Salamis

XIII

Sostratos wished he had somewhere nice and safe to run to. That failing, he wished he could show how afraid he was. Well, he could, but not if he wanted to be a man among men in Rhodes ever again. Sokrates’ Be what you wish to seem, ran through his head once more.

Sokrates had been brave in battle. Alkibiades talked about it in Platon’s Symposion. The philosopher might have been scared green inside, but he hadn’t shown it. And Sostratos did his best to look relaxed as he gripped the Aphrodite’s sternpost with one hand and shaded his eyes with the other.

Demetrios’ gods-cursed war galley kept looking bigger, which meant it kept getting closer. Why weren’t its rowers exhausted? They’d fought in the sea-battle against Ptolemaios’ fleet. And pulling big oars like that, even with two or three men on them, had to be wearing … didn’t it?

By the signs, no. As a wave trough showed the war galley’s ram, Sostratos got a glimpse of its three-flanged bronze ram. He imagined that ram crunching into the Aphrodite’s stern or flank. He’d always prided himself on how vivid his imagination was. Just this once, he could have done with less of it.

Like Ptolemaios’ warships, this one mounted a catapult at the bow. Its crew seemed busy. Sure enough, its crew was busy. A bolt flew from the catapult and splashed into the sea no more than thirty 30 cubits astern of the akatos.

“O Menedemos!” Sostratos said sharply. “They’re shooting at us!”

“They should get a catapult bolt up their pink piggy!” his cousin replied. Then he raised his voice to a roar all the rowers could hear: “If you’ve got anything left in you, boys, now’s the time to spend it. We won’t have much fun if they catch up to us.”

Back on Demetrios’ galley, the catapult crew loaded a new bolt in the groove and drew back the bow with the windlass, then shot again. To Sostratos’ relief, this missile also fell short. By a little less than the first? Or by a little more? For the life of him—which might be literally true—he couldn’t tell.

Archers also stood on the fighting platform that ran from the war galley’s bow to stern. They didn’t waste time or arrows shooting at the Aphrodite. If the catapult couldn’t reach her, their arrows surely wouldn’t.

They wore crested helms and bronze corselets, as if they were fighting on land. Sostratos wouldn’t have cared to do that. A stumble could send you into the drink, and then you’d surely drown. But you’d want such protection if you had to worry about other galleys full of archers and slingers and spearmen. A big ship like that turned a sea-fight into a pankratiasts’ brawl where brute force usually prevailed over skill.

The catapult let fly once more. This bolt definitely fell farther behind the fleeing Aphrodite than the first two had. Demetrios’ ship looked a hair smaller, too, the eyes at its bow less fierce and menacing.

“We gain!” Sostratos told his cousin.

“Good! Those turds are worn down, then,” Menedemos said, and raised his voice for the rowers again: “Come on! Come on, my dears! We can’t outfight that big, ugly tub, but by the gods we can outrun her!”

If only Olympia had lain by the sea so rowing could be a competition there, the Aphrodite’s oarsmen would have been crowned with laurel. They put more and more distance between the akatos and the pursuing war galley. Demetrios’ catapult men quit shooting, not wanting to waste any more bolts.

If we can stay ahead till the sun sets, we’ve won, Sostratos thought. They’ll never find us in the dark. They won’t try very hard, either. No sooner had that gone through his mind than one of the portside rowers passed out, overwhelmed by the hard work he’d put in.

Without wasting a heartbeat, Diokles set his hammer and triangle on the stern platform and dashed forward. Over his shoulder, he said, “You’re keleustes now, O son of Lysistratos! Reckon I can still pull for a bit.” He dragged the unconscious rower from his bench and took the man’s place. The rowers ahead of and behind that bench hadn’t lost more than a couple of strokes before the oar was served once more.

Menedemos took his hand off the port steering oar and stood aside to let Sostratos get to the tools of the keleustes’ trade. “Next one who goes down, you grab an oar,” Menedemos said.

