“And you’re thinking, Besides, Menelaos has all the money in the world, aren’t you?” Menelaos rolled his eyes. “That’s because you don’t know what a skinflint my brother is.”
“As a matter of fact, we do,” Sostratos said. “We dealt with him last year on Kos.”
“If you were to give him some of this silk, he might not worry so much about what you spend on it,” Menedemos said, his voice sly.
“How much have you got?” Menelaos asked.
“A dozen bolts, all of size and quality like this, dyed several different colors,” Menedemos replied.
Menelaos rubbed his chin. “You’re a sneaky one, aren’t you, Rhodian? Yes, that might do the trick.” He raised his voice: “Simias!”
The steward appeared on the instant. “Yes, your Excellency?”
“What would a bolt of good Koan silk cost?”
“About a mina, sir.”
Menelaos looked to Sostratos and Menedemos. “Is he right?”
They glanced at each other. Sostratos answered, “I’d say it might cost a little more, but he’s not far wrong, though.”
“So you paid five minai, more or less, for each bolt of this eastern silk?”
The Rhodians looked at each other again. “Probably be closer to six, best one,” Menedemos said.
“And how much more than that would it take to make it worth your while to sell the silk to me?” Menelaos asked.
“Twice as much,” Sostratos said.
“What? You’d want a dozen minai, by your reckoning, per bolt? By Zeus, Rhodian, that’s too much! I’ll give you half again as much, not a drakhma more.”
Counting on his fingers, Sostratos worked out how much that would be. “Nine minai the bolt. We have twelve bolts in all, so you’d pay”-he muttered to himself as he did the arithmetic-”one hundred eight minai all told?” Almost two talents of silver-10,800 drakhmai. That was, by anybody’s standards, a lot of money.
Menelaos turned to his steward. “Is that what it would come to, Simias? My head turns to mush when I try to figure things without a counting board.”
“Yes, sir. He calculated it correctly,” Simias answered. “Whether you want to pay the price is a different question, of course.”
“Isn’t it just?” Menelaos agreed. “Still, if I share the silk with Ptolemaios, he can’t very well complain about it.” He dipped his head in sudden decision. “All right, Rhodians-a bargain. Your fancy eastern silk, all twelve bolts, for one hundred eight minai of silver-or would you rather have it in gold? Gold would be a lot easier for you to carry.”
Egypt was a land rich in gold, where most Hellenes used silver as their main monetary metal. “What rate of exchange would you give?” Sostratos asked. “That makes a difference, you know.”
“Ten to one, no more,” Menelaos said. “This isn’t Philip of Macedon’s day, when a gold drakhma would buy you twelve silver ones.”
He wasn’t wrong; ten to one was the most common exchange rate nowadays. A century before, the ratio had been thirteen or even fourteen to one. “If you’ll wait till we can bring a couple of men here, I think I’d sooner have it in silver,” Sostratos answered. “As you say, gold’s fallen over this past generation, and it may fall further.”
“However you please,” Ptolemaios’ brother said with a shrug. “I’ve got the silver.” Sostratos was sure he had it. How big was his army on Cyprus? He probably spent more than a couple of talents every day on his soldiers’ pay.
Menedemos said, “I’ll go over to the Aphrodite to get the sailors. Can you give us some guards when we’re taking the money back to the ship, most noble one?”
“Certainly,” Menelaos answered. “Worried about getting knocked over the head between here and the harbor, are you? Don’t blame you a bit. Salamis can be a tough town.”
“Thank you, sir,” Menedemos said. “If you’d told me no, I’d’ve come back with a lot more than just two men, I’ll tell you that.” He waved and hurried away.
That left Sostratos alone with Menelaos and Simias. He usually hated such situations, as he was a man of little small talk. Now, though, he asked, “Sir, did you hunt tigers in distant India, as Ptolemaios did?”
“Did I? I should say I did!” Menelaos exclaimed, and he was off on a hunting story that not only fascinated Sostratos and told him two or three things about tigers that he hadn’t known but also relieved him of the obligation to say much more till his cousin got back with the sailors. Not bad, he thought, for a double handful of words.
11
Menedemos pulled in on one 5teering-oar tiller and pushed the other one out. The Aphrodite rounded Cape Pedalion, the highland that marked the southeastern corner of Cyprus. Diokles said, “That headland is supposed to be sacred to Aphrodite, so there’s a good omen for our ship, if you like.”
“I like good omens just fine, thanks very much,” Menedemos answered. “I’ll take ‘em wherever I can find ‘em, too.”
“Why is this part of Cyprus sacred to the love goddess?” Sostratos asked. “Didn’t she rise from the sea at Paphos? Paphos isn’t near here, is it?”
“No, young sir, Paphos is way off to the west,” the oarmaster said. “I don’t know why Cape Pedalion’s sacred to her. I just know that it is.”
Sostratos still looked discontented. Menedemos shot him a glance that said, Shut up. For a wonder, his cousin got the message. Menedemos wanted the sailors to think the omens were good. The happier they were, the better they’d work. If Diokles hadn’t given him a real one, he might have invented a good omen to keep them cheerful.
The beaches west of Cape Pedalion were of fine white sand, the soil inland from them a red that promised great fertility, though fields lay fallow under the hot sun, waiting for fall and the rains that would bring them back to life. But the promontory did strange things to the wind, which went fitful and shifting, now with the merchant galley, now dead against her.
“By the gods, I’m glad I’m in an akatos,” Menedemos said. “I wouldn’t care to sail this coast in a round ship. You could spend days going nowhere at all. And if the wind did blow in one direction, like as not it’d drive you aground instead of taking you where you wanted to go.”
“You don’t want that,” Sostratos said. “You don’t want that anywhere. You especially don’t want it on a shore where nobody knows you.”
Diokles dipped his head. “No, indeed. And you really especially don’t want it on this shore, where most of the people are Phoenicians, not Hellenes at all. Kition, the next city up ahead, is a Phoenician town.”
“From what we saw in Sidon, Phoenicians aren’t any worse than Hellenes,” Sostratos said.
“I’m not saying they’re worse. I’m saying they’re foreign,” the keleustes replied. “If I were a Phoenician skipper, I’d sooner go aground here than up by Salamis, where the people are mostly Hellenes.”
“I’d sooner not go aground anywhere,” Menedemos said. “I’d sooner not, and I don’t intend to.”
He did put in at Kition the next day to buy fresh bread. It looked like a Phoenician town, with tall buildings crowding close together and with men in caps and long robes. The gutturals of Aramaic dominated over Greek’s smooth rising and falling cadences.
“I can understand what they’re saying,” Sostratos exclaimed. “When we first set out, I wouldn’t have followed even half of it, but I can understand almost all of it now.”
“You’ve been speaking the language yourself,” Menedemos said. “That’s why. I can even understand a little myself. But I expect I’ll forget it as soon as we get back to Rhodes. I won’t need to know it anymore.”
“I don’t want to forget!” Sostratos said. “I never want to forget anything.”
“I can think of a few things I’d just as soon forget,” Menedemos said, “starting with Emashtart.” He laughed and tossed his head. “I didn’t have any trouble keeping my oath on account of her. How about you, O best one? Outrage any husbands in Ioudaia? You never swore you wouldn’t.”