“The best sort of bargain is one where both sides go away happy,” Sostratos said diplomatically. “I’m heading back to the harbor now. Farewell, and enjoy the poem.”
“If it’s got Aphrodite in it without her clothes, I expect I’ll like it just fine.” Epianax sounded very sure of himself.
When Sostratos came aboard the merchant galley, he told Menedemos what he’d learned from Epianax. His cousin shrugged. “I’d thought we’d sell the eels to the Hellenes in Antigonos’ army anyhow,” he said. “I know we’re all opsophagoi when we get the chance. Who wouldn’t rather stuff himself with turbot or tunny or cuttlefish or lobster than with barley cakes or wheat bread?”
“Sokrates wouldn’t, for one. Opson is fine, he’d say, but it’s the relish- it’s what you eat with the staple, with the sitos. If you do it the other way round, then your bread turns into the relish, doesn’t it?”
“So what?” Menedemos said cheerfully, and smacked his lips. “If I had the silver for it, I’d eat fish till I grew fins.”
“Gods be praised you don’t, then,” Sostratos said. But how could you argue with somebody who not only admitted he was an opsophagos but sounded proud of it? Seeing no way, Sostratos didn’t try. Instead, he passed on what Epianax had said about the oracle at Dinos.
“That is interesting,” Menedemos said. “But what did he tell you? It’s only a few stadia north of Phaselis? I don’t see much point in stopping.”
“You surprise me,” Sostratos said. “Don’t you want to learn what the god has to say about our voyage?”
Menedemos tossed his head. “Not me, my dear. I’ll know in a few months any which way. Why? Are you that curious?” He answered his own question: “Of course you are. You always are. Do you really care about what the god says, or are you interested in watching how this particular oracle works?”
Sostratos’ ears heated. “You know me too well,” he mumbled.
“Only your mother and father have known you longer,” Menedemos said. “And they have to love you, for they bore you. Me, I see you as you are-and, somehow or other, I put up with you anyway.”
“Thank you so much,” Sostratos told him.
His cousin ignored the sarcasm. “My pleasure-most of the time, anyhow. But listen-I’ve got news. While you were talking with the eel-seller, I chatted up some of the sailors here in port. Things are stirring, sure enough.”
“What sorts of things?” Now Sostratos sounded interested. If anything could distract him from his own gloom, it was news of the outside world.
“Well, do you know Kleopatra, Philip of Macedon’s daughter and Alexander’s sister?”
“Personally?” Sostratos said. “No.”
Menedemos gave him the exasperated stare he’d hoped for. “No, not personally, you thick-head. Do you know of her? “
“Who doesn’t?” Sostratos replied. “When she married Alexandras of Epeiros, Philip was murdered at their wedding feast. That put Alexander the Great on the throne. It made him Great, in fact, because who knows what he would have been if Philip ruled another twenty-five years, as he could have? After Alexandros died, she married Alexander’s marshal Perdikkas, and after he died some other officer-I forget whom.
She’s in one of Antigonos’ Anatolian towns these days, isn’t she?”
“Yes, in Sardis-for the moment,” Menedemos said portentously.
“Ah?” Sostratos said. “ ‘For the moment,’ is it? Tell me more.”
“Well, what one of my chattering friends told me was that she doesn’t want to stay in Sardis or under old One-Eye’s muscular thumb anymore,” Menedemos replied. “The story is, she wants to go over to Ptolemaios.”
“He’s got that base over there on Kos, right across from the Anatolian mainland,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos dipped his head. Sostratos thought quickly. The conclusion he reached didn’t take much in the way of complicated calculation. “Kleopatra will never get to his men alive.”
“You sound sure of that,” Menedemos said.
“I’ll bet a mina of silver on it, if you’re in the mood,” Sostratos told him.
“A hundred drakhmai? By the dog of Egypt, you are sure, aren’t you?”
“Will you take the bet?”
Now Menedemos thought it over. He didn’t need long, either. “No, thanks. Antigonos can’t afford to let her get to Ptolemaios; he’d lose too much face. And he’s ruthless enough to kill her if she tries. In other words, you’re likely right.”
“Whether I am or I’m not, we’re both reasoning the same way, anyhow,” Sostratos said. “All right, then, we won’t bet. And we won’t stop at the oracle, either?” He did his best to sound woefully disappointed.
“Not if it’s that close to Phaselis,” Menedemos answered. “Don’t you want to get to Phoenicia and Ioudaia and practice your Aramaic?”
The question was good enough to keep Sostratos from complaining as the Aphrodite’s, rowers took her out of the harbor of Phaselis. He wondered whether Kleopatra had already fled Sardis. Poor woman, he thought. If she’s tried it, she’s probably already dead. Who’s left from Philip’s dynasty, then? No one. No one at all.
As the Aphrodite slid past the sacred grove at Dinos, Menedemos eyed the pines and oaks. The grove looked like any other unhallowed Anatolian forest to him. As Epianax the eel-seller had told Sostratos, though, it did come right down to the sea. Its holiness had let it survive in the lowlands where most timber had been cut away to make room for farms. The only trees close by were cultivated groves of olives and almonds. But the hills rose steeply from the sea. A man wouldn’t have to go many stadia inland to find himself in the woods once more.
“Rhyppapai!” Diokles called. “Rhyppapai!” The breeze was fitful. When it did blow, it came mostly from the north. If the akatos was going to get anywhere, it had to travel by oar power.
Dolphins leaped and frolicked alongside the ship. “They’re a good omen,” Menedemos remarked to his cousin.
Sostratos dipped his head. “So says the part of me that goes to sea every sailing season. The part of me that went to the Lykeion in Athens has its doubts.”
“Why take chances?” Menedemos asked. “If you take omens but they aren’t real, you don’t hurt yourself, but if you ignore them and they are, you can end up in all sorts of trouble.”
“You can end up in trouble following omens that aren’t real,” Sostratos said, “Suppose you believe some lying fool of a soothsayer and do what he tells you, and it turns out to be the worst thing you could have done? Or what about the prophecy the Pythia at Delphi gave to King Kroisos of Lydia;
If Kroisos o’er the Halys River go
He will a mighty kingdom overthrow’?
What about that?”
“Oh, no, my dear.” Menedemos tossed his head. “You won’t get me with that one. That’s not the oracle’s fault. It’s Kroisos’ fault, for not asking whether he’d overthrow the Persian kingdom-or his own.”
Sostratos gave him an impudent grin, “I can’t fault your logic. I doubt whether Sokrates himself could fault your logic. But logic, remember, lies at the heart of philosophy. And you’re a man who sneers at philosophy. So where, O marvelous one, is the logic in that?”
“In your proktos,” Menedemos suggested.
“Aristophanes and his jokes arc funny in their place. When they get out of their place…” Sostratos sniffed.
Menedemos started to point out that Aristophanes had had a good deal to say about philosophy and especially about philosophers. At the last instant, he held his tongue. He knew what would happen if he sailed down that channel. He and Sostratos would get into a row about how big a role Aristophanes and Clouds had played in Sokrates’ death. How many times had they had that argument? Too many for Menedemos to want to go through it again. By now, the steps were almost as formal as a dance.