Salamis

XV

Menedemos yawned as he ate bread and oil and drank watered wine at breakfast. His father was yawning, too. “I’d forgotten what a racket you used to make all night long,” Philodemos said.

“Diodoros takes after me, all right,” Menedemos answered, and then quickly raised his cup to his mouth so his father couldn’t see his face. Careful, fool! he told himself. He didn’t know whether the baby was his or his father’s. He never would. But he knew his father would want to kill him for lying with Baukis whether he’d got her with child or not.

Philodemos chuckled. “I expect I did the same thing when I was tiny. Everyone does.”

“Tiny is right!” Menedemos could safely say that. “He fit in the crook of my elbow when I held him last night. And he doesn’t seem to weigh anything at all.”

“You have to be careful to keep something under their heads for the first few months,” his father said. “They aren’t strong enough to hold them up for themselves at first.”

“Yes, Father. Your wife told me the same thing before she let me pick him up,” Menedemos said. The way Baukis looked had shocked him. She seemed to have aged five years, and to have worked through those five years in the mines. They didn’t call it labor for nothing. And she hadn’t given the smallest sign of remembering the passion they’d shared. Everything centered on Diodoros to her.

“I’m glad to see what a good mother she makes. And she’s come through childbirth as well as a woman can—better than your mother did after she had you.” Philodemos stared down into his own cup of wine. He still mourned his first wife, while Menedemos hardly remembered her or the sister she’d died birthing.

As if in one of Aristophanes’ comedies, Diodoros chose that moment to start crying again. Philodemos rolled his eyes. He’d been going through this since the baby came into the world. Menedemos said, “He has good lungs, that’s for sure. Gods grant he stay healthy, and the lady your wife, too.”

“I’ve prayed. I’ve sacrificed. I’ve done everything a man can do,” his father said. “The midwife and the physician both think she’s doing as well as anyone could hope—and your brother, too.”

“May it be so!” Menedemos exclaimed.

“Yes. Losing a wee one is hard. You know you shouldn’t love them—they’re so fragile when they’re small—but you can’t help yourself,” his father said. He would know what he was talking about, too.

Menedemos emptied his morning cup and thought about pouring himself another, this one with less water in it. That might make his heart beat faster. But people joked about men who started drinking hard as soon as they rolled out of bed. He knew a couple of men like that, and he joked about them … when they weren’t around to hear him, anyway.

His father also cast a longing glance at the amphora and at the mixing krater, but he didn’t fill his cup again, either. His father was a sensible man—not annoyingly sensible like, say, Sostratos, but sensible all the same. Philodemos slid off his couch and stood up. “Do you want to come upstairs with me and have another look at Diodoros?” he asked.

“I’ll do that.” Menedemos also rose. A house slave could clean up what they’d left—and likely eat some of the bread and oil. The household had never been one that fed its two-legged property barely enough to stay alive. You got runaways when you did that, and even the slaves who wouldn’t flee also wouldn’t work hard or take any pains at what they did.

And seeing his half-brother (if Diodoros wasn’t his son) would also let him see Baukis. She wouldn’t care, not the way she was right now, but he would. He followed his father to the stairs.

As they went up, the older man remarked, “I have to give you credit, son. You show more interest in the baby than I thought you would. My guess was, you’d just complain all the time about how much noise he made.”

That made Menedemos miss a step. He grabbed at the handrail to keep from falling on his face. Then he said, “He’s part of the family, too, sir. Depending on how things work out for Sostratos and me, he may end up running the business one of these years.”

“You are growing up. It’s taken you longer than it should have, but you are.” Philodemos hardly ever gave a compliment without dipping it in vinegar first.

Philodemos knocked on the door to the women’s quarters instead of just going in, as he had the right to do. He’d knocked the evening before, too, maybe because he’d also had Menedemos along them, maybe as a courtesy to the new mother inside.

A slave woman opened the door. She dipped her head to Philodemos. “Good day, Master.” She dipped it again to Menedemos, not quite so deeply. “And good day to you, young master.”

“Good day, Xanthe,” Menedemos and his father answered together. The slave’s hair was more light brown than yellow, but they called her Blondie anyhow.

“You wish to see the mistress and your son, sir?” she asked. Then she glanced at Menedemos. “Your little son, I mean.”

