Salamis

XIV

“Oh, the gods be praised!” Menedemos exclaimed when his home polis came into sight ahead.

Diokles looked over his shoulder. “We knew things were all right when we talked to those fishermen off the coast.”

“We knew things were all right when we saw Demetrios’ friends weren’t burning every farmhouse and village on the island so they could lay siege to the polis,” Sostratos added.

“There’s a difference between hearing things or reasoning about things and finding out with your own eyes,” Menedemos insisted. “It’s like the difference between hearing about love and being in love.”

“Trust you to come up with a comparison like that,” Sostratos said. Diokles laughed. Menedemos lifted one hand from the steering oar to aim a filthy gesture at them both. Diokles laughed harder. Sostratos hadn’t been laughing, but he started.

“There are the harbor forts,” Menedemos said, pointing. “People look to be working on the seawalls, too. That’s good. We’ll be … as ready as we can be, anyhow.”

The keleustes and his cousin stopped laughing then. The news they were bringing back to their home city wasn’t good, and nothing could make it good. Even if Ptolemaios had escaped from the battle off Salamis, he wouldn’t be able to send, or want to send, another fleet north from Egypt for some time to come. Rhodes was on her own.

Menedemos sighed. “All we can do is all we can do. Diokles, get rowers on all the oars, will you? We may as well look good when we come into the harbor, eh?”

“Right you are, skipper.” Diokles bawled orders to the men. Soon every bench was full. He picked up the stroke, too, even before Menedemos asked him to. The oars dipped into the water and rose from it in smooth unison. The rowers wanted to show off, too.

I wonder if any admirals or trireme captains will be watching us come in, Menedemos thought, and then, I wonder how many of our crew will be rowing for the polis before long. The answer to that seemed much too clear. Unless Rhodes changed course and yielded to Antigonos and Demetrios, she would have to fight, on the sea as well as on land.

As the Aphrodite neared the moles that protected the Great Harbor from storms at sea and the forts on the moles protected it from seaborne attack, men in the forts who recognized the akatos and knew where she’d gone began shouting for news.

Menedemos shouted back at them: “I’ll tell it when I’m tied up at a pier—not a heartbeat before!”

The Rhodian soldiers swore at him. Like any other Hellenes, they wanted to hear the latest before anyone else could. They’d score points then for passing it on. Only they wouldn’t today, because Menedemos didn’t aim to tell it more than once, and then to people who needed to know it for reasons better than getting a leg up on gossip.

Two graybeards eating bread and drinking wine on a rowboat in the harbor, out for an afternoon wasting time in the sun, also called for news as the Aphrodite stroked past. They seemed even more offended than the soldiers when they didn’t get it.

“Here we go! Here we go! Easy! Easy!” Diokles glided up to a pier. “Now back oars—stroke! Once more!” He eyed the planks and the pilings. “Good. We’re home, by the gods!”

“We’re home, by the gods!” Menedemos echoed to Sostratos.

His cousin dipped his head. “We are. We’re home with a handsome profit, too—if we can keep it.”

“If,” Menedemos agreed.

A couple of dockside loungers made the Aphrodite fast to bollards on the pier. Menedemos hoped she could get hauled up into a shipshed soon; she’d spent a long time at sea, and her timbers were bound to be waterlogged. But that would have to wait.

More men came down the pier to see what the merchant galley was carrying—and, again, to sweep up as much news as they could. That wasn’t much. Sailors ran the gangplank from the ship to the pier. Menedemos crossed it. After so much time asea, planking that didn’t shift under his feet felt strange, even unnatural, to him.

He pointed at three loungers he knew. “Two oboloi for each of you—one now, the second when you bring someone back here. Are you with me?” When none of them said no, he went on, “Karneades, go to my father’s house and fetch him here. Athanippos, do the same for Lysistratos, my uncle. He lives across the street from my father. And Simias, you bring Komanos.”

Every man collected a small silver coin and hurried away. One of the loungers Menedemos hadn’t hired was peering into the Aphrodite. He asked, “How come your ship’s all full of shields and arrows and things?”

“I’ll tell the whole story once,” Menedemos said. “Just once. You can wait and listen, or you can go play with it.”

To his disappointment, the man hung around. A small crowd, and then a crowd not so small, gathered on the pier and on the dry land at its base. Half of Rhodes would know the Aphrodite had gone to Egypt, and all of Rhodes would know Antigonos’ son was fighting Ptolemaios’ brother on Cyprus. If Menedemos had news about any of that, people wanted to hear it.

