Owls to Athens sam-4

by Harry Turtledove

  “Ha! I’ll believe that when I see it,” Menedemos said.

  A gray stone wall around the holy precinct kept him from getting more than a glimpse of the roof of the temple of Dionysos. That roof was of red tiles, like those of most of the nearby houses. These, though, were faded by the sun and cracked and weathered by who could say how many freezes and rainstorms. The temple had stood there a very long time.

  Menedemos pointed to a street that headed south just beyond the temple. “Shall we try this one?”

  “Why not?” Sostratos replied. “If we’re wrong, we can’t be far wrong. The Athenian said second or third house down, didn’t he?”

  “That’s right,” Menedemos said. When they came to the second house, he knocked on the door.

  Several dogs inside the house started howling: not little yapping lap-dogs, but Kastorian hunting hounds with big, deep voices. Menedemos found himself hoping whoever was in there wouldn’t open the door. He let out a sigh of relief when all he got was a hoarse shout: “Who’s there? What do you want?”

  “Is this the house of Protomakhos son of… uh…?”

  “Alypetos,” Sostratos supplied.

  “No,” the voice said over the baying of the hounds. “He lives next door, one house down.”

  “Artemis be praised for that,” Menedemos muttered as they went on to the next house. “If they’d opened the door to that last place, those dogs might have eaten us alive.”

  “We wouldn’t have been alive for long,” Sostratos said, relentlessly accurate. “And how would you like to live next door to that racket all the time? I like my peace and quiet. If it were me, I’d be tempted to throw some poisoned meat over the wall and get rid of a few of those beasts.”

  “It’s not just the racket, either.” Menedemos held his nose. “I know cities can’t help being smelly places, but I don’t fancy dog shit in my nostrils all day long. There’ll be more flies, too, especially when the weather warms up.”

  “Would you rather stay at an inn, then?” Sostratos asked.

  Menedemos sighed and tossed his head. “No, we’re here.” He knocked on the door. Again, someone on the inside asked who he was. He gave his name and Sostratos’, adding, “This is the house of the Rhodian proxenos, isn’t it?”

  The door opened. The man standing there had to be Protomakhos himself. He was about fifty, broad-shouldered, a little thick in the belly but still vigorous, with a face that would have been strikingly handsome but for a nose that had met a mishap somewhere and bent to the left. “Come in, friends,” he said. “Use my house as your own for as long as you’re in Athens. I’ve heard of your fathers. If you match them, you won’t be doing bad. Try to ignore the smell from next door; Demotimos raises hunting dogs.”

  “Thank you very much,” Menedemos and Sostratos said together. Protomakhos stood aside to let them in. A beginning, Menedemos thought. In he went, Sostratos at his heels.

  5

  “We thank you again for. Your generous hospitality,” Sostratos told Protomakhos over breakfast the next morning. Menedemos, who was also spooning up barley porridge and sipping watered wine in the andron, dipped his head in agreement.

  “My pleasure, best ones.” Protomakhos took a swig from his cup. The wine he served was no Ariousian, but it would do; it was a good deal better than what the Aphrodite carried for sailors to drink. The Rhodian proxenos went on, “I don’t know how much you’ll get done for the next seven days or so, what with the Greater Dionysia starting today. You’ll be paying your rowers for getting drunk in the god’s name.”

  Menedemos stirred at that, as if he hadn’t thought of it till now. Maybe he hadn’t. Sostratos had. It distressed his thrifty soul, but the alternative was missing the festival-and missing the plays that went with it. “We’ll just have to make the best of it, most noble one,” he said. “I’m not sorry your house is so close to the theater.”

  His cousin almost choked on his wine. Protomakhos chuckled. “Aha! So you did come for the plays. I wondered, but coming right out and asking is rude. Yes, this isn’t a bad place to start from if you fancy drama.”

  “I hope Menandros offers a comedy this year,” Sostratos said.

  “He’s supposed to be working on one,” Protomakhos said. “I don’t know if he’s finished it.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” Sostratos said. “I’m trying to convince Menedemos that comedy doesn’t start and stop with Aristophanes.”