“I understood you.” Philodemos smiled. He seemed happier than he had before the Aphrodite sailed for Alexandria. And why not? He had that new son (or at least thought Diodoros was his), and Baukis had come through childbirth as well as could be expected. He went on, “We heard the baby crying when we were eating breakfast downstairs—and if he’s awake, Baukis will be, too.”

Xanthe also smiled. “That’s right. She’s nursing him now. Let me tell her the two of you are here.” As a Hellene would have, she used the dual, not the plural, to show that Philodemos and Menedemos formed a natural pair. She’d grown up speaking Greek; her mother had been a slave before her.

She ducked back into the mistress’ bedroom. Except a few times with his father after Philodemos remarried, Menedemos hadn’t gone in there since the days when he was a little boy with his own mother. He wondered how he would have been different had she lived longer, but shrugged a tiny shrug. How could you hope to know such a thing?

Sticking her head out the door, Xanthe said, “She’s ready for you, masters.”

Menedemos stayed a step behind his father as they went inside. He was here on Philodemos’ sufferance. Had Philodemos known how he felt about Baukis, had he known they’d lain together ….

No. That didn’t bear thinking about. And Father didn’t know any of those things. Gods willing, he never would.

The bedroom smelled a bit of human waste, but any room with a chamber pot in it was liable to. The odor here didn’t seem much stronger than usual.

Baukis sat at the edge of the bed. A shawl draped over her shoulder and over the baby let her preserve her modesty while the baby nursed. Diodoros made little grunting and sucking noises, the way a puppy or a lamb might have.

“Good day, my husband,” Baukis said. “I should be finished here soon. He drank the other breast dry—he won’t want much at this one.”

“All right. I’m always glad to hear he’s eating well.” Philodemos wore that almost-foolish smile again. He might be immune to all the ploys Menedemos used to soften him, but just by existing Diodoros had him wrapped around his finger.

“Good day,” Menedemos said to Baukis. “How do you hold?”

“How do I hold?” Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I’m tired, son of my husband. I don’t go anywhere—I hardly leave this room. I don’t do anything but nurse the baby and take care of the baby, and that’s plenty to leave me so tired, I can hardly see.”

Menedemos noticed the way she said son of my husband. Diodoros also was, or might be, the son of her husband. Was she thinking about how things that worked to the baby’s advantage might work against Menedemos, and the other way round? If she was, what could he do about it? Not much he could see.

Diodoros wiggled under the shawl. Baukis said, “See? I knew he was just about done. Turn your backs, both of you, while I set myself to rights.”

Along with his father, Menedemos turned and looked at the door through which he’d come in. He didn’t try to sneak a glance at his stepmother while she rearranged her clothes. He knew better than to blunder into such a simple trap.

“All right. You can turn around again,” she said.

He did, along with his father. Her chiton covered her the way it should once more. She’d folded the shawl and put it on her left shoulder. Diodoros’ head—still a bit misshapen after his passage through the birth canal—lay on it. She held him nearly upright with her left arm, using the crook of her elbow to support his backside. She patted—almost drummed—his back with the palm of her right hand.

Diodoros soon let out a surprisingly loud, surprisingly deep belch. Laughing in surprise, Menedemos exclaimed, “Brekekekex! Koax! Koax!”

His father chuckled, too. Baukis just blinked—she knew no Aristophanes. She asked, “Did he spit up any?”

“Not this time,” Philodemos said.

“Good,” she said. “I’m going to try to get him back to sleep.” She slid Diodoros from almost upright to flat, making sure she supported his floppy little head all the while. Then she rocked him in her arms as if they made a cradle. Philodemos slipped out of the bedchamber, Menedemos half a step behind.

Menedemos didn’t throw himself over the handrail and down into the courtyard headfirst. Why he didn’t, he couldn’t have said just then, but he didn’t. He walked down the stairs behind his father instead.

Sostratos took to hanging around the harbor for news so much, anyone who didn’t know him as a prominent merchant’s son and as a rising merchant himself would have taken him for one of the odd-jobs men who made their oboloi running errands and hauling bundles from ship to storeroom or from storeroom to ship.

A skipper just in from Corinth did mistake him for one of those men, and gave him three oboloi to tell Himilkon the Phoenician his ship had arrived. Keeping a straight face, Sostratos took the little silver coins and stowed them between his gum and his cheek; he didn’t happen to have a pouch on his belt.

One of the real dockside loungers told the Corinthian, “You silly fool, don’t you know that’s Lysistratos’ son?”

