Owls to Athens sam-4

by Harry Turtledove

  A step here, three there, half a dozen there, he made his way back into the built-up part of Athens. A young man who’d already poured down too much wine leaned over a low wall puking it up again. A man and a woman-no, they weren’t Menedemos and anyone, Sostratos noted with relief-ducked into a house, or perhaps an inn. A woman whirled through the crowd, dancing and clicking castanets. She stood on tiptoe to kiss Sostratos on the cheek, then spun away before he could put his arms around her.

  Even before he got to the temple, Sostratos heard the frightened lowing and bleats from the animals as they smelled the blood of those already sacrificed. Soon he could smell it himself: a heavy, rusty odor that penetrated all the other stinks of the city.

  More slave constables kept things orderly in the temple precinct as people queued up to get their gobbets of meat. The butchery was crude. The only requirement was for all the pieces to be of about the same size, so that one person in line didn’t take away more than another. Some people got a fine chunk, some a piece full of gristle and fat. That was just luck, luck and where one happened to stand in line.

  Flies buzzed all around, more of them every minute as the stream of sacrifices yielded ever more offal and blood. If they’d lit only on refuse, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But, of course, they came to rest wherever they pleased. One landed on the soft flesh between Sostratos’ left eyebrow and eyelid. He tossed his head like a spooked horse. The fly hummed away. He swatted at it with the palm of his hand, but missed. A moment later, another bit him on the back of the calf. He slapped his leg. The fly squashed under his fingers. He wiped his hand on his chiton and took a step toward the temple, feeling a little better for having killed one bug.

  Ancient, gnarled olive trees gave shade from the warm spring sun as the queue snaked forward. The trees were surely at least as old as the temple itself-and it was in such bad repair, a new building would have been needed to do Dionysos justice. A northerly breeze rustled through the gray-green leaves overhead. Peeping birds hopped and fluttered from branch to branch. Sostratos hoped they were eating some of the flies.

  “In the name of the god, here is meat from the sacrifice,” a priest said, and handed a piece to the woman in front of Sostratos.

  “In the name of the god, I thank you for it,” she replied, and carried it away.

  Sostratos took her place. The priest gave him a piece of about the same size. “In the name of the god, here is meat from the sacrifice.” He sounded bored. How many times had he said the same thing today?

  “In the name of the god, I thank you for it,” Sostratos said. How many times had the priest heard that? As many as he’d spoken his own ritual phrase, surely.

  As Sostratos took his chunk of meat away, the priest turned to the next man. “In the name of the god…” Sostratos did a little surreptitious poking and prodding at the meat. It seemed a pretty good piece. He took it back to Protomakhos’ house. On the way, he heard a scuffle, an angry shout, and then the rapidly fading sound of running feet. Someone probably wouldn’t get to eat the sacrificial portion for which he’d stood in line so long.

  The proxenos’ cook was a Lydian named Myrsos. He too poked at the meat, more assuredly than Sostratos had done. “This is a good piece, most noble one,” he said in almost unaccented Greek. “It is better, I think, than the one my master brought home. Will your-cousin, is it?-also bring me a chunk?”

  “My cousin, yes. I don’t know. We got separated in the crowd,” Sostratos answered. If Menedemos had found a woman who pleased him, he might not come back for some little while. To put that thought out of his mind, Sostratos asked, “What will you do with the meat you have?” That he seldom ate meat made him more curious.

  “I shall make a kandaulos, a Lydian dish,” Myrsos told him. “The ingredients are boiled meat, bread crumbs, Phrygian cheese, anise, and a fatty broth in which to simmer them all. It is a famous delicacy among my people, and you Hellenes have come to relish it, too.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Sostratos said. “Doesn’t Menandros mention it in The Cook’? How does it go?

  ‘Rich fool of an Ionian, making his thick soups-

  Kandaulos, food that rouses lust.’ “

  “It is a thick soup, yes, sir,” Myrsos answered. “I hadn’t heard those verses before, and I don’t think it rouses lust.”

  “If Menedemos thought it did, he’d bring you back a whole cow,” Sostratos said.

