The Sacred Land

2

Coming into Kaunos, on the Karian coast, Sostratos knew a certain surge of hope. So might a man coming back to a polis where he’d lived twenty years before have hoped a hetaira he’d kept company with then was still beautiful and still as glad to see him as she had been once upon a time. He’d been to Kaunos only the year before, but all the same…

“Do you suppose…?” he said to Menedemos.

Three words were plenty to let his cousin know what he was talking about. “No, my dear, I’m afraid I don’t suppose,” Menedemos answered. “What are the odds?”

Sostratos prided himself on being a rational man. He knew what the odds were-knew all too well, in fact. Yet, like someone hoping a long-dead love affair might miraculously revive, he did his best to look away from them rather than in their direction. “We found one gryphon’s skull in the market square here,” he said. “Why not another?”

“You’d do better to ask why we found one, wouldn’t you, when none was ever seen in these parts before?” Menedemos said.

“I suppose T would.” Sostratos heaved a melodramatic sigh. “After all the evils, hope came out of Pandora’s Box, and I’ll cling to it as long as I can.”

“However you like, of course,” his cousin answered, guiding the Aphrodite alongside a quay with fussy precision and minute adjustments of the steering oars. Satisfied at last, Menedemos dipped his head. “That ought to do it.”

“Back oars!” Diokles called to the rowers. After they’d used a couple of strokes to kill the merchant galley’s forward motion, the oarmaster held up his hand and said, “Oцp!”

The rowers rested. Some of them rubbed olive oil into their palms. Their hands had softened over the winter, and the first couple of days aboard ship had left them sore and blistered. And they’d rowed all the way up from Rhodes. They’d had no other choice, not with the wind dead in their faces all the way north.

A couple of soldiers strode up the pier toward the Aphrodite . “This seems just like last year,” Sostratos said.

“Are you trying to make an omen of it?” Menedemos asked. Suddenly shamefaced, Sostratos dipped his head. Menedemos laughed. “Omens are often where you find them, I admit, but do remember that last year the men who questioned us served Antigonos. Old One-Eye’s hoplites arc gone. Ptolemaios’ men threw ‘em out.”

“I’m not likely to forget that,” Sostratos said tartly. “Antigonos’ soldiers almost caught us here in the harbor.”

“Hush,” Menedemos told him. “You don’t want to say such things where these boys might hear you.”

That, no doubt, was good advice. “What ship are you?” called the soldier with the fancier plume in his helmet, “Where are you from? What’s your cargo? “

“We’re the Aphrodite , best one, out of Rhodes,” Sostratos answered. Rhodes tried to stay on good terms with all the squabbling Macedonian marshals, but was especially friendly to Ptolemaios of Egypt, who shipped enormous amounts of wheat through her harbor. “We’ve got perfume, fine oil, Koan silk, books-”

“Let me see a book,” the soldier said.

“What would you like? We have some of the best parts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, or a poem that’s as, ah, spicy as anything you’ve ever read,”

Ptolemaios’ trooper tossed his head. “I’ve never read anything at all, on account of I haven’t got my letters.” He seemed proud of his illiteracy, too. “But if you’ve really got books, I know you’re traders and not some gods-detested spies.”

Maybe that was logic. Maybe it was just stupidity. Sostratos couldn’t quite decide which. Would spies be clever enough to bring books along in case some officious junior officer decided he wanted to have a look at them? Who could guess? Sostratos stooped under a rower’s bench, opened an oiled-leather sack, and took out a roll of papyrus. He worked the wooden spindles to show the soldier the roll did indeed have words written on it.

“All right. All right. I believe you.” The fellow motioned for him to stop. “Put the silly thing away. By Zeus, you are what you say you are.” He turned on his heel and tramped back down the pier. The other soldier, who’d never said a word, followed him.

“That was easier than I’ve seen it a good many places,” Menedemos remarked.

“I know.” Sostratos looked up to the forts atop the hills west of Kaunos. Antigonos’ soldiers had held out for a while in one of them, even after the city fell to Ptolemaios’ men. “I wonder if the Rhodian proxenos ever came back here.”

“If you really care, we can ask,” Menedemos said with a shrug. A year before, the Aphrodite had taken the Kaunian who looked after Rhodian interests in his city to Rhodes itself; he’d feared arrest from Antigonos’ men when word came that Ptolemaios’ soldiers were sweeping west along the southern coast of Anatolia. He’d had reason to fear, too; soldiers who’d come to arrest him had got to his house just too late, and they’d come down to the harbor just too late to keep the Aphrodite from sailing.

Sostratos went back behind the steering oars, picked up the gangplank, and stretched it from the poop deck to the wharf. Normally, that was work for an ordinary seaman, not the merchant galley’s toikharkhos. Sostratos didn’t care. He was too eager to care. He gave Menedemos an inviting wave. “Come on, my dear. Let’s see what there is to see.”

“You’re not going to find another gryphon’s skull,” his cousin told him.

“If I don’t look for one, I certainly won’t,” Sostratos replied with dignity. “Are you coming?”

“Oh, yes,” Menedemos said. “If you think I’ll pass up a chance to see you act foolish, you can think again.”

“I don’t see how seeking something I want is foolish,” Sostratos said, more dignified than ever. “When you seek what you want, it usually wears a transparent chiton and perfume.”

“Well, I’d rather have a live girl than a dead gryphon. If that makes me a fool, I’ll answer to the name.”

Kaunos was an old town. Its streets ambled every which way instead of sticking to a neat rectangular grid like those of Rhodes. All the inscriptions used Greek letters, but not all were in Greek: a few were in the Karian tongue, for Kaunos had been a Karian town before Hellenes settled there, and it remained a place where folk of both bloods lived. Pointing to an inscription he couldn’t read, Sostratos said, “I wonder what that means.”

“Some barbarous blather or other,” Menedemos said indifferently. “If it were anything important, they’d’ve written it in Greek.”

“You say that, on your way to Phoenicia?” Sostratos said. “Hardly anyone knows Greek there. If more people did, would I have been wrestling with Aramaic all winter long?”

“If you want to wrestle, go to the palaistra,” Menedemos answered, misunderstanding him on purpose. “As for the Phoenicians, well, there haven’t been many Hellenes in their towns till lately. The Kaunians have no excuse.”

“Always ready to see things to your own advantage, aren’t you?” Sostratos said.

“To whose better?” his cousin returned.

Despite the town’s twisting roads, Sostratos led both of them to the agora. “Here we are!” he said as the street opened out onto the market square.

“Yes, here we are.” Menedemos scratched his head. “And how did you lead us here? Me, I’d’ve had to take an obolos out of my mouth and give it to somebody to get him to tell us the way.”

“Why?” Sostratos said in surprise. “We were here last year. Don’t you remember the way?”

“If I did, would I be saying I didn’t?” Menedemos replied. “My dear, there are times when you forget ordinary mortals haven’t got your memory, I’m not sure all-powerful Zeus has your memory.”

“Of course not-he has his own,” Sostratos said. Menedemos’ praise displeased him not at all. Pointing across the agora, he went on, “The fellow who sold us the gryphon’s skull had his stall there.”

“Well, so he did.” Menedemos started across the square, picking his way between a farmer hawking dried figs and a fellow who’d gathered a great basketload of mushrooms out in the meadows and woods in back of Kaunos. “Let’s get this over with.” He brightened a little. “Maybe he’ll have more hides to sell us, anyhow.”

