"Ah, too bad," Xanthos said. "That cost you some money, it did, it did." Sostratos gravely dipped his head. He didn't say anything. Much later than Xanthos should have, he began to suspect he'd outstayed his welcome. "Well, I guess I'll wander over and pay my respects to Menedemos and his father."
"Good to see you," Sostratos said. Good to see you go, he glossed silently. He was glad enough to clasp Xanthos' hand as the other merchant took his leave. So was Lysistratos. Son and father looked at each other. When they heard Gyges close the door behind Xanthos, they sighed in unison. "Is there any more wine left in the oinokhoe?" Sostratos asked. "He's windy without eating beans and cabbage."
When his father shook the jar, it sloshed. He poured some into Sostratos' cup, the rest into his own. "He means well," he said.
After hearing every word of Xanthos' speech before the Assembly, Sostratos was not inclined to be charitable. "So does a puppy that piddles on my feet," he said, and drank the wine his father had given him.
"I know what you're thinking," Lysistratos said. "I'll have you know, though, that I suffered worse than you. I've heard his speech twice now."
"Oh, poor father!" Sostratos exclaimed, and put an arm around Lysistratos' shoulder. They both started laughing. Once they started, they had a hard time stopping. It's not the wine. Sostratos thought. We didn't drink that much. It had to be Xanthos' speech. That would have paralyzed a man who'd drunk nothing but water his whole life long.
"We shall have to have a feast to welcome you back," Lysistratos said. "A couple of feasts, in fact: one for your sister and your mother, and the other a proper symposion where you and your cousin can speak at length of your adventures in Great Hellas. Did you truly beat a trireme in the Aphrodite?"
"We wrecked its starboard bank of oars, and that let us get away," Sostratos replied. "Menedemos was telling Uncle Philodemos about it just before you got down to the harbor. I'm sure, at the symposion, he'll make a much more exciting story of it than I ever could."
"Exciting stories are all very well after the wine's gone round a few times," his father said. "I'd also like to have some notion of what really happened, though." Lysistratos' smile was lopsided, the smile of a man who'd learned not to expect too much from the world. "It might even make the stories more exciting."
"I'll tell you everything, as best I remember it," Sostratos promised. "But you should also listen to Menedemos' version, and Diokles' as well. Then you can put them together for yourself and decide where the real truth lies." He laughed at himself. "Anyone would think I wanted to write a history one day. That's how Thoukydides says he went about figuring out just what happened in the Peloponnesian War."
"Seems a sensible way to try to learn things," Lysistratos said.
Sostratos snapped his fingers. "Diokles!" he exclaimed. "I do want to put in a good word for him. We couldn't have had a better oar-master. Honest, sensible, brave when he needs to be - I'd love to sail with him as keleustes again next spring, but he'd make a good captain, too."
"I've always thought well of him, ever since the days when he first started pulling an oar," Lysistratos said. "I'll tell you what I do. When we have our symposion here, I'll invite him. I'm sure he can tell some stories of his own, and that will also let him talk with some other men who might want to offer him command of a ship."
"That would be very good, Father." Sostratos enthusiastically dipped his head. "It might be our loss, but Diokles deserves the chance."
"I should say so," Lysistratos agreed. "Considering how much silver you brought home, anyone who helped you earn it deserves a hand up from us. A man should lift up his friends and put down his enemies as he can, eh?"
"So Hellenes have said since the days of Akhilleus and Agamemnon," Sostratos answered. And so Hellas has seen endless factions and feuds, too, he thought, and then, I wonder if that would make sense to any of Alexander's marshals. Probably not, worse luck, or they wouldn't be at one another's throats.
Lysistratos pointed. "There's your sister, watering the garden. She'll be glad to see you."
Sostratos had heard water splashing from a hydria, too, but sat with his back to the courtyard. He'd guessed the slave girl, Threissa, was doing the work. "I'm always glad to see her," he said, getting to his feet. He walked out of the andron and called, "Hail, Erinna."
