“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.”
“Menedemos is so clever, he even thinks he can talk me into doing his share of the work,” Sostratos said. “But I’m clever enough to see that, and not to let him get away with it… too often.”
“Too bad!” Menedemos said with great feeling.
“Go howl,” Sostratos replied. He and his cousin and Phainias all smiled. After a good day of trading, why not?
4
“Come on, you lugs,” Diokles called as the Aphrodite slid away from its mooring at Mytilene. “Put your backs into it. It’s not like you’re going to get heatstroke today.”
“You’re right about that,” Menedemos said from his station at the steering oars. The day was cool and overcast, the sky so gray he couldn’t find the faintest trace of the sun. It was, in fact, the sort of weather his father had warned him about while arguing against putting to sea too soon. Once more, he reminded himself he owed Sostratos’ nuisance of a brother-in-law thanks for getting his father to change his mind. That wasn’t something Menedemos himself had ever had much luck doing.
Sostratos said, “If it stays like this, we’re liable to have an interesting time navigating today. Sailing from here to Athens, we’ll be crossing one of the wider landless stretches of the Aegean.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Menedemos said, hoping he was right. “We’ll have Psyra, west of Khios, to sight on as we go west, and Skyros and Euboia should be coming up over the horizon by the time Psyra drops out of sight astern.”
“True-as long as the weather doesn’t get any worse than this,” Sostratos said. “If it starts raining, though, or if a fog rolls in…”
Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic to avert the omen. After a moment, his cousin did the same. Bad weather was the main reason ships seldom put to sea from the middle of autumn to the beginning of spring. Storms were the most dramatic worry, but fog and mist might have been more dangerous. Not being able to tell where you were or to recognize landmarks till too late… What could be more terrifying?
Diokles said, “Even in the fog, we’ve got wind and wave and casting the line to keep us safe. Between knowing how deep the sea is and seeing what sort of stuff the lead brings up when it does touch bottom, we ought to have a pretty fair notion of where we are.”
“That’s right,” Menedemos said loudly, aiming his words not only at Sostratos but at the crew as well. He didn’t want the men worrying he’d end up in Byzantion when he was aiming for Athens. He also didn’t want them worrying he’d tear the belly out of the akatos on a rock he didn’t see soon enough. He didn’t want to worry about that himself, though he knew it could happen if he wasn’t careful.
Maybe Sostratos didn’t want to worry about that, either. He changed the subject, saying in a sly voice, “Are you slipping, best one? You haven’t said a word about either Phainias’ wife or Onesimos’.”
“I never saw Phainias’,” Menedemos answered. “And he gave us girls, so going after her wouldn’t have been sporting of me, would it?”
“That hasn’t always stopped you,” Sostratos observed.
He was right. Not caring to admit it, Menedemos said, “I did get a look at Onesimos’, as a matter of fact. She was about this tall”-he held the palm of one hand flat against his chest, just below the level of his nipples-”and about this wide”-he took both hands off the tillers to stretch his arms wide-”so as far as I’m concerned Onesimos is welcome to her.”
The listening sailors laughed. Sostratos said, “She’d be not far from our age, wouldn’t she? Do you suppose she was that fat when he wed her?”
“I wouldn’t know, and I don’t much care to find out,” Menedemos answered. “More women are like that than you’d think. They can’t get out to the gymnasion to exercise, the way men do. They just stay inside the women’s quarters and nibble all day long. Some men like them that way, too. For all I know, Onesimos is happy with her. But she wasn’t what I wanted.”
A line of pelicans flew by, not far from the ship. Menedemos admired their great white wings. He wondered if one of them would glide down to the water and scoop out a fish with its long, pouched beak, but none did. Sostratos also followed them with his eyes. He remarked, “They really do have heads shaped like axes, don’t they?”
“So they do!” Menedemos said; in Greek, the two words were very close in sound. “I never thought of that before.” He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, wondering why not.
Sostratos said, “I can imagine the first couple of Hellenes who ever saw pelicans. One of them turns to the other and says, ‘What’s that?’ And the second fellow goes, ‘I don’t know, but it’s got a head like an axe.’ And the name would have stuck.”