“I will,” Sostratos answered. He knew how to row, as most Rhodian men did. Unlike Diokles’, though, his hands were soft, as befit a gentleman. He’d tear his palms to pieces if he had to ply an oar for long. Well, that was as nothing next to the things that would happen to him if he were sold into slavery. He’d pull his lungs out, and worry about bloody blisters later.

For a little while, he set himself so he could see both the rowers and Demetrios’ galley. Then Menedemos said, “Pay attention to the stroke. I’ll tell you when you need to speed up or slow down.”

“As you say.” When his cousin spoke as captain, Sostratos gave him full of obedience. And he found he was steadier with the rhythm when he didn’t look up to see how the war galley was doing.

When the sun lay only a couple of its own diameters above the western horizon, Menedemos said, “I think they’re giving up. We’ve gained a lot of ground—well, of water—on them, and they have to realize they can’t overhaul us before the light goes.”

“Gods be praised!” Sostratos said. “If we make it home safe to Rhodes, I’ll give Poseidon a sheep.” He might not be sure Zeus’ brother ruled the seas, but he also wasn’t altogether sure the god didn’t. Better to take no chances, then.

“As long as that wide-arsed bugger is still in sight of us, I’m going to keep going south as well as west, even if we could round Cape Pedalion now,” Menedemos said.

“Why?” Sostratos asked, as he was no doubt meant to do.

“Because, my dear, I want Demetrios’ captain there to think the Aphrodite is a natural part of Ptolemaios’ fleet, and that we’re trying to get home safe to Alexandria,” Menedemos replied. “The less that ties us to Rhodes, the happier I’ll be.”

“Oh.” Sostratos chewed on that for a moment, then dipped his head. “Well, when you’re right, you’re right. The fewer reasons Demetrios and Antigonos have to hold a grudge against us, the better off the polis will be.”

“May be,” his cousin amended bleakly. “The Demetrios will take all of Cyprus now. Once he’s done that, he’ll look around and see only one polis in the neighborhood that doesn’t bend the knee to his father and him.”

“Rhodes,” Sostratos said.

“Rhodes,” Menedemos agreed. “He and Antigonos may decide to swallow us just to tidy things up, you might say.”

“I wish I could tell you you were wrong,” Sostratos said, “but I’m afraid you’re right again.” Menedemos had made much more sense than usual on this voyage. Maybe he truly was growing up at last.

“One good thing,” he said now. “The moon’s as near new as makes no difference, so it won’t be rising till just before sunrise. That gives us plenty of time to get away from the war galley with her skipper none the wiser.”

After the sun sank in the sea, twilight lingered longer than Sostratos wished it would. Or maybe that was only his imagination, stretching time finer than it really went. As night’s onset cooled the air, the rower Diokles had replaced came to his senses.

“Get out of there, old man!” he told the keleustes. “I’ll take back my oar.”

“Drink some wine. East some bread and oil,” Diokles said. “Get your strength back. You won’t be working tonight. I’m fine here.”

“He’s right, Rhinias,” Sostratos said. “We should be safe now, but you don’t want to push hard and pass out again.”

“Or drop dead,” Diokles said.

“I wouldn’t do that!” Rhinias said.

“You won’t get the chance,” Sostratos said firmly. “If you’re all right tomorrow, maybe we’ll put you back to work. Till then, you’re a passenger, only we pay you instead of your paying us.” Since he doubled as the Aphrodite’s physician, his words carried weight.

They also made Rhinias smile. “Since you put it that way, why can’t the rest of you abandoned troglodytes row faster?” he said. Everyone laughed then. Laughing let Sostratos forget for a little while what a disaster Rhodes’ most important friend had just suffered. Was Ptolemaios still alive? If he was, was he still free or Demetrios’ prisoner? Not knowing, all Sostratos could do was worry.

