The Gryphon's Skull

1

Spring. Never in all his twenty-six years had Menedemos been so glad to see the sailing season come round again. Not that winter in Rhodes was harsh. Menedemos had never seen snow fall here, nor had his father. Even so ...

His fingers caressed the steering-oar tillers of the merchant galley Aphrodite as they might have stroked a lover's skin. His cousin Sostratos stood on the akatos' poop deck with him. Sostratos was a few months older and most of a head taller, but Menedemos captained the ship. His cousin served as toikharkhos, keeping track of the Aphrodite and of what they would bring in and spend on their trading run. Sostratos had a splendid head for numbers. People, now, people gave him a good deal more trouble.

From the quay at which the Aphrodite was tied up, Menedemos' father called, “Be careful. By the gods, be extra careful.”

“I will, Father,” Menedemos said dutifully. One of the reasons he was so glad to escape Rhodes was that that meant escaping Philo-demos. Living in the same house with him through the winter had been harder this year than in any other Menedemos could remember. His father had long been convinced he couldn't do anything right.

As if to prove as much, Philodemos called, “Listen to your cousin. Sostratos has the beginnings of good sense.”

Menedemos clipped his head, as Hellenes did to show assent. He shot Sostratos a hooded glance. Sostratos had the decency to look embarrassed at such praise from the older generation.

Sostratos' father, Lysistratos, stood alongside Philodemos. He was a good deal more easygoing than his older brother. But he too said, “You're going to have to watch yourselves every single place you go.”

“We will.” Even Sostratos let a little exasperation show, and he got on with his father far better than Menedemos did with his.

But Lysistratos persisted: “Not just pirates these days, you know. Since Ptolemaios and Antigonos started fighting again last year, there'll be more war galleys on the sea than a dog has fleas. Some of those whoresons are just pirates in bigger, faster, stronger ships.”

“Yes, Uncle Lysistratos,” Menedemos said patiently. “But if we don't go out and trade, the family goes hungry.”

“Well, that's true,” Lysistratos admitted.

“Watch out for the silk merchants on Kos,” Philodemos warned. “They'll gouge you if you give them half a chance—-even a quarter of a chance. They think they've got the world by the short hairs because you can't buy silk anywhere else.”

They have a point, too, Menedemos thought. Aloud, he said, “We'll do our best. We did all right with them last year, remember. And we've got crimson dye aboard. They always pay well for that.”

His father gave more advice. In a low voice, Sostratos said, “If we keep listening to them, we'll never sail.”

“Isn't that the truth?” Menedemos whispered back. He raised his voice to call out to the crew: “Rowers to the benches! Diokles, come up to the stern, if you please.”

“Right you are, skipper,” Diokles answered. The keleustes was in his early forties, his skin tanned and leathery from endless summers at sea. He mounted from the undecked waist of the akatos to the poop. His bare feet were sure and quiet as he came up the steps to the raised platform at the stern. Seamen didn't wear shoes aboard ship—and few of them bothered with shoes ashore, either.

All forty of the akatos' oars were manned fast enough to keep Menedemos from complaining. More than half of the rowers had gone west to Great Hellas and the towns of the Italian barbarians the year before. Almost all of them had pulled an oar in a Rhodian warship at one time or another. They weren't a raw crew, and wouldn't need much beating in to work well together—so Menedemos hoped, at any rate.

He glanced over to the quay to make sure no lines still secured the Aphrodite. Sure enough, they'd all been taken aboard. He knew that, but was glad he'd checked all the same. Trying to row away while still tied up? His father would never have let him live it down. Neither would anyone else.

Having satisfied himself, he dipped his head to Diokles.

“Good enough.” As always aboard ship, the oarmaster carried a little mallet with an iron head and a bronze square dangling from a chain. He used them to beat out the stroke. All eyes went to him when he raised the bronze square. He grinned at the rowers as he cocked his right arm, then brought the mallet forward. As metal clanged on metal, he began to call the stroke, too: “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”

The oars rose and fell, rose and fell. The Aphrodite glided away from the pier, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Sostratos waved back toward his father. Grudgingly, Menedemos looked back over his shoulder and lifted one hand from the steering oar to wave at Philodemos in turn. A little to his surprise, his father waved back. But is he waving because he's sorry to see me go, or because he's glad?

Rhodes boasted no fewer than five harbors, but only the great harbor and the naval harbor just northwest of it were warded from wind and weather with manmade moles. The great harbor's opening onto the Aegean was only a couple of plethra across—not even a bowshot. Menedemos steered toward the middle of the channel.

“Rhyppapai!” Diokles called. He smote the bronze square again. “Rhyppapai!” He set a stately pace. What point to wearing out the rowers at the beginning of the voyage? And what point to embarrassing them by pushing them up to a quick stroke and having them make mistakes under the critical eyes of every wharf rat in Rhodes? After all, the only reason Menedemos put a full complement on the oars was for show. Once out of the harbor, the merchant galley would either sail or amble along with eight or ten rowers on a side unless she had to flee or fight.

Menedemos tasted the motion of the sea through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands on the steering oars. Here in the protected harbor, the water was almost glassy smooth. Even so, no one could ever mistake it for the staid solidity of dry land. “Almost like riding a woman, isn't it?” Menedemos said to Sostratos.

His cousin plucked at his beard. They weren't fashionable for young men these days—Menedemos and most of the sailors were clean-shaven—but Sostratos had never been one to care much for fashion. “Trust you to come up with that particular comparison,” he said at last.

“I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about,” Menedemos replied with a chuckle.

Sostratos snorted. “It's plain you're no Persian, at any rate.”

“Persian? I should hope not,” Menedemos said. “What are you talking about, anyhow? You pull the strangest things out from under your hat.”

“Herodotos says Persians learn three things when they're growing up,” Sostratos said: “to ride, to shoot, and to tell the truth.”

“Oh,” Menedemos said. “Well, to the crows with you, O cousin of mine.” They both laughed. What Menedemos didn't tell Sostratos was that he was glad to be leaving Rhodes not because of what he had done this winter but because of what he hadn't—a sizable departure from his norm.

His cousin knew nothing of that. No one but Menedemos knew of the passion he'd conceived for his father's young second wife— unless Baukis herself had some inkling of it. But whatever he thought, whatever he felt, he hadn't done anything about it, and the strain of doing nothing had made living with his father even harder than it would have been otherwise.

He would have known blindfolded the instant when the Aphrodite glided out between the fortified moles that sheltered the great harbor and onto the open waters of the Aegean. The akatos' motion changed inside the space of a heartbeat. Real waves—not big ones, but waves nonetheless, driven by a brisk northerly breeze—slapped her bow and foamed over the three-finned bronze ram she carried there. She began to pitch, going up and down, up and down, under Menedemos' feet.

“Now we're really on the sea!” he said happily.

“So we are.” Sostratos sounded less delighted. The merchant galley's motion remained quite mild, but Menedemos' cousin had an uncertain stomach till he got back his sea legs at the start of each new sailing season. Menedemos thanked the gods that that affliction didn't trouble him.

The chop made the Aphrodite's timbers creak. Menedemos cocked his head and smiled at the familiar sound. The mortises and tenons and treenails that held plank to plank hadn't taken any strain since the akatos came back from Great Hellas the autumn before. Indeed, she'd been beached all winter, for all the world as if she were a warship, to let her dry out. She would be uncommonly fast for a while, till the pine got waterlogged again.

