The gray-haired man dipped his head. “That’s right. We didn’t wiggle our backsides at Antigonos like that when he brought is into his Island League. Sure, there’s a cult for him on Delos now, but that’s only polite these days. The rest of the nonsense the Athenians did… Pheu!” He turned away in disgust.
Sostratos started to say something in response to that, then visibly checked himself. What could he say? The Naxian hadn’t said anything he hadn’t thought himself. Instead, he gulped down his wine and shoved the cup across the counter to the taverner. That worthy held out his hand. Not till Sostratos paid him did he refill the cup.
“Hearing news like that out of Athens makes me want to pour it down, too,” the tavernkeeper said. “Not that Demetrios and Antigonos are bad,” he added hastily (after all, they still ruled Naxos), “but it’s a shame to see a city that was so great grovel like a cur dog.”
“Grovel like a cur dog,” Sostratos echoed bitterly, and took a long pull at the wine he’d just bought.
“He’s trying to make you want to get drunk,” Menedemos said in a low voice.
“He’s doing a good job of it, too,” Sostratos said. But he didn’t upend the cup to drain it as fast as he could. Every so often, his natural urge toward moderation served him well.
Menedemos’ natural urges did not run in that direction. As the captain of a merchant galley, though, he had to be prudent regardless of his natural urges. He asked, “Has anyone come into Naxos from the east in the past few days? What are things like between here and Rhodes? Is it quiet, or are pirates prowling the seas?”
The gray-haired man spoke up again: “It’s been pretty quiet, from what I’ve heard. My brother-in-law’s a fisherman, and he’s headed that way lately hoping for tunny. He hasn’t had a whole lot of luck with the fish, but he’s never said anything about spotting trouble on the sea.”
“Thank you, friend,” Menedemos said. “I’ll gladly fill your cup for you again, if you like.” The Naxian dipped his head. Menedemos gave the taverner two oboloi. The fellow plied his dipper. The gray-haired man lifted the newly full cup in salute. Menedemos politely returned the gesture. They both drank. Menedemos knew he wasn’t sure to be safe on the way back to Rhodes, not till he came within sight of the polis. But he was also glad to be sailing with good news and not into the teeth of bad.
Peering east from the foredeck, looking for the first sight of Rhodes, Sostratos jerked as if stung. “Ship ho!” he called urgently. “Ship ho, dead ahead! I just see a hull and rowers-no sail!”
That meant, or could mean, trouble. Sostratos waved toward the stern to make sure Menedemos had heard him. Menedemos waved back to show he had. He ordered a full complement to the oars.
Sostratos stared out to sea. Whatever the other ship was, she was drawing closer in a hurry. She’d probably spied the Aphrodite’s sail- which sailors were now brailing up-before anyone aboard the akatos noticed her. That she was some sort of a galley had been plain from the moment Sostratos set eyes on her. The question now was, what sort? A hungry pirate ship would come bounding across the waves like that. So would a Rhodian war galley, patrolling against pirates. The Aphrodite’s lean lines didn’t fool only fishing boats and round ships, which sometimes proved embarrassing.
Still, I’d rather clear things up with a Rhodian war galley than fight off a hemiolia full of cutthroats, Sostratos thought. He anxiously peered ahead. So did all the sailors not straining at the oars.
Suddenly, painfully, Sostratos wished Aristeidas still lived. The lynx-eyed sailor would have known exactly what to make of that other galley. Sostratos and the rest of the men with only average eyesight had to wait till she came nearer-which meant, till she became more dangerous if she was a pirate.
“I think…” A sailor spoke hesitantly, then with growing conviction: “I think she’s showing three banks of oars.”
Sostratos squinted. He pulled the skin at the outer corner of one eye taut, closing the other. That sometimes helped him see farther and more clearly. Sometimes… The galley did have more than one bank of rowers. Did she have three?
“I… think you’re right,” Sostratos said after a few more heartbeats. He let out a sigh of relief, and the heartbeats after that didn’t come faster on account of fear. A ship with three banks of oars was bound to be a war galley, not a piratical hemiolia or bireme. He watched the sailors relax their grip on weapons, too. They wouldn’t have to fight for their lives and their freedom today.
From the stern, Menedemos asked, “Is that the Dikaiosyne, come to pay us another call?” The Justice was the Rhodian navy’s first trihemiolia, an idea Menedemos had had. She was lighter and swifter than an ordinary trireme, just as a hemiolia was lighter and swifter than an ordinary ship with two banks of oars. Both classes could quickly remove the thranite rowing benches aft of the mast, and could stow the mast and yard on the decking where they had been.
After another glance across the narrowing gap of water, Sostratos tossed his head. “No,” he answered. “She’s an ordinary trireme.” Her mast was down, but he could see that all three banks were manned from bow to stern.
“Ah, well,” Menedemos said. “One of these days, I’d like to take a trihemiolia out and see what she can do. Seems only fair, when there wouldn’t be any if I hadn’t thought of them.”
The officer who’d captained the Dikaiosyne had done so not least because he was rich enough to have the leisure to go pirate-hunting without needing to worry about making a living. Here, for once, Sostratos fully sympathized with his cousin. Just as having to work for a living had kept Menedemos from command of a trihemiolia, so it had kept Sostratos himself from finishing his studies at the Lykeion. I am what I am now, and I’ve made the best of it, he thought. But still I persist in wondering-what would I have been, what would I have become, if I could have stayed?
An officer in a red cape strode up along the trireme’s deck to the bow. He cupped both hands in front of his mouth and shouted across the blue, sun-sparkled sea: “Ahoy, there! What ship are you?”
“We’re the Aphrodite, out of Rhodes and bound for home,” Sostratos shouted back.
“The Aphrodite, eh? Tell me what firm you belong to and where you were headed when you left this spring.”
“We sail for Philodemos and Lysistratos,” Sostratos answered, reflecting that Rhodes wasn’t too big to keep everyone from knowing everyone else’s business. “And we went to Athens. We’re on our way back from there now. You do know Demetrios Antigonos’ son has run Demetrios of Phaleron and Kassandros’ garrison out of Athens?”
“Yes, we’ve heard that,” the officer said. As his ship came up alongside the Aphrodite, Sostratos spied her name-Iskhys-painted above one of the eyes at her bow. Strength was a good name for a war galley.
Thanks to the trireme’s greater freeboard, the Rhodian officer could peer down into the merchant galley. “You haven’t got much aboard there. What’s your cargo?”
“Well, we’ve got honey from Mount Hymettos and cheeses from Kythnos,” Sostratos told him. “Mostly, though, we’re bringing back a fine crop of Athenian owls.”
“You’ll change them back to Rhodian coins, of course,” the officer said.
“Of course,” Sostratos agreed, hoping he wouldn’t have to. He would rather have seen the two percent Rhodes took on changed money go into the coffers of the firm of Philodemos and Lysistratos.
“Safe journey back to Rhodes,” the man on the Iskhys said. Sostratos waved his thanks, thinking the trireme would go on its way. But before it did, the fellow added, “I’ll check with the customs men to make sure you got back all right.”