“That’s one of your philosophers,” Menedemos said accusingly. “I know you, too-you always try to sneak them in. You think you have to improve me, whether I feel like being improved or not.”
Since that held no small amount of truth, Sostratos didn’t waste time denying it. He said, “It’s from one of the Seven Sages, sure enough. But it’s also the inscription at Delphi. If it’s good enough for the oracle there, shouldn’t it be good enough for you, too?”
“Hmm. Maybe,” Menedemos said. “I thought it would be Platon or Sokrates-they’re the ones you usually trot out.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Sostratos knew his cousin wanted to get his goat, and also knew Menedemos was succeeding. He couldn’t keep the irritation from his voice as he continued, “Or do you think Sokrates was wrong when he said the unexamined life wasn’t worth living?”
“Here we go again. I don’t know about that,” Menedemos said. Sostratos showed his teeth in a triumphant grin; even his cousin wouldn’t have the nerve to quarrel there. But Menedemos did: “I do know that if you spend too much time examining your life, you won’t have time to live it.”
Sostratos opened his mouth, then closed it again. He hoped he would never hear a better argument against philosophy. He made the best comeback he could, answering, “One of the Seven Sages also said, ‘Nothing too much.’“
“I think we’ve had too much of this argument for now,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head, glad to escape so easily. But then Menedemos added, “I also think we’ve got too much of your brother-in-law’s olive oil.”
“So do I,” Sostratos said, “but sometimes you have to make allowances for family.” He looked Menedemos in the eye. “Think of all the allowances I’ve made for you.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Menedemos said. “Here I thought I was the one making allowances for you. Didn’t I let you wander over the Italian countryside when we were docked at Pompaia a couple of years ago, even though I was afraid somebody would knock you over the head? Didn’t I let you lug that gryphon’s skull all around the Aegean last summer, even though I was sure we wouldn’t make back what we paid for it?”
“I don’t know why you were so sure of that, when Damonax offered me enough silver to let me turn a big profit,” Sostratos said tartly.
“You turned him down, which proves you’re a fool,” Menedemos said. “And he offered it, which proves he’s a fool. If he’s not a fool, why have we got so cursed much olive oil aboard the Aphrodite? See what I mean about making allowances for family?”
“What I see is-” Sostratos stopped and spluttered laughter. He wagged a finger at Menedemos. “Here, you’re not going to like this, but I’ll tell you what I see. I see a man who knows how to use logic but says he’s got no use for philosophy. I see a man who’d like to love wisdom but-”
“Would sooner love pretty girls and good wine instead,” Menedemos broke in.
Sostratos tossed his head. “Oh, no, my dear. You’re not going to get away with a joke this time. You’re going to let me finish. What I see is a man who’d like to love wisdom but can’t bring himself to take anything seriously. And that, if you ask me, is a shame and a waste of a good mind.”
Out in the harbor, a tern dove into the water. A moment later, it came out with a writhing fish in its beak. It swallowed the fish as it flew away. Menedemos pointed to it. “That bird has no philosophy, but it still gets its opson.”
“It does not,” Sostratos said.
“What? Are you blind? Did it catch a fish or didn’t it?”
“Certainly it did. But what does a tern live on? Fish, of course-fish is its sitos, its staple. If you gave it a barley roll, that would be its opson, its relish, because it has to have fish but it could do without the roll.”
Menedemos scratched his head in thought. Then he scratched again, this time in earnest. “I hope that miserable inn hasn’t left me lousy. All right, you’re right-fish, for a tern, is sitos, not opson. I suppose you’ll tell me that’s philosophy, too.”
“I won’t tell you anything of the sort. I’ll just ask a question.” If there was anything Sostratos enjoyed, it was the chance to play Sokrates. “If caring enough to use the right word isn’t part of loving wisdom, what is it?”
“I don’t suppose you’d put up with anything so ordinary as just trying to say the right thing, would you?”
“Is that all Homer was doing-just trying to say the right thing, I mean?”
“ Homer always said the right thing.” Menedemos sounded very sure. “And he never heard of philosophy.”
Sostratos wanted to argue that, but soon decided he couldn’t. “He doesn’t use the word for wisdom at all, does he?”
“ Sophie? Let me think.” After a moment, Menedemos said, “No, that’s not true. He uses it once, in the fifteenth-I think-book of the Iliad: ‘And he who, thanks to the inspiration of Athene, knows well every skill.’ But he’s not talking about a philosopher-he’s talking about a carpenter. And sophie in the Iliad doesn’t mean abstract knowledge, the way it does with us. It means knowing how to do the things a carpenter does.”
“You can still use it that way,” Sostratos said, “but not, I admit, if you’re going to talk about philosophy.”
“No,” Menedemos said. “ Homer ’s a very down-to-earth poet. Even his gods on Olympos are down-to-earth, if you know what I mean.”
“They certainly are-they behave like a bunch of bad-tempered Macedonians,” Sostratos said, which made Menedemos laugh. More seriously, Sostratos went on, “They’re so down-to-earth, in fact, that some people who love wisdom have trouble believing in them.”
His cousin’s expression curdled like sour milk. Sostratos hadn’t included himself in that group, but he hadn’t excluded himself from it. He suspected he knew why Homer said nothing about philosophy. The poet had lived a long time ago, before any Hellenes began seriously asking questions of the world around them and following logic wherever it took them. We were as ignorant as any barbarians, he thought, bemused. And some of us still are, and don’t want to be any different.
Menedemos said, “Some people say they love wisdom when all they really love is making their neighbors uncomfortable.” He gave Sostratos a pointed stare.
Sostratos returned it. “Some people think that just because their great-grandfathers believed something was so, it has to be so. If we all had that attitude, we wouldn’t use iron-or even bronze, come to that-and we would have thrown back the alpha-beta like a worthless fish that nobody eats.”
They glared at each other. Then Menedemos asked, “What do you suppose would happen if you made that argument to the Phoenicians or the Ioudaioi?”
“Nothing pretty. Nothing pleasant. But they’re barbarians, and they don’t know any better. We’re Hellenes. What’s the point of being a Hellene, if not to use the wits the gods-whatever they may be-gave us?”
“You think you have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“No. Not at all.” Sostratos tossed his head. “I think we should use our wits, though, to try to find answers, and not rely on whatever our forefathers said. They might have been wrong. A lot of the time, they were wrong. If I’d managed to get that gryphon’s skull to Athens, for instance, it would have shown people how wrong they were about the beasts.”
“Yes, but how important are gryphons?” Menedemos asked.
“Gryphons aren’t important, not by themselves,” Sostratos said. “But the men of the Lykeion and the Academy would have looked at the evidence and changed their views to fit. They wouldn’t have said, ‘No, we won’t believe what the skull tells us, because our great-grandfathers told us something else.’ And that’s important, don’t you see?” He sounded as if he was pleading, and he sadly wondered whether Menedemos understood at all.