Fishing boats bobbed on the swells. Seeing the Aphrodite out-bound from the harbor at Rhodes, they knew the galley was no pirate ship. A couple of fishermen even waved at her. Menedemos lifted his right hand from the steering oar to wave back. He loved eating fish— what Hellene didn't?—but nothing could have made him catch them for a living. Endless labor, poor reward . . . He tossed his head: no, anything but that.

Diokles said, “Pity the wind's straight in our face. Otherwise, we could lower the sail from the yard and give the rowers a rest.”

“It usually blows out of the north at this season of the year,” Menedemos answered, and the oarmaster dipped his head in agreement. Menedemos went on, “But I will take half the men off the oars now. We'll make Kaunos by sundown without hurrying.”

“We'd better,” Diokles said. He left off clanging his mallet on bronze and called out, “Oop!” The rowers rested at their oars. The akatos eased to a halt. Diokles went on, “Starting from the bow, every other man take a rest.” The rowers coming off hauled in their long, dripping oars and stowed them atop medium-sized jars of crimson dye; small, round pots of ink; and oiled-leather sacks full of papyrus from Egypt. “Rhyppapai!” the keleustes sang out. “Rhyppapai!” The men left on the oars went back to work. The Aphrodite began to move again, not with the speed she'd shown before but still well enough to suit Menedemos.

“We'll practice tactics for a sea fight a good deal on this cruise,” he told the crew. “Never can tell when we'll need them. Except right around Rhodes, pirates are thick as flies round a dead goat.”

No one grumbled. Anybody who went to sea knew he told the truth. Sostratos said, “If anybody besides our polis cared about keeping those vultures off the water ...” He clicked his tongue between his teeth.

“But no one does.” Menedemos called to one of the sailors who'd just stopped rowing: “Aristeidas! Go up to the foredeck and keep an eye on things. You're the best lookout we've got.”

“Right, captain,” the young sailor answered, and hurried forward. He'd proved on the Aphrodites last voyage how sharp his eyes were. Menedemos wanted a pair of good eyes looking out for pirates. The mountainous seaside district of Lykia lay just east of Kaunos, and, as far as he or any other Rhodian could tell, piracy was the Lykians' chief national industry. Any headland might shelter a long, lean, fifty-oared pentekonter or a hemiolia—shorter than a pentekonter because its oars were on two banks rather than one but even swifter, the pirate ship par excellence—lying in wait to rush out and capture a prize. Spotting a raider in good time might make the difference between staying free and going up on the auction block, naked and manacled, in some second-rate slave market.

Menedemos' eye went from the sea to the Karian coastline ahead. Mist and distance—Kaunos lay about two hundred fifty stadia north and slightly east of Rhodes—shrouded his view, but his mind's eye supplied the details he couldn't yet make out. As in Lykia, the mountains of Karia rose swiftly from the sea. The lower slopes would show the green and gold of ripening crops at this season of the year. Farther up grew cypress and juniper and even a few precious cedars. Woodcutters who went up into the mountains after the timber shipwrights had to have might face not only wolves and bears but lions as well.

When he thought of lions, he naturally thought of Homer, too, and murmured a few lines from the eighteenth book of the Iliad:

“Why are you going on about lions?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos explained. “Ah,” his cousin said. “Do you have a few lines from Homer that you trot out for everything under the sun?”

“Not for everything,” Menedemos admitted. “But for most things, if you know the Iliad and the Odyssey, you'll come up with some lines to help you figure out how it all goes together.”

“But that's something you should do for yourself,” Sostratos said. “You shouldn't need to find your answers in the words of an old blind poet.”

“Hellenes have been doing it ever since he sang,” Menedemos said.

“Tell me any of your precious philosophers and historians will last as well.” He was much more conventional—he thought of himself as much more practical—than Sostratos, and enjoyed twitting his cousin, “Why go to Athens to study, the way you did, when most of what you need is right there under your nose?”

Sostratos exhaled angrily through that nose. “For one thing, a lot of Homer's answers aren't so good as people think they are. And, for another, who says Herodotos and Platon and Thoukydides won't last? Thoukydides wrote his history to be a possession for all time, and I think he did what he set out to do.”

“Did he?” Menedemos jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “I don't know what all he wrote, and I'm not exactly ignorant. But you can take any Hellene from Massalia, on the coast of the Inner Sea way north and west of Great Hellas, and drop him into one of the poleis Alexander founded in India or one of those other countries out beyond Persia, and if he recites the lines I just did, somebody else will know the ones that come next. Go on—tell me I'm wrong.”

He waited. Sostratos sometimes irked him, but was always painfully honest. And now, with a sigh, Menedemos' cousin said, “Well, I can't do that, and you know it perfectly well. Homer is everywhere, and everybody knows he's everywhere. When you first learn to read, if you do, what do you learn? The Iliad, of course. And even men who don't have their letters know the stories the poet tells.”

“Thank you.” Menedemos made as if to bow without letting go of the steering oar. “You've just proved my case for me.”

“No, by the dog of Egypt.” Sostratos tossed his head. “What people think to be true and what is true aren't always the same. If we thought this ship were sailing south, would we end up at Alexandria? Or would we still go on to Kaunos, regardless of what our opinion was?”

It was Menedemos' turn to wince. After a moment, he pointed to starboard. “There's a fisherman with a false opinion of us. We're a galley, so he thinks we're pirates, and he's sailing away as fast as he can.”

Sostratos wagged a finger in his face. “Oh, no, you don't, best one. You can't slide out of the argument that way.” He was, annoyingly, as tenacious as he was honest. “People may believe things because they're true; things aren't true because people believe them.”

Menedemos pondered that. A dolphin leaped into the air near the Aphrodite, then splashed back into the sea. It was beautiful, but he couldn't point to it and talk about truth. At last, he said, “No wonder they made Sokrates drink hemlock,”

That, at least, started a different argument.

With the wind dead against her, the Aphrodite's crew had to row all the way to Kaunos. The akatos got into the town on the coast of Karia late in the afternoon. Sostratos spoke without thinking as they glided past the moles that closed off the harbor and neared a quay: “We won't have time to do any business today.”

He was angry at himself as soon as the words passed the barrier of his teeth—another phrase from Homer, he thought, and wished he hadn't. He'd stayed away from Menedemos, as well as he could in the cramped confines of the merchant galley, ever since they wrangled about Sokrates. They'd had that quarrel before; Sostratos suspected— no, he was certain—his cousin had trotted it out only to inflame him. The trouble was, it had worked.

Menedemos answered as if he hadn't noticed Sostratos avoiding him: “You're right, worse luck. But I hope the proxenos will have room for us at his house tonight.”

“So do I.” Sostratos accepted the tacit truce.

His cousin pulled in on one steering oar and out on the other, guiding the Aphrodite towards a berth, Diokles' mallet and bronze square got a couple of quick strokes from the rowers. Then the ke-leustes called, “Back oars!” Three or four such strokes killed the ship's momentum and left her motionless beside the quay.

“Very nice, as usual,” Sostratos said.

“Thank you, young sir,” Diokles replied. As toikharkhos, Sostratos outranked him, and was of course the son of one of the Aphrodite's owners. But Sostratos would never be a seaman to match the oar-master, and they both knew it. Differences in status and skill made for politeness on both sides.