His sister squeaked, put down the water jar, ran to him, and threw herself into his arms. "Hail, Sostratos!" she said, and kissed him on the cheek. "When that wharf rat came yelling with news the Aphrodite was back, I almost veiled myself up and ran down to the harbor myself to come get a look at you as soon as I could." She grinned wickedly. "Wouldn't that have been a scandal?"
"It's not something girls of a good family do very often," Sostratos said diplomatically.
"I'm not exactly a girl of good family any more," Erinna answered. "The rules are a little looser for a widow."
"I suppose so," Sostratos said. "Father tells me you almost had a match this summer."
"Almost," Erinna agreed bitterly. "But then they decided to wed their son to a maiden instead. Look at me, Sostratos!" His sister seized his hands and held them. "Is my back bent? Is my hair gray? Are my teeth turning black and falling out?"
"Of course not." Sostratos answer was automatic. "By Zeus, you're still my little sister, and I'm a long way from an old man."
"Well, that other family treated me like an old woman," Erinna said. "When the other match came along, they dropped me as if they thought I'd be a shade in the house of Hades day after tomorrow. How am I supposed to have a family if no one wants to marry me any more?"
"You're always part of our family," Sostratos said.
His sister impatiently tossed her head. "I know that, but it's not what I meant, and you know it isn't. I meant a family of my own."
"Don't worry," Sostratos said. "You'll have one." If we have to make your dowry bigger, then we do, that's all. We can afford it better than we could have before this voyage. The silver we made in Syracuse will come in handy, no matter how much I wish Menedemos hadn't taken such a chance to get it.
"I hope so," Erinna said. "Childlessness is a terrible thing." Her smile seemed to Sostratos a deliberate effort of will, one that sprang from purposely turning her back on her troubles. She made her voice bright and cheerful, too: "Tell me about the voyage. Even if I am a widow, I'm a respectable woman, so I hardly get out of the house except to festivals and such, but you - you get to go across the sea. You know I'm jealous."
"You have less to be jealous of than you think," Sostratos said. "If you feel crowded and closed in here, imagine spending a night at sea aboard an akatos, where most of the men don't even have room to lie down to sleep."
"But you see something new every day, every hour!" Erinna sighed. "I know every bump and scratch on the walls of the women's rooms upstairs, every knot in the planks of the roof beams. Even coming out here to the courtyard feels like a journey to me."
He wanted to laugh, but he didn't. Men and women lived different lives, and that was all there was to it. So he spoke of meeting Ptolemaios' five in the Aegean, of the little earthquake while they were at Cape Tainaron, of Herennius Egnatius' toga in Taras, of seeing Mount Aitne and Mount Ouesouion, of his muleback excursion from Pompaia toward Ouesouion, and of the eclipse of the sun at Syracuse. He couldn't have had a more attentive audience; his sister hung on his every word.
Erinna sighed again when he finished. "When you tell me about these things, I can almost see them in my mind. How marvelous it must be to see them in truth."
"I'm just glad I saw the volcanoes when they were quiet," Sostratos said.
"Well, yes," Erinna admitted. "But even so." Her gaze sharpened. "When the man came running up here from the harbor, he was shouting about sea fights. You didn't talk about any sea fights."
"We really had only one," he said, and told her the story of the clash with the Roman trireme.
This time, his sister clapped her hands when he was done. "That was exciting," she sai
d. "Why didn't you tell me about it before?"
Sostratos chuckled sheepishly. "Because it wasn't exciting while it was going on, I suppose," he answered. "It was terrifying. And seeing the Carthaginian fleet coming at us outside of Syracuse was worse. If that had turned into a sea fight, we couldn't possibly have won."
"Why did you let Menedemos go on, then?" Erinna asked.
Sostratos' mouth twisted into a wry, lopsided smile. His laugh was similarly sour. "My dear, it wasn't a question of my letting him do any such thing. I'm toikharkhos. He's the captain. The choice was his. I tried to talk him out of it." I thought he was a fool. I thought he was a reckless idiot. "When he said we were heading for Syracuse, what could I do? Leave the ship and swim home? It turned out well."
"Luck," Erinna said, and then, "Why are you laughing now?"
"Because you sound just like me," he told her. "But it wasn't all luck. Menedemos turned out to be right about that. Agathokles used the grain fleet to lure the Carthaginian ships away from the harbor and give his own navy the chance to get out and make for Africa."
