“good day, my master,” Sostratos said in Aramaic. He was a free Hellene. He would never have called any man “master” in Greek. But the tongue spoken in Phoenicia and the nearby lands-and in broad stretches of what had been the Persian Empire before Alexander’s great campaigns-was far more flowery, more formally polite.
“Good day to you,” Himilkon the Byblian replied in the same tongue. The Phoenician merchant had run a harborside warehouse in Rhodes for as long as Sostratos could remember. Silver was just beginning to streak his curly black beard; gold hoops glittered in his ears. He went on, still in Aramaic, “Your accent is much better than it was when you started these lessons a few months ago. You know many more words, too.”
“Your servant thanks you for your help,” Sostratos said. Himilkon’s dark eyes sparkled as he nodded approval. Sostratos grinned; he’d recalled the formula correctly.
“Sailing season comes soon,” the Phoenician said.
“I know.” Sostratos dipped his head; he had as much trouble making himself nod as Himilkon did with the Hellenic gesture. “Less than a month to go before the… vernal equinox.” The last two words came out in Greek; he had no idea how to say them in Aramaic.
Himilkon didn’t tell him, either. The merchant’s lessons were purely practical. With a little luck, Sostratos would be able to make himself understood when the Aphrodite got to Phoenicia. He had more doubts about whether he would be able to understand anyone else. When he worried out loud, Himilkon laughed. “What do you say if you have trouble?”
“ ‘Please speak slowly, my master.’“ Sostratos had learned that phrase early on.
“Good. Very good.” Himilkon nodded again. “My people will want to take your money. They will make sure you follow them so they can do it.”
“I believe that,” Sostratos said in Greek. He’d dealt with Phoenician traders in a good many towns by the Aegean Sea. They were single-minded in the pursuit of profit. Since he was, too, he had less trouble with them than some Hellenes were wont to do. Sticking to Greek, he asked, “But what about the loudaioi?”
“Oh. Them.” Himilkon’s shrug was expressive. In gutturally accented Greek of his own, he continued, “I still think you’re daft to want anything to do with them.”
“Why?” Sostratos said. “The best balsam comes from Engedi, and you say Engedi is in their land, I’m sure I can get a better price from them than I’d get from Phoenician middlemen.”
“You’ll likely pay less money,” Himilkon admitted. “But you’ll have more aggravation-I promise you that.”
Sostratos shrugged. “That’s one of the things a merchant does-turns aggravation into silver, I mean.”
“All right. Fair enough,” Himilkon said. “I’ll remember that and remind myself of it when I run into a Hellene who’s particularly annoying-and there are plenty of them, by the gods.”
“Are there?” Sostratos said, and the Phoenician nodded. Isn’t that interesting? Sostratos thought. We find barbarians annoying, but who would have imagined they might feel the same about us? Truly custom is king of all. Herodotos had quoted Pindaros to that effect.
Himilkon said, “The gods keep you safe on your journey. May the winds be good, may the seas be calm, and may the Macedonian marshals not go to war anywhere too close to you and your ship.”
“May it be so,” Sostratos agreed. “By all the signs, Antigonos has a pretty solid grip on Phoenicia and its hinterland. I don’t think Ptolemaios can hope to take it away from him. No matter what they do to each other elsewhere along the shores of the Inner Sea, that seems a good bet,”
“For your sake, my master, I hope you are right,” Himilkon said, falling back into Aramaic. “Whether the elephant tramples the lion or the lion pulls down the elephant, the mouse who gets caught in their battle always loses. Shall we go on with the lesson, or have you had enough?”
“May it please you, my master, I have had enough,” Sostratos answered, also in Aramaic.
Himilkon smiled and clapped his hands. “That is perfect-pronunciation, accent, everything. If I had another half a year to work with you, I could turn you into a veritable man of Byblos, may a pestilence take me if I lie.”
“I thank you,” Sostratos said, knowing he meant it as a compliment. The Hellene tried to imagine himself a member of a folk that knew not philosophy. What would I do? How would I keep from going mad? Or would I see what I was missing? A man blind from birth doesn’t miss the beauty of a sunset.
He got to his feet and left the Phoenician’s ramshackle warehouse. Hyssaldomos, Himilkon’s Karian slave, stood just outside, chewing on some brown bread. “Hail, O best one,” he said in Greek.
“Hail,” Sostratos answered. He switched to Aramaic: “Do you understand this language, Hyssaldomos?”
“Little bit,” the slave said, also in Aramaic. “Himilkon use sometimes. Greek easier.”
That probably meant Greek was more like Hyssaldomos’ native Karian. Sostratos didn’t know for certain, though. Rhodes lay off the coast of Karia, and Rhodians had been dealing with Karians for centuries. Even so, only a handful of Karian words had entered the local Greek dialect. Few Rhodians spoke the tongue of their nearest barbarian neighbors, and he wasn’t one of them. But more and more Karians used Greek these days, either alongside their own language or instead of it.
Now that Alexander ’s conquered the Persian Empire, the whole world will have to learn Greek, Sostratos thought. In a few generations, wouldn’t his language replace not only local tongues like Karian and Lykian but also more widely spoken ones like Aramaic and Persian? He couldn’t see why not.
The Aphrodite lay drawn up on the beach perhaps a plethron from Himilkon’s warehouse. The merchant galley’s planking would be good and dry when she put to sea. Till it got waterlogged again, that would give her a better turn of speed.
A gull swooped down by the Aphrodite and flew away with a mouse struggling in its beak. One little pest that won’t make it on to the ship, Sostratos thought as he walked toward the merchant galley. He was a neat man and didn’t like dealing with vermin at sea. A couple of years before, he’d sailed with peafowl aboard the akatos. They’d done a fine job of eating roaches and centipedes and scorpions and mice-but they’d also proved that large pests aboard ship were worse than small ones.
Sostratos laid a more or less affectionate hand on the Aphrodite ’s flank. Thin lead sheets nailed to the timbers below the waterline helped shield the vessel from shipworms and kept barnacles and seaweed from fouling her bottom. Rhodian carpenters had been over the repairs they’d had done in Kos the summer before, after a collision with a round ship that came wallowing out of a rainstorm. The workmen on Kos had also been repairing Ptolemaios’ naval vessels at the time, so they should have known their business. Even so, Sostratos was glad the work met Rhodians’ approval. His own polis, in his biased opinion, held the best and boldest sailors among the Hellenes these days.
One of the harborside loungers-a fellow who would do a little work now and then, when he needed a few oboloi for wine, or perhaps for bread-came up to Sostratos and said, “Hail. You sail aboard this one, don’t you?”
“I’ve been known to, every now and again,” Sostratos said dryly. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” the other man replied. “I was just wondering what she might be carrying when she goes into the sea, that’s all.”
“She might be carrying almost anything. She’s taken everything from peafowl and lion skins and a gryphon’s skull”-Sostratos’ heart still ached when he thought about losing the gryphon’s skull to pirates the summer before, when he was on his way to show it off in Athens-”to something as ordinary as sacks of wheat.”