The Sacred Land

6

Menedemos clapped Sostratos on the back, then cupped his hands and interlaced his fingers to give his cousin a leg-up. With his help, Sostratos swung up onto the back of the mule he’d bought. Sostratos looked around with a grin, saying, “I’m not used to being so far off the ground.”

“Well, O best one, you’d better get used to it,” Menedemos answered. “You’re going to be on that mule for a while.”

“That’s right,” Aristeidas agreed with a grin. “You’ll come back to Sidon all bowlegged.” He stumped around with his legs splayed wide apart.

“Go howl!” Sostratos said, laughing.

“No, Aristeidas is right, or he should be. I like that,” Menedemos said, laughing, too. “Your legs’ll look like an omega, thus.” He wrote the letter-?.-in the dust of the street with his right big toe, then he also imitated a bowlegged man. “And when you get back, you won’t be any taller than I am.”

“In your dreams,” Sostratos retorted. That held more truth than he might have guessed, for Menedemos, especially when they were both growing up, had dreamt of matching his gangling cousin’s height. Sostratos went on, “You’d burst like a squashed melon if Prokroustes tried stretching you on his rack till you were my size.”

“Ha!” Menedemos said. “Prokroustes’d be cutting you down to size if he ever got you to sleep in his bed, and he’d start with your tongue.”

Sostratos stuck out the organ in question. Menedemos made as if to grab for his belt knife. Sostratos looked from him to Aristeidas, Teleutas, and Moskhion. The former sponge diver carried a pike as tall as he was, while the other two men wore swords on their hips. “Some bodyguards,” Sostratos said. He had a sword himself; a leather bowcase held Menedemos’ bow, several spare bowstrings, and twenty arrows. All four men wore cheap bell-shaped bronze helmets that would keep a club from knocking their brains out. The helms offered no protection for the face, but were far lighter and cooler than the all-enclosing ones hoplites used.

“I think we’re ready,” Sostratos said. As if to agree with him, Aristeidas picked up the lead rope of the donkey that carried their trade goods and money. The donkey brayed in protest. A moment later, the mule joined in, its voice louder and deeper.

“Wing-foot Hermes keep you safe,” Menedemos said. He set his hand on Sostratos’ leg for a moment. His cousin covered it with his own hand. Then Sostratos flicked the reins and squeezed the mule’s barrel with his knees and calves. The beast brayed again. For a moment, Menedemos thought it would do no more. But, ears twitching resentfully, it began to walk. Aristeidas had to yank on the ass’ lead line to get it to follow. The four Hellenes and two animals left the harbor and disappeared into Sidon. Before long, they’d be off in the wilds of the land of the Ioudaioi.

“Keep an eye on him, all of you,” Menedemos muttered. He wondered if he was talking to the sailors from the Aphrodite who accompanied Sostratos or to the gods high above. By then, the sailors were too far away to hear him. He hoped the gods weren’t.

Sighing, he walked back up the pier to the Aphrodite . Diokles said, “Hope everything goes good for him, skipper.”

“Yes. So do I,” Menedemos replied.

“He’s a clever fellow, your cousin,” the oarmaster said, doing his best to sound reassuring. “He’ll be fine.”

Menedemos remained un-reassured. “Oh, yes, Sostratos is very clever,” he said. “But has he got any common sense? There are times when I don’t think he’s got as much as the gods gave a gecko.”

“He’s got more than you think,” Diokles said. “The two of you, you’re kin, so of course you can’t see each other straight.”

“Maybe you’re right. I hope you’re right,” Menedemos said. “Still and all, though, I wish he weren’t wandering around among the barbarians. When he goes and does something strange, Hellenes know how to make allowances: almost everybody’s seen someone who’s more cut out to be a philosopher than to live in the real world. But what do these silly Ioudaioi know about philosophy? Not a thing. Not a single, solitary thing. How could they? They’re just barbarians. They’ll think he’s crazy, is what they’ll think.”

“Your cousin doesn’t do that stuff all the time, or even very often,” Diokles said.

“I hope you’re right,” Menedemos repeated. If the keleustes was right, Sostratos would, or at least might, come back with balsam and with profit. If, on the other hand, he was wrong… Menedemos didn’t want to dwell on that but couldn’t help it. He said, “If Sostratos has all this common sense, why did he take Teleutas for one of his guards? Why not anybody else? I wish I hadn’t let him.”

Diokles put the best face on it he could: “Nobody’s ever been able to prove anything bad about Teleutas. Everything he does, there’s always a good reason for it, or there always could be one, anyway. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have let him ship with us last year, let alone this year.”

“It could be,” Menedemos admitted. “Yes, it could be. But when he’s one of forty-odd men aboard the Aphrodite , that’s one thing. When he’s one of four Hellenes in the middle of nowhere, that’s something else-or it’s liable to be something else, anyhow.”

Diokles didn’t argue with him. He wished the keleustes would have. He wanted to think he was wrong, not that he was right. What Diokles did say was, “While your cousin’s traveling, what will you do?”

“The best I can,” Menedemos answered. “Gods only know how I’m going to unload the olive oil we’re carrying, but we’ll see about that. I do have hopes for the rest of the food and the perfume and the silk and especially the books. Sostratos was clever there. I wouldn’t have thought of them by myself, and we’ll make a fine profit from them-or I hope we will.”

“That’d be nice,” the oarmaster said agreeably. “How do you propose to go about selling ‘em, though? You can’t just take ‘em to the market square. Well, I suppose you could, but how much good would it do you? Mostly Phoenicians there, and they won’t care anything about our books.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about that,” Menedemos said. “What I have in mind doing is…” He explained. “What do you think of that?”

“Not bad, skipper.” Diokles grinned and dipped his head. “Matter of fact, not half bad. I’d love to see you when you bring it off, I would.”

“Well, why don’t you come along?” Menedemos said.

“And who’d keep an eye on the ship if I did?” Diokles asked. “If your cousin were here, if Aristeidas were here, even, that’d be different. But the way things are, I think I’d better stick around when you’re away.”

Menedemos clapped him on the back. “You’re the best keleustes I’ve ever known. You ought to have a ship of your own. I’m sorry things haven’t broken the way they might have for you.”

With a shrug, Diokles said, “One of these days, maybe. I’ve had the same thought. I’d like to be a captain. I won’t say any different. But things could be a lot worse, too. If I hadn’t been lucky, I’d still be pulling an oar somewhere.” He held out his hands, palms up, to show the thick rower’s calluses they still bore.

In a way, Menedemos admired the oarmaster’s patience and willingness to make the best of things. In another way… He tossed his head. When he was unhappy about how life treated him, everybody around him knew he was unhappy. Sometimes that only succeeded in annoying everybody. More often, though (he thought it was more often, anyhow), letting people know what he wanted and that he wouldn’t be satisfied till he got it helped him get it. He wondered whether he ought to tell Diokles as much. After a moment, he tossed his head. He doubted Diokles was one who could profit from the advice.

Later that day, he put several books in a wicker basket with a lid, which he took care to fasten down securely. Then he made his way through Sidon’s narrow, brawling streets-canyons, they seemed to him, on account of the tall buildings to either side-looking for the barracks housing the Macedonians and Hellenes of the garrison.

He got lost. He’d known he would. He’d got lost before, in plenty of towns. It didn’t usually worry him. Here, it did. Most places, if he got lost, he could ask for directions. Here, people stared at him as if he was speaking a foreign language when he asked, “Do you speak Greek?”-and so, to them, he was. He couldn’t even steer by the sun. In Sidon, the tall buildings mostly kept him from seeing it.

