“Oh, yes, of course.” Menedemos dipped his head. “You’ll get better use out of them there than I will here. I’m sure of that. Just try to bring the bow back in one piece, if you’d be so kind.”
“What do you think I’d do to it?” Sostratos asked with as much indignation as he could muster.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. All I know is, things sometimes go wrong when you handle weapons.”
“That’s not fair!” Sostratos said. “Haven’t I shot pirates? Haven’t you compared me to Alexandros in the Iliad when I did?”
His cousin dipped his head once more. “You have. I have. All true, every word of it. But I’ve seen you at the gymnasion in Rhodes, too, and there are times when you’ve looked like you hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with a bow.”
That hurt. It hurt all the more because Sostratos knew it was true. He would never make a really fine archer. He would never be anything that required large amounts of grace and strength. Try as he would, he didn’t have them in him, not in large supply. I’ve got my wits, he told himself. Sometimes that brought him considerable consolation, for it let him look down his nose at people who were merely strong and athletic. Other times, such as today… He tried not to think about it.
Menedemos set a hand on his shoulder, as if to say he shouldn’t make too much of it. “If the gods are kind, you won’t have to worry about any of this. The only time you’ll shoot the bow is for the pot.”
“Yes, if the gods are kind,” Sostratos agreed. But Teleutas wouldn’t have any worries or any work to do if the gods were kind, either. Sostratos’ gaze slid to Menedemos. In a way, his cousin reminded him of Teleutas (though Menedemos would have been anything but pleased to hear him say so). They both wanted things to be easy and convenient. There the resemblance ended. If things weren’t easy or convenient, Teleutas, a man of no particular drive, would either withdraw or get through the difficulty or the inconvenience as best he could. Menedemos was much more likely to try to reshape whatever was going on around him so that it suited him better-and had both the energy and the charm to get what he wanted most of the time.
With a laugh, Menedemos went on, “Of course, if we could be sure the gods would be kind, you wouldn’t need to take guards along-or the bow, either, for that matter.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Sostratos said. “Then you could forget about your half of our bargain.”
His cousin wagged a finger at him. “That knife has two edges, and you know it. You don’t want to travel with the sailors because they’ll keep you from poking your nose into everything under the sun.”
“It’s not your nose you want to poke into everything under the sun,” Sostratos retorted.
Menedemos laughed again, this time with a booming guffaw that made several sailors turn their heads to try to find out what was so funny. He waved them back to whatever they were doing, then said, “Ah, my dear, anyone would think you knew me.”
“I’d better, after all these years of living side by side in Rhodes and even closer than that when we go to sea,” Sostratos answered. “But how much does it matter? Not so much, I’d say, as whether you know yourself.”
“That’s one of your philosophers,” Menedemos said accusingly. “I know you, too-you always try to sneak them in. You think you have to improve me, whether I feel like being improved or not.”
Since that held no small amount of truth, Sostratos didn’t waste time denying it. He said, “It’s from one of the Seven Sages, sure enough. But it’s also the inscription at Delphi. If it’s good enough for the oracle there, shouldn’t it be good enough for you, too?”
“Hmm. Maybe,” Menedemos said. “I thought it would be Platon or Sokrates-they’re the ones you usually trot out.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Sostratos knew his cousin wanted to get his goat, and also knew Menedemos was succeeding. He couldn’t keep the irritation from his voice as he continued, “Or do you think Sokrates was wrong when he said the unexamined life wasn’t worth living?”
“Here we go again. I don’t know about that,” Menedemos said. Sostratos showed his teeth in a triumphant grin; even his cousin wouldn’t have the nerve to quarrel there. But Menedemos did: “I do know that if you spend too much time examining your life, you won’t have time to live it.”
Sostratos opened his mouth, then closed it again. He hoped he would never hear a better argument against philosophy. He made the best comeback he could, answering, “One of the Seven Sages also said, ‘Nothing too much.’“
“I think we’ve had too much of this argument for now,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head, glad to escape so easily. But then Menedemos added, “I also think we’ve got too much of your brother-in-law’s olive oil.”