“It’s all right, Epinikos,” Sostratos said easily. “I know where Himilkon’s warehouse is, and I need to talk with him anyhow.”

“I crave your pardon, O best one,” said the Corinthian, who’d plainly heard of Sostratos’ father. “I meant no offense.”

“I took none. And it’s fair pay for the job,” Sostratos replied over his shoulder. “I’ll be back with him before long.”

Himilkon came back to the piers readily enough. “Mikkiades has some marble I hope to buy. I’ve got a sculptor asking after it,” he said.

“It’s all right with me,” Sostratos answered in Aramaic. Talking with Himilkon helped him stay in practice. “Did you hire that Egyptian I sent you?”

“Yes, and thank you,” Himilkon answered in the same language. “I’m glad you did. He works hard, and he’s smart. May I ask you something else, if you would be so kind?”

“Ask, my master,” Sostratos said. Aramaic had more flowery politeness built into it than his own language did.

Perhaps to make sure he’d be understood, the Phoenician fell back into Greek: “If Antigonos and Demetrios attack Rhodes, what will the polis do with resident aliens like me?”

“I don’t think anything has been decided. If it has, I don’t know about it. But I might not, since I’m just back from Alexandria,” Sostratos said carefully. “Are you willing to fight for the polis?”

“Willing, yes. But I am no warrior,” Himilkon said. Sure enough, he was middle-aged, potbellied, and soft-handed.

“If you’re on top of the wall and trying to keep enemies from getting up there with you, that may not matter so much. Siege warfare is different from a battle on the plains.”

“I suppose so.” Himilkon seemed unconvinced.

“That drakhma has two sides,” Sostratos went on. “If Demetrios besieges Rhodes—which the gods prevent!—he may just try to starve us into submission. How much room will we have for men who eat up our food but don’t want to help us defend ourselves?”

Himilkon pulled a sour face. “There is that, yes. Would the citizens truly be hard-hearted enough to cast aliens out of the polis so the slave dealers who follow any army can seize them?”

“If it comes to a choice between that and falling prey to slavers themselves, they’re liable to,” Sostratos answered. “That’s what will happen to us, and to our wives and children, if Rhodes falls. Maybe you should go to the gymnasion and learn what you can.”

“I am not a Hellene. I do not care to show the world my naked body,” Himilkon said with dignity, setting one hand on his paunch.

“We try to have bodies worth looking at. We don’t always manage, but we do try,” Sostratos said. “You could wear a chiton while you train, I suppose.”

“Maybe. Unlike you folk, I think it’s indecent for other people to watch my pecker flapping when I run or dodge.”

“How do you feel about taking a spear in the belly because you didn’t know which way to dodge?”

The Phoenician didn’t answer that. Instead, he picked up his pace so he could get to the pier faster. The Corinthian merchant skipper might haggle about how much he wanted for his block of marble, but he wouldn’t ask such inconvenient questions.

Sostratos didn’t push him, either. When he was younger, he would have. Now … I don’t know that the Assembly would throw aliens out of the polis, he told himself. And Himilkon is a free man, even if he isn’t a Hellene. He’ll have to choose for himself.

Himilkon kept walking fast. At the moment, he seemed eager to be rid of Sostratos. The Rhodian peeled off and let him finish the trip to the harbor by himself. Sostratos paused in a tavern to buy himself a cup of wine. As he drank it—unwatered, as if he were a Macedonian or a barbarian—he thought about Sokrates, whom the Athenians had executed almost a century earlier.

Only people who studied philosophy read Platon’s accounts of Sokrates’ teaching and his defense against the charges the Athenians threw at him. Naturally, people who cared enough about philosophy to read those dialogues and the Apology sympathized with Sokrates.

For the first time, Sokrates wondered what living in a polis with Sokrates roaming the agora would have been like. How many people enjoyed the company of a man who went around asking those inconvenient questions all the time? One or two from Sostratos had been plenty to make Himilkon want to get away as fast as he could.

Sokrates had called himself a gadfly. What did you do, though, when a gadfly bit you again and again? Either you went mad with pain and irritation or you tried to squash it. Suddenly, Sostratos understood from the inside out what the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today’s Athenians had been up against.