He was beginning to wonder if he’d ever manage to find his way to the barracks or back to the harbor when he ran into a Macedonian. That was literally what he did-the fellow was coming out of an armorer’s shop, a stout mace in hand, when Menedemos bumped him. “I’m sorry. Please excuse me,” Menedemos said automatically, in Greek.

“It’s all right. No harm done,” the fellow answered. He certainly stood out from the locals. His skin was ruddy rather than olive, his face freckled, his eyes green, and his hair halfway between brown and blond. His nose was short and blunt-and leaned to the right, the result of a long-ago encounter with something hard and blunt.

“Oh, gods be praised! Someone I can understand!” Menedemos said.

Now the Macedonian laughed. “Hellenes don’t always say that about the likes of me. When I start talking the way I did back home on the farm, I…” He drifted into Macedonian dialect, which, sure enough, Menedemos couldn’t follow.

He waved that aside. “Doesn’t matter, O best one. You can speak Greek if you want to, but these Phoenicians don’t come close. Can you tell me where your barracks are?”

“I’ll do better than that. I’m on my way back, and I’ll take you there,” the Macedonian said. “I’m Philippos son of Iolaos.” He waited for Menedemos to give his own name, his father’s name, and his birthplace, then asked, “Why do you want to find the barracks, Rhodian?”

Menedemos held up the basket. “I’m a merchant, and I’ve got things to sell in here.”

“Things? What kind of things?”

“Books,” Menedemos answered.

“Books?” Philippos echoed in surprise. Menedemos dipped his head. “Who’d want to buy a book?” the Macedonian asked him.

“Can you read and write?” Menedemos asked in return.

“Not me.” Philippos spoke with a certain stubborn pride Menedemos had heard before. “Letters are just a bunch of scratches and squiggles, far as I’m concerned.”

Even in Rhodes, far more men would have answered that way than not. Menedemos said, “Well, in that case, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about even if I explained, so I’m not going to waste my time. I might as well try explaining music to a deaf man. But a lot of men who have got their letters do enjoy reading.”

“I’ve heard that, but to the crows with me if I know whether to believe it or not,” Philippos said. “Tell you what, pal-we’re almost to the barracks. Bet you a drakhma you don’t sell any of your silly scribbles.”

“Done!” Menedemos said, and he clasped hands with the Macedonian to seal the wager.

They rounded a corner. Like so many buildings in cramped Sidon, the barracks towered five stories into the air. Sentries in Hellenic armor stood guard outside the entrance. Soldiers and hucksters went in and out. Menedemos heard the sweet, rising and falling cadences of Greek and those of Macedonian, which sounded the same at a distance but, to his ear, didn’t resolve into meaning when he drew closer.

Philippos said, “I’m going to stand right here beside you, friend. By the gods, I won’t jog your elbow. But if you can sell books, you’re going to do it where I can see you.”

“That’s fair,” Menedemos agreed. He planted himself a couple of cubits in front of the sentries and launched into the Iliad: “ ‘Rage!-Sing, goddess, of Akhilleus’…’ “ He wasn’t a rhapsode, one of the traveling men who’d memorized the whole poem (or, sometimes, the Odyssey) and made their living by going from polis to polis and reciting in the agora for a few khalkoi here, an obolos there. But he knew the first book well, and he was livelier than most rhapsodes; they’d repeated the epics endless times and squeezed all the juice from them. Menedemos was really fond of the poet, and that showed as hexameter after hexameter flowed from him.

A soldier going into the barracks stopped to listen. A moment later, so did another one. Somebody stuck his head out a third-story window to hear Menedemos. After a bit, the fellow pulled it back in again. He came downstairs to hear better. By the time a quarter of an hour passed, Menedemos had drawn a fair crowd. Two or three soldiers had even tossed coins at his feet. He didn’t bother to pick them up, but kept on reciting.

“You’re not selling books,” Philippos said. “You’re doing the poem yourself.”

“Shut up,” Menedemos hissed. “You told me you wouldn’t queer my pitch.” The Macedonian subsided.

Menedemos went on with the Iliad:

“ ‘Thus he spoke. Peleus’ son grew troubled, his spirit

Pondering, divided in his shaggy breast,

Whether to draw his keen sword from beside his thigh,

Break up the assembled men, and slay the son of Atreus,

Or to contain his anger and curb his spirit.’ “

He stopped. “Here, go on!” one of the soldiers exclaimed. “You’re just getting into the good stuff.” A couple of other men dipped their heads.

But Menedemos tossed his. “I’m no rhapsode, not really. I’m just a man who loves his Homer, the same as you’re men who love your Homer. And why not? How many of you learned to read and write from the Iliad and the Odyssey}”

Several soldiers raised their hands. Philippos the Macedonian let out a low, admiring whistle. “Crows take you, Rhodian-I think you’re going to cost me money.”

“Hush,” Menedemos told him, and went on with his sales pitch: “Don’t you want the poet always with you, so you can enjoy his words whenever you please? The divine Alexander did: he took a complete Iliad, all twenty-four books, with him when he went on campaign in the east. That’s what people say, anyhow.”

“It’s the truth,” one of the soldiers, an older man, said. “I saw his Iliad with my own eyes, I did. He wanted to be as great a hero as Akhilleus. Me, I’d say he did the job, too.”

“I wouldn’t want to argue with you, my friend,” Menedemos said. “Of course, a complete Iliad’s an expensive proposition. What I’ve got here, though”-he hefted the basket-”are copies of some of the best books in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, too, so you can read about the anger of Akhilleus or his fight with Hektor or about Odysseus and the way he tricked Polyphemos the Cyclops, as often as you like. The finest scribes in Rhodes wrote ‘em out; you can be sure you’ve got the words just as Homer sang them all those years ago.”

He knew he was stretching things. He wasn’t sure himself any more just what Homer had sung. And Rhodes had so few scribes that speaking of them in the plural necessarily lumped in just about all of them. But he didn’t intend to mention to the soldiers the hopeless, hapless drunk Sos-tratos had dealt with. They didn’t need to know such things-and, after all, poor Polykles hadn’t copied any of these books. Besides, though Rhodes had only a handful of scribes, it surely boasted more than any other cities except Athens and Ptolemaios’ bumptious upstart of a capital, Alexandria.

“How much do you want for one of your books?” asked the soldier who’d seen Alexander ’s Iliad.

Menedemos smiled his smoothest smile. “Twenty drakhmai,” he replied.

“That’s bloody robbery, buddy, that’s what that is,” another man squawked. By his accent, he sprang from Athens. “Where I come from, five drakhmai’s a fair price for a book.”

“But you’re not where you come from, are you?” Menedemos said, still smoothly. “I had to get these books copied in Rhodes, then dodge pirates all the way from there to here to bring them to Sidon. If you want a book here, I don’t think you’ll go to a Phoenician scribe to get one written out. The Phoenicians’ letters don’t even run the same way ours do; they read from right to left.” If his cousin hadn’t complained about that, he never would have known it, but he happily used it as part of his argument. “Besides,” he added, “what else would you rather spend your silver on?”

“Wine,” said the mercenary from Athens. “Pussy.”

“You drink wine, and an hour later you piss it out. You lay a woman, and a day later your spear stands stiff again,” Menedemos said. “But a book’s different. A book is a possession for all time.” He’d heard that phrase from Sostratos, too; he supposed Sostratos had got it from one of the historians he liked so much.

A couple of the men who’d listened to him looked thoughtful. The Athenian said, “That’s still an awful lot of money.”

