"Herodotos did it." To Sostratos, that was answer enough - more than answer enough, in fact. His cousin just rolled his eyes.
Sostratos booted the mule into motion. It brayed resentfully, but then started to walk. Its motion put Sostratos a little in mind of that of the Aphrodite, though here he was feeling it through his backside rather than the soles of his feet. He picked his way toward the north gate through Pompaia's reeking alleys: he wanted a closer look at Mount Ouesouion. The Aphrodite probably wouldn't go back to Sicily and the environs of Mount Aitne, so this was his best - probably his only - chance to see a volcano.
He had to ask his way to the gate only once, and got lucky when he did: the first man to whom he put the question not only understood Greek but gave directions that proved detailed and accurate. The Pompaian didn't even ask for an obolos before answering. Proves he's a barbarian - any Hellene would have, Sostratos thought.
Once out of town, Sostratos guided the mule in the direction of the mountain. Farms and vineyards filled the rolling countryside. Leptines hadn't exaggerated: the land looked finer and broader than any Sostratos had seen in cramped, rocky Hellas, though the coastal lowlands of Asia Minor might have matched it.
The grainfields weren't planted, not in the heat of summer. When the fall rains came, the farmers would put in their wheat and barley, as they did in Hellas, to be harvested in the spring. But the vines were growing nicely. Sostratos had liked some of the Italian wines he'd drunk. He hadn't found any worth taking back to Hellas with him, but they weren't bad.
A fellow trimming vines not far from the road waved to him. Sostratos lifted a hand in return. The farmer no doubt took him for another Italian. His tunic and broad-brimmed hat were nothing out of the ordinary. He stroked his chin. Had he been clean-shaven like Menedemos, everyone would have known him for a Hellene at once: the fashion for scraping one's cheeks smooth hadn't yet reached the Samnites. He was less likely to find trouble if people didn't take him for a foreigner.
He rode past a couple of grave markers. One of the stelai had writing on it, in the odd-looking local alphabet. Sostratos wondered what the words meant. People were working in the fields a couple of plethra away, but he didn't call to them. Farmers were unlikely either to understand Greek or to be able to read their own tongue.
When he came to a roadside boulder convenient for remounting, he slid off the mule and tied it to a nearby sapling. Then he squatted, not to ease himself but to scoop up some dirt in the palm of his hand. The soil was grayish brown and crumbly; it had almost the look of ashes to it. His eyes went to the slopes of Ouesouion. What was more likely than that a burning mountain should scatter ashes far and wide?
Sostratos sniffed at the dirt, tasted of it. He was a trader, not a farmer, but, like most Hellenes, he knew something about judging soils. If this dirt wasn't rich with brimstone, he would have been astonished. No wonder the grapevines grew so exuberantly.
He led the mule over to the rock and climbed aboard it once more. It let out an amazingly human-sounding sigh, as if to say it had hoped its work was done for the day. But, being a reasonably good-natured beast, it consented to walk on with no more complaint than that.
After a while, Sostratos halted again, this time under the shade of a gray-branched, gray-green-leaved olive tree. The mule nibbled at grass that grew in little patchy clumps in the shade while Sostratos ate barley bread and sheep's-milk cheese and drank from a little jar of some local wine or another. He thought about sleeping for a while in the heat of the day, but tossed his head. Menedemos would say that was asking for trouble, and he'd very likely be right.
And so Sostratos mounted the mule once again - awkwardly this time, because he had no rock handy to give himself a boost, but he managed. The mule protested much more loudly and vehemently than it had before: it was convinced he was extorting an unfair amount of work from it. He had to whack its haunch with the flat of his hand to make it get going again.
He looked back toward the gray stone walls of Pompaia. He had no trouble spotting the town; he'd been riding mostly uphill, so it hadn't vanished behind higher ground. But he was surprised at how many stadia the mule, dismayed braying and all, had managed to cover. A glance at the sun showed noon already gone.
"Time to head back," he told the mule, and turned it toward the Sarnos River once more. It seemed no happier about going downhill than it had about going up-, and almost bucked him off over its head when an ocellated lizard as long as his arm dashed across the road in front of it.
"Hold still, you stupid, gods-detested thing!" Sostratos cried, hanging on to the mule's bristly mane for dear life till he got an arm around its neck. "It's not even a snake. It couldn't hurt you if it bit you." He didn't think the beast believed him.
Some time later, when he was a good deal nearer to Pompaia and the farms clustered more closely together, a large gray-and-white dog of a breed he'd never seen before advanced on the mule from a field. By the dog's fierce, stiff-legged gait and by the way it bared long, sharp teeth, Sostratos wouldn't have been the least surprised to learn it was half wolf.
As it came nearer and snarled again and again, he drew the sword that he hadn't needed against robbers. Fighting a dog from muleback was about as close as he cared to come to actual cavalry combat.
But the mule proved not to need his help. The harmless lizard had terrified it. It brayed at the dog - which really could have done it harm - and lashed out with its forefeet. The dog made one little barking rush, then decided it didn't feel like sampling either mule or Hellene after all. It loped off toward a round stone farmhouse with a thatched roof a couple of plethra from the road. The mule seemed inclined to pursue it.
Sostratos yanked back hard on the reins. The mule brayed and gave him a resentful stare. He stared back. "You really are a stupid creature," he told it. "You don't know the difference between what can hurt you and what can't." By the way it tried to pitch him off onto the dirt road again, it believed him no more than it had about the ocellated lizard.
He got into Pompaia a little before sunset, exactly as he'd planned, and succeeded in making his way back to the agora from the northern gate without having to ask directions of anyone. After returning the mule to the local from whom he'd hired it, he walked over to Menedemos: walked with a slow, rolling, bowlegged stride, for he'd done no riding for a long time before this.
His cousin laughed, recognizing the signs. "Don't you wish you'd stayed here with us?" Menedemos asked.
"I do not," Sostratos replied with dignity. "I've gone exploring, and I'm glad I did it."
"Have any trouble?"
"Oh yes - twice." Sostratos dipped his head. He made as if to draw the sword again. "Once I almost had to fight."
"Do you see? Do you see?" Menedemos said, his voice rising in excitement. "I told you it was dangerous out there. You're probably lucky to get back here alive. What happened, by the gods?"
"You're right - the Italian countryside is a rougher place than I ever thought it was," Sostratos said gravely. "The first time, a lizard tried to carry off my mule: that's what the mule thought, anyhow. And then we were assailed again, the second time by a . . . stray dog."
The sailors in the market square with Menedemos laughed. After a moment, so did Sostratos' cousin. He said, "All right, you got by with it. If you want to make me look the fool, I don't suppose I can blame you. But I still say you were the foolish one for going off by yourself."
Sostratos grunted. He'd hoped for more of a rise out of Menedemos. What was the fun of annoying him if he wouldn't get annoyed? Dissatisfied but doing his best not to show it, Sostratos asked, "How did you do here?"