Sostratos’ heart pounded with excitement as he hurried after his cousin. For a moment, hope outran reason. There was the stall, there was the fellow who’d sold them the gryphon’s skull, there was a lion skin on display… No gryphon’s skull. Sostratos sighed. He did his best to remind himself he really shouldn’t have expected to see another one, not when the first had come from far to the east, beyond the edge of the known world.

His best wasn’t good enough to mask disappointment.

“Why, it’s the Rhodians!” the local exclaimed. “Hail, O best ones! Can we do business again? I hope we can.”

“Of course he does,” Menedemos muttered behind his hand. “He played us for fools once, unloading that skull on us.”

“Oh, go howl,” Sostratos told him. He asked the Kaunian, “Have you by any chance seen another gryphon’s skull?”

“Sorry, my friend, but no.” The fellow tossed his head, dashing Sostratos’ hopes once and for all. Menedemos didn’t say, I told you so, which was just as well. Sostratos thought he might have picked up a rock and brained his cousin for a crack like that right then.

Then Menedemos asked the Kaunian, “Have you seen another tiger’s hide?”

The local tossed his head again. “No, not one of those, either. You fellows want all the strange things, don’t you? I’ve got this fine lion skin here, you see.” He pointed to it.

“Oh, yes,” Menedemos said, though he sounded anything but impressed. “I suppose we’ll buy it from you, but we’d make more money with the stranger things.”

“Especially in Phoenicia,” Sostratos added. “We’re sailing east this year, and they have lions of their own there. How much would they care about one more hide in, say, Byblos?”

“I don’t know about that, but if you’re going to Phoenicia, you’ll be going by way of Cyprus,” the local merchant said. “They may have lions in Phoenicia, but they don’t on the island. You could get a good price selling it there.”

He was right. Neither Sostratos nor Menedemos had any intention of admitting as much; that would only have driven the price higher. Grudgingly, Menedemos said, “I suppose I might give you as much for this hide as I paid for the ones last year.”

“Don’t do me any favors, by the gods!” the Kaunian exclaimed. “This is a bigger hide than either of the ones I sold you then. And look at that mane! Herakles didn’t fight a fiercer beast at Nemea.”

“It’s a lion skin,” Menedemos said in dismissive tones. “I won’t be able to charge any more for it, and you’re mad if you think I’m going to pay any more for it.”

“We wasted our time coming here,” Sostratos said. “Let’s go back to the ship.”

Words like those were part of every dicker. More often than not, they were insincere. More often than not, both sides knew as much, too. Here, Sostratos meant what he said. When he saw the merchant had no gryphon’s skull, he stopped caring about what the fellow did have. The sooner he got away from Kaunos and from the memory of what the local had had, the happier-or, at least, the less unhappy-he would be.

And the Kaunian heard that in his voice. “Don’t get yourselves in an uproar, best ones,” he said. “Don’t do anything hasty that you’d regret later. You made a good bargain last year, and it would still be a good bargain at the same price this year, is it not so?”

“It might be tolerable at the same price,” Sostratos said. “It might, mind you. But a moment ago you were talking about wanting more for this hide than you did for those. ‘Look at that mane!’ “ He mimicked the Kaunian to wicked effect.

“All right!” The fellow threw his hands in the air, “You haggle your way, I haggle mine. When you do it, you’re wonderful. When I do it, it’s a crime. That’s how you make it seem, anyhow.”

Menedemos grinned at him. “That’s our job, my friend, the same as your job is to sneer at every offer we make. But we do have a bargain here, don’t we?”

“Yes.” The Kaunian didn’t sound delighted, but he dipped his head and stuck out his hand. Sostratos and Menedemos clasped it in turn.

Menedemos went back to the ship to get the money-and to bring along a couple of sailors to make sure he wasn’t robbed of it before returning to the agora. Sostratos wandered through the market square till his cousin came back. He didn’t think, Maybe someone will have a gryphon’s skull. He knew how unlikely that was. Whenever the notion tried to climb up to the top part of his mind, he suppressed it. But he couldn’t help hoping, just a little.

Whatever he hoped, he was disappointed. The agora held fewer interesting things of any note than it had the year before. He spent an obolos for a handful of dried figs and ate them as he walked around. Had they been especially good, he might have thought about getting more to put aboard the Aphrodite . But they were ordinary- Rhodes grew far better. He finished the ones he’d bought and didn’t go back to the man who was selling them.

After Menedemos handed the Kaunian with the lion skin a sack of silver coins, Sostratos was glad to go back with him to the akatos. “This hide is better cured than the ones we got last year,” he remarked. “You can’t smell it halfway across a room.”

“I know. I noticed that, too. It’s one reason I wanted to pick it up.” Menedemos cocked his head to one side. “I am sorry you didn’t sniff out a gryphon’s skull, my dear.”

Sostratos sighed, “So am I, but I can’t do anything about it. I’ll keep looking, I suppose. Maybe, one of these days, I’ll get lucky again.” Maybe, he thought. But maybe I won’t, too.

“Rhyppapai!” Diokles called as the Aphrodite sailed east and south out of Kaunos. “Rhyppapai!” The merchant galley’s oars rose and fell, rose and fell. Before long, the keleustes stopped calling the stroke and contented himself with beating it out with his hammer and bronze square. That let him ask Menedemos, “Skipper, are you going to serve out weapons to the men?”

“I should hope so!” Menedemos exclaimed. “We’d look like fools, wouldn’t we, going into Lykian waters without weapons to hand?”

The Lykian coast harbored pirates as a filthy man harbored lice. It was rocky and jagged, full of headlands and little inlets in which a pentekonter or a hemiolia might hide, and from which the pirate ship might rush out against a passing merchantman. And the Lykians themselves seemed to take the attitude that anyone not of their blood was fair game.

Not that Lykians are the only ones manning these pirate ships, Menedemos thought. Some of the sea raiders in these parts came from other Anatolian folk: Lydians, Karians, Pamphylians, Kappadokians, and the like. And some-too many-were Hellenes. Like Kaunos, the towns on the Lykian coast were half, maybe more than half, hellenized. But Greek pirates came to these parts no less than honest settlers.

Sailors passed out swords and hatchets and pikes and bronze helmets. Menedemos called, “Aristeidas!”

“Yes, skipper?” replied a young man at one of the oars.

“Get somebody to take your place there and go on up to the foredeck,” Menedemos told him. “You’ve got the best eyes of anybody on this ship, I want you seeing where we’re going, not where we’ve been.”

“All right,” Aristeidas said agreeably. “Come on, Moskhion, will you pull for me?”

A lot of sailors would have been angry to be bidden to hard work. Moskhion only dipped his head and sat down on the rower’s bench as Aristeidas rose. “Why not?” he answered. “I’d sooner be doing this than diving for sponges any day.”

Up on the foredeck, Aristeidas took hold of the stempost with one hand and shielded his eyes with the other as he peered first dead ahead, then to port, and then to starboard. Sostratos chuckled. “Not only are his eyes better than ours, he’s showing us how much better they are. He ought to be a lookout in a play-say, in Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon.”

