The Sacred Land

7

“How you is?” the innkeeper asked when Menedemos came out of his room one morning. His name, the Rhodian had learned, was Sedek-yathon.

“Good,” Menedemos answered in Greek. Then he said the same thing in Aramaic, of which he’d picked up a few words.

Sedek-yathon grunted. His wife, who was called Emashtart, smiled at Menedemos. “How clevers you am,” she said in her dreadful Greek. She rattled off a couple of sentences of Aramaic much too fast for him to follow.

“What?” Menedemos said.

Emashtart tried to explain it in Greek, but she lacked the vocabulary. She turned to her husband. Sedek-yathon was busy putting a new leg on a stool. He showed no interest in translating. His Greek was bad, too; odds were he couldn’t have done it if he’d wanted to. When he refused even to try, Emashtart started screeching at him.

“Hail,” Menedemos said, and left the inn in a hurry. He spent as little time there as he could. The innkeeper’s wife kept making unsubtle advances at him. His oath to Sostratos had nothing to do with anything. He didn’t want the woman, whom he found repulsive, and he didn’t want Sedek-yathon thinking he did want her and trying to kill him as a result.

Though the sun hadn’t been up long, the day promised brutal heat. The breeze came, not from the Inner Sea, but from the hills east of Sidon. When it swept down off them, Menedemos had learned, the heat got worse than anything he’d ever known in Hellas.

He stopped at a baker’s and bought a small loaf of bread. With a cup of wine from the first fellow he saw carrying a jug, it made a good enough breakfast. The cup, fortunately, was small; unlike Hellenes, Phoenicians didn’t believe in watering their wine and always drank it neat. A big mug of unmixed wine first thing in the morning would have set Menedemos’ head spinning.

Sidon was already bustling as he made his way through its narrow, winding streets toward the harbor and the Aphrodite . On days like this, the locals often tried to pack as much business as they could into the early morning and the late afternoon. When the heat was at its worst, they would close their shops and sleep, or at least rest, for a couple of hours. Menedemos wasn’t used to doing that, but he couldn’t deny it made a certain amount of sense.

Diokles waved to him when he came up the wharf. “Hail,” the oarmaster called. “How are you?”

“Glad to be here,” Menedemos answered. “Yourself?”

“I’m fine,” Diokles said. “Polykharmos came back to the ship last night shy a front tooth, though. Tavern brawl.” He shrugged. “Nobody pulled a knife, so it wasn’t a bad one. He was pretty drunk, but he kept going on about what he did to the other fellow.”

“Oh?” Menedemos raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t anybody ever tell him he shouldn’t lead with his face?”

The keleustes chuckled. “I guess not. Hasn’t been too bad here-I have to say that. Nobody’s been stabbed; nobody’s been badly hurt any other way. As often as not, you lose a man or two on a trading run.”

“I know.” Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic to turn aside the evil omen. Diokles did the same. “Gods prevent it,” Menedemos added.

“Here’s hoping,” Diokles agreed. “What are you going to do about Damonax’s olive oil and the rest of the food now, skipper?”

“To the crows with me if I know.” Menedemos melodramatically threw his hands in the air. “I thought I had a bargain with that whipworthy rogue of an Andronikos, but the abandoned catamite wouldn’t give me a decent price.”

“Quartermasters are cheese-parers,” Diokles said. “They always have been, and I expect they always will be. They don’t care if they serve their soldiers slop. If giving the men something better means costing them an extra obolos, they won’t do it. They figure you can fight as well on stale, moldy bread as on fresh-maybe better, because bad food makes you mean.”

“Every word you say is true, but there’s more to it than that,” Menedemos answered. “A lot of the time, every obolos a quartermaster doesn’t spend on his soldiers is an obolos he gets to keep for himself.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed.” The oarmaster dipped his head. “Still, though, if I were in Antigonos’ army, I’d be careful about playing games like that. If old One-Eye caught me at ‘em, I’d end up on a cross like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“May Antigonos catch Andronikos, then. May he-” Menedemos broke off. Someone was coming up the pier toward the Aphrodite : a Hellene, surely, for no Phoenician would have worn a tunic that bared his arms to the shoulders and his legs to above the knee. Menedemos raised his voice: “Hail, friend! Do something for you?”

“You’re the fellow who brought that good olive oil to the barracks the other day, aren’t you?” the newcomer said. Before the Rhodian could answer, the man dipped his head and answered his own question: “Yes, of course you are.”

“That’s right.” Menedemos didn’t bother hiding his bitterness. “Your polluted quartermaster doesn’t want anything to do with it, though.”

“Andronikos can take it up the arse like a slave in a boy brothel for all of me,” the Hellene replied. “I know what he gives us, and I was one of the people who tasted what you’ve got. He may not want to buy any, but I do. How much do you want for a jar?”

“Thirty-five drakhmai,” Menedemos answered, as he had at the beginning of the failed dicker with Andronikos.

He waited to see what counteroffer the Hellene would make. Hippokles, that’s what his name is, Menedemos remembered. He’d liked the oil a lot when he tried it. And now he didn’t make any counteroffer. He just dipped his head and said, “I’ll take two amphorai, then. That’d be thirty-five sigloi, near enough, right?”

“Right,” Menedemos said, doing his best to hide his surprise.

“Good.” Hippokles turned on his heel. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back. I’ve got to get the money and a couple of slaves to haul the jars.” Away he went.

“Well, well,” Menedemos said. “That’s better than nothing.” He laughed. “Of course, I would’ve sold Andronikos a lot more than two jars.”

Less than an hour later, Hippokles returned with two scrawny men in tow. He gave Menedemos a jingling handful of Sidonian coins. “Here you are, pal. Now I’ll put these lazy wretches to work.”

Menedemos counted the sigloi. Hippokles hadn’t tried to cheat him. Some of the coins bore inscriptions in the angular Aramaic script. The letters meant nothing to Menedemos. That Hippokles had plenty of silver did. “Would you like to buy some smoked eels from Phaselis, too?” he asked. “Two sigloi each.”

That was four times what Sostratos had paid for them in the Lykian town. And Hippokles, after tasting a tiny sample, dipped his head and bought three. He took care of them himself. The slaves, grunting, picked up the jars of oil and carried them back down the quay after him into Sidon.

“Not bad,” Diokles said.

“No. I got premium prices there, no doubt about it.” Menedemos ducked under the poop deck and stowed his fat handful of silver in an oiled-leather sack. He’d just made about a day’s wages for the crew of the merchant galley. Of course, not all of it was profit; the olive oil and eels hadn’t come on board for nothing. Even so, it was the best he’d done since putting in at Sidon.

And Hippokles turned out not to be the only soldier who, after trying Damonax’s olive oil, wanted some for himself. The mercenary hadn’t been gone long before another officer came up the pier to the Aphrodite . This fellow didn’t need to go back and fetch a slave to take away his purchase; he’d brought a man along. Like Hippokles, he had only Sidonian coins on him. “I’ve been here three years, ever since we took this place back from Ptolemaios,” he told Menedemos. “Whatever drakhmai I had once upon a time are long since spent.”

“Don’t you worry, best one,” Menedemos said smoothly. “I’ll figure out how many sigloi make thirty-five drakhmai, never fear.” Sostratos would have done it in his head. Menedemos had to flick beads on a counting board. With the board, he got the answer about as quickly as his cousin would have: “Seventeen and a half.”

“Sounds about right.” The other Hellene counted out sigloi one by one and gave them to Menedemos. “… sixteen… seventeen.” He handed the Rhodian a smaller coin. “And here’s the half-siglos to make it square.”

