The Sacred Land sam-3

by Harry Turtledove

  As the two Rhodians started on their way, Abibaal called after them in Greek: “What is the trouble, best ones? Whatever it is, I can make it right.”

  “No. You lied to me,” Sostratos told him, sticking to Greek himself now. “No man would take such a small extra charge after shipping his goods across the sea. How can I trust you when you will not tell me the truth?”

  “You will find no finer dye anywhere in Phoenicia,” Abibaal said.

  “That may be, or it may not. Because you lied to me before, I have a harder time believing you now,” Sostratos answered. “But whether it’s so or not, I’m sure I can find cheaper dye there, and I intend to.”

  “You told him,” Menedemos said as the dye merchant from Sidon stared after them.

  “I don’t like being taken for a fool.” Sostratos could, in fact, think of few things he liked less. After muttering darkly to himself, he went on, “Actually, my dear, you’ll be the one buying dye and such in the coastal cities. I aim to go to that Engedi place and buy balsam straight from the source.”

  “I know what you aim to do.” Menedemos didn’t sound happy. “One Hellene wandering through a country full of barbarians where he barely speaks the language-”

  “I did well enough with Abibaal.”

  “And maybe you would again. But maybe you wouldn’t, too,” his cousin said. “Besides, a lone traveler is asking to be robbed and murdered. I would like to see you again,”

  “Would you? I didn’t know you cared.” Sostratos batted his eyelashes. Menedemos laughed. But Sostratos wasn’t about to be deflected from his purpose. “We’ve been talking about this since the end of last summer. You knew I was going to do it.”

  “Yes, but the more I think about what it means, the less I like it,” Menedemos replied. Sostratos started to get angry. Before he could say anything, though, Menedemos continued, “Why don’t you take four or five sailors with you? Bandits would think twice before they bothered a band of armed men.”

  “I don’t want-” Sostratos checked himself. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever heard. He still saw difficulties with it, though. “They speak nothing but Greek. I’d have to translate for them all the time. And, sailors being what they are ashore, they’d want to spend their time pouring down wine and bedding women, not traveling and bargaining.”

  “Oh, I think that, if one of them found a pretty girl, he’d want to dicker,” Menedemos said innocently. Sostratos made a horrible face. Grinning, his cousin went on, “I’d sooner see you come back safe, even if you did have to keep an eye on your guards while you were away.”

  “We’d need to pay them a bonus, too, to tempt them away from the taverns and brothels of whatever cities we go through,” Sostratos said.

  “Maybe we could make it payable afterwards, for good behavior,” Menedemos said.

  “Maybe.” Sostratos wasn’t convinced. “And maybe none of them would want to go for the sake of a bonus he might not earn. Besides, who says I want to play nursemaid to a squad of men who don’t want to be with me? And how could I learn anything about the countryside and its history if I am playing nursemaid?”

  Menedemos pointed an accusing finger at him. “There’s your real reason!” he exclaimed. “You’re not making this jaunt just for the sake of the balsam. You want to spy out these Ioudaioi and see what you can find out about their funny customs.”

  “Well, what if I do?” Sostratos said. Herodotos had managed to travel for the sake of travel, or so it seemed from his history. Sostratos wished he could do the same, but no such luck. “As long as I bring back the balsam, how can you complain about what else I do?”

  “How? Easy as you please. You never miss a chance to complain when I find some bored, pretty wife whose husband’s not giving her enough of what she craves.”

  The unfairness of that almost choked Sostratos. “Lying with other men’s wives-especially with our customers’ wives-is bad for business, and it’s liable to get you killed. Remember Halikarnassos. Remember Taras.”

  “Getting robbed and murdered because you’re stupid enough to travel by yourself is bad for business, too,” Menedemos retorted. “And it’s also liable to get you killed. And it’s not nearly so much fun as getting laid. Either you take an escort or you don’t go to Engedi,”

  Sostratos glared. “I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll take an escort along if you swear not to commit adultery this sailing season. If your spear gets too stiff to bear, go to a brothel and buy your relief.”