“So do I,” Sostratos said, “but sometimes you have to make allowances for family.” He looked Menedemos in the eye. “Think of all the allowances I’ve made for you.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Menedemos said. “Here I thought I was the one making allowances for you. Didn’t I let you wander over the Italian countryside when we were docked at Pompaia a couple of years ago, even though I was afraid somebody would knock you over the head? Didn’t I let you lug that gryphon’s skull all around the Aegean last summer, even though I was sure we wouldn’t make back what we paid for it?”
“I don’t know why you were so sure of that, when Damonax offered me enough silver to let me turn a big profit,” Sostratos said tartly.
“You turned him down, which proves you’re a fool,” Menedemos said. “And he offered it, which proves he’s a fool. If he’s not a fool, why have we got so cursed much olive oil aboard the Aphrodite ? See what I mean about making allowances for family?”
“What I see is-” Sostratos stopped and spluttered laughter. He wagged a finger at Menedemos. “Here, you’re not going to like this, but I’ll tell you what I see. I see a man who knows how to use logic but says he’s got no use for philosophy. I see a man who’d like to love wisdom but-”
“Would sooner love pretty girls and good wine instead,” Menedemos broke in.
Sostratos tossed his head. “Oh, no, my dear. You’re not going to get away with a joke this time. You’re going to let me finish. What I see is a man who’d like to love wisdom but can’t bring himself to take anything seriously. And that, if you ask me, is a shame and a waste of a good mind.”
Out in the harbor, a tern dove into the water. A moment later, it came out with a writhing fish in its beak. It swallowed the fish as it flew away. Menedemos pointed to it. “That bird has no philosophy, but it still gets its opson.”
“It does not,” Sostratos said.
“What? Are you blind? Did it catch a fish or didn’t it?”
“Certainly it did. But what does a tern live on? Fish, of course-fish is its sitos, its staple. If you gave it a barley roll, that would be its opson, its relish, because it has to have fish but it could do without the roll.”
Menedemos scratched his head in thought. Then he scratched again, this time in earnest. “I hope that miserable inn hasn’t left me lousy. All right, you’re right-fish, for a tern, is sitos, not opson. I suppose you’ll tell me that’s philosophy, too.”
“I won’t tell you anything of the sort. I’ll just ask a question.” If there was anything Sostratos enjoyed, it was the chance to play Sokrates. “If caring enough to use the right word isn’t part of loving wisdom, what is it?”
“I don’t suppose you’d put up with anything so ordinary as just trying to say the right thing, would you?”
“Is that all Homer was doing-just trying to say the right thing, I mean?”
“ Homer always said the right thing.” Menedemos sounded very sure. “And he never heard of philosophy.”
Sostratos wanted to argue that, but soon decided he couldn’t. “He doesn’t use the word for wisdom at all, does he?”
“ Sophie? Let me think.” After a moment, Menedemos said, “No, that’
s not true. He uses it once, in the fifteenth-I think-book of the Iliad: ‘And he who, thanks to the inspiration of Athene, knows well every skill.’ But he’s not talking about a philosopher-he’s talking about a carpenter. And sophie in the Iliad doesn’t mean abstract knowledge, the way it does with us. It means knowing how to do the things a carpenter does.”
“You can still use it that way,” Sostratos said, “but not, I admit, if you’re going to talk about philosophy.”
“No,” Menedemos said. “ Homer ’s a very down-to-earth poet. Even his gods on Olympos are down-to-earth, if you know what I mean.”
“They certainly are-they behave like a bunch of bad-tempered Macedonians,” Sostratos said, which made Menedemos laugh. More seriously, Sostratos went on, “They’re so down-to-earth, in fact, that some people who love wisdom have trouble believing in them.”
His cousin’s expression curdled like sour milk. Sostratos hadn’t included himself in that group, but he hadn’t excluded himself from it. He suspected he knew why Homer said nothing about philosophy. The poet had lived a long time ago, before any Hellenes began seriously asking questions of the world around them and following logic wherever it took them. We were as ignorant as any barbarians, he thought, bemused. And some of us still are, and don’t want to be any different.
