The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  Menedemos tossed his head. “No. All I know is, they were delicious.”

  “Expensive, too,” Baukis said. “If we make less money because of the war, how long can we afford such fancy opson?”

  “Quite a while,” Menedemos said in some alarm. However young she was, his father's second wife took her duties as household manager most seriously. She'd already had several rows with the cook. Menedemos went on, “We're still a long way from poor, you know.”

  “Now we are,” Baukis answered. “But how long will we stay that way if we make less and spend more? I'd better have a word with Sikon. Sooner or later, he'll have to listen to me.”

  She strode off toward the kitchen. Menedemos' gaze followed her. She didn't have a boy's hips and backside, not at all. And, here inside the house, she didn't veil herself against the prying eyes of men. It was practically like seeing her naked all the time. Menedemos’ manhood stirred.

  Baukis came out of the kitchen with bread, wine, and an indignant expression on her face. “He's not in there yet,” she complained. “He spends too much money, and he's lazy, too.” She sat down on the bench, hardly more than a cubit away from Menedemos, and began to eat her breakfast.

  Does she know what I feel? Menedemos wondered, as he had ever since realizing it himself the autumn before. He didn't think so, but. .. Is she sitting there to tease me? Is she sitting there because she has something in mind, too?

  He had more than a little practice seducing other men's wives. Here, he didn't want to use what he knew. He wished he were aboard the Aphrodite, a steering-oar tiller in each hand, wave and wind and the chance of pirates all he had to worry about. None of them seemed so dangerous as the woman beside him.

  Gulping down the last of his wine, he got to his feet and said, “I'm off. As long as I'm back in Rhodes, I have a couple of men I need to see.”

  “All right.” Baukis went on eating. Menedemos' withdrawal felt uncomfortably like headlong retreat.

  One of the advantages of being a free Hellene was having slaves to do the work one didn't care to do oneself. Sostratos took that for granted. His slave, a Karian named Arlissos, did not. “Is it much farther, boss?” he whined in almost unaccented Greek. “This polluted thing gets heavier every step I take.”

  Such illogical arguments were the wrong sort to use against Sostratos, who answered, “That's impossible,” and for good measure added, “And, since no place inside the walls of Rhodes is more than about ten stadia from anywhere else inside the walls, you're not walking all that far.”

  “I bet it seems farther to me than it does to you,” Arlissos said darkly.

  Sostratos didn't deign to reply to that. He was just glad he'd had Arlissos drape the gryphon's skull in a square of sailcloth before taking it through the streets of Rhodes. Otherwise, people would have stopped him every plethron—more likely, every few cubits— and pestered him with questions.

  Arlissos seemed more inclined to pester him with complaints: “And then, once we get where we're going, I'll have to lug it all the way back.”

  Not if I break it over your head, Sostratos thought. But he couldn't do that, no matter how tempting it might be. So far as he knew, this was the only gryphon's skull ever seen by Hellenes. He couldn't afford to have anything happen to it.

  “You'll have plenty of time to rest and loaf when we get where we're going,” he said. “In fact, if you slide back to the kitchen, you can probably wheedle the cook out of some wine, and maybe some figs or some nuts while you're at it.”

  The slave brightened, though he didn't seem to want to show Sostratos he was any happier. “My arms are going to come out of their sockets,” he grumbled.

  “Oh, be quiet,” Sostratos said, and then, “There's that little temple to Hephaistos, so it's only another couple of blocks.”

  They'd come into the western part of the city, most of the way from Sostratos' house to the gymnasion. But Sostratos didn't intend to strip off his clothes and run or wrestle. He exercised as little as he could get away with, not least because Menedemos easily outdid him when they went to the gymnasion together. Sostratos was larger than his cousin, but Menedemos was far quicker and more graceful.

  “I... think this is the house,” Sostratos said. He had trouble being sure; one blank housefront looked very much like another. If I'm wrong, he thought as he knocked on the door, whoever answers can probably set me right.

  Somewhere inside the house, a dog started barking. Arlissos set down the gryphon's skull so he could stretch and show how put-upon he was. He'd just picked up the skull again when somebody said, “Yes? What is it?” through the door.

