Over the Wine-Dark Sea

by Harry Turtledove

  "Hardly seems like barbarian work," one of the sailors said.

  "I was thinking the same thing," Menedemos answered. "The architect was probably a Hellene." Then he raised his voice again: "Perfume from Rhodes! Silk from Kos! Fine Ariousian, the best in the world, from Khios! Peafowl chicks!" He turned to Sostratos. "I wish you did know some Oscan. Then more of these people would be able to understand."

  His cousin pointed. "I think we'll do all right." Sure enough, Pompaians were converging on the men from the Aphrodite.

  One of them, a plump, prosperous-looking fellow in a toga - a garment Menedemos found very strange and not very attractive - surprised him by going over to the cage with the peafowl chicks and addressing Sostratos in good Greek: "Are these the young of the big, shiny bird with the crest and the incredible tail?"

  "Why, yes," Sostratos replied. "How do you know of peafowl? I didn't expect anyone here in Pompaia would."

  "As it happens, Herennius Egnatius brought his through the town day before yesterday, on the way up to his home in Caudium," the man said. "Everyone who saw the male was amazed. He said he bought it from a couple of Hellenes in Taras. And so, when I saw you . . ."

  "At your service, then," Sostratos said. "I would be lying, though, if I told you I knew which chicks would become peacocks and which peahens." Here in Pompaia, Menedemos might have told that lie. He didn't expect to be back any time soon to be called on it. But Sostratos had forestalled him, so now he had to make the best of it.

  The Pompaian didn't seem displeased. "Life is full of gambles, is it not?" he said. "If I bought two of these little birds, I should have a reasonable chance of getting at least one peacock, eh? What is your price?"

  Menedemos spoke before Sostratos could: "Two Tarentine minai apiece."

  With a cough, the man in the toga said, "That is a lot of silver."

  "It's a lot less than Herennius Egnatius paid for his birds," Sostratos put in.

  "Which does not make what I said any less true," the Pompaian replied. "Half your price might strike me as reasonable."

  "Half my price strikes me as unprofitable," Menedemos said. The Pompaian smiled. He might be a barbarian in a peculiar garment, but he knew the start of a dicker when he heard one.

  And it turned out to be quite a quick dicker, too, for he wanted to buy as much as Menedemos wanted to sell. They didn't take long to settle on one mina, sixty drakhmai for each bird. The local spoke a couple of crackling sentences of Oscan to the retainers who stood near him, then returned to Greek: "I shall go to my house to get the money. And when I return, I may have a thing or two to say about your wine, as well."

  Menedemos bowed, "Just as you say, O best one. Would you care to talk about the price now, so you'll know how much silver to bring back here to the market square?"

  The Pompaian plucked at his graying beard. "Do you know, that is not a bad notion. You Hellenes have a knack for picking smooth ways to do things. How much will you try to steal from me?"

  "Sixty drakhmai the amphora," Menedemos said calmly.

  "What?" Now the local dug a finger in his ear, as if to make sure he'd heard right. He spoke in Oscan, presumably translating the price. His retainers all made horrified noises. Not a bad ploy, Menedemos thought. The Pompaian went back to Greek again: "You Hellenes say your gods drink something called nectar, is it not so? Have you got nectar inside those jars?"

  With a smile, Menedemos said, "You are closer than you think. Any Khian wine is among the best that comes from Hellas, and Ariousian is to common Khian as common Khian is to ordinary wine. It's so sweet and thick and golden, you almost hate to mix it with water."

  "As far as I am concerned, you Hellenes are daft for mixing wine with water in the first place." The Pompaian folded his arms across his chest. "I shall not pay even a khalkos, though, before I taste this wine for myself. Peafowl are hard to come by. Wine, now - wine is easy."

  At Menedemos' dip of the head, one of the sailors unsealed an amphora. At the same time, one of the Pompaian's men borrowed a cup from a local wineseller. Menedemos poured some of the precious Ariousian into it and handed it to the local. "Here you are. See for yourself."

  The Pompaian stuck his forefinger into the cup and flicked out a drop or two onto the dusty ground of the market square to do duty for a libation. He muttered something in Oscan, presumably a prayer to whatever god the Samnites worshiped in place of Dionysos. Then he sniffed the wine, and then, slowly and deliberately, he drank.

