“Who, me?” Sostratos said, not quite innocently enough, “Answer my question, if you please.”
“How do I know if I’m living well?” Menedemos echoed. Sostratos dipped his head. His cousin frowned in thought. “By whether I’m happy or not, I suppose.”
“Amazing, O marvelous one!” Sostratos said. Menedemos shot him a dirty look. Sostratos went on, “Could a dog or a goat speak, it would give the same answer. For a dog or a goat, it would be good enough, too. But for a man? No. Artaxerxes Okhos, the Great King of Persia, was happiest when he was killing people, and he killed a lot of them. Does that mean he lived well?”
“No, but killing people doesn’t make me happy.” Menedemos fixed Sostratos with a mild and speculative stare. “For certain people, I might make an exception.”
“You’re still talking around the question,” Sostratos said. “Just think, too: if you knew why you were so charming, you might get more women yet.”
That made Menedemos look sharply at him. Sostratos had thought it might. “Do you think so?” his cousin asked.
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Sostratos replied. “An archer who knows what he’s doing is more likely to hit the target than one who just picks up the bow and lets fly, isn’t he?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.” But Menedemos sounded suspicious. A moment later, he explained why: “I still think you’re trying to turn me into a philosopher behind my back.”
“Would I do such a thing?” Again, Sostratos sounded as innocent as he could.
He sounded so very innocent, in fact, that both Menedemos and Diokles burst out laughing. “Oh, no, my dear, not you,” Menedemos said. “No, indeed. Never you. The thought wouldn’t cross your mind.” He laughed some more, louder than ever,
“What I’d like to know,” Sostratos said with more than a little heat, “is what’s so dreadful about the notion that one man should want to persuade another to love wisdom and look for it, instead of just stumbling over it when he chances upon it or turning his back on it altogether. Can you tell me that?”
“Philosophy’s too much like work,” Menedemos said. “I’ve got real work to do, and I haven’t got the time to worry about becomingness or essences or any of that other philosophical nonsense that makes my head ache.”
“Do you have time to think about whether you’re doing the right thing, and why?” Sostratos asked. “Is anything more important than that?”
“Getting the Aphrodite to Phoenicia and not sinking on the way,” his cousin suggested.
“You’re being troublesome on purpose,” Sostratos said. Menedemos grinned at him. Sostratos went on, “Yes, you want to survive. Any living thing wants to survive. But when you get to Phoenicia, will you do good or evil?”
“Good to my friends, evil to my enemies,” Menedemos replied at once.
Any Hellene who answered without thinking was likely to say something much like that. Sostratos tossed his head. “I’m sorry, my dear, but what was good enough for Homer ’s heroes isn’t any more.”
“And why not?” Menedemos demanded. “If anybody does me a bad turn, I’ll give him a knee in the balls first chance I get.”
“What happens then? He’ll give you one back, or his friends will.”
“And then I’ll get my own back, or I’ll have a friend help me against his friend,” Menedemos said.
“And your faction fight will go on for years, maybe for generations,” Sostratos said. “How many poleis have been ruined by feuds like that? How many wars between poleis have started through feuds like that? By the gods, if the poleis of Hellas hadn’t spent their time fighting amongst themselves, could the Macedonians have beaten them?”
He thought that was an invincible argument. But Menedemos said, “Ha! Now I’ve got you!”
“You do not!”
“I do so.” His cousin leered at him. “For one thing, the Macedonians fight amongst themselves, too, even worse than regular Hellenes, Go ahead-tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.” He waited. Sostratos stood silent. He couldn’t disagree. “Ha!” Menedemos said again. “And, for another, if Philip of Macedon hadn’t whipped the Hellenes into line, and if Alexander hadn’t come along right afterwards, who’d be running Phoenicia now? The Great King of Persia, that’s who. So I say hurrah for feuds, I do.”
Sostratos stared at him, then started to laugh, “huge!” he exclaimed. “That’s the best bit of bad argument I think I’ve ever heard. Some people learn to argue from Platon and what he says of Sokrates. You took your model from Aristophanes ’ Clouds.”
“Bad Logic there, you mean?” Menedemos asked, and Sostratos dipped his head. Not a bit abashed, Menedemos made as if to bow. “Bad Logic won, remember. Good Logic gave up and went over to the other side. And it looks like I’ve out-argued you.”
He waited to see whether Sostratos would challenge that. Sostratos didn’t, but gave back the same sort of bow he’d got. “Every once in a while, I surprise you when we wrestle in the gymnasion.” He towered over his cousin, but Menedemos was quicker and stronger and more agile. “Every once in a while, I suppose you can surprise me when we aim winged words at each other.”
“Winged words?” Menedemos echoed. “You knew the Aristophanes, and now you’re quoting Homer. By the dog, which of us is which?”
“Oh, no, you don’t. You won’t get away with that, you rascal. If you say you’re me and I’m you, you get out of the oath you gave me in Salamis.”
They both laughed. Menedemos said, “Well, it wouldn’t be hard for you to keep. You don’t go looking to sleep with other men’s wives anyhow.”
“I should hope not,” Sostratos answered. “But you can’t be me, because you didn’t spend all that time over the winter learning Aramaic.”
“I’m glad I didn’t, too. You sound like you’re choking to death every time you speak it.” Menedemos put on a horrible Phoenician accent: “Dis iz vat joo zound lige.”
“I hope not,” Sostratos said.
“Go ahead and hope. You still do.”
They kept on chaffing each other as Menedemos sailed the Aphrodite southeast. Going due east from Salamis would have shortened their journey across the Inner Sea, but then they would have had to crawl south along the Phoenician coast to get to Sidon, the city from which Sostratos wanted to set out and explore the interior. At this season of the year, with the sun hot and bright and the sea calm, the risk seemed worth taking.
Sostratos looked back toward Salamis. Already, the coast of Cyprus was no more than a low line on the horizon. The akatos would be out of sight of land for three days, maybe four, on the way to Phoenicia. Except for the journey south from Hellas and the islands of the Aegean to Alexandria, it was the longest journey over the open sea a ship was likely to have to make.
“I wouldn’t want to do this in a round ship,” Sostratos said. “Suppose you got halfway across and the wind died? Sitting out there, bobbing in the middle of nothing, hoping you wouldn’t run out of water and wine…” He tossed his head. “No, thanks.”
“That wouldn’t be much fun,” Menedemos agreed. “I don’t like the idea of riding out a storm out of sight of land, either. When that happened on the way west from Hellas to Italy a couple of years ago, we were lucky to make as good a landfall as we did.”
“There ought to be a better way to navigate out on the open sea,” Sostratos said. “Sun and stars, wind and waves, just aren’t enough. Ships that set out for Alexandria can end up almost anywhere along the Egyptian coast, in the Delta or in the desert to the west, and then have to beat their way back.”
“I won’t say you’re wrong, because you’re right,” Menedemos replied. “But how would you do such a thing? What else is there but sun and stars, wind and waves?”
“I don’t know,” Sostratos said fretfully. He’d feared Menedemos would ask him that, for he had no answer to give. “Maybe there’s something, though. After all, T don’t suppose the very first sailors knew enough to cast a line down to the seabed so the lead’s hollow bottom, full of tallow, would bring up sand or marl that helped tell them where they were.”