He went to the gymnasion the next morning to start exercising again. He was intrigued to find Himilkon there before him; and Hyssaldomos, the Phoenician’s Karian slave and right-hand man; and Attinos as well. The merchant and the slave still wore their chitons. The Egyptian, who’d rowed as naked as any of the Hellenes on the Aphrodite, stripped off in the gymnasion, too.

With an oarsman’s powerful arms, a flat belly, and strong legs, he had a body fit to be seen. He had most of a body fit to be seen, anyhow. A Hellene shouted at him: “Hey! What’s the matter with your prong?”

Like Ioudaioi, Egyptian men had their foreskins cut off when they were babies. To Hellenes, that seemed a mutilation. As Pindar said, though, custom was king of all. Attinos thought he was the normal one. “Nothing wrong with my prick, you cistern-arsed son of an ugly dog,” he answered. “You want I should stick it up that fat prokton of yours?”

“You can’t talk to me like that!” the Hellene shouted. “I’ll murder you!” He charged the Egyptian, arms flailing.

People said that if you hit a barbarian in the stomach, he’d cover it up, so then you could punch him in the nose. People who said that had never seen Attinos. He ducked under the Hellene’s wild punches, tripped him, jumped on him, and began hitting him in the face again and again.

“How you like my prick now, you hyena turd?” he said, and landed yet another punch.

Sostratos grabbed his shoulder. “Enough! Enough, by the gods! If you kill him, you’ll get in trouble with the law and you’ll have a blood feud with his whole family.”

“All right,” Attinos said, agreeably enough. As he got to his feet, he rubbed his bruised knuckles against the outsides of his thighs.

The Hellene was much slower rising, and none too steady on his pins when at last he did. He already had a mouse under his left eye and a bruise on one cheek. His nose leaned to the right; blood ran from both nostrils. He had a cut lip, too. When he spat, he spat out more blood and a couple of broken teeth.

“By the gods, I’ll sue you for everything you’ll ever have, you stinking barbarian!” he said, his voice mushy from the pounding his mouth had taken—and maybe because he still wasn’t thinking any too straight, either.

“Futter your mother,” Attinos replied, direct as usual.

“You’re a fool if you go to law,” Sostratos told the Hellene. “You insulted him first, and you tried to hit him first, too. Plenty of witnesses here will say so.”

The man spat out more blood. “What are you doing, taking a barbarian’s part against a Hellene?”

“What were you doing, picking a fight with someone who came to the gymnasion to exercise so he’d do a better job fighting for Rhodes if it comes to that?” Sostratos returned. “We need all the help we can find, and you want to laugh at somebody’s prong? To the crows with you!”

When the other Hellene looked around, he saw no sympathy on the faces of nearby men. As he staggered away, someone held out a bowl of water. He dipped some up with both hands to wash off his battered face. When he saw how much blood he was rinsing off, he cursed some more.

Himilkon stared at Attinos as if he’d just grown a second head. “I should sack the man who guards my warehouse and pay you to do that!”

“Whatever you want, boss,” the Egyptian said.

He proved less than expert with sword and spear, though. That plainly came from lack of practice, but it eased Sostratos’ mind. He’d wondered whether he’d brought a new Herakles back to Rhodes.

He doggedly went through his own exercises. No one would ever mistake him for a demigod returned to earth. All he hoped for was a better chance to stay alive if war came to his island and his polis.

Sostratos was scraping off the oil with which he’d rubbed himself when a man hurried in saying, “Menelaos has surrendered his army—twelve thousand foot soldiers and twelve hundred horsemen—and Salamis to Demetrios.”

That saddened Sostratos without surprising him. Someone else beat him to the question he most wanted to ask: “What will Demetrios do with Ptolemaios’ brother?”

“He’s already set him free without any ransom. Same with the soldiers,” replied the fellow with the news.

Sostratos whistled softly. Demetrios had acted very generously indeed, far more so than Hellenes and Macedonians usually did. As if reading his mind, the man who’d asked the question said, “He’s asking for trouble.”

“Maybe, but maybe not,” the informant said. “I heard he’s keeping the soldiers’ armor. He’s sending something like twelve hundred panoplies to Athens.”

That impressed most of the men in the gymnasion, but not Sostratos. He’d seen how wealthy Egypt was. Most places would have trouble replacing an army’s worth of armor. All Ptolemaios had to do was give the order and set the smiths in villages and towns up and down the Nile to work.