They wouldn’t want to hear what Menedemos told them. He knew that too well. One more reason to want to tell it just the once.

Someone on the pier made as if to go down into the akatos to see what all she carried. Menedemos said, “By the gods, friend, I’ll shove you into the drink if you take one more step.” He sounded as if he looked forward to it. He did.

“Who the daimon are you?” the fellow asked.

“The skipper.”

The man didn’t take the step. “I can’t swim,” he said.

Menedemos smiled, the way Medusa might have when she was turning someone to stone. “Good.”

All at once, the Rhodian decided he wasn’t so curious after all. He drew back, and nobody seemed eager to take his place. A commotion broke out at the back of the crowd. There was Karneades trying to push his way forward, with Philodemos doing his best to help.

“Let my father through!” Menedemos shouted in a voice that could have reached from the Aphrodite’s stern to bow in the middle of a roaring gale. Sailors would have done whatever he told them without even thinking about it. Landlubbers were less used to taking orders. That always annoyed Menedemos, never more than today.

At last, Philodemos and his guide stood in front of Menedemos. After giving Karneades the second obolos, he clasped his father’s hand. “Hail,” he said.

“Hail, son. It’s good to see you home,” Philodemos said.

“It’s good to be home,” Menedemos said, and meant it. “Things have been … lively.”

“They often are, where you’re involved.” Even at the moment of return, Philodemos couldn’t resist a gibe. He did add, “They’ve been lively here, too, I will say.”

“Ah?” Menedemos did his best not to seem too eager for news of Rhodes.

“That’s right. You have a new half-brother. I’ve named him Diodoros, for he is Zeus’ gift to the family,” Philodemos said.

“Congratulations, Father. I hope your wife came through the birth well.” Menedemos made himself sound calm and detached over something he cared about more than anything else in the world. If anything had happened to Baukis ….

She can’t be dead, Menedemos told himself. His father’s hair wasn’t cropped short, as it would have been if he were mourning. But birth was as hard on women as battle was on men. Baukis might be suffering from fever, might be … Menedemos didn’t know what all she might be. He’d never needed to worry about it, not in detail.

But Philodemos dipped his head. “She’s as well as can be expected, gods be praised. And the little fellow looks much the way you did when you were a baby. He looks a lot like me, in other words. I must have strong seed.” He sounded pleased with himself, even smug.

Menedemos wondered whether Diodoros looked like him because they both had the same father or because he was the baby’s father. Odds were Baukis wasn’t sure herself, in which case no one would ever know for certain. In law, Diodoros was Philodemos’ son.

Then Menedemos got distracted, perhaps mercifully: the escorts leading Lysistratos and Komanos came to the harbor at about the same time. They and the men they’d brought fought their way through the crowd. Menedemos paid off the other two loungers. He greeted his uncle and the powerful civic leader. Then he held both hands in the air to get the crowd’s attention.

Little by little, the men who’d been gabbling quieted down. “Hear me, O gentlemen of Rhodes,” Menedemos said, as if he were speaking before the Assembly. That started them chattering again. He’d known it would. “Hear me!” he repeated, louder this time. He finally got something close enough to silence to suit him.

“The Ptolemaios and the Demetrios fought a great battle on the sea off Cypriot Salamis,” he told the crowd. “I was there in the Aphrodite, which Ptolemaios had hired to help carry his military supplies.”

His father, his uncle, Komanos, and others in the crowd who understood how things worked looked startled and alarmed. Rhodes was supposed to stay neutral in the wars among Alexander’s generals. The political leader said, “Why did you go with Ptolemaios’ fleet?”

“Because, O most excellent one, my other choice was having my ship confiscated and getting interned in Alexandria,” Menedemos answered bleakly. “This way, at least we got some silver for having the Aphrodite used. The Demetrios won the battle, I’m afraid. Most of Ptolemaios’ fleet is lost. I don’t know if he lives, or whether he’s free if he does. Not many of his ships got away. We were one of the lucky ones.”

That set everyone exclaiming, as he’d once more known it would. Well, almost everyone. Komanos opened his mouth, then closed it again without saying anything. Menedemos’ father also held his peace. His expression went thoughtful rather than shocked. Menedemos dared take that for a good sign. Uncle Lysistratos said, “So all these tools for murder in the Aphrodite would have gone to Ptolemaios’ soldiers if they’d managed to land near Salamis?”

