Throwing away your armor to flee the faster was still a serious business. Back then, it had been a mark of complete cowardice and disgrace, a slave’s brand on a reputation. It had till the poet laughed at it, anyhow. Arkhilokhos helped change the way the Greek-speaking world looked at such things.
A man with a stack of round shields for hoplites in his arms walked through a door in the back of a shipshed. Those shields, like everything else going into the ships, would get stacked somewhere aboard a four or a five that wasn’t along to fight. Another man with shields followed the first, and another, and another yet. Soldiers had something to say about how the world looked at things, too.
VII
“Here we is.” Pasos’ Greek, though understandable, was far from perfect. The barge skipper pointed south. “We just about out from what Greeks call Delta. Last two big branches come together soon. After that, just … Nile … for … long, long way.” He threw his arms wide, as if to say that explaining how long the Nile was exceeded his powers.
“Memphis lies not far from the joining? And the Pyramids? And the Sphinx?” Sostratos thought he understood that, but wanted to reassure himself. Egypt wasn’t just another land. Egypt was another world.
But, to his relief, Pasos nodded. “That right. You no worry—we gets there. Maybe not fast, but we do.”
“I could swim faster than this tub crawls,” Thersandros muttered. “It makes one of our freighters look like a pentekonter.”
“It isn’t the stadion sprint at the Olympic Games,” Sostratos answered. “As long as we get there, just when doesn’t matter much.” There was more room on the barge than there had been with the Aphrodite crossing the Inner Sea, but he and the rowers had less to do. He was as bored as Thersandros, even if he tried not to let on.
Pasos mostly ignored the Hellenes when they talked among themselves. Maybe that was his notion of politeness. Or maybe his Greek wasn’t up to following conversations not aimed at him.
A town called Kerkasoros lay at the place where the Nile went from two streams to one. Sostratos didn’t realize right away that that had happened, for a low-lying island in the middle of the river fooled him into thinking it was still divided. Once the barge fought past the island, though, he understood what had happened.
He whistled softly under his breath. He’d seen rivers before, of course. But the Nile might have been the mother of all rivers. How many stadia wide was that mighty, muddy stream?
And he saw a change in the landscape. In the Delta, everything had been lush and green and growing. Even mud bricks sometimes had weeds sprouting from them. Everything alongside the Nile’s single channel was also green and lush … as far as the river’s lifegiving water could be made to flow, and not a digit farther. Beyond that, it abruptly went a sun-blasted yellow-brown.
The Egyptians called everything west of the Nile Libya, everything east of it Arabia. Except for where they lay, Sostratos couldn’t see any difference between the two sides. Desert and desolation were desert and desolation. Hellenes built poleis on the Libyan coast, a long way west of Alexandria. They sold silphium from them, a spice obtainable nowhere else in the world.
One of these days, he thought, we ought to take the Aphrodite there and load up with as much as we can carry. We’d make a fortune. That would have to wait till something more like peace came back to Rhodes, and perhaps to the whole of the Inner Sea, to the whole of the vastly extended Hellenic world, as well.
As they had on the Nile’s branches in the Delta, fishing boats also bobbed in the single channel. Most ships pushed south by the wind stayed on the right hand of the river; most of those letting the current take them north used the other half. That improved traffic without perfecting it. Everyone still had to dodge the little fishing boats, which often didn’t move at all. And crewmen on faster vessels shouted unpleasantries at slower ones while swinging wide to pass them.
Because it was so big and slow, the barge got passed a lot. And a lot of abuse rained down on Pasos and his Egyptians. After a while, the skipper came over to Sostratos and said, “Next time boat go by, maybe you and other Hellenes go to side with spears and show selves.”
Sostratos grinned at him. “I think we can do that.” He relayed the word to the rowers. They grinned, too, and dipped their heads.
Half an hour or so later, they got their chance. A river galley not much smaller than the Aphrodite glided past, using oars as well as sails to get more speed. Sostratos couldn’t understand what the crew shouted at the bargemen, but he recognized the tone. He and his comrades took their places by the rail, spears shown in fine martial array.
Then Pasos and his men started yelling back. It was in Egyptian, of course, so Sostratos followed not a word of it. But, by the way the bargemen pointed at him and his fellow Hellenes, he guessed they were telling the galley’s crew something like You’d better not mess with us! We’ve got the new overlords of the Two Lands on our side!
And the men in the river galley had to take it. They put on a burst of speed to get out of earshot of the barge as quickly as they could, but they didn’t dare answer back. Egypt had been a conquered province for most of the past two centuries. Whatever pride the people here had had in long-gone days was as dead now as one of their mummified corpses.
Sostratos wondered what would have happened if Dareios or Xerxes had led the Persians to victory over Hellas. Would the freedom-loving, free-speaking folk he knew have turned servile like this under foreign domination? He didn’t know—how could you know anything about something that didn’t happen? But he didn’t like the guesses he made.
Pasos’ smile stretched from ear to ear as he clapped Sostratos on the back. “Ha! We show them wide-arsed sons of hippopotamoi a thing or three!” He had a decent—or rather, an indecent—grasp of Greek obscenity, but what he did to the irregular verb to show was a caution.
“Glad to help.” Sostratos even mostly meant it. The rowers were laughing and smiling, too. They understood Pasos’ joke. They’d mocked merchantmen as they glided past them on the Inner Sea. Most of the time, the sailors who manned them had to take the abuse. Today, Pasos had turned the tables on his tormentors.
The Egyptian said, “Pretty quick we come to Pyramids. Just before Memphis, you know. You want I should point for you?” He jabbed an index finger toward the Nile’s western, or Libyan, bank.
“Please!” Sostratos knew he sounded eager. Nothing in Egypt could be more famous or more ancient than the Pyramids. Hellenes with all the silver and time they needed came here just to see them. Herodotos had done it. Now I will, too, Sostratos thought.
“I do, then,” Pasos said. He saw the Pyramids every time he went up and down the Nile. They were just part of the landscape to him. He took them as much for granted as Sostratos did fried squid. Sostratos didn’t know whether to pity or envy him.
For the first time in some little while, Sostratos noticed how very slowly the barge made headway against the titanic flow of the river on which it floated. An Egyptian peasant dipping water out of the Nile with a pot mounted on a pivoted pole might have been nailed in place. After a while, though, the barge did put him behind it. Sostratos laughed at himself. Having a goal just ahead made him notice the journey once more.