Salamis

I

The helmet sat heavy on Menedemos’ head. The cheekpieces covered his ears, too, so that he felt as if he had his fingers stuffed in them. Together, the cheekpieces and the nasal squeezed his vision. So did the upper rim of his big, round, bronze-faced hoplite’s shield. The shield was also heavy; keeping it up so it warded the lower half of his face took work.

His right hand closed tighter on the spearshaft. The spear was as long as he was tall, and not a weapon he was used to using. He knew what to do with the sword on his belt, but in this kind of fighting, swords were for emergencies, when you’d lost or broken your spear.

“Come on, you cowardly cur!” his foe shouted, capering in front of him. The Cretan mercenary, equipped much like him, was a lean, tanned, leathery, much-scarred man with a mouthful of broken teeth. His Doric dialect was broader and harsher than the one Rhodians spoke.

“To the crows with you, Heragoras!” Menedemos answered, and thrust at him. The mercenary easily blocked the spear, and went low with his own. Menedemos thought the strike was aimed at his right leg, which was partly protected by a bronze greave. He swung his shield that way to make sure the blow didn’t land home.

That was a mistake. Fast as a striking viper, Heragoras switched the direction of his thrust so the speartip smote Menedemos’ unarmored left shin, not his right. Like Menedemos’, that tip was a bundle of rags, bound on with a rawhide cord, but it still hit hard enough to hurt.

“Papai!” Menedemos exclaimed, more from anger at being bested than from the pain. He hated to lose at anything he did.

Heragoras’ snaggle-toothed grin said he knew that. He was a professional fighting man, Menedemos very much an amateur. “You know how you buggered it up, right?” he asked.

Glumly, Menedemos dipped his head to show he did. “My shield—” he began.

“That’s right.” Heragoras dipped his head, too. “You’ve got that greave there for a reason. You don’t have one on the other side ’cause your shield’s supposed to cover that leg. Next time, let the greave do its proper job.”

“It’s an honor to have a panoply,” Menedemos said, by which he meant, My family is rich enough to let me kit myself out. He wasn’t even wearing his corselet. Even on cool spring days like this, you started baking in it after a quarter of an hour.

“It’s an honor to use a panoply,” Heragoras retorted. Gods only knew where he’d got his gear. Stolen it or taken it from men he’d killed, most likely. “So use it. Let’s have another go.”

They did. This time, Heragoras bruised Menedemos’ spear arm. “In a phalanx, my side man’s shield would have blocked that,” Menedemos said, rubbing where he’d got hit.

“Maybe. More likely, you’d be screaming and bleeding.” Heragoras sounded cold as a Phoenician reckoning accounts. That made him more frightening, not less. Letting some of his scorn show, he went on, “You Rhodians are soft. You haven’t had to do any fighting for a while, so you forget how.”

“We’re learning again.” Menedemos waved around the gymnasion. Hardly any of the men there were running or wrestling or working with weights, as they would have in less troubled times. They were throwing javelins or shooting arrows at targets fastened to bales of hay or hacking at one another with wooden swords. Menedemos’ cousin Sostratos, who was tall but ungainly, had just taken a wooden blade in the ribs. Had it been iron, it would have let the air out of him for good.

“Fighting’s not something you pick up when you think it might be handy,” Heragoras said. “Not that you won’t get better, but you won’t get good enough. Fighting’s a trade, like potter or stonecarver or anything else. You do it all the gods-cursed time, till you don’t need to think while you’re doing it.”

“We’re like that on the sea,” Menedemos said. Skipper of his family’s merchant galley in times of peace, he captained a Rhodian trihemiolia—a shark-swift pirate hunter—when he wasn’t buying and selling or when danger threatened.

Heragoras raised his right eyebrow. A vertical scar bisected it; how he hadn’t lost the eye to that wound, Menedemos had no idea. “Reckon you can keep the Demetrios from landing on your island here if he sets his mind to it?” he asked.

“We’re at peace with the Antigonos and his son,” Menedemos said stiffly. “We’re at peace with the Ptolemaios down in Egypt, too. We’re at peace with everyone.”

“For now, y’are.” The Cretan mercenary hawked and spat. “But Egypt is a kakodaimon of a long ways away. Demetrios and Antigonos, they can practically piss on you.” He pointed northeast, across the strait separating Rhodes from the Anatolian mainland.

