Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"I never expect anything from Athenians," Menedemos said. "They'll come up with better excuses for cheating you than . . ." His voice trailed away. His cousin's face had gone hard and cold. A few words too late, Menedemos remembered just how much Sostratos had enjoyed his time at Athens, and just how gloomy he'd been when he first came back to Rhodes. Doing his best to sound casual, Menedemos continued, "Well, I'd better keep my mind on sailing the ship."

"Yes, that would be good." Sostratos sounded like a man holding in anger, too. Menedemos sighed. Sooner or later, he would have to make it up to his cousin.

The Aphrodite wouldn't give him a hard time, not on a fine bright day like today, with only a lazy breeze and the lightest of chop ruffling the blue, blue surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Even so, he steered away from land; he wanted a few stadia of leeway between the merchant galley and the shore. You never can tell, he thought. Ashore, with just his own neck to worry about, he took chances that horrified the cautious Sostratos. At sea, with everything at stake . . . He tossed his head. Not usually.

And so when, some time later that morning, Aristeidas called out, "Sail ho! Sail off the starboard bow!" Menedemos smiled and dipped his head. He wouldn't have to change course -  that other ship, whatever it was, would pass well to leeward of him.

But then Aristeidas called out again: "Sails to starboard, skipper! That's not just a ship -  that's a regular fleet."

Menedemos' eyes snapped toward the direction in which the lookout was pointing from the foredeck. He needed only a moment to spot the sails himself, and only another to recognize them for what they were. "All men to the oars!" he shouted. "That's a fleet of triremes, and they can have us for lunch if they want us!"

Sailors ran to their places on the benches. Oars bit into the sea. Without waiting for an order from Menedemos, Diokles picked up the stroke. Menedemos swung the Aphrodite away from those low, lean, menacing shapes.

They couldn't be anything but triremes: they sported foresails as well as mainsails, which smaller galleys like pentekonters and hemioliai never did. Looking back over his shoulder, Menedemos did his best to count them. He'd got to eighteen when Sostratos said, "There are twenty."

"Twenty triremes!" Menedemos said. "That's not a pirate's outfit -  that's a war fleet. But whose?"

"Let's hope we don't find out," Sostratos said. "They're traveling under sail, and they look as if they know just where they want to go. May they keep right on going."

"May it be so," Menedemos said. "They look like they're heading straight for the mouth of the Sarnos. Maybe they aim to raid Pompaia." He spoke before his cousin could: "If they do, it's a good thing we got out of there this morning. If they'd caught us tied up at the pier, they could have done whatever they pleased with us."

"That's true, and I'm glad we're away, too," Sostratos said -  as close as he came to I told you so, and not close enough to be annoying. Then he grunted, as if someone had hit him in the belly. "The trireme closest to us just brought out its oars. It's . . . swinging this way."

Menedemos looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, a pestilence," he said softly. Sostratos was right, not that he'd really expected his cousin to be wrong. And when a full crew rowed a trireme, she fairly leaped through the water -  she had a hundred seventy men at her three banks of oars, compared to the Aphrodite's forty on a single level. "Pick up the stroke," Menedemos told Diokles.

"We're doing everything we can now, captain," the keleustes answered. "She's faster than we are, that's all." Menedemos cursed. He knew that. He knew it much too well. And if he hadn't known it, the way the trireme got bigger every time he looked at it would have told him.

Sostratos was peering aft with a fascination somewhat less horrified and more curious. "There's a wolf painted on the mainsail," he remarked. "Who uses the wolf for an emblem?"

"Who cares?" Menedemos snarled.

To his surprise, Diokles said, "The Romans do -  those Italians who're fighting the Samnites."

"How do you know that?" Sostratos asked, as if discussing philosophy at the Lykeion in Athens.

"Tavern talk," the oarmaster answered, as Menedemos had a few days before. "You hear all sorts of things sitting around soaking up wine."

"How interesting," Sostratos said.

"How interesting that we know who's going to sell us for slaves or knock us over the head and pitch us into the drink," Menedemos said. The trireme was gaining on the Aphrodite at a truly frightening rate. As he watched, the Romans -  if they were Romans -  brailed up the sails and stowed the mast and foremast. Like Hellenes, they would make their attack run under oar power alone.