  The Lydian smiled. “He’s a young gentleman-and so are you.” His own hair held more than a little gray. He went on, “Whether it rouses lust or not, it is tasty. And, after I serve the master and you Rhodians,

  I’ll be going out into town myself tonight, to see if I can find a friendly lady. I’d do the same thing even if I weren’t eating kandaulos, too.”

  “Yes, anything can happen on the first night of the Dionysia, can’t it?” Even if the festival wasn’t so wild here as elsewhere, Sostratos had some warm memories of his own earlier stay in Athens. He said not a word about Myrsos’ supper plans. Cooks always ate as well as the people for whom they worked.

  Menedemos came back to Protomakhos’ house late that afternoon. He did contribute a piece of meat to the kandaulos. He smelled of wine and looked pleased with the world. “Protomakhos can say what he wants. It’s a Dionysia, all right,” he declared, splashing water from the fountain in the courtyard on his face and over his head. “If you can’t find a woman today, you’re not trying very hard. I wonder how many babies born this winter won’t look like their mothers’ husbands.”

  “Sometimes it’s better not to ask a question,” Sostratos observed.

  “You say that? You?” Menedemos gave him an owlish, half-sozzled stare. “The fellow who never once leaves off asking things?”

  “I say it, yes. Some questions should be left quiet. If you don’t believe me, think about Oidipous, lord of Thebes. His flaw was following the truth too far. It’s possible. It’s not common, but it’s possible.”

  “All right, my dear. I’m not going to argue with you now, that’s for sure. I’m in no shape for it. You’d tear me limb from limb.” Menedemos belched softly.

  “Was that you I saw kissing a woman in the agora, just after the parade went by?” Sostratos asked. “The crowd had already swept us apart, so I wasn’t sure. If it was, you didn’t waste any time at all.”

  “Yes, that was me,” Menedemos answered. “We found someplace quiet-well, out of the way, anyhow-and had a good time. And then I met a slave girl with hair as yellow as a golden oriole’s feathers. You probably would have liked her, Sostratos; you seem to fancy barbarians who look out of the ordinary.”

  “I do like red-haired women,” Sostratos admitted. “I gather you liked this blonde pretty well.”

  “About this well.” Menedemos held his hands a couple of palms apart. Sostratos snorted. His cousin went on, “And I had a bit of wine- well, maybe more than a bit-so I thought I’d come back here, lie up for a while, have some supper, and then go see what things are like tonight. They’ll be wilder, or I miss my guess.”

  “Probably,” Sostratos said. “Do remember, though, the theater opens tomorrow morning as soon as it’s light. Three days of tragedies, then one of comedies.”

  “Yes, yes.” Menedemos mimed an enormous yawn. “I’ll probably have to use twigs to prop my eyelids open, but so it goes.” He paused to sniff. “Mm-that must be the kandaulos. I’d rather smell it cooking than the dogs next door, by Zeus. And… I wonder if Sikon knows how to do up a kandaulos. With meat from a sacrifice, that would be a fancy dish he could fix without making my father’s wife yell at him because the ingredients are so expensive.”

  “They do quarrel, don’t they?” Sostratos said.

  “It’s better than it used to be, but even so…” Menedemos rolled his eyes. The yawn that followed looked genuine. “I am going to sleep. Have one of Protomakhos’ slaves bang on the door before supper, will you?” Without waiting for an answer, he headed off toward the room the Rhodian proxenos h
ad given him.

  He automatically thinks I’ll do what he tells me. Sostratos kicked at a pebble in the courtyard. Menedemos had always thought that, ever since the two of them were children. Most of the time, he’d been right. That gift for getting other people to do what he wanted made him a good skipper. It could also make him very annoying. Sostratos did tell a slave to wake his cousin before supper. Then he went to the kitchen and dipped out a cup of wine. Maybe drinking it would soothe his feeling of being used.

  He was sitting on an olive-wood bench in the courtyard when Protomakhos came downstairs. The Rhodian proxenos looked smug and happy. Were you celebrating the Dionysia with your wife? Sostratos wondered. That wasn’t the sort of license the festival ordained, but it somehow seemed more satisfying.