“I don’t care how showy he is,” Menedemos said. “As long as he spots trouble soon enough for us to do something about it, that’s what matters.”

“Oh, certainly,” his cousin said. “I wasn’t complaining about the job he does, only saying he’s got a fancier way of doing it than he did a couple of years ago.”

“Not a thing wrong with that,” Menedemos said again,

Sostratos looked at him. “Are we both speaking Greek?”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Menedemos asked. Sostratos didn’t answer, annoying him further. He knew his cousin didn’t think he was as bright as he might have been. More often than not, that amused him, for he thought Sostratos got less pleasure from life than he might have. Every so often, though, supercilious Sostratos struck a nerve, and this was one of those times, “What’s that supposed to mean?” Menedemos repeated, more sharply than before.

“If you can’t figure it out for yourself, I don’t see much point to explaining it,” Sostratos retorted.

Menedemos fumed. An ordinary sailor who spoke to him so insolently might have found himself paid off and let go at their next stop. He couldn’t do that to his cousin, however tempting it was.

Before he could snarl at Sostratos, Aristeidas sang out: “Sail ho! Sail ho to starboard!”

Along with everyone else’s, Menedemos’ eyes swung to the right. He needed a moment to spy the little pale rectangle; Aristeidas did have sharper eyes than the usual run of men. Having spotted it, Menedemos struggled to make out the hull to which it was attached. Did it belong to a plodding round ship or to a wolf of the sea on the prowl for prey?

Sostratos said, “I don’t think that’s a pirate.”

“Oh? How can you be so sure?” Menedemos snapped. “Your eyes aren’t even as good as mine.”

“I know that, but I also pay attention to what I see,” his cousin replied. “Most pirates dye their sails and paint their hulls to look like sky and sea, so they’re as hard to spot as possible. That ship has a sail of plain, undyed linen, and so she probably isn’t a pirate.”

He spoke as if to a halfwitted child. What really stung was that he was right. Menedemos hadn’t thought of that, and it was true. Furies take me if I’ll admit it, though, he thought.

A couple of minutes later, Aristeidas said, “Looks like she’s turning away-maybe she thinks we’re pirates and doesn’t want any part of us.”

“We see that every year,” Menedemos said.

“We see it every year even though we’re still close to Rhodes,” Sostratos said. “That’s what really makes me sad, because our navy does everything it can to put pirates down.”

“Ptolemaios’ captains seem to go after them pretty hard, too,” Menedemos said. “That’s one reason to like him better than Antigonos: they say old One-Eye hires pirates to eke out his own warships. To the crows with that, as far as I’m concerned.”

Sostratos dipped his head. There the two cousins agreed completely. “It’s all one to Antigonos,” Sostratos said. “To him, pirate fleets on the sea are the same as mercenary regiments on land.”

Menedemos shuddered. Any trader would have done the same. “Mercenary regiments can turn bandit-everybody knows that’s so. But pirates are bandits, right from the beginning. They live by robbery and plunder and kidnapping for ransom.”

“Robbery. Plunder.” Sostratos spoke the words as if they were even viler than was in fact the case. A heartbeat later, he explained why: “The gryphon’s skull.”

“Yes, the gryphon’s skull,” Menedemos said impatiently. “But you seem to forget: if those gods-detested, polluted whoresons had had their way, they wouldn’t just have taken your precious skull. They’d have gone off with everything the Aphrodite carried, and they’ve have murdered us or held us for a ransom that would have ruined the family, or else sold us into slavery.”

“That’s true,” Sostratos said in thoughtful tones. “You’re right-I don’t usually remember it as well as I ought to.” More readily than anyone else Menedemos knew, his cousin was willing to admit he was wrong. He went on, “All the more reason to crucify every pirate ever born, I’d nail ‘em to the cross myself.” That carried more weight from him than it would have from another man, for he normally had little taste for blood.

Diokles said, “Begging your pardon, young sir, but I’d have to ask you to wait your turn there. I’ve been going to sea longer than you have, and so I’ve got first claim.”

Sostratos bowed. “Just as you say, most noble one. I yield to you as the heroes of the Iliad yielded to ancient Nestor.”

“Now wait a bit!” Diokles exclaimed. “I’m not so old as that.”

“Are you sure?” Menedemos asked slyly. The keleustes, who was graying-but no more than graying-gave him a sour look. The rowers close enough to the stern to hear the chatter grinned back toward Diokles.

“You’re making for Patara?” Sostratos asked as the Aphrodite sailed southeast.

“That’s right,” Menedemos said. “I don’t want to put in anywhere along this coast except at a town. That’d be asking for trouble. I’d sooner spend a night at sea. We were talking about bandits a little while ago. This hill country swarms with ‘em, and there might be bands big enough to beat our whole crew. Why take chances with the ship?”

“No reason at all,” his cousin said. “If you were as careful with your own life as you are with the akatos here…”

Menedemos glowered. “We’ve been over this ground before, you know. It does grow tedious.”

“Very well, best one; I’ll not say another word,” Sostratos replied. Then, of course, he said several more words: “Helping to keep you out of harm’s way after you debauch some other man’s wife grows tedious, too.”

“Not to me,” Menedemos retorted. “And I don’t usually need help.”

This time, Sostratos said nothing. His silence proved more embarrassing to Menedemos than speech might have, for his own comment wasn’t strictly true. Sometimes he got away with his adulteries as smoothly as Odysseus had escaped from Kirke in the Odyssey. In Taras a couple of years before, though, he had needed help, and in Halikarnassos the year before that…

He didn’t want to think about Halikarnassos. He still couldn’t set foot there for fear of his life, and he’d been lucky to escape with that life. Some husbands had no sense of humor at all.

Gulls and terns wheeled overhead. A black-capped tern plunged into the sea only a few cubits from the Aphrodite ’s hull. It emerged with a fine fat fish in its beak. But it didn’t enjoy its dainty for long. A gull started chasing it and buffeting it with its wings and pecking at it. At last, the tern had to drop the fish and flee. The gull caught the food before it fell back into the water. A gulp and it was gone.

Sostratos had watched the tern and gull. “As with people, so with birds,” he said. “The uninvited guest gets the choice morsel.”

“Funny,” Menedemos said, grinning.

But his cousin tossed his head. “I don’t think so, and neither did the tern.”

“Haven’t you ever got drunk at one symposion and then gone on to another one?” Menedemos asked. “Talking your way in-sometimes shouting your way in-is half the fun. The other half is seeing what sort of wine and treats the other fellow has once you do get inside.”

“If you say so. I seldom do such things,” Sostratos answered primly.

Thinking back on it, Menedemos realized his cousin was telling the truth. Sostratos always had been a bit of a prig. Menedemos said, “You miss a good deal of the fun in life, you know.”

“You may call it that,” Sostratos said. “What about the fellow whose drinking party you invade?”

“Why would he throw a symposion in the first place if he didn’t want to have fun?” Menedemos said. “Besides, I’ve been to some that turned out jollier on account of people who came in, already garlanded, off the street.”

He suspected he sounded like Bad Logic in Aristophanes ’ Clouds, and he waited for Sostratos to say as much. Menedemos liked Aristophanes ’ bawdy foolery much more than his cousin did, but Sostratos knew-and disapproved of-the Clouds because it lampooned Sokrates. To his surprise, though, Sostratos brought up the Athenian in a different way: “You may be right. You know Platon’s Symposion, don’t you, or know about it? That’s the one where Alkibiades comes in off the street, as you say, and talks about the times when he tried to seduce Sokrates.”

