After perhaps a quarter of an hour, the tern took off and plunged headfirst into the water of the Inner Sea. It emerged a moment later with a fish just above sprat size in its beak. Instead of returning to the yard, it flew over the Aphrodite and away. It must have clamped down on the still-wiggling fish, for the last couple of digits’ width of the tail fell at Sostratos’ feet.
“There, you see?” he told Menedemos. “I wish some of the people we deal with would pay us so promptly.”
“Well, that’s the truth, and I can’t tell you otherwise,” his cousin said.
Menedemos let him steer for about an hour, then took back the tillers. As Sostratos stepped away from them, he did feel useless. Most of what you do on a trading run, you do ashore, he reminded himself. He knew that was true, but it made him feel no more useful at this moment. He looked back past the stern again, hack past the ship’s boat that followed the Aphrodite almost as the Great Dog and the Little Dog followed Orion through the night sky of winter.
Not long after Menedemos took the tillers, Aristeidas spotted a sail off to starboard. Sostratos peered east himself. He might have got a glimpse of a pale sail right at the edge of the horizon, or he might have imagined it. He couldn’t tell. Did he really see it, or did he imagine he saw it because sharp-sighted Aristeidas said it was there? Plenty of men believed things for no better reason than that someone they respected- whether rightly or wrongly-said it was so. Am I one of the herd? Maybe I am.
Then the lynx-eyed lookout said, “Gone now-under the horizon. Must have seen us and not wanted to find out what we were.”
“If we were pirates, they wouldn’t get free of us so easy,” Menedemos said. “We’d be after them like a hound after a hare. And we’d catch them, too. No place to hide on the sea-they couldn’t duck into a hole or under a thorn bush, the way a hare can.”
Cyprus was visibly closer than the Anatolian mainland when, with the setting of the sun, the Aphrodite’s anchors splashed into the Inner Sea. Sostratos washed down barley rolls, cheese, onions, and briny olives with watered wine. “I should have kept the fish tail the tern dropped,” he said. “It would be the fanciest opson I’ve got.”
“An opsophagos who goes to sea for the fish is going to be disappointed most of the time,” Menedemos answered. “Yes, he’s right above all those beauties, but how often does he ever see them?”
“Somebody caught a lovely mullet last year-remember?” Sostratos said.
“Yes-one mullet, for one sailor out of the whole crew,” Menedemos said. “Those aren’t good odds, you know.”
“Too true,” Sostratos agreed. “But I do wonder what sort of interesting fish they catch off Cyprus and Phoenicia.”
“We found out some of the people thereabouts don’t eat fish at all- and you say your Ioudaioi won’t eat pork, isn’t that right?” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. His cousin laughed. “Who can guess why barbarians have the strange customs they do? If they didn’t, they’d be Hellenes.”
Once more, Sostratos quoted Herodotos quoting Pindaros: “ ‘Custom is king of all,’ That’s true wherever one goes, I’m sure, with Hellenes as well as barbarians.”
By the next afternoon, he could clearly see the forested hills of Cyprus’ eastern spike of land. Hawks wheeled above the woods. Now and then one would swoop down after prey it could see and Sostratos couldn’t. A gull that was resting contentedly on the masthead took off all at once with a harsh squawk of fear and a mad flapping of wings. The falcon that flew past paid it no heed but went on its way straight and swift as an arrow.
“Splendid bird,” Sostratos murmured.
“The gull didn’t think so,” Menedemos said.
“Yes, the gull hared out of there,” Sostratos replied, and his cousin made a face at the pun on laros and lagos. Sostratos smiled. As far as he was concerned, that pun welcomed him to Cyprus.
4
Menedemos looked ahead to the port approaching on his right hand. Thanks to favorable winds, they’d reached it on the second afternoon after coming to Cyprus. He pointed toward the narrow mouth of the harbor. “There’s a place with a famous name.”
“Salamis?” Sostratos answered. “Yes, my dear, I should hope so. It’s a name that means liberty for all Hellenes, a name that means Xerxes the Persian king watching from the shore as his ships were beaten.” He laughed. “The only trouble is, it’s the wrong Salamis for that.”
“Yes, I know,” Menedemos said, wondering if his cousin thought him so ignorant as not to know. “I wonder how a town in Cyprus got the same name as an island off the coast of Attica.” Then he snapped his fingers. “No, I don’t wonder. I know.”
“Tell me,” Sostratos said.
“Teukros founded this Salamis, didn’t he?” Menedemos said.
“So they say,” Sostratos answered.
“Well, then, Teukros was Telamon’s bastard, right?” Menedemos waited for his cousin to dip his head, then continued, “And who’s Telamon’s legitimate son?”
“You’re the one who knows the Iliad backwards and forwards,” Sostratos said.
“Oh, come on!” Menedemos said. “Everybody knows this one. Telamon’s son is-”
“Aias.” Sostratos supplied the right answer. Menedemos clapped his hands. Sostratos went on, “I see. I have it now. Because there are two Hellenic heroes named Aias in the Iliad, there must be two places named Salamis by the sea.”
“No, no, no!” Menedemos exclaimed. Only then did he notice the wicked gleam in his cousin’s eye. “You-you cacodaemon!” he burst out. Sostratos laughed out loud, Menedemos glared at him. “Now you’re going to hear the right answer, curse it, you scoffer, you.” Sostratos bowed, as if at a compliment. Menedemos doggedly plowed ahead: “Teukros founded this Salamis-and Alas, his half brother, was lord of the Salamis in Attica.” He quoted the Iliad:
“ ‘And Aias from Salamis led two-and-ten ships
And, having led them, placed them where the Athenians’ formations stood.’
So you see, this Salamis is named for the other one-in spite of your dreadful jokes.”
“Some people say the Athenians put those two lines into the Catalogue of Ships themselves, to justify their claim to the island of Salamis,” Sostratos said. That rocked Menedemos. To him, Homer ’s poems were perfect and unchanging as they passed from one generation to the next. Adding lines for political reasons seemed as vile as adulterating barley for the sake of profit. But if people did the latter-and they did-why not the former, too? His cousin added, “Can’t fault your argument, though. If Aias was lord of Salamis and if Teukros founded this Salamis, this one is named after the other. You can think logically when you want to. If only you’d want to more often.”
Menedemos hardly noticed the gibe. He was thinking about the rest of the Iliad. Aias wasn’t associated with Menestheus of Athens anywhere but in the Catalogue of Ships, as best he could remember. His ships were sometimes mentioned as lying alongside those Protesilaos-first to land at Troy, and first to die there-had brought from Phylake, up in Thessalia. He sometimes fought in the company of the other, smaller, Aias. Except in that one passage, he had nothing to do with the Athenians.
“Filthy,” Menedemos muttered.
“What’s that?” Sostratos asked.
“Perverting the Iliad for the sake of politics.”
Sostratos’ smile looked anything but pleasant. “Shall I really disgust you?”
“How?” Menedemos asked. “Do I want to know?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” Sostratos returned. “Here’s how: there are a couple of lines in place of the ones you quoted, lines that tie Salamis to Megara, which also claimed it in the old days. But those lines don’t say how many ships Aias led to Troy, the way the Catalogue of Ships does for all the other places and heroes, so they probably aren’t genuine, either.”