The Gryphon's Skull Read online

  The market square was still nearly empty when the men from the got there. That let them stake out a good spot, one that would give them shade for most of the day. They arranged the jars and pots and sacks the sailors had carried. Menedemos started crying his wares: “Perfume from Rhodian roses! Fine Phoenician crimson dye! Papyrus from the Nile! Fine ink, none better!”

  A good many other people were shouting, too, for things like pots and figs—Kaunos was famous for its figs—and leather and wool cloth. Those shouts would have gone up in any city around the Inner Sea. Menedemos', for goods out of the ordinary, drew the curious and, he hoped, the slaves of the wealthy.

  “Where's your crimson from?” a man asked. “Just saying 'Phoenician,' now, that doesn't mean a thing. Plenty of towns in Phoenicia, and every one of 'em has its own style of fixing up the shellfish.”

  “Byblos,” Sostratos said. “Since sacked Tyre, everyone agrees that Byblian crimson is the best.”

  “Oh, I don't know about that,” the Kaunian replied. “I've always been partial to Sidon's dye, myself. But I might use Byblian on my wool, if T can get a halfway decent price for it. What do you want for one of your jars? They'll be a Rhodian kotyie apiece, won't they?”

  “That's right,” Sostratos replied. “About the size of a big drinking cup of wine. But you can get your wine for a few oboloi. Crimson dye is dearer—shellfish aren't so easy to come by as grapes.”

  “I know, I know.” The wool merchant sounded impatient. “Tell me what you want for a jar, I'll tell you what a gods-detested thief you are, and we'll go from there.”

  Sostratos smiled. So did Menedemos; the Kaunian didn't believe in wasting time. “Just as you say, best one,” Sostratos told him. “Thirty drakhmai the jar seems a fair price.”

  “Thirty?” the local howled. “You are a gods-detested thief! I expected you to say fifteen, and I'd've laughed at that. Ten would be too much, by .” He spoke Doric Greek not much different from Menedemos' or Sostratos', but the god by whom he swore was Karian.

  “Nice of you to stop by,” Sostratos said pleasantly. The wool merchant made no motion to leave. The little crowd that had gathered leaned forward for the next move in the dicker. Sostratos merely waited. He was good at that, better than Menedemos, who was an impulsive plunger by temperament.

  Looking like a man with a sour stomach, the Kaunian wool dealer said, “I suppose I might go up to twelve.” Sostratos hardly seemed to hear him. As if every word hurt, the local added, “Or even thirteen.”

  “Well. . .” Sostratos plucked at his beard. Everyone waited. How much would he come down? Sometimes—often—Menedemos stuck his oar into the bargaining, too, but this didn't seem to be the moment. In tones of mild regret, Sostratos said, “I don't suppose my father would take a strap to me if I got twenty-eight drakhmai the jar.” He didn't sound sure about that, though.

  He didn't drive the wool merchant away, either. The spectators smiled and nudged one another: this would be a loud, long, entertaining haggle. One man whispered to the fellow beside him, offering a bet on what price the dye would finally bring.

  Plainly, the dicker would tie things up for a while. Menedemos walked away, judging he had time for a quick look around the agora. He ate a fig candied in honey. He had to work to keep from exclaiming at how good it was. “Maybe we should talk,” he told the man selling them. “I might try bringing a few of those to Rhodes, on the off chance some people would like them.”

  “Don't wait too long, my friend,” the dealer answered. “They always go fast. I've already sold a lot.”

  “Let me see what else I might be interested in,” Menedemos said. “This fellow next to you has . . . Are those really lion skins? And what's that one with the stripes?”

  “That's from the Indian beast called a tiger,” the man at the next stall said. “If I were to stretch the skin out, you would see it's even bigger than the ones from the lions. They're local. They were killing sheep up in the hills till a whole mob of men took after 'em with spears.”

  “Er—yes,” Menedemos said. No lions on . There never had been, not so far as anyone's memory reached. Here on the Anatolian mainland, though, it was a different story. He recalled the verses he'd recited on the sea; had known the beasts well. They didn't live in Hellas these days, though some were still supposed to lurk in the back woods of Macedonia.