  “I laugh at Menandros’ plays,” Protomakhos said. “I don’t see how you can help it, not unless you’re dead.”

  Sostratos glanced at Menedemos, to see how his cousin would take that. Menedemos was too polite to come right out and disagree with his host. Instead, he changed the subject: “I’ll enjoy the plays, I’m sure. I’ll also enjoy the rest of the festival for the god’s sake. Nothing wrong with plenty of wine, or with women who have license to be loose for a few days.”

  “There’s some of that at this festival, but less than at Dionysiai in other places,” the Rhodian proxenos warned. “In fact, there’s less of it than there was at the smaller festivity last month. I don’t want you fellows to have the wrong idea and get in trouble because of it.”

  “I already knew as much, having spent some time here,” Sostratos said. “We do appreciate your care for us.” Menedemos didn’t look as if he appreciated it at all, but Sostratos didn’t remark on that.

  Protomakhos said, “If you want to watch the parade into town from the Academy, you’d do well to head for the agora now. It fills up fast, with slaves as well as citizens. If you care to try your luck with women, that’ll be your best chance-unless you feel like going out at night, that is.”

  “Shall we?” Menedemos asked.

  “Why not?” Sostratos said. “If we’re going to give ourselves to the god, we should do it in fullness.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Protomakhos said.

  “Will you come, too, best one?” Sostratos asked him.

  He tossed his head. “I’ll wait till the procession gets to the temple of Dionysos here to pay my respects to the god. I’m an Athenian, you know, and not a young one. I’ve seen the Dionysia… well, a good many times by now. This part is always the same.”

  “All right.” Sostratos nudged Menedemos. “Come on. Hurry up. We don’t want to get there and find out we’re too far away from the Street of the Panathenaia to see anything.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Menedemos turned to Protomakhos. “I’m usually the one who has to hustle him along, you know. But he wants to see this, and so…” He made as if to pour himself another cup of wine. When Sostratos rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh, his cousin laughed and got to his feet.

  People were already out in the streets when they left the Rhodian proxenos’ house. A lot of the women looked like respectable wives and matrons: they weren’t all slaves and poor folk by any means. Now Sostratos was the one who laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Menedemos asked.

  “You,” Sostratos told him. “You’re so busy turning and looking at them all, you can hardly walk, and you haven’t got any idea which ones to smile at first.”

  “I don’t get to see a crowd of them like this very often,” Menedemos answered. “Most honest women who can afford it spend most of their time indoors, so I’m enjoying the… the variety.”

  “If you stare any harder, the Athenians will decide you’re a bumpkin from Akharnai who’s never come into the big city before,” Sostratos said. Menedemos made a face at him-Aristophanes had written a comedy about Akharnaians-but kept on looking around at all the pretty, fairly pretty, and even not so pretty women who’d come out to celebrate the festival.

  People were already passing cups of wine back and forth. Sostratos drank when somebody thrust one at him. The wine was neat and not very good. He took a small sip, then passed it to Menedemos. After drinking, Menedemos gave a woman the cup. Her smile showed two black front teeth. Menedemos didn’t speak to her after that. He hurried
on with Sostratos toward the agora. Phalloi decorated the streets, some of clay, some of wickerwork, some with cloth-covered wicker frames decorated with ribbons.

  Athens’ great market square lay on the flat ground northwest of the akropolis. The Street of the Panathenaia, a rutted dirt track, ran through it from northwest to southeast. Athens’ public buildings bounded the southern and western sides: the mint and a couple of fountains on the south, along with a covered colonnade that was not only full of people but had them clambering up to the roof like monkeys. On the west stood the generals’ headquarters, the round Tholos, which housed the rotating executive committee of the Council of Elders; the Bouleuterion, where the whole Council met, and the Royal Stoa, which also had people climbing its columns and up onto the roof.

  The agora itself was filling rapidly. Skythian constables, shouting in bad Greek, fought to keep the crowd from packing the Street of the Panathenaia and blocking the procession. Everyone struggled to get as close as he could. Sostratos was an uncommonly large man. Menedemos wasn’t, but he was an uncommonly good wrestler. They got closer than most.

