Harry Turtledove - Salamis

He didn’t go to the harbor that day, though. It might have been autumn, but it was bright and sunny, too much so for comfort. He sat in the andron, reading a book of the Iliad . It was the second book, the dullest in the poem, but it suited his mood. The Catalogue of Ships listed every town in Hellas that had joined Agamemnon to attack Troy, and told how many ships it had contributed.

Having worked his way through that, though, he wondered how many ships there were all told, and how many strong-greaved Akhaians manned them. He went through the second half of the scroll again, flicking pebbles on a counting board whenever he came to a new listing. He totaled up 1,186 ships. Then, just to make sure, he did it again. He felt proud of himself when he got the same answer twice running.

That was a lot of ships, far more than Demetrios and Ptolemaios put together had had when they fought each other off Salamis. They would have been smaller ships, though, than the monsters that met there. Any vessels bigger than a trireme dated to very recent times; he knew the Athenians and their foes hadn’t had any when they fought a century before. For that matter, even triremes would have been news to Homer. So how many men would the Akhaians have brought along?

Menedemos went back through the listings—yes, surely the most tedious part of the Iliad —once more. The Boiotians, he found, had had a hundred twenty men in each of their fifty ships. By contrast, the chieftains Methone, Thaumakie, Meliboia, and Olizon had commanded a total of seven ships with fifty men apiece.

“Split the difference,” Menedemos muttered. Halfway between fifty and a hundred twenty was … some more pebble work told him it was eighty-five. So if each ship carried about eighty-five men and there were 1,186 ships ….

Back and forth went the pebbles in their grooves. He hardly needed to look at his fingers as he flicked the tablet. The answer came to just over ten myriads: ten ten thousands. That was a lot of warriors, more than any modern general was likely to put in the field. And, to oppose them, Priamos and shining Hektor would have had about as many fighting men, or the war wouldn’t have lasted anything like ten years.

Knowing something like that made Menedemos want to tell it to somebody. His father would have been interested—he’d got his own love for the Iliad from Philodemos—but he wanted as little to do with his father as he could manage. Instead, he walked across the street to his father’s brother’s house. Luck was with him; Sostratos answered the door when he knocked.

“Hail,” his cousin said. “What can we do for you?”

“Do you know how many soldiers Agamemnon lord of men led against Troy?”

“Not offhand, my dear, no, but why do I think you’re about to tell me? Why don’t you come in before you do?”

When they were settled in the andron, Menedemos said, “You think so because I am. He commanded eight hundred ten above ten myriads, more or less.”

“And how do you know this so precisely, O sage of the age?”

Not without pride, Menedemos explained his method. His cousin listened attentively; that, at least, Menedemos had been sure he would do. Menedemos finished, “And so, you see, I’ve reckoned it up exactly.”

“You have if everything Homer says is true, anyhow,” Sostratos replied.

He shocked Menedemos. “It’s Homer! ” he exclaimed. To him, that said everything that needed saying. All that made Hellenes what they were sprang from the Iliad and Odyssey .

But his cousin said, “He was a great poet, O best one, but he was a human being. He made mistakes. Doesn’t a Trojan named Khromios get killed three different times in the Iliad ?”

“How do you know there weren’t three separate Trojans named Khromios?” Menedemos said. They both laughed, but nervously. They were treading on dangerous ground, ground that might give way under their feet and pitch them headlong into a real quarrel.

“Well, maybe.” Sostratos picked his words with care as he went on, “What truly makes me wonder about the epics is that hundreds of years went by between the fall of Troy and Homer’s time. You won’t disagree with me there, I hope?”

“No,” Menedemos replied, oddly reluctant to admit it for fear of walking into a trap. “Why does that matter, though?”

“Herodotos wrote about the Persian Wars less than a lifetime after they happened. Where he could see things for himself, he did very well—I found that out in Egypt. Where he could question men about exactly what happened and compare stories, he was also good. Where he couldn’t do either, where he had to listen to old tales, he wasn’t investigating anymore. Thoukydides criticized him because of it.”

“I thought you liked Herodotos better than Thoukydides, though,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos blinked in surprise, then grinned enormously. “By the gods, my dear, you’ve spent all these years listening to me! Who would have dreamt it? I do like Herodotos better. History needs to be interesting, or who’ll want to read it? But Thoukydides was right here. Once you get past what the people you’re talking with can remember, exaggerations creep in and you can’t be sure you’re rid of them all.”

“Homer wouldn’t make silly mistakes like that, though,” Menedemos said. “He is Homer, you know.”

“The point is, he wouldn’t know he was making mistakes, because he wouldn’t be able to question anyone who knew the truth,” his cousin replied. “Think, why don’t you? You’ve been all over Hellas. Is it really likely the Akhaians could have raised ten myriads of men and sent them off to besiege Troy for ten years without everybody back home starving to death because no one was left to work the fields?”

“Well … no,” Menedemos admitted reluctantly. “But if you can’t trust Homer, you can’t trust anybody.”

“You know, my dear, you can enjoy him as a poet without enjoying him as a historian. They’re different trades, like carpenter and potter,” Sostratos said.

“But … but …” Menedemos felt himself floundering. “Think of all the other poets and playwrights who’ve borrowed from him since his day.”

“That’s poetry, too. Were the gods and goddesses truly on the windy plains of Troy, helping first one side and then the other, depending on who was friendly with whom on any particular day? That is poetry, not the real world. How many gods are running around loose these days?”

“People say the Alexander was one. The Athenians say Demetrios and Antigonos are two more.”

Sostratos made a face at him. He knew why, too. Hellenes often spoke of a very talented man, or one who had done a lot, as divine. They might make offerings to his memory, or to him if he was still alive. That didn’t mean they thought he was a match for Zeus or Apollo or Ares. There were questions of degree.

As if plucking that thought from inside his head, his cousin said, “Not everybody thinks the way we do about these things. As far as the Ioudaioi are concerned, there’s only one god who does everything. They’d fight if we tried to make them give kings divine honors.”

Menedemos sniffed. “Who cares what a little tribe of barbarians off in the middle of nowhere thinks? You don’t see their god doing things these days, either, do you?”

“Certainly not,” Sostratos replied, as if he were one of the men Sokrates so enjoyed questioning.

“There you are, then,” Menedemos said.

“Here we all are,” Sostratos said. “We are, but what about the gods? For all we know, they’ve gone on holiday together: ours, and the invisible one the Ioudaioi worship even if he doesn’t do anything, and the Egyptians’ falcon and jackal-head and I don’t know what all else, and the Persians’ good god and his wicked foe, and all the others, too. They’re all at an inn somewhere, drinking neat wine and eating fried tunny and baby squid and trying to sweet-talk each other into bed. And the world they made can cursed well take care of itself.”