Dickering started there. Not even the Athenian had the gall to offer only five drakhmai. The soldiers started at ten. Menedemos tossed his head-not derisively, but with the air of a man who didn’t intend to sell for that price. One of them went up to twelve with no more prodding than that. Menedemos had to fight to keep a smile off his face. It wasn’t supposed to be so easy. He didn’t have to come down very far at all: only to seventeen drakhmai, three oboloi for each book.

“You’ll sell for that?” the Athenian asked, to nail it down. With the air of a man making a great concession, Menedemos dipped his head. Eight or nine soldiers hurried into the barracks. Even before they came back, Philippos son of Iolaos handed Menedemos a drakhma. “Well, Rhodian, you taught me a lesson,” he said.

“Oh? What lesson is that?” Menedemos asked. “My cousin collects them.”

“Don’t bet against a man who knows his own business. Especially don’t push the bet yourself, like a gods-detested fool.”

“Ah.” Menedemos considered. “I think Sostratos already knows that one. I hope he does, anyhow.”

Sostratos had never wanted to be a leader of men. In the generation following Alexander the Great, when every fisherman dreamt of becoming an admiral and every dekarkhos imagined he would use the ten men he commanded to conquer a kingdom full of barbarians and set a crown on his head, that made the Rhodian something of a prodigy. Of course, hardly any of the men with big dreams would fulfill them. Sostratos, with no ambitions along those lines, found himself in a role he didn’t want to play.

“Trust me to get too much of what I don’t want,” he muttered from atop his mule. He didn’t like the animal, either.

“What’s that?” Aristeidas asked.

“Nothing,” Sostratos said, embarrassed at being overheard. He liked Aristeidas and got on fine with him aboard the Aphrodite , not least because he hardly ever had to give him orders there. Here on dry land, though, almost everything he said took on the nature of a command.

The mule’s and donkey’s hooves and the feet of the sailors accompanying him raised dust from the road. The sun blazed down, the weather warmer than it would have been in Hellas at the same season of the year. Sostratos was glad for the broad-brimmed traveler’s hat he wore in place of his helmet. Without it, he thought his brains might have cooked.

Apart from the heat, though, the countryside could easily have been inhabited by Hellenes. The grain fields lay quiet. They would be planted in the fall, when the rains came, for harvesting at the beginning of spring. Olive groves, with their silver-green leaves and gnarled, twisted tree trunks, looked much the same as they would have on Rhodes or in Attica. So did the vineyards. Even the sharp silhouettes of mountains on the horizon could have come straight from a land where Hellenes dwelt.

But the farmers tending the olive trees and grapevines stared at the men from the Aphrodite . Like the Sidonians, the men in the interior wore robes that reached down to their ankles. Most of them just draped a cloth over their heads to hold the sun at bay. The Hellenes’ tunics, which left their arms bare and didn’t reach their knees, marked them as strangers. Even Sostratos’ hat seemed out of place.

Teleutas didn’t want to bother with his chiton. “Why can’t I shed it and go naked?” he said. “This weather’s too stinking hot for clothes.”

“These people pitch fits if you run around bare, and it’s their country,” Sostratos said. “So no.”

“It’s not their country-it’s Antigonos’ country now,” Teleutas said. “Do you think old One-Eye cares a fart whether I wear my chiton or not?”

Sostratos wondered why he’d let Teleutas talk his way into coming along on this journey. Here they were, only a day out of Sidon, and the sailor was already starting to whine and fuss. Sostratos said, “What I think is, Antigonos is back in Anatolia, keeping an eye on Ptolemaios. The Phoenicians, though, the Phoenicians are here. They don’t like people going naked. I don’t want them throwing rocks at us or whatever else they decide to do.”

“How do you know they’d do that?” Teleutas demanded. “How do you-

“I don’t know they’d do that,” Sostratos said. “What I do know, O marvelous one, is that you’re about a digit’s breadth away from going back to Sidon and explaining to my cousin that I couldn’t use you here after all. If you’re going to come along, you’ll do what I tell you, the same as you do what Menedemos tells you when we’re at sea. Have you got that?” He was breathing hard by the time he finished. He didn’t like launching into a tirade like that. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to. And maybe I wouldn‘t, he thought resentfully, if I’d picked somebody besides Teleutas.

But he had picked Teleutas, and so he was stuck with him. The sailor looked resentful, too. He plainly had not the faintest notion why Sostratos had come down on him so hard. Had he understood such things, he wouldn’t have annoyed Sostratos in the first place. Now, glaring, he said what he had to say: “All right. All right. I’ll keep my chiton on. Are you happy?”

“Delighted,” Sostratos answered. Aristeidas snickered. Even Moskhion smiled, and he was hardly a man to notice subtleties. But Teleutas just went on glaring. Either he couldn’t recognize sarcasm when he heard it or he was more comprehensively armored against it than anyone Sostratos had ever met.

Aristeidas pointed and asked, “What’s that up ahead?”

As usual, he’d seen something before anyone else did. After riding on for a little way, Sostratos said, “I think it’s a little roadside shrine, like a Herm at a crossroads back in Hellas.”

The sandstone stele stood about half as tall as a man. It had the image of a god, now much weathered, carved in low relief on each of its four sides. There had been letters beneath the god’s images, but they were too worn to make out, at least for someone as little familiar with Phoenician writing as Sostratos.

A couple of bundles of dried flowers and a loaf of bread, now half eaten by animals, lay by the base of the stele. “Let’s leave some bread of our own,” Moskhion said. “We ought to get the gods here on our side, if we can.”

Sostratos doubted an offering would do anything of the sort, but he didn’t suppose it could hurt. If it made Moskhion and the other sailors feel better, it might even do some good. “Go ahead,” he told the former sponge diver.

Moskhion took a barley roll from a leather sack on the pack donkey’s back. He set it by the old loaf. “I don’t know what prayers you’re used to,” he told the god whose image adorned the stele, “but I hope you’ll look kindly on the Hellenes passing through your land.” He bobbed his head up and down. “Uh, thank you.”

It wasn’t the worst prayer Sostratos had heard. “May it be so,” he added. “Shall we press on now?”

No one said no. Before long, a Phoenician leading a donkey came up the road toward the Hellenes. He stared at them. Plainly, he’d seldom seen men who looked like them or dressed like them. But they were four to his one, so he kept to himself whatever opinions he might have had.

“Peace be unto you,” Sostratos said in Aramaic-the phrase most often used as a greeting or farewell in that language.

The Phoenician blinked. He must not have expected a foreigner to use his tongue. “And to you also peace,” he replied. “What manner of men are you?”

“We are Hellenes,” Sostratos said. That was what it meant, anyway; as always in Aramaic, the literal meaning was, We are lonians. “Who are you, my master? What does your beast carry? Maybe we can trade.”

“Hellenes!” The Phoenician’s dark eyebrows rose. “I have seen soldiers who called themselves by that name, but never traders till now. I thought all Hellenes were soldiers and robbers. It does my heart good to learn I am wrong.” That told Sostratos more than he might have wanted to hear about the way his countrymen behaved hereabouts. The Phoenician bowed and went on, “Your servant is Bodashtart son of Tabnit. And you, sir?”

“I am called Sostratos son of Lysistratos,” Sostratos answered. “I come from the island of Rhodes.” He pointed westward.

“And you come here from this island to trade?” Bodashtart asked. Sostratos started to dip his head, then remembered to nod as a barbarian would have done. Bodashtart pointed to the pack donkey. “What do you carry there?”