“Thanks very much,” Menedemos said. “I’ve got hams from Patara, too, if you’d be interested in one of those…”

“Let me try a bit,” the officer said. Menedemos did. The officer grinned. “Oh, by the gods, yes-that pig died happy.” He made Menedemos happy, too, with the price he paid. Turning to his slave, the fellow added, “Come on, Syros. Sling that ham over your shoulder-may I scrounge a bit of rope from you, Rhodian?-grab that amphora, and get moving.”

“Yes, boss,” the slave replied in halting, Aramaic-accented Greek. Sweat poured from him as he followed his master off the ship. He was shorter and much skinnier than the Hellene, but it would have gone against his master’s dignity to stoop to manual labor himself when he had a slave to do it for him.

Menedemos and Diokles watched the two men go. “How about that?” the oarmaster said. “If one soldier had come here, I’d’ve said it was a nice happenstance and forgotten about it the next day. But if two do it of a morning…”

“Yes.” Menedemos dipped his head. He looked down at his new handful of silver. “I wonder how many more we’ll get.” Something else occurred to him. “And I wonder if the other oil Andronikos had in that room was some of the best he serves out, not the everyday stuff. Wouldn’t surprise me. Even if it was, it wasn’t good enough.”

“He’s the only one who knows for sure,” Diokles answered. “One thing, though: at least now we know the olive oil we’ve got really is as good as we’ve been saying.”

“Yes. The same thing occurred to me.” Menedemos sighed. “All the trouble we’ve had getting rid of it, I was worrying about that myself. Harder to make sure you get top quality from in-laws, but you’d better. Otherwise, who’s going to trust you when you come back to a place in a year or two?”

Diokles laughed. “It might not matter here, skipper. If we come back to this place in a couple of years, we’re liable to find Ptolemaios’ garrison here, not Antigonos’.”

“Well, I can’t tell you you’re wrong, and I won’t even try,” Menedemos answered. “Or, of course, we might find that Ptolemaios’ men had been here, and Antigonos’ had run them out again.”

“That, too,” the oarmaster agreed. “It’s like the pankration with those two-they’ll keep pounding away till one of them can’t pound any more.”

“And with Lysimakhos, and with Kassandros,” Menedemos added. “And if one of them does go down, somebody else will probably rise up to take his place-that Seleukos, maybe, out in the east. Somebody. I don’t think anyone can fill Alexander ’s shoes, but nobody’s willing to leave them empty, either.”

“The marshals don’t care what they step on while they’re fighting,” Diokles said. “They’ll step on Rhodes if they get the chance.”

“Don’t I know it,” Menedemos said. “We really are a free and autonomous polis, and even Ptolemaios, who’s the best friend we’ve got among the Macedonians, even he thinks it’s funny we want to stay that way. He’ll humor us-we’re the middlemen for his grain trade, after all- but he thinks it’s funny. I saw that in Kos last year.”

Instead of taking the political talk further, Diokles pointed down to the base of the quay. “Furies take me if those don’t look like more soldiers looking around for the Aphrodite .”

“You’re right,” Menedemos murmured. “Maybe that session at the barracks is going to pay off pretty well after all, even if that abandoned rascal of an Andronikos didn’t do any buying himself.”

Up the pier came the Hellenes. They remained tentative till Menedemos waved and called to them. Then they sped up. One of them said, “You’re the trader with the good oil?”

“That’s me, sure enough.” Menedemos looked from one man to the next. “How do you know about it? I’ve got a good memory for faces, and I don’t think any of you were at the quartermaster’s taste test.”

“No, but we heard about it, and we know what he feeds us,” replied the soldier who’d spoken before. He made a face to show what he thought of it. “We figured we’d club together, buy an amphora of the good stuff, and share it amongst us. Isn’t that right, boys?” The other mercenaries dipped their heads to show it was.

“Fine with me,” Menedemos said. Then he told them what a jar cost.

“Papai!” their spokesman said as the others flinched in dismay. “Can’t you give us a break on that? It’s pretty steep for ordinary mortals.”

“I’ve already sold three jars for that price this morning,” Menedemos answered. “If I sell it to you for less, your pals will come by and say, ‘Oh, you gave it to good old What’s-his-name for twenty drakhmai, so let us have it for twenty, too.’ There goes my profit-you see what I mean?” He spread his hands to show he was sorry, but he held firm.

The soldiers put their heads together. Menedemos ostentatiously didn’t listen to their low-voiced argument. At last, they separated again. The fellow who did the talking for them said, “All right, thirty-five drakhmai it is.

This is supposed to be good stuff, so we’ll pay for it this once.”

“And I do thank you very much, most noble ones,” Menedemos said. “Come aboard, then, and choose the amphora you want.” They were as near identical as one ear of barley to another, but he’d seen before that giving-or rather, seeming to give-customers such choices made them happier. As they picked their jar, he added, “Would you like to buy some ham or some smoked eels?”

Antigonos’ men put their heads together again and then spent some more money on eels. Menedemos ended up happy when they paid him, too. Some of the coins they used were Sidonian sigloi, which he accepted as equaling two Rhodian drakhmai. But others were drakhmai and didrakhms and tetradrakhms from all over Hellas. Athenian owls and turtles from Aigina were considerably heavier than Rhodian coins. To the soldiers, one drakhma was as good as another. Menedemos knew better- and also knew better than to say anything about the extra profit he was making.

Before long, another party of soldiers came up the pier toward the Aphrodite . “You may end up thanking that quartermaster for turning you down, not cursing him,” Diokles remarked.

Menedemos thought about how very many amphorai of olive oil remained aboard the akatos. But then he thought about how large Antigonos’ garrison in Sidon was. If Damonax’s oil became a fad… “By the dog of Egypt,” he said slowly, “so I may.”

As Sostratos traveled father into Ioudaia, he began to see why Hellenes knew so little about the land and its folk. The people stuck together, clinging to their own kind and having as little to do with outsiders as they could. And the land worked with them. It was broken and hilly and hot and poor. As far as he could see, the Ioudaioi were welcome to it. Who in his right mind would want to take it away from them?

He knew he couldn’t have been so very many stadia from the Inner Sea. There it lay, off to the west, the broad highway that could swiftly waft him back to Rhodes. But the Ioudaioi turned their backs on it. They had their flocks of sheep and cattle, their olive trees and their vineyards, and they seemed content with those-and with their strange god, whose face no one ever saw.

In every village and town through which he passed, Sostratos had looked for a temple to this mysterious god. He never found one. At last, he’d asked a Ioudaian who’d proved friendly enough over a couple of cups of wine in a tavern. The fellow had shaken his head and looked amused at the question: amused and pitying, as if Sostratos couldn’t be expected to know any better.

“Our god has only one temple, where the priests offer prayer and sacrifice,” he’d said. “That is in Jerusalem, our great city.”

Everywhere in Ioudaia, people spoke of Jerusalem as Hellenes spoke of Athens or Alexandria. Every other town, they said, was as nothing beside it. And they spoke of their temple as Athenians might have spoken of the Parthenon-as the most perfect and beautiful building in the world.

They were only barbarians, and provincial barbarians at that, so Sostratos did discount a fair amount of what he heard. Even so, he wasn’t prepared for his first sight of Jerusalem, which he got from a rocky ridge a couple of hours’ travel north and west of the city.

He pointed ahead. “That’s it,” he said. “That has to be it. But is that all there is? That’s what all the Ioudaioi we’ve met were swooning over?”

