Harry Turtledove - Salamis

“I’m Areton son of Aretakles,” the man said. As soon as his men ran the gangplank to the pier, he went up it and joined Menedemos. He was about forty, lean and fit and burnt brown by the sun.

Sostratos had been making his way toward the Tykhe —he was curious about the strange ship, too. He tagged along with Menedemos and Areton on their way to the house, then went into his own across the street to bring his father over. Philodemos was upstairs with Baukis and Diodoros when Menedemos brought Areton inside, but quickly came down. Sostratos and Lysistratos got back to the house almost at once. Menedemos’ father sent slaves to fetch Komanos, Xanthos, and other civic leaders. In the meantime, he offered Areton bread and oil and raisins and olives and wine.

“You’re very kind, sir,” the skipper said.

“You are my guest-friend,” Philodemos replied with dignity. To an old-fashioned man like him, that said everything that needed saying.

The dignitaries arrived even sooner than Menedemos had thought they would. They wanted news from Alexandria, all right. As soon as they got it, Xanthos started to launch into an oration of praise and gratitude. Komanos cut him off, asking, “Will the Ptolemaios be able to help us if Demetrios and Antigonos try to seize the island and the polis?”

“With supplies, possibly. With a naval force?” Areton tossed his head. “Not soon. Menedemos here will have told you what a beating the fleet took. Ptolemaios will be some time rebuilding and recruiting, I’m afraid.”

“We’re on our own, then.” Philodemos brought it out like a physician giving a bad prognosis.

Areton didn’t try to tell him he was wrong. “I am sorry, but that’s how things hold right now.”

“Well, it isn’t anything we weren’t expecting,” Menedemos’ father said. “Now we know the worst.” Again, neither Areton nor anyone else contradicted him.

Sostratos watched the Tykhe leave the harbor and head back towards Egypt. Good news and bad: good that Ptolemaios wasn’t dead or loaded down with chains, bad that Rhodes was on its own.

One of the harborside regulars turned to him and said, “You were just down there, weren’t you? What’s it like?”

“It’s like …” Sostratos thought for a moment, then spread his hands in despair. “Egypt isn’t like anything. Alexandria wasn’t there at all when we were born, and now it’s bigger than Rhodes. Bigger than Athens or Syracuse, too.” Those were the biggest Greek cities he could think of. He went on, “And the rest of the country is as ancient as Alexandria is new. The Pyramids, the Sphinx, the temples …. They were all old a thousand years before Akhilleus fought Hektor on the plains outside of Troy.”

“I didn’t think anything could be older than that,” the man said.

“It’s true anyway. That’s why Egyptians laugh at Hellenes the way grown men laugh at children. We are children to them, children or just-sprouted weeds,” Sostratos said, remembering his Herodotos.

“Huh!” the other man said. He was unlikely ever to go to Egypt. Rowing or even being a crewman on a sailing ship would seem too much like work to him. He had plenty of opinions about things he’d never seen, though. “We may be weeds, but we’re weeds who tell the barbarians there what to do.”

“That’s …. Oh, never mind.” Sostratos knew he couldn’t explain it in a way that made sense to an ignorant, untraveled man. Ptolemaios and his nomarchs did tell the Egyptians what to do, at least to the extent of collecting the country’s wealth. But they did it as the Great Kings of Persia had before them: by acting as if they were Pharaohs in their own right. Whether they could actually change the way the Egyptians thought …. Maybe they were wiser not to try. What would they spawn but rebellion?

“You see?” the dockside lounger said triumphantly. He thought he’d won the argument Sostratos didn’t want to have. In the Apology , Sokrates talked about men who knew a lot about a little and thought that meant they knew a lot about a lot. This fellow was even worse. He didn’t know anything about anything, but thought he knew everything about everything. And how many more just like him were there? Myriads upon myriads.

Sostratos wanted to shove him into the sea. He walked away instead. The man might go to law against him. Or he might not be able to swim and drown. Arrogant stupidity wasn’t a capital crime. If it were, not many people would be left in the world.

On his way to nowhere in particular, Sostratos bought some sprats from a man who sold them off a tray. A few were still twitching, so he knew they were fresh. He took them to a tavern. For one obolos more, the man behind the counter plopped them into a kettle of hot olive oil. The sizzle and the smell made Sostratos’ mouth water.

He bought some wine to wash down the fried fish. It wasn’t a big midday meal, but often he went without any. The sprats were fine, crispy and delicious, the wine no better than it had to be. Sostratos shrugged. You didn’t go into a place like this for fine wine. A man snoring on his stool at a table by the wall, his cup on its side in front of him with flies humming around the wine that had spilled from it, showed why people did go in.

When Sostratos left, he headed back to the harbor. But he’d drunk enough wine for nature to assert itself. He could have just hiked up his chiton and eased himself against the nearest wall, as men often did, but found himself only a couple of doors away from a dyer’s shop. The man who ran it had rammed the pointed end of an amphora into the ground by his doorway. He used urine in his trade, and made it easy for men to give him some. Sostratos took care of what he needed to do right there.

As he let the front of his tunic drop back into place, he thought about one of the characters Theophrastos (under whom he’d studied in his brief spell in Athens) had described. A mark of the abominable man, Theophrastos said, was that he’d lift his chiton in the agora and wag his prong at women walking by.

Men who did such things thought they were hilarious. Sostratos had heard them laugh while they put themselves on display. The women they exposed themselves to didn’t usually think it was so funny. Sostratos agreed with his old mentor: men who did such things were abominable.

Before long, he found himself back at the docks again. He seemed to spend time there every day. Whenever a ship from some foreign place came in, he would try to find out whatever news the skipper and sailors were carrying. Menedemos had beaten him to the Tykhe , but Sostratos heard things more often than his cousin did.

Ptolemaios’ being safe was the most important news that had yet reached Rhodes from the sea-fight near Salamis. Menelaos and his soldiers would be going back to Egypt soon, presumably along with whatever sailors of Ptolemaios’ Demetrios’ men had fished from the sea.

And yes, Cyprus would belong to Demetrios and his formidable father. That had been plain from the moment the Aphrodite had to flee Demetrios’ triumphant fleet. It wasn’t good news for Rhodes, but Sostratos knew too well his polis couldn’t do anything about it.

But what else would Demetrios and Antigonos do with their victory? It was the hardest blow one of Alexander’s marshals (here, acting through his son) had dealt another since the great Macedonian conqueror died. Sostratos once more remembered what Alexander had said about who should take his empire while on his deathbed. Right this minute, Antigonos had good reason to claim he was the strongest would-be successor.

A fishing boat Sostratos didn’t recognize was tying up at a pier. He would have bet he knew every fishing boat that put out from the polis of Rhodes, though not every boat from the island of Rhodes’ smaller settlements.