"Can he take Carthage?" Erinna asked.
"I don't know," Sostratos answered. "Nobody knows - including the Carthaginians, I'm sure. But I do know they can't be anxious to find out. No one's ever tried to take the wars in Sicily to their country before."
"Alexander conquered the barbarians in the east," his sister said. "Why shouldn't Agathokles conquer the barbarians in the west?"
"I can think of two reasons," Sostratos replied. Erinna raised a questioning eyebrow. He explained: "First, the Carthaginians are still strong. And second, Agathokles isn't Alexander, no matter how much he wishes he were."
"All right." Erinna hugged him again. "It's so good to have you home. No one else takes me seriously when I ask questions."
"Well, if your brother won't, who will?" Sostratos kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be home till spring, so you'll have plenty of chances to ask them. But now I'm going upstairs." With obvious reluctance, she dipped her head and let him go. As he headed for the stairway, she picked up the hydria and went back to watering.
He was halfway up the stairs when Threissa started down them. "Hail, young master," the redheaded slave girl said in her oddly accented Greek. "Welcome home."
"Hail. Thank you," he said, and went up another couple of steps. The Thracian slave wasn't so pretty as Maibia had been. But Maibia was back in Taras while Threissa was here - and Sostratos had gone without a long time. "Come to my room with me," he told her.
She sighed. She couldn't say no, not when she was as much property as the bed on which he intended to have her. But she said, "All right," in a way that promised she would give him as little enjoyment as she could.
He considered ways and means. "I'll let you have a couple of oboloi afterwards."
He didn't have to do that, not with a family slave. "All right," Threissa said, but this time in a different tone of voice. "Maybe even three?"
Slaves are mercenary creatures, Sostratos thought. But then they have to be. "Maybe," he answered. Threissa waited for him at the top of the stairs. They went down the hall together to his room. He closed the door behind them.
"Come on," Menedemos said as he and Sostratos made their way toward the gymnasion in the southwestern part of Rhodes, not far from the stadium and the temple dedicated to Apollo. "It'll do you good. We've been away too long."
His cousin accompanied him only reluctantly. "What you mean is, it'll do you good to show you can still outrun me and throw me when we wrestle. I don't know why you bother. We both know how that will come out."
"That's not the point," Menedemos said, which was at least partially true. "The point is, a proper Hellene doesn't let himself go to seed."
"I can think of quite a few things you do that a proper Hellene doesn't," Sostratos said tartly. "Why shouldn't I get to pick and choose, too?"
Since Menedemos knew he had no good comeback for that, he didn't bother trying to find one. Instead, he repeated, "Come on," adding, "No point in going back now. Look, you can already see the theater and the southern wall beyond it."
"And if I went back home, I could see Demeter's temple," Sostratos retorted. "Did you drag me out here to see the sights? I don't mind that so much. Going to the gymnasion is a different story."
"Quit complaining," Menedemos said, beginning to lose patience. "You can let yourself get all hunched-up and flabby, like a shoemaker stuck at his bench all the time or a barbarian who doesn't care what he looks like because he never takes off his clothes, or else you can try to be as much of a kalos k'agathos as you can."
"I have much more control over whether I'm good than I do over whether I'm good-looking," Sostratos said. Despite his grumbles, he accompanied Menedemos into the gymnasion. They stripped off their chitons - being seamen, they didn't bother with sandals - and gave an attendant an abolos to keep an eye on the clothes while they went out and exercised.
Some of the men running on the track or grappling with one another in the sandy wrestling pits plainly didn't get to the gymnasion often enough. But others . . . Menedemos pointed. "There's a pretty boy, fourteen or fifteen, and handsome enough to have his name scrawled on the walls." His own name had gone up on more than a few walls when he was that age; Sostratos', he remembered rather too late, hadn't.
All his cousin said now, though, was, "Yes, and doesn't he know it? If he sticks his nose any higher in the air, he'll get a crick in the neck."
"When you look like that, you can get away with a few airs," Menedemos said. Sostratos only grunted.