  “Hail,” Protomakhos said. As Menedemos had, he sniffed. “Ah, kandaulos. Smells good, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly does,” Sostratos said.

  They ate supper just before sundown, with lamps brightening Protomakhos’ andron. To Sostratos’ disappointment, Menedemos had emerged before the slave came to rouse him. Sostratos wouldn’t have minded his cousin getting bounced out of bed. Menedemos looked toward the kitchen. “If that Lydian soup tastes as good as it smells…” he said.

  It did. If anything, it tasted even better than it smelled. Sostratos couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything so rich and filling. “If we had meat all the time, we’d get too fat to show ourselves in the gymnasion,” he said, “but oh, wouldn’t we be happy?”

  “Nothing satisfies like it,” Menedemos agreed. “Well, nothing you can eat, anyhow.”

  Myrsos brought out a honey-cake full of layers of flaky dough for a sweet. It too was very fine. As he set the cake before the men in the andron, he said, “I’m off to join the festival, master.” He wasn’t asking permission. He was telling Protomakhos what he intended to do.

  “Enjoy yourself. I’ll see you in the morning,” Protomakhos replied. A man who tried to keep his slaves at work all the time and didn’t let them make merry now and again would have trouble with them in short order. The Rhodian proxenos plainly knew as much.

  Menedemos got to his feet after finishing a piece of cake. “I’m going to see what’s out there in the night, too,” he said. “How about you, Sostratos? Never know what sort of girl you might run into on a festival night.”

  “I know. Every other comedy, it seems, uses that in the plot these days,” Sostratos said. “A young man meets a girl when she’s out of the house for a festival-”

  “When else is he likely to meet her?” Protomakhos said. “When else is she likely to be out of the house?”

  “True enough, O best one, but it’s done so often, it’s getting trite,” Sostratos said. “Either he meets her when she’s out, or he gets her alone and has his way with her without even realizing she’s the girl he loves, or-”

  The Rhodian proxenos broke in again: “These things do happen. That happened with a cousin of mine, as a matter of fact, and Menandros and the other comedians didn’t dream of half the mess it caused between his family and the girl’s.”

  “Oh, yes. Certainly,” Sostratos said. “If it didn’t happen, you couldn’t write plays about it and expect anyone to take you seriously. But doing the same thing over and over again shows a lack of imagination. That’s what I think, anyhow.”

  “What I think is, you still haven’t said whether you’re coming out with me,” Menedemos said.

  “Not right now, anyhow,” Sostratos answered. “Maybe I’ll go out into the streets later on. Maybe I’ll go to bed, too. You snoozed this afternoon. I didn’t.”

  “I intend to go to bed,” Protomakhos said. “I’ve got too many years on me to head out after wild revels.”

  Menedemos’ raised eyebrow said Sostratos was a young man behaving like an old one. Sostratos’ raised eyebrow said he didn’t care what his cousin thought. He waited to see whether Menedemos would mock him out loud and start a quarrel. Menedemos didn’t. He only shrugged and started out of the andron.

  “Shall I have a slave get you up in time to go to the theater tomorrow?” Protomakhos called after him.

  After a long pause in the doorway for thought, Menedemos reluctantly dipped his head. “Yes, most noble one, please do,” he said, and then left.

  Protomakhos did go off to bed a little later. Sostratos sat by himself in the andron, now and then sipping wine and listening to Athens enjoy itself around him. Off in the distance, several women called out, “Euoiii! Euoiii!” and then burst into drunken laughter-playing at being maenads. Much closer, a man and a woman moaned and then gasped. By the soft thumps accompanying those sounds, they were probably making love up against a wall.

  I wish I could go out and have a good time like Menedemos, without second thoughts, instead of staying off to one side and observing. Sostratos picked up his cup once more, only to find it empty. Sometimes I can-every once in a while. Why not now? He shrugged. The only answer he could find was, he didn’t feel like it. If I don’t feel like doing it, I wouldn’t be having a good time if I did.

  A woman giggled, right outside the house. “Come on, sweetheart,” a man said. “We can lie here on my himation.”

  She giggled again. “Why not?”

