“Will there be another trilogy tomorrow, or will the modern tragedies be separate from one another?” Menedemos asked.
“Almost certainly single plays,” Sostratos answered. He turned to Protomakhos. “Who was the last tragedian who tried a trilogy?”
“To the crows with me if I remember,” the proxenos said. “Nobody writes them these days, because all the tragedians know they’d never find a khoregos who could afford to produce a whole trilogy. Demetrios of Phaleron can, but you have to know he’s spending his patron’s silver, not just his own. Finding a khoregos who can afford to put on even one tragedy is hard enough, but three and a satyr play?” He tossed his head.
“Say what you will about Demetrios, but I enjoyed the plays,” Sostratos said. “I enjoyed the staging, too. That has to be what it was like in the old days.”
“Yes: splendid and a little clumsy at the same time,” Protomakhos said.
“They knew they were splendid. They didn’t know they were clumsy, didn’t know and didn’t care,” Sostratos said.
“But we know,” Menedemos said. “That makes watching the plays different for us from what it would have been for them. We know what they turned into. By the dog, we are what they turned into.”
Sostratos started to answer that, but then checked himself. After a few steps, he started over: “You’d better be careful, my dear. Every once in a while, you say something that shows you’re much more clever than you usually let on.”
“Who? Me?” Menedemos was used to mockery from Sostratos. He didn’t seem to know what to make of praise. After a startled blink, he turned it into a joke, saying, “Believe me, I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
Protomakhos laughed. “Anyone can see at a glance you two like each other pretty well.”
That offended both Sostratos and Menedemos. They both indignantly denied it-so indignantly, they started laughing, too. Sostratos said, “Oh, yes. We get on fine… whenever I don’t feel like strangling this thick-skin, which I do about half the time.”
“Only half?” Menedemos bowed to him. “I must be getting better. And I haven’t said a word about how often I wish I could pitch you over the rail.”
They came down the little street south of the temple of Dionysos, the one that opened onto the street where Protomakhos lived. A couple of women came up the street from the other side of the theater. They had been chattering. When they saw the Rhodians and Protomakhos, they drew their veils up higher and fell silent.
One of them hurried past the men. The other turned down the same street. She walked on without a word. In a low voice, Protomakhos murmured, “My wife.”
“Oh.” Sostratos discreetly didn’t look at her. He did glance at Menedemos. To his relief, his cousin had developed an apparently absorbing interest in some swallows circling overhead. Chance meetings after festivals were the wine and opson of the plots of modern comedies. In real life, though, they were liable to cause trouble-especially with Menedemos’ taste for adultery.
Protomakhos knocked at the door. A slave opened it. Protomakhos’ wife went through first. The men followed. Now Menedemos couldn’t look up at birds. Was he eyeing the woman’s hindquarters and the way she moved her hips when she walked? Or was he simply looking straight ahead, as anyone might do? Sostratos would have believed that of anyone else. Put his cousin, even accidentally, around a married woman, and who could say what might happen?
Protomakhos’ wife behaved with perfect propriety: she pretended the men with her husband didn’t exist. Menedemos didn’t watch her as she went over to the stairway and, presumably, up to the women’s quarters. Sostratos was jumpy enough to mislike the way Menedemos didn’t watch her.
“I’ll go see how Myrsos is doing with supper,” Protomakhos said, and headed for the kitchen.
Menedemos let out a small, soft sigh. Sostratos felt ice run up his back. He was as frightened as if he’d heard an owl in daylight: more so, in fact. He could, if he worked at it, dismiss his fear about the owl as superstition. But he knew what that sigh meant. Out of the side of his mouth, he hissed, “She’s our host’s wife. Do try to remember that.”
“Yes, my dear,” Menedemos said in a way that proved he’d barely heard. “Doesn’t she have the most exciting walk you ever saw? With a walk like that, she must be a handful and a half in bed.”
“You’re a handful and a half all the time,” Sostratos replied in something not far from despair.
Menedemos only smiled at him. Protomakhos came out with a smile on his face, too. “Oysters, Myrsos said,” the Rhodian proxenos reported. Menedemos’ smile got wider. Now Sostratos’ despair was unalloyed. Why had the cook chosen this of all nights to do up a supper widely thought to be aphrodisiac?
As dusk fell, the sounds of revelry again floated over the walls and into Protomakhos’ house. The Athenian scooped another oyster out of its shell. “I may go out myself, see what kind of a good time I can find,” he said. “I’ve been sitting in the theater all day. I don’t want to sit all night, too. How about you boys?”
“Us?” Menedemos said. “We’re just a couple of stick-in-the-muds tonight, I’m afraid. We’ll all go to the theater tomorrow, though, eh?”
You’re no stick-in-the-mud, Sostratos thought. You just don’t feel like leaving the house to hunt. Protomakhos noticed nothing amiss. “Yes, the theater,” he said. “I’ll be the one with the thick head come morning, I expect.”
The proxenos left, a hunter’s smile on his own face. Menedemos yawned. “I think I’ll go to bed,” he said.
“Do you?” Sostratos said tonelessly.
“Yes. I’m tired.” His cousin sounded perfectly innocent. That only made Sostratos more suspicious.
But what could he do except go to bed himself? He intended to stay awake as long as he could, to listen and make sure Menedemos stayed in his own room. Sleep sneaked up on him, though. The next thing he knew, a slave was pounding on the door. “Time to get up for the theater, sir,” the man said.
“To the crows with…” But Sostratos, by then, was resigned to being awake. He got out of bed, eased himself, and went to the andron for breakfast. Protomakhos and Menedemos were already there. “How are you today?” Sostratos asked.
“Well, thank you,” the proxenos replied.
“Just fine,” Menedemos added with a smile. That could mean anything or nothing. Sostratos devoutly hoped it meant nothing.
He perched on a stool. The slave who’d awakened him brought him barley porridge and watered wine. “Eat up,” Protomakhos said, showing no ill effects from whatever carousing he’d done the night before. “The sooner we get to the theater, the better the seats we’ll have.”
Sostratos watched his cousin as he spooned up the porridge. Menedemos showed nothing out of the ordinary. Had he gone upstairs and tried to seduce Protomakhos’ wife? If he’d tried, had he succeeded? Whatever had happened, the woman hadn’t gone to her husband with a tale of rape or attempted rape. That was something. But what had Menedemos done? Were they in danger of being summarily evicted or worse? Menedemos’ bland expression was proof against Sostratos’ curiosity.
As soon as Protomakhos finished breakfast, he got up. So did Menedemos. Sostratos joined them. Protomakhos said, “Well, now we’ll see how our modern poets stack up against Aiskhylos.”
“Bet on Aiskhylos,” Menedemos said.
“I like some of the modern work,” Sostratos said. Protomakhos dipped his head.
Menedemos said, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re both welcome to it. Most modern tragedians think they have to be different to be clever, and most of the differences are no good. That’s how I see it, anyhow.”
“Some truth to that, certainly,” Protomakhos said. “Only some, though, I think, O best one. Some of the poetry that’s written nowadays is very fine.”
Sostratos went into the theater prepared to agree with the proxenos. This time, despite Protomakhos’ protests, he and Menedemos paid for their host’s seat. Protomakhos responded by chasing a honey-cake seller up an aisle to buy some of his wares for the Rhodians. As soon as he was out of earshot, Sostratos said, “Please tell me you didn’t.”