The Sacred Land

“And your faction fight will go on for years, maybe for generations,” Sostratos said. “How many poleis have been ruined by feuds like that? How many wars between poleis have started through feuds like that? By the gods, if the poleis of Hellas hadn’t spent their time fighting amongst themselves, could the Macedonians have beaten them?”

He thought that was an invincible argument. But Menedemos said, “Ha! Now I’ve got you!”

“You do not!”

“I do so.” His cousin leered at him. “For one thing, the Macedonians fight amongst themselves, too, even worse than regular Hellenes, Go ahead-tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.” He waited. Sostratos stood silent. He couldn’t disagree. “Ha!” Menedemos said again. “And, for another, if Philip of Macedon hadn’t whipped the Hellenes into line, and if Alexander hadn’t come along right afterwards, who’d be ru

Sostratos stared at him, then started to laugh, “huge!” he exclaimed. “That’s the best bit of bad argument I think I’ve ever heard. Some people learn to argue from Platon and what he says of Sokrates. You took your model from Aristophanes ’ Clouds.”

“Bad Logic there, you mean?” Menedemos asked, and Sostratos dipped his head. Not a bit abashed, Menedemos made as if to bow. “Bad Logic won, remember. Good Logic gave up and went over to the other side. And it looks like I’ve out-argued you.”

He waited to see whether Sostratos would challenge that. Sostratos didn’t, but gave back the same sort of bow he’d got. “Every once in a while, I surprise you when we wrestle in the gymnasion.” He towered over his cousin, but Menedemos was quicker and stronger and more agile. “Every once in a while, I suppose you can surprise me when we aim winged words at each other.”

“Winged words?” Menedemos echoed. “You knew the Aristophanes, and now you’re quoting Homer. By the dog, which of us is which?”

“Oh, no, you don’t. You won’t get away with that, you rascal. If you say you’re me and I’m you, you get out of the oath you gave me in Salamis.”

They both laughed. Menedemos said, “Well, it wouldn’t be hard for you to keep. You don’t go looking to sleep with other men’s wives anyhow.”

“I should hope not,” Sostratos answered. “But you can’t be me, because you didn’t spend all that time over the winter learning Aramaic.”

“I’m glad I didn’t, too. You sound like you’re choking to death every time you speak it.” Menedemos put on a horrible Phoenician accent: “Dis iz vat joo zound lige.”

“I hope not,” Sostratos said.

“Go ahead and hope. You still do.”

They kept on chaffing each other as Menedemos sailed the Aphrodite southeast. Going due east from Salamis would have shortened their journey across the I

Sostratos looked back toward Salamis. Already, the coast of Cyprus was no more than a low line on the horizon. The akatos would be out of sight of land for three days, maybe four, on the way to Phoenicia. Except for the journey south from Hellas and the islands of the Aegean to Alexandria, it was the longest journey over the open sea a ship was likely to have to make.

“I wouldn’t want to do this in a round ship,” Sostratos said. “Suppose you got halfway across and the wind died? Sitting out there, bobbing in the middle of nothing, hoping you wouldn’t run out of water and wine…” He tossed his head. “No, thanks.”

“That wouldn’t be much fun,” Menedemos agreed. “I don’t like the idea of riding out a storm out of sight of land, either. When that happened on the way west from Hellas to Italy a couple of years ago, we were lucky to make as good a landfall as we did.”

“There ought to be a better way to navigate out on the open sea,” Sostratos said. “Sun and stars, wind and waves, just aren’t enough. Ships that set out for Alexandria can end up almost anywhere along the Egyptian coast, in the Delta or in the desert to the west, and then have to beat their way back.”

“I won’t say you’re wrong, because you’re right,” Menedemos replied. “But how would you do such a thing? What else is there but sun and stars, wind and waves?”

“I don’t know,” Sostratos said fretfully. He’d feared Menedemos would ask him that, for he had no answer to give. “Maybe there’s something, though. After all, T don’t suppose the very first sailors knew enough to cast a line down to the seabed so the lead’s hollow bottom, full of tallow, would bring up sand or marl that helped tell them where they were.”

“That’s… probably true,” Menedemos said, “I don’t remember Homer talking about sounding leads in the Iliad or the Odyssey, and resourceful Odysseus would surely have used one if he’d known about it.”

“Herodotos does mention them, so they’ve been known for more than a hundred years,” Sostratos said. “Sometime between the Trojan War and the Persian Wars, some clever fellow figured that out. I wonder who. I wonder when. I wish I knew. That’s a man whose name deserves to live. I wonder if he was a Hellene or a Phoenician or a gods-detested Lykian pirate. I don’t suppose anyone will ever know for certain.”

His cousin gave him an odd look, “It hadn’t even occurred to me that the fellow who came up with the lead could have been anything but a Hellene.”

“We’ve borrowed all sorts of things,” Sostratos said. “The Phoenicians gave us the alpha-beta. Theirs is older than ours, and you should have heard Himilkon go on and on about how they’re happy with it just the way it is. The Lydians were the first ones to mint real coins, or so Herodotos says-before that, everybody had to weigh out scrap gold and silver. And even Dionysos is supposed to come from out of the distant east, so maybe we learned to make wine from barbarians, too.”

“Wherever we learned it, it’s a good thing we did,” Menedemos said. “I wouldn’t want to spend my whole life drinking water. Or it could be even worse than that. We could drink milk the way the Thracians and the Skythians do.” He made a revolted face, sticking out his tongue like a Gorgon painted on the facing of a hoplite’s shield.

“That would be dreadful.” Sostratos made a nasty face of his own. “Cheese is all very well-cheese is better than all very well, as a matter of fact-but milk?” He tossed his head. “No, thanks.”

“We found out the Syrians don’t fancy seafood, remember,” Menedemos said. “Now that’s ignorance, nothing else but,”

“Of course it is,” Sostratos said. “And that strange god the Ioudaioi worship won’t let them eat pork.” He sent his cousin a warning look. “You’re going to start talking about Pythagoreans and beans and farting again, aren’t you? Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to do any such thing,” Menedemos insisted. Sostratos didn’t believe him for a moment. But then his cousin went on, “What I was going to do was tell you there’s a little tiny island between Lesbos and the Anatolian mainland that’s called Pordoselene.”

“What? Fartmoon?” Sostratos exclaimed. “I don’t believe it,”

“Apollo smite me if I lie,” Menedemos said solemnly. “It even has a polls of the same name. And there’s another island, even smaller, also called Pordoselene, in front of the polis, and that island has a temple to Apollo on it.”

“Fartmoon,” Sostratos said again, and shrugged in bemusement. ‘‘We’re not even out of sight of land yet, but we’re already getting… peculiar. By the time we spy the Phoenician coast, I expect we’ll all be raving mad.” He sounded as if he was looking forward to it.