  Menedemos was about to ask a price for the hides. Hellenes didn't wear furs—that was the mark of Thracians and Skythians and other barbarians—but images of and Herakles could be decked in lion skins. . . and, he supposed, in a tiger skin as well. Or maybe that would do for Dionysos, who was also said to come from India.

  Before he put the question to the merchant, though, he noticed another item by the man's sandaled foot. “What exactly is that, and where did it come from?” he asked.

  “I can answer the second question easier than the first,” the fellow replied. “The fellow who sold it to me said he got it from a man who'd lived in Alexandria Eskhate.”

  “The last Alexandria?” Menedemos echoed. “ named towns for himself all over the east. Where's that one?”

  “Way off near the edge of the world—in Sogdiana, on the Iaxartes River,” the merchant said. “The Hellene who lived there got it from the Sakai who roam the plains to the north and east. Where the nomads found it, the man who sold it to me couldn't say. I guess the fellow who sold it to him didn't know, either.”

  “What is it?” Menedemos asked again. “What did it come from?” The merchant told him. His eyes widened. “You're joking.”

  “Looks like one, doesn't it?” the Kaunian said.

  “I don't know. I've never seen one before,” Menedemos answered. “I don't know anybody who has ... or maybe I do.” He glanced over toward Sostratos. His cousin looked to have just struck a bargain with the wool merchant. That meant he could come over and take a look. Menedemos whistled shrilly, then waved to draw his notice. “Oë, Sostratos!” he shouted. “Come here!”

  Sostratos was more than a little pleased with himself. He'd got the Kaunian wool merchant up to twenty-two drakhmai a jar for six jars of crimson dye. Anything over eighteen drakhmai the jar was profit, so he'd done pretty well. Now that the wool merchant had gone off to get the silver—one mina, thirty-two drakhmai, said the calculating part of Sostratos' mind that rarely rested—he wanted a moment in which he could relax and be proud of himself.

  He wanted one, but he didn't get it. From halfway across the agora, Menedemos started waving and whistling and generally acting the fool. “Oe, Sostratos!” he called. “Come here!”

  “What is it?” Sostratos shouted back. He doubted whether anything in Kaunos' market square was worth getting excited about.

  His cousin, though, evidently disagreed with him, “Come here,” his cousin repeated. “You've got to take a look at this.”

  “Take a look at what?” Sostratos asked irritably. Menedemos didn't answer. He just waved and called again. Muttering under his breath, Sostratos went over to see what besides a pretty girl could get his cousin in such an uproar.

  When he got to the flimsy stall by which his cousin was standing, Menedemos pointed dramatically and said, “There!”

  Sostratos stared. Staring didn't tell him what he needed to know, so he asked the question he had to ask: “What is that thing?”

  “A gryphon's skull,” Menedemos and the local merchant answered together. They might have come from the chorus in a revived tragedy of '.

  “A gryphon's skull?” Sostratos echoed, as if he couldn't believe his ears. As a matter of fact, he couldn't, “But... I always thought— everyone always thought—gryphons weren't real. Herodotos puts them at the end of the world with the one-eyed Arimaspioi and other unlikelihoods.”

  “This skull comes from the end of the world,” Menedemos said, and told Sostratos what the Kaunian had told him. Before Sostratos could say anything, his cousin added, “And if that's not a gryphon's skull, my dear, I'd like you to tell me what it is.”
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br />   “I . . don't know.” Sostratos squatted beside the extraordinary skull—it was definitely the skull of some sort of beast, whether gryphon or not—for a closer look. After a moment, Menedemos crouched down beside him. “What have you come across here?” Sostratos asked his cousin,

  “I already told you,” Menedemos said. “You didn't want to believe me, that's all.”

  “Do you blame me?” Sostratos said. Menedemos only shrugged.

  The skull itself said nothing at all, of course. It only lay on the muddy ground in the middle of Kaunos' agora and stared back at Sostratos out of large, empty eye sockets. The skull itself was impressively large, too: perhaps two cubits long, and almost a cubit and a half wide at the broadest point, though it narrowed at the front to a curved beak almost like that of an eagle. Growing astonishment and awe prickled through Sostratos; gryphons were supposed to have just that sort of beak.