A couple of round ships—ordinary merchantmen—and a shark-shaped hull that looked as if it would make a hemiolia were abuilding in the dockyard not far away. One of the round ships was nearly done; carpenters were affixing stiffening ribs to the already completed outer shell of planking. Other men drove bronze spikes through the planking from the outside to secure it to the ribs. The bang of their hammers filled the whole town.

Up on the hills above seaside Kaunos, the gray stone fortress of Imbros squatted and brooded. The soldiers in the fortress served one-eyed Antigonos, who had overrun all of Karia three years before. Kaunos still proclaimed itself to be free and autonomous. In these days of clashing marshals, though, many towns' claims to freedom and autonomy had a distinctly hollow ring.

While Sostratos eyed the dockyards and the bills and mused on world affairs, Menedemos briskly went ahead with what needed doing. Like a lot of Hellenes, he carried small change in his mouth, between his cheek and his teeth. He spat an obolos into the palm of his hand. “You know who the Rhodian proxenos is, don't you?” he asked a man standing on the pier who wasn't busy securing the Aphrodite.

“Certainly: Kissidas son of Alexias, the olive merchant,” the Kaunian replied.

“That's right.” Menedemos tossed the little silver coin to the local. He gave the fellow the name of the ship, his own name, and Sostratos'. “Ask him if he's able to put my cousin and me up for the night. I'll give you another obolos when you come back with his answer,”

“You've got a bargain, pal.” The man stuck the obolos into his own mouth and trotted away.

He came back a quarter of an hour later with a big-bellied bald man whose bare scalp was as shiny as if he'd rubbed it with olive oil. Menedemos gave the messenger the second obolos, which disappeared as the first one had. The bald man said, “Hail. I'm Kissidas. Which of you is which?”

“I'm Sostratos,” Sostratos answered. Menedemos also named himself.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Kissidas said, though he didn't sound particularly pleased. That worried Sostratos: what was a proxenos for, if not to help citizens of the polis he represented in his own home town? The olive dealer went on, “You'll want lodging, you say?” No, he didn't sound pleased at all.

“If you'd be so kind,” Sostratos replied, wondering if Kissidas bore a grudge against his father or Menedemos’. Neither of the younger men had set eyes on the proxenos before. Menedemos has never tried seducing his wife, Sostratos thought tartly.

“I suppose I can get away with it,” Kissidas said. “But Hipparkhos— he's Antigonos' garrison commander—doesn't much like Rhodians. He's made it hard to keep up the proxeny, he really has.”

“We're glad you have kept it up, best one.” Sostratos meant every word of that. Neither a buggy, noisy, crowded inn nor sleeping on the hard planks of the poop deck much appealed to him. “And what has old One-Eye's officer got against Rhodians?”

“What would you expect?” Kissidas answered. “He thinks your polls leans toward Ptolemaios.”

That held a good deal of truth. Considering how much Egyptian grain went through Rhodes for transshipment all over the Aegean, Sostratos' city had to stay friendly with Ptolemaios. Nonetheless, Sostratos spoke the technical truth when he said, “That's foolish. We're neutral. We have to stay neutral, or somebody would gobble us up for leaning to the other side.”

“My cousin's right,” Menedemos said. He and Sostratos might squabble with each other, but they presented a united front to the world. Menedemos went on, “We even built some ships for Antigonos two or three years ago. How does that make us lean toward Ptolemaios?”

“You don't need to persuade me, friends,” Kissidas said, “and you won't persuade Hipparkhos, for his mind's made up.”

“Will you have trouble with him because you're taking us in?” Sostratos asked.

“I hope not,” the proxenos answered bleakly. “But whether I do or don't, it's my duty to help Rhodians here, the same as it's the duty of the Kaunian proxenos in Rhodes to help men from this city there. Come along with me, best ones, and use my home as your own as long as you're in Kaunos.”

Before leaving the Aphrodite, Menedemos made sure Diokles would keep at least half a dozen sailors aboard her. “Wouldn't do to come back and find half our cargo had grown legs and walked off, now would it?” Menedemos said.

“Not hardly, skipper, especially when we haven't got any peafowl along with us this spring,” Diokles said.

“We haven't got 'em, and we—or I, anyhow—don't miss 'em, either,” Sostratos said. He'd had to care for the birds till they sold the last of them in Syracuse, and hadn't enjoyed the experience. As far as raucous, stupid bipeds go, they're even worse than sailors, he thought—a bit of fluff he wisely didn't pass on to the oarmaster.

“Come along, my friends,” Kissidas repeated, more urgently than before: maybe he didn't want to be seen hanging around a Rhodian ship. Would informers denounce him to Antigonos' garrison commander? As Sostratos went up the gangplank onto the quay, he thanked Fortune and the other gods that Rhodes really was free and autonomous, and that Rhodians didn't have to worry about such nonsense.

As far as the look of both buildings and people went, Kaunos might have been a purely Hellenic city. The temples were older and plainer than those of Rhodes, but built in the same style. Houses showed the world only blank fronts, some whitewashed, and red tile roofs, as they would have back home. All the signs were in Greek, Men wore thigh-length chitons; a few wrapped hitmatia over the tunics. Women's chitons reached their ankles. If prosperous or prominent women came out in public, they wore hats and veils against the prying eyes of men.

“Just thinking about what might be under those wrappings builds a fire under you, doesn't it?” Menedemos murmured after one such woman walked by.

“Under you, maybe,” Sostratos said. His cousin laughed at him.

As Sostratos walked along the narrow, muddy, winding streets, he realized the Karians who shared Kaunos with the Hellenes also made their presence felt. Though they were hellenized as far as dress went, more of their men wore beards than was true at Rhodes—the fad for shaving hadn't caught on among them. Some of them wore short, curved swords on their belts, too: outlandish weapons to a Hellene's eye. And, even if they didn't write their own language, they did speak it—a gurgling tongue that meant nothing to Sostratos.

“Tell me,” he said to Kissidas, suddenly curious, “do men and women and even children here in Kaunos sometimes get large drinking parties together for friends of about the same age?”

The Rhodian proxenos stopped in his tracks and gave him an odd look. “Why, yes,” he answered. “But how could you know that?

You've never been here before, I don't believe, and that's not the custom anywhere else in Karia.”

“I've heard it said, and I wondered if it was true,” Sostratos answered. Explaining he'd stumbled across it in the history of Herodotos was likely to spawn as many questions as it answered, so he didn't bother.

When they got to the olive merchant's home, a slave greeted Kissidas in bad Greek before barring the door after him and his guests. Kissidas led the two Rhodians across the rather bare courtyard to the andron. The slave brought a jar of wine, another of water, a mixing bowl, and three cups to the men's room. “Supper soon,” he said, mixing wine and water in the bowl and filling the cups from it.

“To what shall we drink?” Sostratos asked. “To peace among the marshals?”

“That would be wonderful. It would also be too much to hope for,” Kissidas said bleakly. He lifted his own cup. “Here is a prayer the gods may hear: to staying out from underfoot when the marshals clash!” He drank. So did Menedemos. And so did Sostratos. The proxenos' toast summed up his own hope for Rhodes.