“Doesn’t look like so very much, does it?” Aristeidas said.

“Now that you mention it, no,” Sostratos answered. The allegedly great city of the Ioudaioi straggled along a rise between a sizable valley to the east and a smaller, narrower ravine to the west. It might have been half a dozen stadia long; it was nowhere near half a dozen stadia wide. Some more homes-suburbs, though they hardly deserved the name-dotted the rise west of the narrow ravine. Smoke hung above everything: the unfailing mark of human habitation. Giving the place the benefit of the doubt, Sostratos said, “There are poleis that are smaller.”

“I can’t think of any that’re uglier,” Teleutas said.

Sostratos didn’t find that quite fair. The walls around Jerusalem and the bigger buildings he could see were built from the local stone, which had a golden color his eye found pleasing. He couldn’t make out any details, not at this range, and doubted even lynx-eyed Aristeidas would be able to. “One of those big buildings will probably be the temple the Ioudaioi talk about.”

“I don’t see anything that looks like a proper temple, with columns and all,” Aristeidas said, leaning forward to peer at the distant city on the hill.

“They’re barbarians, and peculiar barbarians at that,” Moskhion said. “Who knows if their temples look the way temples are supposed to?”

“And they worship this silly god nobody can see,” Teleutas added slyly. “Maybe they’ve got a temple nobody can see, too.”

“It could be,” Sostratos said. “The Kelts worship their gods in groves of trees, I’ve heard.” He looked around. “I admit there are bound to be more trees in the land of the Kelts than there are here.” After a little more thought, he went on, “I take it back. I do think one of those buildings is the temple, for the Ioudaioi wouldn’t have talked about the place the way they have if it were only a sacred grove-or, for that matter, if it weren’t there at all.”

He stopped, pleased by his logic. But when he looked from one of his escorts to another to find out if it had impressed them, too, he caught Teleutas muttering to Aristeidas: “By the dog, I can’t even make a joke without getting a lecture back.”

Sostratos’ ears burned. Well, you wanted to find out what they thought, he told himself. Now you know. He hadn’t intended to lecture. He’d just been making a point. Or so he’d thought, anyhow. He sighed. I have to watch that. I really do need to be careful. If I’m not, I’ll end up boring people. That’s the last thing a merchant can afford to do, because-

He broke off. He did some muttering of his own, some fairly pungent muttering. He’d started lecturing himself about not lecturing. “Let’s go,” he said aloud. That was brief enough and enough to the point that not even Teleutas could try to improve it.

The road to Jerusalem meandered through olive trees and fields that would have been richer had they not gone uphill at such a steep slope. The closer the Hellenes got to the city, the more impressive its fortifications looked. The walls cunningly took advantage of the ground. The northern part of the place had especially strong works. Even Teleutas said, “I wouldn’t want to try storming this place.”

“No, indeed.” Aristeidas dipped his head. “You’d have to try to starve it out. Otherwise, you could throw away an army in nothing flat.”

On approaching the western gate, Sostratos found some of the guards to be Hellenes and others-who carried spears and shields and wore helmets, but had no body armor-swarthy, hook-nosed Ioudaioi. One of the Hellenes stared at the short chitons Sostratos and the sailors from the Aphrodite had on. He nudged his comrades. They all pointed toward the newcomers. The man who’d first noticed them called out, “Hellemzete?”

“Malista.” Sostratos dipped his head. “Of course we speak Greek.”

“ Poseidon ’s prick, man, what are you castaways doing in this gods-forsaken place?” the gate guard asked him. “We have to be here, to keep Moneybags in Egypt from taking this town away from Antigonos again, but why would anybody in his right mind come here if he didn’t need to?”

“We’re here to trade,” Sostratos said. “We’re bound for Engedi, to buy balsam there, but we’ll do business along the way, too.”

“Not much business to do in these parts,” another guard said, which did nothing to gladden Sostratos’ heart. But then he went on, “What there is of it, though, you’ll do in Jerusalem.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Sostratos said. He gave the Ioudaioi at the gate a polite nod, aping barbarous manners as best he could, and switched to Aramaic: “Peace be unto you, my masters.”

The Ioudaioi exclaimed in surprise. So did the Hellenes. “Listen to him make bar-bar noises!” one of them said. “He can talk with these polluted Ioudaian maniacs. He doesn’t have to point and do dumb show and hope you can find one of them who’s picked up a few words of Greek.”

“Where’d you learn this language, pal?” another Hellene asked.

“From a Phoenician merchant on Rhodes,” Sostratos answered. “I don’t speak all that much of it.”

“Better than I can do, and I’ve been out here a couple of years,” the guard told him. “I can ask for a woman-they don’t like you to ask for a boy, on account of they say their god doesn’t go in for that-and for wine and bread, and I can say, ‘Hold still! Hands up!’ And that’s about it.”

In Aramaic, Sostratos asked the Ioudaioi if they spoke Greek. They all shook their heads. By the way a couple of them had looked back and forth when he and the guard were talking, he suspected they understood more than they let on. “Why do they share this duty with you?” he asked the Hellenes.

“Because they shared it with the Persians,” one of them answered.

“That’s the deal we’ve got here-whatever the Ioudaioi had under the Persians, they’ve still got under us. They say Alexander went through here and set that up himself.”

“Bunch of drivel,” another Hellene said. “Like Alexander would come to the middle of nowhere while he was on his way to Egypt. Fat chance! But we smile and play along. It saves trouble, you know what I mean? As long as we don’t mess with their god, everything’s fine. You know about that? You can get into a lot of trouble awful quick if you’re not careful to be nice to their god.”

“Oh, yes,” Sostratos said. “I do know about that. My men and I did well enough coming down here from Sidon, anyhow.”

“All right, then,” the guard said. He and his friends stood aside. “Welcome to Jerusalem.”

Such as it is, Sostratos thought. But he kept that thought to himself, not knowing whether the Ioudaioi with the Hellenes had picked up any Greek. He was perfectly willing to insult Ioudaia in general and Jerusalem in particular, but he didn’t care to do it where the locals might understand. That was bad business.

What he did say was, “Thank you.” After a moment, he added, “Where is the market square in the city, and can you recommend an inn not too far from it?”

“It’s not far from the temple, in the north end of town,” the guard answered. “You know about the temple?”

“Some.” Sostratos dipped his head. “We were trying to spot it as we came up to the town. I’d like to, and to have a look around the place when I get the chance.”

“You can do that.” The guard who’d spoken tossed his head. “I take it back-you can do some of that. But only the outer parts are open to people who aren’t Ioudaioi. Whatever you do, don’t try going where you’re not supposed to. For one thing, the barbarians are liable to murder you. For another, if they don’t, we’re liable to. Poking your nose in where it doesn’t belong is bound to start a riot, and the Ioudaioi get excited enough as things are.”

“All right.” Sostratos hid his disappointment; he’d looked forward to poking his nose in wherever he could. “What about the inn?” he asked again.

“Ask these fellows.” The Hellene pointed to the Ioudaian guards. “You can make the funny noises they do, and they know this miserable place better than we do.”

“Good idea.” Sostratos switched to Aramaic: “My masters, can you tell me where to find an inn near the market square? “

That almost touched off a riot by itself. Every Ioudaian seemed to have a cousin or a brother-in-law who ran an inn. Each of them praised his relative’s establishment and scorned all the others. Their snarling gutturals got louder every minute. They began to shake fists and brandish weapons.

Then one of them said, “My brother-in-law already has an Ionian staying at his inn.”

