“What’s so funny?” Menedemos asked.
“My brother-in-law’s jumping up and down on the wharf, like a three-year-old when you tell him he can’t have another piece of honey cake,” Sostratos answered.
“Somebody ought to give him a good thrashing, the way you do with a three-year-old who has a fit when you tell him he can’t have another piece of honey cake,” Menedemos said.
“That would be nice,” his cousin agreed. “He’s right by the edge of the pier now. Maybe he’ll fall in. Maybe your father-or mine-will help him fall in.” Menedemos waited in eager anticipation. But then Sostratos tossed his head. Disappointment in his voice, he went on, “No such luck. The slaves are picking up the jars of oil and taking them away, and Damonax is going with them.”
“Too bad,” Menedemos said. “I’d have loved it if he went into the drink instead.”
“I just hope he doesn’t take it out on Erinna, that’s all.” Sostratos sighed. “Family.”
“Family,” Menedemos echoed, and gave all his attention back to the Aphrodite . A big, beamy round ship was bearing down on her, great square sail full of the breeze from out of the north, hold full of grain or wine or-irony-olive oil. The round ship was about as maneuverable as an avalanche. Like the Aphrodite , like any ship around the Inner Sea, she had eyes painted at her bow, but how much good did they do when she couldn’t get out of her own way? And Menedemos would have bet the round ship’s goose-headed sternpost had more brains than the man handling her steering oars.
Menedemos pulled the port-side steering-oar tiller toward him and pushed the starboard tiller as far away from him. Graceful as a dancer, the Aphrodite swung to port and slipped past the lumbering round ship. Sailors on the round ship’s deck waved as the merchant galley glided by. Most of the Aphrodite ’s crew were too busy to wave back.
Long fortified moles to the east and north protected the Great Harbor of Rhodes from storms. The opening between them was only a couple of plethra wide. Side by side with a little fishing boat from whose crew Sikon might buy the evening’s opson, Menedemos steered the akatos out of the harbor and onto the open sea.
As Sostratos did every sailing season, he discovered how much the Aphrodite ’s motion changed when she left the calm waters of the harbor and braved the Inner Sea. Before, all he’d noticed was the forward thrust each time her oars bit into the water. Now the light chop made her pitch up and down as her bow rode over the waves and down into the troughs between them.
Sostratos’ stomach felt as if it were lurching in the same way as the akatos. Gulping, he hoped the barley porridge he’d had for breakfast would stay down. He looked forward from the poop deck. A few sailors were similarly greenish, but only a few. That was how things usually went. Sostratos gulped again.
“Use the rail if you’ve got to give it back, boys,” Menedemos said, on the whole in a kindly way. “The bilges get foul enough without adding puke to the mix.” He lowered his voice to ask, “Are you all right, Sostratos?”
“I’ll be all right in a few days,” Sostratos answered. “I wish this didn’t happen every sailing season, but it does. I need a few days to get my sea legs, that’s all.”
“You look a little paler than usual,” Menedemos said.
“I’ll be fine in-” Sostratos stopped, gulped once more, clapped a hand to his mouth, and took two quick steps over to the rail. Breakfast did not stay down, but he put it neatly in the sea. “A pestilence,” he wheezed when he could speak again. “Been a long time since I’ve actually gone and heaved.”
“Happens to a lot of people,” his cousin said, with the ease of one whom seasickness didn’t bother. “Maybe now you’re over it, the way some pregnant women are when they throw up in the morning.”
“I hope so!” Sostratos spat to get the vile taste out of his mouth. Spitting didn’t do much good. He dipped some wine from an amphora carried for the crew. Rinsing his mouth with that helped more. He spat out one mouthful, then swallowed another. His stomach didn’t rise in immediate rebellion, which he took as a good sign.
Once the Aphrodite was well out of the Great Harbor, Menedemos took half the men off the oars, letting them row from every other bench. He’d started out with all forty benches filled for the sake of swank. Out on the open sea, he usually used eight or ten men on a side, and rotated the crew every couple of hours. That way, he could have fresh men rowing when he really needed them: escaping or fighting pirates, pushing forward against a headwind, or clawing away from the shore in case of storm.
The merchant galley rounded the northernmost tip of the polis- and the island-of Rhodes. Sostratos pointed to the marble temple of Demeter, whose gleaming white bulk stood out from the swarm of red tile roofs. “Our houses are somewhere not far from there,” he said. “I wish I could pick out mine, but it’s just another roof from here.”
“I’m not sorry to be gone,” Menedemos said. “I suppose I even owe your brother-in-law a vote of thanks.”
“For what?” Sostratos said, and then, “Oh! You mean for nagging our fathers?”
“I sure do. If he hadn’t got my father good and mad, we’d still be stuck in Rhodes, playing knucklebones and twiddling our thumbs. The biggest reason we got to sail so soon is that our fathers wanted him to shut up and go away.”
“I know,” Sostratos said. “And I’ll give you another reason to be grateful to good old thick-headed Damonax. Without him, we wouldn’t have had a chance to get up to Athens soon enough to catch the Greater Dionysia, and now we do. I tell you, my dear, you haven’t lived till you’ve seen the theater in Athens. There’s nothing like it in any other polis in the world.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Menedemos said. “That is one of the reasons I wanted to sail-not the only reason, mind you, but one of them.”
“The tragedies will probably be revivals,” Sostratos said, “but I keep telling you there are some good comic poets still writing.”
As usual, his cousin said, “Give me Aristophanes any day. I’ll believe anybody can match him when I see it, and not till then.”
That could have started another argument, had Sostratos let it.
Instead, he only smiled and shrugged. Menedemos was loyal to Aristophanes as he was loyal to Homer. Argument wouldn’t change that. In both poetry and drama, Sostratos had more modern tastes. Argument wasn’t likely to change that, either.
Once well clear of the northern tip of Rhodes, Menedemos swung the Aphrodite to port, so that she headed west. Sostratos peered north, toward the haze-shrouded Karian coast. As with Rhodes, the rains of fall and winter had left it bright with greenery. When the merchant galley came back at the end of summer, the sun would have baked it sere and brown. Minor islands-Syme, Khalke, Telos-lay ahead. They too looked green and inviting. Sostratos had trouble imagining duller places to live, though.
“Think this breeze will hold, Diokles?” Menedemos asked.
“Reckon it ought to, skipper, for a while, anyway,” the oarmaster replied.
“Well, let’s get some use out of the sail, then.” Menedemos raised his voice to call out to the crew: “Lower the sail from the yard.”
The men hurried to obey. Using the brails-lines that ran from the top of the merchant galley’s square sail to the bottom-they quickly spread it, then swung the yard from the starboard bow back to the stern at the port side to take best advantage of the wind. The sail, sewn together from small pieces of linen, filled with air. The mast creaked a little as it took the force of the wind. The Aphrodite’s bronze ram, greened from all its time in the sea, dug deeper into the water.