“Wasn’t Sokrates supposed to be ugly as a satyr?” Menedemos asked. “And wasn’t Alkibiades the handsomest fellow in Athens back whenever that was?”

“About a hundred years ago,” Sostratos said. “Yes, Sokrates was ugly, and yes, Alkibiades was anything but.”

“Why did Alkibiades try to seduce him, then?” Menedemos asked. “If he was as handsome as that, he could have had anybody he chose. That’s how things work.”

“I know,” Sostratos said, a certain edge to his voice. Menedemos feared he’d stuck his foot in it. He’d been an exceptionally handsome youth and enjoyed the luxury of picking and choosing among his suitors. Nobody’d paid court to Sostratos, who’d been-and who still was-tall and gawky and plain. After a moment, Sostratos went on, “If Alkibiades could have chosen anyone he wanted but set out to seduce Sokrates, what does that tell you?”

“That he was very nearsighted?” Menedemos suggested.

“Oh, go howl!” Sostratos exclaimed. Diokles laughed out loud. He wasn’t beating out the stroke now; with a good breeze from out of the north, the Aphrodite made for Patara by sail alone. Sostratos visibly gathered himself. “He knew Sokrates was ugly. Everybody knew Sokrates was ugly. So what did he see in him, if not the beauty of his soul?”

“But it wasn’t his soul Alkibiades was after,” Menedemos pointed out. “It was his-”

“Go howl,” his cousin said again. “That’s the point of the Symposion: how love of the beautiful body leads to love of the beautiful soul, and how love of the soul is a higher thing, a better thing, than love of the body.”

Menedemos lifted a hand from a steering-oar tiller to scratch his head. “Love of the beautiful body, yes. But you just got done admitting Sokrates’ body wasn’t beautiful, or anything close to it.”

“You’re being difficult on purpose, aren’t you?” Sostratos said.

“Not this time.” Menedemos tossed his head.

“A likely story,” Sostratos said darkly. “Well, look at it like this: Sokrates’ soul was so beautiful, Alkibiades wanted to take him to bed even though his body was ugly. That’s quite something, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” Menedemos said. Sostratos looked as if he would have brained him with an amphora of olive oil had he said anything else. Of course he looks that way, Menedemos thought. If somebody handsome could fall in love with ugly Sokrates for the sake of his beautiful soul, why couldn’t someone do the same with plain Sostratos for the sake of his soul? No wonder he takes that story to heart.

He wasn’t used to such insights. It was as if, for a moment, a god had let him look out from Sostratos’ eyes instead of into them. He also realized he couldn’t say anything to his cousin about what he’d seen, or thought he’d seen.

The sun set. Sailors ate barley bread and olives and onions and cheese. Menedemos washed his frugal supper down with a rough red Rhodian wine: good enough to drink, but not to sell anywhere off the island. He stepped to the rail and pissed into the sea. Some of the sailors settled down on rower’s benches and went straight to sleep. Menedemos couldn’t. He sat down on the planks of the poop deck-he’d been standing all day- and watched the stars come out.

The moon, a waxing crescent, hung low in the west. It wasn’t big enough to shed much light, though its reflection danced on the sea behind the Aphrodite . Ares’ wandering star, red as blood but not so bright as it sometimes got, stood high in the southeast.

Sostratos pointed east. “There’s Zeus ’ wandering star, just coming up over the horizon.”

“Yes, I see it,” Menedemos said. “Brightest star in the sky, with Ares’ fading and Aphrodite ’s too close to the sun to spy for a while.”

“I wonder why a few stars wander like the moon but most of them stay in one place in the sky forever,” Sostratos said.

“How can you hope to know that?” Menedemos said. “They do what they do, that’s all, and there’s an end to it.”

“Oh, I can hope to know why,” his cousin answered. “I don’t expect to, mind you, but I can hope. Knowing why something happens is even more important than knowing what happens. If you know why, you really understand. Sokrates and Herodotos and Thoukydides all say the same thing there,”

“And that must make it so.” Menedemos gave his voice a fine sardonic edge.

But Sostratos refused to rise to the bait. All he said was, “ Homer says the same thing, too, you know.”

“What?” Menedemos sat up straighter, so abruptly that something in his back crackled. Unlike his cousin, he had no great use for philosophers and historians. They breathed too rarefied an atmosphere for him. Homer was another matter. Like most Hellenes, he looked to the Iliad and Odyssey first, everywhere else only afterwards. “How do you mean?” he demanded.

“Think about how the Iliad starts,” Sostratos said. The Aphrodite bobbed up and down in light chop, the motion just enough to remind men they weren’t on land any more. Sostratos went on, “What’s the poet talking about there? Why, the anger of Akhilleus. That’s what causes the Akhaioi so much trouble. Homer ’s not just talking about the siege of Troy, don’t you see? He’s talking about why it turned out the way it did.”

Menedemos did think about that famous opening. After a moment, he dipped his head. “Well, my dear, when you’re right, you’re right, and you’re right this time. Do try not to let it go to your head.”

“Why don’t you go to the crows?” Sostratos said, but he was laughing.

“I’ve got a better idea: I’m going to bed.” Menedemos got to his feet, pulled his chiton off over his head, wadded up the tunic, and laid it on the planks for a pillow. Then he wrapped himself in his himation. Like most sailors, he made do with chiton alone in almost any weather. But the thick wool mantle, though he didn’t wear it over his tunic, made a perfect blanket. “Good night.”

Sostratos lay down beside him, also snug in his himation. “See you in the morning,” he said around a yawn.

“Yes.” Menedemos’ voice was blurry, too. He stretched, wriggled… slept.

Patara stood near the mouth of the Xanthos River. The hills above the city put Sostratos in mind of those above Kaunos, which the Aphrodite had just left. Red and yellow pine, cedar, and storax grew in those hills. “Plenty of good timber there,” Sostratos remarked.

“Hurrah,” Menedemos said sourly. “More for the polluted Lykians to turn into pirate ships.”

A couple of fives patrolled outside Patara’s harbor. The big war galleys had two rowers on each oar on the thranite and zeugite banks; only the bottom, or thalamite, oars were pulled by a single man. All those rowers made the ships speedy despite their heavy decking and the planks of the oarbox that protected the rowers from flying arrows. One of them, displaying Ptolemaios’ eagle on mainsail and small foresail, made for the Aphrodite .

“I don’t mind Ptolemaios drawing timber from this country,” Sostratos said.

“Better him than the Lykians, that’s for sure,” Menedemos agreed. “And the trees he turns into triremes and fours and fives, they can’t use forhemioliai and pentekonters.”

“Ahoy!” The call from Ptolemaios’ war galley wafted across the water, “What ship are you?”

Menedemos’ chuckle had barbs in it. “Sometimes it’s funny when round ships and fishing boats think we’re a pirate. It’s not so funny when a five does: this bastard can sink us by mistake.”

“Let’s make sure she doesn’t, eh?” Sostratos cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted back: “We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes.”

“A Rhodian, are you?” the officer at the how of the war galley said. “You don’t sound like a Rhodian to me.”