“Sostratos and I were in Athens last year, when Demetrios … restored the democracy.” Menedemos heard the catch in his own voice. The democracy in Athens, once restored, fell all over itself allying with the young, handsome, personable Demetrios and his old, wily father and voting them ridiculously exaggerated honors.

Heragoras’ leer said he knew all about that. “You figure Rhodes’ll point its backside towards ’em the same way Athens did? I sure don’t. You wouldn’t be makin’ ready for a scrap if you aimed to do that.”

“We want to stay at peace,” Menedemos repeated.

“Sure you do. Sisyphos wants to get that cursed stone all the way up the hill. Tantalos wants hisself”—yes, Heragoras’ Doric drawl was thick, and getting thicker as he warmed to his subject—“a drink o’ water and a bite to eat. What d’you suppose the chances are?”

“If you feel that way, O best one”—Menedemos hoped to make the polite formula sting—“why are you here? Why didn’t you join up with old One-eye and Demetrios instead?”

Antigonos was less lucky than Heragoras here; he’d lost an eye in battle. People sometimes called him Cyclops, but not to his face. No matter how old he was (and he had to be past seventy), he remained large and powerful in lands, in armies and fleets, and in his person.

The Cretan spat again. “He’s just another one o’ them whoresons who want to tell everybody what to do. This here, this is a nice town. Things’re looser here than they would be across the water. Not as loose as they are back home, mind you, but back home a fella can’t hardly make hisself a living.”

Menedemos dipped his head once more. A lot of mercenaries left Crete because the island had nothing for them. And a lot of Cretans who didn’t sell their spears to one of Alexander the Great’s squabbling successors or another turned pirate instead. To Menedemos, that was worse. Mercenaries followed their paymasters’ orders … most of the time, anyhow. Pirates were at war with the world, and especially with Rhodes.

There were rumors Antigonos and Demetrios had been recruiting pirate ships and crews to pad out their naval forces. Menedemos didn’t want to believe that; it was too likely to be aimed at his island and his polis. He sighed and made the two-fingered gesture used to turn aside the evil eye and other misfortunes not stoppable by natural means alone. “Maybe everything will turn out for the best,” he said.

“Sure it will,” Heragoras said. “But whose notion of the best really is the best?”

That was such a philosophical question, Menedemos would have looked for it from his cousin, not from this battered soldier of fortune. Since he had no good answer, he hefted his rag-tipped spearshaft again. “As long as I’m here, I should get some more work in,” he said.

Sostratos walked across the courtyard that lay at the heart of his family’s home. A red-headed Thracian slave woman poured water on the flowers and herbs in the little garden there. “Good day, Threissa,” he said. The name she’d been born with sounded more like a sneeze than a word; the one he and his kin used for her just meant the woman from Thrace.

“Good day, young master.” Threissa kept her head down and didn’t look at him. Her accented Greek was soft and nervous. He’d taken her to bed a few times after the family bought her. She’d put up with it, as a slave woman had to, but she hadn’t been delighted about it. Well, she hadn’t delighted him, either. He didn’t intend to sleep with her again unless his prong got a desperate itch. She couldn’t know that, though, and tried her best to make herself invisible in plain sight.

He heard her low sigh of relief when he kept walking. Some men would have got angry at that. He just went on toward the strongroom. Things went better when you didn’t make a pointless fuss. He thought so, anyhow, though plenty might have made a pointless fuss arguing with him.

The firm, in which his father and uncle were the head and he and Menedemos the arms, kept most of its merchandise in a warehouse down by the harbor. They paid a night watchman—an old soldier who limped because he’d lost three toes from his right foot—to keep thieves at bay. Alxiadas did a good job, too.

But things that were small, easy to carry, and very valuable stayed in the strongroom here or in the one at Philodemos’ house. Sostratos fumbled in a pouch on his belt for the bronze key that would open the lock on the strongroom door.

As he pulled out the key, it slipped between his fingers and fell to the ground. He swore at himself as he bent to pick it up. He was not the most graceful young man in Rhodes, and had such small mishaps more often than he wished. As he straightened, the key now firmly in his grasp, he stole a glance back at Threissa to see if she was laughing at his clumsiness.

She was paying him no attention whatsoever. He tried to decided whether that was better or worse than laughter. Then he chuckled in wry amusement: both were pretty bad. And, whether Threissa laughed at him or not, he could laugh at himself.

