The Sacred Land

5

“Ship ho!” Aristeidas called from the Aphrodite ’s small foredeck. He pointed. “Ship off the starboard bow!”

Menedemos peered in that direction. “I don’t see a sail,” he said, but swung the merchant galley a little to the south anyway. Over the past couple of years, he’d come to rely on Aristeidas’ eyesight.

“No sail, skipper,” the lookout said. “There’s the hull-do you see it? Fishing boat, I’d guess.”

“Ah.” Menedemos had been looking for the wrong thing. As soon as Aristeidas told him what he ought to see, he spotted it. “We’ll come up to him, and he can tell us just where we are.”

The coastline of Phoenicia had come into view a little while before: a low, dark smudge of land rising up out of the endless blue flatness of the waters of the Inner Sea. Had Menedemos sighted land in Hellas, he wouldn’t have needed to figure out where he was. But neither he nor anyone else aboard the akatos had ever come so far east before; the silhouettes of the hills against the sky didn’t tell him where the ship was, as they would have in lands he’d already visited.

“He’s making sail, skipper,” Aristeidas called, and Menedemos dipped his head-he saw the pale square of linen coming down from the yard, too. The lookout added, “He must think we’ve got a pirate ship. A lot of these little boats do.”

“Well, we’ll keep after him anyhow,” Menedemos said. “We’d make a pretty sorry excuse for a pirate if we couldn’t catch up with a tubby scow like that, now wouldn’t we?” He raised his voice: “Sostratos!”

His cousin, as far as he could tell, might not have noticed the boat at all-he was watching dolphins leaping and cavorting off to port. He started at the sound of his name and looked around wildly, as if wondering what had been going on while his mind was elsewhere. “What is it?” he asked apprehensively.

“See that fishing boat?” Menedemos said. By Sostratos’ expression, he might never have heard of fishing boats, let alone seen one before; when he thought about other things, he thought hard. Patiently, Menedemos pointed it out. He was relieved to see the light of intelligence appear on his cousin’s face, and went on, “How would you like to practice your Aramaic with whoever’s aboard her?”

“I can do that, I suppose,” Sostratos said. “What do you want me to say?”

Maybe that hadn’t been the light of intelligence after all. Menedemos drummed his fingers on the steering-oar tiller. “Do you know where we are, my dear?” he asked sweetly. “Do you have any idea which Phoenician city we’re closest to?”

“Of course not.” Sostratos sounded affronted. “How could I know that?”

“Well, one good way might be to ask the people on the boat there, don’t you think?”

“Oh,” Sostratos said. This time, it really was the light of intelligence, or something like it, anyhow. Still sounding slightly peevish, Sostratos asked, “Why didn’t you tell me to do that before?”

Menedemos drummed his fingers on the tiller again. “Never mind,” he said; he didn’t feel like arguing with his cousin. “Just take care of it when we catch up with them, all right?”

“Certainly, O best one,” Sostratos replied with such dignity as he could muster. “And it goes to show some people in these parts do catch fish, doesn’t it?” Menedemos supposed it did. He hadn’t thought of that.

The fishermen in that boat were good sailors. They got the sail down with commendable haste and wrung every digit of speed they could from their little craft. That made the Aphrodite take longer to catch up to them but never gave them the slightest chance of escaping her. They were much too far out to sea to get to shore before she came up alongside them. Even then, they were ready to fight. A couple of them brandished what were either gutting knives or shortswords. A third shot an arrow that splashed into the sea fifteen or twenty cubits short of the merchant galley.

“Tell them we’re friendly. Tell them we don’t want to murder them or sell them into slavery,” Menedemos said. The fisherman with the bow let fly again. This arrow came closer. Menedemos scowled. “I get more tempted every minute, though.”

His cousin shouted something in Aramaic. The fishermen shouted back. Menedemos raised a questioning eyebrow. Sostratos coughed. Then he said, “They’re telling me to do things to my mother Sophokles never thought of in Oidipous Tyrannos .”

“Barbarians curse that way, don’t they?” Menedemos said.

“They’re not paying me compliments, my dear,” Sostratos answered.

“Heh,” Menedemos said. “All right. Find out what we need to know. And tell them that if they don’t learn manners we cursed well will ram them and sink them, just to teach them to respect their betters.”

“I don’t think I can say all that in Aramaic,” Sostratos warned.

“Try.”

Sostratos dipped his head. He made what to Menedemos sounded like horrible choking noises. The Phoenicians in the fishing boat shouted back. This time, they seemed less impassioned. So did Sostratos when he replied to them. After a bit, he turned to Menedemos and said, “Euge, my dear. Sidon is a couple of hours’ sail to the south. A very nice bit of navigating.”

“Euge is right, skipper,” Diokles agreed. “All that water to cross, and then to make it to the coast almost right where we wanted to be…” He raised his voice, calling out to the sailors, “Give the captain a cheer, boys! He put us right where he wanted to.”

“Euge!” the men called. Menedemos grinned and waved. Somebody added, “The skipper always puts it right where he wants to.” Menedemos laughed at that. After a moment, though, he felt like scowling again. Thanks to his bargain with his cousin, he might not have the chance to put it where he wanted to.

“Shall I send them on their way?” Sostratos asked.

“Yes, go ahead,” Menedemos answered. “We’ve found out what we needed to know. If they’re telling the truth, that is.”

“Not much point to lying about something like that,” Sostratos said. “We’d find the truth soon enough, and their lie wouldn’t do us any harm, no matter how much they might wish it would.” He shouted once more, in incomprehensible Aramaic. The fishermen understood it well enough, though, whether Menedemos did or not. They steered away from the Aphrodite , and were no doubt delighted when the akatos, which dwarfed their little boat, did not match their course.

Sidon, once the merchant galley reached it, proved to lie on a small promontory behind a line of islets running parallel to the coast. “It’s not a very big place, is it?” Menedemos said, none too happily-he wanted a good market for the Aphrodite ’s wares.

“But look at the buildings,” Sostratos said. “I’ve heard the Phoenicians build tall, and now I see it’s true. They go up and up and up.”

He was right. Few buildings in a polis full of Hellenes rose more than two stories above the street, so that the temples and other public structures stood out. Sidon was different. Every other building seemed to tower four or five stories high. Menedemos said, “The Sidonians must have strong legs, from going up and down all those stairs so often.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right,” his cousin answered. “They have to get their exercise somewhere, I suppose. There certainly doesn’t look to be room in the town for a gymnasion.” He paused, then laughed. “In fact, the very idea of a gymnasion in a place like Sidon is absurd.”

“Why? “ Menedemos asked. “They could squeeze one in if they wanted to badly enough.”

Sostratos gave him the sort of look he hated, the look that said he’d been so blatantly stupid, he should have been ashamed of himself. Menedemos scratched his head. He couldn’t see why, which only made things worse. Holding on to patience with both hands-and making a point of doing so-Sostratos said, “What is a gymnasion? Literally, that is-what does the word mean?”

“A place to go nak-” Menedemos stopped. “Oh. Phoenicians don’t go naked, do they?”

He could see they didn’t for himself. The day was warm, warmer than it was likely to have been in Rhodes at this season of the year. It was more than warm enough for a lot of male Hellenes to have stripped off their chitons and gone through the streets bare without a second thought. They took nudity in stride and took it for granted.