  He made a good game try at not showing how impressed he was, but his eyebrows rose in spite of himself. After smacking his lips, he said, "Sixty drakhmai is too much, but I can see how you had the nerve to ask for it. I might give you sixty for two amphorai."

  Now Menedemos tossed his head. "Again, there'd be no profit in it for me at that price, not when you reckon in the effort it took me to bring the wine from Khios all the way to Pompaia." Sincerity filled his voice, as sweetness filled the Ariousian. He wasn't even lying.

  Maybe the local sensed as much. Or maybe he just had more silver than things he could readily buy in Pompaia, for, as with the peafowl chicks, he didn't seem to haggle so hard as he might have. Before long, he said, "All right, then, I'll give you a mina for the two jars."

  "Fifty drakhmai the amphora?" Menedemos said, and the Pompaian nodded. Menedemos dipped his head. "A bargain." They clasped hands to seal it. Menedemos asked Sostratos, "How much does our friend owe us altogether?"

  "Four minai, twenty drakhmai," Sostratos said at once, as if he had a counting board in front of him. Menedemos could have figured it out, too, but not nearly so fast.

  "Four minai, twenty drakhmai," the Pompaian repeated. "I shall bring it. You wait here." Off he swept, retainers in his wake. When he returned, he brought back silver coined in most of the poleis of Great Hellas, as well as coins from Italian towns. Menedemos and Sostratos had to pay a jeweler three oboloi for the use of his scale.

  Sostratos, as usual, did the weighing and calculating. When he dipped his head, Menedemos gave the Pompaian the birds and the wine. The local went off, seeming well pleased with himself. In a low voice, Menedemos asked, "How much extra did we make?"

  "By weight, you mean?" his cousin answered. "A few drakhmai."

  "It all adds up," Menedemos said happily, and Sostratos dipped his head once more.

  The next morning found Sostratos spending one of those extra drakhmai on the hire of a mule in the market square and Menedemos loudly dismayed about it. "Why do you want to go riding around?" he demanded. "Somebody will knock you over the head, that's what'll happen."

  "I doubt it," Sostratos said.

  "I don't," his cousin snapped. "I ought to send a bodyguard out with you, is what I ought to do. You're a hopeless dub with a sword or a spear."

  "You know that, and I know that, but these Italians don't know it," Sostratos answered. "All they'll see is a big man, one they'd think twice about bothering. And I want to look around a little. Who can guess when the Aphrodite will come back to Pompaia again, if she ever does?"

  "All right. All right!" Menedemos threw his hands in the air. "You're more stubborn than that mule. Go on, then. Just remember, I'll be the one who has to explain to your father why I didn't bring you back to Rhodes in one piece."

  "You worry too much," Sostratos said, and then started to laugh. "And do you know what else? You sound the way I usually do when I'm trying to keep you out of some madcap scrape. See how it feels to be on the other side?"

  His cousin still looked unhappy, but stopped arguing. Menedemos even gave him a leg up so he could mount the mule. Once Sostratos swung aboard the beast - which gave him a resentful stare - his feet almost brushed the ground: he was indeed a large man on a smallish beast. And he did have a sword belted on his hip; he wasn't such a fool as to wander weaponless.

  "Sell some more chicks," he told Menedemos. "I'll be back this afternoon."

  "Why anyone would want to go wandering around a countryside full of half-wild Italians is b
eyond me," Menedemos said. "It's not like you've got a pretty girl waiting for you, or anything else worth doing. By the gods, you're just going around for the sake of going around, and where's the sense in that?"

  "Herodotos did it." To Sostratos, that was answer enough - more than answer enough, in fact. His cousin just rolled his eyes.

  Sostratos booted the mule into motion. It brayed resentfully, but then started to walk. Its motion put Sostratos a little in mind of that of the Aphrodite, though here he was feeling it through his backside rather than the soles of his feet. He picked his way toward the north gate through Pompaia's reeking alleys: he wanted a closer look at Mount Ouesouion. The Aphrodite probably wouldn't go back to Sicily and the environs of Mount Aitne, so this was his best - probably his only - chance to see a volcano.

  He had to ask his way to the gate only once, and got lucky when he did: the first man to whom he put the question not only understood Greek but gave directions that proved detailed and accurate. The Pompaian didn't even ask for an obolos before answering. Proves he's a barbarian - any Hellene would have, Sostratos thought.

