“Did he say what I think he did?” Diokles asked after the huckster went on to the next pier. “Back in Hellas, we eat for a treat what’s slave food here? I like our kind of dates. But for honey, you can’t find anything much sweeter. Don’t know that I’ll want ‘em any more, though.”
“Can’t be helped,” Menedemos said. “Like I said, fresh dates won’t keep on a voyage back to Hellas, any more than fresh grapes would.”
“Well, maybe not,” the oarmaster said. “But it still galls me that the Phoenicians send us their leavings and keep the best for themselves. There was that miserable fellow with his cheap basket, and he’s selling something nobody in Hellas can have. It doesn’t seem right.”
“Maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t know what to do about it, either,” Menedemos answered. “Fresh is fresh, in figs as in pretty boys, and it won’t keep in either one. Boys sprout hair and figs sprout mold, and there’s nothing anybody can do to it.”
“There ought to be,” Diokles insisted.
Menedemos laughed. This was almost the sort of argument he and Sostratos would have all the time. The difference was, Sostratos knew enough in the way of logic to keep the discussion moving in one direction. Diokles didn’t, and neither did Menedemos himself. When hashing things out with his cousin, it hadn’t mattered. Now it did, and he felt the lack.
He wondered how Sostratos was doing among barbarians who not only didn’t have much in the way of logic, but who’d probably never even heard of it. “Poor wretch,” Menedemos muttered; if anything could be calculated to drive Sostratos mad, it was people who couldn’t think straight.
Sostratos sat in ithran’s inn, snacking on fresh dates and on chickpeas fried in cumin-flavored oil and drinking wine. The wine wasn’t particularly good, but it was strong; like the Phoenicians, the Ioudaioi drank it unmixed. This was only his second cup, but his head had already started to spin.
Aristeidas and Moskhion had taken some of their pay and gone to visit a brothel. Teleutas would take his turn when one of them got back. The sailors from the Aphrodite seemed to have decided Menedemos would kill them if they left Sostratos alone for even a minute. He’d tried to convince them that that was nonsense. They’d paid no attention to his elegant logic.
Ithran’s wife was a handsome woman named Zilpah. She came up to Sostratos and Teleutas with a pitcher. “More wine, my masters?” she-asked in Aramaic; she spoke no Greek.
“Yes, please,” Sostratos replied in the same language. When she poured his cup full, Teleutas also held out his and got it filled again. The idea of drinking neat wine all the time didn’t bother him—on the contrary.
His eyes followed Zilpah as she walked away. “What a slut she is, to come and talk with us without even trying to cover her face.”
Sostratos tossed his head. “That’s our custom, not theirs. She has no reason to follow it. She seems a good enough woman to me.”
“Better than good enough,” Teleutas said. “She’d be a piece and a half in bed, I bet. Ithran’s a lucky dog. I’d sooner lay her than some bored whore who might as well be dead.”
“Drag your mind out of the chamber pot, if you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. “Have you seen her paying attention to anyone but her husband? You’ll get us thrown out—or worse—if you treat her like a loose woman when she plainly isn’t.”
“I haven’t done anything with her. I haven’t done anything to her. I don’t intend to,” Teleutas said. But he’d had enough wine to speak his mind: “I’m not the only one who keeps watching her all the time, though, and there’s nobody can say I am.” He sent Sostratos a significant glance.
“Me? Are you talking about me? Go howl, you whipworthy rogue!” Sostratos exclaimed, so sharply that Zilpah, who usually paid no attention to talk in Greek, looked back in surprise to see what the matter was.
Sostratos gave her a sickly smile. She frowned back. But, when neither he nor Teleutas pulled out a knife or started swinging a stool like a flail, she relaxed and went back to what she’d been doing.
“Ha!” Teleutas sounded disgustingly sly. “I knew I put that arrow right in the middle of the target. If you were your cousin, now, you’d already know what she’s like under those robes. If she shows you her face, she’ll show you the rest, too, easy as you please.”