He eased the key into the iron lock. The lock had worked fine the last time he used it, a couple of weeks before. His fingers felt how greasy it was; he and his father both smeared it with olive oil to hold rust at bay. Yet the lock didn’t release now when he twisted the key. Maybe they hadn’t greased it well enough.

He jiggled the key forward and back, trying to get it to set better. It didn’t want to move … and then it did. When he twisted it this time, a snick! inside said it had done its job.

“That’s better,” he muttered. He took the lock off the bar, pulled the bar from the brackets supporting it, and pushed the door open. When he stepped inside, the air smelled rich and pungent, almost perfumed—spices like pepper, cinnamon, and cloves were part of the firm’s stock in trade.

But, aside from making certain that mice hadn’t been nibbling at the pitched stoppers of the spice jars, he didn’t worry about them. It seemed likely that he and Menedemos would take the Aphrodite down to Alexandria this sailing season. No profit in bringing spices to Egypt. Many of them were shipped from there to the Hellenese farther north after arriving from the distant, exotic lands that produced them.

Instead, after letting his eyes adjust to the gloom inside the strongroom, he picked up a wooden box that sat on a shelf against the far wall. Even the box was a curiosity: the wood was paler than pine, so pale as to be almost white. He’d never seen anything like the carvings—an odd mix of sinuous and clumsy—that ornamented the top and sides, either.

He took off the top. Nestled inside were the chunks of amber he’d bought from Himilkon the Phoenician the autumn before. Amber came to Hellas from the north. It wouldn’t be common in Alexandria, which traded more with the lands to the south and east. He hoped he could get a good price for it there. He hoped he could get a very good price, in fact, because he’d paid Himilkon a good one.

One of the smaller chunks of amber in particular …. Yes, that one. Sostratos took it from the box and walked out of the strongroom and into the watery sunshine. Trapped inside the almost-transparent amber was some kind of insect, smaller than the nail on his little finger. How had it got there? How long had it been there? He could wonder—he did wonder—but he had no way to know.

A shadow fell on his hand. He looked up in surprise. “Oh. Father! Hail,” he said foolishly.

“Hail, Sostratos.” Lysistratos sounded more amused than annoyed. He made allowances for his absentminded, often single-minded son: more allowances, certainly, than his brother Philodemos was in the habit of making for Menedemos. When he continued, “You’re thinking about the trip to Egypt,” it wasn’t a question.

“That’s right.” Sostratos dipped his head. “I’ve got the feeling we have a chance to do some really excellent business, and—” He broke off, truly noticing for the first time the expression on Lysistratos’ face. “Father! What’s wrong?”

“Word’s just reached the city—just reached me, anyhow—that the Demetrios is in Loryma and wants to come to Rhodes to address the Assembly.” Lysistratos sounded as grim as he looked. Adding the article in front of Demetrios’ name signaled how important he was.

Loryma was the closest city to Rhodes on the Anatolia mainland. And Lysistratos was prominent enough that the news would reach him very quickly. Sostratos puffed out his cheeks and exhaled through pursed lips. “Have you heard what he wants to talk to us about?” he asked, fearing he already knew.

“Not officially,” his father said. “But it can be only one thing, don’t you think? He’ll want to squeeze us or scare us into an alliance with his father and him.”

“We can’t do that!” Sostratos exclaimed.

“I hope we won’t have to. I hope we can convince him we’re of more good to Antigonos as a real neutral.” Lysistratos’ mouth turned down further. “If we can’t do that, I hope he doesn’t decide to invade the island. He can draw on a lot more men and lands than we can.”

“He’s clever, too,” Sostratos said. “The way he cleared Kassandros’ men out of Athens ….” His voice trailed away. He’d been there with Menedemos when Demetrios took the city. After a moment, he resumed, “He’s not the kind of general I’d like to face.”

“I understand that, son. Believe me, I do. Antigonos is the same way—maybe more so,” Lysistratos said. “But if we’re going to be a free and independent polis, if we’re going to stay a free and independent polis, we may have to fight.”

Free and independent poleis had been the ideal for as long as Hellenes could remember—for a few hundred years, in other words. They’d beaten back the invading Persians, and they’d also fought ferociously among themselves. Philip of Macedon, Alexander, and the generals who battled furiously over Alexander’s empire had subjected most of them. Rhodes remained, still free, still independent, still democratic, preserved in time like that bug in amber.

For the moment, anyhow. “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Sostratos said. “I pray it doesn’t.”