  Once out of town, Sostratos guided the mule in the direction of the mountain. Farms and vineyards filled the rolling countryside. Leptines hadn't exaggerated: the land looked finer and broader than any Sostratos had seen in cramped, rocky Hellas, though the coastal lowlands of Asia Minor might have matched it.

  The grainfields weren't planted, not in the heat of summer. When the fall rains came, the farmers would put in their wheat and barley, as they did in Hellas, to be harvested in the spring. But the vines were growing nicely. Sostratos had liked some of the Italian wines he'd drunk. He hadn't found any worth taking back to Hellas with him, but they weren't bad.

  A fellow trimming vines not far from the road waved to him. Sostratos lifted a hand in return. The farmer no doubt took him for another Italian. His tunic and broad-brimmed hat were nothing out of the ordinary. He stroked his chin. Had he been clean-shaven like Menedemos, everyone would have known him for a Hellene at once: the fashion for scraping one's cheeks smooth hadn't yet reached the Samnites. He was less likely to find trouble if people didn't take him for a foreigner.

  He rode past a couple of grave markers. One of the stelai had writing on it, in the odd-looking local alphabet. Sostratos wondered what the words meant. People were working in the fields a couple of plethra away, but he didn't call to them. Farmers were unlikely either to understand Greek or to be able to read their own tongue.

  When he came to a roadside boulder convenient for remounting, he slid off the mule and tied it to a nearby sapling. Then he squatted, not to ease himself but to scoop up some dirt in the palm of his hand. The soil was grayish brown and crumbly; it had almost the look of ashes to it. His eyes went to the slopes of Ouesouion. What was more likely than that a burning mountain should scatter ashes far and wide?

  Sostratos sniffed at the dirt, tasted of it. He was a trader, not a farmer, but, like most Hellenes, he knew something about judging soils. If this dirt wasn't rich with brimstone, he would have been astonished. No wonder the grapevines grew so exuberantly.

  He led the mule over to the rock and climbed aboard it once more. It let out an amazingly human-sounding sigh, as if to say it had hoped its work was done for the day. But, being a reasonably good-natured beast, it consented to walk on with no more complaint than that.

  After a while, Sostratos halted again, this time under the shade of a gray-branched, gray-green-leaved olive tree. The mule nibbled at grass that grew in little patchy clumps in the shade while Sostratos ate barley bread and sheep's-milk cheese and drank from a little jar of some local wine or another. He thought about sleeping for a while in the heat of the day, but tossed his head. Menedemos would say that was asking for trouble, and he'd very likely be right.

  And so Sostratos mounted the mule once again - awkwardly this time, because he had no rock handy to give himself a boost, but he managed. The mule protested much more loudly and vehemently than it had before: it was convinced he was extorting an unfair amount of work from it. He had to whack its haunch with the flat of his hand to make it get going again.

  He looked back toward the gray stone walls of Pompaia. He had no trouble spotting the town; he'd been riding mostly uphill, so it hadn't vanished behind higher ground. But he was surprised at how many stadia the mule, dismayed braying and all, had managed to cover. A glance at the sun showed noon already gone.

  "Time to head back," he told the mule, and turned it toward the Sarnos River once more. It seemed no happier about going downhill than it had about going up-, and almost bucked him off over its head when an ocellated lizard as long as his arm dashed across the road in front of it.

  "Hold still, you stupid, gods-detested thing!" Sostratos cried, hanging on to the mule's bristly mane for dear life till he got an arm around its neck. "It's not even a snake. It couldn't hurt you if it bit you." He didn't think the beast believed him.

  Some time later, when he was a good deal nearer to Pompaia and the farms clustered more closely together, a large gray-and-white dog of a breed he'd never seen before advanced on the mule from a field. By the dog's fierce, stiff-legged gait and by the way it bared long, sharp teeth, Sostratos wouldn't have been the least surprised to learn it was half wolf.

  As it came nearer and snarled again and again, he drew the sword that he hadn't needed against robbers. Fighting a dog from muleback was about as close as he cared to come to actual cavalry combat.

