"Easy there - easy," Diokles told the rowers as the Aphrodite came alongside. "Back oars . . . a couple more strokes, stop her nice and smooth. One more . . . Oöp!" The rowers rested. Longshoremen trotted up the pier toward the Aphrodite. Sailors near the bow and stern tossed them lines. They made the akatos fast.
"What are you carrying?" one of them asked in the broad Doric spoken through most of Great Hellas.
"We have papyrus and ink," Menedemos answered in a loud voice: not only the longshoremen but also the usual gaggle of spectators were listening. "We have the finest perfume, made from Rhodian roses. We have fine Koan silks and fine Khian wine - not just Khian, mind you, but Ariousian." That sent a hum through the Tarentines, though Menedemos doubted whether any of the people standing on the wharf could afford the splendid wine. He struck a dramatic pose. "And, for the very first time ever in this part of the world, we have for sale a peacock, five - uh, four - peahens, and eggs to yield more peafowl."
That produced another buzz, but less than he'd hoped for and expected. A moment later, somebody's question explained why the buzz was subdued: "Just exactly what kind of a thing is a peacock, anyways?"
Before Menedemos could answer, the thing in question let out one of its horrible, raucous screeches. Smiling, he said, "That's a peacock."
"You're selling it for its pretty song, right?" a wag in the crowd asked, and got a laugh from the Tarentines.
Menedemos laughed, too. He said, "I'll show you why we're selling it. Sostratos . . ." He waved to his cousin, who'd already gone up onto the foredeck. This would be a free show, unlike the ones they'd put on at other stops. They hoped to do business here.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Sostratos said, fumbling with the hooks and eyes on the cage, "behold - the peacock!" He threw open the door. The bird, however, declined to come forth. That drew more laughter. Sostratos muttered something uncomplimentary to every bird ever hatched. Having cared for the peafowl all through the voyage, having finally failed to keep one of them from leaping into the sea, he loathed them with a pure, clean loathing that far outdid Menedemos' dislike for them. "Behold the peacock!" he repeated, and got ready to drag out the bird by main force.
But, perverse as usual, it chose that moment to emerge on its own. And then, instead of running around and making a nuisance of itself as it often did, it peered up at the people on the pier like an actor looking up at the crowd in a theater - and, like an actor taking his cue, spread its tail feathers as wide as they would go.
"Ahhhh!" That was the sound Menedemos had hoped to hear when he announced they had peafowl for sale. It was a little late, but it would do.
"That's a pretty bird, sure enough, but what good is it?" somebody asked.
"If you're pretty enough, you don't have to be anything else," Menedemos replied. "What good is a beautiful hetaira?"
The wag spoke up again: "I'm not doing that with a peacock!"
He got another laugh. Menedemos didn't have a comeback ready. But Sostratos said, "A polis with a peacock is surely more splendid than one without. You'll be the envy of all the other cities of Great Hellas, and of the local barbarians, too." Menedemos feared the response was too serious, but it seemed to go over well.
"How much do you want for that creature?" asked a fellow whose threadbare chiton made him a most unlikely candidate to buy.
"Ah, that would be telling," Menedemos said slyly. "Suppose you ask the man who buys him, and see if you get a straight answer."
"Fat chance," the Tarentine said mournfully. Menedemos smiled. That's just what it is, he thought: a chance to get fat. And I intend to make the most of it.
Taras' central district had the streets laid out in a neat Hippodamian grid. Farther west, they ran every which way, as they had throughout the city in the old days. Sostratos rented a house right on the border between the grid and the alleyways. But for the peafowl, he would have sold from the ship or from a stall in the agora, but he didn't want to keep them caged up any more than he had to. They could also be displayed to better advantage strutting around the central courtyard than huddled behind wooden slats.
"And," Menedemos said, "this is a much more comfortable arrangement for us."
"That's not why I did it," Sostratos said.
"I know." Menedemos grinned at him. "That doesn't make it any less true."
Sostratos started to get huffy. Before he launched into a lecture, though, he checked himself - that was just what his cousin wanted him to do. "All right," he said mildly, and Menedemos looked disappointed.
"Maybe we should have got a stall, too," Menedemos said.
"If our goods don't move so well as we'd like, I'll get one," Sostratos said. "But for now, I think going through the agora and letting people know where we are and what we've got for sale will work well enough. We've already moved a lot of the Ariousian - and all that papyrus, too."
Menedemos laughed out loud. "Didn't that Smikrines say he was going to write a history? You should have made him promise to have a copy made for you when he finished."
"If I'd thought he'd do it, I would have," Sostratos answered.
"If you thought he'd do which?" Menedemos asked. "Finish the work, or have a copy made once he did?"
"Either one," Sostratos said. "Writers are an unreliable lot." He knew that was true. How much writing had he done himself, after all? What he wanted to do was leave behind a work to rival those of Herodotos and Thoukydides, but what was he doing? Selling wine and silk and peafowl and papyrus and perfume.
You're traveling, he told himself. Herodotos traveled all over the world so he could learn things at first hand, and Thoukydides went all over Hellas and got to know men on both sides of the Peloponnesian War. If you don't see things and come to know about people, your history can't possibly be any good.
That was some consolation, but only some. To keep Menedemos from knowing what was in his mind - and perhaps to keep himself from dwelling on it, too - Sostratos said, "I'm going over to the market square myself."
"You just want to make me keep an eye on the peafowl for a while," Menedemos said, which also held some truth. But Sostratos' cousin slapped him on the back. "Go on, then. I don't blame you. You had charge of them all the way from Rhodes to here."
Taras' agora lay a few blocks south of the rented house, close by the Ionian Sea - the Tarentines called it the Big Sea, in contrast to the Little Sea that was their sheltered harbor lagoon. Fishermen sold their wares there. So did potters and weavers and cobblers and netmakers and all the other sorts of craftsmen who worked in the city. And so did merchants from other Hellenic poleis and Italians from the interior with wool and tanned hides and honey and other products of the countryside.
Some of the customers were Italians, too. A good many of them wore tunics and mantles like Hellenes, and couldn't be told from Tarentines till they opened their mouths and spoke Greek with an accent. Others, though . . . In the midst of calling out the wares the Aphrodite had brought from Rhodes, Sostratos broke off and asked one of them, "Excuse me, sir, but what do you call that garment you're wearing over your chiton?"
"It is called a toga," the Italian answered in good Greek. "I am a freeborn citizen, so I have the right to wear it."
"I see. Thank you," Sostratos said. "Do you mind my asking how you wear it?"
"You Hellenes are always curious, and about the strangest things, too." The Italian's eyes twinkled. "Well, why not? You ask politely enough, I must say." He pulled off the toga and displayed it for Sostratos in his outstretched arms.
"What an unusual shape for a piece of cloth," Sostratos exclaimed. "We Hellenes just use rectangles, which are simple. This is . . . a broad octagon, except that two of the sides are curved instead of straight. Now I have another question: why do you wear such an oddly shaped mantle?"