But almost all the people he could see in Sidon covered themselves in cloth all the way down to their feet. The only exceptions were men- probably slaves-bearing heavy burdens, and even they wore loincloths. Those were the only exceptions Menedemos spotted, at any rate. Sostratos pointed to a knot of men on a quay and said, “Look. They’re Hellenes, or maybe Macedonians.”

He was right. He usually was. Some of the men he’d spotted wore short tunics like the ones he and Menedemos had on. A couple of others were in linen corselets and bronze helms with tall horsehair crests. Menedemos couldn’t imagine why they wanted to show they were soldiers in a town unlikely to be attacked. All it would do was make them sweat more than they had to. But that was their worry, not his.

Sostratos did some more pointing, this time at some of the ships and, more important, at the large ship sheds by the water’s edge. “Look at all the war galleys Antigonos has here,” he said. “Do you suppose Menelaos knows about that, over in Salamis?”

Menedemos laughed. No matter how much Sostratos knew, he could be naive as a child. “My dear, think about how many ships go back and forth between here and Salamis,” Menedemos said. “If I were Menelaos, I wouldn’t just know how many ships old One-Eye has here. I’d know the name of every rower on every one of them, and I’d know the name of every rower’s father, too. And you can bet your last obolos that Menelaos does.”

Now it was his cousin’s turn to say, “Oh,” in a gratifyingly small voice. “Yes, that is reasonable, isn’t it?”

Menedemos guided the Aphrodite to a mooring place at the end of a quay. The longshoremen who caught the lines to make the ship fast stared at the scantily clad Hellenes aboard her. They shouted questions in their harsh language. Sostratos gave halting answers. Menedemos caught the merchant galley’s name, those of his father and uncle, and that of Rhodes. But for the handful of names, he understood not a word his cousin was saying.

A big round ship was tied up next to the akatos. More longshoremen carried sacks of grain off her, down the quay, and into the city. As they worked, they chanted: “Hilni hiya holla-ouahillok holya.”

“What does that mean?” Menedemos asked Sostratos.

“What does what mean?” his cousin answered. Menedemos pointed to the men unloading the round ship. Sostratos cocked his head to one side. Menedemos got the idea he hadn’t even noticed the chant till it was pointed out to him. After a bit, Sostratos shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think it means anything at all, though I wouldn’t swear to that. If I had to guess, I’d say it was something rhythmic they sing to help the time pass while they work.”

“Could be,” Menedemos said. “We have chants like that. I just wondered if this one made any sense.”

“Not to me.” Sostratos pointed toward the far end of the wharf. “And here comes an officer to ask us questions.”

“Oh, hurrah,” Menedemos said, meaning anything but, “Gods-detested arrogant snoops, the lot of them. I don’t care if they work for Antigonos or Ptolemaios or one of the other Macedonian marshals. To the crows with ‘em all.”

Antigonos’ man was quite tall-several digits taller than Sostratos and close to twice as wide through the shoulders. He had blue eyes, blondish hair, and a once-fiery beard now streaked with gray. Menedemos wondered for a moment if he was a Keltic mercenary, but he proved to be a Macedonian. “Who are you, and where are you from?” he asked, not bothering to sharpen his slurred accent. “Don’t see many strange Hellenes here, and that’s a fact.”

“This is the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes,” Menedemos told him.

“ Rhodes, eh?” The Macedonian didn’t seem to know what to make of that. “Your little island built some ships for Antigonos, but you do a lot of business with Ptolemaios, too.”

“Yes, we’re neutral,” Menedemos said, wondering if there were any such thing with the world as it was these days. “We have no quarrel with anybody.”

“Ah, but what happens when somebody has a quarrel with you}” the Macedonian asked. Then he shrugged. “What are you carrying?”

“We’ve got papyrus and ink, Koan silk, fine Rhodian perfume, some of the best olive oil you’ll ever see, Lykian ham, smoked eels from Phaselis, and a nice stock of books to help pass the time.”

Antigonos’ officer didn’t laugh at the olive oil. The way things had gone, Menedemos took that as good news. The Macedonian said, “Books, eh? Why would you bring books?”

“Didn’t Alexander himself travel with them?” Menedemos replied. “If they were good enough for him, why not for you?”

“On account of he had his letters, and I don’t.” The Macedonian’s expression sharpened. “Coming from the west, you’d’ve stopped in Salamis, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s right,” Menedemos said.

“Well, what did you see there?” the officer demanded. “How many war galleys in the harbor? Are they building more? Is Menelaos in town, or is he somewhere else on Cyprus? What’s he up to?”

Before answering, Menedemos sent Sostratos a significant look. If Antigonos’ men were so interested in learning what was happening on Cyprus, how could his cousin doubt that Ptolemaios’ forces on the island also closely questioned sailors coming from Phoenicia? “Didn’t pay much attention to the harbor,” Menedemos said.

“Oh, yes-likely tell.” Antigonos’ officer curled his lip in what he no doubt thought to be an aristocratic sneer.

“By the gods, it’s true,” Menedemos said. “I don’t care about war galleys; they’ve got nothing to do with me. If there’d been a couple of other akatoi in the harbor, you can bet I’d’ve noticed them. We did see Menelaos, though. He’s there.”

“Ah, that’s something.” The Macedonian eagerly snatched the bone Menedemos tossed him. “Where’d you see him? What was he doing?”

“He was at a tavern, not far from the harbor,” Menedemos answered.

“What was he doing? Was he getting drunk?” Yes, the officer was eager, all right. “Do you know if he gets drunk a lot?” Given the Macedonian reputation for pouring down cup after cup of neat wine, the questions weren’t so surprising. If Cyprus’ commander were drunk all the time, the place would be easier for Antigonos’ men to attack.

But Menedemos and Sostratos both tossed their heads. Sostratos said, “He didn’t seem drunk at all. He came to the place for the same reason we did: to hear Areios the kitharist play and sing.”

That drew the Macedonian’s interest, too, but not in the way Menedemos would have expected. “Really?” he said. “How was he? I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never seen him perform. I saw Stratonikos a few times when I was back in Hellas. He’s the best I know-but the tongue on that man! If a viper had it, he wouldn’t need to bite you-he’d just stick out that tongue and you’d fall over dead.”

“That’s the truth!” Sostratos said, and he and the Macedonian spent the next quarter hour chatting-sometimes arguing-about the virtues of various kitharists and swapping stories about Stratonikos. For all his uncouth accent, the officer plainly knew what he was talking about. Menedemos listened in growing bemusement. He would no more have expected the fellow to care about the kithara than he would have thought a Phoenician might set up as a philosopher. You never can tell, he thought.

At last, with obvious reluctance, Antigonos’ officer tore himself away.

Sostratos had succeeded in charming him; he said, “I enjoyed the talk, O best one. Gods give you profit here in Sidon.” He went back into the city whistling the tune to one of Areios’ Alexandrian love songs, which Sostratos had taught him.

“He wasn’t a donkey after all,” Menedemos said.

“No, but he brayed like one. Macedonians!” Sostratos answered. “When he got excited there, I was missing about one word in four.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Menedemos said. “What matters is, he liked you, and so he’ll give us a good character. Well done, my dear.”

“Thanks,” Sostratos said. “And tomorrow we’ll see what we can find here in Sidon.”

“Yes.” Normally, one of the things Menedemos would have looked for in a new city was the bored wife of a merchant or an officer. Because of his oath, he wasn’t supposed to do that. Harlots all summer, he thought, and sighed. Then he shrugged. It wasn’t as if Sostratos had asked him to stay away from women altogether. His cousin knew him better than that.

