Menedemos asked what struck Sostratos as a couple of eminently reasonable questions: “Why would anybody want to touch that altar, if people know what happens to those who do? And how often is anybody going to be mad enough to do it?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you, skipper,” Diokles replied. “All I know is what I remember-or what I think I remember-from when I did put in here. That was years ago now, so I may have it wrong.”
No war galleys patrolled outside Kourion, or none Sostratos saw. He hadn’t spied any around Kition, either. Ptolemaios seemed to be keeping his whole fleet at Salamis, that being the port closest to the Phoenician coastline from which Antigonos might launch an attack against Cyprus. And if the ruler of Egypt had garrisoned Kourion, as Sostratos assumed he had, the local commander was most incurious. No one asked any questions of the Aphrodite ’s crew except the longshoremen who moored the merchant galley to a quay.
“Whence come ye?” a naked man inquired in the old-fashioned Cypriot dialect as he made a line fast. “Whither be ye bound?”
As usual, Menedemos told him, “We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes. We’re heading home from Sidon.” The Doric drawl Sostratos’ cousin spoke seemed all the stronger after the longshoreman’s archaic speech.
“ Rhodes, say you, good sir? And Sidon? In sooth, you’ve traveled far, and seen many things passing strange. What think you the most curious amongst ‘em?”
“I’ll answer that, if I may,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos waved for him to go on. He did: “In loudaia, inland from the Phoenician coast, there’s a lake full of water so salty, a man can’t drown in it. He’ll float on the surface with head and shoulders and feet sticking out into the air.”
“Tush! Go to!” the Cypriot exclaimed. “Think you to gull me so? You rank cozener! Why, water’s water, be it salt or fresh. An you throw a man in’t, if he swim not, he’ll sink down and drown. ‘Tis but natural that it be so. Who told you such lies?”
“No one told me,” Sostratos said. “I saw this with my own eyes, felt it with my own body. I went into this lake, I tell you, and it bore me up from the great amount of salt in it.”
Try as he would, though, he couldn’t make the longshoreman believe him. “By Apollo Hylates, I’ve met folk like you aforetimes,” the fellow said. “Always ready with a tall tale, the which no man hereabouts may check. Go to, I say again! You’ll not catch me crediting such nonsense and moonshine.”
Sostratos wanted to insist he was telling the truth. He wanted to, but he didn’t bother. He knew he would only waste his time and end up out of temper. People who often clung to the most absurd local superstitions wouldn’t trust a foreigner to tell them the truth about a distant land. The Cypriot had asked him for a strange story and then refused to believe it once he got it.
Moskhion came up onto the poop deck. “Don’t worry about it, young sir,” he said. “Some people are just natural-born fools, and you can’t do a thing about it.”
“I know,” Sostratos said. “Arguing with somebody like that is nothing but a waste of breath. He wouldn’t have believed you and Teleutas, either.”
“That’s why I kept quiet,” Moskhion said, dipping his head. “I didn’t see any point in quarreling, that’s all. It wasn’t on account of I wouldn’t back you.”
“Of course not,” Sostratos said. “I’d never think such a thing, not when we fought side by side there in the rocks north of Gamzo. We owe each other our lives. We’re not going to split apart over a foolish argument with somebody who’s probably never gone fifty stadia from Kourion in his life.”
Menedemos said, “We still have a little while before sunset. Shall we go into the agora and see what they’re selling there?”
“Well, why not?” Sostratos answered. “You never can tell. I wouldn’t bet on finding anything worth buying, but I might be wrong. And walking around in any market square will remind me I’m back among Hellenes.”
His cousin dipped his head. “Yes, I had the same thought.” He ran the gangplank from the poop deck to the quay. “Let’s go.”
Kourion wasn’t a big city, but it was an old one. Even its larger streets meandered in every direction. One of these days, Sostratos supposed, someone might rebuild the place with a neat Hippodamian grid of avenues, such as Rhodes and Kos and other newer foundations enjoyed. Meanwhile, the locals knew their way around, while strangers had to do their best. Eventually, he and Menedemos did find the agora.
Men wandered from stall to stall, examining produce and pots and leather goods and nets and carved wood and cloth and a hundred other things. Sellers praised their goods; buyers sneered. Men with trays ambled through the square, selling figs and wine and fried prawns and pastries sweetened with honey. Knots of men gathered here and there, arguing and gesticulating. It was the most ordinary scene imaginable, in any town full of Hellenes along the Inner Sea.
Tears stung Sostratos’ eyes. “By the gods, I never dreamt I could miss this so much.”
“Neither did I,” Menedemos agreed. “Let’s see what they’ve got, eh?”
“Of course, my dear,” Sostratos said. “You never know what we might find.” They strolled the agora together. Sostratos knew what he hoped to find: another gryphon’s skull. That one was most unlikely to turn up in this out-of-the way little polis bothered him not at all. He had his hopes, and would keep on having them as long as he lived.
He saw no sign of any such wonder in Kourion, though. He saw no sign of any wonders in the market square. The agora was almost staggeringly dull, at least for someone looking for cargo for a merchant galley. A local miller or farmer would surely have found it delightful.
As soon as he realized he wouldn’t see anything much he wanted to buy, he started listening to the talk in the agora. Talk, after all, was the other main reason men came to the market square. Thanks to the Cypriot dialect, he had to listen harder than he would have back in Rhodes. The more he listened, though, the more easily he followed it.
People kept talking about a gamble or a risk. They all knew what it was, and they wisely discussed this fellow’s chance of bringing it off, or that one’s, or someone else’s. They also talked about the price of failure, without saying what that was, either.
Finally, Sostratos’ curiosity got the better of him. He walked up to a local and said, “Excuse me, O best one, but may I ask you a question?”
The man from Kourion dipped his head. “Certes, stranger. Say on.”
“Thank you kindly.” As had happened before on Cyprus, the accent here made Sostratos acutely conscious of his own Doric dialect, which came out more than usual. He persisted even so: “What is this gamble I hear you all talking about?”
“Why, to touch the altar of Apollo Hylates unbeknownst to the priests serving the god, of course,” the man from Kourion replied.
Sostratos stared. “But isn’t it death to touch that altar? Don’t they throw you off the cliffs?” He pointed westward.
“In good sooth, sir, ‘tis indeed. An a man be caught, he suffereth infallibly that very fate. ‘Tis the price of failure,” the local said.
Menedemos said, “In that case, why on earth would anybody be crazy enough to want to do it?”
Shrugging, the man from Kourion replied, “It hath of late become amongst the youth of this our city a passion, a sport, to make their way to yon temple by twos and threes-the odd young men being witness to him who dareth-to lay hold of the altar, and then to get hence with all the haste in ‘em.”
“Why?” Sostratos asked, as Menedemos had before him. Again, the local only shrugged. When he saw the Rhodians had no more questions for him, he politely dipped his head again and went on his way.
Sostratos kept scratching his own head and worrying at the question like a man with a bit of squid tentacle stuck between his teeth. At last, he said, “I think I understand.”
“More than I can say,” Menedemos replied.