Harry Turtledove - Owls to Athens

“You get no arguments from me, skipper,” the keleustes said. “Why tempt ‘em? is just right, far as I’m concerned.”

Up and down the length of the Aphrodite , sailors stretched and twisted, working kinks out of muscles they hadn’t used all winter. Some of them rubbed olive oil onto their blisters. Teleutas, who happened to be back by the poop deck, rubbed something else on them instead, from a small flask he’d stuck under his bench. Menedemos sniffed. “Isn’t that turpentine?” he asked, his eyebrows leaping in surprise.

“That’s right,” the sailor said.

“Doesn’t it burn like fire?” Menedemos said.

“It’s not so bad,” Teleutas answered. “It hardens the flesh instead of making it soft, the way oil does. I was talking with an Epeirote sailor in a tavern. He said they use it up there, and I thought I’d give it a try.”

“Better you than me,” Menedemos said.

Another rower, a former sponge diver named Moskhion, asked, “Can we take the boat and go ashore, skipper? We can buy ourselves some wine and some better grub than we’ve got on the ship here. Maybe there’s a brothel in town, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” Menedemos said. “This isn’t what you’d call a big place, and ships don’t put in here all that often. But yes, you can go find out, if you have a mind to.”

The merchant galley towed her boat behind her, on a line tied to the sternpost. The boat was new. She’d lost the old one the sailing season before, on the way back to Rhodes from Phoenicia. When two pirate ships attacked off the Lykian coast, a sailor had cut the old boat loose to help the Aphrodite fight them off. And so she had-but she hadn’t been able to go back and recover the boat.

Soldiers pulled the new boat alongside the akatos and clambered down into her. She carried half a dozen oars-small ones, compared to the nine-cubit sweeps that propelled the Aphrodite -and could hold a dozen men. The sailors briefly argued over who would row her back to the ship for the next group, then set off for the town of Syme.

“Are you going ashore?” Sostratos asked.

Menedemos tossed his head and mimed an enormous yawn. “Not likely, my dear. I might never wake up again. What about you?”

“I’m tempted,” his cousin answered. “After all, Syme’s less than a day’s sail from Rhodes. You can see this place any time you look west. Even so, I’ve never been into the town.”

“Yes, and we both know why, too: it’s not worth going into,” Menedemos said.

“Too true.” Sostratos thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I live in Rhodes. I’ve stayed in Athens. I’ve visited Taras and Syracuse- poleis that are poleis, if you know what I mean. I’m sorry, but I can’t get excited about Syme. This is one step up from a village-and a small step, too.”

“That’s the way I feel about it,” Menedemos said. “Well, if we’re going to stay aboard ship, shall we have supper? What Syracusan wouldn’t be jealous of our feast?”

Sostratos laughed. Syracuse was famous for its fancy cooking. Some cooks from the Sicilian city had even written books of their favorite recipes for opson, recipes full of rare, expensive fish, spices from all around the Inner Sea and beyond, and rich cheeses. The Aphrodite carried coarse, hard barley rolls for sitos and olives and onions and hard, crumbly, salty cheese for opson to go with it. If the crew wanted fish as a relish, they had to put lines over the side and catch it themselves.

The rough red wine in the amphorai was a suitable match for the rest of the meal. Menedemos could think of no worse condemnation. “This stuff almost makes you want to drink water,” he said.

“Drinking water isn’t healthy,” Sostratos said.

“You think this wine is?” Menedemos returned. “You can taste more of the pitch on the inside of the jar than you can of the grapes.” He sipped again, and pulled a face. “Of course, considering what the grapes do taste like, maybe that’s just as well.”

“It’s not supposed to be anything special. It’s just supposed to be wine,” his cousin said. “And even if it isn’t the best stuff Dionysos ever made, it won’t give you a flux of the bowels, the way water would.”

“Well, that’s true.” Menedemos flipped a couple of more drops of wine onto the poop deck. “My thanks, great Dionysos, for arranging that we don’t get the galloping shits from wine-for we’d surely drink it even if we did.”

“That’s peculiar praise for the god,” Sostratos said, smiling. “But then, Dionysos is a peculiar sort of god.”

“How do you mean?” Menedemos asked.

“Just for instance, Homer doesn’t say much about him,” Sostratos answered. “He talks much more about the other Olympians-even Hephaistos has a couple of scenes where he’s the center of attention, but Dionysos doesn’t.”

“That’s true,” Menedemos said thoughtfully. “There is that passage in the sixth book of the Iliad, though. You know the one I mean:

‘I would not fight with the gods who dwell in the heavens.

For not even the son of Dryas, mighty Lykourgos,

Could stay at strife for long with the gods who dwell in the heavens.

He once drove off the attendants of madness-bringing Dionysos

Near sacred Nyseion: they all

Let their mystical gear fall to the ground. Dionysos, afraid,

Plunged into the salt sea, and Thetis received him into her bosom

While he feared. For the man put him in great terror through his shout.’“

“Yes, that’s probably the place where the poet talks most about him,” Sostratos said. “But isn’t it strange to have a god who’s a coward?”

“Dionysos did have his revenge later,” Menedemos said.

“But that was later,” Sostratos reminded him. “Can you imagine any of the other Olympians, even Aphrodite, leaping into the sea on account of a mortal man’s shout?”

“Well, no,” Menedemos admitted.

“And Herodotos says Dionysos came from Egypt, and Euripides says he came out of India, and just about everyone says he came from Thrace,” Sostratos said. “None of the rest of the Olympians is foreign. And some of Dionysos’ rites…” He shivered, though the evening was fine and mild. “Give me a god like Phoibos Apollo any day.”

“Dionysos’ rites on Rhodes aren’t so bad,” Menedemos said.

“No, not on Rhodes,” his cousin agreed. “But Rhodes is a tidy, modern, civilized place. Even back on Rhodes, though, they get wilder if you leave our polis and the other towns and go out into the countryside. And in some of the backwoods places on the mainland of Hellas… My dear fellow, Euripides knew what he was talking about when he wrote the rending scenes in the Bakkhai. ”

“That’s a play I’ve only heard about,” Menedemos said. “I’ve never seen it performed, and I’ve never read it.”

“Oh, you must, best one!” Sostratos exclaimed. “If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll revive it in Athens while we’re there. It’s… quite something. I don’t think there’s ever been another play that shows the power of a god so strongly.”

“If a freethinker like you says that, I suppose I have to take it seriously,” Menedemos said.

“It’s a marvelous play,” Sostratos said earnestly. “And the poetry in the choruses is almost unearthly, it’s so beautiful. No one else ever wrote anything like it-and Euripides never wrote anything else like it, either.”

Menedemos respected his cousin’s judgment, even if he didn’t always agree with it. “If I ever get the chance, I’ll see it,” he said.

“You should,” Sostratos said. “In fact, you ought to find someone who has a copy and read it. There are bound to be a few in a polis the size of Rhodes -and of course there’ll be more than a few in Athens.”