Sostratos bowed. “Just as you say, most noble one. I yield to you as the heroes of the Iliad yielded to ancient Nestor.”

“Now wait a bit!” Diokles exclaimed. “I’m not so old as that.”

“Are you sure?” Menedemos asked slyly. The keleustes, who was graying-but no more than graying-gave him a sour look. The rowers close enough to the stern to hear the chatter grinned back toward Diokles.

“You’re making for Patara?” Sostratos asked as the Aphrodite sailed southeast.

“That’s right,” Menedemos said. “I don’t want to put in anywhere along this coast except at a town. That’d be asking for trouble. I’d sooner spend a night at sea. We were talking about bandits a little while ago. This hill country swarms with ‘em, and there might be bands big enough to beat our whole crew. Why take chances with the ship?”

“No reason at all,” his cousin said. “If you were as careful with your own life as you are with the akatos here…”

Menedemos glowered. “We’ve been over this ground before, you know. It does grow tedious.”

“Very well, best one; I’ll not say another word,” Sostratos replied. Then, of course, he said several more words: “Helping to keep you out of harm’s way after you debauch some other man’s wife grows tedious, too.”

“Not to me,” Menedemos retorted. “And I don’t usually need help.”

This time, Sostratos said nothing. His silence proved more embarrassing to Menedemos than speech might have, for his own comment wasn’t strictly true. Sometimes he got away with his adulteries as smoothly as Odysseus had escaped from Kirke in the Odyssey. In Taras a couple of years before, though, he had needed help, and in Halikarnassos the year before that…

He didn’t want to think about Halikarnassos. He still couldn’t set foot there for fear of his life, and he’d been lucky to escape with that life. Some husbands had no sense of humor at all.

Gulls and terns wheeled overhead. A black-capped tern plunged into the sea only a few cubits from the Aphrodite ’s hull. It emerged with a fine fat fish in its beak. But it didn’t enjoy its dainty for long. A gull started chasing it and buffeting it with its wings and pecking at it. At last, the tern had to drop the fish and flee. The gull caught the food before it fell back into the water. A gulp and it was gone.

Sostratos had watched the tern and gull. “As with people, so with birds,” he said. “The uninvited guest gets the choice morsel.”

“Funny,” Menedemos said, grinning.

But his cousin tossed his head. “I don’t think so, and neither did the tern.”

“Haven’t you ever got drunk at one symposion and then gone on to another one?” Menedemos asked. “Talking your way in-sometimes shouting your way in-is half the fun. The other half is seeing what sort of wine and treats the other fellow has once you do get inside.”

“If you say so. I seldom do such things,” Sostratos answered primly.

Thinking back on it, Menedemos realized his cousin was telling the truth. Sostratos always had been a bit of a prig. Menedemos said, “You miss a good deal of the fun in life, you know.”

“You may call it that,” Sostratos said. “What about the fellow whose drinking party you invade?”

“Why would he throw a symposion in the first place if he didn’t want to have fun?” Menedemos said. “Besides, I’ve been to some that turned out jollier on account of people who came in, already garlanded, off the street.”

He suspected he sounded like Bad Logic in Aristophanes ’ Clouds, and he waited for Sostratos to say as much. Menedemos liked Aristophanes ’ bawdy foolery much more than his cousin did, but Sostratos knew-and disapproved of-the Clouds because it lampooned Sokrates. To his surprise, though, Sostratos brought up the Athenian in a different way: “You may be right. You know Platon’s Symposion, don’t you, or know about it? That’s the one where Alkibiades comes in off the street, as you say, and talks about the times when he tried to seduce Sokrates.”

“Wasn’t Sokrates supposed to be ugly as a satyr?” Menedemos asked. “And wasn’t Alkibiades the handsomest fellow in Athens back whenever that was?”

“About a hundred years ago,” Sostratos said. “Yes, Sokrates was ugly, and yes, Alkibiades was anything but.”

“Why did Alkibiades try to seduce him, then?” Menedemos asked. “If he was as handsome as that, he could have had anybody he chose. That’s how things work.”

“I know,” Sostratos said, a certain edge to his voice. Menedemos feared he’d stuck his foot in it. He’d been an exceptionally handsome youth and enjoyed the luxury of picking and choosing among his suitors. Nobody’d paid court to Sostratos, who’d been-and who still was-tall and gawky and plain. After a moment, Sostratos went on, “If Alkibiades could have chosen anyone he wanted but set out to seduce Sokrates, what does that tell you?”

“That he was very nearsighted?” Menedemos suggested.

“Oh, go howl!” Sostratos exclaimed. Diokles laughed out loud. He wasn’t beating out the stroke now; with a good breeze from out of the north, the Aphrodite made for Patara by sail alone. Sostratos visibly gathered himself. “He knew Sokrates was ugly. Everybody knew Sokrates was ugly. So what did he see in him, if not the beauty of his soul?”

“But it wasn’t his soul Alkibiades was after,” Menedemos pointed out. “It was his-”

“Go howl,” his cousin said again. “That’s the point of the Symposion: how love of the beautiful body leads to love of the beautiful soul, and how love of the soul is a higher thing, a better thing, than love of the body.”

Menedemos lifted a hand from a steering-oar tiller to scratch his head. “Love of the beautiful body, yes. But you just got done admitting Sokrates’ body wasn’t beautiful, or anything close to it.”

“You’re being difficult on purpose, aren’t you?” Sostratos said.

“Not this time.” Menedemos tossed his head.

“A likely story,” Sostratos said darkly. “Well, look at it like this: Sokrates’ soul was so beautiful, Alkibiades wanted to take him to bed even though his body was ugly. That’s quite something, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” Menedemos said. Sostratos looked as if he would have brained him with an amphora of olive oil had he said anything else. Of course he looks that way, Menedemos thought. If somebody handsome could fall in love with ugly Sokrates for the sake of his beautiful soul, why couldn’t someone do the same with plain Sostratos for the sake of his soul? No wonder he takes that story to heart.

He wasn’t used to such insights. It was as if, for a moment, a god had let him look out from Sostratos’ eyes instead of into them. He also realized he couldn’t say anything to his cousin about what he’d seen, or thought he’d seen.

The sun set. Sailors ate barley bread and olives and onions and cheese. Menedemos washed his frugal supper down with a rough red Rhodian wine: good enough to drink, but not to sell anywhere off the island. He stepped to the rail and pissed into the sea. Some of the sailors settled down on rower’s benches and went straight to sleep. Menedemos couldn’t. He sat down on the planks of the poop deck-he’d been standing all day- and watched the stars come out.

The moon, a waxing crescent, hung low in the west. It wasn’t big enough to shed much light, though its reflection danced on the sea behind the Aphrodite . Ares’ wandering star, red as blood but not so bright as it sometimes got, stood high in the southeast.

Sostratos pointed east. “There’s Zeus ’ wandering star, just coming up over the horizon.”

“Yes, I see it,” Menedemos said. “Brightest star in the sky, with Ares’ fading and Aphrodite ’s too close to the sun to spy for a while.”

“I wonder why a few stars wander like the moon but most of them stay in one place in the sky forever,” Sostratos said.