  Sostratos pointed northwest, toward the Dipylon Gate and the Academy beyond the wall. “The god’s boat will come from that direction,” he said.

  Menedemos dug a finger in his ear. “The god’s what? The noise is dreadful, isn’t it? I thought you said ‘boat.’ “

  “I did. You’ll see,” Sostratos said. Someone trod on his toe. “Oimoi!” he exclaimed. Like any sailor, he always went barefoot. That had disadvantages in a crowd.

  “Sorry, pal,” said the fellow who’d stepped on him.

  “You’re lucky he’s not like some of those harlots,” Menedemos said. “You know the kind I mean: the ones who have FOLLOW ME or something like that written backwards on the bottom of their sandals in metal, so they leave the words in the dust of the street as they walk along. No fun at all if that comes down on your foot.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be,” Sostratos agreed. Thoughtfully, he went on, “I imagine the trade they’d bring in would vary from polis to polis, depending on how many men in each place can read. They’d do better here or in Rhodes than up in Macedonia-I’m sure of that.”

  “Only you-” Menedemos said, and then had to stop, for he was laughing too hard to go on. He needed some little while before he could continue. “Only you, my dear, could think of a whore and think of how much money she might make and why, and not of how she makes her money.”

  “I know how they make their money,” Sostratos said. “The other is something I hadn’t thought about before.” He started to say that made it more interesting, but checked himself. It did, to him, but Menedemos had already showrn he would make him sorry if he said anything like that.

  Flutes and drums and other instruments resounded, out beyond the northern edge of the agora. Heads swung in that direction. An Athenian stepped out into the Street of the Panathenaia to get a better look. One of the Skythian slave constables shoved him back into the crowd, shouting, “What you t’ink you does? How selfis’ is you?” Like a lot of barbarians, he couldn’t pronounce some of the sounds of Greek. Having tried to learn how to say the gutturals of Aramaic, Sostratos had more sympathy for him than he would have before.

  Unlike the Athenian, Sostratos was not only close to the Street of the Panathenaia but also tall enough to see over the crowd. Beside him, Menedemos twisted to look past the few people in front of him and now and then jumped in the air to get briefly above them. Once he too came down on Sostratos’ toes. “Papai!” Sostratos said in pain and annoyance. “Have you got FOLLOW ME on the bottoms of your polluted feet?”

  “Sorry.” His cousin didn’t sound sorry at all. He jumped up again. This time, he missed Sostratos when he landed.

  “Here they come!” The words raced through the crowd.

  Some of the dancers at the head of the procession were dressed as satyrs, with tight-fitting goatskin costumes, horsetails, erect phalloi as long as a man’s forearm, and snub-nosed masks that put Sostratos in mind of the way Sokrates was said to have looked. They shouted lewd suggestions at the pretty women they saw, sometimes aiming their phalloi at them like spears. Some of the women shouted lewd suggestions of their own; the Dionysia, even in the toned-down version of it celebrated at Athens, was a time when restraint went out the window.

  Behind the satyrs came maenads in torn, ragged tunics that suggested they’d been running wild on the mountainsides. Some of them carried thyrsoi, the ivy-tipped wands of Dionysos. Others bore smoky, crackling torches. Still others had tambourines. To the accompaniment of that jingling music, they called, “Euoiii! Euoiii!”-the cry of the god’s followers.

  Menedemos nudged Sostratos. “By the god of wine, what’s that?”

  “I told you,” Sostratos answered. “That’s the boat of Dionysos.”

  The ancient wooden image of the god, slightly above life size, was indeed pulled down the Street of the Panathenaia in a boat by a team of captering satyrs. The planking almost concealed the four large wheels on which the landboat rolled. Except for those wheels, it seemed perfect in every respect, from painted eyes and ram at the bow to goose-headed sternpost. Two more satyrs, these playing flutes, shared the boat with the image of Dionysos. A wreath of leaves crowned the god’s head, as if he were enjoying a symposion. His right hand held more greenery, symbolic of fertility and renewal.

  “That’s… very strange to see,” Menedemos said as the boat drew near. “What’s the point to this parade, anyway?”

