Menedemos had missed some of what the tavernkeeper had to say. “-Here direct from appearances in Athens and Corinth and Alexandria,” the man went on, “My friends, I give you the famous… Areios!”
He clapped his hands, holding them above his head to signal everyone else to applaud, too. Menedemos clapped a few times. So did Diokles. Sostratos, Menedemos noted, sat quietly, waiting to find out whether the kitharist would be worth hearing. Sometimes Sostratos was too sensible for his own good.
“Thank you very much!” Areios waved to the crowd as he came out onto the platform. Lean and spare, he spoke a polished Attic Greek. He’d probably been a striking youth. Even now, though the gray in his hair argued that he had to be close to fifty, he shaved his face to make himself look younger. By lamp- and torchlight, the illusion worked remarkably well. “I’m very pleased to be here,” he went on with a grin. “By the gods, I’m very pleased to be anywhere that isn’t apt to get sacked in the next hour.”
He got his laugh. Menelaos called, “That won’t happen in Cyprus. Cyprus belongs to my brother, and he’ll keep it!”
“As long as he keeps it till after I’ve sailed away, that’s fine with me,” Areios replied, and won a louder laugh.
“Another kitharist who thinks he can make fun of powerful men,” Menedemos said. “Doesn’t he remember what happened to Stratonikos here?” He paused. “Menelaos does seem a more cheerful sort than Nikokreon was-I will say that.”
“I wonder how he feels about being the second most important man in Ptolemaios’ realm,” Sostratos said. “Does he ever wonder what things would have been like if he’d been born before his brother?”
“Why ask me?” Menedemos said. “Why not go over there and ask him?”
For a bad moment, he thought Sostratos would get up and do just that. But his cousin was only shifting on the stool. Sostratos pointed to the kithara Areios cradled in his arms. “Have you ever seen a finer instrument?”
Menedemos had to crane his neck to see it at all, but answered, “I don’t believe I have.”
Large and heavy, the kithara was the instrument of choice of professional musicians. It had seven strings, and an enormous sound box that amplified the tones the kitharist struck from them. Areios’ kithara was of pale oak, and gleamed as if rubbed with beeswax. It had Inlays of ivory and of some dark wood, perhaps walnut, perhaps something more exotic-and more expensive. From supporting the instrument he played, Areios’ arms were as muscular as a pankratiast’s.
But then Areios ran his fingers over the strings, and Menedemos stopped noticing anything but the music. Not only was his one of the most beautiful kitharas Menedemos had ever seen, it was also one of the most perfectly tuned he’d ever heard. Tuning the kithara-or its relatives, the lyre, the barbitos, and the phorminx-was anything but easy. Like anyone who’d been to school, Menedemos had learned to play the lyre… after a fashion.
The strings-four in a lyre, more in the other instruments-were attached to the sound box at the bottom by a string bar and bridge. Things were more complicated at the other end. The strings were wound around the crosspiece and held in place by a piece of hide cut from the neck of a cow or goat and rubbed with sticky grease to make them adhere to it. Menedemos remembered endless plucking, endless adjustments- and the schoolmaster’s stick coming down on his back when he couldn’t get the tone right no matter what. And even when he managed to persuade the strings to yield notes somewhere close to what they should have been, a little playing would put them out again. It was enough-more than enough-to drive anybody mad.
Here, though, the tones weren’t close to what they should have been. They were exactly right and seemed to pierce Menedemos’ very soul. “Pure as water from a mountain spring,” Sostratos whispered. Menedemos dipped his head, and then waved his cousin to silence. He didn’t want to hear anything but the music.
Areios played a little bit of everything, from the lyric poetry of the generations following Homer to the latest love songs out of Alexandria. Everything he did play had a slight sardonic edge to it. He chose Arkhilokhos’ old poem about throwing away his shield and leaving it for some Thracian to find. And the Alexandrian song was about a woman trying to bewitch her lover away from her rival-a boy.
At last, the kitharist struck one more perfect chord, bowed very low, said, “I thank you, most noble ones,” and left the stage.
Menedemos clapped till his palms were sore. He wasn’t the only one, either; a tremendous din of applause filled the tavern, enough to make his head ring. Cries of “Euge!” rang out from all sides.
“How is he next to Stratonikos?” Menedemos asked as they left the building.
“It’s been a while since I heard Stratonikos,” Sostratos replied, judicious as usual. “I think Areios is at least as good with the kithara itself-and I’ve never heard one better tuned-
“Yes, I thought the same thing myself,” Menedemos said.
Diokles dipped his head. “Me, too.”
“But Stratonikos, if I remember rightly, had a better voice,” Sostratos finished.
“I’m glad we went,” Menedemos said. He clapped the keleustes on the back. “Good thing you heard he was playing, Diokles-and I hope Nikokreon’s shade got himself an earful tonight.”
Sostratos wasn’t sorry to see Cyprus recede behind the Aphrodite’s goose-headed sternpost and the boat the akatos towed in her wake. He also was not eager to face Phoenicia or the land of the Ioudaioi. What he was was coldly furious at his brother-in-law. “When we get back to Rhodes,” he said, “I’m going to pour melted cheese and garlic over Damonax and fry him in his own olive oil. We’ll have plenty left to do the job, with some left over for the barley rolls we’ll serve with his polluted carcass.”
“You must be angry, if you’ve got the whole menu planned,” Menedemos said.
“Herodotos puts the Androphagoi far to the north of the Skythian plains, beyond a great desert,” Sostratos replied. “I wonder what he would have thought if he’d heard a Rhodian wanted to become a man-eater. “
“He’d probably wonder what wine went best with brother-in-law,” Menedemos said. “Something sweet and thick, I’d say.”
“Gods bless you, my dear,” Sostratos said, “for you’re the best man I’ve ever known when it comes to helping someone along with his mood, whatever it happens to be. I’m not surprised men often choose you symposiarch when they throw a drinking party-you’re the one to take them where they want to go.”
“Well, thank you, () best one,” Menedemos answered, raising his right hand from the steering-oar tiller to give Sostratos a salute. “I don’t know that anyone’s ever said anything kinder of me.”
“Now that I think about it,” Sostratos went on in musing tones, “that’s probably the same sort of knack that gets you so many girls, isn’t it?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Menedemos said.
“Papai!” Sostratos exclaimed, now dismayed. He stared at his cousin, hardly believing what he’d heard. “Why not? Don’t you know what Sokrates said?-’The unexamined life is not worth living.’ He’s right.”
“I don’t know about that,” Menedemos said. “I’m usually too busy living my life to step back and take a look at it.”
“Then how do you know if you’re living well or not?”
Menedemos frowned. “If we go down this road, I’m going to get all tangled up. I can see that coming already.” He wagged a finger at Sostratos. “I can see you looking forward to it, too.”