Menedemos raised his cup, too. “To making a profit while we stay out from underfoot!” They all drank again. Warmth spread outward from Sostratos' belly. He guessed the mix was one part wine to two of water, a little stronger than usual.

Kissidas said, “I can have couches brought if you like, gentlemen, but I usually dine sitting unless I'm giving a real symposion.”

“Don't trouble yourself, best one,” Sostratos said at once. “You're doing us the kindness of putting us up. We don't want to disrupt your household any more than we must.”

“Good of you. Kind of you.” The wine seemed to hit Kissidas even harder than it hit Sostratos. “My dear fellow, some people imagine that staying at a proxenos' house means they own the place.” He rolled his eyes. “The stories I could tell you ...” After another cup of wine, he started telling those stories. Sostratos heard a good one about a long-winded Rhodian of his father's generation whom he already disliked, a pleasure sweeter than most.

At Kissidas' wave, his house slave set a three-legged round table in front of each chair. The sitos—the main part of the meal—the slave fetched in was wheat bread, still warm from the oven. The opson—the relish that accompanied it—consisted of plates of small squids fried in olive oil till they were golden brown.

Like any mannerly person, Sostratos ate sitos with his left hand, opson with his right, and was careful to eat more bread than squid. As Menedemos popped a squid into his mouth with the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, he inclined his head to Kissidas and said, “You'll make an opsophagos out of me with a supper like this.”

Not wanting to be taken for someone who ate opson at the expense of sitos helped keep Sostratos mannerly. He dipped his head to show his host he agreed with Menedemos' comment. Actually, he thought his cousin was exaggerating for politeness' sake. The squids were good—like most Hellenes, Sostratos was very fond of seafood— but nothing exceptional.

“You're too kind,” Kissidas said. “I forgot to ask before: what have you got aboard? With an akatos, I wouldn't expect you to be carrying grain or timber or cheap wine or oil.”

“No, the Aphrodite's not a bulk hauler, though she's carried grain before,” Menedemos said. “We've got perfume from Rhodian roses, and some of the finest crimson dye to come out of Phoenicia since Alexander sacked Tyre twenty years ago.”

“And papyrus out of Egypt, and pots of first-quality ink from Rhodes,” Sostratos added.

“A few other odds and ends, too: things for men who aren't satisfied with the everyday,” Menedemos said.

“The luxury trade, sure enough—I knew it as soon as I saw your ship,” Kissidas said. “And what do you hope to get here? This isn't a town with a lot of luxuries to sell; we make our living from our crops, and from the timber and mines in the mountains.”

Sostratos and Menedemos shrugged in such perfect unison, they might have been actors on the comic stage. “We'll go into the agora tomorrow and see what your traders have,” Sostratos said. “And we'll gladly sell for silver, too. Plenty of that in these parts, if we can pry it out of people.”

“I wish you the best of luck,” Kissidas said. “But Antigonos squeezes us pretty hard. He—” He broke off as the house slave came in to light lamps and torches, and didn't resume till the man had left the andron. Even afterwards, he kept the conversation innocuous for a while. He had to be worrying about informers.

Menedemos, if Sostratos knew his cousin, had to be thinking about taking one of Kissidas' slave girls to bed. But no women showed themselves, and the fellow who took Sostratos and Menedemos out of the andron led them to a pair of beds in one crowded room. The lamp flickering on the table between the two didn't throw much light, but did shed enough to show Menedemos' expression. It was so eloquent, Sostratos snickered.

“Oh, shut up,” Menedemos told him. “You're not a pretty girl.”

“I'm not even an ugly girl,” Sostratos agreed, “though I suppose I would be, were I a girl.”

“That old-fashioned beard you wear certainly wouldn't help,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos snorted. “Things could be worse. We could be lying there on the planks of the poop deck.” He pulled his chiton off over his head, wrapped himself in his himation, and lay down. Menedemos did the same. Both bed frames creaked as the leather lashings supporting the wool-stuffed mattresses sagged under the men's weight. Menedemos blew out the lamp. The room plunged into blackness. Sostratos fell asleep almost at once.

When Menedemos woke up in the Rhodian proxenos' guest bedchamber, he needed a moment to remember where he was. His cousin's snores from the other bed soon gave him a hint. Gray morning twilight was leaking through the wooden shutters over the window. Outside, not very far away, a jackdaw started screeching: “Chak! Chak! Chak!”

The bird's racket made Sostratos' snores falter. He tried to wrap the himation around his head and sleep through the noise, but had no luck. When he muttered something unpleasant and sat up, Menedemos said, “Good day.”

“Not too bad,” Sostratos answered around a yawn. “Is our host awake?”

“I haven't heard anything stirring except for that jackdaw.” Menedemos reached down and felt around under the bed till he found the chamber pot. He stood up to use it, then passed it to Sostratos—Kissidas' hospitality hadn't extended to one for each guest.

“Miserable noisy bird,” Sostratos said. “If I could see it instead of just listening to it, I'd try to drown it in here.” He set down the pot.

Menedemos shrugged on his tunic. “Let's find the kitchen and seen if we can get some bread and oil and olives, or maybe an onion. Kissidas' slaves will be up, whether he is himself or not. Then we can go back to the Aphrodite, get some sailors to haul things for us, and see what kind of luck we have in the agora.”

“And what the Kaunians are selling,” Sostratos said.

“And what the Kaunians are selling,” Menedemos agreed. “Never can tell what you'll find in a place like this: things from the town, things from the rest of Karia—and, no matter what Kissidas says, things from the other end of the world. Ever since Alexander kicked the Persian Empire open for us Hellenes, we've come across all sorts of strange things we'd hardly known about before. Peafowl, for instance.”

“They were nothing but trouble,” Sostratos said.

“Not quite nothing—we turned 'em into silver.” Menedemos waited to see what sort of argument his cousin would give him about that. When Sostratos didn't argue, Menedemos concluded he'd made his point. He went off toward Kissidas' kitchen in a good mood; he didn't win arguments from Sostratos every day.

Kissidas himself came into the kitchen just as Menedemos and Sostratos were finishing their breakfasts. “You boys are up early,” he said as he tore a chunk from a loaf of last night's bread.

“We've got a lot to do today,” Menedemos said. “The sooner we get started, the sooner we'll get it done.” He was always full of driving energy on the sea, less often on land—when he wasn't chasing some woman or other. But this morning he wished he could do everything at once. “Haven't you finished yet, Sostratos?”

Sostratos spat a last olive pit onto the rammed-earth floor. “I have now. I thought you were just my cousin and my captain, not my master.”

“Shows what you know. Come on, let's get moving.” He swept Sostratos along in his wake, as the Aphrodite brought her boat along in her wake with the tow rope. Over his shoulder, he called back to Kissidas: “We'll see you in the evening, best one. Wish us luck.”

“I do, not that I think you'll need too much,” the olive merchant answered. “Men who push as hard as you do make their own luck.”

Menedemos hardly heard him; he was hustling Sostratos out the front door to Kissidas house. Only then did he hesitate. “Now—to find the harbor.” Kaunos' streets did not run on a neat grid. In fact, they ran on no pattern known to geometry. This was an old town, unlike modern Rhodes, which had gone up only a century before, and whose streets went at right angles to one another.

“As long as we go east, we're fine,” Sostratos said. “The shadows will tell us which way that is.”

