Owl to Athens

by H. N. Turteltaub

  “There’s more yet? Papai!” Menedemos said. “Come on, then. Let me hear it. After ninety-nine lashes, what’s the hundredth?”

  “Just so. As part of an offering, we Athenians are supposed to consecrate some shields at Delphi. There’s been a disagreement over how best to do it. So Dromokleides, that worthless arse-licker, put forth a motion that the people of Athens should choose a man who would sacrifice, get good omens, and then approach Demetrios—approach the savior god, is how the motion puts it—and get his oracular response on how best to perform the consecration. And whatever he says, that’s what Athens will do. And the motion passed. Someone’s probably busy cutting the letters into stone right now.”

  “Oh, dear,” Menedemos said again. That wasn’t enough. “Oh, my.” That wasn’t enough, either. He finished his wine in a hurry and poured himself some more. That might not have been enough, either, but it was on the right track.

  “We won at Marathon,” Protomakhos said bitterly. “We won at Salamis. We fought Sparta for a generation. I was just going from youth to man when we gave the Macedonians all they wanted at Khaironeia, That would have been around the time you were born. We lost, but we fought hard. We gave it everything we had. Even Leosthenes stood up against the Macedonians after Alexander died. And now this! It makes you want to cry.” By his anguished expression, he meant it literally.

  Menedemos set a hand on the Rhodian proxenos’ shoulder. “I’m sorry, best one,” he said; on matters political, he could and did sympathize with Protomakhos. “Times are hard nowadays.”

  “Furies take all the Macedonians—Demetrios and Antigonos, Kassandros, Lysimakhos, Ptolemaios, Polyperkhon, all of them!” Protomakhos burst out. It’s the wine, Menedemos thought. This is too strong a mix, and it’s having its way with him. But Protomakhos didn’t sound the least bit drunk as he went on. “This could happen to Rhodes, too, you know. If one of the marshals ever gets inside your walls, you’ll bend over backward—bend over forward—to keep him happy, too.”

  That made Menedemos take a swig from the cup he’d refilled. He spat into the bosom of his chiton to turn aside the evil omen. “May that day never come,” he said. If it did, he feared Protomakhos was right. Flatterers lived everywhere, and none of the Macedonian marshals— with the possible exception of Antigonos—had shown himself immune to praise.

  “We said the same thing, Rhodian. Don’t forget that,” Protomakhos replied. “What you wish for and what you get too often don’t match.” He eyed the little jars of perfume Menedemos had set down so he could drink some wine. “I’m sorry I burdened you with this. Go on back to the agora and make yourself some silver.”

  “It’s all right,” Menedemos said easily, “Don’t worry about it. You’ve shown Sostratos and me every kindness.” More than you know, in fact. “The least I can do in return is lend an ear.”

  “Nice of you to say so,” Protomakhos told him. “What I say is, the two of you have been the best guests I’ve had since I became proxenos. I’ll be sorry when you go back to Rhodes, and you’re welcome in my home any time.”

  “Thank you very much.” Menedemos took a long pull at his wine to help hide any blush he might be wearing. He wasn’t immune to embarrassment. Hearing such praise from a man whose wife he’d bedded made him feel foolish, not to mention guilty. But showing what he felt would only land him in trouble, and what Protomakhos had to say then would be anything but praise.

  For now, the Rhodian proxenos remained oblivious. “I tell you only what you deserve,” he said.

  Menedemos finished his wine, took up the perfume, and left Protomakhos’ house in a hurry. He didn’t want to betray himself, and he didn’t want to lacerate his conscience any more, either. As he threaded his way through Athens’ twisting streets toward the agora, he wondered why it troubled him. It hadn’t during his affairs in Halikarnassos and Taras and Aigina and any of several other towns. Why here? Why now?

  You’ve been listening to Sostratos for too long, and he’s finally started rubbing off on you. But Menedemos tossed his head. It wasn’t that simple, and he knew it. Part of it was that he’d come to know and to like Protomakhos, which he hadn’t with any of the other husbands he’d outraged. Part of it was that he remained unsure how much of what Xenokleia said about Protomakhos was true and how much invented to spur on her new lover.