Menedemos looked over his shoulder as the sun rose behind him. Since it rose north of due east at this summery season, the akatos was still heading southwest. The ship had left Cape Pedalion behind early in the night. She was out of sight of land. That bothered him less than it would have before he crossed the Inner Sea to go to Alexandria. Even if he couldn’t see Cyprus, he had a good notion of where it lay.

More to the point at the moment, he couldn’t see Demetrios’ war galley, either. The Aphrodite had made a clean getaway during the hours of darkness. If no piratical pentekonter came shooting out from behind a little headland, the Aphrodite had a clear track to Rhodes … and to bringing Rhodes what news she had of Ptolemaios’ defeat.

Menedemos swung the ship to starboard, pulling the tiller in his right hand toward him and pushing the one in his left away by about the same distance. When he’d turned her through about a quarter of a circle, he asked Sostratos, “How are you holding?”

“I’m tired,” answered his cousin, who’d beaten out the stroke for the rowers all through the night. “I can keep going a while longer if I have to, though.”

“Can you conn the ship till you spy land? It shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours, but I’m so worn I feel as though daimons have been beating on me with mallets. You can give Diokles back his toys. We don’t need every single oar manned now.”

“Toys?” Diokles called from the rowing bench he’d taken, his voice full of gruff—and false—indignation.

“What else would you call them?” Sostratos returned. Diokles’ answer made Menedemos snicker—it came straight out of Lysistrata, whether the keleustes knew it or not. Diokles came back to reclaim the hammer and triangle. Sostratos took the steering oars from Menedemos. Menedemos curled up on the stern platform like an Alexandrian cat in the sun.

Cats, he thought. I was going to bring some cats back to Rhodes. Have to do that some other year. He closed his eyes and thought no more.

Next thing he knew, a hand on his shoulder shook him awake. “Diokles has the helm,” Sostratos said. “We’re in sight of land.”

“Oh.” Menedemos sat up, knuckling sand from his eyes. He could have used another couple of days’ sleep, or at least another couple of hours’. He remembered he wasn’t the only one. Everybody aboard the Aphrodite had to be weary down to the very marrow. “Do you and the oarmaster want some rest? Nikagoras can set the stroke for a while. No one’s on our tail, gods be praised.”

“If you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. Even Diokles didn’t claim he was fine, which proved how tired he had to be.

Once more, Menedemos’ hands molded themselves around the steering-oar tillers. He wondered whether, if he lived to be an old man, they would take that curved shape of themselves. Plenty of men who did the same thing over and over for years found it marking their bodies.

His chances of living into old age seemed better now than they had when Demetrios’ war galley came after the akatos. Those big ships might carry swarms of marines, but they weren’t as fast or as agile as this one.

He’d been thinking about the news he would bring to Rhodes. Now he wondered once more what kind of news Rhodes would have for him. Did he have a half-brother, or perhaps a son? Baukis would have had the baby by now, surely. Was she all right? Remembering the fate of his own mother, his father’s first wife, he knew there was no guarantee. No guarantee the baby would survive, either. So many newborns didn’t.

How many times had he chased those fears round and round inside the cavern of his skull? More than he could count. They felt different now, more real, more urgent. Now he was almost home. Soon he wouldn’t fear anymore. Soon he would know, and knowing might be worse.

How would his father greet him, at the quay or at the family house? As a son come home safe after a dangerous but profitable voyage? Or as an adulterer who’d debauched and impregnated his stepmother? If Baukis had called out the wrong name—or rather, the right one—while in the torment of labor ….

The tragedians Sostratos loved so well wrote plays about stories like that, though theirs had gods in them. When such things happened in real life, what then? Menedemos saw only one thing. If he escaped without bloodshed, what could he do but flee Rhodes, change his name, and make a new life in some inland town that had no traffic with the sea?

Sostratos had promised Poseidon a sheep for delivering the akatos from Demetrios’ war galley. A sheep was not a small offering, but …. “Aphrodite, if you keep Baukis’ good name safe, and mine, I’ll give you a bullock,” Menedemos murmured.

