Owls to Athens

by Harry Turtledove

  Some things hadn’t changed, though. Sostratos suddenly realized the cloths around the baby’s middle were moist. He thrust Polydoros at the wet nurse and wiped his hands on his chiton.

  “There, there,” the woman told the baby. “We’ll take care of that. Don’t you worry about a thing.” She carried him away.

  When she came back, she sat down on a bench, slipped her chiton down from one shoulder, and gave Polydoros her breast. Sostratos watched the baby suck, as interested in the process as he was in the bare breast. He also listened to his nephew nursing; he hadn’t realized it could be so noisy. He could hear every gulp Polydoros took. Then the baby swallowed wrong and choked. The wet nurse took him away from the breast and held him up against her shoulder, patting him on the back till he belched: a surprisingly large, surprisingly deep sound. Then she brought him down and let him nurse some more.

  “You’ll be sailing soon, won’t you?” Erinna asked.

  “What?” When Sostratos concentrated on something, he did so to the exclusion of everything else around him. He had to pause and make himself remember what his sister had said before he could dip his head and answer, “Yes, very soon, especially if the weather stays fine like this. Athens!” He couldn’t hold the excitement from his voice.

  “Athens.” Erinna sounded resigned—or was it merely wistful? For her, leaving her husband’s house was an adventure. Sailing off to another city? When she’d come back to Lysistratos’ household after losing her first husband, she’d listened with endless fascination as Sostratos told her stories of the distant places he’d seen. With the circumscribed lives respectable women led among the Hellenes, listening was all she could do. She would never see distant places herself.

  Sostratos eyed her with some concern. Like him, she’d always been on the lean side. Now, though, she still kept the flesh she’d put on while carrying Polydoros. To his eye, it didn’t suit her frame: it seemed added on, not a natural part of her. “How are you, my dear?” he asked, hoping his worry didn’t show.

  “Tired,” she answered at once. “After you have a baby, you feel as though someone’s dropped a wall on you. I don’t think you can help it.”

  “Oh, yes.” The wet nurse dipped her head. “That’s true, by the gods.”

  “What . . . What is it like? Having a baby, I mean,” Sostratos asked hesitantly. As they often did, curiosity and decorum warred within him. This time, curiosity won.

  Not that it got him much. Erinna only laughed. “It’s not like anything,” she said. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think it’s the hardest thing anyone can do.”

  “Oh, yes,” the wet nurse said again, and then, softly, “‘What’s it like?’ Men!” She didn’t have to worry about keeping Sostratos sweet.

  “I can’t very well know unless I ask, can I?” he said, stung by the scorn in her voice.

  If he thought his question would get him less, he rapidly found himself wrong. “Men!” the wet nurse said again, this time not bothering to hold her voice down. “What you don’t understand is, you can’t know even if you do ask.”

  “Gorgia’s right, I’m afraid.” Erinna sounded sad. She knew of Sostratos’ unrelenting itch to find out whatever he could. Sad or not, though, she tossed her head here. “Unless you had a baby yourself, you couldn’t know what it was like. You’re not . . equipped for it.” That made the wet nurse—Gorgia—giggle.

  It made Sostratos angry, at least for a moment. “But—” he began. Then he spread his hands in defeat. “No, I suppose not, any more than you can understand what growing a beard is like.” He scratched his own hairy chin. Most Hellenes of his generation, Menedemos among them, shaved their faces as had done. Sostratos thought his beard made him look like a philosopher. Maybe he was right.

  Someone rapped on the front door. Erinna said, “That’s Damonax—I know his knock.” By the way one of the house slaves hurried to the entrance, he recognized his master’s knock, too.

  The door scraped as it turned on pivots set into the floor and the lintel above. The house slave spoke to Damonax in a voice too low for Sostratos to make out what he said. He didn’t need to have studied logic to figure out what it must have been, though, for Damonax replied, “He is? Well, good. I’ve been meaning to talk with him for the past few days, anyhow.”

