“Normally, that’s a good rule,” Sostratos said. “But the Greater Dionysia is special.”
“I’ll tell you what’s special,” Menedemos said. “The clink of the owls the Athenians’ll lay down for truffles and good Lesbian wine is special, that’s what.”
“I know we have to make money.” Sostratos said it with more than a little shame in his voice. A kalos k’agathos, a proper Hellenic gentleman, lived off the land he owned and looked down his nose at trade. Damonax professed being that kind of gentleman. As Sostratos had seen, though, his brother-in-law didn’t despise the money from trade, especially when his family needed it-which they did a lot of the time.
“Well, then, act like you enjoy it.” Menedemos didn’t mind being a merchant-or, if he did, he hid it well, perhaps even from himself. “If it weren’t for people like us, all the kaloi k’agathoi would be sitting around on bare floors scratching themselves, because who’d sell ‘em all the things that make life worth living? Nobody, that’s who.”
“Getting the chance to see strange places is part of what makes being a merchant worthwhile,” Sostratos admitted. “And I’ve never been to Mytilene, so”-he dipped his head-”all right. If that’s what you want to do, we’ll do it. You know, that polis wouldn’t be here today if the Athenians hadn’t changed their minds during the Peloponnesian War. ”
“When did the Athenians ever do anything but change their minds?” Menedemos asked, more than a little scornfully.
“They would have massacred the city after it rose up against them, and they sent off a trireme with orders to do just that,” Sostratos said. “But then they had second thoughts, and they sent another ship after the first. The rowers on the first ship dawdled; they didn’t like what they were doing. The other ship hurried. Even though it started a day behind, it got there just in time to stop the slaughter. Mytilene’s worth seeing, just on account of that.”
Menedemos laughed. “If that’s what interests you, all right. The other thing that makes me want to go to Lesbos is the word of mouth.” He leered. Diokles chuckled.
Sostratos said, “Is it true, what they say about Lesbian women? Did they really invent that particular vice there? From what I’ve heard of Sappho ’s poetry, she doesn’t talk about it.”
“With that funny Aiolic dialect they speak there, half the time it’s hard to tell what they’re talking about,” Menedemos answered. “But if you mean, did they invent sucking a man’s prong, well, Aristophanes sure thinks so.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” Sostratos said. “ Aristophanes says all sorts of things that aren’t so.”
His cousin ignored him. Menedemos seldom wasted a chance to quote from the comic poet, and proved no exception now: “ ‘You seem to me to be the lambda among the Lesbians,’ he says. And there’s that modern poet, what’s-his-name-Theopompos, that’s it-too:
‘Not to mention this old method, repeated Through our mouths Which the children of the Lesbians Found.’ “
“That’s not proof-it’s only assertion,” Sostratos said.
“You want proof, find a friendly girl on Mytilene,” Menedemos answered. “She’ll measure the hypotenuse on your triangle. See, I remember some geometry after all.”
He and Diokles both found the joke very funny. For some reason Sostratos couldn’t fathom, he did, too. He tried to think rationally about a pretty girl from a brothel drawing triangles in the sand and talking in learned tones about the theory the godlike Pythagoras had proved-and the harder he tried, the harder he laughed.
“You’re absurd,” he told his cousin.
“Thank you,” Menedemos answered, which for some reason made them both laugh more than ever. At last, Menedemos said, “On to Lesbos, then.”
“On to Lesbos,” Sostratos agreed. After a while, he asked, “What are truffles supposed to cost? Have you got any idea?”
Menedemos tossed his head. “Whatever we have to pay, we charge more in Athens, that’s all. So far as I know, they don’t grow truffles there, so they’ll pay.”
“Well, yes, certainly,” Sostratos said. “But I’ve never traded for them before. I’d like to have some idea of how to tell good ones from bad, and how much I ought to pay for each grade. The more I know beforehand, the better the bargains I can hope to make.”
“Ask at some of our stops on the way up to Mytilene,” Menedemos suggested. “The closer we get to Lesbos, the more likely the merchants in the market squares are to have dealt in ‘em.”
“That makes good sense,” Sostratos said. “Yes, that makes very good sense. How did you come up with it?”
“Talent,” Menedemos said airily. “Pure talent.”
Few things irked Sostratos more than having his cousin refuse to rise to one of his gibes. “There must be a rational explanation instead,” he said.
Menedemos blew him a kiss. “You’re so sweet,” he purred. “Sweet as vinegar.”
“Oh, lesbiaze,” Sostratos said. The verb, derived from the alleged proclivity of Lesbian women for such things, set him and Menedemos- and Diokles, and some of the rowers, too-laughing all over again.
Menedemos steered the Aphrodite toward the harbor at Mytilene. Part of the polis sat on a little island in the middle of the harbor. The rest lay on Lesbos proper, to the north of the islet. A modern wall of gray stone protected the portion of Mytilene on the Lesbian mainland. Like Rhodes, that part of the city was built on a grid; a glance told Menedemos the streets on the little island, the older part of Mytilene, ran every which way.
“I keep waiting for a war galley to come boiling out and ask what we’re doing here,” Sostratos said.
“That happened at Samos, but not at Khios,” Menedemos said. “My guess is, we’re far enough inside Antigonos’ dominions that people don’t worry so much about a lone galley.”
“People in Antigonos’ dominions don’t worry so much about whether we’re pirates, either,” Sostratos said. “They might want to hire us if we turn out to be raiders, but they don’t care about sinking us.”
“From everything I’ve seen and heard, old One-Eye cares about himself first, last, and always, and to the crows with everything else,” Menedemos said. “If he can get some use out of pirates, he’s all for them. If he can’t, he doesn’t worry one way or the other.”
Diokles pointed to a quay not far from the bridge joining the old part of Mytilene to the new. “There’s a good place to tie up, skipper,” he said.
“Yes, I see it,” Menedemos agreed, and swung the merchant galley slightly to port. He eased her up alongside the jutting pier, then dipped his head to the oarmaster.
“Back oars!” Diokles called. A couple of strokes killed the bit of forward momentum the Aphrodite had left. The keleustes grunted in satisfaction. “Oцp!” he said, and the rowers rested. “Ship oars!” he added. As they obeyed, sailors tossed lines to waiting longshoremen, who made the akatos fast to the pier.
“What vessel? What cargo?” asked one of the men on the quay. In Aiolic fashion, he put the accent on each word as far forward as it could possibly go.
“We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes,” Menedemos answered. His Doric drawl seemed even more foreign here than it did in the Ionic-speaking towns the merchant galley had visited on her way north. “We’ve got Rhodian perfume, papyrus and ink, Koan silk, crimson dye and beeswax and balsam and embroidered linen from Phoenicia- things of that sort.”
“And what are you looking for here?” the local asked.
“Wine, of course,” Menedemos said, and the fellow dipped his head.
Sostratos added, “And truffles. Can you give us the names of a couple of dealers?”
The Mytilenean looked elaborately blank. “By the gods, Hellenes are a greedy folk,” Sostratos muttered. He took an obolos out of his mouth and tossed it to the longshoreman.