Sostratos eyed the men. “Probably. They’re bigger and fairer than most Athenians, anyhow. But Demetrios of Phaleron is the glove to Kassandros’ hand: what Kassandros wants done, Demetrios does. So they may be Athenians doing the Macedonians’ bidding.”
“I thought these walls would be more impressive,” Menedemos said. “They aren’t that tall, and they aren’t that strong.”
“They were first built in Perikles’ day, and generals then knew less about besieging cities than they do now, so the works didn’t have to be that strong to serve,” Sostratos answered. “They were strong enough to keep the Spartans out. Athens wasn’t stormed at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The Spartans starved her into surrender, and then made the Athenians pull down a stretch of the walls afterwards.”
Menedemos looked around. “Built up again,” he observed.
“Oh, yes,” Sostratos said. “The Athenians did that as soon as they thought they could get away with it.” His gaze went this way and that, too. The road up from Athens wasn’t much to look at: only a dirt track, with grass and bushes on either side. Even so ... “Walking this road, Menedemos . . . Walking this road is special. Perikles traveled on this road. So did Aiskhylos and Sophokles and Euripides. So did Thoukydides—and Herodotos, too, though he wasn’t born here. Sokrates walked this road, and Platon, and Aristoteles. And now - Sostratos and Menedemos.”
Menedemos went off behind a bush to ease himself. When he came back, he said, “Aristophanes might have pissed on that very same bush. What an honor!” He batted his eyes like a youth playing coy.
“To the crows with you,” Sostratos said. “I try to talk about what coming to Athens means to me, and what do I get? Filthy jokes!”
“Aristophanes lived here, too, and the other comic poets, though you didn’t bother mentioning them,” Menedemos said. “Are you going to tell me comedy isn’t part of what Athens stands for?”
“There’s a time and place for everything,” Sostratos replied, a weaker comeback than he’d thought he might give. Reluctantly, he dipped his head to his cousin. “All right. You have a point—of sorts.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much!” Menedemos cried.
“Enough,” Sostratos said. His cousin only laughed at him. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. He might have known that would happen.
But Menedemos wasn’t a complete scoffer. Pointing up to the akropolis, he said, “That’s the temple to Athena the Maiden, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s the Parthenon, sure enough,” Sostratos answered. The sinking sun shone brilliantly on the white marble and on the painted blues and reds and yellows of the Panathenaic frieze.
“I’ve seen a lot of temples in my time,” Menedemos said, “but that one’s as fine as any.”
Sostratos dipped his head. “I think so, too. We’ll have to make a trip up there so you can see the cult statue. It’s all gold and ivory, five or six times as tall as a man. There’s nothing like it except the great Zeus at Olympia—and Pheidias made that image, too.”
“All gold and ivory.” For a moment, Menedemos sounded as piratical as any Lykian. Then his thoughts turned to those a trader might have: “I wonder how much of the gold stuck to Pheidias’ fingers.”
“Perikles’ enemies charged Pheidias with that, and with putting his own face on one of the details of the ornamentation of the statue of Athena, and all manner of other things, for Perikles, of course, was his patron, and by striking at Pheidias they could embarrass the man through whom he did what he did,” Sostratos said.
“Well? What happened?” Menedemos sounded interested in spite of himself.
“He didn’t steal any of the gold. Perikles had warned him he might be challenged, so he made the gold plates for the statue easy to remove. When the Athenians took them down and weighed them, they found that none of the metal entrusted to him was missing. But then they started shouting, ‘Impiety!’ when they found out he’d put his portrait on one of the warriors on Athena’s shield—that’s what I was talking about before.”
“Men do that sort of thing all the time nowadays,” Menedemos remarked.
“I know, but this was more than a hundred twenty years ago, and they didn’t then,” Sostratos said. “And some say Perikles’ face was there with his. Some say Pheidias had to leave Athens. Others say he was made to drink hemlock, like Sokrates later.” He shuddered. So did Menedemos. They’d watched a man die of hemlock. It wasn’t so neat and tidy as Platon made it out to be. Sostratos went on, “I don’t think they killed him, but I can’t prove it. Too long ago now—no one who knew the truth is left alive.”
