Over the Wine-Dark Sea Read online

  Himilkon plucked at his fancy curled beard, considering. He put so much into it, he might have been an actor in a comedy using his body to get across what his mask couldn't. At last, elaborately artless, he said, "Oh, I don't know. A mina a bird sounds about right."

  "A pound of silver? A hundred drakhmai?" As Himilkon had worked to sound casual, Menedemos worked to sound horrified. Actually, he'd been braced for worse. Peafowl were obviously for the luxury trade. Nobody would raise them in the courtyard like ducks. Like any merchant galley, the Aphrodite specialized in carrying luxuries. She didn't have the capacity to make a profit hauling wheat or cheap wine, the way a tubby sailing ship could.

  Menedemos shot Sostratos a glance. A little slower than he should have, his cousin chimed in, "It's an outrage, Himilkon - pure hubris. Half that much would be an outrage, and you know it."

  Himilkon shook his head back and forth again, then tossed it as a Hellene would to show disagreement. "No such thing, O best ones. I know you both. I know your fathers. If you buy my birds, you'll take them somewhere far away, and you'll sell them for plenty more than you pay. Tell me I'm wrong." He set his hands on his hips and looked defiantly at the younger men.

  "We'll try to do that, no doubt," Menedemos said. "But what if the peacock dies while we're at sea? What do we sell then? I saw the peahen in her cage; she's not pretty enough to bring much by herself."

  "Breed her to the cock. Breed all the hens you buy - if you buy any; if you don't go on trying to cheat me - to the cock," Himilkon replied. "Once they lay, you'll have plenty of birds to sell."

  Sostratos said, "But only the one peacock shows what anyone who buys a bird from us would want."

  Himilkon's smile might have shown off a shark's teeth, not his own, which were square and rather yellow. "In that case, you should pay me more for him, eh, not less."

  The hangers-on laughed and clapped their hands at that. Menedemos shot Sostratos another glance, an angry one this time. But Sostratos tossed his head as calmly as if his opponent hadn't landed a telling blow. "Not at all," he said. "A mina is too much for the peacock, and much too much for the peahens."

  "Without the peahens, you'll get no more peacocks," Himilkon said. "That's the value in them."

  "We'll give you a mina and a half for the peacock and the five peahens," Menedemos said, wondering how loudly his father - and Sostratos' father, too - would scream at him for plunging into this dicker.

  No louder than Himilkon screamed now; he was sure of that. "Twenty-five drakhmai a bird?" the Phoenician merchant bellowed. "You're no trader - you're a pirate, robbing honest men. I'd sooner roast the fowl myself than sell them for that."

  "Invite us to the banquet," Sostratos said coolly. "A white wine from Thasos would go well with them, don't you think? Come on, cousin." He set a hand on Menedemos' shoulder.

  Menedemos didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay and haggle with Himilkon, or possibly punch the Phoenician in the face. But when he angrily rounded on Sostratos, he saw something in his cousin's eyes that gave him pause. He dipped his head in agreement. Sometimes the only way to get a better bargain was to pretend one didn't matter. "Let's go," he said.

  They started to walk away. If Himilkon kept quiet, they would have to keep walking. Menedemos didn't want that. What would the rich Hellenes in Taras or Syracuse pay for a peacock? A lot more than a mina, or he wildly missed his guess.

  From behind them, Himilkon said, "Because I've dealt with your families before, I might - just might, mind you - let you have six birds for five minai, though I'd not do it for any other men born of woman."

  With the best appearance of reluctance they could manage, Menedemos and Sostratos turned back. The little crowd of hangers-on sighed and shifted their feet and made themselves comfortable, ready to enjoy a long, vituperative dicker.

  They got one, too. After much shouting and many invocations of gods both Greek and Phoenician, the two cousins settled with Himilkon on fifty drakhmai for each of the peahens and seventy-five for the peacock. Just when everything seemed agreed, Menedemos suddenly tossed his head and said, "No, it won't do."

  Himilkon eyed him apprehensively. "What now?"

  Holding up the fancy tail feather he'd bought, Menedemos said, "Seventy-four drakhmai, three oboloi for the peacock."