“Among other things, fine perfume. Rhodes is famous for it,” Sostratos told him. “The name of the island-and the name of the city on the island-means ‘rose.’ “

“Ah. Perfume.” The Phoenician nodded again. “If it is not too expensive, I might want some for my concubine, and maybe for my wife, too.”

A man who could afford to keep both a concubine and a wife could probably afford perfume. Sostratos gave him another bow, asking, “Would you buy for silver, my master? Or would you trade?” Bodashtart hadn’t told him what his donkey was carrying.

“My lord, I have with me beeswax and fine embroidered linen from the east,” the man said now. He had to pause and explain what beeswax was; Sostratos hadn’t heard the word before. That done, he went on, “I was taking them to Sidon to sell them for what they might bring. Truly Shamash shines on the hour of our meeting.”

Shamash, Sostratos remembered, was the Phoenician name for Apollo, the god of the sun. “Truly,” he echoed. “I can use beeswax, I think. You buy perfume for yourself only? Or you want some to sell later?”

“I may want some to sell. Indeed, my master, I may,” Bodashtart replied. “But it depends on price and quality, eh?”

“And what does not?” That earned Sostratos the first smile he’d got from the Phoenician. He slid down off his mule. The muscles in his inner thighs weren’t sorry to escape the beast. Trying not to show how sore he was, he walked over to the pack donkey.

“What’s going on?” Aristeidas asked. “We can’t understand a word you’re saying, remember.”

“He has beeswax and embroidered linen,” Sostratos answered. “He’s interested in perfume. We’ll see what we can work out.”

“Ah, that’s fine, sir. That’s very fine,” the sharp-eyed young sailor said. “But remember that you’ll want to have some perfume left when we get to that Engedi place, so you can trade it for balsam.”

“I’ll remember,” Sostratos promised. He hesitated; Aristeidas deserved better than getting brushed off like that. “It’s good you remembered, too,” Sostratos said. “If you can keep such things in mind, maybe you’ll make a trader yourself one day.”

“Me?” Aristeidas looked surprised. Then he shrugged. “Don’t know that I’d want to. I like going to sea the way I do.”

“All right. I didn’t say you had to make a trader. I said you might.” Sostratos fumbled with the lengths of rope lashing the pack donkey’s burden to its back. Bodashtart watched with growing amusement, which only made Sostratos fumble worse. He was about to pull out his knife and solve the problem the way Alexander had solved the Gordian knot when Moskhion stepped up and helped undo the knots. “Thanks,” Sostratos muttered, half grateful, half mortified.

One large leather sack held the jars of perfume, which lay nestled in wool and straw to keep them from smashing together and breaking. Sostratos pulled out a jar and held it up. Bodashtart frowned. “It isn’t very big, is it?”

“My lord, the perfume is… strong.” Sostratos wanted to say concentrated, but had no idea how to do so in Aramaic, or even if the word existed in that language. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to try to talk his way around holes in his vocabulary. He pulled the stopper out of the jar. “Here-smell for yourself.”

“Thank you.” Bodashtart held the jar under his nose, which was long and thin and hooked. In spite of himself, he smiled at the fragrance. “That is very sweet, yes.”

“And the odor stays,” Sostratos said. “Perfume is in olive oil, not water. Not wash off easily.”

“That is good. That is clever,” Bodashtart said. “I have heard you Hellenes are full of clever notions. Now I see it is so. Here, let me show you the beeswax I have.”

“Please,” Sostratos said. The Phoenician had no trouble with the ropes securing his ass’ load. Sostratos sighed. He’d thought he was used to the idea that most people were more graceful and dexterous than he. Every once in a while, though, it upped and bit him. This was one of those times.

“Here you are, my master.” Bodashtart held up a lump of wax bigger than Sostratos’ head. “Have you ever seen any so fine and white? White as the breasts of a virgin maid, is it not so?” He had to eke out his words with gestures; that wasn’t vocabulary Himilkon had taught Sostratos.

When the Rhodian understood, he chuckled. He didn’t think a Hellene would have tried to sell him wax with that particular sales pitch. From his point of view, Phoenicians were even worse than bad tragedians for overblown comparisons and figures of speech. Of course, they probably found most Hellenes bland and boring. Custom is king of all, Sostratos reminded himself once more. To Bodashtart, he said, “Let me see that wax, if you please.”

“I am your slave,” the Phoenician replied, and handed him the lump.

He sniffed it. It had the distinctive, slightly sweetish odor of good wax. Bodashtart hadn’t cheapened it with tallow, as some unscrupulous Hellenes were known to do. Sostratos took his belt knife from its sheath and plunged it deep into the mass of wax, again and again.

“I am no cheat,” Bodashtart said. “I have not hidden rocks or anything else in the middle of the beeswax.”

“So I see,” Sostratos agreed. “You have not. But I do not know you. I meet you on the road. I have to be sure.”

“Shall I open every jar of perfume I get from you, to make sure you have not given me one that is half empty?” Bodashtart asked.

“Yes, my master, if you like,” Sostratos answered. “Fair is fair. How can I say, do not make yourself safe? I cannot.”

“Fair is fair,” Bodashtart echoed. He bowed to Sostratos. “I had heard that all Hellenes were liars and cheats. I see this is not so. I am glad.”

Sostratos politely returned the bow. “You too seem honest. I want this beeswax. How many jars of perfume for it?” He had a good notion of the price he might get for about ten minai of beeswax back in Rhodes. Sculptors and jewelers and others who cast metal used as much of the stuff as they could lay their hands on, and paid well for it.

Bodashtart said, “Ten jars seems right.”

“Ten?” Sostratos tossed his head, then shook it back and forth in barbarian style. “You are no cheat, my master. You are a thief.”

“You think so, do you?” the Phoenician said. “Well, how many jars would you give me for my wax?”

“Three,” Sostratos answered.

“Three?” Bodashtart laughed scornfully. “And you call me a thief? You are trying to steal from me, and I will not have it.” He drew himself up to his full height, but was still more than a palm shorter than Sostratos.

“Maybe we have no deal,” Sostratos said. “If no deal, I am pleased to meet you even so.”

He waited to see what would happen next. If Bodashtart didn’t want to trade, he would take back the beeswax and go on his way toward Sidon. If he did, he would make another offer. The Phoenician bared his teeth in what was anything but a friendly grin. “You are a bandit, a robber, a brigand,” he said. “But to show that I am just, that I uphold fair dealing, I will take only nine jars of perfume for this splendid, precious wax.”

Now Bodashtart waited to see if the Rhodian would move. “I maybe give four jars,” Sostratos said reluctantly.

They shouted at each other again and accused each other of larcenous habits. Bodashtart sat down on a boulder by the side of the road. Sostratos sat down on another one a couple of cubits away. The sailors escorting him started throwing knucklebones for oboloi while he haggled. His mule and ass and Bodashtart’s donkey began to graze.

After a fair number of insults, Sostratos got up to six jars of perfume and Bodashtart got down to seven. There they stuck. Sostratos suspected six and a half would have made a decent bargain, but perfume, except to cheaters, didn’t come in half-jars. Bodashtart showed no inclination to accept only six, and Sostratos didn’t want to part with seven. The market for beeswax wasn’t enormous, and did fluctuate. If someone close to home came up with a lot of it, he’d lose money even paying only six jars of perfume for this lump.

He and Bodashtart glared at each other, both of them frustrated. Then the Phoenician said, “Look at the cloth I have to sell. If I give you a bolt of that-it’s about three cubits long-with the wax, will you give me seven jars of your perfume?”

“I know not,” Sostratos answered. “Let me see it.”

