Sostratos wanted to tell him he was talking nonsense-wanted to, but knew he couldn’t. He gave back a rather sickly smile. “We really ought to go meet the fellow, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.” Menedemos sounded both judicious and dubious. “I was thinking of selling our goods at the marketplace right here in Peiraieus, and so we won’t-”
“What?” Sostratos yelped. “Are you out of your mind? They sell timber and oil and wheat here, not the kind of…” He fumbled to a stop when his cousin started laughing again, this time harder than ever. Sostratos sent him an aggrieved stare. “Oh. You’re having me on. Ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha.” That wasn’t laughter. He repeated the empty syllables to show how funny he thought the joke was.
Menedemos set a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, my dear. I truly am. I just couldn’t resist. The look on your face-”
“Couldn’t resist?” Sostratos said. “You didn’t even try.”
“Well, maybe not.” Menedemos gauged the sun. “Do you think we’ve got time to go into town today and find this Protomakhos, or would we do better waiting till tomorrow? “
Sostratos looked at the sinking sun, too: looked at it and let out a long, mournful sigh. “Tomorrow would be better,” he said, “and you have no idea how much I wish I could tell you otherwise.” And then, suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “No, I take it back-we’d better go now.”
“And how have you talked yourself into that?” Menedemos asked, amused.
“Simple. Tomorrow’s either the ninth or the tenth of Elaphebolion.” His gaze swung to the ripening moon, which announced the date. “I think it’ll be the tenth. If it is, it’s the first day of the Dionysia. There’ll be a big parade and all sorts of other things going on, and nobody will want to do any business. That’s why we ought to meet Protomakhos today.”
His cousin thought it over. “Well, when you’re right, you’re right. We’d better go. Diokles, keep enough men on board and sober tonight to make sure none of these clever, light-fingered Athenians walks off with the akatos.”
“I’ll take care of it, skipper,” the oarmaster promised. “You can count on me.”
“I know. I do,” Menedemos said. “And now I’d better get moving. Look at Sostratos there, shifting from foot to foot like a comic actor about to shit himself.”
“I am not!” Sostratos said indignantly, and made sure he did not rise up onto the toes of his left foot. “I’m just.. eager.”
“That’s what boys say when they shoot too soon the first time they visit a brothel,” Menedemos retorted. Sostratos yelped again, even more indignantly than before. His cousin laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go, then.”
Even setting foot in Peiraieus was enough to excite Sostratos. He made himself hurry past the long colonnade that housed the harbor-side market. Most of the port wasn’t worth looking at: nondescript houses and shops, mud-brick with red tile roofs. Some of them were whitewashed, rather more weren’t. The goods on display were of the cheap, flashy sort he might have seen in any good-sized polis around the Inner Sea. But the people were speaking Attic Greek. Even the barbarians in business in Peiraieus, of whom there were a good many, spoke Attic flavored by their foreign accents. Hearing it made Sostratos smile.
Menedemos pointed. “What’s that temple? It sure stands out amongst all this boring stuff.”
“That’s the sacred enclosure of Athena and Zeus,” Sostratos answered. “Both deities are portrayed in bronze. Athena’s holding a spear; Zeus has a rod in one hand and a Victory in the other. There’s also a fine painting of Leosthenes and his family by Arkesilaos. That’s new; the statues aren’t.”
“Leosthenes?” Menedemos frowned. “I can’t place the name.”
“The Athenian general who fought the Macedonians right after Alexander died, when we were just going from boys to youths,” Sostratos said. “He beat them a couple of times up in Boiotia, but they won the war.”
“All right. I remember that,” Menedemos said. “I couldn’t have come up with his name if you’d handed me to a Persian torturer, though.” He pointed off to the right, toward the east. “And what’s that big thing?”
“That’s the fortress at Mounykhia, the harbor next door,” Sostratos told him. “It’s full of Kassandros’ Macedonians.”
“It would be, wouldn’t it?” Menedemos said.
“What? You don’t suppose the Athenians would line up with Kassandros if he didn’t hold them down?” Sostratos did his best to sound artfully shocked. His cousin chuckled. He went on, “If there weren’t any Macedonians around, Athens-and all the other poleis in Hellas- would go back to squabbling amongst themselves, the way they did before Philip put his foot on them.”
“Not all the other poleis.”
“What do you mean?”
“Thebes isn’t there anymore. Alexander destroyed it.”
“That’s true,” Sostratos said. “I’ve heard people are starting to live on the site, though. One of these days, it’ll be a city again.”
“I suppose so,” his cousin said. They walked on through Peiraieus and up toward Athens through the Long Walls joining the port to the great city. Menedemos nodded to the soldiers on the walls. “They’d be more Macedonians, wouldn’t they?”
Sostratos eyed the men. “Probably. They’re bigger and fairer than most Athenians, anyhow. But Demetrios of Phaleron is the glove to Kassandros’ hand: what Kassandros wants done, Demetrios does. So they may be Athenians doing the Macedonians’ bidding.”
“I thought these walls would be more impressive,” Menedemos said. “They aren’t that tall, and they aren’t that strong.”
“They were first built in Perikles’ day, and generals then knew less about besieging cities than they do now, so the works didn’t have to be that strong to serve,” Sostratos answered. “They were strong enough to keep the Spartans out. Athens wasn’t stormed at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The Spartans starved her into surrender, and then made the Athenians pull down a stretch of the walls afterwards.”
Menedemos looked around. “Built up again,” he observed.
“Oh, yes,” Sostratos said. “The Athenians did that as soon as they thought they could get away with it.” His gaze went this way and that, too. The road up from Athens wasn’t much to look at: only a dirt track, with grass and bushes on either side. Even so… “Walking this road, Menedemos… Walking this road is special. Perikles traveled on this road. So did Aiskhylos and Sophokles and Euripides. So did Thoukydides-and Herodotos, too, though he wasn’t born here. Sokrates walked this road, and Platon, and Aristoteles. And now – Sostratos and Menedemos.”
Menedemos went off behind a bush to ease himself. When he came back, he said, “Aristophanes might have pissed on that very same bush. What an honor!” He batted his eyes like a youth playing coy.
“To the crows with you,” Sostratos said. “I try to talk about what coming to Athens means to me, and what do I get? Filthy jokes!”
“Aristophanes lived here, too, and the other comic poets, though you didn’t bother mentioning them,” Menedemos said. “Are you going to tell me comedy isn’t part of what Athens stands for?”
“There’s a time and place for everything,” Sostratos replied, a weaker comeback than he’d thought he might give. Reluctantly, he dipped his head to his cousin. “All right. You have a point-of sorts.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much!” Menedemos cried.
“Enough,” Sostratos said. His cousin only laughed at him. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. He might have known that would happen.
But Menedemos wasn’t a complete scoffer. Pointing up to the akropolis, he said, “That’s the temple to Athena the Maiden, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s the Parthenon, sure enough,” Sostratos answered. The sinking sun shone brilliantly on the white marble and on the painted blues and reds and yellows of the Panathenaic frieze.
“I’ve seen a lot of temples in my time,” Menedemos said, “but that one’s as fine as any.”