Sostratos cursed under his breath. He’d grown up using the same Doric drawl as anyone else from Rhodes. But he’d cultivated an Attic accent ever since studying at the Lykeion. More often than not, that marked him as an educated sophisticate. Every once in a while, though, it proved a nuisance. “Well, I am a Rhodian, by Athana,” he said, deliberately pronouncing the goddess’ name in the Doric style, “and this is a Rhodian merchant galley.”

“What’s your cargo?” the officer demanded. His ship came up alongside the Aphrodite . He scowled down at Sostratos; the five had twice as much freeboard as the akatos, and its deck had to rise six or seven cubits above the water.

“We’ve got fine olive oil, the best Rhodian perfume, silk from Kos, books, and a lion skin we just picked up in Kaunos,” Sostratos answered.

“Books, is it?” Ptolemaios’ officer said, “Can you read ‘em?”

“I should hope so.” Sostratos drew himself up very straight, the picture of affronted dignity. “Shall I start?”

The man on the war galley laughed and tossed his head. The crimson horsehair plume on his bronze helm nodded above him. “Never mind. Pass on to Patara. No pirate would get so pissy when I asked him a question like that.” The five went back to its patrol, big oars smoothly rising and falling as it glided away.

“Pissy?” Sostratos said indignantly. He turned to Menedemos and spread his hands. “I’m not pissy, am I?” Once the words were out of his mouth, he realized he’d asked the wrong man.

Menedemos smiled his sweetest smile. “Of course not, O marvelous one, not after you stood by the rail just a little while ago.” He could have done worse. Having expected him to do worse, Sostratos took that with hardly a wince.

Patara had two harbors, an outer and an inner. Menedemos took the Aphrodite into the inner harbor, but clucked distressfully when he saw how shallow the water was. He ordered a man up to the bow to cast the lead to make sure the merchant galley didn’t run aground on the way to a quay.

“Here we are,” he said with a sigh of relief as sailors tossed lines to longshoremen standing on the wharf. Some of the longshoremen were Hellenes, others Lykians who wore hats with bright feathers sticking up from them and goatskin capes over their shoulders. Most of the Hellenes were clean-shaven; the Lykians wore beards.

“This is a good harbor-now,” Sostratos said, looking around the lagoon. “I wonder how long before it silts up too much to use, though.”

“Well, it won’t be before we sail out of here,” Menedemos answered. “Nothing else matters right now.”

“You have no curiosity,” Sostratos said reproachfully.

“I wonder why not,” Menedemos said-curiously. Sostratos started to reply, then gave his cousin a sharp look. Menedemos favored him with another of those sweet smiles he would sooner not have had.

One of Ptolemaios’ officers came up the quay to ask questions of the new arrival. Patience fraying, Sostratos said, “I just told an officer aboard one of your fives everything you’re asking now.”

The soldier shrugged, “Maybe you’re lying. Maybe he won’t bother telling what you said in any report he makes. Maybe he won’t come back here for a day or two, or maybe his ship will get called away. You never can tell, eh? And so…” He went right on with the same old questions. Sostratos sighed and gave the same old answers. When the grilling ended, the officer dipped his head. “All right, I’d say you are what you claim to be. That’s what I needed to know. I hope the trading is good for you.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and went back down the quay.

“What can we get here?” Menedemos said as he and Sostratos headed into Patara.

“Lykian hams are supposed to be very good,” Sostratos said.

“Yes, I’ve heard that, too,” his cousin replied. “Maybe we can take a few to Phoenicia,”

“Why not?” Sostratos agreed. A moment later, he snapped his fingers.

“What is it?” Menedemos said.

“We can take hams to Phoenicia, yes,” Sostratos answered, “but not inland, to the country of the loudaioi. Their religion doesn’t let them eat pork, Himilkon told me. Good thing I remembered.”

“So it is,” Menedemos said. “Why can’t they eat it?”

“I don’t know-Himilkon didn’t explain it.” Sostratos wagged a ringer at his cousin. “You see, my dear? Why? is always the interesting question.”

“Maybe,” Menedemos said, and then, “Maybe it’s for the same sort of reason that Pythagoreans can’t eat beans.”

“I’ve never heard that ham makes you windy,” Sostratos said.

“You’re already windy, seems to me,” Menedemos said. “You’re ready to quibble about almost anything, too, but that isn’t news.”

“To the crows with you,” Sostratos said, but he and his cousin both laughed. And he knew Menedemos hadn’t been wrong, either. Me, ready to quibble about anything? Now why would he say that?

Lykian houses looked little different from their equivalents back in Hellas. They presented blank fronts to the street. Some were whitewashed, some of unadorned mud brick, some of stone. They all had red tile roofs. Whatever beauty and valuables they held lay on the inside, behind tiny windows and stout doors. They gave robbers no clues about who had money and who didn’t.

Patara’s streets also seemed much like those of an older polis back in Hellas. That is to say, they were narrow and smelly and wandered every which way, more often than not at random. Dogs and pigs chased rooks and jackdaws away from piles of garbage. The stench was overwhelming.

“You forget how bad a city smells till you get out to sea for a while,” Sostratos said.

“You’re right.” Menedemos looked more nearly green than he ever did on the ocean.

Here in town, Sostratos couldn’t always tell whether the people walking along the streets were Hellenes or Lykians. A fair number of Lykians affected Hellenic styles, wearing chiton and himation, shaving their faces, and even speaking Greek. Their tongues betrayed them more readily than their outward seeming, though. They couldn’t shed the accent of their native tongue-and Lykian, to Sostratos’ ear, sounded like a series of sneezes strung together into a language.

Menedemos noticed something else. “Look how many women are out and about-and not just slaves and poor ones who can’t help coming out, either. That lady who just passed us had gold earrings and a gold necklace that had to be worth plenty, but she didn’t even bother wearing a veil. She was pretty, too.”

“Yes, she was.” Sostratos wasn’t blind to a good-looking woman, either. He went on, “I’m not surprised the Lykians give their women more leave to go out and about than we do.”

“Why? Because they’re barbarians who don’t know any better, do you mean?

“ No. Because they reckon their descent through the female line. If you ask a Hellene who he is, he’ll give you his name, his father’s name, his father’s father’s, and so on. But if you ask a Lykian, he’ll tell you his name, his mother’s, her mother’s…”

“Why do they do that?” Menedemos asked.

“I don’t know,” Sostratos answered. He poked his cousin in the ribs with an elbow. “You see? Another why question.”

“All right. Another why question. I’d like to know.”

“So would I,” Sostratos said. “Just as a guess: a man’s always sure who his mother is. There’s room for doubt about his father,”

“Ah, I see. You’re saying the Lykians figure that way because they know their women are sluts.”

“I don’t think that’s what I said,” Sostratos answered. “And I don’t know for a fact whether Lykian women are sluts or not. I’ve never had anything to do with them.”

By the gleam in Menedemos’ eye, he was about to impart much more information on that topic than Sostratos wanted to hear. But he fell silent when a couple of squads of soldiers tramped by on a cross street, holding up traffic on the way to the market square. Some of the men were Hellenes, with pikes in their hands and shortswords on their hips. The rest were Lykians, many of them in their feathered hats and goatskin cloaks. In place of spears, some carried iron ripping-hooks; others were archers, with bows bigger than Hellenes usually used and with long, unfletched arrows in their quivers.