Bodashtart got up and opened a leather sack on the ass’ back. Sostratos would have carried fine cloth inside an oiled-leather sack, too, to make sure water didn’t damage it. Rain at this season of the year would have been unlikely in Hellas and, he judged, was even more so here, but Bodashtart’s donkey might have to ford several streams between here and Sidon.

When the Phoenician held out the length of cloth, all three of Sostratos’ escorts inhaled sharply. In Greek, Sostratos snapped, “Keep quiet, you gods-detested fools! Do you want to mess this up for me? Turn your backs. Pretend you’re looking out to the hills for bandits if you can’t keep your faces straight.”

To his relief, they obeyed. Bodashtart asked, “What did you say to them? And will the cloth do?”

“I said they should watch for bandits in the hills.” Sostratos feared he’d made a hash of indirect discourse; the Aramaic construction was quite different from the accusative and infinitive Greek used to show it. But Bodashtart nodded, so he must have made himself understood. He went on, “Let me have a better look, please.”

“As you say, my master, so shall it be,” Bodashtart replied, and brought it up to him.

The closer the Phoenician came, the more splendid the cloth appeared. Sostratos didn’t think he’d ever seen finer embroidery. The hunting scene might have come straight from real life: the frightened hares, the thorn bushes beneath which they crouched, the spotted hounds with red tongues lolling out, the men in the distance with their bows and javelins. The detail was astonishing. So were the colors, which were brighter and more vivid than those in use back in Hellas.

He’d managed to keep his men from exclaiming over the piece. Now he had to fight to keep from exclaiming over it himself. To him, it had to be worth more than the beeswax. Doing his best to keep his voice casual, he asked, “Where did it come from?”

“From the east, from the land between the rivers,” Bodashtart told him.

“Between which rivers?” Sostratos asked. But then the Greek equivalent of what the Phoenician had said formed in his mind. “Oh,” he said. “From Mesopotamia.” That, of course, meant nothing to Bodashtart.

Sostratos knew Mesopotamia lay too far east for him to go there himself. He would have to get this work from middlemen like the fellow with whom he was haggling.

“Will it do?” Bodashtart asked anxiously. To him, the embroidery seemed nothing out of the ordinary: just a small extra he could throw in to sweeten the price for perfume he really wanted.

“I… suppose so.” Sostratos had trouble sounding as reluctant as he knew he should. He wanted the embroidered cloth at least as much as the wax. Only later did he realize he might have asked for two cloths. Menedemos would have thought of that right away and would have done it, too. Menedemos automatically thought like a trader, where Sostratos had to force himself to do so.

Bodashtart, fortunately, noticed nothing amiss in Sostratos’ answer. He smiled. “We have a bargain, then-the cloth and the wax for seven jars of perfume.” He thrust out his hand.

Sostratos took it. “Yes, a bargain,” he agreed. “Seven jars of perfume for the wax and the cloth.” They exchanged the goods. The Phoenician put the perfume into a leather sack and led his ass on toward Sidon.

“You cheated him good and proper,” Teleutas said as Sostratos loaded the beeswax and the embroidered cloth onto his pack donkey.

“I think I got the better of him, yes,” Sostratos answered. “But if he makes a profit with the perfume, then no one cheated anybody. That’s the way I hope this trade works out.”

“Why?” the sailor asked. “Why not hope you diddled him good and proper?” He had a simple, selfish rapacity that wouldn’t have been out of place on a pirate.

Patiently, Sostratos answered, “If both sides profit, they’ll both want to deal again, and trade will go on. If one cheats the other, the side that gets cheated won’t want to deal with the other the second time around.”

Teleutas only shrugged. He didn’t care. He had no eye for the long term, only for quick gain. Some merchants were like that, too. They didn’t usually stay in business long, and they fouled the nest for everyone else. Sostratos was glad he had more sense than that. Even Menedemos had more sense than that. Sostratos hoped his cousin had more sense than that, anyhow.

He walked over to the mule. “Someone give me a leg-up,” he said. “We can get some more travel in before the sun goes down.”

Menedemos was beginning to feel at home in and around the barracks that housed Antigonos’ garrison in Sidon. He preferred working the barracks to going into the market square. Not enough people in Sidon spoke Greek to make selling in the agora worthwhile for him. Around the barracks, he was dealing with his own kind. He was even starting to understand bits of Macedonian. It wasn’t so big an accomplishment as Sostratos’ learning Aramaic, but it made Menedemos proud.

When he came up to the barracks one morning, a guard who’d seen him before said, “Haven’t you sold all your books yet?”

“I’ve still got a couple left,” Menedemos answered. “Want to buy one?”

The soldier tossed his head. “Not me. Only use I’d have for papyrus is wiping my arse, on account of I can’t read.”

“You wouldn’t want it for that. It’s scratchy,” Menedemos said, and the sentry laughed. Carefully keeping his voice casual, Menedemos asked, “What’s the name of your quartermaster here, eh?”

“What do you want to talk with Andronikos for?” the soldier replied. “With his shriveled-up little turd of a soul, he won’t want to buy your books.”

“Well, maybe you’re right and maybe you’re not,” Menedemos said easily. “I’d still like to find out for myself.”

“All right, Rhodian.” The sentry stood aside to let him into the building. “He’s got an office on the second floor. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Menedemos had to be content with that less than ringing endorsement. He paused inside the barracks to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Someone on the first floor was reading aloud the story of Akhilleus’ fight with Hektor. Menedemos dared hope it was from a copy of the relevant book of the Iliad he’d sold. He didn’t stop to find out, though. He made his way to the stairs and went up them.

“I’m looking for Andronikos’ office,” he told the first Hellene he saw when he came out onto the second floor. The man jerked his thumb to the right. “Thanks,” Menedemos said, and went down the hallway leading in that direction.

Four or five people were in front of him. He waited for perhaps half an hour as the quartermaster dealt with them one by one. They didn’t emerge from Andronikos’ office looking happy, though Andronikos seldom if ever bothered raising his voice.

In due course, it was Menedemos’ turn. By then, a couple of more Hellenes had joined the line behind him. When Andronikos called, “Next,” he hurried into the office, a broad, friendly smile on his face.

That smile survived his first glimpse of the quartermaster, but barely. Andronikos was in his late forties, with a permanent fussy frown on his pinched features. “Who are you?” he asked. “Haven’t seen you before. What do you want? Whatever it is, make it snappy. I haven’t got time to waste.”

“Hail, O best one. I’m Menedemos son of Philodemos, of Rhodes,” Menedemos said. “My bet is, you’re having more trouble keeping this garrison fed than you wish you did. Am I right or am I wrong?”

“You’re the Rhodian, eh? Hail.” Andronikos rewarded him with a dry grimace doubtless intended for a smile. “What do you care what the soldiers eat? You can’t sell them papyrus.”

“No, indeed, most noble, though I can sell you papyrus and first-quality Rhodian ink for record-keeping, if you’re so inclined.” Menedemos kept trying his best to be charming. Andronikos’ unwaveringly sour expression told him he was wasting his time. He continued, “The reason I’m asking is that I also have some top-notch olive oil aboard my akatos, oil fit for the highest-ranking officers in the garrison here. And I’ve got fine Pataran hams and a few smoked eels from Phaselis, too.”

“If the officers want fancy grub, they buy most of it themselves. As for you-you sailed an akatos here from Rhodes, and you’re carrying oil?” Surprise made the quartermaster sound amazingly lifelike. “You believe in taking chances, don’t you?”

Menedemos winced. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been telling himself the same thing-he had. But having someone he’d just met throw it in his face rankled. I’m going to hit Damonax over the head with a brick when we get home, he thought. Aloud, all he could say was, “It’s prime-quality oil, believe you me it is.”