For a moment, the sound of the sea seemed the sound of laughter. Menedemos imagined it was the goddess laughing at him. He wasn’t asking her to turn the future. He wanted her to change the past if that past hadn’t turned out the way he wanted it to. Even if the goddess were inclined to grant such a prayer, wouldn’t the Fates prevent it?

Of course they would. If the gods started granting retrospective prayers, the past would turn into something like the wax on a writing tablet’s panel. Endlessly scribbled on, rubbed out, and then scribbled on again with something new. That wasn’t answered prayer. That was chaos.

Still holding the steering-oar tillers, Menedemos shrugged. If everything turned out all right, he’d still give Aphrodite her bullock. You didn’t want to cheat the gods, even when you’d asked one for something she couldn’t possibly give.

Four or five rowers not at their oars rested on the small bow platform. Two stretched out in slumber. The rest were sitting up, talking and looking out over the sea. Suddenly one of the loungers pointed to port and bawled, “There’s a ship out there!”

Ice ran through Menedemos, even under the hot sun. He couldn’t worry about what would happen when he came to Rhodes if he never got there. His eye followed the rower’s finger. Sure enough, there was a bump on the southern horizon.

That shout also roused Sostratos, who sat up. “What are you going to do?” he asked around a yawn.

There was the question, all right. Menedemos needed only a few heartbeats to come up with an answer. “As long as that ship doesn’t turn towards us, I’m not going to do a gods-cursed thing,” he said. “If she does come at us, either we’ll run or we’ll serve out some of the weapons the Ptolemaios saddled us with and give the whoresons the best fight we can. Or if you have a better scheme, give forth. I’d love to hear it.”

His cousin tossed his head. “Not me. Those seem about the best choices we have.”

“Good.” Menedemos meant it. Sostratos was a modern Odysseus, always full of clever plans. If he saw nothing that improved on Menedemos’ idea, chances were there was nothing to be seen.

Chances were … Menedemos worried the inside of his lower lip with his teeth, almost as if he were fretting about Baukis. The weight of command pressed on his shoulders as the weight of the world must have pressed on Atlas’. Sostratos could suggest whatever popped into his head. Menedemos had to decide, and afterwards to live with what he’d decided.

Or to die with it. That chance was what made command such a weight. Make a mistake and you might lose your ship, your freedom, or your life. So might all the men who followed your mistaken order. It wasn’t a game you played for yourself alone. Everyone aboard the Aphrodite relied on you to be right. So did your family back in Rhodes.

Thinking of his family in Rhodes brought Menedemos back to Baukis. Everything did, sooner or later. He kicked at the planking under his feet. Suppose he came home safely. Suppose she’d had her baby. Suppose it was his, and a boy. Then what?

That was one more thing he hadn’t cared to dwell on, and still didn’t. Even if everything went as well as it could for him and for the woman he loved, she’d still be his father’s wife. After she recovered from childbirth, she’d go back to his father’s bed. She wouldn’t warm his. The most they could hope for was rare, frantic couplings like the one that might have got her with child to begin with. Most of the time, they’d have to pretend they were nothing but stepmother and stepson. What kind of life was that?

No kind of life at all. The one good thing he could see about it was that it looked better than any other possibility. That didn’t seem enough, but what else was there?

Nearly everyone aboard the Aphrodite was craning his neck to port, doing his best to make out what the strange ship was. One of the rowers said, “I think it’s a gods-cursed pentekonter!”

That was the last thing Menedemos wanted to hear. A pentekonter, whether attached to Demetrios’ fleet or a pirate ship prowling alone, was fast enough to overhaul the akatos and carried enough men to overwhelm the Rhodians. His own fear grew, for the stranger was surely a galley, showing no mast or sail. Yet it had not turned toward his ship.