“So do I. So does everyone. But it may,” his father said.

Menedemos and his father walked toward the agora to hear what Demetrios had to say to Rhodes. The day was raw, and on the chilly side. Philodemos hadn’t gone out on a trading run in a double handful of years. Even so, like Menedemos he made do with just a tunic, no cloak, and went barefoot down the muddy street. He’d been a sailor; in his mind, at least, he still was.

They waved to men they knew. Every Rhodian citizen—every property-owning native son, in other words—who could get out of bed was on his way to the marketplace. Most of them looked as worried as Menedemos felt. Even if they hadn’t met Demetrios and seen him in action, as Menedemos had, they knew of him by reputation.

Thinking along with him, his father said, “I don’t suppose the city’s ever faced worse danger.”

“I hope it will be all right,” Menedemos said. “He’s … more easygoing than his father, and takes his pleasures where he finds them.”

“Yes, you’d think well of all that, wouldn’t you?” Philodemos said. Menedemos bit down on the inside of his lower lip till he tasted blood. That let him swallow a sharp retort instead of coming out with it. His father’s gibe stung all the more because it held some truth. Philodemos added, “And my stake in this is greater than yours. Baukis will have her baby later this year, remember. What kind of place for a woman with child is a city under siege? And if it falls … Oimoi!” He clapped a hand to his forehead.

“Avert the evil omen!” Menedemos said, and spat—red—into the bosom of his tunic to help do that. Grunting in something as close to approval as he was likely to give his son, Philodemos imitated the gesture.

But Menedemos went right on gnawing at the inside of his lip. Yes, Baukis was pregnant. Menedemos had no idea whether he’d started the baby when his father’s new wife was coming home after a religious festival or whether it was Philodemos’ seed sprouting inside her. Philodemos had no idea how Menedemos felt about his stepmother … and how she felt about him. It made life under the same roof with them harder than he’d dreamt anything could be.

“Look!” he said suddenly, pointing ahead. “There’s Sostratos.” More than a palm taller than most men, his cousin stood out in crowds. Relieved at finding something safe to talk about, he hurried on: “Uncle Lysistratos will be with him. Shall we catch them up?”

“Let’s.” His father quickened his pace. For a man in his fifties, he was in good trim. His teeth hadn’t troubled him much, and he still exercised in the gymnasion. Lately, in fact, he’d been practicing with spear and sword and shield, as Menedemos had. Menedemos needed to step lively to stay up with him.

Sostratos was looking this way and that, as he usually did. Sometimes he tripped over his own feet on account of it. Now he spotted Menedemos and his father. He waved, then turned back and spoke to Lysistratos. They slowed to let their kinsmen join them.

“Hail!” all four men said at the same time. Menedemos laughed. Laughing at anything felt good.

They’d run most of the merchants and traders out of the agora. Affairs of the city would cost them a day’s business. That was their hard luck. A few sellers did work their way through the incoming citizens with trays of cheap wine in cheaper little cups, of grilled squid on wooden skewers, of dough wrapped around cheese and fried in olive oil.

It was as noisy as a usual day at the marketplace, but the timbre was different. No one shouted, no one chuckled. No women’s voices lightened things, either. Well-to-do women stayed home and sent slaves to shop for them, but the poorer ones had to go out for themselves. Menedemos missed their leavening, though he didn’t say so for fear of another sharp comeback from his father.

Someone had run up a small platform near the northern edge of the agora, from which Demetrios would speak. Like Sostratos, he was tall enough that people would have been able to see him anyway. Still, the platform was a nice touch. Menedemos and his kinsfolk worked their way towards it. So did everyone else, of course. As men squeezed closer together, a few elbows found ribs and a few toes got stepped on. Menedemos tried to give better than he got.

“Hail, Philodemos! Hail, Lysistratos!” The plump, gray-haired man’s well-trained voice showed he’d done his share of public speaking and more.

“Hail, Xanthos,” Menedemos’ father said with less enthusiasm than he might have shown for other acquaintances. Uncle Lysistratos just dipped his head in a bare minimum of politeness. Xanthos liked to hear himself talk … and talk … and talk.

He paid no attention to Menedemos or Sostratos. He looked down his nose at the younger generation when he noticed them at all. But he regaled their fathers with a preview of everything Demetrios would say—everything he thought Demetrios would say, anyhow. To Menedemos, he sounded more like a Rhodian man of business than a Macedonian warlord, but that didn’t stop him. It didn’t even slow him down.

