“They sell it in Ioudaia for twice its weight in silver,” Sostratos answered.
“Somesimes they sell it here in Hellas for twice its weight in silver, too,” Onetor said pointedly.
“Not always,” Sostratos said, just as pointedly. “And if I paid twice its weight, and I did, I’m not going to let it go for no profit. If you buy it from me, you won’t sell it at your buying price, either.”
“All that may be true-if you paid what you say you paid. But who knows about that?” Onetor sent Sostratos a sour stare. “Merchants are born liars.”
“No doubt you would know, being one yourself,” Sostratos said. Onetor’s expression got blacker. Sostratos gave him a polite seated bow. “We can go on insulting each other, best one, or we can do business. Which would you rather?”
Now the Mytilenean frankly stared. “You’re a cool customer, aren’t you?
“I try to stay cool, and I would like to be a customer,” Sostratos replied. “Shall we talk about balsam and truffles, or shall we go on and on about what a thief each of us thinks the other one is?”
To his surprise, Onetor started to laugh. “You are a cool customer, Furies take me if you’re not. All right, my dear, let’s talk about trading truffles for balsam, and just how much balsam you’ll give for a drakhma’s weight of my fungi. Maybe perfume, too, now that I think of it.”
Sostratos hadn’t expected anyone to be interested in balsam till he got to Athens. But he had a good notion of the most he could hope to get for it there. That, clearly, was less than he could get for truffles. Because Onetor had annoyed him, he named an outrageous price to open the dicker. As he’d hoped, the truffle-seller bawled like a castrated colt. Sostratos came down, but, because he’d started so high, he came down to a price he still liked.
Onetor had made a mistake, setting the value of his truffles so firmly as the dicker started. He’d made it plain he wouldn’t come down, but he couldn’t very well go up from the three drakhmai of silver for each drakhma’s weight of truffles, either. Sostratos was more flexible, and took advantage of that when haggling over both the balsam and the perfume. At last, he and the Mytilenean settled on prices that left neither of them too dissatisfied.
“While we’re talking here, my cousin is dickering with your brother,” Sostratos remarked.
“I hope Onesimos comes out of the deal with all his fingers and toes,” Onetor said. “If Menedemos is anywhere near as sharp as you are, best one, he’s too good for us poor fellows who stay in one polis all our days.”
“You give me too much credit, most noble one,” Sostratos murmured, not at all displeased at Onetor’s flattery. “And,” he went on truthfully, “you don’t give yourself enough. I think this is a bargain where we’ll both end up showing a nice profit.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Onetor said. “For a while there, I thought you were going to talk me out of my skin and sell it in the Athenian agora.”
“Who’s your prettiest hetaira here? I’d get a better price for hers,” Sostratos said. Onetor laughed. The Rhodian asked, “Can you have your truffles ready this afternoon? I’ll have sailors bring the balsam and perfume here then, if that pleases you.”
“It pleases me fine. And if you’re going to get an amphora or two of Phainias’ oil and flavor it with truffles, you might also want to arrange to buy lekythoi here in Mytilene so you can sell the oil from the small jars. Kallikrates son of Kalligenes can probably sell you enough of them to do the job without making you wait.”
Sostratos wondered if this Kallikrates would give Onetor a kickback, but getting away in a hurry did matter. “I’ll talk with him,” he said. “Where’s his pottery?”
“Not far from here. Phainias can give you directions; he buys all his amphorai from Kallikrates,” Onetor said. That made Sostratos feel better. If the Rhodian proxenos bought from Kallikrates, the man was likelier to be reputable.
When he and Menedemos met at Phainias’ house, he found his cousin jubilant. “We’ll take Lesbian to Athens along with the Byblian,” Menedemos said. “Do you know what I did? Do you know?” He was almost beside himself with glee.
“No,” Sostratos replied, “but I suspect you’re going to tell me.”
“I traded him ten jars of Byblian for thirty of his best,” Menedemos said. “Ten for thirty! Can you believe it?”
“Euge!” Sostratos and Phainias both spoke together. The proxenos went on, “How did you pry such a bargain out of Onesimos? He’s one of the singiest men I know.”
“You won’t tell him?” Menedemos asked.
“By Zeus, best one, I won’t,” Phainias promised. “It would go against my duty as proxenos-and besides, Onesimos should deal in vinegar, he’s so sour.”
“Well, I thought so, too,” Menedemos said. “We were talking about wine, and I made sure we tried his Lesbian before he sent a slave down to the harbor to bring back my sailors with a jar of Byblian for him to sample. We’d had quite a bit of his wine before then, in fact. He thought he was getting me drunk and pliable. I had something else in mind, though.”
“I think I know what,” Sostratos said. “You are a sly rascal.”
“Why, thank you, my dear.” Beaming, Menedemos turned back to Phainias. “When the slave and the sailors got back with the Byblian, we broached the amphora. What you need to know about Byblian is, it has the most wonderful bouquet in the world. Maybe Ariousian is as nice on the nose coming out of the jar, but I can’t think of any other wine that is.” He sniffed and smiled and went on, “When Onetor got a whiff of it, he was so excited, he almost looked happy.”
“He must have been excited,” Phainias said.
“Oh, he was, all right. He was practically panting to make the deal, as a matter of fact. And then we tasted the Byblian, and that didn’t queer things, the way I feared it might.”
The Rhodian proxenos still wore a puzzled expression. Sostratos explained: “Byblian is a funny wine. It’s much nicer to the nose than it is to the palate. But if Onesimos had drunk a lot of his own Lesbian beforehand-”
“That’s right. That’s exactly right,” Menedemos broke in. “Once you’ve had a few cups of wine, it all tastes pretty much the same unless it’s real donkey piss. And Byblian’s not that bad; it just doesn’t have a flavor to match its bouquet. So when I sipped and praised it to the skies, Onesimos couldn’t tell I was giving it more than it deserved.”
“He usually deals in local wines, not ones from as far away as Byblos, so he wouldn’t know that about your vintage,” Phainias said.
“Which is what I was hoping for, and which is what happened,” Menedemos said happily. “He knows plenty about his own little corner of the business, and so he thought he knew everything about all of it.”
Sostratos said, “When Sokrates was defending himself before the Athenians, that was his complaint about artisans generally.”
“Since his jury was probably full of them, he was foolish to complain about them to their faces,” Menedemos said. Before Sostratos could rise to that, his cousin continued, “Me, I don’t want to get tangled up with the law in Athens any which way. Things are more complicated there than anywhere else in Hellas, I think.”
“It’s a big polis, far bigger even than Rhodes,” Sostratos said. “It’s no wonder everything’s more complicated there.” Having said that, he couldn’t very well go back and start a quarrel over Menedemos’ gibe about Sokrates. Menedemos grinned at him. He pretended not to notice, which only made Menedemos grin more.
Phainias said, “You people who do business in so many poleis are a wonder to me. How do you keep everything straight?”
“I don’t even try,” Menedemos said. “I just count on Sostratos. He knows what all the various laws and customs are, who coins heavy drakhmai and who light, what’s good in each town and what’s not worth having, and so on.”
“I already said he was a clever fellow,” the proxenos replied. “I would say you’re not bad yourself, and I would be right about that, too.”