“It’s also supposed to be a place where the frogs don’t croak,” Menedemos said.
“We wouldn’t have heard them at this season of the year, anyhow,” Sostratos said, which was true. He went on, “And we can’t sell frogs, croaking or otherwise, or chunks of rock. Good cheese, on the other hand…”
“I already said yes,” Menedemos reminded him. He changed course a little, till the stempost covered the island of Kythnos from where he stood. “Now I’m aimed straight for it. Are you happy?”
“I’m positively orgiastic, O best one,” Sostratos answered.
“You’re positively sarcastic, is what you are,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head; that was something he could hardly deny.
The wind held all day. The Aphrodite raced past the tiny islet of Belbina, which lay eighty or a hundred stadia south of Cape Sounion. A few sheep ambled over Belbina’s steep, meager fields; except for a shepherd or two, the island was uninhabited, Kythnos still lay dead ahead.
In weather like this, sailing was joy, not drudgery. Rowers hung fishing lines over the side of the ship, some of their hooks baited with bits of cheese-cheap cheese. Every so often, one of them would let out a yip of triumph and haul in a flying fish or a sea bream or a goby: something he could cook over a charcoal brazier and enjoy for his opson,
Kythnos swelled ahead. It was greener than Seriphos to the south, but not much. Sheep and goats wandered the hills in back of the island’s one small town, which faced west, back toward Attica and the Peloponnesos-toward civilization, Menedemos thought unkindly.
Kythnos the town boasted no developed harbor. A visiting ship could either beach herself nearby or anchor in front of the town. At Menedemos’ order, the anchors splashed into the sea. After so long immersed, the Aphrodite wouldn’t gain much from a night or two out of the water. Once back in Rhodes, she would come out of the sea till spring.
“All yours,” Menedemos told his cousin. “Here’s to cheese.”
When Sostratos listened to the people of Kythnos talk the next morning, he felt as if he’d somehow traveled back through time. They spoke Attic Greek, but a very old-fashioned Attic, saying es for eis (into), xyn for syn (with), and any number of other things that had vanished from the speech of Athens itself more than a hundred years before. Hearing them, he might have been listening to Aiskhylos… had Aiskhylos chosen to talk about cheese and the sheep and goats from whose milk it was made.
He supposed the Kythmans spoke that way because, even though they were only a day’s sail from Athens, not many ships bothered coming into the harbor here. The locals were isolated from the wider world. If change came, it came only slowly.
A breeze from off the mainland-not so strong as the one that had driven the Aphrodite here but still brisk enough-ruffled Sostratos’ hair as he made his way toward the agora. After Athens, Kythnos seemed ludicrously small; it might have been a toy town, made for children to play with. That didn’t keep him from getting lost once. There were enough houses to box him in to where he wasn’t sure whether he needed to go right or left to find the market square, and he guessed wrong. He had to give a man with several missing front teeth an obolos for directions, and then had to ask him to repeat himself, for his dialect and the missing teeth made him hard to understand.
In the agora, people displayed fish and woolen cloth and cheeses. The fish were for other Kythnians. The cloth struck Sostratos as nothing special. The cheeses… The cheeses were as fine as Kythnos’ reputation would have led him to believe, than which there was little higher praise.
And the prices proved amazingly low. Sostratos had to work to keep astonishment off his face when a fellow who’d piled wedge after wedge of delicate, creamy goat’s-milk cheese on a little table behind him asked no more than a Rhodian cheesemaker would have for something only a quarter as good. The local, an anxious-looking man with large, rabbity eyes and a wen on one cheek, took his surprise for anger rather than delight. “I can come down a little, best one,” the man said hastily, even before Sostratos made a counteroffer. “Don’t go away, please.”
Sostratos collected himself. “Well, all right,” he said, as if he didn’t really want to stay. “Maybe I won’t, as long as you’re reasonable.”
“I can be very reasonable, sir, very reasonable indeed,” the cheese-maker replied.
He meant it, too. Sostratos was almost embarrassed to haggle with him. It felt like stealing from a helpless child. Sostratos knew he could have forced the Kythnian lower than he finally did. He didn’t have the heart to do it. He consoled himself by thinking he would still make a good profit on the cheese, even if he bought it at this slightly higher price.
Another man two stalls over sold a sharp, crumbly sheep’s-milk cheese for prices similarly small. Again, Sostratos could have bargained harder. He knew Menedemos would have squeezed every obo-los possible from these men, scorning them for fools because they didn’t understand how splendid their cheeses were.
Dickering with some merchants, even most merchants, Sostratos bargained as ferociously as he knew how. Phoenicians, Athenians, that truffle-seller up in Mytilene-they were all out for themselves, just as he was. These men, though… They seemed pathetically grateful that he would give them any silver for their cheeses.
“Owls,” the man with the crumbly cheese murmured, almost in awe, when Sostratos paid him. “Aren’t they pretty? Most of the time, you know, we just swap stuff back and forth amongst ourselves. I get me a few owls, though, and who knows? I may even go across to Attica”-he didn’t say to Athens, which might have been beyond his mental horizon-”and, and buy things.”
“That’s what money is for,” Sostratos agreed.
“It is, isn’t it?” To the Kythnian, it seemed a new idea. A Karian farmer a hundred stadia from the nearest tiny town could hardly have been more distant from the kind of trading Sostratos did than was this fellow Hellene only a long day’s sail from Athens, the beating heart of the civilized world.
Suppressing several sighs, Sostratos went on through the agora. His only problem was choosing the best of the best. One man gave him a sample of a hard yellow cheese that made him raise his eyebrows. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything quite like this,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, O stranger,” the Kythnian said with modest pride-no one here seemed to display more than modest pride. “It’s made from cow’s milk.”
“Really?” Sostratos said, and the cheesemaker dipped his head. “How… unusual.” Few Hellenes, especially south of Boiotia (whose very name was associated with cattle), kept cows. Sheep and goats were far more common, for they were valuable for their wool as well as for their milk,
“Do you like it?” the local asked.
“It’s not bad,” Sostratos answered; no matter how pitiful he thought the Kythnians, he couldn’t make himself sound too enthusiastic. “What do you want for a wedge?”
He wasn’t surprised when the cheesemaker named a price higher than any of the others had given him. Another reason few cows dwelt in this part of Hellas was that they took more fodder for the amount of milk they yielded. Despite that, for an exotic cheese like this what the Kythnian wanted wasn’t bad at all. Sostratos haggled a little harder than he had with the other men, but only a little. Before long, he and the cheesemaker clasped hands to seal the bargain.
“I thank you very much,” the fellow said. “Some of my neighbors think I’m daft for keeping a cow, but I guess I’ve shown them.”
“Maybe you have.” Sostratos would never have let one relatively small sale go to his head like that, but he was a Rhodian, used to dealing all over the Inner Sea. To a Kythnian, for whom a major journey meant walking from his farm to this little town-it surely didn’t deserve to be called a polis-showing some drakhmai to his neighbors might be a triumph of sorts.