Someone clambered up onto the platform: not Demetrios but a man named Komanos, one of the most prominent people in the city. He called for quiet, then called for it again. When he didn’t get it, he gestured to two men behind the platform. The trumpeters blew a loud, discordant blast that startled everyone.

This time, the assembled citizens paid attention when Komanos asked them to settle down. “Thank you, O men of Rhodes!” Komanos said. Menedemos eyed Sostratos, wondering if his cousin would explain how O andres Rhodioi was modeled after Athens’ O andres Athenaioi, as he did at about every other Assembly. Sostratos pined for Athens the way most young men pined for a gorgeous hetaira they couldn’t begin to afford.

But Sostratos, like the other men in the agora, really was giving Komanos his attention. He could see the civic leader better than Menedemos could; Menedemos was a digit or two under average height. At least I make the most of what I’ve got, Menedemos thought.

“O men of Rhodes, our polis has been free and independent since it was built, almost a hundred years ago,” Komanos said. “The three towns here before, Ialysos, Lindos, and Kamiros, were likewise free and independent poleis.” Demetrios won’t like that went through Menedemos’ mind as Komanos continued, “We are gathered here now to decide whether the day of the free and independent polis is past in Hellas, whether all small states must seek the protection of one strong neighbor lest another strong neighbor destroy them altogether. Here to put to us terms for a possible alliance with himself and his illustrious father is the general and admiral, Demetrios son of Antigonos. I know we’ll hear him with the serious attention his proposal deserves.”

By the gods, don’t start throwing cabbages or rocks at him! That was what Komanos had to mean. By the way one of Sostratos’ eyebrows jumped toward his hairline, he was thinking the same thing.

Up onto the platform stepped Demetrios. Where Komanos had scrambled, he was big enough simply to step, and that despite the weight of greaves and a corselet polished till their bronze shone almost like gold. His face was handsome and ruddy, his hair halfway toward the blond sometimes found among Macedonians and more often in their barbarous neighbors to the north and west.

“Hail, O men of Rhodes!” Demetrios’ big, deep voice effortlessly filled the marked square. He spoke an Attic-flavored Greek much like Sostratos’, with only a vanishing trace of the broad vowels and odd consonant clusters he must have used as a little boy. “It is a pleasure and an honor to speak to the citizens of the free and independent polis of Rhodes.”

Some of the men in the crowd made small approving noises, soaking in Demetrios’ flattery like dry sponges soaking up water. Menedemos thought the Macedonian was being sardonic, in effect saying, You believe you’re free and independent, but I’m the one with the soldiers and the ships. By the way Sostratos’ eyebrow rose again, he heard the Macedonian’s words the same way.

Demetrios went on, “In the old days, it was easy for a polis to stay free and independent. It was facing only other poleis, more or less the same size it was. But times have changed. I was fortunate enough to liberate Athens from Kassandros’ oppression last year. Athens was a polis, with only the force a polis could draw on. Kassandros rules broad lands in Europe. He has great wealth, and many men to obey him. Without help from my father and me, Athens on her own couldn’t have hoped to gain freedom and independence once more.”

Again, some of the citizens of Rhodes dipped their heads in agreement and made approving noises. Menedemos had been in Athens. To him, what Demetrios called its newfound freedom and independence looked a lot like a change of masters from Kassandros to Antigonos and his son. To Sostratos, too, by the set of Menedemos’ cousin’s mouth.

“Out in the east, Seleukos rules huge tracts of land, all full of barbarians,” Demetrios said. “Hellenes are settling there, but they have no free and independent poleis. Seleukos doesn’t let them, and the locals would swallow places like that if he did. Egypt is the same way. You know that’s true, O men of Rhodes. Ptolemaios rules Egypt like the Persians before him, and like the Pharaohs before the Persians. He tells people what to do, and they do it. No free and independent poleis in Egypt, by the gods!” He threw his hands high, artfully scorning the very idea.

“He’s sly,” Sostratos murmured before Menedemos could. Demetrios was doing the most dangerous thing he could: telling the truth, but slanting it in his direction.

“Now my father, on the other hand, has plenty of free and independent poleis working alongside him as friends and allies,” the Macedonian went on. “That’s what we’re looking for from Rhodes: friendship and alliance. That’s all, by the gods! Join with my father and me in our struggle against the tyrant Ptolemaios, and everything will go back to the way it was as soon as the fight is over.”

