Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"We may come back there one of these days," Sostratos said. "People will remember. They always remember scandal." He didn't need to read any history to be sure of that, and was slightly scandalized when Menedemos only shrugged. He has no sense of anything but the moment, Sostratos thought sadly. Maybe that's why he ends up in trouble over women so often. It never occurred to him to wonder what Menedemos was thinking about him just then.

They didn't make Kallipolis before nightfall, and did anchor offshore. The men grumbled a little about that. Sostratos wondered at their logic. They'd just made it very clear that they didn't care to risk going ashore, but they still didn't want to stay at sea? What did that leave? He imagined the Aphrodite floating several hundred cubits up in the air. Daidalos and Ikaros might get to the ship then, but he didn't see how anyone else would.

Menedemos' imagination was of a more practical sort: "I hadn't planned to lay over a night in Kallipolis, but I think I'd better, to give the men a chance to drink and roister."

"Good idea, skipper," Diokles said. If the oarmaster thought it a good idea, Sostratos wouldn't argue with him.

When they reached Kallipolis the next morning, it proved to lie on an island just off the Italian mainland, as Ortygia lay just off the Sicilian coast. Kallipolis, though, had never expanded off its island the way Syracuse had. It remained what so many of the colonies of Great Hellas had been in their early days: a Hellenic outpost at the edge of a land full of barbarians.

Despite its name, it didn't strike Sostratos as a particularly beautiful city. When he said as much, Menedemos laughed at him. "What would you expect them to call it? Kakopolis?" his cousin asked. "They'd enjoy trying to lure settlers to a polis with a name like that, wouldn't they? Uglytown?"

"All right, I see your point," Sostratos said. "But if you found a land full of snow and ice, you wouldn't call it a green land, would you?"

"I would if I wanted to get anybody to live there with me," Menedemos replied. "But I'm a good Rhodian. I don't even want to think about snow and ice, let alone live with 'em."

"It did snow once when I was in Athens," Sostratos said. "It was beautiful, but Zeus! it was cold." He shivered at the memory.

"We won't need to worry about that here," Menedemos said. "We have some wine, and we have some silk. Let's see if we can unload them. And"  - he wagged a finger at Sostratos -  "we don't need to tell the Kallipolitans what we think of their polis."

"I understand," Sostratos said. "We'll tell them the land is green."

His cousin laughed. "Exactly. That's just what we'll do."

Seen from its narrow, winding streets, Kallipolis was even less prepossessing than when viewed from the streets. Because the island wasn't very big and had been settled for centuries, the locals used every digit of space they could. Many of their buildings were two and three stories high. They leaned toward one another above the streets, making them even closer and darker and smellier than they would have been otherwise.

That was one of the first things that struck Sostratos about the place. The second didn't take much longer. "Do you notice how nobody's smiling?" he said. "Everybody has a frown on his face."

"What is there to smile about?" Menedemos returned."If you lived in a miserable little town in the middle of nowhere, how happy would you be? They probably wonder whether the barbarians will snap them up tomorrow or the day after." Since he was bound to be right, Sostratos took that no further.

They had to ask their way to the agora. On their way there, they passed several parties of mercenary soldiers: some Hellenes, others Italians in ordinary enough helmets but wearing odd, almost triangular, cuirasses that, in Sostratos' view, didn't cover nearly enough of the chest. The mercenaries looked no more cheerful than the ordinary Kallipolitans.

Menedemos was never one to leave well enough alone. Pointed to the soldiers, he said, "You see?"

And Sostratos had to admit, "I see."

The market square looked as if it had been bigger than it was. Buildings encroached on it from all sides, like weeds growing at the edge of a field. People buying and selling huddled together in the shadows the buildings cast. By the way merchants and customers kept glancing over their shoulders, they might have thought more buildings would spring up while they weren't looking.

"Fine wine from Khios! Transparent silk from Kos! Fragrant Rhodian perfume!" Menedemos' voice rang through the agora, echoing from the buildings that seemed to lean toward him from all the edges of the square. People stared, as if wondering who this loud stranger was. He certainly made more noise than half a dozen locals. "By the dog of Egypt," he murmured, "I think they're all so many wraiths here, like the spirits of the dead in the Odyssey."

"Fine wine and transparent silk will liven anyone up, if he gives them half a chance," Sostratos observed.