Sostratos had good eyes. Menedemos didn’t know how he did, since he stared at scrolls so much, but he did. “No, it’s not a pentekonter,” he said now. “Not enough oars. I think it’s another akatos, maybe bound from Paphos to Kition.”

“Gods, I hope you’re right,” Menedemos said.

“We’ll know pretty soon,” his cousin replied.

The stranger on the sea wanted no more of the Aphrodite than Menedemos wanted anything to do with her. Instead of approaching, her rowers put more distance between her and the Rhodian vessel. As she turned away, Menedemos started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” asked Diokles, who was also awake now.

“Not a pentekonter. Not even an akatos,” Menedemos answered. “A fornicating akation, that’s all, with maybe six or eight oars on each side. Her skipper’s really got something to be scared of from us. But we …. We saw a cat walking down an alleyway in Alexandria at night, and we thought it was a lion.”

“Cats are bad enough,” Diokles said. Menedemos was glad he hadn’t talked with the keleustes about bringing some back to Rhodes. Not everybody liked them, plainly.

“Many good-byes to that cursed baby galley,” Sostratos said. “I hope her rowers all fall over dead from apoplexy. Getting a scare like that after we made it out of the sea-fight whole was too much.”

“If you think I’ll argue with you, you’re daft,” Menedemos replied. “We’ll be pissing ourselves every time we see anything on the ocean bigger than a fishing boat.”

“I wondered whether the polis has our fleet out on patrol,” Sostratos said. “Or are we keeping the triremes in the shipsheds so we don’t give Demetrios and Antigonos any excuse to fight us?”

“There’s an interesting question!” Menedemos said. “The only good thing is, Rhodians will recognize the Aphrodite when they get close. They won’t try to sink us on sight.”

“We hope they won’t. They’re going to be edgy, too. Everyone in the eastern half of the Inner Sea is edgy right now. By the gods, for all I know the Carthaginians are edgy out west, too,” Sostratos said. “We just have to pray our skippers don’t try to ram first and figure out what they’re ramming afterwards.”

“Thank you, my dear. You always know how to cheer me up,” Menedemos said.

“My pleasure, O best one,” Sostratos answered with courtesy he didn’t usually show: sardonic courtesy, if Menedemos was any judge … and, after a lifetime with his cousin, he was. “Any little thing I can do to ease your mind, you have but to ask.”

Something else occurred to Menedemos, though it was nothing that eased his mind. “I wonder what Menelaos will do back in the town of Salamis. Ptolemaios isn’t going to rescue him, or bring him reinforcements and fresh supplies.”

“The other interesting question is, what will Demetrios do to Menelaos if he takes Salamis by storm or if Menelaos has to surrender to him?” Sostratos said. “Menelaos is probably mighty interested in that question now.”

“I would be, in his sandals,” Menedemos said. War was a hard business when you lost. Victors commonly sold defeated soldiers into slavery. Alexander hadn’t done things like that when he overran Persia, and Demetrios prided himself on matching Alexander in generalship as well as looks (though Alexander was said to have been short, while Demetrios stood well above 4 cubits high—he was even taller than Sostratos). How much could Menelaos rely on his magnanimity, though?

“For all we know, the Ptolemaios is dead or captured himself,” Sostratos said. “If Demetrios and Antigonos have Ptolemaios and Menelaos, doesn’t that mean they have Egypt, too? And if they have Egypt, too, who’s going to stop them from grabbing the rest of Alexander’s domain?”

“Seleukos may,” Menedemos said. His cousin sent him a look, and he understood why. Seleukos’ strength lay far to the east. If Egypt fell to Antigonos and Demetrios, who would stop them from gobbling up Rhodes next? No one Menedemos could see.

“We have to act as though Ptolemaios is still free and running Egypt till we know for certain that he isn’t, because—” Sostratos began.