  Unlike an eagle's, though, this beak held teeth. Sostratos tilted the skull for a better look. He would have expected fangs to put a lion's to shame, but these flat-topped, square teeth looked more like a cow's or a goat's. “Isn't that interesting?” Sostratos murmured. “No matter what we've heard, the gryphon may graze instead of killing,”

  “What makes you say that?” Menedemos asked.

  “Its teeth,” Sostratos answered, and explained his reasoning. Menedemos pursed his lips as he thought, then dipped his head in agreement.

  “You're a clever fellow,” the Kaunian merchant said. “That never would have occurred to me.”

  “A clever fellow, eh?” Sostratos tossed his head. “If I'm so clever, why did I never imagine . . . this?” He reached out and rested his palm on the skull's projecting, beaky snout. The feel of it surprised him anew; it was cooler and heavier, more solid, than he'd expected from old bone. “It might almost be stone under my ringers,” he said, and glanced toward Menedemos. “You don't suppose some sculptor—”

  “No.” His cousin cut him off. “That's impossible, best one, and you know it as well as I do. Who could have imagined such a thing, let alone carved it? Those teeth are teeth. A man would break his heart and go blind trying to shape them. And the broken horn that sticks up and back from the skull? Don't be absurd.”

  Sostratos sighed. He would have loved to tell Menedemos he was wrong, but couldn't. “You have me, I'm afraid.”

  He straightened, picked up the skull—It weighed about a third of a talent, he guessed—and turned it all the way over, wondering if the underside would tell him anything the top hadn't. On closer inspection, he discovered the teeth weren't quite so much like a cow's as he'd first thought. But he still couldn't imagine the gryphon eating meat with them.

  Menedemos pointed to some reddish dirt clinging to the bottom of the skull. “There. You see? It's not carved. It's been buried underground for a long time.”

  “Well, maybe.” Sostratos tried to scrape off the dirt with his finger. It didn't want to be scraped. He broke a fingernail trying, in fact, and had to gnaw at it to get some sort of even edge. “It's not dirt. It's stone.” He tried scraping, more cautiously, with his other index ringer. A little of the stuff came away, but not much. “Soft, sandy stone, but stone, no doubt about it.”

  After reaching out himself and scraping a bit, Menedemos dipped his head. “You're right. How long do you suppose a skull would have to stay underground to have bits of stone stuck to it?”

  “I couldn't begin to guess,” Sostratos answered. “Herodotos says the Egyptians say their kings and priests go back 341 generations, which he makes out to be something over 11,000 years. Some good part of that time, anyway.”

  “Probably.” Menedemos whistled softly. “Over 11,000 years? That's a long time. I don't suppose it's been even one thousand years since the Trojan War, has it? You know things like that.”

  Before Sostratos could tell him it hadn't been a thousand years, or even quite nine hundred, since the Trojan War, the Kaunian merchant said, “So what will you give me for this gryphon's skull?”

  And, before Sostratos could even ask him how much he wanted, Menedemos laughed and said, “Oh, my dear fellow, that old bone is interesting to look at, but I don't think we want to buy it. What in the name of the gods is it good for, except maybe as the strangest decoration for an andron anyone ever saw? Now the lion skins you've got, and the one from the—tiger, did you call it?—those I might be interested in talking about with you.”

  “Menedemos,” Sostratos said.

  His cousin ignored him. Menedemos was turning into a haggler right in front of him. Examining the skins with a critical eye, he clicked his tongue between his teeth in dismay. “I'd pay more if it weren't for this poorly repaired hole here. Where a spear went in, I suppose?”

  “Menedemos,” Sostratos said again, rather louder. The next time, he would scream his cousin's name. He was sure of it.

  But, for a wonder, Menedemos deigned to notice him. “Yes? What is it, best one? You wanted something?” He was the picture of slightly distracted good will.

  Sostratos took him by the arm. “Walk with me for a moment, if you'd be so kind.” He led his cousin out of earshot of the local before speaking in a low voice: “I want that skull.”

  “What?” As he'd thought it would, that got rid of Menedemos' distraction. “Why? What would you do with it?”

