Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"You're bound to be right." Sostratos shivered again. He wondered what Thoukydides would have thought of the world as it was nowadays. Nothing good; he was sure of that. In the historian's day, each polis in Hellas had been free to go its own way. Now almost all the Greek city-states danced to the tune of one Macedonian warlord or another. Rhodes remained free and independent, but even his own polis had had to throw out a Macedonian garrison after Alexander died.

Lysistratos might have been thinking along similar lines, for he said, "Being a polis these days is a lot like being a sardine in a school of tunny. But what's your news, son? I hope it's cheerier than mine."

"So do I," Sostratos said, wondering how his father would react. Well, he'd soon know. He brought it out in a rush: "Menedemos and I bought a peacock and five peahens from Himilkon the Phoenician, to take to Italy in the Aphrodite."

"A peacock!" Lysistratos exclaimed. "Do you know, I've never seen a peacock in all my life. I don't blame you and your cousin one bit. If I haven't seen a peacock, you can bet none of the Hellenes in Italy has, either. They'll pay through the nose." His gaze sharpened. "And what did you pay?"

Sostratos told him. He waited for his father to burst like a lidded pot left too long on the fire, to thunder like Zeus of the aegis.

But Lysistratos only stroked his gray beard, a gesture Sostratos had copied from him. "Truth to tell, I haven't the faintest idea what a peacock's worth, or a peahen, either," he confessed. "I suspect nobody else does, either. What you lads paid doesn't sound too bad, not unless the birds die on the way and you have to throw them into the sea -  the peacock especially."

"That's what we thought, too," Sostratos said. "It's one of the reasons we were able to beat Himilkon down as far as we did."

"He's a man to be reckoned with in a dicker." Lysistratos stroked his beard again. "Tell me . . . Is the peacock as splendid as everyone imagines?"

"He's more splendid than I imagined," Sostratos answered, almost stammering in his relief that things had gone so much smoother than he'd expected. "When he spread his tail to show off for the peahen, I'd never seen anything like it."

"All right," his father said. "When we go next door to supper tonight, we'll find out what your uncle Philodemos has to say about it."

"Yes, that will tell the tale," Sostratos agreed. Philodemos was Lysistratos' older brother, and the senior partner in their trading operation. He was also a man of less certain temper than Lysistratos, just as Menedemos was touchier than Sostratos. Now Sostratos dipped his head to his father. "If you'll excuse me . . ."

He went up the wooden stairs to his bedroom on the second story. One of the house slaves, a redheaded girl about Erinna's age called Threissa, was coming downstairs. By her looks and the name she'd been given -  it simply meant the Thracian -  she'd probably been captured not too far from Amphipolis. Sostratos smiled at her. He'd summoned her to his bed a couple of times. As a bachelor, he could get away with such things, where his father would have had trouble: keeping a wife and a mistress under the same roof was a recipe for trouble and scandal.

Threissa nodded back, polite but no more than that. She'd pleased him; he feared the reverse wasn't so true. Of course, he had to worry about her opinion only if he chose to.

The bedroom was sparsely furnished: a bedstead with a woolstuffed mattress, a chamber pot under it, a chair beside it, and two cypresswood chests, a smaller atop a larger. The larger one held Sostratos' tunics and mantles. The smaller held his books. While in Athens, he'd had complete sets of Herodotos and Thoukydides copied out for him.

When he opened the smaller chest, he smiled at the spicy scent of cypress. Like the more expensive cedar, it helped keep insects away from wool and linen and papyrus. He went through the rolls of papyrus till he found the one that held the fifth book of Thoukydides' masterful narrative of the Peloponnesian War. The battle of Amphipolis began the book.

Like most literate Hellenes, Sostratos murmured the words on the papyrus to himself as he read. Halfway through the account of the battle, he paused, shaking his head in wonder. No matter how often he read Thoukydides, his admiration never flagged. Father Zeus, if you are kind, one day let me write half as well as that man did. Let me think half as well as that man did. It was, he supposed, a peculiar sort of prayer, but no less sincere for that.

Menedemos hurried into the kitchen. "I trust we'll have something specially luscious tonight, Sikon," he said.

"Well, I hope so, young master," the cook answered. "I do my best, no matter how hard things are." He complained all the time.