worth a good bit—no doubt about that. But how much do you have, and how much will you give me for a jar of Ariousian?”

“I have plenty, my dear. For one thing, I use them in the trade—myrrh especially helps keep wine from going to vinegar. And for another, Alexandria is practically swimming in them these days. The Arabs bring them up the coast…. You do know where Fortunate Arabia lies?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Menedemos said cautiously. “South and east of here, isn’t it?”

“Very good!” Exakestos beamed at him. “There’s another sea, a narrow one, that splits Egypt from Fortunate Arabia. The Red Sea, they call it, though I don’t think it really is red. Anyhow, the Arabs who bring the incenses up their coasts talk about the winged snakes that protect the myrrh and all, and how they have to drive them away to get any.”

“Sounds like a story to keep the price high,” Menedemos remarked.

“It could be, but when they have the stuff and you don’t, what are you going to do?” Exakestos said. “They bring it up the coast till the coast stops, if you know what I mean. That’s not very far from the Inner Sea. If someone could dig a canal ….” He shrugged. “Some goes into Syria from there, and some comes here. Since the Alexander built Alexandria, more comes here.”

“I can see how that would happen, yes,” Menedemos said. Before Alexandria’s creation, the coast of the Delta had been a sleepy backwater, with villages and small towns that lived off fishing and smuggling. Now the Delta had the greatest port on the Inner Sea. The Rhodian scratched his chin. Whiskers rasped under his fingers; he needed a shave. “So how much myrrh have you got, and how much frankincense? How much do you aim to give me for each amphora of Ariousian?”

“The incenses usually sell here for their weight in gold,” Exakestos said.

“That incenses me!” Menedemos barely managed to turn his alarm into a joke. Silver was the usual monetary metal through the Greek world; gold staters were rare, and Persian darics seldom seen. But Egypt had been in Persian hands till a generation before. Thinking in terms of gold might remain common here.

“Let’s do it like this, old chap,” Exakestos said. “We’ll work out the price of a jar in drakhmai. Then we’ll turn that into staters or darics.”

“Twenty drakhmai to the goldpiece?” Menedemos wanted to pin that down before he went any further. The usual rate of exchange between silver and gold was ten to one. Both the Greek stater and the daric weighed twice as much as the drakhma.

“Yes, twenty.” Exakestos dipped his head. “There’s been talk that the Ptolemaios will coin lighter drakhmai for the lands he rules, but it hasn’t happened yet, and gods willing it won’t.”

“Why would he do that?” Menedemos answered his own question before the wine merchant could: “So he can make money changing money—why else? The Ptolemaios is a marvelous man, but he does like his silver.”

“I won’t try to tell you you’re wrong,” Exakestos answered. “It will set Egypt apart from other lands, too. Ptolemaios cares more about hanging on here than grabbing all of Alexander’s empire like Antigonos or Seleukos.”

That thought had crossed Menedemos’ mind, too. It wasn’t his worry, though, as it was the wineseller’s. He said, “Remember, we’re not just talking about Khian here. We’re talking about Ariousian, the best wine Dionysos knows.”

“There are those who would say wine from Thasos is just as good, or maybe even better. Don’t know but what I lean that way myself,” Exakestos said.

Menedemos bared his teeth at him in a predatory grin. “Of course you do. That lets you talk down the price of my wine. I’d sell you Thasian, but I’ve already disposed of most of what I brought.”

“I’m not going to ask you what you got for it and say I’ll pay the same for your Ariousian,” Exakestos said. “That would give you an excuse to invent a price and ruin me.”

“I’d never do such a thing!” Menedemos assumed a look of injured innocence.

“My prokton!” Just for a moment, Exakestos’ actor’s mask of Attic elegance slipped, Then he pulled it at least partly back in place. “I bloody well would, in your sandals.”

“Not wearing sandals.” Like other sailors, Menedemos went barefoot on land as well as at sea. In Alexandria’s warm climate, doing without shoes just meant watching where you stepped. But he did it in winter at home in Rhodes, too. He also seldom threw a himation over his chlamys. Cloaks, as far as he was concerned, were for Thracians and Skythians, who needed them to keep from turning into blocks of ice during barbarous northern winters. That was one more nautical prejudice brought to land.

