Maybe I need a wife. The thought so surprised him, he stopped short in the middle of the street. A man behind him who was leading a scrawny donkey loaded down with sacks of grain or beans let out an indignant squawk. Menedemos got moving again. His father had started talking about looking for a bride for him. Up till this moment, he hadn’t taken the idea seriously himself.
And Father has the woman I really want-and I think she wants me. Menedemos muttered under his breath. For the past several sailing seasons, he’d done his best to leave thoughts of Baukis behind when Rhodes dropped below the horizon. Some things he would not do, no matter how tempting. He hoped he wouldn’t, anyhow.
He wondered why she drew him so. She wasn’t spectacularly beautiful, even if she did have a nice shape. The only thing he could think of was that he’d got to know her even before he first found her attractive.
She’d been a person to him, a person he liked… and then he’d noticed her sweet hips and rounded bosom (considerably sweeter and more rounded now than when she’d come into the household as a girl of fourteen). He whistled tunelessly. Could that make such a difference? Maybe it could.
Here was the agora. He’d got to it without noticing the last half of his journey. He tried to put Baukis out of his mind-tried, but didn’t have much luck. He made an unhappy noise, down deep in his throat. Even he knew how dangerous falling in love could be. And it would have been dangerous even if she weren’t his father’s wife. Like any Hellene, he reckoned falling in love a disease. It was, in many ways, an enjoyable disease, but that didn’t improve the prognosis. Of course, the prognosis for anyone who fell in love with his stepmother-even if she was years younger than he-was bad.
The hurly-burly of the market square came as a relief. With people chattering and chaffering all around him, Menedemos couldn’t keep his mind on his own worries. Somebody said, “I wonder how the world could have existed before DemetrioZeus created it. I suppose all our ancestors were just figments of his imagination.”
“Fig-sucking figments,” somebody else replied, and added another obscenity on top of that.
Menedemos laughed. Not all the Athenians were impressed with what the Assembly had voted, then. That was a good sign. He almost paused to talk politics with the men who’d jeered at the latest decree. Then he decided to keep walking instead, for he realized they likely wouldn’t want to talk to him, not when his accent proved him a foreigner the instant he opened his mouth. A man could say things to his friends that he wouldn’t to a stranger.
Someone was selling garlic in the place where Menedemos had been selling perfume. That made him laugh again. Unlike Sostratos, who was given to prolonged sulks, Menedemos had trouble staying gloomy for long. He found another spot, one not far from the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton in the middle of the agora. Most Athenians believed the two young men had liberated them from tyranny a couple of centuries before. From what Sostratos said, that wasn’t how things had really happened. Even nitpicking Sostratos, though, couldn’t deny that what people believed often helped shape what would happen next.
“Fine rose perfume from the island of roses!” Menedemos called.
For this, as opposed to politics, his Doric drawl was an asset. He held up a perfume jar in the palm of his hand. “Who wants sweet-smelling Rhodian perfume?”
As usual, all sorts of people came up to him and asked how much the perfume cost. Also as usual, most of them retreated in dismay when he told them. And some of them got angry when they found out. A woman who’d brought a basket of eggs into the city from a farm or a village out beyond the walls exclaimed, “How dare- you sell anything that expensive? How do you think it makes people who have to worry about every obolos feel?” That she was there and unveiled and sun-browned and wearing a tunic full of patches and mends said she was one of those people.
Shrugging, Menedemos answered, “In the fish market, some people buy eels and tunny and mullet. Others buy sprats or salt-fish. Some people wear golden bracelets. Others have to make do with bronze.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t chosen that example. The woman with the basket of eggs wore a bronze necklace. The day was warm, and the cheap piece of jewelry had left a green mark on her sweaty skin. But her reply took a different tack: “But there’s something for poor people there, anyhow. Where can I find perfume somebody like me could buy? Nowhere. All I can do is envy the fancy whores who get it.’’
He shrugged again. What could he say to that? She wasn’t wrong. Before he found any words, she turned her back and strode away in magnificent contempt. He bit his lip. He couldn’t remember the last time a mere woman-especially one he wasn’t bedding-had made him feel ashamed.
“I’m allowed to make a living, too,” he muttered. But, because the Aphrodite carried only luxury goods-the most profitable sort-he dealt for the most part with rich men and the occasional rich woman. He and Sostratos were rich themselves, or rich enough. He too often took for granted the life he led. He never had to worry about where his next meal was coming from, or to agonize over whether to spend an obolos on food or rent. Neither did anyone he knew. Even the family slaves had… enough.
But life wasn’t so simple, wasn’t so pleasant, for most Hellenes. If it had been, they wouldn’t have had to buy sprats for opson when they could afford anything better than olives or a little cheese. They wouldn’t have worn clothes as sorry as that egg-seller’s. They wouldn’t have exposed so many infants, and they wouldn’t have been so thin.
She rubbed my nose in what’s real, the Rhodian thought ruefully, and it doesn’t smell anywhere near so sweet as my perfume.
But if he didn’t sell that perfume, he would find out what being poor was like-find out from the inside. And so he went back to calling out its virtues. And, before too long, a man whose double chin and bulging belly said he didn’t have to worry about hunger bought three jars. “Two for my hetaira,” he said, winking, “and one for my wife, to keep her sweet.”
‘‘You’re a fellow who knows how to handle women, O best one,” Menedemos replied: partly a merchant’s flattery, partly one man talking to another. The plump Athenian, who had a slave following him like a dog, didn’t haggle very hard over the price. He didn’t have to worry about every obolos, either. Drakhmai rang sweetly in Menedemos’ hands as the other fellow paid him.
The Athenian strutted off. His slave, who hadn’t said a word all through the dicker, carried the perfume. The rich man would have lost dignity if he’d been seen carrying it himself. The woman with the basket of eggs hadn’t been shy about carrying it herself. But then, she didn’t have so much dignity to lose.
Menedemos made another sale not long before he would have gone back to Protomakhos’ house. The day turned out to be quite nicely profitable. And yet, as the sun sank down toward the Pnyx and he did head back to the proxenos’ home, he found himself less happy than he would have liked.
Sostratos ran his tongue over his lips, savoring the sweetness of what he’d just eaten. “That may be the best honey cake I’ve ever had, most noble one,” he told Protomakhos. “My compliments to your cook.”
“Very fine indeed,” Menedemos agreed.
“Myrsos is a fine cook. I’d be the last to say otherwise,” Protomakhos replied. “Still, I don’t think this cake would have turned out so well anywhere but Athens. The clover honey from Mount Hymettos is the best in the world.”
“You’ve mentioned it before. I certainly won’t quarrel with you, not after tasting it,” Menedemos said. “Delicious.”
“Yes.” Sostratos snapped his fingers. “Do you know, my dear, we could get a good price for it back in Rhodes.”