  “It’s not the same at a brothel, and you know it,” Menedemos said. “The girls there have to give you what you ask for, whether they want to or not-and mostly they don’t. But there’s nothing randier than a wife who’s done without for too long, and you know it’s more fun when the woman enjoys herself, too,”

  “I’d have more fun going to Engedi alone,” Sostratos answered.

  “Till the first arrow got you in the ribs, you would.”

  “That’s the chance you take in your games, too. You ask me to give up something, but you won’t do the same. Where’s the justice in that?”

  “By Zeus, I’m the captain,” Menedemos said.

  “But you’re not Zeus yourself, even if you swear by him, and you’re not a tyrant, either,” Sostratos replied. “Have we got a bargain, or haven’t we? Maybe I’ll just stay along the coast myself, and to the crows with getting the best price for the balsam at Engedi.”

  “What? That’s mutiny!” Menedemos squawked. “We set off to the east to buy balsam. You learned that horrible language they speak so we could buy balsam. And now you say you won’t go where they have it?”

  “Not with a squad of clumping, gallumphing sailors, not unless you give me something in return,” Sostratos said. “That’s not mutiny, my dear-that’s haggling. Are you saying you can’t keep away from other men’s wives till I get back from Engedi? What kind of weakling are you, if that’s so?”

  “Oh, all right!” Menedemos kicked at the ground, sending a pebble spinning. “All right. You’ll go with guards, and I’ll fight shy of adultery till you’re back. What oath would you have me swear?” He held up a hand. “Wait! I know! We need some wine first, though.” In Salamis’ bustling agora, buying some was a matter of a moment. “All right. Here: ‘These things fulfilling, may I drink from this source.’ “ He sipped the wine and passed it to Sostratos, who did likewise. Menedemos finished, “ ‘But if I should break it, may the cup be full of water,’ Now you repeat it after me.”

  Sostratos did. Then he said, “That’s a good oath. But why did you use a feminine participle there?-’these things fulfilling,’ I mean.”

  His cousin grinned. “That’s the end of the oath Lysistrate and the other women swore in Aristophanes ’ comedy-the oath not to let their husbands have them till they ended the Peloponnesian War. It fits here, doesn’t it?”

  Laughing, Sostratos dipped his head. “It could hardly fit better, my dear. Shall we finish that wine now?” They did and gave the cup back to the skinny little Hellene who’d sold the wine to them.

  By the time they’d gone through the market square, Sostratos had got a lot of practice saying, “No thank you, not today,” and other such phrases in Aramaic. The Phoenicians--and the Hellenes-in the agora were slaveringly eager to sell to the Rhodians. Sostratos could easily have spent every obolos he had. Whether he could sell what he bought for enough to turn a profit was a different question, though he had a hard time convincing the merchants at Salamis of that.

  He also discovered that Damonax’s olive oil was going to be even harder to move than he’d feared. Whenever he mentioned it to a trader, whether a Hellene or a Phoenician, the fellow would roll his eyes and say something like, “We make plenty at home.”

  Wearily, Sostratos would offer a protest: “But this is the finest oil, from the very first picking, from the very first pressing. The gods couldn’t make better oil than this.”

  “Let it be as you say, my master,” a Phoenician told him. “Let everyth
ing be just as you say. I will pay a premium for fine oil, certainly. But I will not pay a big premium, because the difference between the finest oil and an ordinary oil is so much less than the difference between the finest wine and an ordinary wine. It is there. You will find a few people who seek it out. But you will find only a few. My heart is full of grief to have to tell you this, my master, but it is so.”

  Sostratos would have been more irate had he not heard variations on the theme from merchants along the southern coast of Anatolia. He went on his way, wondering if urging his father to let Damonax marry into the family had been such a good idea after all.

  “What are we going to do with that oil?” Menedemos said morosely after he’d translated.

  “Burn it in lamps, for all I care,” Sostratos answered. “Rub it all over yourself. If my brother-in-law were here, I’d give him an enema with it, as much as he could hold.”

  Menedemos let out a startled laugh, “And I thought I was the one who liked Aristophanes.”

  “I won’t say anything about Aristophanes one way or the other,” Sostratos told him. “What I will say is, I don’t much like my brother-in-law right now.”