Menedemos said, “Some people say they love wisdom when all they really love is making their neighbors uncomfortable.” He gave Sostratos a pointed stare.
Sostratos returned it. “Some people think that just because their great-grandfathers believed something was so, it has to be so. If we all had that attitude, we wouldn’t use iron-or even bronze, come to that-and we would have thrown back the alpha-beta like a worthless fish that nobody eats.”
They glared at each other. Then Menedemos asked, “What do you suppose would happen if you made that argument to the Phoenicians or the Ioudaioi?”
“Nothing pretty. Nothing pleasant. But they’re barbarians, and they don’t know any better. We’re Hellenes. What’s the point of being a Hellene, if not to use the wits the gods-whatever they may be-gave us?”
“You think you have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“No. Not at all.” Sostratos tossed his head. “I think we should use our wits, though, to try to find answers, and not rely on whatever our forefathers said. They might have been wrong. A lot of the time, they were wrong. If I’d managed to get that gryphon’s skull to Athens, for instance, it would have shown people how wrong they were about the beasts.”
“Yes, but how important are gryphons?” Menedemos asked.
“Gryphons aren’t important, not by themselves,” Sostratos said. “But the men of the Lykeion and the Academy would have looked at the evidence and changed their views to fit. They wouldn’t have said, ‘No, we won’t believe what the skull tells us, because our great-grandfathers told us something else.’ And that’s important, don’t you see?” He sounded as if he was pleading, and he sadly wondered whether Menedemos understood at all.
6
Menedemos clapped Sostratos on the back, then cupped his hands and interlaced his fingers to give his cousin a leg-up. With his help, Sostratos swung up onto the back of the mule he’d bought. Sostratos looked around with a grin, saying, “I’m not used to being so far off the ground.”
“Well, O best one, you’d better get used to it,” Menedemos answered. “You’re going to be on that mule for a while.”
“That’s right,” Aristeidas agreed with a grin. “You’ll come back to Sidon all bowlegged.” He stumped around with his legs splayed wide apart.
“Go howl!” Sostratos said, laughing.
“No, Aristeidas is right, or he should be. I like that,” Menedemos said, laughing, too. “Your legs’ll look like an omega, thus.” He wrote the letter-?.-in the dust of the street with his right big toe, then he also imitated a bowlegged man. “And when you get back, you won’t be any taller than I am.”
“In your dreams,” Sostratos retorted. That held more truth than he might have guessed, for Menedemos, especially when they were both growing up, had dreamt of matching his gangling cousin’s height. Sostratos went on, “You’d burst like a squashed melon if Prokroustes tried stretching you on his rack till you were my size.”
“Ha!” Menedemos said. “Prokroustes’d be cutting you down to size if he ever got you to sleep in his bed, and he’d start with your tongue.”
Sostratos stuck out the organ in question. Menedemos made as if to grab for his belt knife. Sostratos looked from him to Aristeidas, Teleutas, and Moskhion. The former sponge diver carried a pike as tall as he was, while the other two men wore swords on their hips. “Some bodyguards,” Sostratos said. He had a sword himself; a leather bowcase held Menedemos’ bow, several spare bowstrings, and twenty arrows. All four men wore cheap bell-shaped bronze helmets that would keep a club from knocking their brains out. The helms offered no protection for the face, but were far lighter and cooler than the all-enclosing ones hoplites used.
“I think we’re ready,” Sostratos said. As if to agree with him, Aristeidas picked up the lead rope of the donkey that carried their trade goods and money. The donkey brayed in protest. A moment later, the mule joined in, its voice louder and deeper.
“Wing-foot Hermes keep you safe,” Menedemos said. He set his hand on Sostratos’ leg for a moment. His cousin covered it with his own hand. Then Sostratos flicked the reins and squeezed the mule’s barrel with his knees and calves. The beast brayed again. For a moment, Menedemos thought it would do no more. But, ears twitching resentfully, it began to walk. Aristeidas had to yank on the ass’ lead line to get it to follow. The four Hellenes and two animals left the harbor and disappeared into Sidon. Before long, they’d be off in the wilds of the land of the Ioudaioi.