  “Is this the house of Damonax son of Polydoros?” Sostratos asked.

  “Yes. Who wants to know?” The door still didn't open.

  Sostratos gave his own name, adding, “I've brought something your master may be interested in seeing.”

  “Wait,” said the man on the other side of the door. Sostratos duly waited. So did Arlissos, who exuded silent reproach. After a bit, the door did swing open on the lengths of doweling that turned in holes in the floor and the lintel. “He'll see you,” Damonax's slave reported. By his guttural accent and narrow, swarthy face, he was probably a Phoenician. “He's in the courtyard. Come with me.”

  “Hail, Sostratos,' Damonax said when the doorman brought the newcomers into the courtyard. He was a handsome man about ten years older than Sostratos, his hairline beginning to recede at the temples. Pointing to the sailcloth-shrouded bundle Arlissos bore, he asked, “What have you got there?” Like Sostratos', his Doric Greek—the dialect spoken in Rhodes—had an Attic overlay; he'd studied at the Lykeion for several years, returning to his home polis the year after Sostratos arrived.

  Like a conjurer performing at a symposion, Sostratos whipped away the square of sailcloth. “Behold!” he said. “A gryphon's skull!”

  “Really? You're joking.” Damonax got up off the bench where he'd been sitting and came over for a closer look. He tapped the skull with his fingernail. “No, by the dog of Egypt, I see you're not. Where on earth did you find it?”

  “Kaunos,” Sostratos answered, and explained how he and Menedemos had come by the skull. “I brought it here because you also studied under Theophrastos. What do you make of it?”

  “I wish you could have brought that tiger skin you mentioned, too,” Damonax said wistfully. “If going out to trade can lead to such marvels as this, the Hellenes who look down their noses at it may have to think again.”

  Most upper-class Hellenes looked down their noses at merchants. The life of a gentleman farmer was the ideal, with an overseer and slaves to do the actual work, giving the gentleman farmer himself the money and leisure he needed to live as he would, beholden to no one. Damonax wore two heavy gold rings; the clasps of his sandals were likewise golden, Roses scented the olive oil he rubbed into his skin. He lived the ideal.

  Acknowledging that, envying it, Sostratos said, “Thank you, O best one.”

  “Thank you for letting me see this.” Damonax pointed to the bench on which he'd been sitting, then spoke to Arlissos: “Why don't you put the skull down there, so your master and I can examine it as we please?”

  “I'll gladly do that, sir.” The Karian sighed with relief as he set down the skull.

  To his own slave, Damonax said, “Bring us some wine, Phelles, and some olives, or whatever else you find in the kitchen.” Nodding his head as barbarians often did to show agreement, the Phoenician hurried away. Damonax leaned close to the gryphon's skull and tapped it again. “It feels more like stone than bone,” he remarked.

  “ noticed the same thing,” Sostratos answered. “I don't know what it means, except that the skull is old and was buried for a long time.”

  “Not just old,” Arlissos muttered. “Heavy.”

  “Who was the philosopher,” Damonax asked, “who found petrified seashells on the mountainside and realized the ocean must have covered it long ago?”

  “I should know that.�
�� Sostratos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “A pestilence! I do know that.” He snapped his fingers, then suddenly grinned. “Xenophanes of Kolophon, that's who it was.”

  “Euge!” Damonax exclaimed. “Very well done indeed, in fact. I couldn't have come up with the name if you'd given me to Antigonos' nastiest torturer.”

  Phelles came back with a wooden tray on which he carried a bowl of olives and two cups of wine. He set them down on the bench by the gryphon's skull. Seeing no wine for himself, Arlissos took the tray from Phelles' startled hands. “Here, my friend,” Sostratos' slave said, “let me carry this to the kitchen for you.” Sostratos popped an olive into his mouth to hide a smile. If Arlissos didn't end up with a snack, he would be surprised.

  Damonax pointed to the back-projecting horn. “Pity this bit seems broken off. I wonder what the beast would have looked like when it was alive.”

  “Not so pretty as gryphons are supposed to be, I suspect,” Sostratos said. “And what do you make of its teeth?”