“That’s right, sir. I don’t think any of them managed to, or even to escape Demetrios’ fleet. We had to outrun a big war galley ourselves. Believe me, I thought about throwing all that stuff into the drink so we could go faster,” Menedemos said.

“Why didn’t you?” Komanos asked.

“Well, O best one, for one thing, we managed to stay ahead of that big beamy whoreson without doing it,” Menedemos replied. “And, for another, I thought Rhodes could use every sword, every arrow, every shield we were carrying. Just in case, if you know what I mean.”

Komanos somberly dipped his head. “I know much too well. The polis may be in your debt.”

“I live here, too, sir. I want to go on living in a free and independent polis if I can.” Belatedly, Menedemos realized he and Sostratos might have sold the warlike gear to the city for a good bit of silver. He shrugged. Sometimes profit came at too high a price. He hadn’t been joking. Rhodes could use every weapon she could lay her hands on. And she could use every drakhma in her coffers, for weapons or work on the walls or ships or grain or … anything.

Sostratos’ father said, “You don’t even know if the Ptolemaios got away safe?”

“No, sir. I have no idea,” Menedemos answered. “I wish I did, but I don’t. We were back with the transports, you understand, behind the warships, and at the rear of the transports at that. When the transport skippers realized Demetrios’ war galleys had beaten Ptolemaios’, we all scattered, every ship on its own.”

“It will be as it is.” Komanos’ voice still sounded uncommonly heavy, as well it might. “Before long, we’ll find out what did happen to Ptolemaios, and we’ll go on from there.”

“Yes, sir. But if he’s sunk and drowned, or mewed up in chains on Demetrios’ flagship—” Menedemos broke off. He saw no way to go on.

Komanos did. “If we have to make the best terms we can with Demetrios and his father, then we do that, and hope the future repeats the past.”

Rhodes had briefly had a Macedonian garrison while Alexander was alive, but got free of it shortly after he died. Menedemos had been a youth then, not involved in the polis’ affairs. Things were different now.

Underscoring that, Komanos said, “As I told you, the polis is in your debt for bringing us the news as quickly as you did, and for bringing these … other things as well.” His eyes flicked to the armaments stowed under most of the rowing benches and everywhere else there was room on the ship. “We do try to remember what we owe.”

“We’re citizens, sir. We try to remember that, too,” Menedemos said. “If you’d care to tell off some men to carry the weapons to the armory ….”

“I will do that very thing.” Komanos’ voice rose as he addressed the men who’d been watching and listening. “Who’ll fetch and carry for his polis? Three oboloi to any man who bears a bundle to the armory.” A few hands went up, but only a few. Komanos chuckled. “Everything costs more than you wish it would. All right, O gentlemen of Rhodes—I’ll not play the niggard today. A drakhma for every bundle. Now who’s game?”

Doubling the wage produced many more willing workers. That surprised Menedemos not at all. Sostratos got the sailors to start handing sheaves of catapult bolts, stacks of shields, and other military gear up the gangplank to the loungers, which had the added benefit of keeping would-be thieves off the akatos. Sostratos had let Menedemos do the talking; that wasn’t his strength. But when it came to making sure things ran smoothly, he was hard to beat.

As the last of the weapons headed into the polis, Menedemos came up onto the pier and spoke to his father and Sostratos’: “We have silver aboard, too, and some other things that will want securing.”

“I hoped you might,” Philodemos said. Lysistratos dipped his head.

Sostratos spoke up then: “I’ll need some of that silver to pay off the rowers. They had easy times in Alexandria, but gods know they worked hard taking us there and back. And they all pulled like heroes when we were getting away from Demetrios’ monster of a galley.”

“True. Too true!” Menedemos said. “I felt like a sprat with a tuna after me. But we did get away.”

“Fine. I’ll get some people we can count on to bring those things back to our house and Lysistratos’,” his father said. “And Sostratos can bring the rest of the silver back with him when he finishes paying the men. I’ll send a couple of beefy fellows to walk back with him, too, so no one knocks him over the head between here and the houses.”

“Thanks, Uncle Philodemos,” Sostratos said. Menedemos wondered if his father would have done the same for him had he been the one doling out drakhmai to the rowers. Probably, he admitted to himself. The silver was important, even if his own carcass wasn’t.

He was back in Rhodes. He let himself believe it. He had a baby half-brother—or maybe a baby son. And the woman he loved, the woman with whom he might have fathered the baby, had come through the birth, and hadn’t given him away. Taken all in all, life might have been much worse in spite of what Demetrios did to Ptolemaios.

