“Nothing wrong with profit,” Menedemos said. “Without it, merchants couldn’t operate. And without merchants, where are philosophers? Squatting there straining to take a shit, that’s where.” He wasn’t sure whether Aristophanes had said that about men who loved wisdom, but it was something the comic poet might have said.
“Oh, yes. I had that same thought in Athens, though I didn’t put it so… elegantly,” Sostratos said.
Was that praise, or was he being snide? Menedemos couldn’t tell. He wondered whether his cousin was sure. With a shrug, he clapped Sostratos on the shoulder. “Stuck with being a trader, eh? And stuck with being a Rhodian? Well, I suppose there are worse fates.” He could think of plenty of them. What he didn’t know was if any were better.
Sailors who hadn’t hauled water began clamoring to go into Naxos. Unlike Kythnos and Syros, this was a real city, with plenty of taverns and plenty of brothels to choose from. Like an indulgent father-not a breed with which he was personally familiar-he waved them away from the Aphrodite .
“Some of them will come back to Rhodes without an obolos to put in their mouths,” Sostratos said.
“Shall I tell them not to drink and roister?” Menedemos asked. “Would they listen if I did?”
“I can think of more than one family back home that would thank you if you did.” But Sostratos sighed. That wasn’t what Menedemos had asked, and he knew it. With another sigh, he went on, “No, they wouldn’t heed you. That’s too bad.”
“No doubt, but I don’t know what to do about it,” Menedemos said. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of going into a tavern myself tonight.”
“You were?” Sostratos sounded as if he were confessing to some particularly nasty vice. “By the dog, why?”
“Always a good idea to pick up some news of what lies ahead,” Menedemos replied. “If pirates are out in force in the waters east of here, I’d sooner find out in a wineshop than the hard way. And besides”-he grinned at Sostratos-”I’m sick and tired of the wine we’ve got on board.”
“Your second reason’s a disgraceful excuse, and I hope you know it,” his cousin said severely. “Your first one, on the other hand… I’ll come with you. Two sets of ears might pick up something one misses.”
They set out just before the sun dipped below the western horizon. The twelve daylight hours shrank every day as summer waned, while those of the nighttime stretched. The wineshop they chose lay only a couple of streets in from the harbor. A dried grape vine hung over the door said what kind of place it was. So did the raised voices and discordant snatches of song floating out through the doorway. Some men hadn’t gone to the tavern for gossip. They’d gone to squeeze what merriment they could from wine.
Menedemos and Sostratos both coughed when they went inside. Torches filled the room with smoke. Soot stained the mud brick of the walls and the rafters above those torches. Olive-oil lamps on a few tables and on the stone-topped counter at the back of the room added the stink of hot grease to the smoke. And-Menedemos wrinkled his nose-someone in the not too distant past had given back his wine. That stink wasn’t strong enough to drive the Rhodians out of the tavern, but it was there.
“Hail, friends!” The man who ran the place had the falsely jovial air so many tavernkeepers assumed. He was a scrawny little fellow with enormous ears. When he didn’t remember to smile and be cheerful, his narrow face relaxed into what looked like a permanently sour expression. Menedemos had seen the like on other taverners, on men who ran brothels, and on those who made their living overseeing slaves. This fellow put the smile back on and asked, “Where are you boys from?”
“ Rhodes,” Menedemos answered.
“We’re on our way back there now from Athens,” Sostratos added.
“Wine?” the tavernkeeper said. Menedemos and Sostratos both dipped their heads. The Naxian set two big, deep mugs on the counter. A round opening cut in the gray stone let him plunge his long-handled dipper into the amphora waiting below. He filled the cups, then held out his hand. “Two oboloi each.”
The Rhodians paid. Menedemos sloshed out a small libation. When he drank, he sighed. As far as the wine went, he could have done better staying aboard the Aphrodite . He felt Sostratos’ ironic gaze on him, but refused to acknowledge it.
“Out of Athens, are you?” a gray-haired man with a big nose said. “What’s really going on there? We heard Demetrios was out, and then we heard Demetrios was in. Somebody doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that’s plain.”
“There are two different Demetrioi,” Menedemos said.
“That’s right.” Sostratos dipped his head. “Demetrios of Phaleron is out; he’s fled to Kassandros. And Demetrios son of Antigonos is in. He’s knocked down the fortress of Mounykhia that Kassandros’ men were using, and he’s given back-he says he’s given back-the Athenians’ old constitution.”
“Is that what’s happened? No wonder I was confused,” the gray-haired man said. Menedemos was ready to take him for a fool, but then a shrewd look crossed his face and he asked, “What have the Athenians given him, if he’s given them their old laws?”
Now Sostratos was the one who didn’t want to go into detail. “They’ve voted him many honors,” he said, and would have let it go at that.
Even here in the middle of the Aegean, he doesn’t want to embarrass Athens, Menedemos thought with amusement. He didn’t care if he made the polis they’d left look bad. Since he didn’t, he told the men in the tavern some of the sycophantic degrees the Athenian Assembly had passed.
Some of them laughed. The gray-haired man with the big nose said, “You’re making that up. They’d never sink so low. This is Athens we’re talking about, not some miserable little polis in the middle of nowhere.”
“By Zeus, by Athena, by Poseidon, I’m telling you the truth,” Menedemos said.
“He is.” The melancholy in Sostratos’ voice made him sound all the more convincing. “We were in the Assembly with the Rhodian proxenos when many of these decrees were proposed, and we saw and heard them passed. I wish I could tell you otherwise, O men of Naxos, but to do so would be a lie.”
Menedemos thought such philosophical-sounding language would put the Naxians’ backs up. Instead, it seemed to impress them. “Who would’ve reckoned the Athenians, of all people, would turn out to be wide-arsed?” the tavernkeeper muttered-an epitaph for the polis if ever there was one.
The gray-haired man dipped his head. “That’s right. We didn’t wiggle our backsides at Antigonos like that when he brought is into his Island League. Sure, there’s a cult for him on Delos now, but that’s only polite these days. The rest of the nonsense the Athenians did… Pheu!” He turned away in disgust.
Sostratos started to say something in response to that, then visibly checked himself. What could he say? The Naxian hadn’t said anything he hadn’t thought himself. Instead, he gulped down his wine and shoved the cup across the counter to the taverner. That worthy held out his hand. Not till Sostratos paid him did he refill the cup.
“Hearing news like that out of Athens makes me want to pour it down, too,” the tavernkeeper said. “Not that Demetrios and Antigonos are bad,” he added hastily (after all, they still ruled Naxos), “but it’s a shame to see a city that was so great grovel like a cur dog.”
“Grovel like a cur dog,” Sostratos echoed bitterly, and took a long pull at the wine he’d just bought.
“He’s trying to make you want to get drunk,” Menedemos said in a low voice.
“He’s doing a good job of it, too,” Sostratos said. But he didn’t upend the cup to drain it as fast as he could. Every so often, his natural urge toward moderation served him well.
Menedemos’ natural urges did not run in that direction. As the captain of a merchant galley, though, he had to be prudent regardless of his natural urges. He asked, “Has anyone come into Naxos from the east in the past few days? What are things like between here and Rhodes? Is it quiet, or are pirates prowling the seas?”