  “We could have carried quite a few things we’d have had an easier time selling,” Menedemos agreed. “We’d probably have made more money from them, too.”

  “I know. I know.” Sostratos had been thinking about that even before Damonax’s slaves stowed amphora after amphora of olive oil aboard the Aphrodite . “At least we have some room for other cargo. He wanted us to fill her to the gunwales, remember. I did manage to talk my father out of letting him get away with that.”

  “A good thing, too,” Menedemos said. “Otherwise, we’d have come home from our trading run without having sold anything. That’d be a first. And I’ll tell you something else, too: one way or another, my father would manage to blame me for everything that went wrong.”

  He often complained about his father. Sostratos had never had any particular trouble with Uncle Philodemos, but he wasn’t Philodemos’ son, either. And, from everything he’d seen, Menedemos had cause for his complaints, too. “What is it between the two of you, anyhow?” Sostratos asked. “Whatever it is, can’t you find some way to cure it?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.” Menedemos sounded surprisingly bleak. He also sounded as if he was lying, or at least not telling all of the truth.

  Sostratos thought about calling him on it. Menedemos had frozen up a couple of times before when Sostratos asked him questions like that. It was as if he knew the answer but didn’t want to air it to anyone, perhaps even-perhaps especially-to himself. What could it be? Sostratos’ ever-lively curiosity sniffed at that like a Molossian hound sniffing for the scent of a hare, but found nothing.

  That being so, changing the subject looked like a good idea. Sostratos said, “The king of Salamis and all these little Cypriot kings have to pay tribute to Ptolemaios nowadays. I wonder how they like it.”

  “Not much, unless I miss my guess, and I don’t think I do,” Menedemos answered. Sostratos dipped his head in agreement. His cousin went on in musing tones: “I wonder why towns full of Hellenes here on Cyprus have kings, where most poleis back in Hellas itself and over in Great Hellas are democracies or oligarchies or what have you.”

  “There’s Sparta,” Sostratos said.

  “I said most poleis. I didn’t say all poleis. And Macedonia isn’t a polls, but it’s got a king, too.”

  “At the moment, it hasn’t got a king, which is why all the marshals are hitting one another over the head with anything they can lay their hands on,” Sostratos pointed out. He thought for a little while. “That’s an interesting question, you know.”

  “Give me an interesting answer, then,” Menedemos said.

  “Hmm. One thing Cyprus and Macedonia have in common is that they’re right at the edge of the Hellenic world. Old-fashioned things stick around in places like this. Listen to the dialect the Cypriots use. And Macedonian’s even worse.”

  “I should say so,” Menedemos agreed. “I’m not even sure it’s properly Greek at all. But tell me, then, O best one: are kings old-fashioned? What about Alexander?”

  “Certainly not,” Sostratos said, as if he were responding to a question from Sokrates in a Platonic dialogue. In those dialogues, though, Sokrates got all the best lines. Here, Sostratos had some hope of having some himself. He went on. “But even if Alexander was something special, kingship isn’t. It is archaic in most of Hellas. Sparta’s the most conservative polls around. Add that to kings hanging on in backwoods places like this and Macedonia, and to other evidence-”

  “What other evidence?” Menedemos broke in.

  “Look at Athens, for instance,” Sostratos said. “Athens hasn’t had a king since the days of myth and legend, since King Kodros went out to fight knowing he would get killed, but would bring his city victory doing it.”

  “Why talk about Athens, then?”

  “If you’ll let me talk, my dear, I’ll tell you. Athens doesn’t have a king- hasn’t had one for ages. But it still has an arkhon called the king, who takes the place of the king it used to have in some religious ceremonies. So Athens is a place that once had a king, that shows it once had a king by keeping an official with the name but none of the power, but that doesn’t need him any more than a bird needs the eggshell it hatched out of. You see? Evidence.”

  “Well, if you went to trial with It, I don’t know if you’d convince enough jurors to win a conviction, but you’ve convinced me; I will say that.” Menedemos clapped his hands together. Sostratos grinned. He didn’t win an argument with Menedemos-or rather, Menedemos didn’t admit he’d won one-every day. But his cousin added, “No matter how old-fashioned kinging it is, the Macedonian marshals have all of the job except for the name, and they seem to like it pretty well.”

