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"Not quite ninety, then. Fine. Why are you getting so exercised about it?"

"Because he was a great and good man," Sostratos answered. "That's reason enough -  more than reason enough. They aren't so common that we can afford to lose them."

"From everything I've heard, he was an interfering old busybody," Menedemos said. "Even if Aristophanes hadn't said a word about him, plenty of people still would've wanted to get rid of him."

For a moment, Sostratos looked as shocked as if he'd said Zeus did not exist -  more shocked than that, even, for some bright young men these days did dare doubt the gods. But his cousin, as usual, thought before he spoke. At last, he said, "There may be some truth to that. He never did worry much about what other people thought before he opened his mouth. Platon makes that very plain."

"There you are, then," Menedemos said. "If it was his own fault, why are you blaming Aristophanes?"

"I didn't say it was all his own fault."

"Ha! Now you're backing oars. You can go one way or the other, O best one, but you can't try to go both ways at once," Menedemos said.

"I think you're trying to be as difficult as you can," Sostratos said.

"I'd sooner talk philosophy -  or gossip about philosophers, which isn't quite the same thing -  than think about pirates," Menedemos said. "Since I don't usually care to do that, you'd best believe the pirates worry me."

"You could have decided to make for Zakynthos instead of taking the short way across the Ionian Sea," Sostratos said.

Menedemos tossed his head. "I told you, it's too close to craneflying season. Too much chance of a storm's blowing up for me to make the long journey across the open sea. But the pirates will be out. They'll know what honest skippers are thinking, the gods-detested bastards."

For once, though, the usually cautious Sostratos was the bolder of the two of them. "I still think you're worrying too much," he said. "If a pirate sees our hull, what will he think? He'll think the same thing half the fishermen in Great Hellas -  and over in the Aegean, too -  have already thought: that we're pirates ourselves. We don't look anything like a round ship, after all. And he'll leave us alone."

"Here's hoping you're right." Menedemos looked back over his shoulder toward the rocks of Cape Iapygia, the southeasternmost point of Italy. Soon it would disappear from view, and the Aphrodite would be out of sight of land till Korkyra or the mainland of Hellas or Macedonia crawled up over the eastern horizon. "But dogs eat dogs. Why shouldn't pirates eat pirates?"

"You've said it yourself: we've got enough men aboard to put up a good fight," Sostratos said.

Menedemos' laugh was less cheerful than he would have liked. "Well, maybe we'll find out if I'm as smart as I think I am."

They got their chance to find out sooner than he would have liked. It wasn't Aristeidas who sang out, "Sail ho!" but a sailor who was pissing from the Aphrodite's stern. Menedemos turned to look back over his shoulder, as he had for Cape lapygia. He had to follow the sailor's pointing finger to spot the sail, which wasn't much different in color from the sky or the sea. Whoever captained that ship didn't want it seen.

"Fast," Diokles remarked as the sail got bigger and the hull came into view. It too was painted greenish blue, so as not to stand out against waves and sky. "Almost bound to be a pirate, with that turn of speed and that paint job."

"I was thinking the same thing." Menedemos raised his voice: "Take your weapons, men. We may have a fight on our hands."

The skipper of that other ship was bound to be making calculations about the Aphrodite. Yes, she was a galley, but she didn't try to disguise herself and she was on the beamy side for a rowed vessel. That made her an akatos, not a pentekonter or hemiolia -  probably not a pirate ship herself, but still a vessel with a formidable crew, one not to be taken lightly.

When Menedemos got a better look at the pirate ship, he saw she wasn't quite so long and low as he'd expected. She carried two banks of oars, though the rowers' benches of the upper deck aft of the mast could be taken out in a hurry to stow the mast and yard and sail. "Hemiolia," Sostratos remarked, coming up onto the poop deck: he'd noted the same thing.

"Which would mark her for a pirate even without her paint job," Menedemos said. "Not much use for hemioliai except to steal from slow ships and run away from fast ones."

"They might make naval auxiliaries," said Sostratos, who sometimes showed himself altogether too good at looking at all sides of a question to suit Menedemos.

But the hemiolia coming up behind the Aphrodite was without a doubt, without argument even from Sostratos, a pirate. Menedemos, who couldn't conveniently take down his own mast, could and did order the sail brailed up to the yard and put a full complement on the oars. As he'd done twice before, he swung his ship toward the pirate, showing he was ready for a fight if her skipper wanted one.

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