  But the mule proved not to need his help. The harmless lizard had terrified it. It brayed at the dog - which really could have done it harm - and lashed out with its forefeet. The dog made one little barking rush, then decided it didn't feel like sampling either mule or Hellene after all. It loped off toward a round stone farmhouse with a thatched roof a couple of plethra from the road. The mule seemed inclined to pursue it.

  Sostratos yanked back hard on the reins. The mule brayed and gave him a resentful stare. He stared back. "You really are a stupid creature," he told it. "You don't know the difference between what can hurt you and what can't." By the way it tried to pitch him off onto the dirt road again, it believed him no more than it had about the ocellated lizard.

  He got into Pompaia a little before sunset, exactly as he'd planned, and succeeded in making his way back to the agora from the northern gate without having to ask directions of anyone. After returning the mule to the local from whom he'd hired it, he walked over to Menedemos: walked with a slow, rolling, bowlegged stride, for he'd done no riding for a long time before this.

  His cousin laughed, recognizing the signs. "Don't you wish you'd stayed here with us?" Menedemos asked.

  "I do not," Sostratos replied with dignity. "I've gone exploring, and I'm glad I did it."

  "Have any trouble?"

  "Oh yes - twice." Sostratos dipped his head. He made as if to draw the sword again. "Once I almost had to fight."

  "Do you see? Do you see?" Menedemos said, his voice rising in excitement. "I told you it was dangerous out there. You're probably lucky to get back here alive. What happened, by the gods?"

  "You're right - the Italian countryside is a rougher place than I ever thought it was," Sostratos said gravely. "The first time, a lizard tried to carry off my mule: that's what the mule thought, anyhow. And then we were assailed again, the second time by a . . . stray dog."

  The sailors in the market square with Menedemos laughed. After a moment, so did Sostratos' cousin. He said, "All right, you got by with it. If you want to make me look the fool, I don't suppose I can blame you. But I still say you were the foolish one for going off by yourself."

  Sostratos grunted. He'd hoped for more of a rise out of Menedemos. What was the fun of annoying him if he wouldn't get annoyed? Dissatisfied but doing his best not to show it, Sostratos asked, "How did you do here?"

  Now Menedemos' face lit up. "I'll tell you, I'm tempted to stay here longer, to the crows with me if I'm not. I sold Ariousian, I sold silk, I sold perfume, I sold a pe
afowl chick. A lot of these Pompaians look to have more silver than fancy goods to buy with it, so they leap hard when they see something they want."

  "Do you think the same won't hold true in Neapolis?" Sostratos asked. "That's a real polis, and the folk there won't have seen the kinds of things we've got any more than the Pompaians have."

  "Some truth to that - but only some, I think," Menedemos said. "Ships from Hellas surely come to Neapolis more often than they put in here."

  "You may be right," Sostratos said. "Even so, though, I've seen as much of Pompaia and the countryside as I care to."

  "Well, yes, but have we seen as much of Pompaia's silver as we're going to? That's the real question, wouldn't you say?"

  "You're the captain. I can't tell you when to sail," Sostratos answered. "I'm just thinking that in a small town like this, you do most of your business right at the start, and then it peters out after that." Menedemos looked mulish. Have had all too recent experience with a veritable mule, Sostratos had no trouble noting the resemblance. With a sigh, he said, "Very well, O best one. If you want to stay in Pompaia a while longer, stay a while longer we shall."

  "That's right," Menedemos said smugly.

  Menedemos glanced out over the agora. He was beginning to hate Pompaians. Over the past two days, he'd sold one amphora of Ariousian, one bolt of Koan silk, and not a single peafowl chick. He wasn't even meeting the Aphrodite's expenses, let alone turning a profit.

  His glare reached over to Sostratos. His cousin only smiled back, which irked him further. Had Sostratos said something like, I told you so, they could have had a good, satisfying, air-clearing quarrel. Of course, had Sostratos said something like, I told you so, Menedemos' pride probably would have made him keep the Aphrodite tied up outside Pompaia for another couple of days. He knew that perfectly well. In fact, he was looking for the excuse.

  But Sostratos kept his mouth shut. He just went on smiling that irritating, superior smile. As sunset of the second long, boring, empty day neared, Menedemos knew he was beaten. "All right," he snarled, as if Sostratos were arguing with him. "All right, curse it. Tomorrow morning we'll head up toward Neapolis."