“Good enough.” Menedemos laughed. “I usually steer by the sun out on the sea, not here on land. But you're right—it should work.”

And it did. Menedemos wasn't so sure he'd be able to find Kissidas' house again, but the rising sun did lead him to the harbor and to the Aphrodite. A few sailors aboard the merchant galley were still snoring on the rowers' benches, leaning up against the planking of the ship's side. More were up and about but moving with the slow care of men who'd had too much wine the night before.

Diokles, predictably, was both awake and undamaged. “Hail, skipper,” he boomed, making several men wince. “I was hoping you'd get here about now. Plenty of things to do today.”

“That's right,” Menedemos agreed. “Pick me six or eight men to haul jars of dye and perfume and pots of ink and a couple of these sacks of papyrus to the agora. Don't choose any of the fellows who stayed on the ship last night—they're entitled to their fun today.”

“Right you are.” The keleustes told off several sailors. They grumbled—they wouldn't have been free Hellenes if they hadn't—but they did as they were told. Leading their little procession, Menedemos and Sostratos headed back into Kaunos from the harbor district.

Menedemos had to ask how to get to the agora: no steering by the sun there. The first man he asked babbled at him in Karian, which he didn't understand. The next plainly followed Greek, but made a production of having to think things over till Menedemos handed him an obolos. Once he'd popped the little coin into his mouth, he gave quick, clear directions that also proved accurate. Menedemos silently thanked the gods; he'd known lots of quick, clear directions that had the sole flaw of not taking him where he needed to go.

The market square was still nearly empty when the men from the Aphrodite got there. That let them stake out a good spot, one that would give them shade for most of the day. They arranged the jars and pots and sacks the sailors had carried. Menedemos started crying his wares: “Perfume from Rhodian roses! Fine Phoenician crimson dye! Papyrus from the Nile! Fine ink, none better!”

A good many other people were shouting, too, for things like pots and figs—Kaunos was famous for its figs—and leather and wool cloth. Those shouts would have gone up in any city around the Inner Sea. Menedemos', for goods out of the ordinary, drew the curious and, he hoped, the slaves of the wealthy.

“Where's your crimson from?” a man asked. “Just saying 'Phoenician,' now, that doesn't mean a thing. Plenty of towns in Phoenicia, and every one of 'em has its own style of fixing up the shellfish.”

“Byblos,” Sostratos said. “Since Alexander sacked Tyre, everyone agrees that Byblian crimson is the best.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” the Kaunian replied. “I've always been partial to Sidon's dye, myself. But I might use Byblian on my wool, if T can get a halfway decent price for it. What do you want for one of your jars? They'll be a Rhodian kotyie apiece, won't they?”

“That's right,” Sostratos replied. “About the size of a big drinking cup of wine. But you can get your wine for a few oboloi. Crimson dye is dearer—shellfish aren't so easy to come by as grapes.”

“I know, I know.” The wool merchant sounded impatient. “Tell me what you want for a jar, I'll tell you what a gods-detested thief you are, and we'll go from there.”

Sostratos smiled. So did Menedemos; the Kaunian didn't believe in wasting time. “Just as you say, best one,” Sostratos told him. “Thirty drakhmai the jar seems a fair price.”

“Thirty?” the local howled. “You are a gods-detested thief! I expected you to say fifteen, and I'd've laughed at that. Ten would be too much, by Zeus Labraundeus.” He spoke Doric Greek not much different from Menedemos' or Sostratos', but the god by whom he swore was Karian.

“Nice of you to stop by,” Sostratos said pleasantly. The wool merchant made no motion to leave. The little crowd that had gathered leaned forward for the next move in the dicker. Sostratos merely waited. He was good at that, better than Menedemos, who was an impulsive plunger by temperament.

Looking like a man with a sour stomach, the Kaunian wool dealer said, “I suppose I might go up to twelve.” Sostratos hardly seemed to hear him. As if every word hurt, the local added, “Or even thirteen.”

“Well. . .” Sostratos plucked at his beard. Everyone waited. How much would he come down? Sometimes—often—Menedemos stuck his oar into the bargaining, too, but this didn't seem to be the moment. In tones of mild regret, Sostratos said, “I don't suppose my father would take a strap to me if I got twenty-eight drakhmai the jar.” He didn't sound sure about that, though.

He didn't drive the wool merchant away, either. The spectators smiled and nudged one another: this would be a loud, long, entertaining haggle. One man whispered to the fellow beside him, offering a bet on what price the dye would finally bring.

Plainly, the dicker would tie things up for a while. Menedemos walked away, judging he had time for a quick look around the agora. He ate a fig candied in honey. He had to work to keep from exclaiming at how good it was. “Maybe we should talk,” he told the man selling them. “I might try bringing a few of those to Rhodes, on the off chance some people would like them.”

“Don't wait too long, my friend,” the dealer answered. “They always go fast. I've already sold a lot.”

“Let me see what else I might be interested in,” Menedemos said. “This fellow next to you has . . . Are those really lion skins? And what's that one with the stripes?”

“That's from the Indian beast called a tiger,” the man at the next stall said. “If I were to stretch the skin out, you would see it's even bigger than the ones from the lions. They're local. They were killing sheep up in the hills till a whole mob of men took after 'em with spears.”

“Er—yes,” Menedemos said. No lions on Rhodes. There never had been, not so far as anyone's memory reached. Here on the Anatolian mainland, though, it was a different story. He recalled the verses he'd recited on the sea; Homer had known the beasts well. They didn't live in Hellas these days, though some were still supposed to lurk in the back woods of Macedonia.

Menedemos was about to ask a price for the hides. Hellenes didn't wear furs—that was the mark of Thracians and Skythians and other barbarians—but images of Zeus and Herakles could be decked in lion skins. . . and, he supposed, in a tiger skin as well. Or maybe that would do for Dionysos, who was also said to come from India.

Before he put the question to the merchant, though, he noticed another item by the man's sandaled foot. “What exactly is that, and where did it come from?” he asked.

“I can answer the second question easier than the first,” the fellow replied. “The fellow who sold it to me said he got it from a man who'd lived in Alexandria Eskhate.”

“The last Alexandria?” Menedemos echoed. “Alexander named towns for himself all over the east. Where's that one?”

“Way off near the edge of the world—in Sogdiana, on the Iaxartes River,” the merchant said. “The Hellene who lived there got it from the Sakai who roam the plains to the north and east. Where the nomads found it, the man who sold it to me couldn't say. I guess the fellow who sold it to him didn't know, either.”

“What is it?” Menedemos asked again. “What did it come from?” The merchant told him. His eyes widened. “You're joking.”

“Looks like one, doesn't it?” the Kaunian said.

“I don't know. I've never seen one before,” Menedemos answered. “I don't know anybody who has ... or maybe I do.” He glanced over toward Sostratos. His cousin looked to have just struck a bargain with the wool merchant. That meant he could come over and take a look. Menedemos whistled shrilly, then waved to draw his notice. “Oë, Sostratos!” he shouted. “Come here!”

Sostratos was more than a little pleased with himself. He'd got the Kaunian wool merchant up to twenty-two drakhmai a jar for six jars of crimson dye. Anything over eighteen drakhmai the jar was profit, so he'd done pretty well. Now that the wool merchant had gone off to get the silver—one mina, thirty-two drakhmai, said the calculating part of Sostratos' mind that rarely rested—he wanted a moment in which he could relax and be proud of himself.