  The Phoenician dug his tongue into his cheek, feeling for the silver coins he'd already got from Menedemos. "All right," he said. "Seventy-four drakhmai, three oboloi it is."

  "We'll have ourselves an interesting cargo when the Aphrodite sails," Sostratos said, as he and Menedemos walked back from the harbor to their homes, which sat side by side near Demeter's temple in the northern part of the city.

  "Father's got those jars of ink in the warehouse," Menedemos agreed, "and the rolls of papyrus with them, and the vials of Egyptian poppy-juice, too. And we'll put in at Khios and pick up some wine." He ran his tongue over his lips. "Nothing finer than Khian. It's thick as honey, and even sweeter."

  "Khian's a lot stronger than honey, too," Sostratos observed. "Those are vintages you need to drink well-watered."

  With a snort, Menedemos said, "Those are vintages you can drink well-watered, my dear cousin. Me, I like to have some fun every so often."

  Sostratos sighed. "I like drinking wine. I don't like swilling it down neat like a barbarian. I don't like getting drunk and breaking things and getting into fights." He was, or at least tried to be, moderate. All the philosophers maintained that moderation was a virtue. By the look on Menedemos' face, he reckoned it not only a vice but a nasty vice at that. Sostratos sighed again. His cousin had all the noteworthy good traits: he was handsome, outgoing, strong, nimble. He could as easily sing a song as guide a ship through a gale without showing fear.

  And what about you? Sostratos asked himself. He shrugged. Nobody'd ever written Sostratos is beautiful on the walls when he was a youth. He wasn't a bad haggler, but he got what bargains he got with reason and patience, not by making people like him and go easy or by persuading them black was white. He towered over Menedemos, but his cousin always threw him when they stripped off their clothes and wrestled in the gymnasion.

  I have a good prose style. Theophrastos told me that himself, up in Athens, and he doles out even less praise than Aristoteles did when he headed the Lykeion. Everyone says so. I remember what I read, too. And I've always been clever - better than clever, really - with numbers.

  It didn't seem enough. Even with moderation and reliability thrown in, it didn't seem enough. Sostratos shrugged again. I can't be Menedemos. I am what the gods made me. I have to make the most of what they gave me.

  His cousin laughed and pointed. "Look, Sostratos. It really is getting on toward spring. There's a gecko on a wall."

  Sure enough, a gray-brown lizard clung to the gray-brown mud brick of a poor man's house. It walked up the wall as easily as a fly might have done, and snapped up a bug before the insect knew it was there.

  Half a block past the house with the gecko, they turned right so as to go north. That was the only turn they'd have to make till they got to their homes. Sostratos said, "Gods be praised, Rhodes is laid out on a grid, the way Peiraieus is up in Attica. Anyone can find his way around here or in Athens' harbor. Athens itself?" He tossed his head. "You have to be born there to know where you're going, and even the Athenians aren't sure half the time. Hippodamos of Miletos was a man of godlike wit."

  "I never much thought about it," Menedemos confessed. "But most towns are pretty bad, aren't they? You can't get from the harbor to an inn a bowshot away without asking directions three different times, on account of the streets go wherever they please, not where you need 'em to."

  "Of course," Sostratos said musingly, "Peiraieus and Rhodes are new cities; they could be planned. It's what, two years shy of a century since Rhodes was founded? A town that's been there since before the fall of Troy, the streets probably follow the way the cows used to wander."

  "Homer doesn't say anything about whether Troy was laid
out in a grid," Menedemos said. He paused to eye a slave woman carrying a jar of water back to her house. "Hello, sweetheart!" he called. The slave kept walking, but she smiled back at Menedemos.

  Sostratos sighed. If he'd done that, the slave woman might have ignored him - if he was lucky. If he wasn't lucky, she'd have showered him with curses. That had happened to him once, up in Athens. Like a puppy that once stuck its nose into the fire, he hadn't taken the chance of its happening again.

  Potters and jewelers and shoemakers and smiths and millers and tavernkeepers and all the other artisans whose work helped keep Rhodes prosperous had their shops in the front part of the buildings in which they and their households also lived. Some of them steadily kept whatever they did for a living. Others made periodic forays out into the street in search of customers.