  And part of it was that seducing other men’s wives was a sport that was starting to pall. The thrill of sneaking into a strange bedroom seemed smaller. The risks seemed bigger. And he’d come to realize that what he got from the women, while better in its way than what he got in a brothel, wasn’t exactly what he wanted, or wasn’t all of what he wanted.

  Maybe I need a wife. The thought so surprised him, he stopped short in the middle of the street. A man behind him who was leading a scrawny donkey loaded down with sacks of grain or beans let out an indignant squawk. Menedemos got moving again. His father had started talking about looking for a bride for him. Up till this moment, he hadn’t taken the idea seriously himself.

  And Father has the woman I really want—and I think she wants me. Menedemos muttered under his breath. For the past several sailing seasons, he’d done his best to leave thoughts of Baukis behind when Rhodes dropped below the horizon. Some things he would not do, no matter how tempting. He hoped he wouldn’t, anyhow.

  He wondered why she drew him so. She wasn’t spectacularly beautiful, even if she did have a nice shape. The only thing he could think of was that he’d got to know her even before he first found her attractive.

  She’d been a person to him, a person he liked ... and then he’d noticed her sweet hips and rounded bosom (considerably sweeter and more rounded now than when she’d come into the household as a girl of fourteen). He whistled tunelessly. Could that make such a difference? Maybe it could.

  Here was the agora. He’d got to it without noticing the last half of his journey. He tried to put Baukis out of his mind—tried, but didn’t have much luck. He made an unhappy noise, down deep in his throat. Even he knew how dangerous falling in love could be. And it would have been dangerous even if she weren’t his father’s wife. Like any Hellene, he reckoned falling in love a disease. It was, in many ways, an enjoyable disease, but that didn’t improve the prognosis. Of course, the prognosis for anyone who fell in love with his stepmother—even if she was years younger than he—was bad.

  The hurly-burly of the market square came as a relief. With people chattering and chaffering all around him, Menedemos couldn’t keep his mind on his own worries. Somebody said, “I wonder how the world could have existed before DemetrioZeus created it. I suppose all our ancestors were just figments of his imagination.”

  “Fig-sucking figments,” somebody else replied, and added another obscenity on top of that.

  Menedemos laughed. Not all the Athenians were impressed with what the Assembly had voted, then. That was a good sign. He almost paused to talk politics with the men who’d jeered at the latest decree. Then he decided to keep walking instead, for he realized they likely wouldn’t want to talk to him, not when his accent proved him a foreigner the instant he opened his mouth. A man could say things to his friends that he wouldn’t to a stranger.

  Someone was selling garlic in the place where Menedemos had been selling perfume. That made him laugh again. Unlike Sostratos, who was given to prolonged sulks, Menedemos had trouble staying gloomy for long. He found another spot, one not far from the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton in the middle of the agora. Most Athenians believed the two young men had liberated them from tyranny a couple of centuries before. From what Sostratos said, that wasn’t how things had really happened. Even nitpicking Sostratos, though, couldn’t deny that what people believed often helped shape what would happen next.

  “Fine rose perfume from the island of roses!” Menedemos called.

  For this, as opposed to politics, his Doric drawl was an asset. He held up a perfume jar in the palm of his hand. “Who wants sweet-smelling Rhodian perfume?�
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  As usual, all sorts of people came up to him and asked how much the perfume cost. Also as usual, most of them retreated in dismay when he told them. And some of them got angry when they found out. A woman who’d brought a basket of eggs into the city from a farm or a village out beyond the walls exclaimed, “How dare- you sell anything that expensive? How do you think it makes people who have to worry about every obolos feel?” That she was there and unveiled and sun-browned and wearing a tunic full of patches and mends said she was one of those people.

  Shrugging, Menedemos answered, “In the fish market, some people buy eels and tunny and mullet. Others buy sprats or salt-fish. Some people wear golden bracelets. Others have to make do with bronze.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t chosen that example. The woman with the basket of eggs wore a bronze necklace. The day was warm, and the cheap piece of jewelry had left a green mark on her sweaty skin. But her reply took a different tack: “But there’s something for poor people there, anyhow. Where can I find perfume somebody like me could buy? Nowhere. All I can do is envy the fancy whores who get it.’’