  “Of course they do,” Sostratos said. “They’re all rich as you please- Ptolemaios especially-and nobody dares tell them no. How can you not like that? But do the people in their realms like it? That’s liable to be a different question.”

  “Except in Macedonia itself, most of those people are just barbarians. They don’t know what freedom is-they lived under the Great Kings of Persia before the Macedonians came,” Menedemos answered. “And, from everything I’ve ever heard, Egyptians don’t like anything foreign.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard the same,” Sostratos agreed. “From what Himilkon says, it sounds as if the Ioudaioi don’t fancy foreigners, either.”

  “All the more reason for you to have some guards along, then,” Menedemos said. “If the people you’re going to do business with want to kill you because you’re foreign-”

  “Nobody said they wanted to kill me,” Sostratos broke in. “And I’ve agreed to bring along some sailors, remember? You’d better remember- and you’d better remember what you agreed to, too. Do you?”

  “Yes, O best one,” Menedemos answered glumly,

  Menedemos was in a sulky mood as he and Sostratos made their way back to the harbor from Salamis’ market square. No adultery, no chance for adultery, for the rest of the sailing season? He came close to wishing he’d let his fool of a cousin go off alone and get himself killed. It would serve him right, wouldn’t it?

  After contemplating that, Menedemos reluctantly-very reluctantly- tossed his head. He did like Sostratos, in an almost avuncular way, and they would be able to make a lot of money on Engedi balsam if they could bring it back to Hellas without having to pay any Phoenician middlemen.

  All the same,.. “The sacrifices I make,” he muttered.

  “What’s that?” Sostratos asked.

  “Never mind,” Menedemos told him. “I’d have to explain to my father-and to yours-how I happened to lose you to bandits, and that’s more trouble than it’s worth. Just as well, then, you’re going with guards.” And if I happen to have to pay a price for it, I pay a price for it, that’s all.

  Then Sostratos pointed to a peculiar structure off to the left and as
ked, “What’s that?” in an altogether different tone of voice.

  “Why are you asking me?” Menedemos asked in turn, “I don’t know. It’s sure funny-looking, though, whatever it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?” The more he looked at it, the stranger it seemed, too. “Some sort of shrine?”

  “Beats me.” Sostratos was staring, too. The base of the structure was of mud brick, with a mound of what looked like charcoal raised above it. Statues of a man, a woman, and three children surrounded the strange erection. Sostratos was normally a shy man, but curiosity could make him bold. He stepped in front of a passing Salaminian and asked, “I beg your pardon, but could you tell me what this building is?”

  “Know you not?” the local said in surprise. But when Menedemos and Sostratos both tossed their heads, he said, “Why, ‘tis the cenotaph of King Nikokreon, of course.”

  “Oh, a pestilence!” Menedemos snapped his fingers, annoyed at himself. “I should have thought of that. Ptolemaios made him kill himself when he took over Cyprus, didn’t he? So there isn’t any king of Salamis any more, Sostratos, Two or three years ago, it would have been. I heard about it in Rhodes.”

  “Aye, you have’t,” the Salaminian said. “‘Twas not Nikokreon alone made to slay himself, but wife and offspring as well. The monument you see here raised commemorates them all. Farewell.” He walked on.

  “Ptolemaios doesn’t like murdering people,” Menedemos remarked, “Maybe, to his way of thinking, there’s no blood guilt if he makes them kill themselves. Polemaios last year in Kos, and Niknkrcon here, too. I daresay Polemaios had it coming, though, I never would have trusted him at my back, anyhow.”

  “By the dog of Egypt, Nikokreon had it coming, too,” Sostratos said, his voice suddenly savage. “I’d forgotten what Ptolemaios made him do, but it wasn’t half what he deserved.”

  “Why?” Menedemos asked. “I’d never even heard of him till word got to Rhodes that he’d slain himself. Life’s too short to keep track of every little Cypriot kinglet who comes along.”