Walking through the narrow streets of Sidon, Sostratos kept craning his neck up and up. He didn’t particularly want to do it, but he couldn’t help himself. When he glanced over at Menedemos, he was relieved to find his cousin doing the same thing. Menedemos gave him a sheepish look. “I know the buildings won’t fall down on us, but I can’t stop thinking they might,” he said.

“Yes, I know. I feel like that, too,” Sostratos said. “I wonder why they build so tall. And what happens when there’s an earthquake?”

“Things fall down, I suppose.” Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic to turn aside the evil omen. After another couple of paces, Sostratos imitated him. Logically, he saw no connection between the act of spitting and an earthquake that might come in the next instant or might not come for the next hundred years or more. How the one could keep the other from happening was beyond him.

He spat anyhow. The training in logic and analysis he’d had at the Lykeion in Athens warred with the superstitions he’d picked up at sea. At least as often as not, superstition won. For one thing, he spent his time these days around sailors, not around philosophers. For another, he didn’t see how spitting could hurt, and so…

“Why not?” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Menedemos asked.

“Nothing,” Sostratos said, embarrassed Menedemos had heard him.

The Sidonians took their towering buildings as much for granted as Sostratos took the shorter ones of Rhodes and other Hellenic poleis. They swarmed around the two Rhodians, sometimes grumbling at the slow-moving, gawking foreigners. All the men wore beards; though shaving was popular among Hellenes, especially of the younger generation, it hadn’t caught on here. Some of their robes-often boldly striped in deep blue or rusty red-had fancy fringes on the hem; they used one hand to keep those fringes from trailing in the dust. They wore tall cylindrical caps or lengths of cloth-again, often brightly colored-wrapped around their hair.

More women went out in public than would have in a polis full of Hellenes. Some of them were veiled against the gaze of strange men, but many weren’t. Quite a few stared in frank curiosity at the Rhodians. Sostratos needed a little while to figure out why. “We’re a novelty here,” he said. “Hellenes, I mean.”

“Well, of course,” Menedemos answered. “I haven’t seen many Phoenician women till now. They’re not bad, are they?”

“No,” Sostratos admitted; he’d noticed bright eyes and red lips and white teeth himself. “They put on more paint than our women do- except for hetairai, of course.”

“They’re more used to being seen than our women are,” Menedemos said. “They aim to take advantage of it.”

“I think you’re right.” Sostratos dipped his head. Then he paused and sniffed. “Sidon doesn’t smell the way I thought it would.”

“It smells like a city-smoke and people and animals and shit,” Menedemos said. “Maybe it smells a little worse than a lot of places-all those rotting shellfish they use to get their crimson dye. But what did you expect?”

“I don’t know.” But Sostratos did know, and at last, sheepishly, he owned up to it: “I thought it might smell like spices and incenses, because so many of them come through here on their way to Hellas: pepper and cinnamon and myrrh and frankincense and I don’t know what all else. But”-he sniffed-”you’d never know it by your nose.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Menedemos agreed. “Sidon smells like the garbage on a hot day after Sikon did up seafood the night before.”

“You’re right-it does,” Sostratos said. “That’s just what it smells like, as a matter of fact. Your family has a good cook there. Father would buy him in a heartbeat if Uncle Philodemos ever decided to sell him.”

“Not likely!”

“I didn’t think it was,” Sostratos replied. “I wouldn’t even have mentioned it if he weren’t going around Rhodes with his face like a thundercloud. Father and I have both noticed it. If Sikon’s having trouble with your father-”

“No, no, no.” Menedemos tossed his head. “It’s not Father. Father wants to keep him and wants to keep him happy, too. Like I told you before, Baukis is the one who thinks Sikon spends too much silver on our opson, and so they fight.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Sostratos said. “I can see how it would be a problem, but I still think your father ought to come between his wife and his cook so they don’t fight any more. Why doesn’t he?”

“Why?” Menedemos laughed. “I told you that before, too, my dear. For the same reason nobody comes between Antigonos and Ptolemaios, that’s why. They’d squash him between them, and then they’d go right on fighting. He’s smart enough to know it, too. He sometimes thinks he can just lay down the law”-by the way Menedemos’ mouth twisted, Uncle Philodemos often thought that around him-”but he hasn’t tried it there.”

“He could use you as his go-between,” Sostratos remarked.

He wasn’t ready for what happened next. His cousin’s face slammed shut, as if it were a door slammed in the face of an unwelcome guest. “No,” Menedemos said in a voice like a Thracian winter. “He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that at all.”

“Why not?” Sostratos asked. “It would seem to make good logical sense, and-”

Still in that gelid voice, Menedemos broke in: “A lot of things that seem to make good logical sense are amazingly stupid when you try them out in the real world. You never have figured that out, have you? But believe me, this is one of them.”

“Well, excuse me for existing,” Sostratos said, not only affronted but also confused, for he didn’t know how he’d managed to irk his cousin this time.

“I’ll think about it, my dear,” Menedemos replied. Had he stayed coldly angry, they would have had a real row. This time, though, something of the old sardonic glint returned to his voice and to his eye. Sostratos didn’t ask him for any more family details, but he didn’t feel like hauling off and kicking him anymore, either.

They walked past a temple. With its colonnaded front, at first glance it put Sostratos in mind of a shrine in a Hellenic polis of no particular account. But the terra-cotta figurines decorating the pediment were done in a style different from any he would have seen where Hellenes lived. And the reliefs on the frieze were not only stiff and square and blocky-plainly the product of a sculptural tradition different from his own-but also acting out a mythological scene about which he knew nothing.

Menedemos noticed something else about the temple. Pointing, he asked, “What does all the funny writing say?”

Sostratos tried to decipher it, but then tossed his head. “Give me time and I can probably puzzle it out,” he said. “But I can’t just sound it out and read it, the way I could if it were Greek. Sorry.” When someone asked him something, he hated not being able to give a precise, detailed answer. That, after all, was one of the things he was best at.

But Menedemos said, “Well, don’t worry about it, my dear. I wondered, that’s all.” As he had in Patara, he added, “If it’s not in Greek, it can’t be very important, can it?”

What would Himilkon have said had he heard that? Something memorable, Sostratos suspected. The Phoenician trader mocked Hellenes for their ignorance of languages other than their own. Back on Rhodes, Sostratos hadn’t taken him seriously. Why should he have, in a polis where Greek, naturally, ruled? But here in Sidon, the purring, coughing, choking rhythms of Aramaic surrounded him. Who spoke Greek here? Antigonos’ soldiers and clerks, along with a handful of Phoenicians who dealt with Hellenes. Drifting on this sea of strange words was intimidating, almost frightening.

It will be even worse in the country of the loudaioi, Sostratos thought glumly. Nobody there deals with Hellenes, and, from everything I’ve heard, Antigonos doesn’t bother sending many soldiers into the interior. Do I really want to try this without an interpreter?

I do, he answered himself, more than a little surprised. Why did I spend all that time and money with Himilkon, if not to do it myself? He smiled.

The truth was, he remained young enough to crave adventure. He’d been too young to go off to the ends of the earth with Alexander the Great. The men of the older generation, the ones who had gone conquering, had to look down their noses at him and his contemporaries, had to reckon them stay-at-homes who’d never measured themselves against the worst the world could do.

I can’t conquer Persia or go fight along the Indus River, Sostratos thought. That’s been done. But I can do a little exploring of my own. I can, and I will.