  He shrugged again. What could he say to that? She wasn’t wrong. Before he found any words, she turned her back and strode away in magnificent contempt. He bit his lip. He couldn’t remember the last time a mere woman—especially one he wasn’t bedding—had made him feel ashamed.

  “I’m allowed to make a living, too,” he muttered. But, because the Aphrodite carried only luxury goods—the most profitable sort—he dealt for the most part with rich men and the occasional rich woman. He and Sostratos were rich themselves, or rich enough. He too often took for granted the life he led. He never had to worry about where his next meal was coming from, or to agonize over whether to spend an obolos on food or rent. Neither did anyone he knew. Even the family slaves had . . . enough.

  But life wasn’t so simple, wasn’t so pleasant, for most Hellenes. If it had been, they wouldn’t have had to buy sprats for opson when they could afford anything better than olives or a little cheese. They wouldn’t have worn clothes as sorry as that egg-seller’s. They wouldn’t have exposed so many infants, and they wouldn’t have been so thin.

  She rubbed my nose in what’s real, the Rhodian thought ruefully, and it doesn’t smell anywhere near so sweet as my perfume.

  But if he didn’t sell that perfume, he would find out what being poor was like—find out from the inside. And so he went back to calling out its virtues. And, before too long, a man whose double chin and bulging belly said he didn’t have to worry about hunger bought three jars. “Two for my hetaira,” he said, winking, “and one for my wife, to keep her sweet.”

  ‘‘You’re a fellow who knows how to handle women, O best one,” Menedemos replied: partly a merchant’s flattery, partly one man talking to another. The plump Athenian, who had a slave following him like a dog, didn’t haggle very hard over the price. He didn’t have to worry about every obolos, either. Drakhmai rang sweetly in Menedemos’ hands as the other fellow paid him.

  The Athenian strutted off. His slave, who hadn’t said a word all through the dicker, carried the perfume. The rich man would have lost dignity if he’d been seen carrying it himself. The woman with the basket of eggs hadn’t been shy about carrying it herself. But then, she didn’t have so much dignity to lose.

  Menedemos made another sale not long before he would have gone back to Protomakhos’ house. The day turned out to be quite nicely profitable. And yet, as the sun sank down toward the Pnyx and he did head back to the proxenos’ home, he found himself less happy than he would have liked.

  Sostratos ran his tongue over his lips, savoring the sweetness of what he’d just eaten. “That may be the best honey cake I’ve ever had, most noble one,” he told Protomakhos. “My compliments to your cook.”

  “Very fine indeed,” Menedemos agreed.

  “Myrsos is a fine cook. I’d be the last to say otherwise,” Protomakhos replied. “Still, I don’t think this cake would have turned out so well anywhere but Athens. The clover honey from Mount Hymettos is the best in the world.”

  “You’ve mentioned it before. I certainly won’t quarrel with you, not after tasting it,” Menedemos said. “Delicious.”

  “Yes.” Sostratos snapped his fingers. “Do you know, my dear, we could get a good price for it back in Rhodes.”

  His cousin dipped his head. “You’re right. We could. Not only that, we should.”

  “Do you recall who sold you this honey?” Sostratos asked Protomakhos.

  Looking faintly embarrassed, the proxenos tossed his head. “I’m afraid I don’t. You’d do better to ask Myrsos. He buys the food along with cooking it. As long as he doesn’t bankrupt me, I give him free rein,”

  “A sensible attitude,” Menedemos said. “If you have the silver, why not eat well?” That sounded very much like him, though Sostratos wondered whether his father’s second wife would agree. By what Menedemos had said, she’d locked horns with the cook at his house more than once. But then his cousin surprised him by adding, “The ones I feel sorry for are the people who can’t afford fine opson or good wine or honey like this—and there are so many of them,” Sostratos sometimes worried about the plight of the poor, too, but he hadn’t imagined they’d ever entered Menedemos’ mind.

