“Yes, but the more I think about what it means, the less I like it,” Menedemos replied. Sostratos started to get angry. Before he could say anything, though, Menedemos continued, “Why don’t you take four or five sailors with you? Bandits would think twice before they bothered a band of armed men.”
“I don’t want-” Sostratos checked himself. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever heard. He still saw difficulties with it, though. “They speak nothing but Greek. I’d have to translate for them all the time. And, sailors being what they are ashore, they’d want to spend their time pouring down wine and bedding women, not traveling and bargaining.”
“Oh, I think that, if one of them found a pretty girl, he’d want to dicker,” Menedemos said innocently. Sostratos made a horrible face. Grinning, his cousin went on, “I’d sooner see you come back safe, even if you did have to keep an eye on your guards while you were away.”
“We’d need to pay them a bonus, too, to tempt them away from the taverns and brothels of whatever cities we go through,” Sostratos said.
“Maybe we could make it payable afterwards, for good behavior,” Menedemos said.
“Maybe.” Sostratos wasn’t convinced. “And maybe none of them would want to go for the sake of a bonus he might not earn. Besides, who says I want to play nursemaid to a squad of men who don’t want to be with me? And how could I learn anything about the countryside and its history if I am playing nursemaid?”
Menedemos pointed an accusing finger at him. “There’s your real reason!” he exclaimed. “You’re not making this jaunt just for the sake of the balsam. You want to spy out these Ioudaioi and see what you can find out about their funny customs.”
“Well, what if I do?” Sostratos said. Herodotos had managed to travel for the sake of travel, or so it seemed from his history. Sostratos wished he could do the same, but no such luck. “As long as I bring back the balsam, how can you complain about what else I do?”
“How? Easy as you please. You never miss a chance to complain when I find some bored, pretty wife whose husband’s not giving her enough of what she craves.”
The unfairness of that almost choked Sostratos. “Lying with other men’s wives-especially with our customers’ wives-is bad for business, and it’s liable to get you killed. Remember Halikarnassos. Remember Taras.”
“Getting robbed and murdered because you’re stupid enough to travel by yourself is bad for business, too,” Menedemos retorted. “And it’s also liable to get you killed. And it’s not nearly so much fun as getting laid. Either you take an escort or you don’t go to Engedi,”
Sostratos glared. “I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll take an escort along if you swear not to commit adultery this sailing season. If your spear gets too stiff to bear, go to a brothel and buy your relief.”
“It’s not the same at a brothel, and you know it,” Menedemos said. “The girls there have to give you what you ask for, whether they want to or not-and mostly they don’t. But there’s nothing randier than a wife who’s done without for too long, and you know it’s more fun when the woman enjoys herself, too,”
“I’d have more fun going to Engedi alone,” Sostratos answered.
“Till the first arrow got you in the ribs, you would.”
“That’s the chance you take in your games, too. You ask me to give up something, but you won’t do the same. Where’s the justice in that?”
“By Zeus, I’m the captain,” Menedemos said.
“But you’re not Zeus yourself, even if you swear by him, and you’re not a tyrant, either,” Sostratos replied. “Have we got a bargain, or haven’t we? Maybe I’ll just stay along the coast myself, and to the crows with getting the best price for the balsam at Engedi.”
“What? That’s mutiny!” Menedemos squawked. “We set off to the east to buy balsam. You learned that horrible language they speak so we could buy balsam. And now you say you won’t go where they have it?”
“Not with a squad of clumping, gallumphing sailors, not unless you give me something in return,” Sostratos said. “That’s not mutiny, my dear-that’s haggling. Are you saying you can’t keep away from other men’s wives till I get back from Engedi? What kind of weakling are you, if that’s so?”
“Oh, all right!” Menedemos kicked at the ground, sending a pebble spinning. “All right. You’ll go with guards, and I’ll fight shy of adultery till you’re back. What oath would you have me swear?” He held up a hand. “Wait! I know! We need some wine first, though.” In Salamis’ bustling agora, buying some was a matter of a moment. “All right. Here: ‘These things fulfilling, may I drink from this source.’ “ He sipped the wine and passed it to Sostratos, who did likewise. Menedemos finished, “ ‘But if I should break it, may the cup be full of water,’ Now you repeat it after me.”
Sostratos did. Then he said, “That’s a good oath. But why did you use a feminine participle there?-’these things fulfilling,’ I mean.”
His cousin grinned. “That’s the end of the oath Lysistrate and the other women swore in Aristophanes ’ comedy-the oath not to let their husbands have them till they ended the Peloponnesian War. It fits here, doesn’t it?”
Laughing, Sostratos dipped his head. “It could hardly fit better, my dear. Shall we finish that wine now?” They did and gave the cup back to the skinny little Hellene who’d sold the wine to them.
By the time they’d gone through the market square, Sostratos had got a lot of practice saying, “No thank you, not today,” and other such phrases in Aramaic. The Phoenicians--and the Hellenes-in the agora were slaveringly eager to sell to the Rhodians. Sostratos could easily have spent every obolos he had. Whether he could sell what he bought for enough to turn a profit was a different question, though he had a hard time convincing the merchants at Salamis of that.
He also discovered that Damonax’s olive oil was going to be even harder to move than he’d feared. Whenever he mentioned it to a trader, whether a Hellene or a Phoenician, the fellow would roll his eyes and say something like, “We make plenty at home.”
Wearily, Sostratos would offer a protest: “But this is the finest oil, from the very first picking, from the very first pressing. The gods couldn’t make better oil than this.”
“Let it be as you say, my master,” a Phoenician told him. “Let everything be just as you say. I will pay a premium for fine oil, certainly. But I will not pay a big premium, because the difference between the finest oil and an ordinary oil is so much less than the difference between the finest wine and an ordinary wine. It is there. You will find a few people who seek it out. But you will find only a few. My heart is full of grief to have to tell you this, my master, but it is so.”
Sostratos would have been more irate had he not heard variations on the theme from merchants along the southern coast of Anatolia. He went on his way, wondering if urging his father to let Damonax marry into the family had been such a good idea after all.
“What are we going to do with that oil?” Menedemos said morosely after he’d translated.
“Burn it in lamps, for all I care,” Sostratos answered. “Rub it all over yourself. If my brother-in-law were here, I’d give him an enema with it, as much as he could hold.”
Menedemos let out a startled laugh, “And I thought I was the one who liked Aristophanes.”
“I won’t say anything about Aristophanes one way or the other,” Sostratos told him. “What I will say is, I don’t much like my brother-in-law right now.”
“We could have carried quite a few things we’d have had an easier time selling,” Menedemos agreed. “We’d probably have made more money from them, too.”
“I know. I know.” Sostratos had been thinking about that even before Damonax’s slaves stowed amphora after amphora of olive oil aboard the Aphrodite. “At least we have some room for other cargo. He wanted us to fill her to the gunwales, remember. I did manage to talk my father out of letting him get away with that.”