“Keep an eye on him, all of you,” Menedemos muttered. He wondered if he was talking to the sailors from the Aphrodite who accompanied Sostratos or to the gods high above. By then, the sailors were too far away to hear him. He hoped the gods weren’t.
Sighing, he walked back up the pier to the Aphrodite . Diokles said, “Hope everything goes good for him, skipper.”
“Yes. So do I,” Menedemos replied.
“He’s a clever fellow, your cousin,” the oarmaster said, doing his best to sound reassuring. “He’ll be fine.”
Menedemos remained un-reassured. “Oh, yes, Sostratos is very clever,” he said. “But has he got any common sense? There are times when I don’t think he’s got as much as the gods gave a gecko.”
“He’s got more than you think,” Diokles said. “The two of you, you’re kin, so of course you can’t see each other straight.”
“Maybe you’re right. I hope you’re right,” Menedemos said. “Still and all, though, I wish he weren’t wandering around among the barbarians. When he goes and does something strange, Hellenes know how to make allowances: almost everybody’s seen someone who’s more cut out to be a philosopher than to live in the real world. But what do these silly Ioudaioi know about philosophy? Not a thing. Not a single, solitary thing. How could they? They’re just barbarians. They’ll think he’s crazy, is what they’ll think.”
“Your cousin doesn’t do that stuff all the time, or even very often,” Diokles said.
“I hope you’re right,” Menedemos repeated. If the keleustes was right, Sostratos would, or at least might, come back with balsam and with profit. If, on the other hand, he was wrong… Menedemos didn’t want to dwell on that but couldn’t help it. He said, “If Sostratos has all this common sense, why did he take Teleutas for one of his guards? Why not anybody else? I wish I hadn’t let him.”
Diokles put the best face on it he could: “Nobody’s ever been able to prove anything bad about Teleutas. Everything he does, there’s always a good reason for it, or there always could be one, anyway. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have let him ship with us last year, let alone this year.”
“It could be,” Menedemos admitted. “Yes, it could be. But when he’s one of forty
-odd men aboard the Aphrodite , that’s one thing. When he’s one of four Hellenes in the middle of nowhere, that’s something else-or it’s liable to be something else, anyhow.”
Diokles didn’t argue with him. He wished the keleustes would have. He wanted to think he was wrong, not that he was right. What Diokles did say was, “While your cousin’s traveling, what will you do?”
“The best I can,” Menedemos answered. “Gods only know how I’m going to unload the olive oil we’re carrying, but we’ll see about that. I do have hopes for the rest of the food and the perfume and the silk and especially the books. Sostratos was clever there. I wouldn’t have thought of them by myself, and we’ll make a fine profit from them-or I hope we will.”
“That’d be nice,” the oarmaster said agreeably. “How do you propose to go about selling ‘em, though? You can’t just take ‘em to the market square. Well, I suppose you could, but how much good would it do you? Mostly Phoenicians there, and they won’t care anything about our books.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about that,” Menedemos said. “What I have in mind doing is…” He explained. “What do you think of that?”
“Not bad, skipper.” Diokles grinned and dipped his head. “Matter of fact, not half bad. I’d love to see you when you bring it off, I would.”
“Well, why don’t you come along?” Menedemos said.
“And who’d keep an eye on the ship if I did?” Diokles asked. “If your cousin were here, if Aristeidas were here, even, that’d be different. But the way things are, I think I’d better stick around when you’re away.”
Menedemos clapped him on the back. “You’re the best keleustes I’ve ever known. You ought to have a ship of your own. I’m sorry things haven’t broken the way they might have for you.”
With a shrug, Diokles said, “One of these days, maybe. I’ve had the same thought. I’d like to be a captain. I won’t say any different. But things could be a lot worse, too. If I hadn’t been lucky, I’d still be pulling an oar somewhere.” He held out his hands, palms up, to show the thick rower’s calluses they still bore.
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