“I can get plenty of ordinary oil for not very much,” Andronikos pointed out. “Why should I spend silver when I don’t have to? Tell me that, and quick, or else go away.”

“Because this isn’t ordinary oil,” Menedemos answered. “It’s the best oil from Rhodes, some of the best oil anywhere. You can give common soldiers ordinary oil to eat with their bread, and they’ll thank you for it. But what about your officers? Don’t they deserve better? Don’t they ask you for better?”

He hoped Antigonos’ officers asked the quartermaster for better. If they didn’t, he hadn’t the faintest idea what he’d do with all that oil. Andronikos muttered something under his breath. Menedemos couldn’t make out all of it; what he could hear was distinctly uncomplimentary to the officers in Antigonos’ service, mostly because they made him spend too much money.

At last, with the air of a man whose stomach pained him, Andronikos said, “Bring me an amphora of this wonderful oil. We’ll let a dozen soldiers dip bread in what they’re using now and in what you bring. If they can tell the difference, we’ll talk some more. If they can’t”-he jerked a thumb toward the doorway through which Menedemos had come- “many goodbyes to you.”

“What about the hams and the eels?”

“I already told you, I’m not interested. Maybe some of the officers will be-with their own silver, of course.”

“All right, most noble one. Fair enough. A chance to show how good my oil is is all I ask.” As usual, Menedemos spoke boldly. He did his best to hide the alarm he felt inside. Just how good was the oil Sostratos’ new brother-in-law had foisted on the Aphrodite ’? Good enough to let men tell the difference at a single taste? He didn’t know. He was about to find out. He did say, “Since you’ll be buying the oil mostly for officers, some of the men who try it should be officers, too.”

Andronikos considered, then dipped his head. “Agreed,” he said. “Go fetch your oil. I’ll get the men together, and some bread, and some of our local oil. And then, Rhodian, we shall see what we shall see.”

“So we shall,” Menedemos said, in what he hoped wasn’t too hollow a voice. He hurried back to the harbor and freed a jar of olive oil from the rope harness and dunnage of twigs and branches that kept it from fetching up against other amphorai and smashing.

“What’s going on, skipper?” Diokles asked. Menedemos explained. The keleustes whistled and said, “That’s a roll of the dice, isn’t it? Any which way, though, you can’t lug that jar back to the barracks yourself. How would it look, a captain doing stevedore’s work? Lapheides!”

“What is it?” said the sailor, who’d been paying no attention to the conversation between oarmaster and captain.

“Come get this amphora and carry it for the skipper,” Diokles answered.

Lapheides looked no more delighted at that prospect than anyone else would have, but he came up and grabbed the jar by its handles. “Where to?” he asked Menedemos.

“Barracks,” Menedemos told him. “Just follow me. You’ll do fine.” He hoped Lapheides would do fine. The sailor was a scrawny little man, and the full amphora probably weighed half as much as he did.

By the time they got back to the barracks, Lapheides was bathed in sweat, but he’d done a good game job of carrying the amphora. Menedemos gave him three oboloi as a reward for his hard work. “Thanks, skipper,” he said, and stuck the coins in his mouth.

One of the sentries, plainly forewarned, escorted Menedemos and Lapheides up to Andronikos’ office. In the next room, the quartermaster had set up a table that held a loaf of bread and half a dozen shallow bowls. He-or, more likely, a slave-had poured yellow oil into three of the bowls. The other three waited, empty.

Menedemos used his belt knife to chip away at the pitch around the clay stopped to the amphora he’d had Lapheides bring. Once the stopper was out, he poured Damonax’s oil into the empty bowls. It was greener than the oil Andronikos had got locally; Menedemos’ nostrils quivered at its odor-fresh, fruity, almost spicy. The Rhodian breathed a silent sigh of relief. By all the signs, this was good oil.

He nodded to Andronikos. “Bring in your men, O best one.”

“I intend to.” The quartermaster walked down the hall, returning a moment later with what looked like a mix of ordinary soldiers and officers. To them, he said, “Here, my friends, we have one oil in these bowls and another in these. Taste them both, and tell me which is better.”

“Please wait till you’ve all tasted both before speaking,” Menedemos added. “We don’t want one man’s words coloring another man’s thoughts.”

A couple of soldiers scratched their heads. But the men wasted no time in tearing the bread into chunks and dipping those chunks first into one olive oil, then into the other. They chewed solemnly and thoughtfully, looking from one to another to see when they’d all sampled both oils. By then, only a few crumbs of the loaf were left.

A scarred veteran who wore a fat gold hoop in his right ear pointed to one of the bowls Menedemos had filled. “That oil there is better,” he said. “Tastes like it’s squeezed from the very first olives of the season. When I was a lad, I spent plenty of autumns whacking the olive trees with sticks to bring down the fruit, I did. Reckon I know a first-rate early oil when I taste one.”

Another man dipped his head. “Hippokles is right, by Zeus. I haven’t tasted oil like that since I left my old man’s farm to go soldier. Tastes like it came out of the press yesterday, to the crows with me if it doesn’t.” He smacked his lips.

Then all the soldiers were talking at once, and all of them praising Menedemos’ oil. No, all of them but one. The stubborn holdout said, “I’m used to this stuff here”-he pointed to a bowl of the local oil. “This other oil tastes different.”

“That’s the idea, Diodoros,” Hippokles said. “The stuff we’ve been eating is tolerable, I guess, but if we can get this other oil, what we’ve been using ought to go into lamps instead, far as I’m concerned.” His comrades agreed, some of them more heatedly.

Diodoros tossed his head. “I don’t think so. I like this oil fine.”

Menedemos glanced toward Andronikos. The quartermaster didn’t seem to want to meet his eye. With his confidence restored, Menedemos didn’t let that stop him. He shooed the soldiers out of the testing room, saying, “Thank you, most wise ones. Thank you very much. I’m sure we can arrange for you to have some of this oil you like-and I’ve got smoked eels and hams to sell, too, back at my ship.” Once they were gone, he rounded on Andronikos. “Can’t we arrange that?”

“Depends on what you want for it,” the quartermaster said coolly. “If you think I’m going to throw silver at you like a young fool in love with his first hetaira, you’d better think again.”

“Do you suppose your men there will keep quiet about what they just did?” Menedemos asked. “Can you afford not to buy? Will you wake up with a scorpion in your bed if you don’t?”

Andronikos said, “I’ve squashed scorpions before. And I’ll squash you, too, if you try to cheat me. What do you want for your fancy Rhodian oil?

Just so you know, I’m paying seven sigloi the amphora for what I buy hereabouts.”

Menedemos reminded himself that one Sidonian siglos held about twice as much silver as two Rhodian drakhmai. Sostratos was bound to know the exact conversion factor. When Menedemos tried to do anything but two for one, he felt as if his brains would start leaking out of his ears.

“You’ve seen for yourself that what I sell is better than what you’re getting here,” he said. “And it comes from Rhodes.”

“So what?” Andronikos retorted. “You can bring it all that way by sea as cheaply as I can get oil from a day’s journey away by land.”

“That might be true on a round ship, best one, but I’m afraid it’s not on an akatos,” Menedemos said. “I have to pay my rowers, you know.”

“Which gives you an excuse to gouge me,” the quartermaster growled.

“No,” Menedemos said, thinking, Yes. He went on, “All in all, I think thirty-five drakhmai the amphora is reasonable.”