“What is your brother-in-law’s name? How can I find his inn?” Sostratos asked. The chance to speak his own language with someone else at the inn struck him as too good to pass up.

“He is Ithran son of Akhbor,” the guard replied. “His inn is on the Street of Weavers, near the Street of Coppersmiths.”

“I thank you,” Sostratos said, and gave him an obolos.

One of the Hellenes said, “You paid him too much. Around here, the governors coin these little tiny silver bits, so small it takes ten or twelve of ‘em to make a drakhma. They don’t even bother counting ‘em most of the time-they just weigh ‘em. One of those would have been about right.”

With a shrug, Sostratos said, “I’m not going to worry about an obolos.” He had some of those tiny silver coins, but hadn’t known whether giving the Ioudaian guard so small a gift would have been reckoned an insult. He waved to the sailors. “Come on,” he told them, and booted his mule into motion. They passed into Jerusalem.

In one way, the place seemed more like a polis than Sidon had. Unlike the Phoenicians, the Ioudaioi didn’t build so high as to seem to scrape the sky. Their homes and shops and other buildings had only one or two stories, like those of the Hellenes. In another way, though, Jerusalem was startlingly different from any Hellenic city. Sostratos didn’t notice that himself; Aristeidas did. After the Rhodians had got about halfway to Ithran’s inn-or so Sostratos thought, anyhow-the sharp-eyed sailor said, “Where are all the statues?”

“By the dog!” Sostratos exclaimed in surprise. “You’re right, Aristeidas. I haven’t seen a one-not a Herm, not a carved face anywhere.”

Even the meanest, poorest polis would have had Herms-carved pillars with Hermes ’ face and genitals-in front of houses for luck. It would have had images of the gods, too, and of figures from myth and legend, and, these days, perhaps of prominent citizens as well. Sidon had been similar. The statues had been of a different style and had commemorated different gods and different legends, but they’d been there. In Ioudaia, though…

Slowly, Sostratos said, “I don’t think we’ve seen a single statue since we came into this country. Do any of you boys remember one?”

After some thought, the three sailors tossed their heads. Moskhion said, “I wonder why that is. Pretty strange, you ask me. Of course, everything in this polluted land is pretty strange, you ask me.”

He used such comments to keep his curiosity from getting loose. Sostratos wanted his to run free. When a plump, prosperous-looking Ioudaian came up the street toward him, he spoke in Aramaic: “Excuse me, my master, but may your humble slave ask a question without causing offense?”

“You are a foreigner. Your being here causes offense. I do not wish to speak with you,” the Ioudaian answered, and pushed on past him.

“Well, to the crows with you, friend,” Sostratos muttered. He and the sailors pressed on toward the inn. A couple of blocks later, he asked another man if he could ask.

This fellow also looked at him as if he was less than welcome in Jerusalem, but said, “Ask. If I do not like the question, I will not answer it.”

“Well enough, my master,” Sostratos said. When he tried to ask what he wanted to know, he discovered he had no idea how to say statue in Aramaic. He had to describe what he meant instead of simply naming it.

“Oh,” the Ioudaian said after a little while. “You mean a graven image.”

“Thank you,” Sostratos told him. “Why no graven images here in Jerusalem? Why none in Ioudaia?”

“Because our god commands us not to make them-it’s as simple as that,” the Ioudaian answered.

I might have known, Sostratos thought. But that didn’t tell him all he wanted to know. And so he asked another question: “Why does your god command you not to make graven images? Again, my master, I mean no offense.”

“Our god made mankind in his own image,” the Ioudaian said. Sostratos dipped his head, then remembered to nod instead. Hellenes believed the same thing. The Ioudaian went on, “We are forbidden to make graven images of our god, so how can we make them of ourselves, when we are made in his image?”

His logic was as pure as any a Hellenic philosopher might have used. His opening premise, on the other hand, struck Sostratos as absurd. Even so, the Rhodian said, “My thanks.” The Ioudaian nodded and went on his way. Sostratos scratched his head. The fellow had shown him a flaw in logic he hadn’t thought enough about: if the premise from which it began was flawed, everything springing from that premise would be worthless, too.

It’s a good thing we Hellenes don’t use such foolish premises. Otherwise, we might make mistakes when we reason and never even notice ourselves doing it, he thought. He rode on for another half a block, feeling pleased with himself for noticing the holes in the barbarian’s logic. Then, abruptly, he was much less happy. Suppose some of the premises from which we reason are flawed. How would we know? Our logic would be only as good as that loudaian’s.

He spent some little while chewing on that and found no answer that satisfied him. He might have kept right on chewing on it, too, had Teleutas not asked, “Are we getting close to this miserable inn? I’ve been walking for a long, long time-feels like forever-and I’d like to get off my feet for a while.”

“I’ll ask,” Sostratos said with a sigh.

He didn’t like asking such practical questions of strangers even in Greek. Historical or philosophical queries were a different matter-there his curiosity overcame everything else. But something as mundane as directions? He wished he could get away without them.

Here, though, he obviously couldn’t. Taking a deep breath, he made himself beard another Ioudaian: “I crave pardon, my master, but could you direct your servant to the inn of Ithran son of Akhbor?”

The fellow pointed. The flood of words that followed flowed too swiftly for Sostratos to understand.

“Slow! Slow!” he exclaimed.

More pointing. More quick, guttural Aramaic. Sostratos threw his hands in the air. More than any of his own words, the despairing gesture got through to the Ioudaian. On his third go-round, the man really did slow down, enough so that Sostratos could actually figure out most of what he was saying.

“Four blocks up, two to the right, and then one more up? Is that right?” Sostratos asked.

“Yes, of course. What did you think I said?” the Ioudaian asked.

“I was not sure,” Sostratos answered truthfully. He gave the man one of the tiny silver coins the local governors issued. The loudaian put it in his mouth, as a Hellene might have. It was so small, Sostratos wondered if he would swallow it without noticing.

Ithran’s inn proved to be a large, noisy, ramshackle place. When Sostratos and the sailors from the Aphrodite got there, the innkeeper was patching a crack in a mud-brick wall with what looked and smelled like a mixture of clay and cow dung. He wiped his hands on his robe, but still had second thoughts about clasping hands with Sostratos. Instead, bowing, he said, “How may I serve you, my master?”

“A room for me. A room for my men,” Sostratos replied. “And stalls for the animals.”

Ithran bowed again. “It shall be just as you require, of course,” he said. He was a few years older than Sostratos, tall and lean, handsome in a swarthy way, with a scar on one cheek that vanished into his bushy black beard.

Sostratos snapped his fingers, remembering something. “Is it not true, sir, that another Ionian is here?” When the innkeeper nodded, Sostratos switched to Greek and asked, “Do you speak the tongue of the Hellenes, then?”

“Speak little bit,” Ithran answered in the same language. “Was soldier for Antigonos before wound.” He touched his face to show what he meant. “Learn Greek from soldiers.” Had he not told that to Sostratos, his accent would have. It was one of the strangest the Rhodian had ever met: half guttural Aramaic, half broad Macedonian. If he hadn’t already heard foreigners mangle Greek a lot of different ways, he wouldn’t have been able to make head or tail of it.

“How much for the lodgings?” he asked.

When Ithran told him, he thought he’d misheard. The Ioudaian had replied in Aramaic. Sostratos went over to Greek again, but the answer didn’t change. He did his best not to show how astonished he was. He haggled a little for form’s sake, but he would have been content to take the first price the innkeeper quoted. In Rhodes or Sidon, he would have paid three times as much.

