“You’re bound to be right about that,” Menedemos said as Sostratos gave him his cup. “I’ve had some ghastly suppers in inns.”
“Who hasn’t? Only men who never travel,” Sostratos said. “And this is another one of those places where, even if I am right, so what?” He took a sip of wine, then fixed a supper for himself. “You see? My being right didn’t even get you to bring out any food for me, though I poured your wine.”
“Well, now you’ve embarrassed me,” Menedemos said, which was true; he knew he should have taken sitos and opson for Sostratos as well as himself. “I’m just lazy and useless, that’s all.” He hung his head.
“If you were on the stage, they’d throw cucumbers and squishy apples at you, the way you overact,” Sostratos said. Menedemos snorted, though Sostratos was probably right again.
When Sostratos woke up on the Aphrodite’s poop deck, he needed a moment to remember in which city’s harbor the ship lay. Kos? Samos? Khios? No, this was Mytilene, on Lesbos. The wind blew from the north, and carried the city stink of dung and smoke and sweat and garbage from the part of the polis on Lesbos proper straight into the harbor. When Sostratos was inside a city, he stopped noticing the smell after a while. Going out to sea, though, reminded him of it whenever he came back to port.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The eastern sky, the sky above the Anatolian mainland, was gray with advancing dawn. Menedemos still snored beside him. That seldom happened; more often than not, Menedemos woke before him. And Diokles still slept sitting up on a rower’s bench, leaning against the planks of the ship’s side. Sostratos rubbed his eyes again, wondering whether to believe them-he couldn’t remember the last time he’d got up ahead of the keleustes.
He got to his feet and walked, naked, to the rail to ease himself. Even one man moving about gave the merchant galley a small but perceptible motion, enough to rouse both Menedemos and Diokles. “Hail,” Menedemos said. “Not such a sleepyhead as usual, eh?”
“Oh, go howl!” Sostratos said. “Sleeping later than you do doesn’t make me a lazy wretch.”
“No, eh? Since when?” Menedemos got out from under his himation. He too didn’t bother with clothes while sleeping: he used his wadded-up chiton for a cushion. He came over and stood beside Sostratos.
Diokles stood up and stretched. Sostratos said, “I still think you’d be more comfortable if you lay down when you slept.”
The oarmaster tossed his head. “That may be fine for other people, but not for me. I got used to sleeping sitting up when I pulled an oar, and nothing else has felt right since. I have no quarrel with what anybody else does, and I don’t see why anyone else should have a quarrel with what I do.”
“I have no quarrel with it,” Sostratos said. “It just seems strange.”
Menedemos grinned impishly. “And when you have a girl, Diokles, do you sit up and put her on your lap?”
“Sometimes,” Diokles replied, unruffled. “It’s as good that way as any other, don’t you think?”
“It’s pretty good any which way.” Menedemos turned to Sostratos. “Now that would be something useful for philosophers to do, my dear: figure out which way it’s best, I mean.”
“It’s as Pindaros says-custom is king of all,” Sostratos answered. “Besides, what one man likes most, another likes least. So who can say what best is?”
“If you go to a brothel, the girls charge you most for riding you like a racehorse,” Diokles said. “They must think that’s the best.”
“Not necessarily,” Sostratos said. “They might charge more because they have to do the most work that way. If they just bend forward, the man behind them is thrusting home with his spear, and they don’t need to do much at all.”
Menedemos laughed. “Well, this is an interesting way to start the morning. More fun than breakfast, I will say.”
From gray, the eastern sky went to pink, and then to gold. The sailors who’d spent the night on the Aphrodite instead of going into Mytilene to drink and wench got up one by one. Before long, they were arguing about the best way to do it. They got no answer that would have satisfied a scholar at the Lykeion, but they had fun, too.
After a barley roll dipped in olive oil and a cup of watered wine, Sostratos said, “Shall we find the agora and see what we can learn about wine merchants and truffle sellers?”
“Sounds good to me.” Menedemos tilted his head back and emptied his cup. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Let’s go.”
They walked up the gangplank and down the quay. As they passed a longshoreman, Sostratos asked him where the market square was. The Mytilenean might have been stricken with an advanced case of idiocy. He scratched his head, pulled at his lower lip, frowned, and generally gave the impression of a man who had a hard time remembering his own name, let alone anything harder. Sostratos didn’t need to have read Hippokrates to know how to cure that malady. As he had with the other longshoreman, he gave the man an obolos. Sure enough, silver proved the proper drug. Intelligence blossomed on the Mytilenean’s face. He pointed north into the part of the polis on Lesbos and gave quick, confident directions, finishing, “You can’t miss it.”
“I hope not,” Sostratos muttered as they crossed the bridge.
“Up this street here, did he say?” Menedemos asked.
“That’s right,” Sostratos answered. He could see the grid of the city in his head, and see which way they should go. He’d needed years to realize most people couldn’t do that.
The wind blew strongly out of the north. Menedemos said, “A good thing we’re not coming up to Lesbos today. We wouldn’t get anywhere fast.”
“No, we wouldn’t.” Sostratos stopped and rubbed at his eyes: the breeze had blown a speck of dust into them. More dust swirled past. “Here’s a town where the Hippodamian grid isn’t everything you wish it were,” he said, rubbing again. “They shouldn’t have made the streets all run north-south and east-west. The north wind just races down these long, straight avenues.”
“If you’re going to have a grid-” Menedemos began.
Sostratos tossed his head. “No, no. If they’d rotated it through half a right angle, then it would be fine; the wind would be blocked. The way things are, though, it’s… unpleasant.”
“It sure is.” Now his cousin paused to rub at his face and get some grit out of his eye. “Miserable wind. I’m glad we don’t live here all year around.”
“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but Rhodes,” Sostratos said, counting street corners so he’d know when to turn.
“Not even Athens?” Menedemos asked slyly.
Sostratos had to think about that. He had to think so hard, he almost lost track of the corners. At last, though, he tossed his head. “No, my dear, not even Athens. It’s a wonderful place to study, and the theater is the finest in the world, but it’s not what it was in the time of Perikles and Sokrates and Platon. The people have lost too many wars, and they know it. They still call themselves free and autonomous, the way so many poleis do these days, but it’s nothing a Rhodian would recognize as freedom. And what they call democracy…” He tossed his head again. “Demetrios of Phaleron runs things for Kassandros, and there’s a Macedonian garrison to make sure nothing unfortunate happens.”
“And if anyone says anything Demetrios doesn’t like, he disappears?” Menedemos asked.
“Sometimes-not always, I admit,” Sostratos replied. “Demetrios studied philosophy himself, and he makes a mild tyrant-a tolerable tyrant, if you don’t mind the contradiction. Things could be worse there. But they could be a lot better, too. And we turn… here, I think. This must be the temple to Hera that fellow in the harbor was talking about.” He swung to the left.
“I’d say so,” Menedemos agreed, and followed him. He pointed down the long, straight street. “And I’d say that’s the agora ahead.”