Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"And," Menedemos said, "this is a much more comfortable arrangement for us."

"That's not why I did it," Sostratos said.

"I know." Menedemos grinned at him. "That doesn't make it any less true."

Sostratos started to get huffy. Before he launched into a lecture, though, he checked himself - that was just what his cousin wanted him to do. "All right," he said mildly, and Menedemos looked disappointed.

"Maybe we should have got a stall, too," Menedemos said.

"If our goods don't move so well as we'd like, I'll get one," Sostratos said. "But for now, I think going through the agora and letting people know where we are and what we've got for sale will work well enough. We've already moved a lot of the Ariousian - and all that papyrus, too."

Menedemos laughed out loud. "Didn't that Smikrines say he was going to write a history? You should have made him promise to have a copy made for you when he finished."

"If I'd thought he'd do it, I would have," Sostratos answered.

"If you thought he'd do which?" Menedemos asked. "Finish the work, or have a copy made once he did?"

"Either one," Sostratos said. "Writers are an unreliable lot." He knew that was true. How much writing had he done himself, after all? What he wanted to do was leave behind a work to rival those of Herodotos and Thoukydides, but what was he doing? Selling wine and silk and peafowl and papyrus and perfume.

You're traveling, he told himself. Herodotos traveled all over the world so he could learn things at first hand, and Thoukydides went all over Hellas and got to know men on both sides of the Peloponnesian War. If you don't see things and come to know about people, your history can't possibly be any good.

That was some consolation, but only some. To keep Menedemos from knowing what was in his mind - and perhaps to keep himself from dwelling on it, too - Sostratos said, "I'm going over to the market square myself."

"You just want to make me keep an eye on the peafowl for a while," Menedemos said, which also held some truth. But Sostratos' cousin slapped him on the back. "Go on, then. I don't blame you. You had charge of them all the way from Rhodes to here."

Taras' agora lay a few blocks south of the rented house, close by the Ionian Sea - the Tarentines called it the Big Sea, in contrast to the Little Sea that was their sheltered harbor lagoon. Fishermen sold their wares there. So did potters and weavers and cobblers and netmakers and all the other sorts of craftsmen who worked in the city. And so did merchants from other Hellenic poleis and Italians from the interior with wool and tanned hides and honey and other products of the countryside.

Some of the customers were Italians, too. A good many of them wore tunics and mantles like Hellenes, and couldn't be told from Tarentines till they opened their mouths and spoke Greek with an accent. Others, though . . . In the midst of calling out the wares the Aphrodite had brought from Rhodes, Sostratos broke off and asked one of them, "Excuse me, sir, but what do you call that garment you're wearing over your chiton?"

"It is called a toga," the Italian answered in good Greek. "I am a freeborn citizen, so I have the right to wear it."

"I see. Thank you," Sostratos said. "Do you mind my asking how you wear it?"

"You Hellenes are always curious, and about the strangest things, too." The Italian's eyes twinkled. "Well, why not? You ask politely enough, I must say." He pulled off the toga and displayed it for Sostratos in his outstretched arms.

"What an unusual shape for a piece of cloth," Sostratos exclaimed. "We Hellenes just use rectangles, which are simple. This is . . . a broad octagon, except that two of the sides are curved instead of straight. Now I have another question: why do you wear such an oddly shaped mantle?"

"It's our custom," the stranger replied with a shrug. "Many people here in Italy wear the toga. We Samnites do, and so do the Lucanians, and even our enemies the Romans farther north. As for how we wear it . . ."

He folded the toga in half at its broadest point, then draped it over his left shoulder so that one corner was level with his left foot. He wrapped the rest of the garment over his back under his right arm, and back over his left shoulder again, then slowly turned so Sostratos could see how the enormous mantle covered him.

"Thank you very much," Sostratos told him. "I hope you will not mind if I say a himation seems much less . . . cumbersome."

"No, I don't mind," the Samnite answered. "I often wear a himation myself. But I am Herennius Egnatius, a man of some importance among my people, and so I sometimes wear the toga to show who and what I am."

To Sostratos' way of thinking, a barbarian coming into a Hellenic city should have wanted to make himself look as much like a Hellene as he could. He gave his own name, and clasped the Italian's hand. Then he stroked his beard in thought. If this Samnite with the cumbersome name was important, he might well be rich. And if he was rich . . . "Sir, as I've been saying all through the agora, among the things my cousin and I have brought from the east are fine Khian wine - Ariousian, in fact; the best of the best - and several peafowl. I am sure no Samnite today is lucky enough to own a peacock. In fact, the birds we brought are the first of their kind in Great Hellas." He wasn't absolutely sure that was true, but he thought so - and no one in Taras seemed to have seen one before.

"I know something of good wine," Herennius Egnatius said. "But what sort of a bird is a peacock?" He pronounced the unfamiliar name with care. "If I have one of these birds, will it show I am a man not of the common sort?"

"That it will, O best one - it will indeed." Sostratos coughed delicately. "Because these birds are rare, you will understand that we do not sell them for a few oboloi."

"Of course," the Samnite said. "One of the marks of a man's distinction is what he can afford. Is your ship in the harbor on the Little Sea?"

"Yes, but Menedemos - my cousin - and I have taken a house here in Taras, the better to show off the peafowl to men who might want to buy them," Sostratos said.

Herennius Egnatius drew himself up very straight. He was at least a palm shorter than Sostratos, but, like Menedemos, acted as if he were taller. "Take me there," he said. "My toga made you curious. Your . . . peafowl do the same for me."

Sostratos thought about going through the agora for a while longer, but then wondered why. He'd been trying to drum up customers, and here he . . . might have one. Worth finding out, he decided and dipped his head to the Samnite. "Come with me."

Aristeidas looked surprised when he knocked on the door to the rented house. "I didn't expect you back so soon, sir," he said.

"This foreign gentleman" - Sostratos nodded to Herennius Egnatius - "is interested in peafowl."

Just then, the peacock started screaming. Herennius Egnatius' eyes widened. "What is that appalling racket?" he asked.

"Those are the noises peafowl make." Sostratos wished he hadn't had to admit it quite so soon. He also wished Menedemos hadn't chosen that precise moment to shout, "Oh, shut up, you miserable, polluted thing!"

Herennius Egnatius smiled a thin smile. As the funny man at the harbor had, he said, "I take it you do not sell them for the beauty of their song?"

"Well . . . no." Again, Sostratos admitted what he could hardly deny. He tried to rally: "Come with me to the courtyard, and you'll see why we do sell them."

He led the Italian through the entry hall and into the rather cramped courtyard at the center of the house. There stood Menedemos, hands on hips, glowering at the peacock. Maybe he'd dozed off and it had wakened him. And there stood the peacock himself, his ocellated tail fully spread as he displayed himself to a peahen that took no notice whatever of him. Maybe that's why he's screaming, Sostratos thought - in some ways, the peacock wasn't so different from a man.