Harry Turtledove - Owls to Athens

“Nothing fancy-just the usual,” Menedemos said.

“All right.” Instead of bending over straightaway, the slave reached for the jar. “Will you use some olive oil first? It’s… easier that way.”

Menedemos pulled off his own chiton. “Well, why not?” he answered. “Go ahead-put some on me.” The brothel boy obeyed, gently pushing back his foreskin as he rose. Sadyattes’ fingers were skilled and knowing. “Now turn around,” Menedemos said after a little while. The boy did. Menedemos took his pleasure. Sadyattes gave no sign of taking any of his own, but boys seldom did. Menedemos patted him on the backside, then gave him an obolos. “Here. You don’t need to tell that fellow with the fancy beard you got this.”

“I thank you, most noble one.” The slave put the little silver coin in his mouth.

Whistling, Menedemos left the boy brothel, which was more than Sadyattes could do. When he got back to the inn, Sostratos asked, “How was it?”

He thought a moment, then shrugged. “Nothing fancy,” he said. “Just the usual.”

“Rhyppa pai! ” Diokles called. “Rhyppa pai! Rhyppa pai! ” The rowers bent their backs; some of them grunted with effort at each stroke. Sostratos looked toward the Anatolian mainland, which slowly crawled past to starboard. Then, deliberately, he looked to port again.

A smooth horizon seemed to rise and fall less than a corrugated one. As if to show how much he approved of that, he said, “I don’t like the Ikarian Sea.”

“No, eh?” Menedemos grinned at him. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Because it’s got some of the roughest water anywhere in the Inner Sea?” Sostratos suggested. He gulped and silently told his stomach to stay where it belonged. For the moment, it seemed willing to listen to him.

His cousin chuckled. “And all the time I thought it was because you sympathized with Ikaros, who came crashing down somewhere around here.”

“As a matter of fact, I do sympathize with Ikaros,” Sostratos said. “I sympathize with Daidalos, who after all made his son’s wings, even more. What’s wrong with pursuing knowledge, I’d like to know?”

“People ought to pursue good sense first,” Menedemos said.

“Really?” Sostratos raised an eyebrow. “And how can a man have any idea of what good sense is without knowledge? Suppose you tell me that.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Menedemos tossed his head. “You’re trying to lure me into a philosophical discussion. No thanks, my dear; I don’t want to play.”

“Not even when you started it?” Sostratos made a reproachful clucking noise. “For shame. You remind me of a man who starts arguments in taverns and then ducks out before the fists fly.”

“I’d rather talk about where we put in next,” Menedemos said. “That has money attached to it.”

“So it does.” Sostratos pointed north. “We’re bound for Samos and then, I thought, for Khios. With the fine wine they make there…”

“As a matter of fact, I was thinking of passing up Khios altogether and going straight on to Lesbos,” Menedemos said.

“You were?” Sostratos gaped. That came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. “By the dog of Egypt, why? We can bring Ariousian from Khios to Athens and make a splendid profit. There’s no better wine in the world than Ariousian.”

“Yes, and don’t the Khians know it?” Menedemos replied. “With what they charge, we have to bump up our prices so high, hardly anyone can afford to buy from us.”

“That’s the point of having an akatos,” Sostratos said. “For bulk goods, we could take out a round ship and not have to pay all our rowers.”

“Lesbos makes good wines, too,” his cousin said. “Not quite up to Ariousian, I admit, but plenty good enough for the Aphrodite to carry. And Lesbos has something Khios doesn’t.”

“What?” Sostratos demanded; he couldn’t think of anything.

But Menedemos could: “Truffles. They grow close by Mytilene, and they’re always best in the springtime. Tell me the rich Athenians and the Macedonian officers in the garrison won’t want truffles.”

Sostratos couldn’t, and he knew it. “Truffles,” he murmured, intrigued in spite of himself. “Isn’t that interesting? I have to hand it to you, my dear-they never would have occurred to me. Still… I hate to spend the extra time on the way.”

“On account of the Greater Dionysia?” Menedemos asked, and Sostratos dipped his head. Menedemos took a hand off the steering-oar tiller to shake a reproachful finger. “Profit first, best one. Profit first, drama second.”

“Normally, that’s a good rule,” Sostratos said. “But the Greater Dionysia is special.”

“I’ll tell you what’s special,” Menedemos said. “The clink of the owls the Athenians’ll lay down for truffles and good Lesbian wine is special, that’s what.”

“I know we have to make money.” Sostratos said it with more than a little shame in his voice. A kalos k’agathos, a proper Hellenic gentleman, lived off the land he owned and looked down his nose at trade. Damonax professed being that kind of gentleman. As Sostratos had seen, though, his brother-in-law didn’t despise the money from trade, especially when his family needed it-which they did a lot of the time.

“Well, then, act like you enjoy it.” Menedemos didn’t mind being a merchant-or, if he did, he hid it well, perhaps even from himself. “If it weren’t for people like us, all the kaloi k’agathoi would be sitting around on bare floors scratching themselves, because who’d sell ‘em all the things that make life worth living? Nobody, that’s who.”

“Getting the chance to see strange places is part of what makes being a merchant worthwhile,” Sostratos admitted. “And I’ve never been to Mytilene, so”-he dipped his head-”all right. If that’s what you want to do, we’ll do it. You know, that polis wouldn’t be here today if the Athenians hadn’t changed their minds during the Peloponnesian War. ”

“When did the Athenians ever do anything but change their minds?” Menedemos asked, more than a little scornfully.

“They would have massacred the city after it rose up against them, and they sent off a trireme with orders to do just that,” Sostratos said. “But then they had second thoughts, and they sent another ship after the first. The rowers on the first ship dawdled; they didn’t like what they were doing. The other ship hurried. Even though it started a day behind, it got there just in time to stop the slaughter. Mytilene’s worth seeing, just on account of that.”

Menedemos laughed. “If that’s what interests you, all right. The other thing that makes me want to go to Lesbos is the word of mouth.” He leered. Diokles chuckled.

Sostratos said, “Is it true, what they say about Lesbian women? Did they really invent that particular vice there? From what I’ve heard of Sappho ’s poetry, she doesn’t talk about it.”

“With that funny Aiolic dialect they speak there, half the time it’s hard to tell what they’re talking about,” Menedemos answered. “But if you mean, did they invent sucking a man’s prong, well, Aristophanes sure thinks so.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” Sostratos said. “ Aristophanes says all sorts of things that aren’t so.”

His cousin ignored him. Menedemos seldom wasted a chance to quote from the comic poet, and proved no exception now: “ ‘You seem to me to be the lambda among the Lesbians,’ he says. And there’s that modern poet, what’s-his-name-Theopompos, that’s it-too:

‘Not to mention this old method, repeated Through our mouths Which the children of the Lesbians Found.’ “