The walls of the polis of Athens loomed ahead. They were taller and more formidable than the Long Walls. All the traffic coming up from Peiraieus and going down to the port funneled through a single gate. A man leading a donkey with half a dozen amphorai lashed to its back came out of Athens toward Sostratos and Menedemos. An old man leaning on a stick went into the city ahead of the Rhodians. Guards asked him a question or two, then waved him forward.
One of the guards held up a hand. Sostratos and Menedemos dutifully stopped. In purest Attic, the guard said, “Who are you? What’s your business here?”
“We’re merchants from Rhodes,” Sostratos answered. “We hope to do business in Athens. Right now, we’re looking for our polis’ proxenos.”
“Pass on.” The gate guard stood aside.
“This isn’t quite the city proper,” Sostratos said, pointing ahead after they went through the gate. “There’s another wall up there, perhaps ten or twelve plethra farther along.”
“Yes, I see it over the roofs of the houses and shops,” Menedemos said.
“We have two choices for a gate there. One will bring us into the city north of the Pnyx, the other to the south,” Sostratos said.
“What’s the Pnyx?” his cousin asked. “Is it worth seeing?”
“It’s where the Assembly meets—or rather, where it did meet till a few years ago,” Sostratos replied. “These days, the people come together at the theater.” He didn’t point out—no telling who might be listening—that the Assembly’s meetings were much less important than they had been during the great days of Athens. These days, Demetrios of Phaleron or Kassandros’ officers or the Macedonian marshal himself decided what went on here. The people’s voice was stifled.
“Doesn’t sound that interesting, not to look at,” Menedemos said. “Let’s use the south entrance—that’s the shorter way to the akropolis and the theater, isn’t it?”
Sostratos dipped his head. “That’s right. You do remember your way around.”
“Some,” Menedemos said. “It’s been four or five years—that trading run where I met the charming lady in Halikarnassos, remember?”
“I’m not likely to forget,” Sostratos said. “It wasn’t the lady who was so memorable—”
“It was to me,” Menedemos broke in.
Sostratos overrode him: “It was her husband. I don’t know whether she will or not, but he’ll never forget you.”
“I’m probably not the only one he’s got to worry about.” Menedemos stepped up the pace. “Come on. There’s the gate. I can see it. Hurry up, won’t you? We do want to find the proxenos’ house before the sun goes down.”
You do want to change the subject, Sostratos thought. You don’t like getting reminded about outraged husbands. You didn’t even mention him—only his wife. Whose wife will you go after here? That was one question whose answer he hoped he wouldn’t learn. He caught up with his cousin. They reached the gate side by side. A yawning guard waved them through without a word. On they went, into Athens.
Menedemos did his best not to stare like a back-country farmer coming for the very first time into a town big enough to boast a wall. It wasn’t easy. On his last visit to Attica, he’d spent most of his time in Peiraieus. He’d been determined not to seem impressed there, too. Sostratos had almost had to drag him up to Athens to look around.
The first thing that stru
ck him was how big a polis it was. Rhodes was a good-sized city in its own right, but it didn’t come close to this one. Syracuse, in Sicily, was supposed to have been a match for Athens years before, but endless civil strife had taken its toll there. These days, only Alexandria deserved mention in the same breath—and Alexandria drew its wealth from all of Egypt, while Athens relied on Attica alone . . . Attica, and the wits of its citizens.
And, large as it was, Athens seemed even grander and more impressive. Menedemos’ eyes kept rising to the akropolis. “They put everything they had into this, didn’t they?” he murmured.
“That’s what Thoukydides says,” Sostratos answered. Plainly quoting, he went on, “ ‘For if the city of the Lakedaimonians were deserted, but the temples and the foundations of the buildings were left, after a long time had gone by there would be great disbelief at their power.’ Then he says, ‘But if this same thing happened to the Athenians, their power would likely be reckoned twice what it is, from the visible appearance of their city.’ “
“Well, I’ve got to hand it to the old boy,” Menedemos said. “He hit that one square in the middle of the target. This place is”—he looked around again, trying to come up with a phrase that fit—”a possession for all time.” Sostratos smiled at that. “What’s the matter now?” Menedemos asked indignantly. “Did I say something funny? I didn’t mean to.”