“When you go to Ioudaia, will you ride a horse or a donkey?” Menedemos asked as a donkey with several amphorai lashed to its back squeezed past the Rhodians.

“A donkey, I think,” Sostratos said. “I’m no cavalryman, and never will be. Besides, bandits are less likely to want to steal a donkey than a horse.”

“Bandits steal, and that’s all you need to say about that,” Menedemos answered. “You’d have a better chance to get away on horseback.”

“Not unless all the sailors who come with me are on horseback, too,” Sostratos said. “Or do you think I’d save my gore and let them perish?”

Menedemos shrugged. “Such things have been known to happen-but let it go, if the idea bothers you. Next question-will you hire your beast, or buy it outright?”

“Both, probably,” Sostratos said. “I’ll want one to carry things and one to ride. I’m thinking now of buying them, and then selling them again before we sail. With luck, that’ll be cheaper than hiring them. If the dealers try to gouge me, that’s when I’ll think about doing it the other way.”

“Of course they’ll try to gouge you,” Menedemos said. “That’s why they’re in business.”

“Oh, I know. But there’s a difference between gouging and gouging, if you know what I mean,” Sostratos said. “Making a profit is one thing; cheating a foreigner is something else again, and I don’t intend to put up with it.”

His cousin dipped his head. “You make good sense. The only thing you have to be sure to do is get back several days before we sail, so you don’t have to sell in a hurry and take the first offer you get, whatever it happens to be.”

“If I can, certainly,” Sostratos said. “I don’t want to lose money on the deal-or as little as I can, anyhow-but I can’t promise what I’ll be doing in the country of the Ioudaioi, either.”

“Whatever you’re doing there, don’t get so interested that you forget the season till it’s wintertime,” Menedemos said. “If you think we’ll wait around for you and then risk sailing in bad weather, you’re daft.”

“You’re the daft one, if you think I’d do anything like that,” Sostratos retorted. Menedemos only laughed, and Sostratos realized his cousin had been teasing him.

Before he could say anything or even begin to plot a revenge, a skinny Phoenician of about his own age spoke to him and Menedemos in bad Greek: “You two, you Hellenes, yes?”

“No, of course not,” Menedemos said, straight-faced. “We’re Sakai from the plains beyond Persia.”

The Phoenician looked confused. Sostratos gave Menedemos a dirty look. “Pay no attention to my cousin,” he told the fellow. “Yes, we’re Hellenes. What can we do for you?”

“You trader men?” the Phoenician asked. “You want to trade?”

“Yes, we’re traders,” Sostratos said cautiously. “I don’t know if we want to trade with you or not. What have you got, and what do you want?”

“I got cinnamon, masters. You know cinnamon? You want cinnamon?”

Sostratos and Menedemos looked at each other. How likely was this scrawny, obviously poor man to have anything worth buying? A silent answer passed between them: not very. Still, Sostratos said, “Show us what you’ve got.”

“I do.” The fellow reached inside his robe and took out a folded cloth. “Hold out hands. I show.” Sostratos did. The Phoenician poured some dried plants into his palm, saying, “Smell. Quality number one, yes?”

Sure enough, the sharp, tangy odor of cinnamon tickled Sostratos’ nose. But he shifted from Greek to Aramaic to say, “You dog! You son of a dog! You thief! You sell trash, and say ‘quality number one’? You liar!” Himilkon had taught him plenty of scornful expressions. “These are weeds with powdered cinnamon for smell. This is what they are worth.” He threw them down and ground them under his foot.

He hadn’t really expected to embarrass the Phoenician, and he didn’t.

The young man only grinned, not a bit abashed. “Ah, my master, you do know something of this business,” he said in his own language. “We could work together, make much money off stupid Ionians.”

“Go away,” Sostratos said in Aramaic. That didn’t convey much of what he wanted to get across, so he switched to Greek: “Go howl. To the crows with you.”

“What was that all about?” Menedemos asked once the Phoenician, still unabashed, had gone his way. “I gather he was trying to trick us, but you were speaking his language, so I don’t know how.”

“Didn’t you see what he gave me? He tried to pass off some worthless leaves and stems as cinnamon. He might have done it, too, if I didn’t know what a quill of cinnamon was supposed to look like. And then, when I showed I did, he tried to get us to go into business with him and gull other Hellenes.”

Menedemos laughed. “You almost have to admire such a thorough thief.”

“Maybe you do,” Sostratos said. “I don’t. I just wish he’d jump off a cliff. He’ll end up cheating some poor, trusting soul out of a lot of silver.”

“As long as it’s not me,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos started to dip his head, then checked himself. “No,” he said. “That’s not right. You shouldn’t want him to cheat anybody.”

“Why not?” his cousin asked. “If someone else is dumb enough to let that Phoenician take advantage of him, why should I worry? It’s the fool’s lookout, not mine.”

“Cheats shouldn’t be allowed to do business,” Sostratos said. “As a matter of fact, they aren’t allowed to do business. Every polis has laws against people who sell one thing and say it’s another, the same as every polis has laws against people who use false weights and measures.”

“That still doesn’t mean you aren’t supposed to keep your eyes open,” Menedemos replied. “If somebody you run into on the street tells you he’s got all the treasure Alexander took and he’ll sell it to you for two minai, don’t you deserve to lose your money if you’re stupid and greedy enough to believe him?”

“Of course you do,” Sostratos answered. “You deserve to be a laughingstock, too. But that doesn’t mean the other fellow shouldn’t be punished for cheating you.”

“Spoilsport. I admire a clever thief.”

“How much would you admire one who was clever enough to cheat you?”

Menedemos didn’t answer, not in words. But, by the way he strutted a little more than he had been doing, he clearly suggested such a thief was yet to be born. Sostratos also kept his mouth shut. Doubting his cousin too loudly would only start a fight, and he didn’t want that.

When he and Menedemos came to the main market square in Sidon, they both stopped at the edge and stared before plunging in. Everything seemed much more tightly crowded than in an agora in a Hellenic polis. Stalls and tents and stands were everywhere, with only narrow lanes through them for customers-and for hawkers who walked about selling things like dates and cheap jewelry from trays they either carried or secured to their waists with harnesses of leather or rope.

When Sostratos did step into the maelstrom, he felt overwhelmed. Everywhere, people haggled and argued in guttural Aramaic. They gesticulated frantically, to bolster whatever points they were making.

He snapped his fingers. “Heureka!” he exclaimed.

“That’s nice,” Menedemos said. “What have you found?”

“Why this place isn’t like one of our agorai.”

“And the answer is?” his cousin asked.

“They’re just talking business here,” Sostratos said. “Business and nothing else. How much this costs, or how much of that they can buy for so many sigloi-’shekels,’ they say in Aramaic. And that’s all.”

Menedemos yawned. “That’s boring, is what it is. Business is all very well-don’t get me wrong-but there are other things in life, too.”

“I should hope so,” Sostratos said. In a polis full of Hellenes, the agora wasn’t only the place where people bought and sold goods. It was also the beating heart of a city’s life. Men gathered there to talk politics, to gossip, to show off new clothes, to meet friends, and to do all the other things that made life worthwhile. Where did the Phoenicians do those things? Did the Phoenicians do those things? If they did, the market square gave no sign of it.

Looking around, Menedemos said, “It may not be a polis, but there’s sure a lot for sale, isn’t there?”

“Oh, yes, without a doubt. Nobody ever said the Phoenicians weren’t formidable merchants. That’s why we’re here, after all,” Sostratos said. “But the place feels… empty, if you’re a Hellene.”