“Tonight,” he said, “I’m going to get drunk.” No one, not even his father, tried to tell him no.

The sun was setting in the west, over the far side of the polis of Rhodes. Sostratos sat on the Aphrodite’s steps leading up to the stern platform. He had a leather sack of drakhmai to his right and his notes on which man was owed how much to his left. He’d paid off the rowers one by one. Some of them grumbled a little at what they got. But he had the written records, and they didn’t. Nobody kicked up a big fuss.

Last in line came Attinos. The Egyptian who spoke profane Greek didn’t complain about his pay. Sostratos said, “I’m sorry, but I have no idea when you’ll be able to go back to Alexandria.”

“Me, neither. Ahh, futter it,” Attinos said with a shrug. “You know where maybe I find some work here?”

“Let me think.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. He switched languages to ask, “Do you speak Aramaic?”

“Little fucking bit,” Attinos said in that language. What he knew, he must have learned from the kind of people from whom he’d picked up his Greek. Or maybe he spoke Egyptian the same way, too. Some men cursed as readily as they breathed. He went on, “Talk Greek better.”

“All right. Even a little will help you,” Sostratos said. “I don’t know a whole lot myself. But there’s a Phoenician merchant named Himilkon who might take you on. His warehouses are that way, three piers down and one street inland.” He pointed. “Tell him he can ask me about you.”

Attinos grinned crookedly. “So you tell him what a big son of a whore I is?”

Sostratos laughed. “If I thought you were, I wouldn’t give you his name. It’s starting to get dark, so I don’t know if he’s still there now, but he will be in the morning.”

“I try him,” Attinos said. “Most Hellenes, they wide-arses who don’t even think Egyptians and other foreigners is people. You, you different. How come you is?”

As usual, Sostratos took the question seriously. “I don’t know. I’ve done business with Hellenes and with barbarians, and I haven’t seen a whole lot of differences. Good men and bad, honest men and thieves? Some everywhere.”

“Truth. Fornicating truth.” Attinos stowed his pay in a belt pouch. He sketched Sostratos a salute, then went up the gangplank, down the pier, and off toward Himilkon’s warehouse.

Sostratos still had a few coins in his hand. He slid them back into the leather sack from which they’d come and tied it shut with a rawhide thong. After carefully noting that he’d paid the last rower, he turned to the pair of bruisers Uncle Philodemos had hired; they were lolling on the stern platform, waiting for him to finish his business.

“Very good, best ones,” he said. “If you’ll be kind enough to escort me back to my father’s house ….”

They climbed to their feet. One was taller, the other wider. “Right you are, sir,” the wider man said. “You just come with us.”

As soon as they got off the pier, the taller one ducked into a tavern and came out with a sputtering torch. “Getting dark,” he remarked. “This’ll maybe keep us from stepping in something nasty.” He and his friend wore sandals. Sostratos, as usual, went barefoot. He held his peace.

No one did step in anything too vile. The guard’s torch was guttering by the time they got to Lysistratos’ house. When his father let him in, Sostratos brought the man a fresh light. He also gave him and his friend a couple of oboloi apiece.

“You don’t have to do that, sir,” the torchbearer said. “Philodemos, he already paid us.”

“I know. You’re a good man for saying so, though,” Sostratos replied. “This isn’t from my uncle. This is from me.”

Across the street, the squalls of a baby floated out from Philodemos’ house. The tough fellow who didn’t have a torch made a face. “You’ll have fun sleeping tonight with a brat so close and all,” he said.

“I won’t mind too much. I hope not, anyhow. That’s my new little first cousin,” Sostratos said.

“That’s Philodemos’ son?” asked the man with the torch. Sostratos dipped his head. The guard went on, “How about that? Philodemos, he’s not too young, but I guess he’s not too old, neither.”

Lysistratos stuck his head out into the street. “He’s my brother. My older brother, mind you. I’ll tell him you said that.”

Everyone laughed. The guards headed off to their own homes, or maybe to a wineshop. After Sostratos went back inside, his father closed and barred the door. “Is anything left to eat?” Sostratos asked. “It’s been a long time since breakfast.”

“Go on into the andron,” Lysistratos replied. “Threissa will bring you some supper.”