He wanted one, but he didn't get it. From halfway across the agora, Menedemos started waving and whistling and generally acting the fool. “Oe, Sostratos!” he called. “Come here!”

“What is it?” Sostratos shouted back. He doubted whether anything in Kaunos' market square was worth getting excited about.

His cousin, though, evidently disagreed with him, “Come here,” his cousin repeated. “You've got to take a look at this.”

“Take a look at what?” Sostratos asked irritably. Menedemos didn't answer. He just waved and called again. Muttering under his breath, Sostratos went over to see what besides a pretty girl could get his cousin in such an uproar.

When he got to the flimsy stall by which his cousin was standing, Menedemos pointed dramatically and said, “There!”

Sostratos stared. Staring didn't tell him what he needed to know, so he asked the question he had to ask: “What is that thing?”

“A gryphon's skull,” Menedemos and the local merchant answered together. They might have come from the chorus in a revived tragedy of Euripides'.

“A gryphon's skull?” Sostratos echoed, as if he couldn't believe his ears. As a matter of fact, he couldn't, “But... I always thought— everyone always thought—gryphons weren't real. Herodotos puts them at the end of the world with the one-eyed Arimaspioi and other unlikelihoods.”

“This skull comes from the end of the world,” Menedemos said, and told Sostratos what the Kaunian had told him. Before Sostratos could say anything, his cousin added, “And if that's not a gryphon's skull, my dear, I'd like you to tell me what it is.”

“I . . don't know.” Sostratos squatted beside the extraordinary skull—it was definitely the skull of some sort of beast, whether gryphon or not—for a closer look. After a moment, Menedemos crouched down beside him. “What have you come across here?” Sostratos asked his cousin,

“I already told you,” Menedemos said. “You didn't want to believe me, that's all.”

“Do you blame me?” Sostratos said. Menedemos only shrugged.

The skull itself said nothing at all, of course. It only lay on the muddy ground in the middle of Kaunos' agora and stared back at Sostratos out of large, empty eye sockets. The skull itself was impressively large, too: perhaps two cubits long, and almost a cubit and a half wide at the broadest point, though it narrowed at the front to a curved beak almost like that of an eagle. Growing astonishment and awe prickled through Sostratos; gryphons were supposed to have just that sort of beak.

Unlike an eagle's, though, this beak held teeth. Sostratos tilted the skull for a better look. He would have expected fangs to put a lion's to shame, but these flat-topped, square teeth looked more like a cow's or a goat's. “Isn't that interesting?” Sostratos murmured. “No matter what we've heard, the gryphon may graze instead of killing,”

“What makes you say that?” Menedemos asked.

“Its teeth,” Sostratos answered, and explained his reasoning. Menedemos pursed his lips as he thought, then dipped his head in agreement.

“You're a clever fellow,” the Kaunian merchant said. “That never would have occurred to me.”

“A clever fellow, eh?” Sostratos tossed his head. “If I'm so clever, why did I never imagine . . . this?” He reached out and rested his palm on the skull's projecting, beaky snout. The feel of it surprised him anew; it was cooler and heavier, more solid, than he'd expected from old bone. “It might almost be stone under my ringers,” he said, and glanced toward Menedemos. “You don't suppose some sculptor—”

“No.” His cousin cut him off. “That's impossible, best one, and you know it as well as I do. Who could have imagined such a thing, let alone carved it? Those teeth are teeth. A man would break his heart and go blind trying to shape them. And the broken horn that sticks up and back from the skull? Don't be absurd.”

Sostratos sighed. He would have loved to tell Menedemos he was wrong, but couldn't. “You have me, I'm afraid.”

He straightened, picked up the skull—It weighed about a third of a talent, he guessed—and turned it all the way over, wondering if the underside would tell him anything the top hadn't. On closer inspection, he discovered the teeth weren't quite so much like a cow's as he'd first thought. But he still couldn't imagine the gryphon eating meat with them.

Menedemos pointed to some reddish dirt clinging to the bottom of the skull. “There. You see? It's not carved. It's been buried underground for a long time.”

“Well, maybe.” Sostratos tried to scrape off the dirt with his finger. It didn't want to be scraped. He broke a fingernail trying, in fact, and had to gnaw at it to get some sort of even edge. “It's not dirt. It's stone.” He tried scraping, more cautiously, with his other index ringer. A little of the stuff came away, but not much. “Soft, sandy stone, but stone, no doubt about it.”

After reaching out himself and scraping a bit, Menedemos dipped his head. “You're right. How long do you suppose a skull would have to stay underground to have bits of stone stuck to it?”

“I couldn't begin to guess,” Sostratos answered. “Herodotos says the Egyptians say their kings and priests go back 341 generations, which he makes out to be something over 11,000 years. Some good part of that time, anyway.”

“Probably.” Menedemos whistled softly. “Over 11,000 years? That's a long time. I don't suppose it's been even one thousand years since the Trojan War, has it? You know things like that.”

Before Sostratos could tell him it hadn't been a thousand years, or even quite nine hundred, since the Trojan War, the Kaunian merchant said, “So what will you give me for this gryphon's skull?”

And, before Sostratos could even ask him how much he wanted, Menedemos laughed and said, “Oh, my dear fellow, that old bone is interesting to look at, but I don't think we want to buy it. What in the name of the gods is it good for, except maybe as the strangest decoration for an andron anyone ever saw? Now the lion skins you've got, and the one from the—tiger, did you call it?—those I might be interested in talking about with you.”

“Menedemos,” Sostratos said.

His cousin ignored him. Menedemos was turning into a haggler right in front of him. Examining the skins with a critical eye, he clicked his tongue between his teeth in dismay. “I'd pay more if it weren't for this poorly repaired hole here. Where a spear went in, I suppose?”

“Menedemos,” Sostratos said again, rather louder. The next time, he would scream his cousin's name. He was sure of it.

But, for a wonder, Menedemos deigned to notice him. “Yes? What is it, best one? You wanted something?” He was the picture of slightly distracted good will.

Sostratos took him by the arm. “Walk with me for a moment, if you'd be so kind.” He led his cousin out of earshot of the local before speaking in a low voice: “I want that skull.”

“What?” As he'd thought it would, that got rid of Menedemos' distraction. “Why? What would you do with it?”

“Take it to Athens,” Sostratos replied at once. “I'd want Theo-phrastos and the other philosophers at the Lykeion—and the ones at the Academy, too—to see it and study it and learn from it. Most philosophers have always thought the gryphon a mythical beast, like a centaur or a Cyclops. But that”—he didn't point back toward the skull, for fear of showing the merchant how much he wanted it— “proves it's as real as a horse. Don't you see how important that is?”

“Maybe,” Menedemos said. “What I don't see is how we'll make any money from it,”

To the crows with money, Sostratos started to say. But he didn't let the words out. His cousin understood silver much better than he understood the relentless drive of curiosity. And so Sostratos chose a different tack: “We might get the Lykeion and the Academy bidding against each other to see who would own it.”

“Do you think so?” Menedemos quirked an interested eyebrow upward.

“Why not?” Sostratos said. “Do you suppose philosophers have any less desire for fame and any less desire to get a leg up on their rivals than ordinary men?”