“I think part of it’s that everybody’s speaking a foreign language,” Menedemos said. “I noticed that in a couple of the Italian towns we visited, and Aramaic sounds a lot less like Greek than Oscan does.”

“That’s part of it,” Sostratos admitted, “but only part. The Italians knew what an agora was for.”

“Well, yes,” his cousin said. “Even so, though, with us likely being here all summer long, I think I’m going to have to rent a room in the town. I don’t see how I can do my business off the Aphrodite .”

“I won’t argue with you, my dear,” Sostratos said. “Do what you have to do. Me, I’m going to look for a donkey tomorrow.” He eyed Menedemos in a thoughtful way. “One I can ride, that is.”

“Ha,” Menedemos said. “Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. If you were half as funny as you think you are, you’d be twice as funny as you really are.” Sostratos had to think that over before deciding his cousin had scored a point.

As Menedemos haggled with an innkeeper, he wished he’d gone with Sostratos to learn a little Aramaic from Himilkon. The innkeeper spoke a rudimentary sort of Greek: he knew numbers and yes and no and a startling collection of obscenities. Even so, Menedemos was sure the fellow missed all the fine points of his argument.

“No,” the Phoenician said now. “Too low. Pay more or-” He pointed toward the doorway.

The wretch had no style, no subtlety. Menedemos lost patience. “Hail,” he said, and walked away.

He was almost to the doorway when the Phoenician said, “Wait.”

“Why?” Menedemos asked. The innkeeper looked blank. Maybe nobody’d ever asked him such a philosophical question before. Menedemos tried again: “Why should I wait? For what? How much less do you say I’d have to pay?”

That finally got through to the fellow. He named a price halfway between what Menedemos had offered and what he himself had insisted on up till now. Menedemos tossed his head. The gesture meant nothing to the Phoenician. Remembering he was in a country full of barbarians, Menedemos shook his head, no matter how unnatural the motion seemed to him. For good measure, he started toward the door again.

“Thief,” the innkeeper said. Menedemos found it interesting that he should know the word when his Greek was so limited. The Rhodian bowed, as if at a compliment. The Phoenician said something in his own language. By his tone, Menedemos doubted it was a compliment. He bowed again. The Phoenician added another string of harsh gutturals, but then cut the difference between his price and Menedemos’ in half again.

“There, you see? You can be reasonable,” Menedemos said. Odds were, the words went straight past the innkeeper. Menedemos raised his own price very slightly. The Phoenician made a wounded noise and clutched at his chest with both hands, as if Menedemos had shot him with an arrow. When that bit of theater failed to impress Menedemos, the barbarian nodded brusquely and stuck out his hand. “Deal,” he said.

Clasping it, Menedemos wondered if he’d made a good bargain or a bad one. In Rhodes, he would have been pleased to rent a room for this price. But were prices here generally higher or lower than those back home? He didn’t know. Figuring it out wasn’t easy, either. Working back and forth between drakhmai and sigloi made his head ache; the local silver coins were worth just over two Rhodian drakhmai each. Sostratos seemed to have little trouble shifting from one to the other, but Sostratos had been born with a counting board between the ears. Menedemos’ mathematical accomplishments were much more modest.

The room itself was about what he’d expected. It was small and close, furnished with a bed, a couple of rickety stools, and a chamber pot. Who’d been in the bed before? What bugs waited there for the next arrival? Just thinking of the question was enough to make Menedemos start scratching.

He knew he dared not leave anything in the room unguarded. He sighed. That would mean paying a sailor something extra to keep an eye on things while he went out to sell. The expense would make Sostratos grumble. Any expense made Sostratos grumble. But the expense of missing trade goods would be worse.

When Menedemos walked back from the room to the front of the inn, he found the Phoenician arguing with his wife. Menedemos had to fight to hold back a laugh. Here was one woman who wouldn’t tempt him into adultery. She was fat and gray-haired, with a sickle of a nose dominating her face. She had a harsh voice that did nothing to soften the rough Aramaic language.

But when she saw Menedemos, she broke off berating her husband and, absurdly, batted her eyelashes at the Rhodian. “Good days,” she said in Greek even worse than the innkeeper’s. “How you is?”

“Well, thank you,” Menedemos answered. Politely, he added, “And you?”

“Good.” She smiled at him and, turning her face away from her husband, ran her tongue over her lips. Then she batted her eyelashes again.

Oh, by the gods! Menedemos thought in alarm. Sostratos doesn’t want me seducing anybody, and I don’t want this harridan seducing me. He wondered if he ought to find another inn. But he didn’t feel like wasting his time in another dicker over another unappealing little chamber. The less I’m here, the less I’ll have to deal with her, he told himself.

She said something in Aramaic to her husband. Whatever it was, it started the argument once more. Menedemos didn’t want to get stuck in the middle. He was about to retreat to his room when a man came in carrying a chunk of pork. Menedemos remembered Sostratos saying Ioudaioi didn’t eat swine’s flesh. That plainly didn’t hold for Phoenicians. The newcomer gave the innkeeper a bronze coin. The innkeeper took the meat and threw it into hot oil. The oil bubbled and sizzled. A savory aroma filled the chamber.

But it wasn’t so savory as it might have been. The meat couldn’t have smelled better. The oil could have. It wasn’t very fresh, and hadn’t been very good to start with. Menedemos wrinkled his nose. So did the fellow who’d brought in the pork. He said something in Aramaic. Menedemos didn’t know how the innkeeper replied, but he sounded defensive. The way he spread his hands also made that likely.

Menedemos had an inspiration. As the innkeeper turned the meat with a pair of wooden tongs, the Rhodian asked him, “Do you want to buy some better olive oil?”

“What you say?” The fellow’s Greek was horrible.

“Olive oil. Good olive oil. You buy?” Menedemos spoke as if to an idiot child-not that an idiot child would have been interested in buying olive oil, of course.

He wasn’t sure the innkeeper understood the Greek for olive oil, and wished Sostratos were here to translate for him. But he had to do the best he could. He pointed into the pan and held his nose. The man whose pork was frying did the same thing.

“Olive oil? You? How much?” the innkeeper asked.

“Yes. Olive oil. Me.” Menedemos started to dip his head, then remembered to nod instead. He named his price.

The Sidonian stared at him. He said something in Aramaic- Menedemos guessed it was the price, translated into his own language. The innkeeper’s wife and the customer both exclaimed in what certainly sounded like horror. The innkeeper then doled out one word of Greek: “No.”

That wasn’t an invitation to haggle. It was rejection, plain and simple. As the innkeeper took the fried pork out of the pan, wiped oil off it with a bit of rag, and handed it to the man who’d brought it in, Menedemos asked him, “Well, what do you usually pay for olive oil?”

He had to simplify that before the innkeeper understood him. When the fellow told him, he let out a wistful sigh. The innkeeper bought oil as cheap as he could get. He wouldn’t have been interested in Damonax’s fine oil at any price that let Menedemos break even, let alone turn a profit. So much for inspiration, he thought.

The man with the fried pork walked out gnawing on it. The innkeeper and his wife didn’t start quarreling again, but the woman did send Menedemos a wink and a leer. He retreated faster than the Persian king had after each battle against Alexander. The Phoenician woman let out a sigh doubtless intended to be alluring. It only made Menedemos retreat faster still.

When he told Sostratos about it on the Aphrodite , his cousin said, “Yes, now give me another story. You’re trying to back out of your oath, is what you’re doing.”

