“Oh, yes.” Euxenides dipped his head. “Phaselis isn’t easy for strangers, either, but Phaselis is a little town. You get lost here, you can stay lost for days. Good thing my sense of direction works.” He turned to go. “Farewell, Rhodian. I won’t forget to mention you to the big boss.”
“Thanks.” Menedemos hoped the soldier meant it. Too many people promised to do something like that and then forgot about it as soon as they turned a comer. Menedemos shrugged. He’d made the effort. If Euxenides delivered, splendid. If he didn’t… Well, Menedemos and Sostratos were no worse off.
After crying his perfume in the agora till close to sundown-and selling two jars to a greasy fellow who wouldn’t say what he did, but who looked like a brothelkeeper-Menedemos made his way back to Protomakhos’ house. The proxenos wasn’t there, which raised Menedemos’ hopes of sneaking up to Xenokleia’s room after dark. But Sostratos returned a few minutes after he did, and Protomakhos a few minutes after his cousin. Oh, well, Menedemos thought.
Sostratos looked pleased with himself. “I’ve been going through the polis talking with physicians,” he said. “Sold a lot of balsam of Engedi today.”
“Euge,”Protomakhos said.
“Euge, indeed,” Menedemos added. “How much more could you have sold if you didn’t fritter away time talking shop with the physicians?”
Reddening, Sostratos said, “I learn things talking with them. It doesn’t cost a lot of time, and one day I might help a sailor who gets sick or hurts himself.” He enjoyed playing the role of a physician aboard the Aphrodite. How much good he did was a different question. But then, how much good any physician did was often a matter of opinion. Fortunately, most of the rowers were young and healthy, and didn’t need much in the way of medical care.
“Nothing wrong with talking shop,” Protomakhos said. “I’ve picked up enough chatting with builders and sculptors that I sometimes think I could run up a temple or carve the cult statue to go inside it. Odds are I’m wrong, but I do think so.”
“Menedemos would sooner talk shop with hetairai,” Sostratos said slyly.
“I’d rather talk about their business than about the best cure for chilblains or hammertoes, yes,” Menedemos said. “If you don’t think the one is more interesting than the other, that’s your affair.”
“There’s a time and a place for everything,” Sostratos said. “I don’t think about piggies every moment of every day.”
Protomakhos wagged a finger at him. “I’d say you’re too hard on your cousin, O best one. From what I’ve seen of Menedemos, he doesn’t chase women every hour of the day and night like some men I’ve known.”
A long, long silence followed. Sostratos looked at the ceiling. Menedemos looked at the floor. At last, several heartbeats later than he should have, Sostratos said, “Well, you may be right.”
“I’m sure I am.” Protomakhos, to Menedemos’ vast relief, seemed to notice nothing amiss. He went on, “I know how kinsfolk can be. My brother and I still quarrel whenever we set eyes on each other, and as for one of my brothers-in-law…” He rolled his eyes.
“Brothers-in-law! Oimoi! By the dog, yes!” Sostratos exclaimed, and started telling the proxenos about some of the things Damonax had done and had wanted him to do. Protomakhos listened sympathetically, and the awkward moment passed. Menedemos had never before been praised for his moderation with women by a man he was cuckolding. He’d thought he was hardened to most of the things that could happen, but this embarrassed him. It was like being praised for honesty by a man whose house you’d just robbed.
Three days later, the Rhodians and Protomakhos were about to sit down to supper when someone pounded on the door. “Who’s that?” Protomakhos said in annoyance. “Whoever it is, why did he have to pick now, when I can smell the fish cooking?”
“Some people have no consideration,” agreed Menedemos, who’d been able to indulge his passion for opson no less than other passions, and far more openly.
But instead of some bore who wanted to gossip with Protomakhos- Menedemos thought of the Athenian equivalent of his father’s long-winded friend, Xanthos-it was Euxenides of Phaselis. “Hail, Rhodians,” he said. “Are those the best tunics you’ve got? They’ll have to do, I suppose. Demetrios bids you to supper, and I’m to take you there. Come along with me, the both of you.”
“You kept your word!” Menedemos blurted.
“Sure I did,” Euxenides said. “You did right by me, so the least I can do is right by you. Come on. We don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“Let’s go,” Sostratos said. “Just let me grab the truffles I still have…”
Euxenides impatiently shifted from foot to foot while Sostratos did. Protomakhos said, “All that lovely opson, and only my wife and me to eat it.” He didn’t sound disappointed; he sounded like a man with a gods-given excuse to make an opsophagos of himself.
Out the door Euxenides of Phaselis went, the two Rhodians in tow behind him. Though Euxenides had been in Athens only a few days, he moved confidently through its labyrinth of streets. When Menedemos remarked on that, the soldier shrugged and said, “I told you, I’ve always had a good sense of direction.”
After that, Menedemos waited for him to get lost. But he didn’t. He brought the Rhodians to a large house north of the akropolis. Hulking Macedonians in full armor stood guard in front of the door. One of them said something to Euxenides. Menedemos couldn’t follow it. Euxenides of Phaselis not only did, he answered in the same dialect. The bodyguards stood aside.
As Euxenides led the Rhodians inside, he remarked, “This is where Demetrios of Phaleron lived before he, ah, decided to move elsewhere.”
“Wait here just a moment, best ones,” a slave said in the entry hall. He hurried away, then returned. “All right, come ahead.” As Menedemos entered the courtyard, he got a fleeting glimpse of a very pretty girl hurrying to the stairway. He wondered just what she and Demetrios had been doing. Beside him, Sostratos let out a warning cough, Menedemos sent his cousin a hurt look. Killing himself by jumping from a high place would end quicker and hurt less than letting the son of a Macedonian marshal catch him sniffing after a mistress.
Demetrios son of Antigonos lounged on a couch in the andron with a cup of wine. “Hail, Rhodians,” he said when Euxenides presented Menedemos and Sostratos to him. He was very large and very strong and, up close, perhaps the handsomest man Menedemos-a handsome fellow himself-had ever seen. As the Rhodian had noted in the theater, he had a man of action’s thrusting chin. With it went a voluptuary’s wide-lipped, sensual mouth; a long, straight nose and prominent cheekbones; a mane of light brown hair; and eyes green as marble. “Forgive me for not rising,” he went on, “but I’m getting over a fever.”
“Yes, I saw her just now as she was going away,” Menedemos said blandly.
Sostratos coughed again, this time in horror. But Demetrios threw back his head and laughed, “Very neat,” he said, “That’s the sort of crack my father would make,” His voice, when he wasn’t using it to fill the theater of Dionysos, was extraordinarily smooth and musical. The gods had blessed him with all they could give a man. He waved Menedemos and Sostratos to couches on either side of his own, and Euxenides to another. A slave brought them wine. “I found several amphorai of Thasian in Demetrios of Phaleron’s cellars,” Antigonos’ son told them. “Coming from the north myself, I’m partial to northern vintages.”
The wine was sweet as honey-so sweet, in fact, that Menedemos wondered if it had honey mixed into it. The vintners of Thasos sometimes did that. It was also neat. Sostratos said, “Most noble one, could we please have a mixing bowl and some water? Otherwise, your men may have to carry us back to our host’s house.”
Demetrios laughed again. “As you wish, though mixing wine seems as silly to me as drinking it neat does to you. If I want water, I’ll drink water; if wine-wine. Some of one, some of the other? Who needs that?”