Ptolemaios … Sostratos asked the newcomer, “Did the Demetrios catch the lord of Egypt, or did he manage to get away?”

The man spread his hands. “I didn’t hear one way or the other. I don’t think anyone in Rhodes knows yet.”

“All right. Thanks,” Sostratos said. He’d wondered whether Demetrios had freed Menelaos because he still held the more important brother. Now he’d have to keep wondering till Demetrios paraded Ptolemaios before Antigonos, or till word came from Egypt that Ptolemaios had made it back to Alexandria.

“Before long, every bit of Cyprus will lie in Demetrios’ hands,” Himilkon said as he walked back toward his warehouse with his men and Sostratos. “That can’t be good for Rhodes.”

“Nothing that’s happened lately has been good for Rhodes,” Sostratos said. “We’re like a sick man. If the fever breaks, we’ll get better. If it doesn’t ….” He let his voice trail off, not wanting to speak words of evil omen.

Himilkon replied, “Well, I’m not sorry I’m starting to learn the warrior’s trade after all.” He patted that ample belly. “I have a bit more training to do, I think.”

“If the gods are kind, all of this nonsense will have been for nothing,” Sostratos said. Himilkon, Hyssaldomos, and Attinos walked along in a silence suggesting they didn’t think it would be. Since Sostratos didn’t, either, he could hardly blame them for that.

He said his farewells at the warehouse, then went back to his home, where he gave his father the news. “Demetrios must really want to be Alexander’s successor,” Lysistratos said. “Alexander might have done something like that. I can’t think of any other Macedonian who would—and I’m including Demetrios’ father.”

“Antigonos? No. He always has his eye on the main chance,” Sostratos agreed. He rubbed his chin. “But Demetrios …. That’s interesting, what you said. I hadn’t looked at it just that way before. He’s as handsome as everyone says the Alexander was.”

“I only saw him the once, in the Assembly, and we weren’t that close to him,” his father said. “I mostly know him from a bust or two and from coins. Those always make you look better than you really do.”

“True enough.” Sostratos dipped his head. “You did see he was tall, though—taller than I am, and not many are. Alexander was supposed to be a little fellow, wasn’t he? Demetrios could make himself out to be the improved version, you might say.”

“Improved how?” his father asked. “Alexander went out and conquered the Persian Empire and went on into India. All Demetrios has ever done is fight other Hellenes and Macedonians. Even if he went after Carthage or the barbarians in Italy, that wouldn’t come close to matching what Alexander did.”

“You’re not wrong, sir,” Sostratos said. “But before he does any of that, he’ll try to take Rhodes.”

He wished his father would have told him he was being foolish. But Lysistratos just said, “Yes, I think so, too.” After that, the conversation flagged. Neither of them seemed to see much point in saying more.

Menedemos spent as much of his waking time as he could away from the house where he’d grown up. He worked out in the gymnasion with a ferocity even the hardened Cretan mercenaries who schooled Rhodians in the art of fighting on foot noticed.

One of them rubbed his shoulder after a blow from Menedemos’ wooden sword got home. “You could hire yourself out to any warlord from Sicily to the Indos River,” the veteran said. “I’ll be sore for the next two moon quarters, bugger me blind if I won’t. Most Rhodians, they still reckon this is a game. You, though, you want to kill things.”

“Do I?” Menedemos thought about it. He shrugged. “Well, what if I do?”

“Not everybody’s got that, not even every soldier.” The mercenary twisted his neck. “It’s turning black already, where you nailed me. Lucky you weren’t using iron. I’d’ve bled to death by now.”

His modest triumph pleased Menedemos not at all. After he scraped off his sweat and put his chiton back on, he went to a tavern. Someone who’d started pouring it down even earlier in the day had already drunk himself mean. For whatever reason, he chose Menedemos to swing at. Menedemos jerked his head to one side and kicked the brawler in the crotch. The man went down with a shriek. He rolled on the dirt floor, clutching at himself. Menedemos emptied his own cup, set it on the counter, and kicked the man in the ribs as he walked out.

“You could have killed him!” the taverner called after him.

“Too bad,” Menedemos said over his shoulder. “Maybe he’ll remember what I gave him before he tries to knock some other stranger’s teeth out.” He kept walking. He hoped somebody would come after him, but no one did.

Then he went down to the harbor. He wasn’t surprised to spot Sostratos’ gangly form there. They were both after news. Since he didn’t feel like talking with his cousin, he stayed several piers away from him.