  “I didn't pay any attention to them,” Damonax confessed. As Sostratos had in the market square at Kaunos, the other Rhodian picked up the skull and turned it over for a closer look. When he put it down on the bench again, his face was thoughtful. “Doesn't have much in the way of fangs, does it?”

  “I thought the same thing,” Sostratos said. “How is it supposed to guard the gold at the edge of the world and fight off thieves?”

  “With its claws, perhaps,” Damonax suggested, and Sostratos dipped his head—that was a good idea, and it hadn't occurred to him. The older man looked from him to the gryphon's skull and back again, “Tell me, best one, now that you've got this remarkable thing here, what did you have in mind doing with it? Are you going to keep it at your house and tell stories about it the rest of your life?”

  “No, by Zeus!” Sostratos exclaimed.

  “Ah.” Damonax looked wise. “Then you'll want to sell it, I expect.” Try as he would, he couldn't keep a slightly dismissive tone from his voice. No matter what he says, he really does look down on traders, Sostratos realized. Smoothly, Damonax went on, “I could give you a good price for it myself, as a matter of fact.”

  So you can keep it here and tell your own stories about it, Sostratos thought. He tossed his head. “I was going to take it to Athens, to let the philosophers at the Lykeion and the Academy examine it.”

  As if he hadn't spoken, Damonax said, “How does two minai sound?”

  “Two hundred drakhmai?” Sostratos tried hard not to show how startled he was. Menedemos, he was certain, would have sold the gryphon's skull on the spot, and spent the next year bragging about the profit he'd squeezed from worthless, ugly bones.

  Damonax must have taken astonishment for rejection, for he said, “Well, if you won't take two, what about three?”

  Part of Sostratos, the part that made him a pretty good merchant, wondered how high Damonax would go to buy the skull. The other part, the part that valued knowledge for its own sake, quailed in horror. Gods be praised my family is well enough off that I don't have to sell it for the first decent offer that comes along.

  “You're very kind,” he said, by which he meant, You're very greedy, “but I really do intend to take it to Athens. I'd be on my way there now if my ship hadn't had to bring the Rhodian proxenos and his kin here from Kaunos.”

  “Four minai?” Damonax said hopefully. Sostratos tossed his head again. Damonax sighed. “You're serious about going to Athens, aren't you?”

  “Yes, of course I am,” Sostratos replied.

  “Isn't that interesting? And here I thought someone who traded things for money would trade anything for money.” Damonax didn't seem to think Sostratos might take that for an insult: the older man hadn't quite called him a whore, but he'd come close. Damonax continued, “You never did explain why you had to get the Rhodian proxenos out of Kaunos.”

  “Didn't I?” Thinking back, Sostratos realized he hadn't. He told the other man about Ptolemaios' descent on Lykia.

  “Ah—that was news to me,” Damonax said. “Are you sure you won't reconsider my offer? I wish you luck getting to Athens from here. As soon as the word spreads, the Aegean will be full of war galleys. How much will Ptolemaios and Antigonos' sailors care about a gryphon's skull?”

  Sostratos grimaced. Ptolemaios' fleet was based on Kos, while Antigonos' navy sailed from ports on the Ionian islands farther north and on the mainland of Anatolia. Damonax was bound to be right: those ships would clash, Sostratos said, “We're free. We're autonomous. We're neutral. No one's ships have any business interfering with us.”

  “Certainly, that's how we Rhodians feel.” Damonax was polite as the ideal landed gentleman, too. That didn't keep him from asking the next obvious question: “Do you think the marshals' captains, or the pirates they hire to do their scouting and raiding, will agree with us?”

  “I can't answer that,” Sostratos answered, in lieu of saying, Not a chance they will. But he went on, “The Aphrodite will try to get to Athens, though.”

  “You are a stiff-necked fellow, aren't you?” Damonax said. “Suppose I were to give you six minai for that skull?”

  “I didn't bring it here to try to sell it to you.” Sostratos raised his voice: “Arlissos! Where have you gone and disappeared to?”

  When the Karian slave emerged, his cheeks were full as a dormouse's. “Are we leaving already?” he asked in disappointed tones around a mouthful of something or other.