“I wish this chamber were on a higher floor, so I could throw you out the window and be sure I was rid of you once for all,” Andronikos said. “You whipworthy rogue, do you think I’d give you more than twenty?” He had no trouble shifting from sigloi back to drakhmai.

“I certainly do think so, because I’m not going to lose money by selling you my oil,” Menedemos answered. “What will your men-and especially your officers-say when they hear you’re too cheap to buy them anything good?”

“My superiors will say I’m not wasting Antigonos’ money,” Andronikos told him. “That’s my job-not wasting his money.” He scowled at Menedemos. “What will your principal say when you go back to Rhodes with that olive oil still in the belly of your ship? How will you pay your rowers on no money at all? “

Menedemos hoped his flinch didn’t show. Andronikos was a quartermaster, all right, and a ruthless specimen of the breed. Despite all of Menedemos’ persuasive powers, he refused to go higher than twenty-four drakhmai.

“I can’t make any money on that,” Menedemos said.

“Too bad. Here.” Andronikos gave him three sigloi. They showed the battlemented walls and towers of a city-presumably Sidon-on one side and a king slaying a lion on the other. “I’m not a thief. This more than pays for the oil you used. Now close up your jar there and go.”

“But-” Menedemos said.

The quartermaster tossed his head. “Go, I told you, and I meant it. You don’t want my best price, and I won’t go higher. Good day.”

Rage threatened to choke Menedemos. He wanted to choke Andronikos. He didn’t. Nor would he give the older man the satisfaction of seeing how badly he was wounded. He’d expected to sell the olive oil after his successful demonstration. The quartermaster’s shot had been all too shrewd. Taking it back to Rhodes was the last thing he wanted to do. But all he said was, “Seal up the jar, Lapheides. We’re leaving.”

He kept hoping Andronikos would ask him to stop or call him back as he started out of the chamber. Andronikos didn’t. He stood silent as a stone. Menedemos slammed the door on the way out, hard enough to rattle it on the pivoting pegs set into the floor and the lintel. That made him feel better for a moment, but it did nothing to bring back the business he’d hoped to have.

Lapheides was not a man he would have called particularly clever. The sailor did have the sense to wait till they’d left the barracks before asking, “What do we do now, skipper?”

It was a good question. It was, in fact, an excellent question. Menedemos wished he had an excellent answer for it, or even a good one. Being without either, he shrugged and said, “We go back to the Aphrodite and see what happens next. Whatever it is, I don’t see how it can be much worse than this.”

After a couple of heartbeats of thought, Lapheides dipped his head. “Neither do I,” he said. Menedemos would sooner have had consolation. Since he could find none himself, though, he didn’t see how he could blame Lapheides for also being unable to come up with any.

Sheep grazed and bleated around the little village nestled between hills and flatlands. Dogs barked at Sostratos and his sailors as they walked into the place. As often happened, some of the bigger, fiercer dogs made rushes at them. Teleutas scooped up an egg-sized stone and flung it. It caught the biggest, meanest dog right in the nose. The beast’s snarls turned to yips of pain. It turned tail and ran. The rest of the dogs suddenly seemed to have second thoughts.

“Euge!” Sostratos said. “Now we won’t have to beat them back with our spearshaft and swords. I hope we won’t, anyhow. People don’t like it when they see us laying into their animals.”

“They don’t care when they see the gods-detested dogs trying to bite us, though,” Teleutas said. “They think that’s funny. Pestilence take ‘em, far as I’m concerned.”

Aside from the dogs-some of which still barked and growled from a safe distance, which argued they’d had more than a few rocks thrown at them before-the hamlet was quiet. No sooner had that crossed Sostratos’ mind than he tossed his head. It didn’t just seem quiet. It seemed more nearly dead.

But a dead village wouldn’t have had flocks grazing around it. Its buildings wouldn’t have been in such good repair. Smoke wouldn’t have risen from the vent holes in several roofs.

On the other hand, when strangers came to most villages, the locals came tumbling out of their houses to stare and point and exclaim. Up till now, that had seemed as much a truth in these parts as it would have back in Hellas. Not here. Everything stayed quiet except for the dogs.

Just before Sostratos and the sailors got to the center of the hamlet, an old man who wore a head scarf in place of a hat came out of one of the bigger houses and looked them over. “May the gods bless you and keep you, my master,” Sostratos said in his best Aramaic. “Please tell us the name of this place.”

The old man stared back without a word for an unnervingly long time. Then he said, “Stranger, we do not speak of the gods here. We speak of the one god, the true god, the god of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. This village is called Hadid.”

Excitement tingled through Sostratos. “The one god, you say?” he asked, and the old man nodded. Sostratos went on, “Then I have come to the land of Ioudaia?”

“Yes, this is the land of Ioudaia,” the old man said. “Who are you, stranger, that you need to ask such a thing?”

Bowing, Sostratos answered, “Peace be unto you, my master. I am Sostratos son of Lysistratos, of Rhodes. I have come to trade in this land.”

“And to you also peace. Sostratos son of Lysistratos.” The local tasted the unfamiliar syllables. After another long pause, he said, “You would be one of those Ionians, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Sostratos said, resigned to being an Ionian in these parts despite his Doric roots. “What is your name, my master, if your slave may ask?”

“I am Ezer son of Shobal,” the old man replied.

“Is all well here?” Sostratos asked. “No pestilence, nothing like that?”

Ezer had formidable gray eyebrows and a beaky nose. When he frowned, he looked like a bird of prey. “No, there is no pestilence. May the one god forbid it. Why do you ask?”

“Everything is very quiet here.” Sostratos waved his arms to help show what he meant. “No one works.”

“Works?” Ezer son of Shobal frowned again, even more fiercely than before. He shook his head. “Of course no one works today. Today is the sabbath.”

“Your slave prays pardon, but he does not know that word,” Sostratos said.

“You did not learn this tongue from a man of Ioudaia, then,” Ezer said.

Once more, Sostratos had to remember to nod instead of dipping his head. “No, I did not. I learned from a Phoenician. Truly you are very wise.” Yes, flattery seemed built into Aramaic.

“A Phoenician? I might have known.” By the way Ezer said it, he had as much scorn for Phoenicians as Himilkon had for Ioudaioi. “The one god commands us to rest one day in seven. That is the sabbath. Today is the seventh day, and so… we rest.”

“I see.” What Sostratos saw was why these Ioudaioi had never amounted to anything in the wider world, and why they never would. If they wasted one day in seven, how could they keep up with their neighbors? He marveled that they hadn’t already been altogether swept away. “Where can my men and I buy food?” he asked. “We have come a long way today. We too are tired.”

Ezer son of Shobal shook his head again. “You do not see, Ionian. Sostratos.” He carefully sounded out the name. “I told you, this is the sabbath. The one god decrees we may not work on this day. Selling food is work. Until the sun sets, we may not do it. I am sorry.” He sounded not the least bit sorry. He sounded proud.

Himilkon had warned that the Ioudaioi had set ideas about their religion. Sostratos saw he’d known what he was talking about. “Will someone draw water from the well for us?” he asked. “You have a well, I hope?”

“We have a well. No one will draw water for you, though, not till after sunset. That is also work.”

“May we draw water ourselves?”

Now Ezer nodded. “Yes, you may do that. You are no part of us.”

No, and I wouldn’t want to be any part of you, either, Sostratos thought. He wondered how he would live in a land where religious law so closely hemmed in everything these people did. His first thought was that he would simply go mad.

But then he wondered about that. If he’d been raised from childhood to find that law right and proper and necessary, wouldn’t he come to believe it was? Even in Hellas, thoughtless people blindly believed in the gods. Here in Ioudaia, it seemed, everyone believed in their strange, invisible deity. If I’d been born a loudaian, I suppose I would, too.

