His cousin dipped his head. “You’re right. We could. Not only that, we should.”
“Do you recall who sold you this honey?” Sostratos asked Protomakhos.
Looking faintly embarrassed, the proxenos tossed his head. “I’m afraid I don’t. You’d do better to ask Myrsos. He buys the food along with cooking it. As long as he doesn’t bankrupt me, I give him free rein,”
“A sensible attitude,” Menedemos said. “If you have the silver, why not eat well?” That sounded very much like him, though Sostratos wondered whether his father’s second wife would agree. By what Menedemos had said, she’d locked horns with the cook at his house more than once. But then his cousin surprised him by adding, “The ones I feel sorry for are the people who can’t afford fine opson or good wine or honey like this-and there are so many of them,” Sostratos sometimes worried about the plight of the poor, too, but he hadn’t imagined they’d ever entered Menedemos’ mind.
Protomakhos said, “That is too bad for them, but I don’t know what anyone can do about it.”
“Neither do I,” Menedemos said. “No one seems to want to do much of anything. They’re only the poor, after all.” Sostratos scratched his head. Such pungent sarcasm wasn’t his cousin’s usual style at all. What had happened to turn his thoughts into such channels? Sostratos didn’t want to ask in front of Protomakhos, but his bump of curiosity itched.
Since he was also curious about Hymettos honey, he went into the kitchen to talk to Myrsos. The Lyclian cook was munching on a piece of honey cake himself. He looked not the least bit abashed. Other slaves might have their rations carefully measured out-though Protomakhos, like Sostratos’ father, wasn’t that strict-but cooks always ate at least as well as the men they served.
Myrsos proved less informative than Sostratos would have liked. “I bought it from a woman in the agora,” he said. “She had a big pot of it, and the scent told me it was good. I’m sorry, but I don’t know her name.”
Sostratos didn’t want to wander the agora sniffing one pot of honey after another. He deplored inefficiency. His nose might also prove less sensitive, less educated, than Myrsos1. The cook evidently knew just what he wanted in honey. Sostratos didn’t. He took a couple of oboloi out from between his teeth and the inside of his cheek. Like anyone else, he’d mastered the art of eating without swallowing his small change-though he’d heard of a miser who’d poked at his turds with a stick to get back an obolos that accidentally went down his throat. “Anything else you can recall about the woman?” the Rhodian asked, holding out the spit-shiny coins.
“No,” Myrsos said regretfully, which made Sostratos think him honest. “I will say, though, that physicians often use honey in their medicines, to hide the nasty taste of herbs and such. You might ask one. Some will use the cheapest, of course, but others will want to have the best.”
“That’s a good idea,” Sostratos said, and gave him the money.
He went back to Iphikrates’ house the next morning. The man had bought the best balsam; he might well use the best honey, too. “Hail, best one,” Iphikrates said. “I just prepared a first-rate salve for hemorrhoids.”
“Lucky you,” Sostratos murmured.
“There’s no part of the body that can’t go wrong,” the physician said. “What brings you back here? Have you figured out some new way to pry silver out of me? I warn you, it won’t be easy. I haven’t got a whole lot more to spend.”
“As a matter of fact, no,” Sostratos answered. “I was wondering if you use Hymettos honey-and, if you do, from whom you buy it.”
“Ah.” Iphikrates dipped his head. “Now I understand. Yes, I do use Hymettos honey. It costs more than honey from other places, but the flavor is worth it. So you think it’s worth exporting, too, do you?”
“If I can get a decent price for it,” Sostratos said. “Who sells it to you?”
“A fellow named Erasinides son of Hippomakhos,” Iphikrates answered. “He keeps bees over by the mountain, and doesn’t come into the polis all that often. You can either wait for him and hope he does, or else go out and pay a call on him. If you go, you’ll want to take some people with you to carry back the jars of honey, or else hire a donkey.”
“Oh, yes,” the Rhodian said with a smile. “I do know something about that.”
Iphikrates chuckled. “I suppose you might. Probably more fun than making a salve to smear on somebody’s poor, sore prokton, too.”
“I hope you don’t use honey from Hymettos in that,” Sostratos said.
“Well, no,” the physician replied. “Not much point to it. Although, considering how some people who come to see me get their hemorrhoids…”
“Never mind,” Sostratos said hastily. Iphikrates laughed out loud. Sostratos went on, “Tell me whereabouts along the mountain this Erasinides lives. I’d rather not spend hours wandering the slopes calling out his name.” He made Iphikrates repeat the directions several times to be sure he had them straight.
As in any city, plenty of men in Athens hired donkeys by the day. Sostratos arranged that afternoon to pick one up early the next morning. For an extra couple of oboloi, the Athenian who owned the animal agreed to let him use some baskets with lids he could tie down and enough rope to lash them to the donkey.
“I’m used to tying knots aboard ship,” Sostratos said. “This will be something different.”
“You’ll manage.” The man with the donkey sounded confident. Of course he sounds confident, Sostratos thought. He wants to make sure he gets as much money out of me as he can.
The Rhodian took the donkey as the sun was just beginning to touch the buildings on the akropolis. The owner even helped him fasten the baskets to the animal. When he tugged at the lead rope, the donkey brayed out a complaint, but it came along.
It kept complaining all the way through the city and out into the countryside. Sostratos grew sick of its bellows and brays. He thought about whacking it, but feared that would only make it louder, so he refrained. A man leading a quiet donkey from Mount Hymettos toward the city grinned at him as they passed and said, “Enjoy your songbird.”
“Thanks,” Sostratos answered sourly. The horrible noise spoiled his delight in what would have been a pleasant walk.
Mount Hymettos lay about thirty stadia southeast of Athens: an hour’s journey. With the donkey being obstinate and loud, it seemed three times as long to Sostratos. He hardly noticed the fine, warm morning, the neat vineyards, the olive groves with fruit steadily ripening, the watered garden plots full of every sort of vegetable.
As the road began to climb, the donkey complained more and more. Finally even Sostratos, a patient man, had had enough. He picked up a stout branch that had lallen from an olive tree, broke off a few twigs, and whacked the branch into the palm of his hand. The donkey was far from young. It must have seen that gesture before, for it suddenly fell silent. Sostratos smiled. He kept on carrying the stick. The donkey kept on being quiet.
By what Iphikrates had said, Erasinides lived about halfway up the mountain, not far from the marble quarries that were Hymettos’ other claim to fame. Sostratos looked for a Herm cut from red stone at a crossroads, and let out a sigh of relief when he spotted the pillar with Hermes’ face and genitals carved on it. “Up this road to the left,” he told the donkey. It didn’t like going up, but the threat of the stick kept it from making a big fuss.
Faint in the distance, the sound of picks clanging on stone came to the Rhodian’s ears. Someone shouted. Sostratos couldn’t make out the words, but recognized the tone; that was a boss giving workers orders. Some things didn’t change no matter where you were, or in what trade. Even in Ioudaia, where the very language was different, people in charge sounded just as peremptory, just as impatient, as they did in Hellas.
Brush and scrub lined the track-it hardly deserved the name of road any more. Every now and then, it opened out to show a farm. The farther away from the main road out of Athens Sostratos got, the smaller and meaner the farms seemed. The Rhodian wondered how many generations of men had worked them. As many as there are, he thought, no fewer.