Once he and the sailors from the Aphrodite got to their rooms, he remarked on that. He all but chortled with glee, as a matter of fact. But Teleutas put things in perspective. “Of course rooms are cheap here,” he said. “You go to Sidon or Rhodes, those are places people really want to visit. But who in his right mind would want to come to this miserable sheep turd of a town?”

Sostratos considered what he’d seen walking through Jerusalem’s narrow, winding, smelly streets. He heaved a sigh. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he admitted, “but to the crows with me if I can tell you you’re wrong.”

A Macedonian trooper too far down on the social scale to care about whether he did his own work lugged an amphora of olive oil and a Lykian ham off the Aphrodite, down the pier, and back into Sidon. As soon as he was off the ship, Menedemos stopped paying much attention to him. Instead, the Rhodian merchant looked down at the gleaming silver that filled his hands: a mixture of Sidonian silver and coins from all over Hellas.

“By the dog, I really am almost starting to think that pimp of an Andronikos did us a favor when he wouldn’t buy our whole shipment of oil,” he said. “ Garrison troops just keep coming in and taking it away a jar at a time.”

“And paying a lot more per jar than he would have,” Diokles said.

“Sure enough,” Menedemos agreed. “We won’t have to unload all the oil to come back to Rhodes with a decent profit.” He laughed. “I never would have said anything like that half a month ago-you’d best believe I wouldn’t.”

He wouldn’t have laughed half a month before, either. He’d been sure he would end up stuck with every last amphora of Damonax’s olive oil. He’d unloaded much more of it by now than he’d ever thought he would after Antigonos’ quartermaster turned him down.

A Phoenician came up the quay toward the akatos. The man wore gold hoops in his ears and a massy gold ring on one thumb; he carried a gold-headed walking stick. “Hail! This ship is from the island?” he said in accented but fluent Greek.

“That’s right, best one,” Menedemos answered. “What can I do for you today?”

“You sell olive oil, fine olive oil?” the Phoenician asked.

Menedemos dipped his head. “Yes, I do. Ah, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you know?”

The Phoenician smiled a thin smile. “You Hellenes can do many marvelous things. You have astonished the world. You have overthrown the Persians, who ruled their great kingdom for generation upon generation. You have cast down the mighty city of Tyre, a city any man would have thought could stand secure forever. But I say this, and I say true: there is one thing you Hellenes cannot do. Try as you will, you cannot keep your mouths shut.”

He was probably right. As a matter of fact, from everything Menedemos had seen, he was almost certainly right. The Rhodian found no point to arguing with him. “Would you care to come aboard and sample the oil, ah…?” He paused.

With a bow, the Phoenician said, “Your servant is called Zimrida son of Luli. And you are Menedemos son of Philodemos, is it not so?” He walked up the gangplank, his stick tapping against the timber at each step.

“Yes, I am Menedemos,” Menedemos answered, wondering what else Zimrida knew about him and his business. By the way the Phoenician spoke, by the amused glint in his black, black eyes, he was liable to have a better notion of how much silver was aboard the Aphrodite than Menedemos did himself. Trying to hide his unease, Menedemos drew the stopper from an already-open jar of oil, poured out a little, dipped a chunk of barley roll in it, and offered the roll and oil to Zimrida.

“I thank you, my master.” The Phoenician murmured something in his own language, then took a bite.

“What was that?” Menedemos asked.

“A… prayer we use over bread,” Zimrida answered, chewing. “In your tongue, it would be, ‘Blessed be you, gods who made the universe, who make bread come forth from the earth.’ In my speech, you understand, it is a poem.”

“I see. Thanks. What do you think of the oil?”

“I will not lie to you,” Zimrida said, an opening that immediately made Menedemos suspicious. “It is good olive oil. It is very good, in fact.” As if to underscore that, he dipped the barley roll again and took another bite. “But it is not worth the price you are getting for it.”

“No?” Menedemos said coolly. “As long as I am getting that price- and I am-I would have to tell you you are wrong.”

Zimrida waved that aside. “You are getting that price for an amphora here, for two amphorai there. How much oil will you have left when you must leave Sidon? More than a little, is that not so?”

“Then I’ll sell the rest somewhere else,” Menedemos answered, again trying to sound unworried. Sure enough, Zimrida was liable to know the last obolos lurking half forgotten between a sailor’s cheek and gum.

“Will you?” the Phoenician said. “Perhaps. But perhaps not, too. Such things are in the hands of the gods. You will surely know that.”

“Why should I sell to you for less than what I’m getting?” Menedemos demanded once more.

“For the sake of getting rid of all your cargo,” Zimrida answered. “You would have sold it to Andronikos for a good deal less than the seventeen and a half shekels you are getting… Excuse me, I should say sigloi in Greek, eh? You would have sold it to Andronikos for less, I tell you again, and so, if I buy a lot of what you have, you should also sell to me for less. It only stands to reason.”

“But I couldn’t make a bargain with Andronikos,” Menedemos reminded him.

“I know this Hellene,” Zimrida said. “I know you Hellenes say we Phoenicians are grasping and money-grubbing and care for nothing in all the world except silver. I tell you, Rhodian, this quartermaster of Antigonos’ is the meanest man I have met in all my days, Phoenician or Hellene-or Persian, come to that. If he could save his father’s life with a drakhma’s worth of medicine, he would try to haggle the price down to three oboloi-and woe betide the old man if he failed.”

Menedemos let out a startled bark of laughter. That summed up Andronikos pretty well, all right. “How do I know you’ll do any better for me, though?” he asked.

“You might try finding out,” the Phoenician said tartly, “instead of saying, ‘Oh, no, I’ll never sell to you, because I’m making too much money the way things are’ “

“All right.” Menedemos dipped his head. “All right, by the gods. If you buy in bulk, how much the amphora will you give me?”

“Fourteen sigloi,” Zimrida said.

“Twenty-… eight drakhmai the jar.” Menedemos made the translation into money more familiar to him. Zimrida nodded. Menedemos also translated that into its Hellenic equivalent. He said, “Is that enough profit to satisfy you, buying at twenty-eight and selling at thirty-five, when you know you may not sell all of what you buy? “

The Phoenician’s eyes were dark and distant and utterly opaque. “My master, if I did not think so, I would not make the offer, is it not so? I do not ask what you will do with my silver once you take it. Do not ask me what I will do with the oil.”

“I won’t sell it all to you at that price,” Menedemos said. “I’ll hold back fifty jars, because I think I may move that many at my price. The rest, though… twenty-eight drakhmai is a fair price, and I can’t deny it.”

I’ll be rid of Damonax’s miserable oil. By the gods, I really will, he thought, trying to hide his growing delight. And I’II have plenty of silver to buy things that are cheap here but expensive back in Rhodes.

“Have we a bargain, then?” Zimrida asked.

“Yes. We have one.” Menedemos thrust out his right hand. Zimrida clasped it. His grip was hard and firm. “Twenty-eight drakhmai or fourteen sigloi the amphora,” Menedemos said while they held each other, leaving no room for misunderstanding.

“Twenty-eight drakhmai or fourteen sigloi,” the Phoenician agreed. “You say you will keep fifty jars. I do not object to that. And you will already have sold close to a hundred jars.” Sure enough, he knew Menedemos’ affairs very well indeed. The Rhodian didn’t even try to deny it-what point? Zimrida went on, “Then you will sell me… two hundred fifty jars, more or less?”

“About that, yes. Do you want the exact count now, O best one, or will tomorrow do?” Menedemos asked. He suspected Zimrida would have an exact count by tomorrow whether he gave it to the Phoenician or not.

