“They sure do.” But then, instead of going on and mocking the Lykians even more, Sostratos checked himself, feeling foolish. “It’s only custom that makes our clothes seem right to us and theirs seem strange. But custom is king of all.”
“That last bit sounds like poetry,” Menedemos said. “Who said it first?”
“What, you don’t think I could have?” Sostratos said. His cousin impatiently tossed his head. Sostratos laughed. “Well, you’re right. It’s from Pindaros, quoted by Herodotos in his history.”
“I might have known you would have found it in a history-and I did know it was too good for you.” Menedemos peered around the agora. “Do you see anything else you want around here?”
“One of the women who was buying dried figs, but I don’t suppose she’d be for sale,” Sostratos answered.
Menedemos snorted. “That’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to say, and you’re supposed to roll your eyes and look at me as if I were a comic actor who’s just shit himself on stage. My only question is, how do you know she’s not for sale unless you try to find out?”
“I’m not going to worry about it,” Sostratos said. “Unlike some people I could name, I know there are other things in the world.”
“Oh, I know that, too,” Menedemos replied. “But none of the others is half as much fun,” He checked himself. “Well, I suppose boys are half as much fun. They’d be just as much fun if they enjoyed it the way women do.”
“I won’t quarrel with you,” Sostratos said. “A lot of men don’t care whether boys enjoy it or not, though.”
“They’re the same sort of men who don’t care if their women take pleasure, either.” Menedemos’ lip curled in contempt. “And, when a man like that beds a woman, she doesn’t take pleasure. You wonder why they even bother.”
“That soldier’s gone,” Sostratos said. “Let’s go find out what the Lykian wants for his hams.”
The merchant’s price for one ham didn’t seem too high. Menedemos asked him, “How many have you got?”
“Twenty-eight. No, twenty-seven. I just sell one.”
In a low voice, Menedemos asked, “How much is twenty times his price, my dear?” Sostratos stood there in a lip-moving trance of concentration. Part of him resented being used as an animate abacus. Much more of him, though, enjoyed showing off. He gave Menedemos the answer. Menedemos gave it back to the Lykian, saying, “We’ll give you that for all of them together.”
“All?” The fellow stared.
“Yes, all. We’ll take them east. For that. Not an obolos more. Yes? No?”
“All,” the Lykian said dazedly. He wasn’t used to doing business on that scale. He made mental calculations of his own, wondering whether a low price for one ham was worth getting a big sack of silver for the lot of them and not having to worry about when or whether they’d sell. Suddenly, he thrust out a hand. “All!”
Menedemos clasped it. Sostratos said, “Let’s head back to the ship. We’ll see how lost we get.”
He didn’t expect to; he’d made it from the Aphrodite to the agora, and, with his good head for directions, thought he’d be able to retrace his steps without much trouble. But he’d reckoned without Patara’s streets, which doubled back on each other even more enthusiastically than those of a Hellenic polis built before Hippodamos popularized the idea of a rectangular grid.
He came upon a carved stone column, inscribed in Lykian, planted in front of a potter’s shop. “Give the potter an obolos,” Menedemos said. “He’ll tell us how to get out of this maze.”
“Wait,” Sostratos said. He found a word on the column he recognized. “Mithradata put this up, I think.”
“Who’s Mithradata?” Menedemos asked.
“He was satrap here about the time our grandfather was born,” Sostratos replied. “He was one of the very first people to use his own portrait on his coins.”
“Everybody does that nowadays,” Menedemos said. “All the Macedonian marshals do, anyhow.”
“No, not all of them,” Sostratos said, precise as usual. “Antigonos’ silver still has Alexander ’s head on it.”
“Fine.” Menedemos sounded exasperated. “So old One-Eye puts somebody else’s portrait on his money. It’s still a portrait.”
“I wonder how much the portraits on coins and statues really look like Alexander.” Sostratos remained relentlessly curious. “He’s fifteen years dead, after all. They aren’t images of him any more: they’re copies of copies of copies of images of him.”
“You could have asked that of Ptolemaios when we were in Kos last year,” his cousin said. “You could ask any Macedonian veteran, as a matter of fact, or any Hellene who went east with the Macedonians.”
“You’re right. I could. Thanks, best one. Next time I think of it, I will.” Sostratos beamed. “Nice to run across a question that has an answer.”
“Ah, but has it got one answer or many?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you ask one veteran, he’ll give you an answer. But if you ask ten veterans, will they all give you the same answer? Or will some say the coins look like Alexander while others tell you they don’t?”
“I don’t know.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. “Finding out would be interesting, though.”
Once past the potter’s, they turned a corner and saw blue water ahead. “There’s the gods-cursed harbor,” Menedemos said. He threw his arms wide. “Thalassa! Thalassa!” he called, and burst out laughing.
Sostratos laughed, too. “You didn’t march through all of Asia to find the sea, the way Xenophon ’s men did.”
“No, but I came through all of Patara-through some of it two or three times, too-and that seems even farther,” Menedemos retorted. “And I tell you something else, too: after I go back with some men to get the hams and pay off that Lykian, I’ll be just about as glad to get on the sea again as Xenophon’s men were. Have you ever found a place that’s harder to get around in than this?”
“Not lately,” Sostratos said. “I hope some of the other Lykian towns will be better.”
“They could hardly be worse,” Menedemos said.
“OцP!” Diokles called, and the Aphrodite’s rowers rested at their oars. The keleustes went on, “Bring ‘em inboard, boys. We’re running nicely before the wind.”
The rowers did ship their oars and stow them. As the oarmaster had said, a brisk wind from out of the north filled the merchant galley’s sails. The Aphrodite sped southward, bounding over the waves as nimbly as a dolphin.
“No sailing better than this,” Menedemos said. Before long, he would swing the akatos east to follow the Lykian coastline. For now, though, he just stood at the steering oars and let her run.
Even Sostratos dipped his head. He was getting his sea legs faster this year than he had on the ship’s last couple of trading runs; its pitching didn’t seem to bother him at all. He said, “A pirate ship would have trouble catching us today.”
“Don’t count on it,” Menedemos said. “They sail at least as fast as we do, and when they sprint with all their rowers going flat out there’s nothing in anybody’s navy can keep up with ‘em.”
The wind continued to rise. It thrummed in the merchant galley’s rigging. The akatos’ creamy white wake streamed out behind it. Menedemos turned to look back over his shoulder, trying to gauge just how fast they were going.
“Skipper, I think maybe you ought to-” Diokles began.
“Take in some canvas?” Menedemos finished, and the oarmaster dipped his head. Menedemos raised his voice to tall out to the sailors; “Come on, boys-brail it up a couple of squares’ worth. We don’t want anything to tear loose.”
Strengthening lines crossed the sail horizontally. The brails ran vertically, giving it a pattern of squares. Hauling on the brails, the sailors could, if they chose, shorten part of the sail and leave the rest fully lowered from the yard, so as to take best advantage of the wind. Now, with that wind blowing out of the north, at their backs, they shortened the whole sail evenly.