  Erinna’s husband strode into the courtyard. He was a handsome man of above average height, though not so tall as Sostratos. Unlike his brother-in-law, he bore himself with the air of a man who knew he was somebody. His chiton was of fine, soft white wool. A gold ring on the index finger of his right hand flashed in the sun. Sostratos smiled to himself. Damonax looked and acted like a rich man, as befitted one whose wealth lay in land. But Sostratos knew whose family was really better off.

  “Hail,” Damonax said with a smile that showed off the teeth he took fastidious pains to keep white. “How are you today?”

  “Fine, thanks.” Sostratos held out his hand. “And you?”

  “Couldn’t be better.” Damonax clasped it: a firm, manly grip. Like Sostratos, he’d studied at the Lykeion. Also like Sostratos, he flavored the Doric dialect of with a strong Attic accent. “What do you think of your nephew these days?”

  “That’s obvious, O best one,” Sostratos answered, looking toward Polydoros, who’d fallen asleep in Gorgia’s arms. “He’ll have the strength and beauty of divine Akhilleus and the wit of resourceful Odysseus.”

  Erinna sent Sostratos a sharp glance. She knew irony when she heard it. Damonax didn’t, or didn’t always. He complacently dipped his head and said, “Yes, I think so, too.” He looked around. “Haven’t they given you any wine? No olives or figs to munch on? What is this place coming to?”

  Not wanting either his sister or Damonax’s slaves to get in trouble, Sostratos spoke quickly: “I’ve been so busy admiring your son and talking with Erinna, I didn’t even notice.”

  “Kind of you to say such a thing, best one, but really, there are standards,” Damonax said. “Come into the andron with me, why don’t you, and we’ll set you to rights.”

  Sostratos would rather have gone on talking with Erinna, of whom he was fond, than gone with his brother-in-law. He had a pretty good idea why Damonax wanted to talk with him, and didn’t anticipate a happy result. But he couldn’t very well say no, not without a shocking breach of manners. Swallowing a sigh, he said, “Lead on, and I’ll follow.”

  At Damonax’s heels, he stepped up into the men’s chamber. As in most houses, it was raised a step above the level of the courtyard and the other ground-floor rooms. No sooner had he perched on a stool than the slave who’d let Damonax into the house brought wine and olives. Damonax and Sostratos both poured a little wine on the floor as an offering to Dionysos.

  When Sostratos drank, he raised an eyebrow. “My dear fellow! This can’t be mixed any weaker than one to one. That’s potent even at a symposion, but in the morning? Do you want your slaves to have to carry me home? What would people say?”

  “One cup won’t send you raging through the streets looking for women to ravish like a satyr,” Damonax said easily.

  Aren’t you thinking of Menedemos? But, though that got to the tip of Sostratos’ tongue, he didn’t say it. He had more reasons to be loyal to his cousin than to his brother-in-law. He took a cautious sip from the cup—a big, deep piece of earthenware in the Spartan style, not one of the shallow, graceful, two-handled kylikes that didn’t hold nearly so much. “The wine is very nice,” he admitted. “Where’s it from?”

  Damonax’s chuckle was self-deprecating. “Just a local vintage, I’m afraid.”

  made good wine, good enough to export. But no one would confuse even her best with what the vintners of Khios or Lesbos or Thasos turned out. That Damonax served a Rhodian wine said his family’s fortunes had declined. That he served a good Rhodian wine said either that they hadn’t declined too far or that he still had good taste even if he needed to be more careful about indulging it these days.

  Sostr
atos ate an olive. Spitting the pit onto the floor of the andron, he said, “These are tasty, too.”

  “Glad you like them, my dear,” Damonax replied. “They’re from the family farm.” Oh, a pestilence, Sostratos thought. I’ve given him an opening. But Damonax didn’t charge right into the breach like a soldier entering a besieged city. Instead, with another of his charming smiles, he asked, “Have you ever been out to the farm?”

  “Why, no, O best one, I never have,” Sostratos said.

  “You must visit one day,” Damonax said. “Do you good to see there’s life on the land as well as here in the bustling polis. It’s in the western part of the island, you know, between Ialysos and Kameiros— not far from the Valley of the Butterflies.”

  “Ah?” Sostratos pricked up his ears. “Now that I would like to see one of these days.” Farm life interested him very little. For better or worse, he was a creature of the polis, of the agora. He was sure he would go mad in short order with only the same handful of faces to see and to talk to month after month, year after year; with news filtering in long after it was fresh, if it ever came at all. An interesting natural phenomenon, on the other hand . . .