“You know what I mean, my dear fellow.” Now the wine merchant might have just stepped out of the Parthenon after sacrificing. “Tell me what you do want for a jar of your fancy vintage, and we’ll see how loudly I scream.”

“Half a mina,” Menedemos said easily. That was more than three times the price of an amphora of ordinary Khian, and something like ten times the price of the common stuff a cobbler or a potter might buy in a tavern.

Sure enough, Exakestos threw back his head and howled like a wolf. He did it so well, a little stray dog trotting down the street yipped in alarm. Then he dug a finger into his ear. “I’m sorry, but I seem to be going deaf,” he said. “I imagined I heard you telling me you wanted fifty drakhmai for the jar. I must be getting old.”

“I’ll go up if you like.” Menedemos sounded as helpful as he could.

That made the wineseller cough like a man choking on an olive pit. He waved Menedemos away when the Rhodian started around the counter to pound him on the back. “I’m lucky you didn’t give me an apoplexy there,” he said, glowering.

“Well, tell me what you aim to pay, then,” Menedemos said. “After I’m done laughing, we can get down to the real dicker.”

“It is better stuff than regular Khian,” Exakestos said, with the air of a man making a great concession. “Regular Khian would go for fourteen, maybe fifteen, drakhmai the amphora. So, because I’m a generous bloke, I’ll give you twenty. A stater’s weight of frankincense or myrrh for a jar.”

Menedemos did laugh then, raucously. “You must want my father to kill me when I get home,” he said, and then bit down hard on the inside of his lower lip. If Baukis screamed out something while she was in labor with the baby, Philodemos might have a reason much more urgent than business to want to kill him.

It wasn’t funny, but Menedemos laughed at himself anyhow. He wouldn’t mind so much if his father murdered him on account of a botched business deal. But if his father killed him because he had, or might have, got his stepmother pregnant ….

That wouldn’t just leave him in disgrace, worse luck. It would cast a black shadow of shame over the whole family. It wasn’t quite what Sophokles wrote about in Oidipous Tyrannos, but it came too close for comfort.

Oidipous, of course, had killed his father and married his mother without knowing who they were. Fate struck him down regardless. Baukis wasn’t Menedemos’ mother by blood, but she was his father’s wife. And he’d sported with her knowing exactly what he was doing. If the gods still looked down from Olympos, what did they think of that?

Exakestos had said something. Menedemos realized he had no idea what it was. “I’m sorry, best one. Try that again, please,” he said. “The ridiculous price you offered left me struck all in a heap.”

Exakestos snorted in annoyance. “I said, old chap, that I don’t want you slain, by your father or anyone else. So I’ll go up to twenty-four drakhmai the amphora without even being asked. So what a generous fellow I am?”

“If you aren’t serious about the deal, tell me now. You don’t seem serious, not when you haven’t come close yet to what my family paid for the wine. Why are you playing dogs and robbers with me? You know what Ariousian is, and what it’s worth. Maybe I should just go to another dealer.”

“You won’t get the precious incenses from another wineseller.”

“Yes? And so? I’ll get silver from him. Then, if I still want myrrh or frankincense, I’ll go to a proper dealer, not someone who sells the stuff for a hobby,” Menedemos said. “Do you want to trade, or just to waste my time?”

“I do want to trade. I don’t much fancy beggaring myself to do it, though,” Exakestos said.

Menedemos exhaled through his nose: to anyone who knew him, a sure sign of how irked he was. “You wouldn’t. You know you wouldn’t, too. You are wasting my time.”

“If you think so, old man, you know what you can do about it.”

“I’ll do it. Hail!” Menedemos turned on his heel and stalked out of Exakestos’ shop. As he went, he loosed a shot over his shoulder: “If you come to your senses, ask after me at the Ptolemaios’ palace. That’s where I’m staying.”

“At … the Ptolemaios’ palace?” Exakestos lost some of his hauteur. “How do you rate that?” His voice wobbled a little. How much trouble can you land me in if you push it? he had to be wondering.

“Since we aren’t trading, that’s none of your business.” Out into the street Menedemos went.

He wondered if Exakestos would come chasing after him, but the wine dealer didn’t. He had more pride or more spine than that. Menedemos shrugged and started back to the palace. If he spotted another wineseller’s place, he’d stop in and see what he could unload. If not, maybe he’d curl up and nap during the noontime heat. A lot of Hellenes and Egyptians seemed to do that.