“You would know better than I,” Menedemos answered.

“My dear, you have no idea,” Sostratos said. “Some of the things the men of the Academy did to us when I was in Athens—”

“And what did your side do to them?” his cousin asked shrewdly.

“Oh, this and that,” Sostratos said in innocent tones. “But if you buy those hides—and I think you can make money from them—by all means get that skull, too.”

“Well, I'll see what I can do,” Menedemos replied. “But if he asks a couple of talents for it, the philosophers will have to do without, because I don't believe they'll come up with that kind of money. Now you go on back and tend to what we brought to the agora: we don't want to lose customers of our own. I'll take care of this fellow. Go on, now.”

Reluctantly, Sostratos went. He wanted to stay and do the dickering himself. Menedemos, after all, didn't really care about the gryphon's skull. But, after a moment, Sostratos realized that gave his cousin an advantage. If he haggled himself, the merchant would see how much he wanted it, and would charge accordingly. What better shield against gouging than indifference?

To his surprise, the first Kaunian who came up to him was interested, not in dye or in perfume, but in papyrus and ink. In short order, Sostratos had sold him two round pots of ink and three twenty-sheet rolls of papyrus, and made fifteen drakhmai. “What will you do with it?” he asked the local.

“I aim to copy out all the city laws,” the man replied. “As things are now, they're either carved in stone or written out on wooden tablets, and they're scattered all over Kaunos. If we have them all in one place, we can refer to them whenever we need to, and the papyrus won't take up nearly so much space.”

“That sounds . . .” Sostratos cast about for a word, and found one that fit: “efficient. Very efficient indeed.”

“It's a new world,” the local said seriously. “If we don't change with the times, we'll go under.” Looking pleased with himself, he carried his purchases out of the market square.

Sostratos cried the virtues of crimson dye and perfume and papyrus and ink—if he'd sold those to one man here, he might sell them to another. At the same time, he kept an eye on Menedemos and the man with the skins and the gryphon's skull. They both gestured with considerable animation; they were, to Sostratos' annoyance, too far away for him to hear what they were saying. Then a burly man came up and asked about his perfume, and he lost any sense of the dicker across the agora because he had to pay attention to the one at hand.

He soon recognized his customer as a brothel keeper. “If the girls smell good, they'll get more trade, and they'll be able to charge more, too,” the fellow said. “Of course, if you try and charge me too much for your rosewater here, I'll never make back the price, so you can't squeeze me too hard.”

Sostratos felt like squeezing the local by the neck, for distracting him from the deal in which he was more interested. He ended up selling the perfume for less than he might have, both because he was distracted and because the brothel keeper quibbled over oboloi with the dogged persistence of a man who struck a dozen bargains every afternoon. Sostratos didn't lose money on the deal, but he didn't make any to speak of, either.

At last, after what seemed like forever, Menedemos ambled back from the Kaunian merchant's stall. “Aristeidas, Teleutas, come on back to the ship with me. We need to get some silver, and then we need to pick up some things.” He led the two sailors off toward the Aphrodite without telling Sostratos which things they would pick up and without giving him the chance to ask.

He did that on purpose, Sostratos thought with no small annoyance. He didn't mind Menedemos' always taking the lead, though he himself was older than his cousin. He didn't enjoy standing in front of men and shouting and gesturing to urge them on to pay higher prices, while Menedemos relished nothing more—except, perhaps, seducing their wives. But when he gives orders deliberately intended to drive me mad. . .

Kaunos wasn't a big city. Menedemos didn't need long to return to the agora, coins clinking in a leather sack he carried in his left hand. His right hand rested on the hilt of a sword he'd belted on. Aristeidas was similarly armed; Teleutas carried a belaying pin with the air of a man who knew what to do with it. It would have taken a large band of determined robbers to separate Menedemos from his money.

Along with the sailors, he strode over to the stall of the merchant with the hides—and the gryphon's skull. Sostratos watched anxiously and tried to listen, but got distracted again when a local came up and wanted to talk about the best way to make crimson dye fast to Koan silk. Normally, Sostratos would have been delighted to talk shop with the fellow. As things were, he'd never had a customer he wanted less. Even when the man bought a jar of dye, he had to make himself remember to take the money.

Here came Menedemos, carrying the striped tiger skin rolled up and tied with rope. At another time, thai hide by itself would have been plenty to rouse Sostratos' always lively curiosity. Here came Aristeidas, with a rolled-up lion skin under each arm. And . .. here came Teleutas, lugging the gryphon's skull and looking put upon, as anyone who got stuck with the heaviest piece of the work would have.

Sostratos hurried over to Menedemos and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you, O best one!” he exclaimed. Then, pragmatism returning, he asked, “What did you pay for it?”

“Thirty drakhmai,” Menedemos answered. “Polluted whoreson wouldn't go any lower, not even when I asked him if he felt like waiting twelve years or so till another mad philosopher wandered into the agora here.”

“He probably gave twenty-five to the Hellene he bought it from, and didn't want to part with it at a loss,” Sostratos said.

“Exactly what I was thinking.” His cousin grinned at him. “I notice you don't deny being a mad philosopher.”

“I do love wisdom, or the chance to gain some,” Sostratos said seriously. “As for mad . . .” He shrugged. “I'd rather call myself, mm, inquisitive,”

Thoukydides had had some sharp things to say about men who called a thing by one name when it manifestly deserved another. But Sostratos honestly didn't think he was mad for knowledge the way, say, Sokrates had been. Of course, what madman ever believes be is one?

Teleutas said, “I've sailed up past Byzantion onto the Pontos Euxeinos, and I've seen gryphons painted on plates along that coast, and done up in jewelry. Up there, they make 'em out to be pretty. But any beast with a skull like this'd have to be the ugliest thing that ever hatched out of an egg.”

“Now there's a question, my wisdom-loving cousin,” Menedemos said. “Do gryphons hatch from eggs, or are they born alive?”

“It's a question with a simple answer, as far as I'm concerned,” Sostratos replied. “I don't know.”

“An honest answer, anyway,” Menedemos said. “Come on, boys, back to the akatos again. We'll stow these prizes—and the skull— and then see what else we can get.”

“Prizes—and the skull?” Sostratos echoed unhappily, “Why did you buy it if you didn't think we'd make anything from it?”

“Because, my dear, you'd have fussed and fumed this whole sailing season if I'd left it sitting there on the ground. Thirty drakhmai isn't too high a price to pay for a summer's worth of peace and quiet,” Menedemos answered, Sostratos' ears got hot. There were times when his cousin knew him much too well.

“ Oh, that thing,” Kissidas said when Menedemos and Sostratos went back to the Rhodian proxenos' house for supper that evening. “I've seen it in the agora. Everybody in Kaunos has seen it in the market square by now, I daresay. Why in the name of the gods did you want it?”

“Well . . .” Menedemos, usually so glib, found himself at a loss for words. “You see . . . That is .. .” I bought it to keep Sostratos happy didn't seem reason enough, not when he sat in the olive merchant's andron instead of bargaining in the market square.

Sostratos was glib enough here: “I want the philosophers in Athens to see it. It answers many questions about gryphons, starting with whether they're real or mythical beasts. I'd always thought they were the stuff of story myself, but I see I was wrong.”

“Hard to have a real skull for a mythical beast,” Kissidas said with a dry chuckle.