Lamps already lit the men’s room. A jar of wine, one of water, a dipper, and some cups sat on a small table by Sostratos’ usual couch. His father came in with him. “Will you drink wine with me, sir?” Sostratos asked him. “How strong would you like it?”

“A little less than half wine, I think,” Lysistratos said. “You’re coming home tonight—we can have it stronger than usual.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Sostratos watered the wine for his father and himself. He raised his cup. “Your health!”

“And yours,” Lysistratos answered. They both poured libations on the floor.

Threissa carried in a wooden tray with a loaf of barley bread, a small bowl of olive oil, a larger bowl of olives, and a platter of fried smelts—fried just now, Sostratos’ nose told him, not sitting on a counter in the kitchen since the rest of the family ate.

“Thank you, my dear,” Sostratos told the slave. “You’ve saved my life with this.”

“Is not’ing,” she said in her accented Greek. Like a lot of barbarians—and, indeed, like some Ionians—she had trouble with aspirated consonants. And she looked as if she wanted to hide while standing in plain sight. She was not enamored of Sostratos, but if he told her to come up to bed with him she had to go. He hadn’t told her that for a long time, but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t, especially when he was just back from a long stretch at sea.

At the moment, he had other appetites that wanted slaking. He tore off a chunk of bread, dipped it in the oil, and popped it into his mouth. “That’s good oil!” he exclaimed.

“It’s Damonax’s,” his father replied. “The same kind of stuff you were flogging in Egypt. You must have got rid of it, too. I didn’t see our work gang hauling any back here.”

“I sold a lot of it to the fellow who cooks for Ptolemaios’ nomarch in Memphis. He’s a Rhodian himself, from the same village as Damonax’s family. It tasted like old times to him, so he bought quite a bit,” Sostratos said.

“Euge!” Lysistratos said. “Did you get a good price?”

“Father, I got a terrific price. He was playing with the nomarch’s silver, after all, not his own. He didn’t care how much he spent.”

“Egypt is as rich as they say, then?”

“Richer!” Sostratos paused to sip wine, eat a couple of olives, and pop first one smelt and then another into his mouth. As he chewed, he went on, “No one who hasn’t been there can imagine how rich it is. No one in Hellas, no one even in old Sybaris or in Syracuse, lives the way that nomarch does. And he was just a nomarch! Ptolemaios’ place in Alexandria ….” He tossed his head in disbelief, then took more smelts from the platter. After he ate them, he said, “I can’t finish all of this, Father. I’ll burst if I try. Have some with me, please.”

“Maybe one or two,” Lysistratos said. Then he held the platter out to Threissa. “Would you like some?” Sostratos wished he’d thought to do that.

“T’ank you, Master!” she said, and ate. The family didn’t keep its slaves hungry, but they seldom got anything so nice.

“Get yourself a cup and have a little wine, too,” Sostratos said, trying to make amends. She scurried away, returning a moment later with a cup like his and his father’s. Sostratos watered her wine the same as he had for himself and Lysistratos. She made a face at him. Like Egyptians and many other barbarians, Thracians drank neat wine when in their native land.

But she smiled as she poured it down. “Is tasty!” she said.

“Good,” Sostratos replied. He poured more for his father, then more for himself. Before long, the slave woman’s cup was empty, too. Thracians had a name for drunkenness; Hellenes said Macedonians had learned their bad habits from them.

When he offered her a refill, though, she shook her head. Then she remembered to toss it like a Hellene. “No, young master, t’ank you,” she said. “I will fall down taking t’ings back to the kitc’en for was’ing.”

He shrugged. “However you please.” Had he been thinking that, if she got tiddly, she might put up with him better? He knew perfectly well that he had.

His father asked, “Do I need to know anything your cousin didn’t tell people at the harbor?”

“Only that we made a lot of silver down in Egypt, sir. If you’re a Hellene, you have to work hard not to make silver in Egypt, I think,” Sostratos replied. “The question is whether we’ll be able to keep it.”

“The polis has been strengthening the walls and the forts ever since Demetrios called on us this spring,” his father said. “Our men are training with weapons, too—you know about that.”

“Yes, sir. I was training myself, before the Aphrodite sailed.”

“Everyone’s doing it. Even oldsters like your uncle and I have been practicing with spear and shield and sword.”

Sostratos smiled. “How much good do you think you’d do against a veteran mercenary half your age?”

“Probably not a lot.” Sostratos’ father was almost as thoroughgoing a realist as he was himself. But Lysistratos continued, “I’ll have a better chance than if I hadn’t practiced, though. So will Philodemos. And fighting is like dicing. Every once in a while, you roll a triple six. Maybe we’ll be lucky.”