An akation rowed into the harbor. Menedemos shaded his eyes with one hand, wondering if it was the same one that had given him such a fright off the south coast of Cyprus. He didn’t think so. This one seemed larger—not quite a triakonter, with fifteen rowers on each side, but not far short of that.

He didn’t remember ever seeing the ship before. That was odd; he thought he knew most honest vessels of that size, vessels likely to bring goods to Rhodes. Pirates were different, but pirates didn’t put in at this harbor.

The akation made for an open berthing space at the pier next to the one by whose base he stood. Casually, as if he had nothing much to do and all the time in the world to do it in, he ambled over to the newcomer. He wasn’t the only man who did, of course, but in spite of his seeming laziness he got there in time to catch a rope one of the crewmen tossed him and to secure it to a bollard.

“You’ve been to sea a time or two, I reckon,” the man said. “That’s a proper square knot, by the gods.”

“Oh, I may have,” Menedemos answered. “What ship are you? You’re new here, I think.”

“We may be. This is the Tykhe, out of Alexandria.”

“Lady Luck, are you? What’s your cargo? If you don’t mind my asking, I mean.” Menedemos did his best to hide a sudden surge of interest. Some of the other Rhodians on the pier exclaimed, in surprise or excitement. A ship from Alexandria, now ….

Tykhe’s skipper must have heard Menedemos’ question. He answered it from the stern platform: “What we bring here is news, important news. I am pleased to inform the people of Rhodes that the great and glorious Ptolemaios, the lord of Egypt, is by the gods’ kindness returned safe and hale to Alexandria.”

Everyone in earshot shouted then, Menedemos no less than anybody else. When he could make himself heard over the hubbub, he said, “That’s important news, sure enough, and the best of news for Rhodes. Will you tell it again, at my father’s house?” He got away from the house whenever he could, yes. But this was the polis’ business, not a family entanglement.

“Who are you, and who is your father?” By the way the Tykhe’s captain said it, he wouldn’t visit just anyone. Well, who could blame him?

“I’m Menedemos son of Philodemos.” Either the Alexandrian would know his name or not.

He did. “Are you?” he exclaimed, eyebrows rising. “Yes, I’ll come with you, then. One of the things the Ptolemaios charged me to do while I was here was learn whether you’d made it back. He’ll be pleased when I tell him you and your cousin have.”

Menedemos was a little less than pleased the skipper had mentioned his cousin, too, though he knew Ptolemaios thought well of Sostratos. “Come along, then,” he said shortly. But he unbent enough to add, “Tell me your name, O best one, so the slaves can use it to bring our polis’ leaders to the house.”

“I’m Areton son of Aretakles,” the man said. As soon as his men ran the gangplank to the pier, he went up it and joined Menedemos. He was about forty, lean and fit and burnt brown by the sun.

Sostratos had been making his way toward the Tykhe—he was curious about the strange ship, too. He tagged along with Menedemos and Areton on their way to the house, then went into his own across the street to bring his father over. Philodemos was upstairs with Baukis and Diodoros when Menedemos brought Areton inside, but quickly came down. Sostratos and Lysistratos got back to the house almost at once. Menedemos’ father sent slaves to fetch Komanos, Xanthos, and other civic leaders. In the meantime, he offered Areton bread and oil and raisins and olives and wine.

“You’re very kind, sir,” the skipper said.

“You are my guest-friend,” Philodemos replied with dignity. To an old-fashioned man like him, that said everything that needed saying.

The dignitaries arrived even sooner than Menedemos had thought they would. They wanted news from Alexandria, all right. As soon as they got it, Xanthos started to launch into an oration of praise and gratitude. Komanos cut him off, asking, “Will the Ptolemaios be able to help us if Demetrios and Antigonos try to seize the island and the polis?”

“With supplies, possibly. With a naval force?” Areton tossed his head. “Not soon. Menedemos here will have told you what a beating the fleet took. Ptolemaios will be some time rebuilding and recruiting, I’m afraid.”

“We’re on our own, then.” Philodemos brought it out like a physician giving a bad prognosis.

Areton didn’t try to tell him he was wrong. “I am sorry, but that’s how things hold right now.”

“Well, it isn’t anything we weren’t expecting,” Menedemos’ father said. “Now we know the worst.” Again, neither Areton nor anyone else contradicted him.