  “Take it to Athens,” Sostratos replied at once. “I'd want Theo-phrastos and the other philosophers at the Lykeion—and the ones at the Academy, too—to see it and study it and learn from it. Most philosophers have always thought the gryphon a mythical beast, like a centaur or a Cyclops. But that”—he didn't point back toward the skull, for fear of showing the merchant how much he wanted it— “proves it's as real as a horse. Don't you see how important that is?”

  “Maybe,” Menedemos said. “What I don't see is how we'll make any money from it,”

  To the crows with money, Sostratos started to say. But he didn't let the words out. His cousin understood silver much better than he understood the relentless drive of curiosity. And so Sostratos chose a different tack: “We might get the Lykeion and the Academy bidding against each other to see who would own it.”

  “Do you think so?” Menedemos quirked an interested eyebrow upward.

  “Why not?” Sostratos said. “Do you suppose philosophers have any less desire for fame and any less desire to get a leg up on their rivals than ordinary men?”

  “You would know better than I,” Menedemos answered.

  “My dear, you have no idea,” Sostratos said. “Some of the things the men of the Academy did to us when I was in Athens—”

  “And what did your side do to them?” his cousin asked shrewdly.

  “Oh, this and that,” Sostratos said in innocent tones. “But if you buy those hides—and I think you can make money from them—by all means get that skull, too.”

  “Well, I'll see what I can do,” Menedemos replied. “But if he asks a couple of talents for it, the philosophers will have to do without, because I don't believe they'll come up with that kind of money. Now you go on back and tend to what we brought to the agora: we don't want to lose customers of our own. I'll take care of this fellow. Go on, now.”

  Reluctantly, Sostratos went. He wanted to stay and do the dickering himself. Menedemos, after all, didn't really care about the gryphon's skull. But, after a moment, Sostratos realized that gave his cousin an advantage. If he haggled himself, the merchant would see how much he wanted it, and would charge accordingly. What better shield against gouging than indifference?

  To his surprise, the first Kaunian who came up to him was interested, not in dye or in perfume, but in papyrus and ink. In short order, Sostratos had sold him two round pots of ink and three twenty-sheet rolls of papyrus, and made fifteen drakhmai. “What will you do with it?” he asked the local.

  “I aim to copy out all the city laws,” the man replied. “As things are now, they're either carved in stone or written out on wooden tablets, and they're scattered all ove
r Kaunos. If we have them all in one place, we can refer to them whenever we need to, and the papyrus won't take up nearly so much space.”

  “That sounds . . .” Sostratos cast about for a word, and found one that fit: “efficient. Very efficient indeed.”

  “It's a new world,” the local said seriously. “If we don't change with the times, we'll go under.” Looking pleased with himself, he carried his purchases out of the market square.

  Sostratos cried the virtues of crimson dye and perfume and papyrus and ink—if he'd sold those to one man here, he might sell them to another. At the same time, he kept an eye on Menedemos and the man with the skins and the gryphon's skull. They both gestured with considerable animation; they were, to Sostratos' annoyance, too far away for him to hear what they were saying. Then a burly man came up and asked about his perfume, and he lost any sense of the dicker across the agora because he had to pay attention to the one at hand.

  He soon recognized his customer as a brothel keeper. “If the girls smell good, they'll get more trade, and they'll be able to charge more, too,” the fellow said. “Of course, if you try and charge me too much for your rosewater here, I'll never make back the price, so you can't squeeze me too hard.”

  Sostratos felt like squeezing the local by the neck, for distracting him from the deal in which he was more interested. He ended up selling the perfume for less than he might have, both because he was distracted and because the brothel keeper quibbled over oboloi with the dogged persistence of a man who struck a dozen bargains every afternoon. Sostratos didn't lose money on the deal, but he didn't make any to speak of, either.

  At last, after what seemed like forever, Menedemos ambled back from the Kaunian merchant's stall. “Aristeidas, Teleutas, come on back to the ship with me. We need to get some silver, and then we need to pick up some things.” He led the two sailors off toward the without telling Sostratos which things they would pick up and without giving him the chance to ask.