Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Menedemos sat in a tavern not far from the little Harbor, drinking wine of the best sort: wine he hadn't bought. Even now, half a month after the grain fleet came into Syracuse, its sailors had trouble buying their own drinks. The polis had been hungry; now it had sitos and to spare. Menedemos wondered how long the gratitude would last. He was a little surprised it had lasted this long.

He might have been able to get his wine free even if he hadn't brought grain into Syracuse. Like a lot of wineshops, this one gave sailors and merchants cups of the local vintage if they told what news they'd heard and so drew customers into the place. His tales of the wars of Alexander's generals could well have kept him as drunk as he wanted for as long as he wanted.

He was going on about Polemaios' defection from his uncle, Antigonos, when a panting Syracusan dashed into the tavern and gasped, "They've landed! They've burned their ships!" He looked around. "Am I the first?" he asked anxiously.

"That you are," the tavernkeeper said, and handed him a large cup of neat wine as the tavern exploded in excited chatter.

"Who's landed?" Menedemos asked.

"Why, Agathokles has, of course, not far from Carthage," the Syracusan replied. Menedemos started to ask, How do you know that? It was, he realized, the kind of question likelier to come from his cousin. Before it could pass his lips, the new arrival answered it: "My uncle's cousin is a clerk on Ortygia, and he was bringing Antandros some tax records when the messenger came in."

"Ahhh," went through the tavern. Men dipped their heads, accepting the authority of this source. Menedemos wondered what Sostratos would have thought of it. Less than most people here did, he suspected.

Another question occurred to him. Again, someone else anticipated him, asking, "Burned the ships, you say?"

"That's right." The fellow with news dipped his head. "It was six days from here to Africa, a long, slow trip around the north coast of our island, made slower by bad winds. Our ships were getting close to land when they spied the Carthaginian fleet right behind them -  and the Carthaginians spied them, too."

He could tell a story. Menedemos found himself leaning toward him. So did half the other people in the tavern. "What happened then?" somebody breathed.

"Well, the Carthaginians came on with a great sprint, rowing as if their hearts would burst," the Syracusan said. He held out his cup to the tavernkeeper, who filled it to the brim without a word of protest. After a sip, the fellow went on, "They got so close, their lead ships were shooting at Agathokles' rearmost just before our fleet beached itself."

"Our men must have thought their hopes were eclipsed," the taverner said. People hadn't stopped talking about the uncanny events of the day after the grain fleet's arrival.

But the man with news tossed his head. "My uncle's cousin said Antandros asked about that. The way Agathokles read the omen, he found out, was by saying it foretold ill for the enemy because it happened after our fleet sailed. He said it would have been bad if it had happened before."

Menedemos wondered what a priest of Phoibos Apollo would have had to say about that. He was sure a ready-for-aught like Agathokles wouldn't have asked a priest, but would have put forward the interpretation that served him best. And the local still hadn't answered the question. Menedemos asked it again: "What happened to Agathokles' ships?"

"Well, we outshot the Carthaginians, because we had so many soldiers aboard our ships. That, I gather, was how we beached, with the barbarians staying out of bowshot. Agathokles held an assembly once we were ashore."

"Just like Agamemnon, under the walls of Troy," someone murmured.

"He said he'd prayed to Demeter and Persephone, the goddesses who watch over Sicily, when the lookouts first spied the Carthaginians," the local went on. "He said he'd promised them the fleet as a burnt offering if they let it come ashore safely. And they had, so he burned his own flagship, and all the other captains set fire to their ships with torches. The trumpeters sounded the call to battle, the men raised a cheer, and they all prayed for more good fortune."

And they can't come back to Sicily again, or not easily, Menedemos thought. If they don't win, they all die, as slowly and horribly as the Carthaginians can make them. Burning the fleet has to remind them of that, too. Sure enough, Agathokles knows how to make his men do what he wants of them.

A man with a short gray beard asked, "How did Agathokles' messenger get here, if he burned all his ships?" That was a question the precise Sostratos might have found.

"In a captured fishing boat," the man with news replied. He had all the answers. Whether they were true or not, Menedemos couldn't have said. But they were plausible.