“Because if he’s not, we may as well cut our own throats now and save ourselves the trouble later,” Menedemos broke in. Sostratos was thinking along with him much too well. If Demetrios had Ptolemaios, if Demetrios and Antigonos had Egypt, the game in the eastern half of the Inner Sea was as good as over.

“What do you think the people who run things in Rhodes will do when we bring back news like this?” Sostratos asked.

“People like our fathers, you mean?” Menedemos gibed.

His cousin dipped his head. “People like them, yes, and people who can buy and sell them.”

There weren’t many people like that in Rhodes, as Menedemos knew. But there were some, and their weight in shaping the polis’ relations with the outside world was inversely proportional to their scanty numbers. Slowly, Menedemos answered, “Either they’ll stick their heads into their shells like so many tortoises and not want to come out at all or they’ll run in crazy circles, as if they were hens that met the chopper but didn’t die right away. Whichever road they choose, they won’t be happy about it.”

“No.” Sostratos left things right there, which was probably just as well. Messengers who brought bad news weren’t loved for it, and all of Rhodes had relied on Ptolemaios as a counterweight against Demetrios and his father. For the time being, at least, the counterweight was gone. Menedemos and Sostratos would have to tell that to the polis’ great men.

That wasn’t quite so terrifying a prospect as having Demetrios’ war galley chasing the Aphrodite after Ptolemaios’ line of ships got shattered, but it wasn’t far behind, either. Menedemos swore under his breath. The akatos was bringing home not only bag after bag of silver but also the military supplies Ptolemaios had commandeered her to carry. And what kind of thanks would her captain and crew get for that? Not much, not if Menedemos was any judge.

Sostratos wasn’t surprised when Menedemos put in at Kourion, well short of Paphos, on the voyage west. People in Paphos would remember the Aphrodite had stopped there with Ptolemaios’ fleet. They’d ask questions without convenient answers. Best to skirt that if at all possible.

In Kourion, they knew Ptolemaios’ fleet had sailed east to meet Demetrios’, but that was all they knew. Menedemos didn’t tell them anything more. “I sailed from Alexandria myself, a few days after the Ptolemaios left,” he said to people who called questions from the piers. “I aim to stay out of trouble, not get into it.”

“You lie like a Cretan,” Sostratos told him—quietly, so none of the locals would overhear.

“The daimon I do,” his cousin answered. “I aim to stay out of trouble, but sometimes I miss.”

Sostratos burst out laughing. When it came to bare-faced effrontery, Menedemos could play with anyone. But Menedemos wasn’t in this game alone. “How do we keep the rowers from blabbing?” Sostratos said. “I know we’re only here for the night, but—”

“Promise them an extra day’s pay if no one gets diarrhea of the mouth,” Menedemos said at once. “With silver on the line, they’ll watch each other like falcons, and we’ve got more of it than we know what to do with, almost.”

“My dear, I think you just rolled a triple six!” Sostratos sketched a salute. Then he went up the rowing benches, passing the word on to the oarsmen. The ploy worked as well as his cousin had hoped it would. The men loudly and profanely agreed to keep their mouths shut, and to pound to gravel anyone who slipped up.

With a few rowers, Sostratos went down the pier to the shops near the base. He bought fried fish and fresh bread, enough for everyone to enjoy a good supper. They brought the food back to the akatos and handed it out.

“Euge!” the sailors cried. Some of them raised cups full of rough shipboard wine in salute.

One of them went further, spilling out a small libation and calling, “This for Sostratos the beautiful!” The rest of the men whooped and cheered.

“Oh, by the gods!” Sostratos exclaimed, which only made the rowers whoop some more. His face felt on fire; he hoped they wouldn’t notice his blushes. No one had ever called him beautiful when he was a youth. He knew too well he hadn’t been beautiful—that kind of praise always went to Menedemos. To hear it now, although it wasn’t serious, flustered him more than he cared to admit, even to himself.

His cousin grinned and said, “They’ll be scrawling your name on the walls next thing you know.”