“Not funny, O best one—just. . . fitting,” his cousin replied. “That’s what Thoukydides intended his history to be: a ktema es aei.” He said the words for possession for all time in a very old-fashioned way; Menedemos supposed that was how Thoukydides had written them. Sostratos added, “His history is a hundred years old now, so it looks as if he’s getting what he wanted.”
“That’s true,” Menedemos said. “Here’s hoping somebody remembers us after we’re a hundred years gone.”
“Yes. Here’s hoping.” Sostratos’ voice had an edge to it.
Menedemos wondered what he’d done to irk his cousin. He didn’t want to offend Sostratos without meaning to; that took the fun out of it. Then he remembered Sostratos aspired to write history, too. Clapping him on the shoulder, Menedemos said, “Don’t worry about it, my dear. A hundred years from now, they’ll be talking about Sostratos and Thoukydides, not the other way round.”
“You’re a splendid flatterer. I hope I have wisdom enough to know when I’m being flattered, though,” Sostratos said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Menedemos said. Sostratos snorted. Menedemos turned serious again: “When should we start asking Athenians where the proxenos’ house is?”
“Not yet, by the dog,” Sostratos replied. “Wait till we get to the theater. Then we have some chance of getting a straight answer. If we ask now, most of these abandoned rogues will take our oboloi, spin us a pretty set of directions that lead nowhere, and go their way laughing at how they suckered the hicks from out of town.”
“Charming people,” Menedemos said.
“In many ways, they are,” his cousin said. “In many ways, mind you, but not all. They’re out for themselves, first, last, and always. So are most Hellenes, of course—”
“I was just going to say that,” Menedemos put in.
“Yes, but you wouldn’t tell a stranger fancy lies for the sake of an obolos and a laugh,” Sostratos said. “A lot of them would. They take being out for themselves further than most Hellenes do. They take almost everything further than most Hellenes do, for good and for ill. You don’t have to be fast to live in Athens, but it helps.”
“How did you manage, then?” Menedemos asked. His cousin was a great many things, but never fast, not the way he’d meant.
“For one thing, I learned to talk more like an Athenian,” Sostratos answered. “For another, I kept company with lovers of wisdom, who are—mostly—a different breed.”
“Oh,” Menedemos said. That made a certain amount of sense, but only a certain amount. “Why are the philosophers different? Have they figured out how to live without money?”
“Some of them have, by choosing not to care about a lot of the things most men go after money to buy,” Sostratos said. Menedemos tossed his head. That way wasn’t for him. He liked his comforts too well. Sostratos continued, “But a lot of men who can study philosophy and history their whole lives long are the ones who can afford to do that from the start. They don’t need to worry about an obolos here and an obolos there, because they come from rich families. They’ve got more silver than they can spend if they live to be ninety.”
That edge returned to his voice. Menedemos remembered how bitter he’d been when his father called him home from Athens. “Well, my dear, if we get rich enough, you can walk away from the trading business and spend all your time at the Lykeion again,” he said.
“Too late for me,” his cousin said. “I’ve been out in the world too long; I could never be indifferent to money—or take it for granted, the way a lot of philosophers do. And do you know what really irks me?”
“Tell me,” Menedemos urged. Every so often, Sostratos had to let out what ate at him or go wild.
“They don’t know how lucky they are,” he said now. “Remember, I told you I met that Hekataios of Abdera in Jerusalem when we were in the east last year? He was writing a history in Alexandria, and he found out the Ioudaioi had a role to play in it. So what did he do? He headed for Jerusalem to see what he could find out about them. He didn’t worry about the money—he just did it. I was so jealous, I wanted to wring his scrawny neck. There I was, worrying about what I could sell and what I might buy, and he took his own sweet time wandering around asking questions—when he found someone who spoke Greek to answer them, that is.”