Once the soldiers had turned a corner, Sostratos remarked, “Well, best one, you were probably wise not to talk about their women where they could hear you.” His cousin gave him a reproachful look, but kept quiet.

The street Sostratos had hoped would lead to the agora abruptly ended in a blank wall. He and Menedemos went back to the nearest intersection. As soon as he found someone who spoke Greek, he took an obolos from his cheek and gave the little silver coin in exchange for directions that would work. The Lykian turned out not to speak much Greek, and Sostratos made him repeat himself several times before letting him go.

Even then, he wasn’t sure he was heading the right way till he walked into the market square. By Menedemos’ pleased murmur, he was taken aback, too. “I only understood about one word in three from that barbarian,” he said,

“I had the advantage of you, then,” Sostratos said, doing his best not to show how relieved he was. “I’m sure I understood one word in two. Now let’s see if that obolos was silver well spent.” It wasn’t much silver, but he hated wasting money.

Menedemos pointed. “There’s a fellow with hams for sale. Shall we go over and see what he wants for them?”

“Why not?” Sostratos said again. He and his cousin pushed their way through the crowded market square. He heard both Greek and Lykian, sometimes in the same sentence from the same man. A fellow shoved a tray of plucked songbirds toward him, urging him to buy. “No, thank you,” he said. “I can’t cook them up properly.” The vendor gave back a spate of incomprehensible Lykian. Sostratos tossed his head and went on. The fellow understood that.

One of Ptolemaios’ soldiers was haggling with the man who sold hams.

“Come on,” Menedemos said out of the side of his mouth. “Let’s look at something else for a little while.”

“Right you are,” Sostratos agreed. If they started bidding for a ham, too, the bearded Lykian could use them and the soldier against each other and bump up the price.

“Here.” Menedemos took a Lykian-style hat and set it on his own head. “How do I look?”

“Like an idiot,” Sostratos told him.

His cousin bowed, “Thank you so very much, my dear. The Lykians who wear our clothes don’t look idiotic.”

“That’s because we don’t wear such funny-looking things,” Sostratos said.

“I should hope not.” Menedemos put back the hat. “And all those goatskin cloaks look like they’ve got the mange.”

“They sure do.” But then, instead of going on and mocking the Lykians even more, Sostratos checked himself, feeling foolish. “It’s only custom that makes our clothes seem right to us and theirs seem strange. But custom is king of all.”

“That last bit sounds like poetry,” Menedemos said. “Who said it first?”

“What, you don’t think I could have?” Sostratos said. His cousin impatiently tossed his head. Sostratos laughed. “Well, you’re right. It’s from Pindaros, quoted by Herodotos in his history.”

“I might have known you would have found it in a history-and I did know it was too good for you.” Menedemos peered around the agora. “Do you see anything else you want around here?”

“One of the women who was buying dried figs, but I don’t suppose she’d be for sale,” Sostratos answered.

Menedemos snorted. “That’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to say, and you’re supposed to roll your eyes and look at me as if I were a comic actor who’s just shit himself on stage. My only question is, how do you know she’s not for sale unless you try to find out?”

“I’m not going to worry about it,” Sostratos said. “Unlike some people I could name, I know there are other things in the world.”

“Oh, I know that, too,” Menedemos replied. “But none of the others is half as much fun,” He checked himself. “Well, I suppose boys are half as much fun. They’d be just as much fun if they enjoyed it the way women do.”

“I won’t quarrel with you,” Sostratos said. “A lot of men don’t care whether boys enjoy it or not, though.”

“They’re the same sort of men who don’t care if their women take pleasure, either.” Menedemos’ lip curled in contempt. “And, when a man like that beds a woman, she doesn’t take pleasure. You wonder why they even bother.”

“That soldier’s gone,” Sostratos said. “Let’s go find out what the Lykian wants for his hams.”

The merchant’s price for one ham didn’t seem too high. Menedemos asked him, “How many have you got?”

“Twenty-eight. No, twenty-seven. I just sell one.”

In a low voice, Menedemos asked, “How much is twenty times his price, my dear?” Sostratos stood there in a lip-moving trance of concentration. Part of him resented being used as an animate abacus. Much more of him, though, enjoyed showing off. He gave Menedemos the answer. Menedemos gave it back to the Lykian, saying, “We’ll give you that for all of them together.”

“All?” The fellow stared.

“Yes, all. We’ll take them east. For that. Not an obolos more. Yes? No?”

“All,” the Lykian said dazedly. He wasn’t used to doing business on that scale. He made mental calculations of his own, wondering whether a low price for one ham was worth getting a big sack of silver for the lot of them and not having to worry about when or whether they’d sell. Suddenly, he thrust out a hand. “All!”

Menedemos clasped it. Sostratos said, “Let’s head back to the ship. We’ll see how lost we get.”

He didn’t expect to; he’d made it from the Aphrodite to the agora, and, with his good head for directions, thought he’d be able to retrace his steps without much trouble. But he’d reckoned without Patara’s streets, which doubled back on each other even more enthusiastically than those of a Hellenic polis built before Hippodamos popularized the idea of a rectangular grid.

He came upon a carved stone column, inscribed in Lykian, planted in front of a potter’s shop. “Give the potter an obolos,” Menedemos said. “He’ll tell us how to get out of this maze.”

“Wait,” Sostratos said. He found a word on the column he recognized. “Mithradata put this up, I think.”

“Who’s Mithradata?” Menedemos asked.

“He was satrap here about the time our grandfather was born,” Sostratos replied. “He was one of the very first people to use his own portrait on his coins.”

“Everybody does that nowadays,” Menedemos said. “All the Macedonian marshals do, anyhow.”

“No, not all of them,” Sostratos said, precise as usual. “Antigonos’ silver still has Alexander ’s head on it.”

“Fine.” Menedemos sounded exasperated. “So old One-Eye puts somebody else’s portrait on his money. It’s still a portrait.”

“I wonder how much the portraits on coins and statues really look like Alexander.” Sostratos remained relentlessly curious. “He’s fifteen years dead, after all. They aren’t images of him any more: they’re copies of copies of copies of images of him.”

“You could have asked that of Ptolemaios when we were in Kos last year,” his cousin said. “You could ask any Macedonian veteran, as a matter of fact, or any Hellene who went east with the Macedonians.”

“You’re right. I could. Thanks, best one. Next time I think of it, I will.” Sostratos beamed. “Nice to run across a question that has an answer.”

“Ah, but has it got one answer or many?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you ask one veteran, he’ll give you an answer. But if you ask ten veterans, will they all give you the same answer? Or will some say the coins look like Alexander while others tell you they don’t?”

“I don’t know.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. “Finding out would be interesting, though.”

Once past the potter’s, they turned a corner and saw blue water ahead. “There’s the gods-cursed harbor,” Menedemos said. He threw his arms wide. “Thalassa! Thalassa!” he called, and burst out laughing.

Sostratos laughed, too. “You didn’t march through all of Asia to find the sea, the way Xenophon ’s men did.”

“No, but I came through all of Patara-through some of it two or three times, too-and that seems even farther,” Menedemos retorted. “And I tell you something else, too: after I go back with some men to get the hams and pay off that Lykian, I’ll be just about as glad to get on the sea again as Xenophon’s men were. Have you ever found a place that’s harder to get around in than this?”