“May the gods hear you!” Sostratos said.

“Thanks. Maybe we won’t have to fight at all,” Lysistratos said. “We won’t do Antigonos and Demetrios any harm if they let us stay free and independent. They have to be able to see that … don’t they?” The falling note in his voice said he was trying to convince himself.

“Let’s hope the Ptolemaios got back to Alexandria. If he did, we still have a counterweight of sorts against Antigonos and his son. If he didn’t.” If Ptolemaios was captured or dead … Sostratos poured more wine, and watered it less than he had before. No, he didn’t want to think about that at all.

Neither did his father. “Let me have another cup, too, if you please,” Lysistratos said. Sostratos poured out another strong draught. After taking it with a murmur of thanks, his father asked Threissa, “Would you care for more, my dear?” He spoke to her with as much courtesy as if she were a high-born lady he happened to meet on a trading voyage. Sostratos admired the effect while knowing he couldn’t hope to imitate it.

She’d turned him down. For his father, she dipped her head. “If you please, Master. T’ank you very muc’.”

Sostratos did the honors. Again, he mixed the slave’s wine as he had for himself and his father. She noticed the difference; she looked sharply at him after her first sip. But then she smiled. It might not have been the neat wine Thracians were said to crave so much, but it came closer to that than what she usually got.

Lysistratos drained his cup fast. After finishing it, he looked a bit glassy-eyed—or maybe it was only reflections from the lamps. He let out a long sigh. “We’re sprats. You know that, son? Nothing but sprats. And the days when anchovies can make a living—can live at all—are just about gone. Pretty soon, the sea will hold nothing but tunny and sharks.”

“Menedemos and I talked about the same thing. I hope you’re wrong,” Sostratos said, fearing his father was right.

“So do I, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Only I am, aren’t I, with my life and everything I care about?” The older man got to his feet. “And I’ve drunk myself stupid, or at least tired. I’m going up to bed. Good night, both of you.” Stepping slowly and carefully, he left the andron.

“Will you come up to my room with me?” Sostratos asked Threissa as soon his he heard his father’s footsteps on the stairs.

She bit her lip. “Do I have to, young master?”

He tossed his head. “No. I won’t make you. But if you can put up with me ….” He could have beaten her, or just spent the next year making her life miserable in ways small and large. He knew he wouldn’t do anything like that. He hoped Threissa knew him well enough so she also understood he wouldn’t. The way he’d said what he’d just said should have told her he didn’t expect miracles of passion.

She thought for longer than he wished she would have. In the flickering lamplight, he had trouble reading her face. At last, she shrugged. “We can do. Why not? You don’t try to hurt me or anyt’ing.” By her tone, she understood how lucky a slave woman was to be able to say even so much.

“Come on, then.” Part of Sostratos knew he should have felt shame, but desire swamped it. He got up and walked toward the stairs, picking up a lamp to light the way. Threissa followed.

He closed and barred the door to his room, then set the lamp on a stool near the bed. He pulled his tunic off over his head. A moment later, Threissa did the same with her longer one. Even the small lampflame showed her skin milk-pale where the sun didn’t touch her. Unlike Greek or Egyptian women, she didn’t pluck or shave her bush.

They lay down together. His hands roamed her. He kissed her mouth, and kissed and caressed her breasts. He wanted to make her happy if he could. He knew he hadn’t when he’d taken her before. Pleasing her felt like a challenge.

He put her on elbows and knees and went into her from behind, as he would have done if she were a Hellene. His pleasure built and built and overflowed … and if she felt any at all, she hid it very well.

When he slid out, she squatted over the chamber pot and got rid of as much of his seed as she could. Women who didn’t want to conceive commonly did that. Maybe it helped, maybe not. They thought so. Sostratos had no idea, though he was sure it couldn’t hurt.

She picked up her tunic and put it on. Sostratos had thought about a second round, but it wasn’t urgent enough for him to say anything. He gave her a drakhma instead. “For your patience,” he said.

“T’ank you,” she said, and then, “Women got to be patient with men. We get in too much trouble when we not.”

Any number of stories from history and tragedy sprang into Sostratos’ mind. “I believe you,” he said. “Good night.” She opened the door and slid out. He pissed in the pot himself, then blew out the lamp, lay down, and fell asleep almost as fast as if he’d been clubbed.