“You’re the one who learned Aramaic,” Menedemos said.
Sostratos answered in that language, something so harsh and guttural and evil-sounding that three or four passersby spun around to stare at him. Menedemos didn’t think Sostratos noticed. Returning to Greek, he went on, “Yes, I’m the one who learned Aramaic, and I probably learned more about the Ioudaioi than Hekataios did, too. And much good it did me, because he’s the one who gets to write the book and be remembered.”
Slyly, Menedemos said, “You’re the one who laid the innkeeper’s wife.”
His cousin gave him a bleak laugh. “So I am. That didn’t work out, either. Afterwards, we both ended up unhappier than we would have if we’d never gone to bed together.”
“Yes, I know. That’s too bad. It’s not supposed to work that way.” The only times Menedemos hadn’t enjoyed adultery were the ones when the woman’s husband had found out.
Sostratos didn’t answer him now. They walked on through the narrow, winding, smelly streets of Athens. When Menedemos couldn’t see the magnificent buildings of the akropolis or those at the edges of the agora off to the northwest, the city seemed just another polis, an oversized one, but nothing out of the ordinary in the way most of its people lived. After doubling back from yet another dead end, he wished it, like Peiraieus, boasted a neat Hippodamian grid of streets.
No such luck, though. He and Sostratos had to scramble out of the way when a woman called, “Coming out!” from a second-floor window and emptied a chamber pot into the dirt street below. Flies started buzzing around the stinking puddle. A man wearing a himation in front of the Rhodians shouted curses at the woman, for the slops had splashed him. When she ignored the hard words, he flung a rock at the window. It rattled off a wooden shutter, breaking two of the slats. He went on his way, contented. From the safety of the upstairs room, the woman screeched her own curses at him. Now he ignored her.
“Welcome to life in the big city,” Sostratos said with a wry chuckle, although a scene like that could have happened in any Hellenic polis, regardless of size.
“It missed us, and we didn’t walk in it afterwards,” Menedemos said. “Past that, who cares?” They walked on for a little while, then turned onto a wider street that went more directly east. Menedemos pointed ahead. “Those c
urved rows of seats ahead—that has to be the theater.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Sostratos dipped his head. “And do you see the big stretch of tile roof beyond them?”
“Not very well. You’re taller than I am.” Menedemos jumped in the air, which made a couple of Athenians goggle. “All right—yes, it’s there. What is it?”
“That’s the Odeion,” his cousin answered. “Perikles had it built to house the musical contests at the Panathenaic Games. It’s so big, it has ninety pillars inside holding up the roof. People say it’s modeled after the tent Xerxes lived in when he invaded Hellas, but I don’t know if that’s true or just a story.”
“If it’s not true, it’s a good story,” Menedemos said. “Can’t ask for more than that.”
“I can ask for the truth,” Sostratos said, a little stiffly. “Whether I can find it after more than a hundred years is liable to be another matter.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Menedemos said. His cousin walked on without answering. I’ve gone and put his back up, Menedemos thought unhappily. Sostratos got much too touchy much too fast when it came to historical questions, though in other areas he would put up with more than most Hellenes did. Instead of trying to jolly him along, Menedemos waved to a passing Athenian. “Oê! You, there!”
“What do you want?” the fellow asked.
“Can you tell us how to get to the house of Protomakhos the marble merchant? He’s not far from the theater, is he?”
“Yes, I know where his house is,” the Athenian said, and said no more. Menedemos had expected nothing else. He gave the man an obolos. Popping the coin into this mouth, the Athenian continued, “It’s close by the temple of Dionysos, at the southwestern corner of the theater precinct. It’s on the left side of the street as you go south. I forget whether it’s the second or third house there, but you can knock on doors and find out.”
“Thanks,” Menedemos said.
“Any time, buddy.” The Athenian stuck his tongue in his cheek, as if to say, Any time you pay me: he might have been going after the obolos he’d just got.
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