  "Here - look at my fine terracottas!" cried a potter - or would he think of himself as a sculptor? Sostratos didn't know. He didn't much care, either. He hoped the fellow made better pots than burnt-clay images. If he didn't, his wife and children would starve.

  "Coming out!" somebody else shouted, this time from a second-story window. Sostratos and Menedemos sprang back in a hurry. So did everyone else close by. The odorous contents of a slops jar splashed down in the middle of the street. Somebody who didn't spring back fast enough - and who got his mantle splattered as a result - shook his fist at the window, whose wooden shutters were now closed again.

  More men than women strode the streets. Respectable wives and maidens spent most of the time in the women's quarters of their houses. They sent slaves out to shop and run errands for them. Poor men's wives - the women in families that had no slaves of their own - had to go out by and for themselves. Some were brazen, or simply resigned to it. Others wore shawls and veils to protect themselves from prying eyes.

  "Don't you wonder what they look like? - under all that stuff, I mean," Menedemos said after such a woman walked past. "Puts charcoal on my brazier just thinking about it."

  "If you did see her, you'd probably think she was ugly," Sostratos said. "For all you know, she's a grandmother."

  "Maybe," his cousin admitted. "But for all I know, she could be Helen of Troy come back to earth again, or Aphrodite slumming among us poor mortals. In my imagination, she is."

  "Your imagination needs cold water poured on it, like a couple of dogs mating in the street," Sostratos said. Menedemos mimed taking an arrow in the chest. He staggered around so convincingly, he alarmed a donkey with four big amphorai of olive oil lashed onto its back with a web of leather straps. The fellow leading the donkey had several pointed things to say about that. Menedemos took no notice of him.

  And Sostratos felt a little guilty, for he too sometimes tried to imagine what women looked like under their wraps and tunics, under their shawls and veils. What man didn't, every now and then? Why did women conceal themselves, if not to spur men's imaginings?

  Musing thus, he almost walked past his own doorway. Menedemos laughed and said, "Don't come along with me yet. You need to go in and let your father know what we've done, while I tell mine. Merchants' supper at our house tonight, you know."

  Sostratos dipped his head to show he remembered. "I expect we'll have plenty to talk about, too - if our fathers haven't skinned us by then and sold our hides to the tanners."

  "We'll make money with those birds," Menedemos said stoutly.

  "We'd better," Sostratos said. His cousin winced, then waved and went on to his own house. Nothing got Menedemos down for long. Sostratos wished he could say the same. He knocked on the door and waited for his father or a house slave to let him in.

  Gyges, the majordomo, unbarred the doors and threw the two panels wide. "Hail, young master," the Lydian slave said. "How is the Aphrodite shaping?" He knew almost as much about the business as Sostratos and his father.

  "Well enough," Sostratos answered. "Is Father home? Menedemos and I bought some goods to take west when we sail, and I want to tell him about them."

  "Yes, he's here," Gyges said. "He'll be glad to see you; Xanthos just left."

  "He'd be glad to see anybody else, if Xanthos just left," Sostratos said with a laugh. The other merchant was honest and reliable, but deadly dull.

  Sostratos walked through the courtyard on the way to the andron - the men's room - where he expected to find his father. His sister Erinna was out there, watering some of the plants in the herb garden with a jar. "Hail," she said. "What's the news out in the city? I think Xanthos had some, but I stayed in till he left."

  "Some business I want to tell Father first," Sostratos said. "Other than that, I didn't hear much. The Aphrodite will be ready to sail whenever we decide the weather's good enough."

  Erinna sighed. "And then you and Menedemos will be gone till fall." She was eighteen; she'd been married for three years, but had returned to her father's household after her husband died. The dark, curly hair she'd cut short in mourning had finally grown out to close to its proper length.

  With a sly smile, Sostratos said, "You know we're only leaving to annoy you."

  "I believe it," Erinna said, and went back to watering the herbs. "Well, go on and tell Father whatever you've got to tell him. I suppose I'll hear about it eventually." She made a point of looking put-upon.

  If Father reacts the way I'm afraid he will, you'll hear about it right away, when he starts bellowing, Sostratos thought. Taking a deep breath, he went into the andron.