  “You mean, besides just celebrating the god?” Sostratos asked, and his cousin dipped his head. Sostratos said, “Back about two hundred fifty years ago, the little town of Eleutherai, up on the border with Boiotia, became part of Attica. To symbolize the joining, they paraded this very statue from Eleutherai to the temple at the foot of the Athenian akropolis-it has to be more than two hundred stadia from Eleutherai down to here. Now they just take the image out of the temple and up to the Academy, a little outside the walls, the day before the Dionysia and then have this procession bringing it back on the day the festival starts.”

  Rattling and creaking, the boat went by. The image of Dionysos smiled its secret smile. Sostratos had seen that expression on old statues of youths here in Athens and elsewhere around the Inner Sea. The smile seemed particularly fitting for a god whose rituals were so wrapped in mystery.

  Behind the boat came a chorus of boys singing Dionysos’ praises. Their leader walked backwards in front of them, directing the hymns. He’d come all the way from the Academy like that. Sostratos wouldn’t have wanted to try it; he feared he would have fallen on his fundament, probably right about here, where the most people could see him do it and laugh. That thought had hardly crossed his mind before one of the boys, a very handsome one, coughed loudly from the dust the boat of Dionysos kicked up. He went scarlet to the roots of his hair. The leader of the chorus pulled a horrible face, which could only have made the boy feel worse. People would remember a public mistake like that for years.

  “Poor fellow,” Menedemos murmured. “I wouldn’t mind consoling him.”

  “I’ll bet you wouldn’t, and I know just how,” Sostratos said.

  Menedemos laughed. “The festival of Dionysos is for things like that.” He looked around. “I’d rather do it with a woman, though.”

  “I expect you’ll have your chance,” Sostratos said. “You’ll have your chance to gorge on meat today, too. Here come the sacrificial animals.”

  Guided along by herdsmen, cattle and sheep shambled down the Street of the Panathenaia. Sheep bleated. Cattle lowed and swung their heads from side to side, uneasy in the presence of so many people. Once Dionysos’ image returned to its temple, the god would get the beasts’ fat-wrapped thighbones while the spectators shared the rest of the meat.

  More big phalloi ended the procession. As the men who carried them went by, the Skythian constables stopped holding back the crowd. Men and women streamed down the Street of the Panathenaia after the pa
rade. Some of them waved jars of wine and passed them back and forth. Others sang snatches of Dionysiac hymns.

  “Come on,” Sostratos said. “Let’s head for the temple. We can get our share of beef or mutton, and take it back to Protomakhos’ house.”

  “Or even piggy,” Menedemos said, and Sostratos made a face at him for the vulgarity.

  One constable after another stood aside. The whole packed agora tried to funnel itself into the Street of the Panathenaia. The result, of course, was that nobody moved very fast. Sostratos said, “Well, Menedemos, we won’t get to the temple in a hurry… Menedemos?” He looked around. That might have been his cousin kissing a woman ten or twelve cubits behind him. On the other hand, it might not. Quite a few couples were embracing in the crowd, and those ten or twelve cubits were so packed with humanity that he got only a very partial glimpse of that one. He shrugged and took a few steps south and east, toward Dionysos’ temple. Sooner or later, he’d get there. As for Menedemos-he could celebrate the Dionysia any way he chose.

  A fairly pretty woman breathed wine fumes up into Sostratos’ face as she tilted her head back to get a good look at him. “Are you really as tall as that?” she asked, and hiccuped.

  “Of course not,” he answered gravely. “I’m standing on stilts. I always do.”

  She looked down at his feet to see if he was joking. How much wine has she had? he wondered. A couple of beats slower than she should have, she laughed. “You’re a funny fellow,” she said. “And you’re tall.” She might have noticed it for the first time. Sending him a look intended for alluring but in fact more bleary, she added, “I like tall.”

  If he wanted his own Dionysiac adventure, he suspected he could find it. He didn’t, or not with her. He said, “Look at that big, handsome Macedonian over there. He’s got his eye on you.” When the woman turned her head, Sostratos pushed his way through the crowd, as far from her as he could go. By the time she looked back, he wasn’t there anymore. He feared she would come after him. If she did, though, she never caught up.