Two cats almost clawed his feet as they ran past, one chasing the other. Were they playing, or did they mean it? He didn’t know cats well enough to guess. There were a few in Rhodes, but only a few. Most were the pampered pets of rich women; the fish they ate would have made a poor man, or maybe one not so poor, a nice opson to go with his bread at supper.

Then he wondered what he could get for cats if he brought some back in the Aphrodite. How much would people pay? Could he start a fad? The sales talk spun itself inside his head, like a spider’s web taking shape in the early morning. Yes, they’re pets. They’re friendly and smart. But they’re more than pets, too. They catch mice and lizards and centipedes and other vermin. Get one now, before your friends buy them for their wives.

That might not be so bad. He might even talk his way into some unwary fellow’s women’s quarters to show off a cat to the lady of the house. Something enjoyable might come of that. No guarantee, of course, but when did anything ever come with a guarantee?

His father would be angry at him for playing that game again, but it would be a relatively innocuous kind of anger, as opposed to the kind of anger caused by a relative. As far as Menedemos could tell, his father was always looking for reasons to be angry at him. If Philodemos couldn’t find any, he’d invent one.

At the palace, Menedemos ducked into a refectory to cadge some barley bread and dates. He chatted with the cook or slave or whatever she was who kept an eye on things. She was an Egyptian but, like Seseset, she knew enough Greek to get by. Her smile said something might be arranged if he pushed it a little.

He thought about it. Then a yawn made him decide not to. Even with a hat, sallying forth in Alexandria’s hot sun took it out of you. He went back to the chamber Ptolemaios had let him and Sostratos use, lay down on his bed, and dozed off.

A knock on the door brought him out of a dream where his father was accusing him of impregnating a swan—Leda’s story turned upside down and inside out. Muttering, he went to see who it was. He hadn’t slept as long as he’d wanted to.

When he found Demodamas standing in the hallway, he ran a quick hand through his rumpled hair. Ptolemaios’ stone-faced steward let him finish the gesture, then asked, “What did you do to yank Exakestos’ tail?”

“I told him I wouldn’t sell him Ariousian at a price that would make me lose money.” Menedemos’ blurred wits suddenly started working faster. “And I told him I was staying here at the palace. So he’s checking up on me, is he?”

“You might say so,” Demodamas answered.

“What business of his is it where I’m—?” Menedemos broke off. Yes, his wits still needed a bit to get going. He scowled at the sturdy Macedonian. “So he’s one of the people who tell the palace things, eh?”

“Don’t be foolish. Palaces have no ears,” Demodamas said. Menedemos snorted; that came closer to a joke than he’d expected from the steward. After a moment, the man went on, “You said that, remember. I didn’t.”

“Which means it’s true but you don’t want to admit it,” Menedemos said. Demodamas just stood there. Menedemos waited to see if he would say anything. When he didn’t, the Rhodian continued. “All right, fine. Along with selling wine, he spies for the Ptolemaios. Do you want to tell me who some of your other snoops are, so I can try not to have them bothering you, too?”

The Macedonian took his sarcasm literally. “No, I don’t want to tell you that,” he said.

“But you have them.” Menedemos didn’t make that a question.

Demodamas answered as if it were: “I don’t want to tell you that, either.” He looked unhappy. Menedemos judged he would have lied if he’d had the faintest hope of being believed. He turned abruptly and stamped away.

Menedemos watched him roll along like Sisyphos’ boulder going downhill. Other people in the hall jumped out of his way. They saw he wouldn’t move aside for them. Only after Demodamas turned a corner did Menedemos go back inside and close the door.

So Ptolemaios used spies to keep an eye on people, did he? It surprised Menedemos less than he wished it would have, but it saddened him. Ptolemaios had always struck him as a decent man for a warlord. If he stooped to such things, no doubt Antigonos and Demetrios, Seleukos, and all the other Macedonian generals battling over Alexander’s empire did, too.

Till that moment, Menedemos hadn’t thought a great deal about just what living in a free and independent polis meant. If it meant not having men spy on you for the rulers, that was plenty to make the Rhodian all for it.