He spat anyhow. The training in logic and analysis he’d had at the Lykeion in Athens warred with the superstitions he’d picked up at sea. At least as often as not, superstition won. For one thing, he spent his time these days around sailors, not around philosophers. For another, he didn’t see how spitting could hurt, and so…
“Why not?” he muttered.
“What’s that?” Menedemos asked.
“Nothing,” Sostratos said, embarrassed Menedemos had heard him.
The Sidonians took their towering buildings as much for granted as Sostratos took the shorter ones of Rhodes and other Hellenic poleis. They swarmed around the two Rhodians, sometimes grumbling at the slow-moving, gawking foreigners. All the men wore beards; though shaving was popular among Hellenes, especially of the younger generation, it hadn’t caught on here. Some of their robes-often boldly striped in deep blue or rusty red-had fancy fringes on the hem; they used one hand to keep those fringes from trailing in the dust. They wore tall cylindrical caps or lengths of cloth-again, often brightly colored-wrapped around their hair.
More women went out in public than would have in a polis full of Hellenes. Some of them were veiled against the gaze of strange men, but many weren’t. Quite a few stared in frank curiosity at the Rhodians. Sostratos needed a little while to figure out why. “We’re a novelty here,” he said. “Hellenes, I mean.”
“Well, of course,” Menedemos answered. “I haven’t seen many Phoenician women till now. They’re not bad, are they?”
“No,” Sostratos admitted; he’d noticed bright eyes and red lips and white teeth himself. “They put on more paint than our women do- except for hetairai, of course.”
“They’re more used to being seen than our women are,” Menedemos said. “They aim to take advantage of it.”
“I think you’re right.” Sostratos dipped his head. Then he paused and sniffed. “Sidon doesn’t smell the way I thought it would.”
“It smells like a city-smoke and people and animals and shit,” Menedemos said. “Maybe it smells a little worse than a lot of places-all those rotting shellfish they use to get their crimson dye. But what did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” But Sostratos did know, and at last, sheepishly, he owned up to it: “I thought it might smell like spices and incenses, because so many of them come through here on their way to Hellas: pepper and cinnamon and myrrh and frankincense and I don’t know what all else. But”-he sniffed-”you’d never know it by your nose.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Menedemos agreed. “Sidon smells like the garbage on a hot day after Sikon did up seafood the night before.”
“You’re right-it does,” Sostratos said. “That’s just what it smells like, as a matter of fact. Your family has a good cook there. Father would buy him in a heartbeat if Uncle Philodemos ever decided to sell him.”
“Not likely!”
“I didn’t think it was,” Sostratos replied. “I wouldn’t even have mentioned it if he weren’t going around Rhodes with his face like a thundercloud. Father and I have both noticed it. If Sikon’s having trouble with your father-”
“No, no, no.” Menedemos tossed his head. “It’s not Father. Father wants to keep him and wants to keep him happy, too. Like I told you before, Baukis is the one who thinks Sikon spends too much silver on our opson, and so they fight.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Sostratos said. “I can see how it would be a problem, but I still think your father ought to come between his wife and his cook so they don’t fight any more. Why doesn’t he?”
“Why?” Menedemos laughed. “I told you that before, too, my dear. For the same reason nobody comes between Antigonos and Ptolemaios, that’s why. They’d squash him between them, and then they’d go right on fighting. He’s smart enough to know it, too. He sometimes thinks he can just lay down the law”-by the way Menedemos’ mouth twisted, Uncle Philodemos often thought that around him-”but he hasn’t tried it there.”
“He could use you as his go-between,” Sostratos remarked.
He wasn’t ready for what happened next. His cousin’s face slammed shut, as if it were a door slammed in the face of an unwelcome guest. “No,” Menedemos said in a voice like a Thracian winter. “He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that at all.”
“Why not?” Sostratos asked. “It would seem to make good logical sense, and-”
Still in that gelid voice, Menedemos broke in: “A lot of things that seem to make good logical sense are amazingly stupid when you try them out in the real world. You never have figured that out, have you? But believe me, this is one of them.”
“Well, excuse me for existing,” Sostratos said, not only affronted but also confused, for he didn’t know how he’d managed to irk his cousin this time.
“I’ll think about it, my dear,” Menedemos replied. Had he stayed coldly angry, they would have had a real row. This time, though, something of the old sardonic glint returned to his voice and to his eye. Sostratos didn’t ask him for any more family details, but he didn’t feel like hauling off and kicking him anymore, either.
They walked past a temple. With its colonnaded front, at first glance it put Sostratos in mind of a shrine in a Hellenic polis of no particular account. But the terra-cotta figurines decorating the pediment were done in a style different from any he would have seen where Hellenes lived. And the reliefs on the frieze were not only stiff and square and blocky-plainly the product of a sculptural tradition different from his own-but also acting out a mythological scene about which he knew nothing.
Menedemos noticed something else about the temple. Pointing, he asked, “What does all the funny writing say?”
Sostratos tried to decipher it, but then tossed his head. “Give me time and I can probably puzzle it out,” he said. “But I can’t just sound it out and read it, the way I could if it were Greek. Sorry.” When someone asked him something, he hated not being able to give a precise, detailed answer. That, after all, was one of the things he was best at.
But Menedemos said, “Well, don’t worry about it, my dear. I wondered, that’s all.” As he had in Patara, he added, “If it’s not in Greek, it can’t be very important, can it?”
What would Himilkon have said had he heard that? Something memorable, Sostratos suspected. The Phoenician trader mocked Hellenes for their ignorance of languages other than their own. Back on Rhodes, Sostratos hadn’t taken him seriously. Why should he have, in a polis where Greek, naturally, ruled? But here in Sidon, the purring, coughing, choking rhythms of Aramaic surrounded him. Who spoke Greek here? Antigonos’ soldiers and clerks, along with a handful of Phoenicians who dealt with Hellenes. Drifting on this sea of strange words was intimidating, almost frightening.
It will be even worse in the country of the loudaioi, Sostratos thought glumly. Nobody there deals with Hellenes, and, from everything I’ve heard, Antigonos doesn’t bother sending many soldiers into the interior. Do I really want to try this without an interpreter?
I do, he answered himself, more than a little surprised. Why did I spend all that time and money with Himilkon, if not to do it myself? He smiled.
The truth was, he remained young enough to crave adventure. He’d been too young to go off to the ends of the earth with Alexander the Great. The men of the older generation, the ones who had gone conquering, had to look down their noses at him and his contemporaries, had to reckon them stay-at-homes who’d never measured themselves against the worst the world could do.
I can’t conquer Persia or go fight along the Indus River, Sostratos thought. That’s been done. But I can do a little exploring of my own. I can, and I will.