They ran a few sprints to loosen up. Menedemos savored the feel of the breeze against his skin, the grass at the verge of the track flying by as he strained to get every bit of speed from himself he could. He also savored leaving Sostratos in his wake, hearing his cousin's panting breath fade behind him time after time.
"You're a pentekonter, sure enough," Sostratos said. "Me, I'm just a round ship."
Menedemos' turn of speed drew the notice of a fellow a couple of years younger than he who also had the lean, muscular build of a runner. "Try yourself against me?" the younger man said. "I'm Amyntas son of Praxion."
"Pleased to meet you." Menedemos gave his own name, and introduced Sostratos, too. "I'd be pleased to run with you. My cousin will call the start."
"Good enough," Amyntas said. "Would you care to put a drakhma on the race, just to make it interesting?"
"Interesting, eh?" Menedemos raised an eyebrow. "All right, if it pleases you. Sostratos, turn us loose." He took his position on the track beside Amyntas.
"Ready?" Sostratos called. "Set." Both runners tensed. "Go!"
Amyntas went off like an arrow from a bow. Menedemos stayed shoulder to shoulder with him till they were within twenty-five or thirty cubits of the end of the stadion course, but Amyntas pulled away and won by five cubits or so. "I can do better than that," Menedemos said. "Try it again, double the stake to the winner?"
"Why not?" Amyntas said, not quite hiding a predatory smile as they walked back to the beginning of the course. Several men gathered to watch them now. Menedemos wondered if Sostratos would give him a fishy stare for gambling on his legs. But his cousin only shrugged and called the start again. He's probably glad not to be running himself, Menedemos thought, leaning forward to get the best start he could.
"Go!" Sostratos said, and Menedemos and Amyntas shot away once more. Again, Menedemos stayed close to the younger man till the race was almost over. Again, he couldn't quite keep up at the end. Again, he kicked at the dirt in frustration.
"That's two drakhmai you owe me," Amyntas said, not bothering to hide his grin now that he'd won.
"Let's double it one more time." Menedemos sounded like a man determined to win his way back to prosperity no matter how long it took - and no matter if it broke him first.
"Just as you say, best one," Amyntas replied as they walked back toward the starting line.
"Give us a start one more time," Menedemos calle
d to Sostratos. "I'm going to whip this fellow yet, and I've doubled the bet to prove it." Some of the men who stood at the side of the track watching murmured among themselves. Amyntas' grin got wider; he had witnesses, in case Menedemos didn't feel like paying up.
They took their marks. "Ready?" Sostratos said. "Set . . . Go!"
Amyntas and Menedemos flew down the track side by side. As before, Menedemos hung at the younger man's shoulder till they were about thirty cubits from the end of the course. Then Amyntas, leaning forward for his final sprint, let out a startled grunt. Menedemos went past him as if his feet were suddenly nailed to the dirt, and won by three or four cubits.
"That's four drakhmai you owe me," he said cheerfully. "Or would you like to double the bet again?"
"Oh, no." Amyntas tossed his head. "I know what I just saw. You held back the first two runs to draw me in, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Menedemos' voice was arch. "Besides, how can I be sure you weren't trying to fool me there?" But he knew. Amyntas had been running flat out, and he hadn't been good enough. Menedemos chuckled. If he'd been fast enough to go to Olympia a couple of years before, Amyntas would have remembered his name. Nobody recalled the also-rans, but a man nearly fast enough to represent his polis at the Olympic Games was plenty fast to beat a fellow who picked up a little extra silver betting on his legs now and then.
"Why haven't I seen you round the gymnasion more?" Amyntas asked sadly. "I would have known better than to take you on."
"I just got back from Great Hellas," Menedemos replied, and the other man rolled his eyes in sorrow and chagrin.
They walked back toward Sostratos by the start line. Amyntas peeled off toward the building where the men left their tunics. "I hope he's not going to get dressed and skip out without paying you," Sostratos said. To him, it was the principle of the thing more than the money.
"I doubt it," Menedemos said. "He couldn't show his face here again for shame if he did - too many people watching. Shall we throw javelins while we wait?"
Over the Wine-Dark Sea Page 41