“Tomorrow will do well enough,” Zimrida said. “I am glad we have made this bargain, Rhodian. We will both profit from it. You will be here at sunrise?”

“Not long after, anyhow,” Menedemos answered. “I’ve taken a room at an inn.” He mimed scratching at bedbug bites.

Zimrida smiled. “Yes, I know the place where you are staying,” he said- which, again, surprised Menedemos not at all. “Tell me, is Emashtart trying to lure you into her bed?”

Hearing that, Menedemos began to wonder if there were anything at all about Sidon that Zimrida didn’t know. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact,” he answered. “Who on earth would have told you that?”

“No one. I did not know, not for certain,” Zimrida told him. “But I am not surprised. You are not the first, and I do not suppose you will be the last.” He started up the gangplank, tapping with his stick at each step.

“Why doesn’t her husband keep her happy?” Menedemos asked. “Then she wouldn’t have to play the whore.” Am I saying that? he wondered. How many wives have I lured away from their husbands’ beds? He didn’t know, not exactly. Maybe Sostratos could have given him a precise number; he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn his cousin had been keeping a tally. But the difference here was simplicity itself: he didn’t want the innkeeper’s wife. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been pursued by a woman who interested him less.

“Why?” Zimrida echoed. “You have seen her, is it not so? Having seen her, you can answer the question for yourself. And I will tell you one thing more, my master. Two doors down from the inn lives a potter with a friendly, pretty young wife. She is even friendlier than he thinks.”

“Is she?” Menedemos said. Zimrida son of Luli nodded. Menedemos’ opinion was that she would have to be friendly to the point of madness to find Sedek-yathon attractive, but women had peculiar taste.

“Good day,” Zimrida told him. “I will be here tomorrow with the silver, and with slaves and donkeys to take away the olive oil.” Down the pier he went.

“Not bad, skipper,” Diokles said when the Sidonian was out of earshot. “Not bad at all, tell you the truth.”

“No,” Menedemos agreed. “This is better than I hoped for. We really are rid of Damonax’s oil. I feel so glad to be out from under it, too-as if Sisyphos didn’t have to roll his stone up the hill anymore.”

“I believe that,” the oarmaster said. “Now the only worry is, will he really pay us what he said he would?”

“Did you see all the gold he was wearing?” Menedemos said. “He can afford it; I’m sure of that. And he wasn’t putting on the dog to try to impress us, the way a cheat would. His robe was fine wool, and it was well worn, too. He hadn’t just borrowed it to make himself look richer than he was.”

“Oh, no. That’s not what I meant. You’re right-I’m sure he can afford to pay. But will he try to stiff us some kind of way? You never can tell with barbarians… or with Hellenes, either, come to that.”

“I only wish I could say you were wrong,” Menedemos told him. “Well, we’ll find out.”

Diokles pointed toward the base of the pier. “Now who’s this fellow coming our way, and what’s he going to want? Besides our money, I mean?”

“He’s selling something-something to eat, I bet. Look at that big, flat basket he’s carrying. You see hucksters with that kind of basket all the time back in Hellas,” Menedemos said. “There, they’d have fried fish on it, or songbirds, or most likely fruit. What do you want to bet he’s got raisins or plums or figs or something like that?”

They had to wait a little while to find out. The peddler stopped at every ship tied up along the quay. He called out the name of whatever he was selling in Aramaic, which did Menedemos no good at all. Seeing Hellenes aboard the akatos, though, the fellow switched to Greek: “Dates! Fresh dates!”

“Dates?” Menedemos echoed, and the Phoenician nodded. “Fresh dates?” The peddler nodded again, and invitingly held out the basket.

“Well, well,” Diokles said. “Isn’t that interesting?”

“It certainly is,” Menedemos said. “Sostratos would be fascinated. I wonder if he’s seen any.” A few date palms grew in Rhodes; Menedemos had seen them on the islands of the Kyklades, too, and had heard they were also found on Crete. But no date palm anywhere in Hellas gave forth fruit; the climate wasn’t warm enough to let the trees come to full maturity. All the dates that reached the land of the Hellenes from Phoenicia and Egypt were sun-dried like raisins or, often, figs.

“You want?” the peddler asked.

“Yes, I want,” Menedemos answered. To Diokles, he went on, “We wouldn’t be able to take ‘em back to Rhodes; they won’t keep for us any more than they do for anybody else. But they’re still something to talk about.”

“Sounds good to me, skipper,” the keleustes answered. “I’m always game for something new.”

An obolos bought a handful for each of them. Menedemos exclaimed in delight at the sweet taste of his. He’d had dried dates often enough. They cost more than figs, but that didn’t always stop Sikon from keeping them in the house. Menedemos tossed his head. It hadn’t always stopped Sikon from keeping them in the house. With Baukis quarreling over every obolos-no, every khalkos-who could say whether the cook still dared buy them?

Menedemos sighed. He’d mostly been too busy to think about his father’s second wife since sailing out of Rhodes. That was one of the reasons, and not the least, he was so glad when winter ended and good weather returned. Brooding about Baukis could only lead to misery, and to trouble.

To try to get her out of his mind, he asked the huckster, “Do you also sell dried dates?”

The Phoenician didn’t speak a lot of Greek. Menedemos had to repeat himself and point to the sun before the fellow got the idea. When he did, he nodded again. “Sell sometimes,” he answered. His expression was scornful, though. “Dried dates for servants, for slaves. Fresh dates proper food, good food.”

“Did he say what I think he did?” Diokles asked after the huckster went on to the next pier. “Back in Hellas, we eat for a treat what’s slave food here? I like our kind of dates. But for honey, you can’t find anything much sweeter. Don’t know that I’ll want ‘em any more, though.”

“Can’t be helped,” Menedemos said. “Like I said, fresh dates won’t keep on a voyage back to Hellas, any more than fresh grapes would.”

“Well, maybe not,” the oarmaster said. “But it still galls me that the Phoenicians send us their leavings and keep the best for themselves. There was that miserable fellow with his cheap basket, and he’s selling something nobody in Hellas can have. It doesn’t seem right.”

“Maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t know what to do about it, either,” Menedemos answered. “Fresh is fresh, in figs as in pretty boys, and it won’t keep in either one. Boys sprout hair and figs sprout mold, and there’s nothing anybody can do to it.”

“There ought to be,” Diokles insisted.

Menedemos laughed. This was almost the sort of argument he and Sostratos would have all the time. The difference was, Sostratos knew enough in the way of logic to keep the discussion moving in one direction. Diokles didn’t, and neither did Menedemos himself. When hashing things out with his cousin, it hadn’t mattered. Now it did, and he felt the lack.

He wondered how Sostratos was doing among barbarians who not only didn’t have much in the way of logic, but who’d probably never even heard of it. “Poor wretch,” Menedemos muttered; if anything could be calculated to drive Sostratos mad, it was people who couldn’t think straight.

Sostratos sat in ithran’s inn, snacking on fresh dates and on chickpeas fried in cumin-flavored oil and drinking wine. The wine wasn’t particularly good, but it was strong; like the Phoenicians, the Ioudaioi drank it unmixed. This was only his second cup, but his head had already started to spin.

Aristeidas and Moskhion had taken some of their pay and gone to visit a brothel. Teleutas would take his turn when one of them got back. The sailors from the Aphrodite seemed to have decided Menedemos would kill them if they left Sostratos alone for even a minute. He’d tried to convince them that that was nonsense. They’d paid no attention to his elegant logic.