“Not lately,” Sostratos said. “I hope some of the other Lykian towns will be better.”

“They could hardly be worse,” Menedemos said.

“OцP!” Diokles called, and the Aphrodite ’s rowers rested at their oars. The keleustes went on, “Bring ‘em inboard, boys. We’re running nicely before the wind.”

The rowers did ship their oars and stow them. As the oarmaster had said, a brisk wind from out of the north filled the merchant galley’s sails. The Aphrodite sped southward, bounding over the waves as nimbly as a dolphin.

“No sailing better than this,” Menedemos said. Before long, he would swing the akatos east to follow the Lykian coastline. For now, though, he just stood at the steering oars and let her run.

Even Sostratos dipped his head. He was getting his sea legs faster this year than he had on the ship’s last couple of trading runs; its pitching didn’t seem to bother him at all. He said, “A pirate ship would have trouble catching us today.”

“Don’t count on it,” Menedemos said. “They sail at least as fast as we do, and when they sprint with all their rowers going flat out there’s nothing in anybody’s navy can keep up with ‘em.”

The wind continued to rise. It thrummed in the merchant galley’s rigging. The akatos’ creamy white wake streamed out behind it. Menedemos turned to look back over his shoulder, trying to gauge just how fast they were going.

“Skipper, I think maybe you ought to-” Diokles began.

“Take in some canvas?” Menedemos finished, and the oarmaster dipped his head. Menedemos raised his voice to tall out to the sailors; “Come on, boys-brail it up a couple of squares’ worth. We don’t want anything to tear loose.”

Strengthening lines crossed the sail horizontally. The brails ran vertically, giving it a pattern of squares. Hauling on the brails, the sailors could, if they chose, shorten part of the sail and leave the rest fully lowered from the yard, so as to take best advantage of the wind. Now, with that wind blowing out of the north, at their backs, they shortened the whole sail evenly.

“That’s better,” Menedemos said, but it still wasn’t good enough to suit him. He ordered the yard lowered on the mast. Again, that helped. Again, it didn’t seem quite enough.

Quietly, Diokles said, “Don’t mean to bother you, skipper, but-” He pointed toward the north.

Menedemos looked back over his shoulder again. “Oh, a pestilence,” he said, also quietly. “Well, that spills the perfume into the soup, doesn’t it?” The line of dark, angry clouds hadn’t come over the horizon the last time he’d looked. They swelled rapidly. No matter how fast the Aphrodite was going, they outpaced her with ease.

“Squall,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos started to spit into the bosom of his tunic to turn aside the omen, but didn’t bother completing the gesture. Sostratos hadn’t really made a prediction. He’d simply stated a fact.

“Brail up the sail the rest of the way,” Menedemos ordered, and the men leaped to obey. He had to call louder than he had only a few minutes before: the wind was rising fast and starting to howl. “Rowers to the oars,” he added, and swung one steering-oar tiller in and the other away from him. “I’m going to put her into the wind. A storm like this one usually blows out as fast as it blows up. We can get through it quicker heading into It than running away.”

Oars bit into the sea. The Aphrodite ’s steady pitching motion changed to a roll as she turned and presented her flank to the waves. Sostratos gulped and turned green as a leek; he didn’t like that so well. The rowers handled it with untroubled aplomb. In one ship or another, they’d done such things before.

Diokles began calling out the stroke as well as using his bronze square and little mallet. “Rhyppapai!” he boomed. “Rhyppapai! Steady boys. You can do it. “Rhyppapai!”

Pushed on by the wind blowing the squall line toward the ship, the waves got bigger. They crashed against the Aphrodite ’s ram, throwing up plumes of spray. As the akatos turned into the wind, she began pitching again, but harder; Menedemos felt as if he were aboard a half-broken horse that was doing Its best to throw him off.

The ship groaned as she rode up over one of those waves. Being long and lean helped her slide swiftly across the sea. But, in a storm like this, it left her vulnerable. In heavy waves, part of her was supported by nothing but air for long heartbeats, till she rode down into the next trough. If she broke her back, everyone aboard would drown in short order.

One of those waves threw water into her bow. Everyone aboard her might drown even if she held together.

“Here comes the squall!” Sostratos shouted, as if Menedemos couldn’t see that only too well for himself.

Black, roiling clouds blotted out blue sky overhead. The sun vanished. Rain poured down in buckets. Zeus hurled a thunderbolt, not far away. The noise, even through the pounding of the rain and the wind’s shrill, furious shriek, seemed like the end of the world. If one of those thunderbolts struck the Aphrodite, that would take her down to the bottom of Poseidon’s watery realm, too, and all the men aboard her down to the house of Hades.

Howling like a bloodthirsty wild beast, the wind tore at Menedemos. He clung to the steering-oar tillers with all his strength, to keep from being picked up and flung into the Aegean. The steering oars fought in his hands, the ferocious sea giving them a life of their own.

A stay parted with a twang like that of an enormous lyre string. The mast sagged. If another stay went, the mast would likely go with it. In its fall, it might capsize the merchant galley. “Fix that line!” Menedemos screamed. He didn’t think the sailors could hear him. He could hardly hear himself. But they knew what needed doing without being told. They rushed to seize the flapping stay, to bind it to another line, and to secure it to a belaying pin. More men stood by with hatchets, ready to try to chop the mast and yard free if they did come down.

And then, as suddenly as the squall line had engulfed the Aphrodite , it was past. The wind eased. The rain slackened, then stopped. The sea remained high, but the waves became less furious without that gale to drive them, A few minutes later, as the clouds roared off toward the south, the sun came out again.

Water dripped from Sostratos’ beard. It was dripping from the end of Menedemos’ nose, too, and from the point of his chin. Now he wiped his face with his forearm; he’d seen no point in bothering before.

“Just another day,” Sostratos remarked, just as if that were true.

Menedemos tried on a grin. It felt good. Being alive felt good. Knowing he’d probably stay alive a while longer felt best of all. He dipped his head, admiring his cousin’s coolness and doing his best to match it. “Yes,” he said. “Just another day.”

A sailor at an oar near the stern grinned, too. He took a hand off the oar to wave to Menedemos. “One thing about a storm like that,” he said. “If you piss yourself, who’ll know?”

“Not a soul.” Menedemos laughed out loud. The harried little men who filled Aristophanes ’ comedies might have said something like that.

“Came through pretty well,” Diokles said.

“Is everyone hale?” Sostratos asked.

One of the men at the oars was groaning and clutching his left shoulder. “Did you break it, Naukrates?” Menedemos called.

“I don’t know, skipper,” the man answered through clenched teeth. “When the sea started going crazy there, it gave my oar a wrench I wasn’t expecting, and I got yanked pretty good.”

“I’ll have a look at it, if you like.” Sostratos sounded eager. He wasn’t a physician, but he’d read something about the art of medicine. Sometimes that made him useful. Sometimes, as far as Menedemos was concerned, it made him a menace. But then, sometimes physicians were menaces, too.

Naukrates dipped his head. “Sure, come on. If you can do anything at all, I won’t be sorry.”

You hope you won’t be sorry, Menedemos thought as his cousin made his way forward. Sostratos felt of the rower’s shoulder. “It’s not broken,” he said. “It’s out of its socket. I can put it back in, I think, but it will hurt.”

