Harry Turtledove: Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"What with the profit the Aphrodite made, we have plenty," Menedemos said.

"We do now," she said. "But how long will it last if we throw it to the winds?"

"You sound like Sostratos." Menedemos didn't mean it altogether as a compliment. With luck, Baukis wouldn't know that.

She just sniffed. "I don't think any man really knows, really cares, about money." Menedemos let out an indignant yelp, but Baukis went on, "Men don't have to manage a household, but wives do. Money and children. We'd better be good with those. We don't get much chance to deal with anything else."

"Well, of course," Menedemos said, and didn't stop to wonder if it felt like of course to Baukis. He'd heard similar things from the bored wives he'd seduced. That was probably why some of them had let him bed them, in fact - to get something out of the cramped and ordinary into their lives.

"I'd better go talk to him," Baukis said. "A mullet? That can't have been cheap. Excuse me, Menedemos." She slipped down the stairs past him and walked across the courtyard, raising a hand to her face to keep the rain out of her eyes.

Menedemos turned to watch her go. Her breasts weren't much more than a maiden might have had, but her hips and her walk were a woman's after all. What does she think about such things, being married to my sour graybeard of a father? Menedemos wondered. Is she bored already? I wouldn't be surprised.

He went up the stairs in a hurry, taking most of them two at a time. He trotted down the hall to his room, then went inside and closed the door behind him. For good measure, he barred it, too, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done that. But what he ran from was in the room with him.

So was a good deal of darkness. The slave girl had wanted the shutters kept closed, and he'd humored her. He opened them, which turned things gray. He stared blindly out at the rain. Now he had another reason to wish it would stop. He wanted to flee the house as he'd fled up the stairs to this refuge that wasn't. He wondered if going out would do any good. He doubted it. Wouldn't he take his troubles with him, as he'd brought them here?

And then he started to laugh. It wasn't really funny - not to him, though a comic poet might have disagreed - but he didn't know what else to do. My father would kill me if he knew what went through my mind. He laughed again, more bitterly than before. He'd had that thought many times, ever since he was a little boy, when things went wrong. His shiver had nothing to do with the chilly, nasty weather. This time, it might be literally true.

But oh, wouldn't that pay him back for everything?

"No," Menedemos said aloud. He kept talking, too, in a soft voice no one in the hall could have heard: "This once, my dear, you're going to have to be like your cousin and use your head. It's not always the best part of you, but it's the only one that will do right now."

Next spring, I'll sail away and not have to worry about it for half a year. Meanwhile, I've got plenty of silver. I can have as good a time as I please. Even my father won't complain too much more than he usually does. That should cure me. It has before, plenty of times.

He heard Baukis on the stairs. After she'd returned to the women's rooms, he went downstairs for some wine. Dionysos' gift brought ease from all cares.

Even so, Menedemos could hardly wait for spring.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Over the Wine-Dark Sea is set in 310 B.C. The Roman attack on Pompaia (the Greek spelling for Pompeii) is described in Book IX of Livy. The journey of the grain fleet from Rhegion to Syracuse, and Agathokles' use of the opportunity it gave him to escape from Syracuse and invade Africa, are told in Book XX of Diodorus Siculus. The solar eclipse described here took place on August 15, 310 B.C. Diodorus is also the main surviving source for the machinations of Alexander's marshals, which form much of the background for this novel.

Of the characters actually on stage, only Menedemos himself and Agathokles' brother, Antandros, are historical figures. Historical figures alluded to but not visible include Agathokles, Ptolemaios, Antigonos, his sons Demetrios and Philippos, his nephew Polemaios (also known as Ptolemaios, but given the former spelling here to distinguish him from Antigonos' rival), Kassandros, Lysimakhos, Polyperkhon, Seleukos, Alexander's son Alexandros, Alexandros' mother, Roxane, Alexander's son (or suppositious son) Herakles, and Herakles' mother, Barsine.

I have for the most part spelled names of places and people as a Greek would have: thus Rhegion, not Rhegium; Lysimakhos, not Lysimachus. Taras was known to the Romans as Tarentum, and is the modern Taranto. I have broken this rule for a few place names that have well-established English spellings: Rhodes, Athens, Syracuse, the Aegean Sea, and the like. I have also broken it for Alexander the Great, whose shadow dominates this period even though he had been dead for about thirteen years when the story opens.

All translations from the Greek are my own. I claim no particular literary merit for them, only that they convey what the original says.