“Exactly so, best one,” Sostratos agreed. He would have made a better merchant if everyday affairs roused the same passion in him as this oddity did. Of course he needs oddities to interest him—he's odd himself, Menedemos thought. His cousin went on, “At the same time, though, having a veritable gryphon's skull raises as many questions as it answers.”

Those questions were for the moment forgotten when Kissidas' cook brought in a dogfish smothered with melted cheese and leeks to accompany his fresh-baked bread. Menedemos made sure he ate enough bread so as not to seem a shameless opsophagos, but the portion of dogfish set before him vanished with marvelous haste. To his relief, his host and his cousin ate their fish just as fast.

But, after Kissidas licked his fingers clean, he asked, “What sort of questions does the gryphon's skull raise? It just looks like ugly old bones to me.”

To me, too, Menedemos thought. But Sostratos answered, “Well, for one thing, why would gryphons make good guards for the gold of the Skythians? They have—or this one has, at any rate—teeth that would be better for grazing than for ripping and tearing, as a lion might do.”

Kissidas blinked. “I never would have thought to look at its teeth. Who would?”

“Sostratos is like that,” Menedemos murmured.

He didn't think the olive merchant heard him. To his relief, he didn't think his cousin did, either. Sostratos went on, “And you're right to say it looks like old bones, but it doesn't feel like old bones. It feels like stone, and it has bits of stone stuck to it here and there. Why should gryphons have skulls made of stone when all other beasts have theirs made of bone?”

“All other beasts? I don't know about that,” Kissidas said.

“Name another beast with a skull of stone,” Sostratos challenged.

“Well, there's Hipparkhos, up in the fortress on the hill,” the Rhodian proxenos said, deadpan.

Menedemos guffawed. “He's got you.”

“So he has.” Sostratos had the grace to chuckle. But then he got back to the business at hand: “You see why I want the philosophers to be able to examine it?”

“Old bones.” Kissidas tossed his head. “You'll never make any silver with old bones.”

“We didn't pay that much,” Menedemos said, stretching a point. “And Sostratos hopes we can get a couple of the philosophical schools in Athens bidding against each other to see who gets to keep the gryphon's skull. So we may turn a profit yet.” He didn't really believe it, but he would back his cousin against a near-stranger.

“For your sake, I hope your cousin is right.” The proxenos didn't sound convinced, but he didn't sound as if he wanted an argument, either: “And I hope the rest of your business went well.”

“Pretty well,” Menedemos said. “We don't get the prices for perfume that we would if we were farther away from Rhodes, but we can't do anything about that. People here who want it badly can sail down to the polis and get it in the agora for the same price a Rhodian would pay.”

“Pity we can't let the Lykeion and the Academy bid up the price of that tiger hide, too,” Sostratos said wistfully.

“Well, we can't.” Menedemos wanted to make sure his cousin had no doubts about that, “I'm sure we can get more for it somewhere else.” Sostratos dipped his head, but didn't look happy. Menedemos went on, “Gods only know if we'll ever see another gryphon's skull, my dear, but you can be sure more tiger skins will make their way towards Hellas. They're beautiful, and they're bound to make money for the fellow selling them. You can't say either of those things about the skull.”

“That's true.” Sostratos sounded a little more cheerful.

One of the lamps in the andron burned out, making shadows swell and swoop and filling the room with the scent of hot olive oil. Menedemos expected Kissidas to call for a slave to refill it and light it again. Instead, the Rhodian proxenos put a hand in front of his mouth to hide a yawn. Voice still blurry, he said, “Your pardon, best ones, but I'm going to bed. It's been a busy day, and I have another one in front of me tomorrow.” He picked up another clay lamp and handed it to Menedemos. “I'm sure you two can find your way to your own room tonight. Good night.” Out he went, thriftily dousing torches on the way.

“Not the most subtle hint I've ever seen,” Sostratos remarked, anger and amusement warring in his tone.

Anger triumphed in Menedemos, as it had in Akhilleus in the Iliad. Menedemos reckoned he had better reason for it than the hero of old. “He didn't much want us here in the first place,” he growled. “Now he's treating us shabbily on purpose. Some proxenos he is.”

“I don't know,” Sostratos said. “He would have given us salt fish for opson were that so, not that lovely little shark. You can't blame him for being nervous about Antigonos' garrison in the fortress above the town,”

“Who says I can't?” Menedemos returned. “We might as well go to bed now, though, unless you'd sooner sit in a dark andron here when this lamp goes out.” He got to his feet. So did Sostratos.

They'd just left the andron when someone knocked on Kissidas' front door. “Who's that?” Sostratos said softly. “Whoever it is, I'll bet Kissidas wishes he'd go away. Good news doesn't come by night.”

“It isn't our worry, and I'm not sorry it isn't.” Menedemos headed back toward the cramped guest room they shared. They'd just undressed and lain down when a cry of anguish and alarm rent the nighttime stillness. Gladder than ever that it wasn't his worry, Menedemos blew out the lamp. Black night enfolded the room.

It didn't last long. Someone came rushing back toward the little chamber.

Torchlight sneaked under the bottom of the door. Kissidas knocked and called, “Open up, in the name of the gods!”

Menedemos got out of bed without bothering to put his chiton back on. He spoke to Sostratos: “Maybe it's our worry after all.” Opening the door, he addressed the Rhodian proxenos in more normal tones: “Good heavens, what's happened?”

“I'll tell you what.” Kissidas was practically hopping in agitation; the torch trembled in his hand. “Ptolemaios has brought an army and a fleet up to Phaselis, in eastern Lykia. The town fell to him a few days ago, and he's heading west—heading this way.”

“Oimoi!” Menedemos whistled. Lykia, like most of Anatolia, was held by Antigonos. The summer before, Ptolemaios' general Leonides had struck at Alexander's one-eyed general in Kilikia, farther east along the southern Anatolian coast. Antigonos' son Demetrios promptly drove him away. But Ptolemaios, who ruled Cyprus as well as Egypt, didn't seem ready to give up the fight.

Kissidas wasn't worrying about the larger shape of the war between the marshals. His concern was more immediate, more personal. “When Hipparkhos hears about this, he's going to nail me to a cross,” he moaned. “I give thanks to Zeus that the first man here with the news was a fellow who's bought my oil and olives for years.”

From behind Menedemos, Sostratos said, “If Antigonos' captain here in Kaunos suspects the Rhodian proxenos of favoring Ptolemaios, he'll suspect a couple of real Rhodians even more.”

“Just my thought.” Kissidas eagerly dipped his head. “You have to get away—this very moment, if you can. And take me and mine with you.” Awkwardly, he went to his knees and embraced Menedemos around the legs in supplication.

“Get up,” Menedemos told him. His wits worked furiously. His cousin and the olive merchant were right—to a point. “We can't flee in the night, not with half my crew in the taverns and the brothels here, not unless I want to leave them behind. This customer of yours—he won't go to the garrison commander with this word, will he?”

“No,” Kissidas said. “He does not love Antigonos.”

“AH right, then. We'll sail at first light tomorrow. If you and yours are aboard when we leave, we'll take you down to Rhodes,” Menedemos said. The proxenos gabbled out thanks. Sostratos made approving noises. Menedemos hardly heard either one of them. Only he knew how little he wanted to return to his home town.