To Menedemos, he sounded like a man trying to talk a girl into bed. No mean seducer himself, Menedemos knew a smooth one when he heard him. He looked around. How many of his fellow citizens felt the same way? Did they think freedom and independence were worth holding on to in a world that had changed?

Then again, how many of them traded with Ptolemaios’ Egypt? Joining Antigonos and Demetrios would put a crimp in that. Men tended to think about where their silver came from.

“We don’t want trouble on our border,” Demetrios said. “Next to my father’s lands, Rhodes is only the size of a flea, but even fleabites are annoying. Friends, it’s easier to go the way the wind already blows. Think about that when you make up your minds. If you try to sail the other way, the wave that’s coming will swamp you. Good day.” He hopped down from the platform. In the dead silence in the market square, Menedemos heard Demetrios’ armor clatter about him, as if he were one of Homer’s warriors going to his doom.

He also heard Sostratos mutter, “ ‘My father’s lands,’ ” to himself in thoughtful tones. He understood that; he’d noticed the odd phrasing himself. Since Alexander’s half-witted half-brother and young posthumous son met their untimely demises, none of the generals who held chunks of his empire had declared himself a king. That day might be—likely was—coming, but it hadn’t come yet.

Komanos got back up where the citizens could see him. He was smoother than he had been the first time, but he still didn’t have Demetrios’ size or grace to make the ascent seem easy. “Thank you, most excellent son of Antigonos, for being so plain about your views and those of your illustrious father. We shall now discuss your proposal and determine what the sense of the polis may be.”

Everyone started shouting and waving his hand hand at once. In Homeric assemblies, only the man holding the scepter had the right to speak. Rhodian democracy was rowdier and more freewheeling than that. Everyone thinks he’s Agamemnon or Nestor, Menedemos thought, but a lot of these people would embarrass Thersites.

Xanthos made his way up onto the platform. Menedemos and Sostratos exchanged glances. So did Philodemos and Lysistratos. If that wasn’t a put-up job, none of them had ever seen one.

“Hear me, O men of Rhodes!” Xanthos said loudly. And hear me, and hear me, and hear me some more went through Menedemos’ mind. Sure enough, his father’s long-winded friend spent half an hour walking through the obvious: that Rhodes had long been free and independent, that the polis would probably stay safer if it didn’t get caught up in its bigger neighbors’ quarrels, and that many people in the polis did a lot of business with Egypt. Much later than he should have, he finished, “All this being so, that which is now most expedient to us is to continue the course we have always taken,” and stood down.

The next speaker, a farmer named Polyaratos, proved a fiery partisan of Demetrios and Antigonos’. “They’re what the future looks like,” he declared. “They’ll put Alexander’s empire back together. Do we want to be on the outside looking in after they do that? I don’t think so! They’ll be kings with crowns, and they’ll treat us the way kings always treat people who make ’em angry. We’d have to be mad to turn down what the Demetrios is offering us—mad, I tell you!”

“I wonder how much of Antigonos’ silver he’s got in his wallet,” Sostratos said in a low voice. Menedemos dipped his head; it wasn’t as if the same thought hadn’t crossed his mind.

But others also spoke for the Macedonians. Most of them, like Polyaratos, were men with few ties outside the island. Then another merchant, Rhodokles son of Simos, got on the platform. He was a rival to Philodemos and Lysistratos’ firm, but no one had ever called him a fool.

Blunt as usual, he said, “I’ve heard that Demetrios and Antigonos are paying pirates to join their fleet. If they do things like that, I don’t care to go to war alongside ’em. It’s about that simple.” He jumped down again.

His blunt announcement seemed to take the wind from the sails of Demetrios’ friends. Not a Rhodian breathed who didn’t hate pirates. When Komanos called for the vote, a solid majority chose continued neutrality. Komanos invited Demetrios up. As the warlord scowled at the citizens who hadn’t done his bidding, Komanos put the best face he could on things: “We are not your foes, O Demetrios. We wish only to remain friends with everyone.”

“I shall take this news to my father. Hail!” Demetrios said, and not one word more. That ended the Assembly in unceremonious fashion.

“What do you think?” Menedemos asked Sostratos as they started home with their fathers.

“We may try hard to stay away from the wider world’s affairs, but those affairs won’t stay away from us,” his cousin answered. Menedemos clicked his tongue between his teeth. That seemed only too likely to him, too.