Ithran’s wife was a handsome woman named Zilpah. She came up to Sostratos and Teleutas with a pitcher. “More wine, my masters?” she-asked in Aramaic; she spoke no Greek.

“Yes, please,” Sostratos replied in the same language. When she poured his cup full, Teleutas also held out his and got it filled again. The idea of drinking neat wine all the time didn’t bother him-on the contrary.

His eyes followed Zilpah as she walked away. “What a slut she is, to come and talk with us without even trying to cover her face.”

Sostratos tossed his head. “That’s our custom, not theirs. She has no reason to follow it. She seems a good enough woman to me.”

“Better than good enough,” Teleutas said. “She’d be a piece and a half in bed, I bet. Ithran’s a lucky dog. I’d sooner lay her than some bored whore who might as well be dead.”

“Drag your mind out of the chamber pot, if you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. “Have you seen her paying attention to anyone but her husband? You’ll get us thrown out-or worse-if you treat her like a loose woman when she plainly isn’t.”

“I haven’t done anything with her. I haven’t done anything to her. I don’t intend to,” Teleutas said. But he’d had enough wine to speak his mind: “I’m not the only one who keeps watching her all the time, though, and there’s nobody can say I am.” He sent Sostratos a significant glance.

“Me? Are you talking about me? Go howl, you whipworthy rogue!” Sostratos exclaimed, so sharply that Zilpah, who usually paid no attention to talk in Greek, looked back in surprise to see what the matter was.

Sostratos gave her a sickly smile. She frowned back. But, when neither he nor Teleutas pulled out a knife or started swinging a stool like a flail, she relaxed and went back to what she’d been doing.

“Ha!” Teleutas sounded disgustingly sly. “I knew I put that arrow right in the middle of the target. If you were your cousin, now, you’d already know what she’s like under those robes. If she shows you her face, she’ll show you the rest, too, easy as you please.”

“Will you shut up?” Instead of shouting, as he wanted to do, Sostratos kept his voice to a furious whisper so as not to draw Zilpah’s notice again. “And I keep telling you, going around unveiled doesn’t mean the same thing here as it would back in Hellas. Besides, what would get me murdered faster than trying to seduce the innkeeper’s wife?”

“Menedemos wouldn’t worry about any of that,” Teleutas said. “All he cares about is getting it in.” He was, no doubt, right. He spoke with nothing but admiration. But what he saw as praiseworthy seemed blameworthy to Sostratos. Then the sailor added, “You only get in trouble if she doesn’t like it. If she does, you’re happy as a billy goat.”

“That only shows how much-or how little-you know,” Sostratos said. The women Menedemos seduced didn’t complain and didn’t betray him to their husbands. He commonly betrayed himself by taking insane chances to get what he wanted. He was lucky to have come out of Halikarnassos and Taras in one piece.

“I give up,” Teleutas said. “But tell me you’d throw her out of bed if you found her in there. Go on-tell me. I dare you.”

“It’s not going to happen, so there’s no point talking about it. Hypothetical questions have their uses, but that isn’t one of them.”

As he’d hoped, the formidable word gave Teleutas pause. Before the sailor could start up again, Aristeidas walked into the inn, a satisfied smirk on his face. Teleutas gulped down what was left of his wine, then hurried away. Aristeidas sat down on the stool he’d vacated. “Hail,” he said to Sostratos.

“Hail,” Sostratos answered. When Teleutas came back from the brothel, he would give a thrust-by-thrust description of what he’d done. Aristeidas didn’t have that vice. He was content to sit there and keep an eye on Sostratos. To encourage him to do that and nothing more, Sostratos sipped at his wine and half turned away.

That meant his gaze swung toward Zilpah. What would she be like in bed? he wondered. It wasn’t the first time the question had crossed his mind. He’d got angry at Teleutas not least for noticing. If the sailor had seen his curiosity (that seemed a safer word than desire), had Zilpah seen it, too? Worse, had Ithran?

He must know he has a good-looking, good-natured wife, the Rhodian thought, because they don’t shut their women away from the world, as we do, he must know other men will get to know her, too. He shouldn’t mind my admiring her, so long as I do it with my eyes and nothing more.

Sostratos dipped his head. Yes, that made good logical sense. The only trouble was, logic was often the first thing out the window in dealings between men and women. If Ithran caught him staring at Zilpah, the Ioudaian might prove as jealous as any Hellene would have been on catching a man eyeing his wife.

And, then again, Sostratos found himself ever more tempted to find out just how interested in straying Zilpah might be. Maybe that was just because he’d gone without a woman for a long time. Maybe a trip to a brothel would cure him of it. But maybe such a visit wouldn’t, either. He was beginning to understand the attractions the game of adultery held for Menedemos. One willing woman might be worth several who lay down for a man because they had no choice.

His cousin had always insisted such things were true. Sostratos had always mocked him, scorned him. Now he discovered Menedemos had, at least to some degree, known what he was talking about. Few discoveries could have alarmed him more.

His eyes slid toward Zilpah again. Angrily, he made himself look away. Did she know what he was thinking? If she did, what did she think? Was it, Oh, dear, here’s another traveler who’s liable to make a fool of himself? Or was it, He wants me. Do I want him, too?

How do I find out? Sostratos wondered. He scowled and made a fist. Sure enough, he was liable to be walking down Menedemos’ road. “No,” he muttered.

“What do you mean, no?” Aristeidas asked.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Sostratos said quickly, and sipped his wine. His ears heated. How can I find out whether she wants me without putting my head on the block? He liked that version of the question much better. I won’t take any chances to find out, not the way Menedemos does.

That made him feel better, but only for a little while. If he hadn’t been trained to root out self-delusion, it probably would have satisfied him longer. As things were, though, he had to wonder, How do I know what I want? A man who wants a woman isn’t likely to think straight.

Aristeidas said, “Maybe you ought to go get laid, you don’t mind my saying so. The girls at this place around the corner are pretty friendly-or they act like they are, anyhow.”

If he hadn’t added that last little bit, he might have persuaded Sostratos. As things were, he only reminded him of the difference between what was paid for and what was freely given. “Another time,” Sostratos said.

“They’re funny there, you know?” Aristeidas went on. “Our women always singe off the hair between their legs or else shave it off, the way you shave your face.”

Sostratos plucked at his beard. “I don’t shave my face,” he pointed out.

“No, the way you would if you did,” the sailor said confusingly. “The whores here don’t shave their bushes, or singe them, or anything. They just let ‘em grow. It looks funny, if you ask me.”

“Yes, I guess it would,” Sostratos agreed. Some men, he supposed, might find the difference exciting. Others might find it disgusting; Aristeidas seemed close to feeling that way. At first, Sostratos thought it wouldn’t matter to him one way or the other. Then he imagined Zilpah with a hairy delta at the joining of her legs. The thought roused him more than he’d expected it to, but was that because he imagined hairy private parts or Zilpah’s private parts? He wasn’t sure.

Zilpah said, “Greetings, my master.” She wasn’t talking to Sostratos, but to another lodger who’d just walked into the inn.

“Hail,” the newcomer replied in Greek. He paused for a moment inside the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom within. Seeing Sostratos and Aristeidas, he waved. “Hail, Rhodians,” he said, and headed over to their table.

“Hail, Hekataios,” Sostratos answered. “Always good to talk to a fellow Hellene.”

Aristeidas didn’t seem to share his opinion. The sailor got to his feet. “I’ll see you later, young sir,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll still be around whenever I come back.” He left before Hekataios perched on a stool.