“Oh, to the crows with you!” Sostratos said. The rowers were teasing him for the fun of it. Menedemos really had had that kind of popularity, admiration, whatever the perfect word was. Sostratos knew how acutely he’d felt the lack of it when he was fourteen or fifteen.

That was half a lifetime ago now, of course. If he chose to, he could fill the role of erastes now, not eromenos: the lover, not the beloved. He was a man, not a youth. But the youth lived just under the man’s skin, and always would. The pain the youth had known then could still stab the man.

For a wonder, Menedemos seemed to hear whatever had been in his voice. He let it go instead of pushing it the way he often did. That let Sostratos simmer down. It didn’t let him forget. No one ever forgot being ignored and unwanted. You could, if you were lucky enough and wise enough, perhaps find a way to live without letting it trouble you too much. But it never went away.

The Aphrodite slipped out of Kourion even before the sun climbed up over the eastern horizon. “Rosy-fingered dawn,” Sostratos murmured as the sky lightened toward real morning.

“Really, my dear?” Menedemos said. “I’m the one who quotes Homer most of the time. And when I do, you tell me Sokrates or Platon or Theophrastos show how the poet was talking rubbish.”

“Funny. When I talk about Sokrates, you throw Aristophanes’ Clouds at me,” Sostratos said. “I wonder how often people who thought they were funny shouted bits of it at him when he walked down the street. I wonder why he didn’t punch them in the nose, too. By the gods, I would have.” Of themselves, his hands balled into fists.

His cousin sent him a quizzical look. “What’s got into you today?”

“Nothing,” Sostratos said, and not a word more.

“You sound like Odysseus telling Polyphemos the Cyclops his name was Nobody,” Menedemos remarked.

“Nodysseus would come closer,” Sostratos said. Sure enough, outis, the Greek word for nobody, sounded very much like the resourceful hero’s name.

“That’s pretty bad,” Menedemos said, but he sounded more admiring than not.

“Don’t blame me. Blame Homer,” Sostratos said.

“You’re here. He isn’t,” Menedemos answered. He looked around. “And we’re out of the harbor, and I don’t think anyone in Kourion has any idea we were part of Ptolemaios’ fleet.”

Sostratos cupped his hands in front of his mouth and called, “We did what we needed to do! A day’s bonus for all the rowers aboard!”

The men pulling the oars raised a cheer. Menedemos cocked an eyebrow. “You might have waited till we got farther away. Now the Kourians may be wondering why we’re so happy to leave their worthless little town.”

“Huh!” Sostratos sniffed. “If you had to live out your days in that miserable place, wouldn’t you want to get away as fast as you could if only you had the chance?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Menedemos said. “There’s no place in the world so grand as Rhodes—well, except Alexandria and Athens, I suppose.”

“Alexandria’s big. I don’t know how grand it is, though I expect it will be once it’s had the time to finish baking,” Sostratos said, which made his cousin chuckle. But his voice turned serious as he went on, “Athens, now … Athens isn’t just a polis. Even after everything that’s happened to it the past hundred years, Athens is the world. Rhodes is a fine place—don’t get me wrong, O best one. But the first time I went into Athens, I felt as though I’d come from a little farming village somewhere, with dung still on my feet.”

“And I’ll bet the Athenians made you feel that way, too.” Menedemos was a couple of palms shorter than Sostratos, but by tilting his head back somehow contrived to look down his nose at him.

The sun rose as Sostratos laughed. “They can be like that, yes—you’ve seen it for yourself,” he said. His cousin dipped his head. Sostratos continued, “But it’s not just the people. It’s the buildings and the art and the knowledge and the past. Hellas is what it is, for better and for worse, because Athens is what it is.”

“These days, Athens is Demetrios’ lapdog. We saw it happen.”

“I know. But it’s more than that, too, or he wouldn’t have wanted it,” Sostratos said. To his relief, Menedemos didn’t argue. The Aphrodite went on toward Rhodes.