“A hawk couldn’t do that, not from here,” Menedemos said.
“And even if it could, it wouldn’t care,” Sostratos agreed. “But we ought to be able to make our sight keener.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. Cupping a hand behind your ear makes you hear better. Cupping both hands in front of your mouth makes your voice louder. We ought to be able to do something to help our eyes.”
“We ought to be able to do all sorts of things we can’t,” Menedemos said. “I’d like to be able to get it up ten times a day, for instance.”
“If you could, you’d never do anything else,” Sostratos said.
“Who’d want to do anything else if he could do that instead?”
“You are a shameless wretch,” Sostratos said. Menedemos grinned and dipped his head. After an exasperated snort (and how many exasperated snorts had Menedemos forced from him?), Sostratos went on, “The arts let us do things we could never do without them. We can span rivers with bridges. We can sail the seas. We can make temples like the Parthenon. Why shouldn’t we be able to stretch our sight?”
“Because we don’t know how,” Menedemos answered. Sostratos had built a beautiful, flawlessly logical argument-but one that broke to pieces like a cheap pot when Menedemos dropped a hard, sharp-cornered fact on it. “We ought to be able to fly, too. Birds can. Bats can, and butterflies. Why not people?”
“Ikaros and Daidalos did, if you believe the myth,” Sostratos said.
Menedemos was more inclined than Sostratos to take myths and legends seriously, but not this one. “It’s only a wish, not a truth, and you know it as well as I do,” he said. “Every so often, some poor fool who thinks it’s the truth makes himself a set of wings and goes up onto a roof or a cliff and jumps off. If he’s lucky, he breaks his ankle. If he’s not, he breaks his stupid neck or smashes himself flat as a flapjack. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Oh, you’re right, best one, no doubt about it-for now.” Sostratos fell back on the only argument he could: “But we may learn things we don’t know now. The alphabet lets memory reach further than it could before. Iron was plainly a new thing in Homer’s day-he calls it ‘difficultly wrought.’ Because it’s both hard and cheap, we can do things with it we couldn’t with bronze alone. Maybe some artisan will figure out how to stretch our sight or make us fly, too.”
“Well, maybe,” Menedemos said. “I’m not going to hold my breath, though.” He made a little hop from the end of the ramp onto the dirt of the southeastern corner of the agora. “I am going to head back to Protomakhos’.”
“You’re hoping he’s not there,” Sostratos said in dismay.
His cousin tossed his head. “Not in broad daylight. The slaves would notice, and they’d likely blab. Tonight, though… We’ll have to see what he does.” He hurried away. As Sostratos followed, he wondered whether clouting Menedemos over the head with the lekythos he carried would knock any sense into him. Off the evidence he had, probably not. Too bad, he thought. How I wish it would.
Menedemos bowed to Kleokritos. “Here is the oil, most noble one,” he said, pointing to the lekythoi lined up in Protomakhos’ courtyard.
“Ten rows of seven jars, plus one. May Demetrios and his friends enjoy them.”
“That’s a fine-looking phalanx,” Demetrios of Phaleron’s man said with a smile. He gestured to a couple of the men who followed him. Most of them looked to be laborers hired for the day to carry the jars of oil. These two were different: both were better dressed and brighter looking than their comrades. They carried nice-sized leather sacks. More of Demetrios’ retainers, Menedemos judged. Kleokritos went on, “They have your silver for you.”
“Good,” Menedemos said.
“As soon as I make sure it’s the proper amount, you are more than welcome to the oil,” Sostratos added.
Kleokritos’ smile vanished. “You’re not going to count out six thousand drakhmai!” he exclaimed. “We’d be here all day. You don’t think I’d cheat you?”
“Of course not, O best one,” Sostratos said suavely. Menedemos knew his cousin was lying. Kleokritos likely knew it, too. But Sostratos gave him no excuse to protest, continuing, “You have every right to count the jars of oil-and to open and taste them, too, if that seems good to you. And I don’t need to count so many coins. Protomakhos, may I borrow your scale?”
“Certainly,” the Rhodian proxenos replied. At his order, a slave brought out a huge balance. Another, grunting, carried a stone weight. “One talent,” Protomakhos said. “Being in the stonecutting business, I find such large weights useful. This one balances perfectly against the standard talent the officials in charge of weights and measures keep in the Tholos. If you want to go over there, I’m sure the metronomoi will show you that.”
“Never mind,” Kleokritos said sourly, to the obvious relief of the slave carrying the weight. “Set it on one pan of the balance, and I’ll set the silver on the other.”
The slave put the weight on the pan. The men with Kleokritos who had the money set their sacks on the other pan. The scales did not balance. Kleokritos turned a dull red. He took a stout leather wallet from his felt and started feeding coins from it onto the scale: a drakhma, a tetradrakhm-four times as heavy-a didrakhm, another fat tetradrakhm. Altogether, he had to load on more than fifty drakhmai before the weight finally rose.
“There!” he snarled. “Are you happy now?”
“Certainly, most noble one,” Menedemos said. “I know it must have been an accident.” This time, he was the one doing the lying. He didn’t want to embarrass Demetrios of Phaleron’s man any more than he had to. What a coincidence, though, he thought, that Kleokritos happened to have enough money with him to make good the error in case we challenged him. Without the scales, he and Sostratos never would have noticed the payment’s being light by less than one part in a hundred, but half a mina of silver was a tidy sum of money by itself. “Still, we do want things to be right, don’t we?”
“Right,” Kleokritos said. That wasn’t agreement. It was anger coming out in one word. Demetrios’ man said not a word about wine, Lesbian or Byblian. He barked at the Athenians he’d hired. They hurried to pick up the lekythoi and left Protomakhos’ courtyard not so much to escape it as to get away from Kleokritos.
“You boys have more nerve than I would,” Protomakhos said once Kleokritos was gone, too. “I wouldn’t risk offending Demetrios of Phaleron.”
“I like that.” Sostratos’ voice cracked in indignation. “His man tries to cheat us, but we’re the ones who have to worry about offending him. Where’s the justice in that?”
“He’s not talking about justice, my dear. He’s talking about power,” Menedemos said. “In a polis like this, they come from different places. You ought to know that-you lived here for a while.”
“It’s good to see one of you understands, anyhow,” the proxenos said. “Walk soft. If you get in trouble with Demetrios, I won’t be able to do much for you.”
“We’ll be careful,” Menedemos said, thinking, He doesn’t know about Xenokleia, or he wouldn’t want to warn me. He knew which upstairs window looked out from her bedroom. He carefully didn’t glance that way. No point making Protomakhos suspicious when he wasn’t already. Sostratos’ gaze held irony. Menedemos pretended not to notice.
“You’ll probably get away with this without anyone saying a word,” Protomakhos said.
“Because we’re right?” Sostratos asked.
“No-I already told you that’s got nothing to do with it,” Protomakhos answered. “But you’re Rhodians. Ptolemaios doesn’t want to offend Rhodes, Kassandros doesn’t want to offend Ptolemaios, and Demetrios of Phaleron won’t do anything to offend Kassandros. If you came from Samos or Mytilene or some other place Antigonos holds, you’d be wise to get out of Athens before Kleokritos and Demetrios could take their revenge, for they would.”