The Sacred Land

Menedemos sighed. He’d mostly been too busy to think about his father’s second wife since sailing out of Rhodes. That was one of the reasons, and not the least, he was so glad when winter ended and good weather returned. Brooding about Baukis could only lead to misery, and to trouble.

To try to get her out of his mind, he asked the huckster, “Do you also sell dried dates?”

The Phoenician didn’t speak a lot of Greek. Menedemos had to repeat himself and point to the sun before the fellow got the idea. When he did, he nodded again. “Sell sometimes,” he answered. His expression was scornful, though. “Dried dates for servants, for slaves. Fresh dates proper food, good food.”

“Did he say what I think he did?” Diokles asked after the huckster went on to the next pier. “Back in Hellas, we eat for a treat what’s slave food here? I like our kind of dates. But for honey, you can’t find anything much sweeter. Don’t know that I’ll want ‘em any more, though.”

“Can’t be helped,” Menedemos said. “Like I said, fresh dates won’t keep on a voyage back to Hellas, any more than fresh grapes would.”

“Well, maybe not,” the oarmaster said. “But it still galls me that the Phoenicians send us their leavings and keep the best for themselves. There was that miserable fellow with his cheap basket, and he’s selling something nobody in Hellas can have. It doesn’t seem right.”

“Maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t know what to do about it, either,” Menedemos answered. “Fresh is fresh, in figs as in pretty boys, and it won’t keep in either one. Boys sprout hair and figs sprout mold, and there’s nothing anybody can do to it.”

“There ought to be,” Diokles insisted.

Menedemos laughed. This was almost the sort of argument he and Sostratos would have all the time. The difference was, Sostratos knew enough in the way of logic to keep the discussion moving in one direction. Diokles didn’t, and neither did Menedemos himself. When hashing things out with his cousin, it hadn’t mattered. Now it did, and he felt the lack.

He wondered how Sostratos was doing among barbarians who not only didn’t have much in the way of logic, but who’d probably never even heard of it. “Poor wretch,” Menedemos muttered; if anything could be calculated to drive Sostratos mad, it was people who couldn’t think straight.

Sostratos sat in ithran’s i

Aristeidas and Moskhion had taken some of their pay and gone to visit a brothel. Teleutas would take his turn when one of them got back. The sailors from the Aphrodite seemed to have decided Menedemos would kill them if they left Sostratos alone for even a minute. He’d tried to convince them that that was nonsense. They’d paid no attention to his elegant logic.

Ithran’s wife was a handsome woman named Zilpah. She came up to Sostratos and Teleutas with a pitcher. “More wine, my masters?” she-asked in Aramaic; she spoke no Greek.

“Yes, please,” Sostratos replied in the same language. When she poured his cup full, Teleutas also held out his and got it filled again. The idea of drinking neat wine all the time didn’t bother him-on the contrary.

His eyes followed Zilpah as she walked away. “What a slut she is, to come and talk with us without even trying to cover her face.”

Sostratos tossed his head. “That’s our custom, not theirs. She has no reason to follow it. She seems a good enough woman to me.”

“Better than good enough,” Teleutas said. “She’d be a piece and a half in bed, I bet. Ithran’s a lucky dog. I’d sooner lay her than some bored whore who might as well be dead.”

“Drag your mind out of the chamber pot, if you’d be so kind,” Sostratos said. “Have you seen her paying attention to anyone but her husband? You’ll get us thrown out-or worse-if you treat her like a loose woman when she plainly isn’t.”

“I haven’t done anything with her. I haven’t done anything to her. I don’t intend to,” Teleutas said. But he’d had enough wine to speak his mind: “I’m not the only one who keeps watching her all the time, though, and there’s nobody can say I am.” He sent Sostratos a significant glance.

“Me? Are you talking about me? Go howl, you whipworthy rogue!” Sostratos exclaimed, so sharply that Zilpah, who usually paid no attention to talk in Greek, looked back in surprise to see what the matter was.

Sostratos gave her a sickly smile. She frowned back. But, when neither he nor Teleutas pulled out a knife or started swinging a stool like a flail, she relaxed and went back to what she’d been doing.

“Ha!” Teleutas sounded disgustingly sly. “I knew I put that arrow right in the middle of the target. If you were your cousin, now, you’d already know what she’s like under those robes. If she shows you her face, she’ll show you the rest, too, easy as you please.”

“Will you shut up?” Instead of shouting, as he wanted to do, Sostratos kept his voice to a furious whisper so as not to draw Zilpah’s notice again. “And I keep telling you, going around unveiled doesn’t mean the same thing here as it would back in Hellas. Besides, what would get me murdered faster than trying to seduce the i

“Menedemos wouldn’t worry about any of that,” Teleutas said. “All he cares about is getting it in.” He was, no doubt, right. He spoke with nothing but admiration. But what he saw as praiseworthy seemed blameworthy to Sostratos. Then the sailor added, “You only get in trouble if she doesn’t like it. If she does, you’re happy as a billy goat.”

“That only shows how much-or how little-you know,” Sostratos said. The women Menedemos seduced didn’t complain and didn’t betray him to their husbands. He commonly betrayed himself by taking insane chances to get what he wanted. He was lucky to have come out of Halikarnassos and Taras in one piece.

“I give up,” Teleutas said. “But tell me you’d throw her out of bed if you found her in there. Go on-tell me. I dare you.”

“It’s not going to happen, so there’s no point talking about it. Hypothetical questions have their uses, but that isn’t one of them.”

As he’d hoped, the formidable word gave Teleutas pause. Before the sailor could start up again, Aristeidas walked into the i

“Hail,” Sostratos answered. When Teleutas came back from the brothel, he would give a thrust-by-thrust description of what he’d done. Aristeidas didn’t have that vice. He was content to sit there and keep an eye on Sostratos. To encourage him to do that and nothing more, Sostratos sipped at his wine and half turned away.

That meant his gaze swung toward Zilpah. What would she be like in bed? he wondered. It wasn’t the first time the question had crossed his mind. He’d got angry at Teleutas not least for noticing. If the sailor had seen his curiosity (that seemed a safer word than desire), had Zilpah seen it, too? Worse, had Ithran?

He must know he has a good-looking, good-natured wife, the Rhodian thought, because they don’t shut their women away from the world, as we do, he must know other men will get to know her, too. He shouldn’t mind my admiring her, so long as I do it with my eyes and nothing more.

Sostratos dipped his head. Yes, that made good logical sense. The only trouble was, logic was often the first thing out the window in dealings between men and women. If Ithran caught him staring at Zilpah, the Ioudaian might prove as jealous as any Hellene would have been on catching a man eyeing his wife.