Perched, Sostratos thought, was the operative word. Hekataios of Abdera-a polis on the southern coast of Thrace-was a birdlike man: small, thin, sharp-featured, quick-moving. “How are you?” he asked Sostratos, speaking Ionic Greek with a strong Attic overlay. Sostratos’ Doric accent had that same overlay, so the two of them sounded more like each other than less educated, less traveled men from their home cities would have.

“Well, thanks,” Sostratos answered.

Zilpah came up. “What would you like, my master?” she asked Hekataios.

“Wine. Bread. Oil,” he replied in extremely rudimentary Aramaic.

“I would also like bread and oil, please,” Sostratos told the innkeeper’s wife.

As Zilpah went off, Hekataios returned to Greek: “I’m jealous of you. You really speak the language. I didn’t think I’d need to when I started traveling through Ioudaia, but Hellenes are so thin on the ground here, I’ve had to start learning ‘ow to go bar-bar-bar myself.” Every once in a while, but only every once in a while, he would forget a rough breathing, as Ionians usually did.

“I’m not fluent,” Sostratos said. “I wish I knew more.”

“I’d have an easier time with my researches if I could make those funny grunting noises, but I do seem to manage even without them.”

Zilpah came back with the food and drink. As Sostratos dipped a chunk of brown bread in olive oil, he said, “Jealous? Speaking of jealous,

0 best one, you have no idea how jealous I am of you. I have to buy and sell as I go. I can’t travel about the countryside for the sake of love of wisdom.” He was also jealous of the wealth that let Hekataios of Abdera do exactly that, but kept quiet about that bit of envy. To him, the other was more important.

Hekataios shrugged. “When I was in Alexandria, I got interested in the Ioudaioi. They’re such a peculiar people.” He rolled his eyes. “And so I decided to come here and find out about them for myself.”

“You’re lucky Antigonos’ men didn’t decide you were spying for Ptolemaios,” Sostratos said.

“Not at all, my dear fellow.” Hekataios tossed his head. “I had written out for me a safe-conduct stating that I was a lover of wisdom traveling for the sake of learning more about the world in which I live, and so was not to be harassed by mere soldiers.”

“And it worked when you got to the frontier?” Sostratos asked.

“Plainly not. Plainly I was seized and tortured and crucified,” Hekataios answered. Sostratos coughed and flushed. He could be sarcastic himself, but he’d met his match and then some in Hekataios of Abdera. The older man relented: “As a matter of fact, Antigonos’ officers ‘ave been more than a little helpful. From everything I’ve heard and seen, Antigonos himself is a man of learning.”

“I suppose so,” Sostratos said. “I know Ptolemaios is. But I wouldn’t want to have either one of them angry at me, and that’s the truth.”

“There I cannot argue with you in the least,” Hekataios agreed. “Then again, however, the weak are always wise not to fall into the clutches of the strong. So it has been since the gods-if gods there be-made the world, and so it shall remain as long as men stay men.”

“It’s a good thing you said that in Greek, and that Ithran wasn’t here to understand it,” Sostratos observed. “Let a Ioudaian hear ‘if gods there be’ and you’ve got more trouble for yourself than you really want. They take their own invisible deity very, very seriously.”

“I should say they do!” Hekataios dipped his head. “They always have, as best I’ve been able to determine.”

“Tell me more, if you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. “This sort of thing is meat and drink to me. I wish I had the chance to do what you’re doing.”

1 wish I didn’t have to worry about making a living, was what that boiled down to. Hekataios’ family had to own land out to the horizon up in Abdera, or to have got wealthy some other way, to let him spend his life traveling and learning.

He smiled what struck Sostratos as a superior smile. But that half sneer didn’t last. What could be more attractive than somebody who was interested in what one was doing? “As I was telling you the last time we talked,” Hekataios said, “these Ioudaioi came here from out of Egypt.”

“Yes, you did say that; I remember,” Sostratos answered. “You were telling me some sort of pestilence there made them flee the country? “

“That’s right.” Hekataios smiled again, this time without a trace of superiority. “You were paying attention, weren’t you?”

“Of course I was, best one. Did you doubt it?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. When you discover how few people have the least interest in the past and how it came to shape the present, you eventually begin to believe no one but yourself has any interest in such things at all. Being proved wrong is always a pleasant surprise.”

“You’ve found me,” Sostratos said. “Please do go on.”

“I’d be glad to.” Hekataios paused to sip his wine and gather his thoughts. Then he said, “When this plague arose in Egypt, the common people there believed some divinity had caused it.”

“That’s not surprising,” Sostratos said. “They wouldn’t have known of anyone like Hippokrates who might have offered a different explanation.”

“No, indeed not.” Hekataios of Abdera dipped his head. “Now Egypt at this time-it would have been about the time of the Trojan War, I believe-was full of all sorts of foreigners, and-”

“Excuse me, most wise one, but how do you know that?” Sostratos broke in.

“For one thing, the Egyptian priests say so,” Hekataios answered. “For another, the Ioudaioi have a legend that they themselves came ‘ere to this country from out of Egypt. Does that satisfy you?”

“Thank you. Yes, it does. But history is only as good as its sources and the questions you ask of them. I did want to know.”

“Fair enough. You do understand the finer points, don’t you?” Hekataios said, and Sostratos wanted to burst with pride. The Abderan went on, “All these foreigners, naturally, worshiped their own gods and had their own rites. The native Egyptians’ rituals were being ignored and forgotten. The Egyptians-I suspect that means their priests, but I can’t prove it-feared their gods would never have mercy on them in respect to the plague unless they expelled the foreigners from their land.”

“And so they did?” Sostratos asked.

“And so they did,” Hekataios agreed. “The most outstanding foreigners banded together and went to places like Hellas: Danaos and Kadmos were some of their leaders.”

“I’ve also heard Kadmos was a Phoenician,” Sostratos said.

“Yes, so have I. Perhaps he stopped in Phoenicia on his way up to Hellas from Egypt. But most of the exiles ended up here in Ioudaia. This isn’t far from Egypt, and in those days no one at all lived here, or so they say.

“I see,” Sostratos said. “But how did the customs of the Ioudaioi become so strange?”

“I am coming to that, O best one,” Hekataios answered. “Their leader at this time was a man outstanding for courage and wisdom, a certain Mouses. He refused to make any images of the gods, because he did not think his god was of human form.”

“The Ioudaioi have kept that custom ever since,” Sostratos said. “I’ve seen it.”

“One could hardly help seeing it-or not seeing it-in this country,” Hekataios said, a little superciliously. “That is the reason the sacrifices this Mouses established differ from those of other nations. So does their way of living. Because of their expulsion from Egypt, he introduced a way of life that was rather antisocial and hostile to foreigners.”

“I don’t know if they’re truly hostile to foreigners, or if they simply want to be left alone,” Sostratos said. “They haven’t treated me at all badly. They just don’t want me trying to tell them about the way we Hellenes live.”

“Well, if that doesn’t make them hostile to foreigners all by itself, I don’t know what would,” Hekataios said.

Sostratos frowned. He thought he saw a logical flaw in the other man’s argument, but for once he let it go. Hekataios of Abdera had studied the Ioudaioi more thoroughly than he had-had studied them as he wished he might have, in fact. “Now that you’ve learned all these things, I hope you write them down so other Hellenes can have the benefit of your inquiries,” Sostratos said.

“I intend to, when I get back to Alexandria,” Hekataios answered. “I want my name to live forever.”

“I understand,” Sostratos said, and sighed. You have to write one day, too, he told himself, or who will remember you once you’re gone? He sighed again, wondering if he would ever find the time.