  Damonax smiled and dipped his head. “It’s quite something. Myriad upon myriad of butterflies perching in the valley through the heat of summer. They cover the rocks, especially by the waterfall, like one of those carpets the Persians lay on the floor.”

  “The summer ...” Sostratos sighed. “It’s also the sailing season, you know. I’m likely to be away from .”

  “They don’t disperse over the island till the fall rains start, and you’re usually home by then,” Damonax said. “Why don’t you pay me a call when you get back from Athens? That should be just about olive-harvest time, too. The oil from the first ones picked is always the best, you know, and if you’re there to dip a barley roll into it when it comes out of the last settling pit. ...” He smiled again, a voluptuary’s smile.

  “You tempt me,” Sostratos said.

  “Good. I mean to,” Damonax answered. “The invitation is open, believe me. And when you see the oil pressed from the olives, when you taste it before it even goes into the amphora . . . Till then, you don’t know what oil can be. Rhodian wine may not be of the very finest, but Rhodian oil is, by the gods. And we make some of the best of any farm on the island.”

  Now we come down to it, Sostratos thought unhappily. “No one has ever said you didn’t, O marvelous one,” he said.

  His brother-in-law gave him a sour look, as any educated man would have done. Sokrates had been fond of using that salutation when he felt sarcastic, so that marvelous meant something like marvelously foolish. Damonax went on, “Your family has been most unreasonable about taking some of my olive oil aboard the this sailing season.”

  Sostratos didn’t like quarrels. He especially didn’t like quarrels with people with whom he had marriage ties. But he also didn’t like problems with trade, and trade came first. Sighing, he said, “We’ve been over this ground before, you know—more than once, in fact—and you can pour lots of strong wine down my throat, but you still won’t seduce me.”

  “If you’d only be reasonable—” Damonax said.

  “No.” Sostratos tossed his head. “I’m afraid you’re the one who’s being unreasonable, not me or my father or uncle or cousin. You do know where the akatos is going this spring?”

  “Athens, of course,” Damonax replied.

  “That’s right.” Now Sostratos dipped his head in agreement. “And since you studied there, the same as I did, you’ll have heard the phrase ‘owls to Athens,’ too, won’t you?” He waited. When Damonax didn’t answer right away, his voice got sharper: “Won’t you?”

  “Well . . . yes,” Damonax said.

  “And you’ll also know what it means, isn’t that so?”

  His brother-in-law flushed angrily. “Don’t play the game of elenkhos with me. You’re not Sokrates, by the dog of Egypt!”

  “All right, my dear. Fine. If you want me to spell it out for you, I will, alpha-beta-gamma.” Sostratos let out an angry exhalation of his own. “ ‘Owls to Athens’ means taking something someplace where they don’t need it. Athens doesn’t need owls, because she already stamps them on her coins. And Athens doesn’t need imported olive oil, because Attica already makes more of it than any other district in Hellas. Athens imports grain so she can grow more olives. You know that, too. You know it, but you don’t want to think about it. What a lover of wisdom that makes you.”

  “My family needs the silver the oil would bring,” Damonax said. “It’s very fine oil—you know that.”

  “I also know I haven’t a chance of selling it in Athens, no matter how fine it is. They’re glutted with what they make themselves,” Sostratos snapped. “And I know it’s not a proper cargo for a merchant galley anyhow—not enough profit even if it does sell.” He held up a hand. “Don’t tell me about last season, either. Yes, we made money, but we would have made more with other cargo we couldn’t carry because of your big, bulky amphorai full of oil.”

  “What am I supposed to do, then?” Damonax demanded.

  “What we’ve been telling you all along: put it in a round ship, where the crew is small and the overhead is low. Sell it someplace where they don’t grow so much on their own—Kos, maybe, or Khios, or the cities up along the Thracian coast where the weather’s cooler and they don’t always get good crops.”

  His brother-in-law pooched out his lower lip and looked sullen. “You have no family feeling whatsoever.”

