And, the moment after that, they flew apart as if each found the other red-hot. “We can’t,” Baukis gasped.
“We don’t dare,” Menedemos agreed. His heart thudded hard in his chest. “But oh, darling, how I want to!”
“So do-” Baukis tossed her head. She wasn’t going to admit that, perhaps not even to herself. She changed course: “I know you do, dear Mene-” She tossed her head again. “I know you do. But we can’t. We mustn’t. The scandal! I’m trying to be-I want to be-a proper wife to your father. And if anyone sees us… If anyone saw us…” She looked around in alarm.
“I know,” Menedemos said grimly. “Oh, by the gods, how I know. And I know it isn’t right, and I know-” He sprang to his feet and ran up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time even in the dark, careless of a stumble. He shut the door to his room and barred it, as if to lock temptation away. But it was there inside with him, inside him, and now that he knew it dwelt in his father’s wife, too…
He lay down again, but he didn’t sleep. Quite a while later, Philodemos came home. Baukis greeted him as if nothing at all were wrong. Menedemos knew he would have to do the same in the morning. It wouldn’t be easy. He also knew that, knew it all too well. From now on, nothing in the world would be easy.
HISTORICAL NOTE
The Sacred Land is set in 308 B.C. Menedemos himself is a historical figure. Sostratos and the other members of their families are fictional. Other real people who appear in the novel are Ptolemaios’ brother Menelaos, Areios the kitharist, and Hekataios of Abdera. Historical figures mentioned in the novel but not actually on stage include Ptolemaios; Antigonos; Lysimakhos; Kassandros; Philip of Macedon’s daughter, Kleopatra; King Nikokreon of Salamis; and his victims, Stratonikos the kitharist and Anaxarkhos of Abdera.
Hekataios of Abdera’s account of the Jews survives, though just barely. Diodorus Siculus quoted him fairly extensively in his universal history, written in the first century B.C. That part of Diodorus’ work does not itself exist in the original, but was in turn excerpted by the Byzantine scholar-patriarch Photios in the ninth century A.D. How closely Photios’ excerpt of Diodorus’ excerpt of Hekataios’ work resembles the latter remains a subject of scholarly debate, and it obviously will never be answered in full without a miraculously fortunate papyrus find. Hekataios worked in Egypt. He probably did not in fact go up into Palestine itself, but a novelist is entitled to bend history a bit now and again.
As usual in this series, I’ve spelled most names of places and people as a Greek would have: thus Lykia, not Lycia; Kassandros, not Cassander. I’ve broken this rule for toponyms that have well-established English spellings: Rhodes, Cyprus, and so on. I’ve also broken it for Alexander the Great and Philip of Macedon. The two great Macedonians dominate this period even though Alexander was about fifteen years dead when The Sacred Land begins. Also as usual, translations from the Greek are, for better or worse, my own.