Harry Turtledove: The Gryphon's Skull

Sostratos exhaled angrily through that nose. “For one thing, a lot of Homer's answers aren't so good as people think they are. And, for another, who says Herodotos and Platon and Thoukydides won't last? Thoukydides wrote his history to be a possession for all time, and I think he did what he set out to do.”

“Did he?” Menedemos jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “I don't know what all he wrote, and I'm not exactly ignorant. But you can take any Hellene from Massalia, on the coast of the Inner Sea way north and west of Great Hellas, and drop him into one of the poleis Alexander founded in India or one of those other countries out beyond Persia, and if he recites the lines I just did, somebody else will know the ones that come next. Go on—tell me I'm wrong.”

He waited. Sostratos sometimes irked him, but was always painfully honest. And now, with a sigh, Menedemos' cousin said, “Well, I can't do that, and you know it perfectly well. Homer is everywhere, and everybody knows he's everywhere. When you first learn to read, if you do, what do you learn? The Iliad, of course. And even men who don't have their letters know the stories the poet tells.”

“Thank you.” Menedemos made as if to bow without letting go of the steering oar. “You've just proved my case for me.”

“No, by the dog of Egypt.” Sostratos tossed his head. “What people think to be true and what is true aren't always the same. If we thought this ship were sailing south, would we end up at Alexandria? Or would we still go on to Kaunos, regardless of what our opinion was?”

It was Menedemos' turn to wince. After a moment, he pointed to starboard. “There's a fisherman with a false opinion of us. We're a galley, so he thinks we're pirates, and he's sailing away as fast as he can.”

Sostratos wagged a finger in his face. “Oh, no, you don't, best one. You can't slide out of the argument that way.” He was, annoyingly, as tenacious as he was honest. “People may believe things because they're true; things aren't true because people believe them.”

Menedemos pondered that. A dolphin leaped into the air near the Aphrodite, then splashed back into the sea. It was beautiful, but he couldn't point to it and talk about truth. At last, he said, “No wonder they made Sokrates drink hemlock,”

That, at least, started a different argument.

With the wind dead against her, the Aphrodite's crew had to row all the way to Kaunos. The akatos got into the town on the coast of Karia late in the afternoon. Sostratos spoke without thinking as they glided past the moles that closed off the harbor and neared a quay: “We won't have time to do any business today.”

He was angry at himself as soon as the words passed the barrier of his teeth— another phrase from Homer, he thought, and wished he hadn't. He'd stayed away from Menedemos, as well as he could in the cramped confines of the merchant galley, ever since they wrangled about Sokrates. They'd had that quarrel before; Sostratos suspected— no, he was certain—his cousin had trotted it out only to inflame him. The trouble was, it had worked.

Menedemos answered as if he hadn't noticed Sostratos avoiding him: “You're right, worse luck. But I hope the proxenos will have room for us at his house tonight.”

“So do I.” Sostratos accepted the tacit truce.

His cousin pulled in on one steering oar and out on the other, guiding the Aphrodite towards a berth, Diokles' mallet and bronze square got a couple of quick strokes from the rowers. Then the ke-leustes called, “Back oars!” Three or four such strokes killed the ship's momentum and left her motionless beside the quay.

“Very nice, as usual,” Sostratos said.

“Thank you, young sir,” Diokles replied. As toikharkhos, Sostratos outranked him, and was of course the son of one of the Aphrodite's owners. But Sostratos would never be a seaman to match the oar-master, and they both knew it. Differences in status and skill made for politeness on both sides.

A couple of round ships—ordinary merchantmen—and a shark-shaped hull that looked as if it would make a hemiolia were abuilding in the dockyard not far away. One of the round ships was nearly done; carpenters were affixing stiffening ribs to the already completed outer shell of planking. Other men drove bronze spikes through the planking from the outside to secure it to the ribs. The bang of their hammers filled the whole town.

Up on the hills above seaside Kaunos, the gray stone fortress of Imbros squatted and brooded. The soldiers in the fortress served one-eyed Antigonos, who had overrun all of Karia three years before. Kaunos still proclaimed itself to be free and autonomous. In these days of clashing marshals, though, many towns' claims to freedom and autonomy had a distinctly hollow ring.

While Sostratos eyed the dockyards and the bills and mused on world affairs, Menedemos briskly went ahead with what needed doing. Like a lot of Hellenes, he carried small change in his mouth, between his cheek and his teeth. He spat an obolos into the palm of his hand. “You know who the Rhodian proxenos is, don't you?” he asked a man standing on the pier who wasn't busy securing the Aphrodite.

“Certainly: Kissidas son of Alexias, the olive merchant,” the Kaunian replied.

“That's right.” Menedemos tossed the little silver coin to the local. He gave the fellow the name of the ship, his own name, and Sostratos'. “Ask him if he's able to put my cousin and me up for the night. I'll give you another obolos when you come back with his answer,”

“You've got a bargain, pal.” The man stuck the obolos into his own mouth and trotted away.

He came back a quarter of an hour later with a big-bellied bald man whose bare scalp was as shiny as if he'd rubbed it with olive oil. Menedemos gave the messenger the second obolos, which disappeared as the first one had. The bald man said, “Hail. I'm Kissidas. Which of you is which?”

“I'm Sostratos,” Sostratos answered. Menedemos also named himself.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Kissidas said, though he didn't sound particularly pleased. That worried Sostratos: what was a proxenos for, if not to help citizens of the polis he represented in his own home town? The olive dealer went on, “You'll want lodging, you say?” No, he didn't sound pleased at all.

“If you'd be so kind,” Sostratos replied, wondering if Kissidas bore a grudge against his father or Menedemos’. Neither of the younger men had set eyes on the proxenos before. Menedemos has never tried seducing his wife, Sostratos thought tartly.

“I suppose I can get away with it,” Kissidas said. “But Hipparkhos— he's Antigonos' garrison commander—doesn't much like Rhodians. He's made it hard to keep up the proxeny, he really has.”

“We're glad you have kept it up, best one.” Sostratos meant every word of that. Neither a buggy, noisy, crowded inn nor sleeping on the hard planks of the poop deck much appealed to him. “And what has old One-Eye's officer got against Rhodians?”

“What would you expect?” Kissidas answered. “He thinks your polls leans toward Ptolemaios.”

That held a good deal of truth. Considering how much Egyptian grain went through Rhodes for transshipment all over the Aegean, Sostratos' city had to stay friendly with Ptolemaios. Nonetheless, Sostratos spoke the technical truth when he said, “That's foolish. We're neutral. We have to stay neutral, or somebody would gobble us up for leaning to the other side.”

“My cousin's right,” Menedemos said. He and Sostratos might squabble with each other, but they presented a united front to the world. Menedemos went on, “We even built some ships for Antigonos two or three years ago. How does that make us lean toward Ptolemaios?”