“Will you shut up?” Instead of shouting, as he wanted to do, Sostratos kept his voice to a furious whisper so as not to draw Zilpah’s notice again. “And I keep telling you, going around unveiled doesn’t mean the same thing here as it would back in Hellas. Besides, what would get me murdered faster than trying to seduce the innkeeper’s wife?”
“Menedemos wouldn’t worry about any of that,” Teleutas said. “All he cares about is getting it in.” He was, no doubt, right. He spoke with nothing but admiration. But what he saw as praiseworthy seemed blameworthy to Sostratos. Then the sailor added, “You only get in trouble if she doesn’t like it. If she does, you’re happy as a billy goat.”
“That only shows how much—or how little—you know,” Sostratos said. The women Menedemos seduced didn’t complain and didn’t betray him to their husbands. He commonly betrayed himself by taking insane chances to get what he wanted. He was lucky to have come out of Halikarnassos and Taras in one piece.
“I give up,” Teleutas said. “But tell me you’d throw her out of bed if you found her in there. Go on—tell me. I dare you.”
“It’s not going to happen, so there’s no point talking about it. Hypothetical questions have their uses, but that isn’t one of them.”
As he’d hoped, the formidable word gave Teleutas pause. Before the sailor could start up again, Aristeidas walked into the inn, a satisfied smirk on his face. Teleutas gulped down what was left of his wine, then hurried away. Aristeidas sat down on the stool he’d vacated. “Hail,” he said to Sostratos.
“Hail,” Sostratos answered. When Teleutas came back from the brothel, he would give a thrust-by-thrust description of what he’d done. Aristeidas didn’t have that vice. He was content to sit there and keep an eye on Sostratos. To encourage him to do that and nothing more, Sostratos sipped at his wine and half turned away.
That meant his gaze swung toward Zilpah. What would she be like in bed? he wondered. It wasn’t the first time the question had crossed his mind. He’d got angry at Teleutas not least for noticing. If the sailor had seen his curiosity (that seemed a safer word than desire), had Zilpah seen it, too? Worse, had Ithran?
He must know he has a good-looking, good-natured wife, the Rhodian thought, because they don’t shut their women away from the world, as we do, he must know other men will get to know her, too. He shouldn’t mind my admiring her, so long as I do it with my eyes and nothing more.
Sostratos dipped his head. Yes, that made good logical sense. The only trouble was, logic was often the first thing out the window in dealings between men and women. If Ithran caught him staring at Zilpah, the Ioudaian might prove as jealous as any Hellene would have been on catching a man eyeing his wife.
And, then again, Sostratos found himself ever more tempted to find out just how interested in straying Zilpah might be. Maybe that was just because he’d gone without a woman for a long time. Maybe a trip to a brothel would cure him of it. But maybe such a visit wouldn’t, either. He was beginning to understand the attractions the game of adultery held for Menedemos. One willing woman might be worth several who lay down for a man because they had no choice.
His cousin had always insisted such things were true. Sostratos had always mocked him, scorned him. Now he discovered Menedemos had, at least to some degree, known what he was talking about. Few discoveries could have alarmed him more.
His eyes slid toward Zilpah again. Angrily, he made himself look away. Did she know what he was thinking? If she did, what did she think? Was it, Oh, dear, here’s another traveler who’s liable to make a fool of himself? Or was it, He wants me. Do I want him, too?
How do I find out? Sostratos wondered. He scowled and made a fist. Sure
enough, he was liable to be walking down Menedemos’ road. “No,” he muttered.
“What do you mean, no?” Aristeidas asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Sostratos said quickly, and sipped his wine. His ears heated. How can I find out whether she wants me without putting my head on the block? He liked that version of the question much better. I won’t take any chances to find out, not the way Menedemos does.
That made him feel better, but only for a little while. If he hadn’t been trained to root out self-delusion, it probably would have satisfied him longer. As things were, though, he had to wonder, How do I know what I want? A man who wants a woman isn’t likely to think straight.
Aristeidas said, “Maybe you ought to go get laid, you don’t mind my saying so. The girls at this place around the corner are pretty friendly—or they act like they are, anyhow.”