“By the gods, I am not!” Menedemos said with a shudder. “Come to the inn with me and you’ll see for yourself. I tell you, I wouldn’t have this woman on a bet, and to the crows with me if I can understand why the barbarian married her.”

“Maybe she brought a large dowry,” Sostratos suggested.

“Maybe,” Menedemos said. “That makes more sense than anything else I can think of, but even so…” He shuddered again, then went halfway toward changing the subject: “I tried to sell the innkeeper some of your brother-in-law’s olive oil.”

“Did you? Well, thanks,” Sostratos said. “Let me guess-no luck?”

“I’m afraid not, my dear. He was using some dreadful, nasty stuff to fry meat, and I hoped he might want something better, but no. He used the nasty oil because it was cheap, and he turned green when I told him what I wanted for ours-as green as if he were seasick, or as if he’d been tasting his own oil. I did try, though.”

Sostratos sighed. “I already said thank you. I’ll say it again. Gods only know how we’re going to unload that stuff. It is good oil, but even so…” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I wouldn’t mind breaking an amphora of it over Damonax’s head.”

“Have you got your donkey yet?” Menedemos asked. “Besides your brother-in-law, I mean?”

“Heh,” Sostratos said, and then tossed his head. “No, not yet. Prices for beasts of burden are higher than I want to pay, because Antigonos’ soldiers have bought up-or maybe stolen, for all I know-so many of them. But there’s one-a mule, actually, not a donkey-I have my eye on, if I can get the man who owns it down to something like a reasonable price.”

“I wished I had you along today, so you could have told the innkeeper just how vile his olive oil was,” Menedemos said. “Maybe I should have learned some Aramaic after all.”

“I could say, ‘I told you so,’ “ Sostratos remarked. But then he surprised Menedemos by continuing, “But I won’t. I’ve been speaking it all day, and my head feels pounded flat.”

“I believe you.” Menedemos didn’t really want to speak Aramaic. He wanted all the barbarians he dealt with to speak Greek. Doing things the other way round was, in his mind, a poor second best.

A big round ship made her slow, stately way into Sidon’s harbor. Her entrance had to be slow and stately. The wind had brought her south past the promontory on which the Phoenician town sat, but that same wind blew dead against her when she tried to come about and sail in. That failing, the crew worked their sweeps and rowed the round ship into port. Her performance under oars was to the Aphrodite ’s as a spavined ass’ was to that of a Persian stallion.

When at last she tied up at a quay perhaps a plethron from the Aphrodite , she started disgorging soldiers. Some of them wore their corselets and crested bronze helms; more carried them. In this warm weather, Menedemos reckoned that sensible. He wouldn’t have wanted to wear any more than he had to, either.

Sostratos’ lips were moving. After the last trooper came off the merchantman, he said, “I counted two hundred and eight men there. The next interesting question is whether they’ll stay here or go on to someplace else-someplace farther south, say.”

“If they stay here, Antigonos or his general probably intends to use them against Cyprus,” Menedemos said, and his cousin dipped his head in agreement. Menedemos went on, “If they move south, where will they be going? Against Egypt, do you think?”

“That seems likely,” Sostratos said. “The next question is, how long will Ptolemaios or his brother Menelaos need to hear those men are here and they’ve done whatever they end up doing?”

“Only a few days’ sail from here to Cyprus,” Menedemos observed. “Not much more to Alexandria-maybe no more, because you’re likely to have the wind with you all the way down to the Nile. If someone doesn’t leave with the news before the sun sets tomorrow, I’d be astonished.”

“So would I.” Sostratos dipped his head once more. He went on, “I can hardly wait to start down toward the land of the Ioudaioi. I wonder how many Hellenes have ever gone there. Not many, unless I miss my guess.”

“You could write a book,” Menedemos said.

He didn’t like the glow that lit his cousin’s eyes. “You’re right,” Sostratos murmured. “I could, couldn’t I? Every Hellene who ever set foot in India seems to have written down what he saw and heard there. Maybe I could do the same for this place.”

“That’s fine,” Menedemos told him. “Or it’s fine as long as you remember you’re there first to buy balsam and whatever else you find. If you take care of that, whatever else you do is your own affair. If you don’t, though, you’ll have to explain to me and to your father-and to mine-why you didn’t.”

“Yes, my dear. I do understand that, I really do,” Sostratos said patiently.

Menedemos wondered whether to believe him.

Having bought his mule, Sostratos wished he could leave Sidon without an escort. The more he thought about having several sailors with him, the less he liked it. But he’d made the bargain with Menedemos, and he had a merchant’s horror of broken bargains. Then, after the first two men he asked to come with him to the land of the Ioudaioi turned him down flat, he began to wonder if he could keep this one.

What will I do if they all say no? he wondered nervously. I’ll have to hire guards here in Sidon, I suppose. His mouth twisted. He didn’t like that. Trusting himself to the company of strangers seemed more dangerous than going alone. He wondered whether his cousin would agree. He doubted it.

He walked up to Aristeidas. The sharp-eyed young sailor smiled and said, “Hail.”

“Hail,” Sostratos answered. “How would you like to come to Engedi with me, to serve as a bodyguard along the way?”

“That depends,” Aristeidas answered. “How much extra will you pay me if I do?”

“A drakhma a day, on top of the drakhma and a half you already make,” Sostratos said. The other two sailors had asked the same question. The extra money hadn’t been enough to interest them. They were happier staying in Sidon and spending their silver on wine and women.

But Aristeidas, after a momentary hesitation, dipped his head. “I’ll come,” he said, and smiled again. Like most though not all men of his generation, he shaved his face, which made him look even younger than he was. He’d probably made a striking youth, though that might have gone unnoticed in someone growing up without wealth.

In any case, a youth’s beauty did less for Sostratos than did a woman’s. “Oh, very good!” he said. “I’ll be glad to have you along.” He meant it, and explained why. “It’s not just that you’ve got good eyes. You’ve got good sense, too.”

“Thank you very much,” Aristeidas said. “I don’t exactly know that that’s true, but I like to hear you say it.”

The next sailor Sostratos asked was Moskhion. He wasn’t particularly young or particularly smart, but he had been smart enough to see that while pulling an oar wasn’t an easy life, it beat the whey out of his former career of sponge diving. And he was big enough and strong enough to be worth more than a little in case of a brawl.

“Sure, I’ll come,” he said when Sostratos put the question to him. “Why not? With a little luck, all we’ll have to do is go there and come back, right?”

“Yes, with a little luck,” Sostratos answered. “But what will you do if our luck isn’t so good? What will you do if we have to fight?”

“I expect I’ll fight. What else?” Moskhion didn’t sound worried.

Sostratos supposed that if you’d got used to jumping out of a boat with a trident in one hand and with a rock held against your chest in the other to make you sink faster, nothing that might happen on dry land was likely to faze you. He said, “I’m glad to have you along. You’re a host all by yourself.”

“Maybe. Maybe not, too,” Moskhion said. “But people think so when they look at me. Every once in a while, that gets me into fights. More often, though, it keeps me out of them.”

“That’s what I want it to do here,” Sostratos said. “I’m not looking to get into fights with the barbarians.”

“Good,” Moskhion said. “Some people fight for sport, but I’m not one of them.”

“I wouldn’t want you along if you were,” Sostratos said. The next three men he asked all told him no. Annoyed at them, annoyed at the need to bring guards along, he went to Menedemos and asked if two would do.