The more Sostratos thought about that, the more it frightened him. He bowed to Ezer. “Thank you for your kindness, my master.”

“You are welcome,” the old man replied. “You cannot help it that you are not one of us, and so cannot know and obey the sacred laws of the one god.”

He means that, Sostratos realized in astonishment. Ezer son of Shobal was as proud to belong to his narrow little backwoods tribe as Sostratos was to be a Hellene. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. I wish I could show him how ignorant he is. Sostratos had had that same urge with Hellenes, too. With his own folk, he could act on it. Sometimes he managed to convince them of the error of their ways. More often, though, even Hellenes chose to cling to their own ignorance rather than accepting someone else’s wisdom.

“What are you and this big-nosed old geezer going on about?” Teleutas asked.

Ezer didn’t change expression. No, of course he doesn’t speak Greek, Sostratos told himself. All the same… “You want to be careful how you talk about people here. You never can tell when one of them may understand some of our tongue.”

“All right. All right.” Teleutas dipped his head with obvious impatience. “But what is going on?”

“We can’t buy any food till after sundown,” Sostratos answered. “They have a day of rest every seventh day, and they take it seriously. We can get water from the well, though, as long as we do it ourselves.”

“A day of rest? That’s pretty stupid,” Teleutas said, which was exactly Sostratos’ opinion. The sailor went on, “What happens if they’re in a war and they have to fight a battle on this special day of theirs? Do they let the enemy kill them because they’re not supposed to fight back?”

“I don’t know.” That intrigued Sostratos, so he turned it into Aramaic, as best he could, for Ezer.

“Yes, we would die,” the Ioudaian answered. “Better to die than to break the law of the one god.”

Sostratos didn’t try to argue with him. Ezer sounded as passionate as a man who was busy wasting his inheritance on a hetaira and didn’t care if he ruined himself on her behalf. A man who wasted his inheritance on a hetaira at least had the pleasure of her embraces to recall. What did a man who wasted his life on devotion to a foolish god have left? Nothing Sostratos could see. Such mad devotion might even cost a worshiper life itself.

He didn’t care to point that out to Ezer son of Shobal. The Ioudaian had made it plain he could see it for himself. He’d also made it plain he was willing to take the consequences. How could a man’s devotion to a god be greater than his devotion to life itself? Sostratos shrugged. No, it made no rational sense.

The Rhodian did find a rational question to ask: “My master, where is the well? We are hot and thirsty.”

“Go past this house here”-Ezer pointed-”and you will see it.”

“Thank you.” Sostratos bowed. Ezer returned the gesture. However mad he might be in matters pertaining to his god, he was polite enough when dealing man to man. Sostratos went back to Greek to tell the sailors with him where the well was.

“I’d sooner have wine,” Teleutas said.

That wasn’t quite pure complaint, or it might not have been pure complaint, anyhow. Aristeidas dipped his head, saying, “So would I. Drinking water in foreign parts can give you a flux of the bowels.”

He was right, of course, but Sostratos said, “Sometimes it can’t be helped. We are in foreign parts, and we have to drink water by itself now and again. The country isn’t swampy or marshy. That makes the water likelier to be good.”

“I don’t care how good it is. I don’t care if it’s water from the Khoaspes, the river the Persian kings used to drink from,” Teleutas said. “I’d still sooner have wine.” He hadn’t cared about his health, then-only about his palate and the way wine would make him feel. Why am I not surprised? Sostratos thought.

As Hellenes often did, the Ioudaioi had circled the well with rocks to the height of a cubit or so, to keep animals and children from falling in. They’d also put a wooden cover over the top of the well. When the sailors took it off, they found a stout branch lying across the opening, with a rope attached to it.

“Let’s haul up the pail,” Sostratos said.

The men got to work, taking turns at it. Teleutas groaned and grumbled as he hauled on the line; he might almost have been sentenced to torture. From everything Sostratos had seen, Teleutas reckoned work the equivalent of torture. Then again, hauling up a large, full bucket wasn’t easy. Sostratos wondered if there were some easier way to raise a bucket of water than yanking it up one pull at a time. If so, it didn’t occur to him.

“Here we are,” Aristeidas said at last. Moskhion reached out and grabbed the dripping wooden pail. He raised it to his lips; took a long, blissful pull; and then poured some over his head. Sostratos said not a word when Teleutas and Aristeidas took their turns before passing him the pail. By bringing it up from the bottom of the deep well, they’d earned the right.

“Water seems good enough,” Aristeidas said. “It’s nice and cool, and it tastes sweet. I hope it’s all right.”

“It should be.” Sostratos drank. “Ahh!” As his men had, he poured water over his head, too. “Ahh!” he said again. It felt wonderful running down his face and dripping from his nose and the end of his beard.

Every now and then, he spied a face staring from the windows of the stone and mud-brick houses. No one but Ezer son of Shobal came out, though. In fact, Sostratos waved the first time he saw one of those curious faces. All that did was make it disappear in a hurry.

Aristeidas noticed the same thing. “These people are funny,” he said. “If we came into a village full of Hellenes, they’d be all over us. They’d want to know who we were and where we were from and where we were going next and what news we’d heard lately. The rich ones would want to trade with us, and the poor ones would want to beg from us. They wouldn’t just leave us alone.”

“I should say not,” Teleutas agreed. “They’d try to steal anything we hadn’t nailed down, too, and they’d try to pry up the nails.”

Sostratos raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t that Teleutas was wrong. The sailor was, without a doubt, right-Hellenes would act like that. But the notion of thievery seemed to occur to him very quickly. Not for the first time, Sostratos wondered what that meant.

He could have pushed on from Hadid, but he did want to buy food, and Ezer had made it very plain he couldn’t do that till after sunset. He and the sailors rested by the well. After a while, they refilled the bucket and hauled it up again. They drank deep and poured the rest over themselves.

As he might have done in Hellas, Teleutas started to pull off his tunic and go naked. Sostratos held up a hand. “I already told you once, don’t do that.”

“It’d be cooler,” Teleutas said.

“People here don’t like showing off their bodies.”

“So what?”

“So what? I’ll tell you so what, O marvelous one.” Sostratos waved a hand. “There probably aren’t any other Hellenes closer to this place than a day’s journey. If we get people here up in arms against us, what can we do? If they start throwing rocks, say, what can we do? I don’t think we can do anything. Do you?”

“No, I guess not,” Teleutas said sulkily. He left the chiton on.

After the sun went down, the locals emerged from their houses. Sostratos bought wine and cheese and olives and bread and oil (he tried not to think about all the oil Damonax had made him carry on the Aphrodite, and he hoped Menedemos was having some luck getting rid of it). Some people did ask questions about who he was, where he was from, and what he was doing in Ioudaia. He answered as best he could in his halting Aramaic. As twilight deepened, mosquitoes began to whine through the air. He slapped a couple of times, but still got bitten.

A few of his questioners were women. Though they robed themselves from head to foot like the local men, they didn’t wear veils, as respectable Hellenes would have. Sostratos had noticed that back in Sidon, too. To him, seeing a woman’s naked face in public came close to being as indecent as seeing his-or Teleutas’-naked body would have been for the Ioudaioi.

He wished he could ask them more about their customs and beliefs. It wasn’t so much that his Aramaic wasn’t up to the job. But, as he hadn’t wanted Teleutas to offend them, he didn’t want to do so himself. He sighed and wondered how long it would be till his curiosity got the better of his common sense.