  Protomakhos said, “That is too bad for them, but I don’t know what anyone can do about it.”

  “Neither do I,” Menedemos said. “No one seems to want to do much of anything. They’re only the poor, after all.” Sostratos scratched his head. Such pungent sarcasm wasn’t his cousin’s usual style at all. What had happened to turn his thoughts into such channels? Sostratos didn’t want to ask in front of Protomakhos, but his bump of curiosity itched.

  Since he was also curious about Hymettos honey, he went into the kitchen to talk to Myrsos. The Lyclian cook was munching on a piece of honey cake himself. He looked not the least bit abashed. Other slaves might have their rations carefully measured out—though Protomakhos, like Sostratos’ father, wasn’t that strict—but cooks always ate at least as well as the men they served.

  Myrsos proved less informative than Sostratos would have liked. “I bought it from a woman in the agora,” he said. “She had a big pot of it, and the scent told me it was good. I’m sorry, but I don’t know her name.”

  Sostratos didn’t want to wander the agora sniffing one pot of honey after another. He deplored inefficiency. His nose might also prove less sensitive, less educated, than Myrsos1. The cook evidently knew just what he wanted in honey. Sostratos didn’t. He took a couple of oboloi out from between his teeth and the inside of his cheek. Like anyone else, he’d mastered the art of eating without swallowing his small change—though he’d heard of a miser who’d poked at his turds with a stick to get back an obolos that accidentally went down his throat. “Anything else you can recall about the woman?” the Rhodian asked, holding out the spit-shiny coins.

  “No,” Myrsos said regretfully, which made Sostratos think him honest. “I will say, though, that physicians often use honey in their medicines, to hide the nasty taste of herbs and such. You might ask one. Some will use the cheapest, of course, but others will want to have the best.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Sostratos said, and gave him the money.

  He went back to Iphikrates’ house the next morning. The man had bought the best balsam; he might well use the best honey, too. “Hail, best one,” Iphikrates said. “I just prepared a first-rate salve for hemorrhoids.”

  “Lucky you,” Sostratos murmured.

  “There’s no part of the body that can’t go wrong,” the physician said. “What brings you back here? Have you figured out some new way to pry silver out of me? I warn you, it won’t be easy. I haven’t got a whole lot more to spend.”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” Sostratos answered. “I was wondering if you use Hymettos honey—and, if you do, from whom you buy it.”

  “Ah.” Iphikrates dipped his head.
“Now I understand. Yes, I do use Hymettos honey. It costs more than honey from other places, but the flavor is worth it. So you think it’s worth exporting, too, do you?”

  “If I can get a decent price for it,” Sostratos said. “Who sells it to you?”

  “A fellow named Erasinides son of Hippomakhos,” Iphikrates answered. “He keeps bees over by the mountain, and doesn’t come into the polis all that often. You can either wait for him and hope he does, or else go out and pay a call on him. If you go, you’ll want to take some people with you to carry back the jars of honey, or else hire a donkey.”

  “Oh, yes,” the Rhodian said with a smile. “I do know something about that.”

  Iphikrates chuckled. “I suppose you might. Probably more fun than making a salve to smear on somebody’s poor, sore prokton, too.”

  “I hope you don’t use honey from Hymettos in that,” Sostratos said.

  “Well, no,” the physician replied. “Not much point to it. Although, considering how some people who come to see me get their hemorrhoids ...”

  “Never mind,” Sostratos said hastily. Iphikrates laughed out loud. Sostratos went on, “Tell me whereabouts along the mountain this Erasinides lives. I’d rather not spend hours wandering the slopes calling out his name.” He made Iphikrates repeat the directions several times to be sure he had them straight.

  As in any city, plenty of men in Athens hired donkeys by the day. Sostratos arranged that afternoon to pick one up early the next morning. For an extra couple of oboloi, the Athenian who owned the animal agreed to let him use some baskets with lids he could tie down and enough rope to lash them to the donkey.

  “I’m used to tying knots aboard ship,” Sostratos said. “This will be something different.”