If he hadn’t added that last little bit, he might have persuaded Sostratos. As things were, he only reminded him of the difference between what was paid for and what was freely given. “Another time,” Sostratos said.
“They’re funny there, you know?” Aristeidas went on. “Our women always singe off the hair between their legs or else shave it off, the way you shave your face.”
Sostratos plucked at his beard. “I don’t shave my face,” he pointed out.
“No, the way you would if you did,” the sailor said confusingly. “The whores here don’t shave their bushes, or singe them, or anything. They just let ‘em grow. It looks funny, if you ask me.”
“Yes, I guess it would,” Sostratos agreed. Some men, he supposed, might find the difference exciting. Others might find it disgusting; Aristeidas seemed close to feeling that way. At first, Sostratos thought it wouldn’t matter to him one way or the other. Then he imagined Zilpah with a hairy delta at the joining of her legs. The thought roused him more than he’d expected it to, but was that because he imagined hairy private parts or Zilpah’s private parts? He wasn’t sure.
Zilpah said, “Greetings, my master.” She wasn’t talking to Sostratos, but to another lodger who’d just walked into the inn.
“Hail,” the newcomer replied in Greek. He paused for a moment inside the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom within. Seeing Sostratos and Aristeidas, he waved. “Hail, Rhodians,” he said, and headed over to their table.
“Hail, Hekataios,” Sostratos answered. “Always good to talk to a fellow Hellene.”
Aristeidas didn’t seem to share his opinion. The sailor got to his feet. “I’ll see you later, young sir,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll still be around whenever I come back.” He left before Hekataios perched on a stool.
Perched, Sostratos thought, was the operative word. Hekataios of Abdera—a polis on the southern coast of Thrace—was a birdlike man: small, thin, sharp-featured, quick-moving. “How are you?” he asked Sostratos, speaking Ionic Greek with a strong Attic overlay. Sostratos’ Doric accent had that same overlay, so the two of them sounded more like each other than less educated, less traveled men from their home cities would have.
“Well, thanks,” Sostratos answered.
Zilpah came up. “What would you like, my master?” she asked Hekataios.
“Wine. Bread. Oil,” he replied in extremely rudimentary Aramaic.
“I would also like bread and oil, please,” Sostratos told the innkeeper’s wife.
As Zilpah went off, Hekataios returned to Greek: “I’m jealous of you. You really speak the language. I didn’t think I’d need to when I started traveling through Ioudaia, but Hellenes are so thin on the ground here, I’ve had to start learning ‘ow to go bar-bar-bar myself.” Every once in a while, but only every once in a while, he would forget a rough breathing, as Ionians usually did.
“I’m not fluent,” Sostratos said. “I wish I knew more.”
“I’d have an easier time with my researches if I could make those funny grunting noises, but I do seem to manage even without them.”
Zilpah came back with the food and drink. As Sostratos dipped a chunk of brown bread in olive oil, he said, “Jealous? Speaking of jealous,
0 best one, you have no idea how jealous I am of you. I have to buy and sell as I go. I can’t travel about the countryside for the sake of love of wisdom.” He was also jealous of the wealth that let Hekataios of Abdera do exactly that, but kept quiet about that bit of envy. To him, the other was more important.
Hekataios shrugged. “When I was in Alexandria, I got interested in the Ioudaioi. They’re such a peculiar people.” He rolled his eyes. “And so I decided to come here and find out about them for myself.”
“You’re lucky Antigonos’ men didn’t decide you were spying for Ptolemaios,” Sostratos said.
“Not at all, my dear fellow.” Hekataios tossed his head. “I had written out for me a safe-conduct stating that I was a lover of wisdom traveling for the sake of learning more about the world in which I live, and so was not to be harassed by mere soldiers.”
“And it worked when you got to the frontier?” Sostratos asked.
“Plainly not. Plainly I was seized and tortured and crucified,” Hekataios answered. Sostratos coughed and flushed. He could be sarcastic himself, but he’d met his match and then some in Hekataios of Abdera. The older man relented: “As a matter of fact, Antigonos’ officers ‘ave been more than a little helpful. From everything I’ve heard and seen, Antigonos himself is a man of learning.”
