Harry Turtledove - Owls to Athens

“Does she?” Sostratos said, and the lounger dipped his head. “He’s come into some silver, then.” Rhodokles was a competitor. Up till now, he’d never been a serious competitor. His ships had all been older and smaller than the Aphrodite and the other vessels Philodemos and Lysistratos owned. The Thalia, though, could go anywhere on the Inner Sea, and could get where she was going as fast as anything afloat.

Thoughtfully, Sostratos asked, “Has he got any others like her?”

This time, the other man did dummy up. Instead of paying him again, Sostratos turned his back. That earned him some of the hottest, earthiest curses he’d ever got. He ignored them and walked away. The lounger cursed louder, which won him no money.

Sostratos paused by a large, ramshackle warehouse only a long spit from the sea. No one stirred there till he stuck his head in the doorway and called, “Somebody’s giving away decorated drinking cups in the agora.”

He waited. He didn’t have to wait long. A deep-voiced, gutturally accented rumble came from the bowels of the building: “Giving them away?” Out came Himilkon the Phoenician, swaddled in his long robe. A gold ring gleamed in one ear; more gold shone on several fingers. When he spotted Sostratos, suspicions spread across his narrow, hook-nosed face. “You liar, you cozener, you trickster!” he began, and went on from there. When he ran out of Greek, he switched to Aramaic.

Since he’d taught Sostratos that language, the Rhodian followed some of it. Even if he hadn’t, the sounds would have been plenty to show Himilkon’s displeasure. With its coughs and grunts and choking noises, Aramaic was a tongue made to show anger.

When Himilkon at last slowed down a little, Sostratos used a sentence of Aramaic of his own: “Peace be unto you, my friend.”

“And to you also peace,” Himilkon said grudgingly, “so long as you do not trick an honest man like that. What do you want? Besides trouble, I mean.”

“Trouble? Me? No.” Sostratos spoke in Aramaic, as the Phoenician merchant had. Having learned the language, he was glad to get a chance to use it, to keep it fresh. He did his best to look innocent. Instead of tossing his head to show that he hadn’t meant to cause trouble, he shook it. He wanted to act as much like a native speaker as he could.

Himilkon noticed. Very little went on around Himilkon that he didn’t notice. Still in his own language, he said, “Most Ionians”-in Aramaic, all Hellenes were Ionians, probably because Aramaic-speakers had met them first-”Most Ionians, I say, who took the trouble to learn my speech (and precious few care about any language but their own) would not bother with the gestures my folk use.”

“If I do something, my master, I want to do it well. I want to do it as I should.” In Greek, Sostratos would never have called any man his master. In Aramaic, though, it was only a polite phrase: another illustration of the difference between the two tongues, and of the differences in the thoughts of the men who spoke them. The Rhodian cast about for a word in Himilkon’s language. Failing to find it, he dropped back into Greek: “When I do something, I want to do it thoroughly.”

“Your slave has known you for some years now, and has noticed this about you, yes.” Even speaking Greek, Himilkon kept flowery Aramaic turns of phrase. Sostratos tried not to talk like a Hellene when using Aramaic; how well he succeeded might have been a different story.

Sostratos wondered how many people had noticed that about him. When men talked about him while he wasn’t there, did they say things like, “Sostratos will drive you mad, trying to nail down every last little detail”? He hoped they did. A reputation for taking pains was far from the worst thing in the world.

Himilkon returned to Aramaic: “If you did not come here to wring my liver with your japes, my master, for what reason did you assail my peace?”

“To see what you got while Menedemos and I were in Athens,” Sostratos replied. He had to pause for a heartbeat to come up with the second-person plural masculine verb form; Aramaic conjugations took gender into account, which Greek verb forms (except participles) didn’t. “To learn if you have anything we might want for the next sailing season.”

“When you bought papyrus from me last winter, you called me a thief,” Himilkon said. “But now you want to do more business, eh?”

“I had to beat you down to a price where I could add in my profit and still sell in Athens at a level where other people could afford to buy,” Sostratos said-in Greek, the idea being too complex for his rusty Aramaic. “I managed to do that. And besides, tell me you’ve never called me such names and I’ll tell you you’re a liar.”

“I?” Himilkon was the picture of affronted dignity. He too went on in Greek: “I am calm. I am restrained. I am judicious.” Sostratos laughed out loud. Himilkon glared. “I am going to bash you in the head with a board.”

“A calm, restrained, judicious board, I have no doubt,” Sostratos replied.

That made Himilkon laugh. “No one who grew up speaking Aramaic would ever think to call a board restrained or judicious. You Hellenes can do strange things with your language. That is probably why you are such a peculiar folk.”

Now Sostratos, reminded he was a Hellene, tossed his head to show he disagreed. “We’re not strange,” he said. “It’s all you folk who aren’t Hellenes who are strange.”

Himilkon laughed raucously. “No, O marvelous one, this time you are wrong. Everybody from Karia to Carthage, as the saying goes, thinks Hellenes are the ones who are peculiar. And if you go farther east, if you go among Phoenicians or Egyptians or Persians, well, they will all say the same thing. This proves my point; is it not so?”

Sostratos laughed once more to hear a barbarian use a stock tagline from any number of philosophical dialogues. The Rhodian also tossed his head again. “I’m sorry, my dear, but it proves nothing of the sort.”

“What? Why not?” Himilkon’s already swarthy features darkened with anger.

“Well, wouldn’t everyone from Karia to Carthage say Egyptians are strange because of all the funny animal-headed gods they worship and the picture-writing they use?”

“Certainly. Egyptians are strange,” Himilkon answered. “They do everything the opposite of the way most people do.”

That made Sostratos laugh yet again, for Herodotos had written almost the same thing about the Egyptians. Sostratos went on, “And wouldn’t everyone say the Ioudaioi are strange, with their god whom no one can see and who forbids them from doing so many perfectly ordinary things?”

“Oh, yes. The Ioudaioi are strange, too, no doubt about it. They are full of wicked customs.” Himilkon spoke with the certainty and scorn only a neighbor could have.

“Some people,” Sostratos remarked, “some people, mind you, might even say Phoenicians are strange.”

“What?” Himilkon stared at him. “What a daft notion! Phoenicians strange? We are the salt of the earth, the most ordinary folk around. How could anyone, even an idiot”-he eyed Sostratos in a speculative way-”think Phoenicians are strange?”

“Well, for one thing, you burn your own children in times of trouble,” Sostratos replied.

“That is not strangeness. That is piety, to show the gods we are their slaves and would give them anything and everything we have,” Himilkon said, “It is only because other folk are not religious enough to do the same that it seems odd to them.”

“There you are!” Sostratos pounced. “Whatever any one folk does will seem odd to other people. That doesn’t prove the folk really is strange.”