“Not likely!”
“I didn’t think it was,” Sostratos replied. “I wouldn’t even have mentioned it if he weren’t going around Rhodes with his face like a thundercloud. Father and I have both noticed it. If Sikon’s having trouble with your father-”
“No, no, no.” Menedemos tossed his head. “It’s not Father. Father wants to keep him and wants to keep him happy, too. Like I told you before, Baukis is the one who thinks Sikon spends too much silver on our opson, and so they fight.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Sostratos said. “I can see how it would be a problem, but I still think your father ought to come between his wife and his cook so they don’t fight any more. Why doesn’t he?”
“Why?” Menedemos laughed. “I told you that before, too, my dear. For the same reason nobody comes between Antigonos and Ptolemaios, that’s why. They’d squash him between them, and then they’d go right on fighting. He’s smart enough to know it, too. He sometimes thinks he can just lay down the law”-by the way Menedemos’ mouth twisted, Uncle Philodemos often thought that around him-”but he hasn’t tried it there.”
“He could use you as his go-between,” Sostratos remarked.
He wasn’t ready for what happened next. His cousin’s face slammed shut, as if it were a door slammed in the face of an unwelcome guest. “No,” Menedemos said in a voice like a Thracian winter. “He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that at all.”
“Why not?” Sostratos asked. “It would seem to make good logical sense, and-”
Still in that gelid voice, Menedemos broke in: “A lot of things that seem to make good logical sense are amazingly stupid when you try them out in the real world. You never have figured that out, have you? But believe me, this is one of them.”
“Well, excuse me for existing,” Sostratos said, not only affronted but also confused, for he didn’t know how he’d managed to irk his cousin this time.
“I’ll think about it, my dear,” Menedemos replied. Had he stayed coldly angry, they would have had a real row. This time, though, something of the old sardonic glint returned to his voice and to his eye. Sostratos didn’t ask him for any more family details, but he didn’t feel like hauling off and kicking him anymore, either.
They walked past a temple. With its colonnaded front, at first glance it put Sostratos in mind of a shrine in a Hellenic polis of no particular account. But the terra-cotta figurines decorating the pediment were done in a style different from any he would have seen where Hellenes lived. And the reliefs on the frieze were not only stiff and square and blocky-plainly the product of a sculptural tradition different from his own-but also acting out a mythological scene about which he knew nothing.
Menedemos noticed something else about the temple. Pointing, he asked, “What does all the funny writing say?”
Sostratos tried to decipher it, but then tossed his head. “Give me time and I can probably puzzle it out,” he said. “But I can’t just sound it out and read it, the way I could if it were Greek. Sorry.” When someone asked him something, he hated not being able to give a precise, detailed answer. That, after all, was one of the things he was best at.
But Menedemos said, “Well, don’t worry about it, my dear. I wondered, that’s all.” As he had in Patara, he added, “If it’s not in Greek, it can’t be very important, can it?”
What would Himilkon have said had he heard that? Something memorable, Sostratos suspected. The Phoenician trader mocked Hellenes for their ignorance of languages other than their own. Back on Rhodes, Sostratos hadn’t taken him seriously. Why should he have, in a polis where Greek, naturally, ruled? But here in Sidon, the purring, coughing, choking rhythms of Aramaic surrounded him. Who spoke Greek here? Antigonos’ soldiers and clerks, along with a handful of Phoenicians who dealt with Hellenes. Drifting on this sea of strange words was intimidating, almost frightening.
It will be even worse in the country of the loudaioi, Sostratos thought glumly. Nobody there deals with Hellenes, and, from everything I’ve heard, Antigonos doesn’t bother sending many soldiers into the interior. Do I really want to try this without an interpreter?
I do, he answered himself, more than a little surprised. Why did I spend all that time and money with Himilkon, if not to do it myself? He smiled.
The truth was, he remained young enough to crave adventure. He’d been too young to go off to the ends of the earth with Alexander the Great. The men of the older generation, the ones who had gone conquering, had to look down their noses at him and his contemporaries, had to reckon them stay-at-homes who’d never measured themselves against the worst the world could do.
I can’t conquer Persia or go fight along the Indus River, Sostratos thought. That’s been done. But I can do a little exploring of my own. I can, and I will.
“When you go to Ioudaia, will you ride a horse or a donkey?” Menedemos asked as a donkey with several amphorai lashed to its back squeezed past the Rhodians.
“A donkey, I think,” Sostratos said. “I’m no cavalryman, and never will be. Besides, bandits are less likely to want to steal a donkey than a horse.”
“Bandits steal, and that’s all you need to say about that,” Menedemos answered. “You’d have a better chance to get away on horseback.”
“Not unless all the sailors who come with me are on horseback, too,” Sostratos said. “Or do you think I’d save my gore and let them perish?”
Menedemos shrugged. “Such things have been known to happen-but let it go, if the idea bothers you. Next question-will you hire your beast, or buy it outright?”
“Both, probably,” Sostratos said. “I’ll want one to carry things and one to ride. I’m thinking now of buying them, and then selling them again before we sail. With luck, that’ll be cheaper than hiring them. If the dealers try to gouge me, that’s when I’ll think about doing it the other way.”
“Of course they’ll try to gouge you,” Menedemos said. “That’s why they’re in business.”
“Oh, I know. But there’s a difference between gouging and gouging, if you know what I mean,” Sostratos said. “Making a profit is one thing; cheating a foreigner is something else again, and I don’t intend to put up with it.”
His cousin dipped his head. “You make good sense. The only thing you have to be sure to do is get back several days before we sail, so you don’t have to sell in a hurry and take the first offer you get, whatever it happens to be.”
“If I can, certainly,” Sostratos said. “I don’t want to lose money on the deal-or as little as I can, anyhow-but I can’t promise what I’ll be doing in the country of the Ioudaioi, either.”
“Whatever you’re doing there, don’t get so interested that you forget the season till it’s wintertime,” Menedemos said. “If you think we’ll wait around for you and then risk sailing in bad weather, you’re daft.”
“You’re the daft one, if you think I’d do anything like that,” Sostratos retorted. Menedemos only laughed, and Sostratos realized his cousin had been teasing him.
Before he could say anything or even begin to plot a revenge, a skinny Phoenician of about his own age spoke to him and Menedemos in bad Greek: “You two, you Hellenes, yes?”
“No, of course not,” Menedemos said, straight-faced. “We’re Sakai from the plains beyond Persia.”
The Phoenician looked confused. Sostratos gave Menedemos a dirty look. “Pay no attention to my cousin,” he told the fellow. “Yes, we’re Hellenes. What can we do for you?”
“You trader men?” the Phoenician asked. “You want to trade?”
“Yes, we’re traders,” Sostratos said cautiously. “I don’t know if we want to trade with you or not. What have you got, and what do you want?”