The Isle of Stone

2.

When Demosthenes presented the Athenians with an opportunity to entrap hundreds of Spartiates, his superiors could hardly deny him. Yet Eurymedon still wouldn’t give up his plans to sail on for Corcyra. He subsequently left with half the fleet, leaving Demosthenes in command with barely enough ships to blockade the island and defend the straits into the bay. Just two ships were enough to keep watch on the enemy during daylight. But after dark, and particularly on the moonless nights toward the beginning of the siege, there was danger that the Lacedaemonians would send small boats or swimmers to help their countrymen, or that the members of the garrison would try to swim for shore. This made it necessary for Demosthenes’ entire fleet to anchor at even intervals around the circumference of Sphacteria. The oarsmen, who were already hungry, overworked, and bored, were forced to take whatever rest they could sitting upright on their benches. Falling over each other in their exhaustion, most gave up sleep altogether. On the Terror, the nocturnal watch therefore became an occasion for lively discussion, whispered but lively over the lap of nighttime swells against the wales.

“Just for your information, you little sprats, do you know why you’re all here, breaking your health in this miserable tub?” asked Patronices.

Dicaearchus, a beam man, had removed the sheepskin cover from his seat and folded it against a bulwark for a pillow. “Of course. It’s because someone decided that the Athenians must have an empire, but did not think of the jealousy it would cause among the Peloponnesians.”

“Wrong! That it exactly what certain people want you to believe, but it isn’t the real truth…”

“It’s a matter of geopolitics, idiot. Nothing more and nothing less.”

“I have heard,” chimed Cleinias from the deck, “that it had to do with the Corinthians encouraging one of our allies to revolt.”

“No, the war is over the way we helped Corcyra in their war with Corinth,” said someone else from the shadows.

“Again, all wrong. What a sad thing it is, to see citizens of Athens giving up their lives for a cause they don’t understand!” declared Patronices.

“All right, slick,” Dicaearchus said as he closed his eyes. “Why don’t you tell us why we’re all here?”

Patronices wiped his face with his oarcloth, for they were stuck in the lee of the island on as stifling a night as he had known in thirty years afloat. “We’re here,” he began, “because of whores. To be more accurate, because of whores of whores. Have any of you spent any time in Megara, among the lovely ladies behind the Temple of Asclepius?”

“All right now, don’t show off…”

“If you’d been there not very long ago, you might have met a girl named Anyte. She plied her trade right at the gate. She was a good-looking girl for that business-I mean soft, plump thighs, hair black and long as the night, tits like scoops of cream. Maybe too good-looking: she had the kind of face you could fall in love with if you forgot yourself. Best of all, she didn’t stink of garlic like every other Megarian, or try to steal your money. For two obols she’d make an honest go of sucking your balls straight out the end of your cock. For three you’d get acquainted with her pink piggy…”

“And nine months later you popped out-end of story!” shouted Cleinias.

“Not hardly! Yes, Anyte hung out with Asclepius, and like him she was good for what ailed you! She was so good at her job, really, that she fell in with some operators who put her into the high-end trade-entertaining rich pricks at their wine parties, if you know what I mean. It was around this time that she changed her name to the exotic, the erotic, the untouchable-Simaetha! Now does that ring any bells?”

Dicaearchus jerked awake. “By Zeus, it does! He’s not kidding, boys: that girl’s legs cut papyrus.”

“I see our friend Dicaearchus is a fan of good flute playing! And so we get to the truly interesting part of our story: seven years ago two purple-faced ne’er-do-wells from Muses Hill, let’s call ’em Frick and Frack, decide to do a little slumming in Megara. They ride over there with their tender rumps on horses, and after throwing their silver around, they get the best room at the inn and order out for some entertainment…”

“Is that the best you can do, ‘Frick and Frack’?”

“Shut up and learn something!” Patronices went on, waving his arms in the constricted space of his station. “So, after a little drinking, a little fish relish without bread, they bring in Simaetha for dessert. And she really wows ’em, friends-by the end of the strip-down they’re sitting with their tongues out, and when she gets down to business Frack is so taken with her that he won’t let Frick get his share! I mean, can you imagine? Frick objects, and Frack tells him to go to his mother in Hades. So the friends get to fighting with knives, with Simaetha screaming, but nobody comes to break it up because they’re thinking there’s nothing wrong, it’s just a lively party.

“When it’s over, Frick’s on the floor, cut up, and Frack is so out of his mind he believes he can’t live without his dear Simaetha. So what does he do? He smuggles her back to Athens wrapped in a blanket! And how do the Megarians react? Like their kind always does, of course-they figure, as the aggrieved party, they might as well take advantage of the situation to… what’s the expression?… trade up. So instead of tracking down the man who stole their property, they head straight to the cathouse run by Pericles’ chippy, Aspasia. Next day her squeeze, old squinchhead, the captain of all our fates, Lord High Pericles Himself is running around the Council House with his hair on fire, denouncing the treachery of Megarians. It seems that not one, but two of Aspasia’s best girls were smuggled off during the night!

“Now not even Pericles, with that honeyed voice of his, can quite convince the whole city to go to war over this. What he proposes instead is a boycott of all Megarian goods within the boundaries of Attica. And so much are the people willing to be fools for him, they actually go for it. Megara, naturally, protests-first to the Assembly, which is useless, and then to the Peloponnesians, who are just waiting for any excuse to clip Pericles’ wings. And the rest, dear friends, we all know, to our sorrow.”

Dicaearchus shook his head. “I may have heard of your Simaetha, but that story is a pack of lies! You’ve been humping an oar too long if you think all this is over a bunch of stolen whores…”

“I disagree! All the really important wars have been over girls, have they not? Remember your Homer.”

“The Romans have a story about how their ancestors stole women from their neighbors, the Sabines,” Cleinias volunteered.

“Romans? Never heard of them.”

“Oh shut up, Timon.”

“Shut up yourself!”

“Oreus, punish him for me.”

Cleinias’ friend Oreus, who had the deck seat over Timon, slapped the latter on top of his head.

“On my father’s name I swear you’ll pay for that, Oreus…!”

“All of you, keep quiet down there!” growled the bosun, Stilbides, through the hatch in the topdeck.

“Just your fellow citizens discussing matters of state…” said Patronices.

“If I have to come down there, fellow citizen, you’ll spend the next three months up to your balls in bilgewater!”