“I suppose so,” Sostratos said. “I know Ptolemaios is. But I wouldn’t want to have either one of them angry at me, and that’s the truth.”
“There I cannot argue with you in the least,” Hekataios agreed. “Then again, however, the weak are always wise not to fall into the clutches of the strong. So it has been since the gods—if gods there be—made the world, and so it shall remain as long as men stay men.”
“It’s a good thing you said that in Greek, and that Ithran wasn’t here to understand it,” Sostratos observed. “Let a Ioudaian hear ‘if gods there be’ and you’ve got more trouble for yourself than you really want. They take their own invisible deity very, very seriously.”
“I should say they do!” Hekataios dipped his head. “They always have, as best I’ve been able to determine.”
“Tell me more, if you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. “This sort of thing is meat and drink to me. I wish I had the chance to do what you’re doing.”
1 wish I didn’t have to worry about making a living, was what that boiled down to. Hekataios’ family had to own land out to the horizon up in Abdera, or to have got wealthy some other way, to let him spend his life traveling and learning.
He smiled what struck Sostratos as a superior smile. But that half sneer didn’t last. What could be more attractive than somebody who was interested in what one was doing? “As I was telling you the last time we talked,” Hekataios said, “these Ioudaioi came here from out of Egypt.”
“Yes, you did say that; I remember,” Sostratos answered. “You were telling me some sort of pestilence there made them flee the country? “
“That’s right.” Hekataios smiled again, this time without a trace of superiority. “You were paying attention, weren’t you?”
“Of course I was, best one. Did you doubt it?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. When you discover how few people have the least interest in the past and how it came to shape the present, you eventually begin to believe no one but yourself has any interest in such things at all. Being proved wrong is always a pleasant surprise.”
“You’ve found me,” Sostratos said. “Please do go on.”
“I’d be glad to.” Hekataios paused to sip his wine and gather his thoughts. Then he said, “When this plague arose in Egypt, the common people there believed some divinity had caused it.”
“That’s not surprising,” Sostratos said. “They wouldn’t have known of anyone like Hippokrates who might have offered a different explanation.”
“No, indeed not.” Hekataios of Abdera dipped his h
ead. “Now Egypt at this time—it would have been about the time of the Trojan War, I believe—was full of all sorts of foreigners, and—”
“Excuse me, most wise one, but how do you know that?” Sostratos broke in.
“For one thing, the Egyptian priests say so,” Hekataios answered. “For another, the Ioudaioi have a legend that they themselves came ‘ere to this country from out of Egypt. Does that satisfy you?”
“Thank you. Yes, it does. But history is only as good as its sources and the questions you ask of them. I did want to know.”
“Fair enough. You do understand the finer points, don’t you?” Hekataios said, and Sostratos wanted to burst with pride. The Abderan went on, “All these foreigners, naturally, worshiped their own gods and had their own rites. The native Egyptians’ rituals were being ignored and forgotten. The Egyptians—I suspect that means their priests, but I can’t prove it—feared their gods would never have mercy on them in respect to the plague unless they expelled the foreigners from their land.”
“And so they did?” Sostratos asked.
“And so they did,” Hekataios agreed. “The most outstanding foreigners banded together and went to places like Hellas: Danaos and Kadmos were some of their leaders.”
“I’ve also heard Kadmos was a Phoenician,” Sostratos said.
“Yes, so have I. Perhaps he stopped in Phoenicia on his way up to Hellas from Egypt. But most of the exiles ended up here in Ioudaia. This isn’t far from Egypt, and in those days no one at all lived here, or so they say.
“I see,” Sostratos said. “But how did the customs of the Ioudaioi become so strange?”
“I am coming to that, O best one,” Hekataios answered. “Their leader at this time was a man outstanding for courage and wisdom, a certain Mouses. He refused to make any images of the gods, because he did not think his god was of human form.”
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