Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

With a smile, Menedemos said, "You are closer than you think. Any Khian wine is among the best that comes from Hellas, and Ariousian is to common Khian as common Khian is to ordinary wine. It's so sweet and thick and golden, you almost hate to mix it with water."

"As far as I am concerned, you Hellenes are daft for mixing wine with water in the first place." The Pompaian folded his arms across his chest. "I shall not pay even a khalkos, though, before I taste this wine for myself. Peafowl are hard to come by. Wine, now - wine is easy."

At Menedemos' dip of the head, one of the sailors unsealed an amphora. At the same time, one of the Pompaian's men borrowed a cup from a local wineseller. Menedemos poured some of the precious Ariousian into it and handed it to the local. "Here you are. See for yourself."

The Pompaian stuck his forefinger into the cup and flicked out a drop or two onto the dusty ground of the market square to do duty for a libation. He muttered something in Oscan, presumably a prayer to whatever god the Samnites worshiped in place of Dionysos. Then he sniffed the wine, and then, slowly and deliberately, he drank.

He made a good game try at not showing how impressed he was, but his eyebrows rose in spite of himself. After smacking his lips, he said, "Sixty drakhmai is too much, but I can see how you had the nerve to ask for it. I might give you sixty for two amphorai."

Now Menedemos tossed his head. "Again, there'd be no profit in it for me at that price, not when you reckon in the effort it took me to bring the wine from Khios all the way to Pompaia." Sincerity filled his voice, as sweetness filled the Ariousian. He wasn't even lying.

Maybe the local sensed as much. Or maybe he just had more silver than things he could readily buy in Pompaia, for, as with the peafowl chicks, he didn't seem to haggle so hard as he might have. Before long, he said, "All right, then, I'll give you a mina for the two jars."

"Fifty drakhmai the amphora?" Menedemos said, and the Pompaian nodded. Menedemos dipped his head. "A bargain." They clasped hands to seal it. Menedemos asked Sostratos, "How much does our friend owe us altogether?"

"Four minai, twenty drakhmai," Sostratos said at once, as if he had a counting board in front of him. Menedemos could have figured it out, too, but not nearly so fast.

"Four minai, twenty drakhmai," the Pompaian repeated. "I shall bring it. You wait here." Off he swept, retainers in his wake. When he returned, he brought back silver coined in most of the poleis of Great Hellas, as well as coins from Italian towns. Menedemos and Sostratos had to pay a jeweler three oboloi for the use of his scale.

Sostratos, as usual, did the weighing and calculating. When he dipped his head, Menedemos gave the Pompaian the birds and the wine. The local went off, seeming well pleased with himself. In a low voice, Menedemos asked, "How much extra did we make?"

"By weight, you mean?" his cousin answered. "A few drakhmai."

"It all adds up," Menedemos said happily, and Sostratos dipped his head once more.

The next morning found Sostratos spending one of those extra drakhmai on the hire of a mule in the market square and Menedemos loudly dismayed about it. "Why do you want to go riding around?" he demanded. "Somebody will knock you over the head, that's what'll happen."

"I doubt it," Sostratos said.

"I don't," his cousin snapped. "I ought to send a bodyguard out with you, is what I ought to do. You're a hopeless dub with a sword or a spear."

"You know that, and I know that, but these Italians don't know it," Sostratos answered. "All they'll see is a big man, one they'd think twice about bothering. And I want to look around a little. Who can guess when the Aphrodite will come back to Pompaia again, if she ever does?"

"All right. All right!" Menedemos threw his hands in the air. "You're more stubborn than that mule. Go on, then. Just remember, I'll be the one who has to explain to your father why I didn't bring you back to Rhodes in one piece."

"You worry too much," Sostratos said, and then started to laugh. "And do you know what else? You sound the way I usually do when I'm trying to keep you out of some madcap scrape. See how it feels to be on the other side?"

His cousin still looked unhappy, but stopped arguing. Menedemos even gave him a leg up so he could mount the mule. Once Sostratos swung aboard the beast - which gave him a resentful stare - his feet almost brushed the ground: he was indeed a large man on a smallish beast. And he did have a sword belted on his hip; he wasn't such a fool as to wander weaponless.

"Sell some more chicks," he told Menedemos. "I'll be back this afternoon."

"Why anyone would want to go wandering around a countryside full of half-wild Italians is beyond me," Menedemos said. "It's not like you've got a pretty girl waiting for you, or anything else worth doing. By the gods, you're just going around for the sake of going around, and where's the sense in that?"

"Herodotos did it." To Sostratos, that was answer enough - more than answer enough, in fact. His cousin just rolled his eyes.

Sostratos booted the mule into motion. It brayed resentfully, but then started to walk. Its motion put Sostratos a little in mind of that of the Aphrodite, though here he was feeling it through his backside rather than the soles of his feet. He picked his way toward the north gate through Pompaia's reeking alleys: he wanted a closer look at Mount Ouesouion. The Aphrodite probably wouldn't go back to Sicily and the environs of Mount Aitne, so this was his best - probably his only - chance to see a volcano.

He had to ask his way to the gate only once, and got lucky when he did: the first man to whom he put the question not only understood Greek but gave directions that proved detailed and accurate. The Pompaian didn't even ask for an obolos before answering. Proves he's a barbarian - any Hellene would have, Sostratos thought.

Once out of town, Sostratos guided the mule in the direction of the mountain. Farms and vineyards filled the rolling countryside. Leptines hadn't exaggerated: the land looked finer and broader than any Sostratos had seen in cramped, rocky Hellas, though the coastal lowlands of Asia Minor might have matched it.

The grainfields weren't planted, not in the heat of summer. When the fall rains came, the farmers would put in their wheat and barley, as they did in Hellas, to be harvested in the spring. But the vines were growing nicely. Sostratos had liked some of the Italian wines he'd drunk. He hadn't found any worth taking back to Hellas with him, but they weren't bad.

A fellow trimming vines not far from the road waved to him. Sostratos lifted a hand in return. The farmer no doubt took him for another Italian. His tunic and broad-brimmed hat were nothing out of the ordinary. He stroked his chin. Had he been clean-shaven like Menedemos, everyone would have known him for a Hellene at once: the fashion for scraping one's cheeks smooth hadn't yet reached the Samnites. He was less likely to find trouble if people didn't take him for a foreigner.

He rode past a couple of grave markers. One of the stelai had writing on it, in the odd-looking local alphabet. Sostratos wondered what the words meant. People were working in the fields a couple of plethra away, but he didn't call to them. Farmers were unlikely either to understand Greek or to be able to read their own tongue.

When he came to a roadside boulder convenient for remounting, he slid off the mule and tied it to a nearby sapling. Then he squatted, not to ease himself but to scoop up some dirt in the palm of his hand. The soil was grayish brown and crumbly; it had almost the look of ashes to it. His eyes went to the slopes of Ouesouion. What was more likely than that a burning mountain should scatter ashes far and wide?