Harry Turtledove - Owls to Athens

H. N. Turteltaub is a pen name of Harry Turtledove

I have, as best I could, used in this novel the weights, measures, and coinages my characters would have used and encountered in their journey. Here are some approximate equivalents (precise values would have varied from city to city, further complicating things):

1 digit = 3/4 inch

4 digits = 1 palm

6 palms = 1 cubit

1 cubit = 1 1/2 feet

1 plethron = 100 feet

1 stadion = 600 feet

12 khalkoi = 1 obolos

6 oboloi = 1 drakhma

100 drakhmai = 1 mina

(about 1 pound of silver)

60 minai = 1 talent

As noted, these are all approximate. As a measure of how widely they could vary, the talent in Athens was about 57 pounds, while that of Aigina, less than thirty miles away, was about 83 pounds.

From the men’s room-the andron-Menedemos son of Philodemos watched the rain patter down in the courtyard of his father’s house. It dripped from the red roofing tiles at the edge of the eaves. The drips had scored little grooves in the dirt; this was as heavy a rain as Rhodes ever saw, and heavier than usual for so late in winter. Spring-sailing season-would be here soon, but the skies didn’t seem to know it.

As if he were a caged animal, Menedemos rocked back and forth on his stool. “I want to be away,” he said to his cousin. “I want to be out and doing things.” He was a handsome man in his late twenties, muscular and well built though a little below average height, his face cleanshaven in the style Alexander the Great had set.

His cousin dipped his head in agreement. Though Alexander was sixteen years dead, Sostratos son of Lysistratos wore a full, rather shaggy beard. He was a few months older than Menedemos, and taller by a palm and a couple of digits. Sostratos didn’t carry his height well, though, and, thanks to his diffident manner, usually followed Menedemos’ lead. Menedemos could be a great many things, but hardly ever diffident.

“I wish it would clear out, too,” Sostratos said. “If we get to Athens early enough, we can see the plays at the Greater Dionysia.” Like Menedemos, he’d grown up speaking Greek with the Doric drawl of Rhodes. But he’d studied philosophy at the Lykeion in Athens; like those of many educated Hellenes, his accent these days had a heavy Attic overlay. “Tragedies, satyr plays, comedies…” He sighed longingly.

“Comedies nowadays are thin-blooded things,” Menedemos said. “Give me Aristophanes any time.”

Sostratos tugged at the front of his chiton, as if wagging the enormous phallos a comic actor wore. “A lot of those jokes have got tired in the hundred years since Aristophanes told them,” he said.

“Then why can’t the new poets come up with anything better?”

Menedemos retorted; this was an old argument between them.

“I think they can,” Sostratos said. “Menandros, for instance, is a match for your precious Aristophanes any day.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Menedemos declared. “The old plays are the best ones.”

“Maybe Menandros will put on a new one at the Dionysia,” Sostratos said. “Then you’ll see.”

“See what?” Menedemos’ father asked, coming up behind them.

“Hail, Uncle Philodemos,” Sostratos said. “How are you today?”

“Not too bad, thanks,” Philodemos answered. He was nearer sixty than fifty, his beard and hair silver, but he still held himself erect- exercise at the gymnasion had helped there. And he’d kept most of his teeth, which let him sound like a younger man.

“If we get to Athens in time for the Greater Dionysia, Menedemos may see what a fine comedian Menandros is,” Sostratos said.

“Ah.” Philodemos’ voice encompassed the gray sky and the wet courtyard. “Nobody’s going anywhere as long as the weather stays like this. Put to sea with clouds and fogs and who knows what and you’re asking to wreck your ship.”

“It should clear out soon, Father,” Menedemos said.

“I doubt it,” Philodemos replied.

Menedemos sighed. Had he said he expected bad weather to last, he was sure his father would have contradicted him there, too. They never had got on well. Menedemos thought his father was a stubborn old stick-in-the-mud. For his part, Philodemos was convinced Menedemos was a wild youth who had no respect for anything. Sometimes each seemed determined to prove the other right.

Philodemos also had another excellent reason for not getting along with Menedemos. Fortunately, he didn’t know he had it. Menedemos was determined that he never find out.

Sostratos said, “Regardless of whether we get to Athens in time for the Dionysia, that is where we ought to take the Aphrodite this year.”

“Oh, yes. I agree,” Philodemos said. “That’s where you’ll get the best prices for the goods you brought back from Phoenicia last season.”

Oh, yes. I agree. The words echoed sourly inside Menedemos’ head. His father never would have been so quick to agree with him, or to admit it if he did. But Philodemos gave his nephew the approval he withheld from his son. Of the two young men, Sostratos was usually the one who was cautious and sensible. The one who’s boring, Menedemos thought. That wasn’t wholly fair. He knew as much. The thought formed all the same.

Voice sly, he said, “You’re as eager to go back to Athens for the sake of your philosophical friends as you are for trade.”

His cousin didn’t even try to deny it, which spoiled the jab. Sostratos just dipped his head in agreement and said, “Of course I am.”

“And what about you? Why are you so eager to go to Athens?” Menedemos’ father asked him. He answered his own question: “You’re eager on account of all the loose women there, that’s why-all the bored, faithless wives who don’t care about their husbands or about doing what’s proper. You’d sooner hunt piggies than hares any day.” With sardonic relish, he used the slang for a female crotch singed free of hair.

Menedemos gave back a bland smile. “Spearing them is more fun.” That was slang, too, of an obvious sort.

Sostratos snorted. Philodemos rolled his eyes. He said, “Joke all you want about adultery now, but it’s landed you in more trouble than anybody since Paris ran off with Helen.”

That wasn’t fair. Menedemos’ father undoubtedly knew it wasn’t fair. But it held enough truth to make it sting. Menedemos did make a hobby of seducing other men’s wives, and he had found himself in trouble because of it. Trying to forestall any more of Philodemos’ wit, he said, “Well, we won’t stop in Halikarnassos on the way to Athens.”

There was a husband in Halikarnassos who would kill him on sight-who almost had killed him a few years before. Menedemos hoped the fellow had perished when Ptolemaios laid siege to the city a couple of years before. He wished it had fallen and been sacked, but no such luck. Antigonos’ older son, Demetrios, had quick-marched an army up from the southeast and relieved it.

Philodemos surely would have brought up Halikarnassos if he hadn’t. Even though he had, his father leaped on it: “A terrible thing, when our firm can’t do business in a polis because you outraged the wife of one of the leading citizens.”

“She wasn’t outraged, by Zeus,” Menedemos said. “She loved every minute of it. Her husband, on the other hand…”

“No point in quarreling about it now.” Sostratos did his best to make peace. “We can’t change it. It’s over. It’s done. No man can step into the same river twice.”

That was a philosophical tagline; Menedemos knew as much, even if he’d had less education than his cousin. If Philodemos knew, he didn’t care. “I want to keep him from jumping into this river of adultery again,” he said. Then he pointed at Sostratos. “And you, too, as a matter of fact.”