A middle-aged man carrying several lekythoi full of truffle-flavored olive oil looked up at that. “My great-grandfather went to Sicily to fight against Syracuse,” he said. “He never came home. I don’t think he was killed in battle, so he likely died in the mines. His wife was pregnant with my grandfather when he sailed away. They almost exposed the baby. If they had, I wouldn’t be here.”
Sostratos said, “Disasters happen more and more often these days, too. Generals are better at taking cities by storm than they used to be-we talked about that when we first came up between the Long Walls, remember, Menedemos? And the Macedonian marshals are always at war with one another, so poleis keep falling.”
Menedemos imagined Rhodes falling to the forces of Ptolemaios or Antigonos-most likely the latter, since his home polis got on well with the lord of Egypt. Would slave dealers swarm to the city, to batten on the disaster? Of course they would. They always did. Imagining misfortune befalling his polis was as much as he could do. He couldn’t envision himself enslaved.
No? he thought. You didn’t have any trouble those couple of times when pirates attacked the Aphrodite. You knew you were fighting for your life and for your freedom then.
Once they got into Athens again, they couldn’t move so fast. That was only partly because the winding streets were full of Athenians intent on their own business, though they were. But the real problem was the swarm of boys who had as much fun with the procession of men carrying trade goods as their parents had had with the Dionysiac procession not long before. In fact, the boys-some in chitons, others naked despite the chilly, rainy weather-had even more fun, for they could dart out and disrupt this parade.
“Here, you little wretch, stop that!” Menedemos’ hand smacked against the wet, bare backside of a boy of perhaps eight who’d almost tripped up two men carrying jars of expensive Byblian. Because the backside-and the hand-were wet, the swat sounded amazingly loud. The boy jumped and yelled and cursed Menedemos with a fluency some of the Aphrodite’s sailors couldn’t have matched. His own hand clapped to the afflicted part, he scurried away, agile as a lizard.
“Euge!” Sostratos said. “Maybe you’ll make some of the other scamps think twice.”
“By Zeus, I hope so,” Menedemos said. “Somebody needs to.”
His cousin pointed ahead. “There’s the theater-you can see the seats set into the side of the slope that leads up to the akropolis. We’re getting close to Protomakhos’.”
“Good,” Menedemos said. “When we get there, I’m going to have one of his slaves heat up some water in the kitchen and pour it into a basin. Then I can wash my feet and warm them up, too.”
“That’s a good idea,” Sostratos said. “Protomakhos had better have two basins.”
“If he doesn’t,” Menedemos said, “I go first.” He never noticed the look Sostratos sent him. He was used to going first. He almost always had. And he saw no reason at all why he shouldn’t keep right on doing it.
Sostratos and Menedemos trudged up the long ramp toward the akropolis. The sun shone down out of a bright blue sky-the rain had blown out to sea. The backs of Sostratos’ calves twinged, for the ramp was steep, and he had scant occasion to climb slopes aboard ship, especially carrying a lekythos of truffle-flavored oil. Menedemos grumbled under his breath. He was a far better athlete than Sostratos-he’d almost gone to the Olympic Games a few years before as a sprinter- but this told on him, too.
“Why couldn’t Demetrios’ man have met us someplace where we didn’t have to pretend we were mountain goats?” he muttered.
“It’s all right,” Sostratos said. “I would have brought you up here sooner or later so you could get a good look at the buildings and the paintings and the statues. There’s no other place like this in all the civilized world. Not even Corinth’s akropolis comes close. And besides, we’re almost there by now, and the way down will be easy.”
“Ah. That’s true.” Menedemos brightened.
The Propylaia, the gateway into the akropolis, loomed in front of them. Half a dozen simple Doric columns supported the entranceway. The space between the two middle ones was wider than the other gaps. People coming in and going out passed through that space. To the right of the gateway stood the temple of Athena of Victory; to the left the Pinakotheke, a dining hall with seventeen couches and some of the grandest paintings in Athens. “They have a portrait of Alkibiades in there,” Sostratos said. “Lots of other paintings, too.”
“Didn’t Alkibiades spend most of his time getting Athens into trouble?” Menedemos asked.
“Yes, and the rest getting her out again,” Sostratos replied.
Past the Propylaia stood a stone pillar with a phallos and a bearded face: a Herm like the ones at crossroads or in front of many houses. This one was bigger than most, but otherwise ordinary. Menedemos paid it no special notice. Sostratos hadn’t thought his cousin would.
“Do you know who carved that Herm?” he asked slyly.
Menedemos looked it over. “No. Should I?” he said. “Whoever he was, he wasn’t anything special, for I’ve seen plenty of better work.”
“He wasn’t anything special as a stonecarver, no,” Sostratos admitted, “but he was in other ways: Sokrates made that.”
“Oh.” Menedemos gave it a second look, then shrugged. “Well, I can see why he never got rich.”
“Scoffer! Come on. We’re supposed to meet Demetrios’ man by the Parthenon.”
They hurried along side by side. Sostratos had a horror of being late and offending Demetrios’ servitor. But he stubbed his toe on a stone, stumbled, and almost dropped the lekythos. Menedemos caught him by the elbow. “Steady, my dear. You don’t want to have to bring the fellow back here and say, ‘Lick this patch of ground if you want the true flavor.’ No point to being like Euripides, is there?”
“Euripides? What are you going on about now?” Sostratos knew he sounded cross. He hated being clumsy, especially in front of his graceful cousin.
“Don’t you know Aristophanes’ Frogs?” Menedemos chuckled. “When Dionysos goes down to the house of Hades to bring back a good tragedian, Aiskhylos and Euripides square off. And Aiskhylos sinks Euripides like a round ship full of dear Protomakhos’ marble, for he shows you can fit, ‘He lost his little bottle of oil,’ into the metre of any of Euripides’ prologues.”
“Oh. I’d forgotten that one, yes.” Sostratos knew and liked Euripides better than Aristophanes. He mentally started the prologue to Iphigeneia in Tauris. Sure enough, the phrase fit right in. Meleagros? Yes again. Clever Melanippe? No doubt about it. Aristophanes knew his versifying, all right. Sostratos decided to gibe at his cousin, not the comic poet: “I thought you called Protomakhos’ wife ‘dear,’ not the man himself.”
Menedemos just grinned and stuck out his tongue, as if he were the Gorgon on the bottom of a drinking cup. “Here’s the Parthenon. Where’s this Kleokritos we’re supposed to meet?”
“I can’t pull him out from between my gum and my cheek like an obolos, you know,” Sostratos said. “Now he’ll be the one who’s late, and he’ll have to do the apologizing to us instead of the other way round.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Menedemos said. “The next Athenian- or even slave in Athens-I hear saying he’s sorry about anything will be the first. These people are the rudest I’ve ever run across.” Even as he spoke, his head tipped back so he could get a better look at the frieze above the entrance to the temple. He clicked his tongue between his teeth in reluctant approval. “Rude or not, though, they knew what they were doing when they made this place.”
“Yes.” Sostratos dipped his head. “Pheidias was in charge again, though this was too much work for him to do by himself.”