His cousin annoyed him all over again by tossing his head. “Get somebody else,” Menedemos said. “The idea is to have enough men along to keep from giving bandits nasty ideas.”

“I might take the whole crew and not manage that,” Sostratos protested.

“I’m not asking you to take the whole crew,” Menedemos said. “I am asking you to take one more man.”

Since he was the captain, Sostratos had to pay attention to him. Sostratos liked getting orders no more than any other free Hellene. Indeed, he liked it less than a lot of other Hellenes might have. Here, though, he had to obey.

As he came down from the Aphrodite ’s poop deck with a storm cloud on his face, one of the sailors said, “Excuse me, but if you’re looking for somebody to go with you when you head inland, I’ll do it.”

“You, Teleutas?” Sostratos said in surprise-and not necessarily pleased surprise, either. “Why do you want to come?”

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t use the extra silver. A drakhma a day over and above the usual? That’s not bad. Not half bad, matter of fact. And it ought to be pretty easy money, so long as everything goes well.”

“Yes, but what if it doesn’t?” Sostratos asked.

Teleutas took his time thinking about that. He was perhaps ten years older than Sostratos-in his mid- to late thirties. Rowing under the fierce summer sun had made his lean face dark and leathery, with lines like gullies, so that at first glance he seemed older than he was. His eyes, though, retained what was either a childlike innocence or a chameleon-like gift for hiding his true nature. He always did enough to get by, but only just, and had a habit of grumbling even about that. More than two years after first bringing him aboard the Aphrodite , Sostratos kept wondering if he’d made a mistake.

At last the sailor said, “Whatever happens, I expect I can handle it.”

“Can you?” Sostratos meant the question. Once, in Italy, Teleutas might have left him and Menedemos in the lurch. He’d quickly returned to the agora in that town in Great Hellas with other sailors from the merchant galley. Maybe he’d only gone to get help. Maybe.

“I expect I can,” he said now. Was his grin as open and friendly as it seemed, or an actor’s mask to hide cowardice? Try as Sostratos would, he couldn’t tell. Teleutas went on in reasonable, rational tones, as if arguing a point at the Lykeion: “I’m not likely to light out, am I, not in a countryside full of barbarians? You may like making those funny noises in the back of your throat, but I don’t.”

Isn’t that interesting? Sostratos thought. He knows I don’t trust him, and he’s giving me a reason why I should this time. It was a good reason, too. Sure enough, why would Teleutas want to do anything but what he was paid to do when he spoke no Aramaic? He couldn’t easily disappear among strangers here, as he could in a polis full of Hellenes. Sostratos plucked at his beard, considering.

Teleutas added, “I know a thing or two that might come in handy, too, the sort of thing you probably wouldn’t.”

“Oh? Such as?” Sostratos asked.

“This and that,” the sailor answered. “You never can tell when it’d be useful, but it just might.” Plainly, he didn’t want to give details. Sostratos wondered what that meant. Had he been a bandit at one time or another? He spoke like a Rhodian, and few Rhodians needed to turn to brigandage to survive. But if, say, he’d been a mercenary and seen things go sour, who could guess what he’d had to do to keep eating? He didn’t have a soldier’s scars, but maybe he’d been lucky.

With sudden decision, Sostratos dipped his head. “All right, Teleutas. I’ll take you on. We’ll see what comes of it.”

Teleutas gave him that charming grin again. “I thank you kindly. You won’t be sorry.”

“I’d better not be,” Sostratos said. “If you make me sorry, I’ll make you sorry, too. I promise you that. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” Teleutas said. But what would he say? More than a few people took Sostratos lightly because he used his wits more readily than his fists. He’d made some of them regret it. He hoped he wouldn’t have to worry about that with Teleutas.

When he told Menedemos he’d chosen his third escort, his cousin looked pained. “By the dog of Egypt, I wish you’d picked almost anybody else,” Menedemos said. “Can you trust Teleutas when your back is turned? I wouldn’t want to-I’ll tell you that.”

“I wouldn’t want to in Hellas. I’d be lying if I said anything else,” Sostratos replied. “But here? Yes, I think I can. He’s not going to make friends with bandits when he can’t speak their language, and he doesn’t know any Aramaic. He should be safe enough.”

“I hope so.” Menedemos didn’t sound convinced.

Since Sostratos wasn’t altogether convinced, either, he couldn’t get angry at his cousin. He said, “I think everything will be all right.”

“I hope so,” Menedemos said again, even more dubiously than before.

“What harm can he do me?” Sostratos asked. “I asked myself again and again, and I couldn’t see any.”

“I can’t see any, either,” Menedemos admitted. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any.”

“We’re on dry land now, my dear,” Sostratos said with a smile. “We don’t have to pay any attention to all our seagoing superstitions.”

Menedemos had the grace to laugh. He, at least, knew he was superstitious. Many sailors would have indignantly denied it, at the same time spitting into the bosom of their chitons to take away the bad luck in the accusation. “All right. All right,” Menedemos said. “I’ve got no real reason not to trust Teleutas. But I don’t. Remember, he was about the last one we took on a couple of years ago, and he’s still the first one I’d leave behind if I ever had to.”

“Maybe you’ll have a different idea when we come back from the land of the Ioudaioi,” Sostratos said.

“Maybe. I hope I will,” Menedemos answered. “But maybe I won’t, too. That’s what worries me.”

Sostratos judged it a good time to change the subject, at least a little: “When I leave Sidon, may I borrow your bow and arrows?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Menedemos dipped his head. “You’ll get better use out of them there than I will here. I’m sure of that. Just try to bring the bow back in one piece, if you’d be so kind.”

“What do you think I’d do to it?” Sostratos asked with as much indignation as he could muster.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. All I know is, things sometimes go wrong when you handle weapons.”

“That’s not fair!” Sostratos said. “Haven’t I shot pirates? Haven’t you compared me to Alexandros in the Iliad when I did?”

His cousin dipped his head once more. “You have. I have. All true, every word of it. But I’ve seen you at the gymnasion in Rhodes, too, and there are times when you’ve looked like you hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with a bow.”

That hurt. It hurt all the more because Sostratos knew it was true. He would never make a really fine archer. He would never be anything that required large amounts of grace and strength. Try as he would, he didn’t have them in him, not in large supply. I’ve got my wits, he told himself. Sometimes that brought him considerable consolation, for it let him look down his nose at people who were merely strong and athletic. Other times, such as today… He tried not to think about it.

Menedemos set a hand on his shoulder, as if to say he shouldn’t make too much of it. “If the gods are kind, you won’t have to worry about any of this. The only time you’ll shoot the bow is for the pot.”

“Yes, if the gods are kind,” Sostratos agreed. But Teleutas wouldn’t have any worries or any work to do if the gods were kind, either. Sostratos’ gaze slid to Menedemos. In a way, his cousin reminded him of Teleutas (though Menedemos would have been anything but pleased to hear him say so). They both wanted things to be easy and convenient. There the resemblance ended. If things weren’t easy or convenient, Teleutas, a man of no particular drive, would either withdraw or get through the difficulty or the inconvenience as best he could. Menedemos was much more likely to try to reshape whatever was going on around him so that it suited him better-and had both the energy and the charm to get what he wanted most of the time.

With a laugh, Menedemos went on, “Of course, if we could be sure the gods would be kind, you wouldn’t need to take guards along-or the bow, either, for that matter.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Sostratos said. “Then you could forget about your half of our bargain.”

