The Sacred Land

His cousin ignored the sarcasm. “My pleasure-most of the time, anyhow. But listen-I’ve got news. While you were talking with the eel-seller, I chatted up some of the sailors here in port. Things are stirring, sure enough.”

“What sorts of things?” Now Sostratos sounded interested. If anything could distract him from his own gloom, it was news of the outside world.

“Well, do you know Kleopatra, Philip of Macedon’s daughter and Alexander’s sister?”

“Personally?” Sostratos said. “No.”

Menedemos gave him the exasperated stare he’d hoped for. “No, not personally, you thick-head. Do you know of her? “

“Who doesn’t?” Sostratos replied. “When she married Alexandras of Epeiros, Philip was murdered at their wedding feast. That put Alexander the Great on the throne. It made him Great, in fact, because who knows what he would have been if Philip ruled another twenty-five years, as he could have? After Alexandros died, she married Alexander’s marshal Perdikkas, and after he died some other officer-I forget whom.

She’s in one of Antigonos’ Anatolian towns these days, isn’t she?”

“Yes, in Sardis-for the moment,” Menedemos said portentously.

“Ah?” Sostratos said. “ ‘For the moment,’ is it? Tell me more.”

“Well, what one of my chattering friends told me was that she doesn’t want to stay in Sardis or under old One-Eye’s muscular thumb anymore,” Menedemos replied. “The story is, she wants to go over to Ptolemaios.”

“He’s got that base over there on Kos, right across from the Anatolian mainland,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos dipped his head. Sostratos thought quickly. The conclusion he reached didn’t take much in the way of complicated calculation. “Kleopatra will never get to his men alive.”

“You sound sure of that,” Menedemos said.

“I’ll bet a mina of silver on it, if you’re in the mood,” Sostratos told him.

“A hundred drakhmai? By the dog of Egypt, you are sure, aren’t you?”

“Will you take the bet?”

Now Menedemos thought it over. He didn’t need long, either. “No, thanks. Antigonos can’t afford to let her get to Ptolemaios; he’d lose too much face. And he’s ruthless enough to kill her if she tries. In other words, you’re likely right.”

“Whether I am or I’m not, we’re both reasoning the same way, anyhow,” Sostratos said. “All right, then, we won’t bet. And we won’t stop at the oracle, either?” He did his best to sound woefully disappointed.

“Not if it’s that close to Phaselis,” Menedemos answered. “Don’t you want to get to Phoenicia and Ioudaia and practice your Aramaic?”

The question was good enough to keep Sostratos from complaining as the Aphrodite’s, rowers took her out of the harbor of Phaselis. He wondered whether Kleopatra had already fled Sardis. Poor woman, he thought. If she’s tried it, she’s probably already dead. Who’s left from Philip’s dynasty, then? No one. No one at all.

As the Aphrodite slid past the sacred grove at Dinos, Menedemos eyed the pines and oaks. The grove looked like any other unhallowed Anatolian forest to him. As Epianax the eel-seller had told Sostratos, though, it did come right down to the sea. Its holiness had let it survive in the lowlands where most timber had been cut away to make room for farms. The only trees close by were cultivated groves of olives and almonds. But the hills rose steeply from the sea. A man wouldn’t have to go many stadia inland to find himself in the woods once more.

“Rhyppapai!” Diokles called. “Rhyppapai!” The breeze was fitful. When it did blow, it came mostly from the north. If the akatos was going to get anywhere, it had to travel by oar power.

Dolphins leaped and frolicked alongside the ship. “They’re a good omen,” Menedemos remarked to his cousin.

Sostratos dipped his head. “So says the part of me that goes to sea every sailing season. The part of me that went to the Lykeion in Athens has its doubts.”

“Why take chances?” Menedemos asked. “If you take omens but they aren’t real, you don’t hurt yourself, but if you ignore them and they are, you can end up in all sorts of trouble.”

“You can end up in trouble following omens that aren’t real,” Sostratos said, “Suppose you believe some lying fool of a soothsayer and do what he tells you, and it turns out to be the worst thing you could have done? Or what about the prophecy the Pythia at Delphi gave to King Kroisos of Lydia;

If Kroisos o’er the Halys River go

He will a mighty kingdom overthrow’?

What about that?”

“Oh, no, my dear.” Menedemos tossed his head. “You won’t get me with that one. That’s not the oracle’s fault. It’s Kroisos’ fault, for not asking whether he’d overthrow the Persian kingdom-or his own.”

Sostratos gave him an impudent grin, “I can’t fault your logic. I doubt whether Sokrates himself could fault your logic. But logic, remember, lies at the heart of philosophy. And you’re a man who sneers at philosophy. So where, O marvelous one, is the logic in that?”

“In your proktos,” Menedemos suggested.

“Aristophanes and his jokes arc fu

Menedemos started to point out that Aristophanes had had a good deal to say about philosophy and especially about philosophers. At the last instant, he held his tongue. He knew what would happen if he sailed down that cha

“Sail ho!” Aristeidas shouted as Menedemos was casting about for something different to say. “Sail ho off the starboard bow!”

A sail was more important than any argument. Menedemos peered out to sea. After a moment, he spotted the sail, too. “Looks like a round ship. And… isn’t that another sail behind it?”

“Yes, skipper, it is-more than one, in fact,” the lookout answered.

“By the gods, you’re right,” Menedemos said after another look. “Three, four, five, six… I make k eight sail altogether. Is that right?”

Aristeidas shaded his eyes with his hand. “I see… ten, skipper, I think. A couple of them are well out to sea there. And look! To the crows with me if the lead ship hasn’t got Ptolemaios’ eagle on its sail.”

“They must be grain ships, keeping his garrisons in Lykia supplied,” Sostratos said.

“He’s got nerve, sending round ships along this coast without any war galleys escorting them,” Menedemos said. “Two or three pirates could put paid to that whole fleet.”

“Ptolemaios has garrisons in all the good-sized towns around here,” Sostratos reminded him. “That has to make a difference.”

“Some difference,” Menedemos allowed. “How much, I don’t know. Most pirate ships don’t operate out of those towns. They skulk behind headlands or at the mouths of little streams, and then leap out at whatever passes by.”

“You make them sound like ferrets, or other little vicious animals,” Sostratos said.

“That’s how I feel about them,” Menedemos replied. “Don’t you?”

“I feel that way about pirates, not about pirate ships,” Sostratos said. “Ships are just-ships. It’s the whoresons inside ‘em who make the trouble.”

“You’re too subtle for me. If I see a pentekonter or a hemiolia, I want to sink it right there on the spot,” Menedemos said. “I don’t care who’s in it. Whoever’s in a ship like that is bound to be up to no good, because you can’t do good in a ship like that. If it weren’t for pirates, there wouldn’t be ships like that.”

“That’s why they’re going to build that trihemiolia you were talking about last fall,” Sostratos said. “She’ll be a pirate-hunter’s dream ship, if she sails the way everybody thinks she will.”