  “On the contrary.” Sostratos tossed his head. “My first loyalty is to my father. My next loyalty is to Uncle and Menedemos. If the only way I can help you is by hurting them—and, incidentally, myself—what would you have me do?”

  “Go to the crows,” Damonax said.

  Sostratos got to his feet. “Good day,” he said, and strode out of the andron.

  Erinna knew something was wrong. “Where are you going?” she called to Sostratos as he stalked across the courtyard.

  “Home.” He pushed past a startled slave and out the front door to Damonax’s house. Menedemos, no doubt, would have slammed it in his wake. Instead, Sostratos closed it as quietly as he could. As far as he was concerned, Damonax was the one in the wrong, and he wanted to do nothing to put himself there with his brother-in-law—or his sister. That didn’t keep him from seething as he stormed away. Oh, no. On the contrary.

  Menedemos spent as much time as he could outside his father’s house. For one thing, that kept him and Philodemos from locking horns. For another, it eliminated temptation, or at least the chance to do anything about temptation. And, for a third, he was a man who liked crowds and noise and excitement. Going to the agora was a lot more fun than sitting around watching flowers begin to bloom.

  Potters and woodcarvers and leatherworkers cried their wares from stalls that had sometimes been in their families for generations. Jewelers showed off brass bracelets that gleamed like gold, beadwork necklaces, and silver rings. Farmers in from the countryside offered up grain and olive oil, olives in brine and vinegar, cabbages and lettuces, beets and mushrooms, eggs from ducks and hens. A dentist reached into a man’s mouth with iron forceps to pull a rotted tooth while a crowd gathered round to watch and point and call advice. Hearing the victim groan, Menedemos thanked the gods his own teeth were sound.

  A mountebank strolled through the crowd, juggling a stream of cups and balls and knives. Every so often, someone would throw him an obolos. He caught the little silver coins without losing control of everything he kept in the air. A grotesquely overmuscled strong man lifted a fellow of ordinary size over his head and tossed him about as if he weighed nothing at all. An artist of sorts perched on a stool in front of a patch of smooth-raked sand. For an obolos, he would use a long stylus to sketch a man’s portrait in the sand. Menedemos watched him work. His strokes were quick and sure; he caught a man’s essence with a minimum of wasted motion. Each portrait remained to be admired till
the next customer gave him some silver.

  “Here.” Menedemos took an obolos out of his mouth and handed it to the artist. “Do me.”

  “Certainly, O best one.” After popping the coin into his own mouth, the man smoothed the sand once more. The fellow whose portrait had been there muttered under his breath; his picture hadn’t lasted long. A few lines delineated Menedemos’ sharp chin, his straight nose and strong cheekbones, the eyebrows that were almost too bushy, and the hairline that had retreated perhaps a digit’s width at each temple. After a couple of minutes, the sketch artist looked up. “Here you are, my friend: you.”

  “Looks like me,” agreed Menedemos, who had often seen his image in a mirror of polished bronze. A poor man from the countryside, though, might have no true idea what he looked like till this fellow showed him.

  As Menedemos turned away, someone just coming up peered at his portrait and said, “There’s a good-looking fellow.” He preened. Even though he was no longer a youth for suitors to pursue, he never got tired of praise.

  Not far away, half a dozen men were arguing about what this year’s campaigning season would likely bring in the wars among ’s marshals. “Mark my words, someone will triumph over all the rest,” a gray-haired man declared.

  “I don’t know about that,” a younger fellow said. “As soon as one of those polluted Macedonians looks like he’s getting on top, the others gang up on him and pull him back down again. That sort of thing can go on for a long time.”

  Menedemos walked over to join them, saying, “It’s already gone on for a long time. ’s been dead—what?—sixteen years now.”

  The men who were talking shifted a little to give him room. If a man couldn’t hash things out with his fellow citizens in the agora, he couldn’t do it anywhere. A stocky fellow of about Menedemos’ age whose scars said he’d fought as a mercenary dipped his head. “That’s right,” he said. “Sixteen years, and we’ve still got Antigonos and Ptolemaios and Lysimakhos and Kassandros in the field against each other.” He sounded cheerful—as long as the marshals brawled, mercenaries would never lack for work.