  “I'm afraid we must.” Sostratos pointed to the gryphon's skull. “Wrap the sailcloth around that, and let's get's going.” He wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. Damonax had shown even more interest in the skull than he'd expected, and not of the sort he'd looked for. If the gentleman farmer suddenly called out half a dozen hulking slaves . . . If that idea hadn't yet occurred to Damonax, Sostratos thought it wise to leave before it did.

  “Are you sure I can't persuade you to let me take that skull off your hands?” Damonax said. “I offered a good price: six minai is a lot of money.”

  “I know, O best one,” Sostratos answered. “But I want to take it to Athens. And who knows? I may do better there.”

  He didn't believe it for a moment. By Damonax's expression, neither did he. But the older man didn't try to keep Sostratos from leaving, and no burly slaves appeared to rape away the gryphon's skull. Once out in the street again, Sostratos breathed a long sigh of relief. He and Arlissos hadn't gone more than a few steps back toward his own house before the slave asked, “Did he really say he'd give you six hundred drakhmai for these miserable old bones?”

  “Yes, that's what he said.” Sostratos dipped his head.

  “And you turned him down}” Arlissos sounded disbelieving. He sounded more than disbelieving; he sounded as if he'd just witnessed a prodigy. “By Zeus Labraundeus, master, I don't think you'd turn down six hundred drakhmai for me?

  He might well have been right. Karian slaves were cheap and easy to come by in Rhodes, while the gryphon's skull was—and, Sostratos was convinced, would remain—unique. Instead of saying so straight out, Sostratos tried a joke: “Well, Arlissos, you have to understand: it eats a lot less than you do.”

  “Six hundred drakhmai,” Arlissos said; Sostratos wondered if the slave had even heard him. “Six hundred drakhmai, and he said no.” He looked down at the shrouded skull and spoke to it as if they were equals in more than price: “Hellenes are crazy, old bone, you know that?”

  Sostratos indignantly started to deny it. Then he thought about what Menedemos would say if his cousin found out he'd turned down six minai for the gryphon's skull. Menedemos would be certain at least one Hellene was raving mad.

  “No,” Menedemos said impatiently when Sostratos began to pester him again. “We can't sail for Athens as soon as you want,”

  “But—” his cousin began.

  “No,” he repeated. “I want to get out of Rhodes, too, but we can't, not right now. Have you seen these new gemstones coming in fr
om Egypt, the ones called emeralds?”

  “I've heard of them. I haven't seen any yet,” Sostratos replied.

  “Well, my dear, you'd better, if you think you can pry me out of Rhodes before I pry some emeralds out of this round-ship captain who has some,” Menedemos declared.

  “But the gryphon's skull—” Sostratos protested.

  “No!” Menedemos tossed his head. His shadow tossed, too, and frightened a butterfly from a flower in the courtyard garden of Lysistratos' house. He watched it flitter away, then resumed: “The skull's been buried since before the Trojan War. We talked about that. Whether it gets to Athens now or next month or month after that doesn't matter so much. Whether I can get my hands on these emeralds does.”

  “That is logical,” Sostratos admitted. Then, when Menedemos hoped that meant he would be reasonable, he added, “But I still don't like it.”

  “Too bad,” Menedemos said heartlessly.

  Too heartlessly: he put his cousin's back up. “What makes these emeralds so special?” Sostratos demanded.

  “They're fine gems, that's what,” Menedemos answered. “They're as fine as rubies, except they're green, not red. They're greener than green garnets; they're as green as ... as ...” He was stuck for a comparison till he plucked a leaf from one of the plants in the garden. “As this.”

  “That's my sister's mint, and she'd give you a piece of her mind if she saw you picking sprigs,” Sostratos said.

  “How immodest,” Menedemos said. Except for her wedding, he hadn't seen Erinna unveiled since she was a little girl.

  “She does speak her mind,” Sostratos said, not without a certain pride. And she was probably up there in the women's quarters listening to every word said here in the courtyard. Women of good family might not get out much, but that didn't mean they had no way to find out—and to influence—what went on around them.

  “Let's give her a chance to talk behind our backs, then,” Menedemos said. “Till you've seen these stones, you have no idea why I'm in such an uproar about them. Thrasyllos has no idea I'm in such an uproar, you understand, and I'll thank you kindly not to give the game away.”