“Go ahead,” Naukrates told him. “It hurts now.”

Before beginning, Sostratos had the sense to get a couple of other men to hold on to Naukrates. Then he took hold of the injured man’s arm and twisted it at an angle that made Menedemos queasy to see. Naukrates howled like a wolf. Menedemos started to ask his cousin if he was sure he knew what he was doing; it seemed more like torture than therapy. But then the joint went back into place with a click Menedemos heard all the way back at the poop.

Naukrates let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you kindly, young sir. It’s easier now.”

“Good.” Sostratos sounded relieved, too. How much confidence bad he had in what he was doing? Less than he’d shown, Menedemos suspected. “Here, leave it like this,” his cousin said to Naukrates, setting his left hand on his right shoulder. “I’m going to put it in a sling for a while, to make sure it stays where it belongs and heals.”

He haggled off some sailcloth with a knife and bound up the rower’s arm. Like everything else aboard the Aphrodite , the cloth was soaking wet. Naukrates didn’t seem to care. “That is better,” he said. “It still hurts, but I can bear it now.”

“I’ve got some Egyptian poppy juice mixed into wine,” Sostratos said. “I’ll give you a draught of it. It will do you some good-I don’t know how much.”

“I’ll try it,” Naukrates said without hesitation. Now that Sostratos had helped him once, he seemed to think Menedemos^’ cousin could do no wrong. Menedemos had a different opinion, but kept it to himself. When Naukrates drank the poppy juice, he made a horrible face. “By the gods, that’s nasty stuff!” he exclaimed. Before long, though, a dreamy smile spread across his face. He murmured, “It does help.”

“Good.” Sostratos started to slap him on the back, then visibly thought better of it. He came back up onto the poop deck.

“Nice job,” Menedemos said.

“Thanks.” Sostratos looked pleased with himself. “First time I ever actually tried that.”

“Well, don’t tell Naukrates. He thinks it was skill, not luck.”

“There was some skill involved, you know.”

“Oh, don’t get stuffy with me, my dear,” Menedemos said. “There was some luck involved, too, and you know that.” He looked a challenge at his cousin. “Or are you going to try to tell me otherwise?”

He was ready to call Sostratos a liar if his cousin tried any such thing. But Sostratos only gave him a sheepish smile. “By no means, O best one. And I suppose you’re right-I won’t tell Naukrates.”

“Won’t tell me what?” Naukrates had sharp ears.

But his voice was as blurry as if he’d drunk too much wine. “Never mind,” Menedemos and Sostratos said together. Normally, that would have made the sailor want to dig more, as it would have with anyone. Now, though, Naukrates just dipped his head and smiled that drugged smile. “How much poppy juice did you give him?” Menedemos asked.

“Enough to take away his pain, I hope,” Sostratos answered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes to sleep in a while.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he sleeps for the next ten days.” Menedemos paused to pull his soaked chiton off over his head and stand naked in the sunshine that had returned. After a moment, Sostratos followed his example. Most ordinary sailors went naked all the time at sea. The few who usually wore loincloths had already shed them.

“That reminds me-when we get to Phoenicia, we’ll make people upset if we take off our clothes whenever we happen to feel like it,” Sostratos said.

“Catering to the foolish prejudices of barbarians goes against my grain,” Menedemos said.

“Does making a profit go against your grain?” Sostratos asked. “If we offend our customers, will they want to trade with us?”

Menedemos grunted. That made more sense than he wanted to admit. Himilkon always wore long, flowing robes, no matter how hot the weather got. The same held true for other Phoenician merchants he’d seen in Hellenic poleis. “Very well,” he said, “As long as I don’t have to put on shoes.”

“Himilkon didn’t say anything about bare feet,” Sostratos told him. “I don’t want to wear shoes, either.” Sailors always went barefoot aboard ship, and they kept up the habit on land, too.

Peering south, Menedemos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “That squall line’s already out of sight. It could have been a lot worse for us. A ship that isn’t quick or lucky could go to the bottom,”

“Let’s hope a couple of pirates did,” Sostratos said.

“Yes!” Menedemos dipped his head, “If navies don’t care about keeping pirates down, maybe the gods will take care of it for us.”

“Maybe.” But Sostratos didn’t sound convinced. “I wish the gods had done a better job up till now.”

“Oh, go howl,” Menedemos said. “You always have reasons not to believe in anything.”

“That’s not true, and it’s not fair, either,” his cousin answered. “I’m trying to find the truth and to live by it. If you want to follow the first story you happen to hear, go right ahead. I can’t stop you.”

They glared at each other. Their own squall seemed as bad as the one that had blown out to sea. For the next couple of hours, they said not a word to each other. Sostratos watched birds and flying fish and leaping dolphins. Menedemos steered the Aphrodite toward Myra, where he’d been heading before the storm hit.

There were plenty of other places to anchor if he didn’t make Myra by nightfall. The Lykian coastline might have had fewer long, projecting fingers of land than did that of Karia, but it was full of little inlets and harbors and coastal villages. The only trouble with them was, Menedemos wanted nothing to do with them. Every other village kept a pirate ship or two ready to sally forth against any quarry that looked catchable. Menedemos was usually sad and sorry when fishing boats fled from the akatos. In these waters, he was just as well pleased the Aphrodite so closely resembled a pirate ship herself.

When Myra came into sight, Diokles let out a sigh of relief. “This place is big enough for Ptolemaios’ men to garrison, same as Patara was,” he said. “They wouldn’t bother with all those little hamlets in between Patara and here. The Lykians in them have got to be as wild as they were in Sarpedon’s day.”

“Sarpedon was the son of Zeus, or that’s what the Iliad says,” Menedemos answered. “If you ask me, the Lykians nowadays are mostly sons of whores.”

The oarmaster laughed. “If you think I’m going to quarrel with you, skipper, you’d better think again.”

Myra itself lay about twenty stadia inland--far enough, Menedemos thought uneasily, to make an attack from the sea harder than it would be if the place were right there by the shore. A couple of war galleys flying Ptolemaios’ eagle and several round ships lay at anchor in the bay in front of the town. They all hailed the Aphrodite when she came into the harbor. Her sleek lines once more created some alarm, but Menedemos did manage to convince the officers aboard the triremes he was a Rhodian, not a pirate with more nerve than was good for him.

He was eating barley rolls for sitos with an uninspiring opson of salt fish when a coughing roar came from the mainland. Even though his ship bobbed a couple of plethra offshore, his hand froze halfway to his mouth. The hair at the back of his neck tried to stand up. “What’s that?” he said, his voice high and shrill. He felt foolish as soon as he spoke; he knew what that was, all right.

“A lion,” Sostratos answered. “It is an awe-inspiring noise, isn’t it?”

“I should say so!” Only then did Menedemos remember he’d quarreled with his cousin. He shrugged. How could a mere quarrel survive in the face of… that?

Sostratos might have been thinking along with him. “Well, my dear,” he said, “we aren’t eaten yet, by lions or by sea jackals.”

“No, not yet,” Menedemos agreed. “Do you suppose Myra has anything worth buying, or shall we press on?”

“I’d go on,” Sostratos said. “How many lion skins can we carry?”

Menedemos thought it over, then dipped his head.