  Why not? Sostratos could almost always find reasons why not. Finding reasons why came harder for him. He couldn’t find one now, and so he stayed where he was, listening to songs and laughter and revelry- and the dogs next door howling-as Athens celebrated the Dionysia. At last, with a shrug, he went back to the little room Protomakhos had given him. With the door closed, not much of the noise outside came in.

  Drifting toward slumber, Sostratos thought, No wonder I want to write a history one day. What else am I but a dispassionate observer, watching from the edge of the action? Herodotos had been like that, with a passion only for indulging his curiosity. Thoukydides and Xenophon, on the other hand, had made history as well as writing it. Maybe I will, too, one of these days. With that hope filling his mind, he fell asleep.

  It was still dark when a slave pounded on the door the next morning. The racket made Sostratos spring out of bed, his heart thuttering, afraid he’d been caught in the middle of an earthquake. Still naked, he’d taken two steps toward the door before reason routed blind panic. “I’m awake,” he called, and the pounding stopped. He went back to the bed to put on his chiton. The pounding started again, this time one door over. Sostratos smiled. His cousin would like it no better-indeed, would probably like it less-than he had.

  He opened the door and walked to the andron, where Protomakhos was breakfasting on bread and oil and watered wine. “Good day,” the proxenos said. “Have something to eat, and then we’ll go over to the theater. We’ll get there before sunup, which ought to mean choice seats.”

  “That seems good to me,” Sostratos said. A slave moving with the slow, quiet care of a man with a hangover brought him bread and oil and wine, too.

  Menedemos came into the andron a couple of minutes later. He moved much as the slave had. “Good day,” he said softly, as if the sound of his own voice might pain him.

  “Good day,” Sostratos and Protomakhos said together. Sostratos asked, “And how was your night of roistering?”

  “Enjoyable-then. I’m paying for it now,” Menedemos answered. When the slave brought him breakfast, he picked at the bread but gulped down the wine. After a little while, he dipped his head. “That’s better, by the dog of Egypt. Takes the edge off the headache.”

  Protomakhos rose from his stool. “Good. Let’s head for the theater, then.” Sostratos followed eagerly. Menedemos followed, too, but with a small groan.

  They picked their way through the morning twilight. The entrance lay only a few blocks north and east of Protomakhos’ house. People streamed towards it from all over the city, even this early. Accents far from Attic said more than a few of them had come a long way to see the day’s plays.

  When they got to the theater, Protomakhos handed
the attendant a drakhma, saying, “This is for the three of us.”

  “Certainly, best one,” the man said, and stood aside to let them by.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” Sostratos protested. “We wanted to buy your seat, to show in a small way how grateful we are for your kindness.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Protomakhos replied. “What is a proxenos for but to show his guests the sights of his own polis?”

  “Thank you very much,” Sostratos said. Menedemos dipped his head as if afraid it would fall off if he weren’t careful. He hadn’t said more than two or three words since leaving the proxenos’ house. He did look better than he had when he first came into the andron. Along with the wine, the cool, crisp air of early morning was helping revive him.

  The two Rhodians and Protomakhos made their way down toward the orkhestra, the outthrust, semicircular area where the chorus danced and sang. The narrow stone aisle had transverse grooves cut in it to help keep feet from slipping. The slope was one in eight, steep enough to make falls a danger.

  “This should do pretty well,” Protomakhos said, and stepped off the aisle to sit down on a stone bench. Sostratos and Menedemos followed. The benches were all the same, with a raised portion for spectators’ backsides and a lower part behind it where the people in the next row back could rest their feet.

  Women had their own section in the theater, off to the left by the Odeion. That area had been added on after the Odeion was built, for it fit around the corner of Perikles’ great structure. Looking toward the women seemed to make Menedemos recover better than wine or fresh air had done, even though many of them wore veils against the prying eyes of men.

  Protomakhos looked that way, too. “In my great-grandfather’s day, this was a place for men only,” he remarked.

  “I like it better this way.” Yes, Menedemos was coming back to life.

  Sostratos asked, “Do you know, best one, just when they did begin to admit women to the theater? “

  The proxenos tossed his head. “They’ve been coming as long as I can remember. That’s all I can say for certain.”