  Lysistratos was sitting in a chair, flicking pebbles back and forth on a counting board and muttering to himself. Sostratos' father looked up when the light changed as the younger man came in. Lysistratos was more than a palm shorter than his gangling son, but otherwise looked much like him. His hair had been darker brown than Sostratos' - almost black, in fact - but gray streaked it these days, for he'd seen more than fifty years.

  He smiled. His teeth were still good, which helped give him the appearance of a younger man despite the gray. "Hail, son," he said, and waved Sostratos to another chair. "I have news."

  "Erinna said you might," Sostratos answered. "So do I, as a matter of fact."

  "You go first." They said it together, and both laughed.

  "Go on, Father," Sostratos insisted. That was both respect for his father's years and genuine liking; Lysistratos hadn't beaten him more than he deserved when he was a boy, and more than once hadn't beaten him at all when he knew he deserved it.

  His father dipped his head in assent. "Xanthos was here a little while ago," he began.

  "Yes, I know - Gyges told me when I came in," Sostratos said.

  "All right, then. You know how Xanthos is. You have to hear about the state of his bowels, and the speech he made in the last Assembly meeting - which must have been as boring as all the rest he's ever made - and how much worse we are these days than the heroes of the Trojan War." Lysistratos rolled his eyes. "But there's usually a little wheat mixed in with all the chaff, and there was today, too."

  "Tell me," Sostratos urged.

  "I will. You know the town of Amphipolis, next door to Macedonia?"

  "Oh, yes." Sostratos dipped his head. "The historian Thoukydides talks about the place in his fifth book. Brasidas the Spartan beat Kleon of Athens there, though they both died in the battle."

  His father looked impatient. "I don't mean Amphipolis in the old days, son. I'm talking about now. You know how Kassandros, the commander in Europe, has been holding Roxane and Alexandros, her son by Alexander the Great, in the fortress there."

  "Oh, yes," Sostratos repeated. "Alexandros would be - what, twelve now? I know he was born after Alexander died. He'll be old enough to make a proper king of Macedonia before too long."

  Lysistratos tossed his head. "Oh, no, he won't. That was Xanthos' news: some time this past winter, when word would travel slow, Kassandros killed Alexandros - and Roxane, too, for good measure."

  Sostratos whistled softly and shivered, as if the andron had suddenly got colder. "Then it's just the generals now, to quarrel over the
bones of Alexander's empire. Kassandros in Macedonia, Lysimakhos in Thrace, Antigonos in Anatolia and farther Asia, and Ptolemaios down in Egypt."

  "And Polyperkhon over in the Pelopennesos, and that Seleukos fellow who's squabbling with Antigonos in inner Asia," Lysistratos said. "I wonder how long the peace your four made last summer will last. No longer than one of them sees an advantage in breaking it, or I miss my guess."

  "You're bound to be right." Sostratos shivered again. He wondered what Thoukydides would have thought of the world as it was nowadays. Nothing good; he was sure of that. In the historian's day, each polis in Hellas had been free to go its own way. Now almost all the Greek city-states danced to the tune of one Macedonian warlord or another. Rhodes remained free and independent, but even his own polis had had to throw out a Macedonian garrison after Alexander died.

  Lysistratos might have been thinking along similar lines, for he said, "Being a polis these days is a lot like being a sardine in a school of tunny. But what's your news, son? I hope it's cheerier than mine."

  "So do I," Sostratos said, wondering how his father would react. Well, he'd soon know. He brought it out in a rush: "Menedemos and I bought a peacock and five peahens from Himilkon the Phoenician, to take to Italy in the Aphrodite."

  "A peacock!" Lysistratos exclaimed. "Do you know, I've never seen a peacock in all my life. I don't blame you and your cousin one bit. If I haven't seen a peacock, you can bet none of the Hellenes in Italy has, either. They'll pay through the nose." His gaze sharpened. "And what did you pay?"

  Sostratos told him. He waited for his father to burst like a lidded pot left too long on the fire, to thunder like Zeus of the aegis.

  But Lysistratos only stroked his gray beard, a gesture Sostratos had copied from him. "Truth to tell, I haven't the faintest idea what a peacock's worth, or a peahen, either," he confessed. "I suspect nobody else does, either. What you lads paid doesn't sound too bad, not unless the birds die on the way and you have to throw them into the sea - the peacock especially."