His cousin wagged a finger at him. “That knife has two edges, and you know it. You don’t want to travel with the sailors because they’ll keep you from poking your nose into everything under the sun.”

“It’s not your nose you want to poke into everything under the sun,” Sostratos retorted.

Menedemos laughed again, this time with a booming guffaw that made several sailors turn their heads to try to find out what was so funny. He waved them back to whatever they were doing, then said, “Ah, my dear, anyone would think you knew me.”

“I’d better, after all these years of living side by side in Rhodes and even closer than that when we go to sea,” Sostratos answered. “But how much does it matter? Not so much, I’d say, as whether you know yourself.”

“That’s one of your philosophers,” Menedemos said accusingly. “I know you, too-you always try to sneak them in. You think you have to improve me, whether I feel like being improved or not.”

Since that held no small amount of truth, Sostratos didn’t waste time denying it. He said, “It’s from one of the Seven Sages, sure enough. But it’s also the inscription at Delphi. If it’s good enough for the oracle there, shouldn’t it be good enough for you, too?”

“Hmm. Maybe,” Menedemos said. “I thought it would be Platon or Sokrates-they’re the ones you usually trot out.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Sostratos knew his cousin wanted to get his goat, and also knew Menedemos was succeeding. He couldn’t keep the irritation from his voice as he continued, “Or do you think Sokrates was wrong when he said the unexamined life wasn’t worth living?”

“Here we go again. I don’t know about that,” Menedemos said. Sostratos showed his teeth in a triumphant grin; even his cousin wouldn’t have the nerve to quarrel there. But Menedemos did: “I do know that if you spend too much time examining your life, you won’t have time to live it.”

Sostratos opened his mouth, then closed it again. He hoped he would never hear a better argument against philosophy. He made the best comeback he could, answering, “One of the Seven Sages also said, ‘Nothing too much.’“

“I think we’ve had too much of this argument for now,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head, glad to escape so easily. But then Menedemos added, “I also think we’ve got too much of your brother-in-law’s olive oil.”

“So do I,” Sostratos said, “but sometimes you have to make allowances for family.” He looked Menedemos in the eye. “Think of all the allowances I’ve made for you.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Menedemos said. “Here I thought I was the one making allowances for you. Didn’t I let you wander over the Italian countryside when we were docked at Pompaia a couple of years ago, even though I was afraid somebody would knock you over the head? Didn’t I let you lug that gryphon’s skull all around the Aegean last summer, even though I was sure we wouldn’t make back what we paid for it?”

“I don’t know why you were so sure of that, when Damonax offered me enough silver to let me turn a big profit,” Sostratos said tartly.

“You turned him down, which proves you’re a fool,” Menedemos said. “And he offered it, which proves he’s a fool. If he’s not a fool, why have we got so cursed much olive oil aboard the Aphrodite ? See what I mean about making allowances for family?”

“What I see is-” Sostratos stopped and spluttered laughter. He wagged a finger at Menedemos. “Here, you’re not going to like this, but I’ll tell you what I see. I see a man who knows how to use logic but says he’s got no use for philosophy. I see a man who’d like to love wisdom but-”

“Would sooner love pretty girls and good wine instead,” Menedemos broke in.

Sostratos tossed his head. “Oh, no, my dear. You’re not going to get away with a joke this time. You’re going to let me finish. What I see is a man who’d like to love wisdom but can’t bring himself to take anything seriously. And that, if you ask me, is a shame and a waste of a good mind.”

Out in the harbor, a tern dove into the water. A moment later, it came out with a writhing fish in its beak. It swallowed the fish as it flew away. Menedemos pointed to it. “That bird has no philosophy, but it still gets its opson.”

“It does not,” Sostratos said.

“What? Are you blind? Did it catch a fish or didn’t it?”

“Certainly it did. But what does a tern live on? Fish, of course-fish is its sitos, its staple. If you gave it a barley roll, that would be its opson, its relish, because it has to have fish but it could do without the roll.”

Menedemos scratched his head in thought. Then he scratched again, this time in earnest. “I hope that miserable inn hasn’t left me lousy. All right, you’re right-fish, for a tern, is sitos, not opson. I suppose you’ll tell me that’s philosophy, too.”

“I won’t tell you anything of the sort. I’ll just ask a question.” If there was anything Sostratos enjoyed, it was the chance to play Sokrates. “If caring enough to use the right word isn’t part of loving wisdom, what is it?”

“I don’t suppose you’d put up with anything so ordinary as just trying to say the right thing, would you?”

“Is that all Homer was doing-just trying to say the right thing, I mean?”

“ Homer always said the right thing.” Menedemos sounded very sure. “And he never heard of philosophy.”

Sostratos wanted to argue that, but soon decided he couldn’t. “He doesn’t use the word for wisdom at all, does he?”

“ Sophie? Let me think.” After a moment, Menedemos said, “No, that’s not true. He uses it once, in the fifteenth-I think-book of the Iliad: ‘And he who, thanks to the inspiration of Athene, knows well every skill.’ But he’s not talking about a philosopher-he’s talking about a carpenter. And sophie in the Iliad doesn’t mean abstract knowledge, the way it does with us. It means knowing how to do the things a carpenter does.”

“You can still use it that way,” Sostratos said, “but not, I admit, if you’re going to talk about philosophy.”

“No,” Menedemos said. “ Homer ’s a very down-to-earth poet. Even his gods on Olympos are down-to-earth, if you know what I mean.”

“They certainly are-they behave like a bunch of bad-tempered Macedonians,” Sostratos said, which made Menedemos laugh. More seriously, Sostratos went on, “They’re so down-to-earth, in fact, that some people who love wisdom have trouble believing in them.”

His cousin’s expression curdled like sour milk. Sostratos hadn’t included himself in that group, but he hadn’t excluded himself from it. He suspected he knew why Homer said nothing about philosophy. The poet had lived a long time ago, before any Hellenes began seriously asking questions of the world around them and following logic wherever it took them. We were as ignorant as any barbarians, he thought, bemused. And some of us still are, and don’t want to be any different.

Menedemos said, “Some people say they love wisdom when all they really love is making their neighbors uncomfortable.” He gave Sostratos a pointed stare.

Sostratos returned it. “Some people think that just because their great-grandfathers believed something was so, it has to be so. If we all had that attitude, we wouldn’t use iron-or even bronze, come to that-and we would have thrown back the alpha-beta like a worthless fish that nobody eats.”

They glared at each other. Then Menedemos asked, “What do you suppose would happen if you made that argument to the Phoenicians or the Ioudaioi?”

“Nothing pretty. Nothing pleasant. But they’re barbarians, and they don’t know any better. We’re Hellenes. What’s the point of being a Hellene, if not to use the wits the gods-whatever they may be-gave us?”

“You think you have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“No. Not at all.” Sostratos tossed his head. “I think we should use our wits, though, to try to find answers, and not rely on whatever our forefathers said. They might have been wrong. A lot of the time, they were wrong. If I’d managed to get that gryphon’s skull to Athens, for instance, it would have shown people how wrong they were about the beasts.”

“Yes, but how important are gryphons?” Menedemos asked.

“Gryphons aren’t important, not by themselves,” Sostratos said. “But the men of the Lykeion and the Academy would have looked at the evidence and changed their views to fit. They wouldn’t have said, ‘No, we won’t believe what the skull tells us, because our great-grandfathers told us something else.’ And that’s important, don’t you see?” He sounded as if he was pleading, and he sadly wondered whether Menedemos understood at all.