“How can you hope to know that?” Menedemos said. “They do what they do, that’s all, and there’s an end to it.”

“Oh, I can hope to know why,” his cousin answered. “I don’t expect to, mind you, but I can hope. Knowing why something happens is even more important than knowing what happens. If you know why, you really understand. Sokrates and Herodotos and Thoukydides all say the same thing there,”

“And that must make it so.” Menedemos gave his voice a fine sardonic edge.

But Sostratos refused to rise to the bait. All he said was, “ Homer says the same thing, too, you know.”

“What?” Menedemos sat up straighter, so abruptly that something in his back crackled. Unlike his cousin, he had no great use for philosophers and historians. They breathed too rarefied an atmosphere for him. Homer was another matter. Like most Hellenes, he looked to the Iliad and Odyssey first, everywhere else only afterwards. “How do you mean?” he demanded.

“Think about how the Iliad starts,” Sostratos said. The Aphrodite bobbed up and down in light chop, the motion just enough to remind men they weren’t on land any more. Sostratos went on, “What’s the poet talking about there? Why, the anger of Akhilleus. That’s what causes the Akhaioi so much trouble. Homer ’s not just talking about the siege of Troy, don’t you see? He’s talking about why it turned out the way it did.”

Menedemos did think about that famous opening. After a moment, he dipped his head. “Well, my dear, when you’re right, you’re right, and you’re right this time. Do try not to let it go to your head.”

“Why don’t you go to the crows?” Sostratos said, but he was laughing.

“I’ve got a better idea: I’m going to bed.” Menedemos got to his feet, pulled his chiton off over his head, wadded up the tunic, and laid it on the planks for a pillow. Then he wrapped himself in his himation. Like most sailors, he made do with chiton alone in almost any weather. But the thick wool mantle, though he didn’t wear it over his tunic, made a perfect blanket. “Good night.”

Sostratos lay down beside him, also snug in his himation. “See you in the morning,” he said around a yawn.

“Yes.” Menedemos’ voice was blurry, too. He stretched, wriggled… slept.

Patara stood near the mouth of the Xanthos River. The hills above the city put Sostratos in mind of those above Kaunos, which the Aphrodite had just left. Red and yellow pine, cedar, and storax grew in those hills. “Plenty of good timber there,” Sostratos remarked.

“Hurrah,” Menedemos said sourly. “More for the polluted Lykians to turn into pirate ships.”

A couple of fives patrolled outside Patara’s harbor. The big war galleys had two rowers on each oar on the thranite and zeugite banks; only the bottom, or thalamite, oars were pulled by a single man. All those rowers made the ships speedy despite their heavy decking and the planks of the oarbox that protected the rowers from flying arrows. One of them, displaying Ptolemaios’ eagle on mainsail and small foresail, made for the Aphrodite .

“I don’t mind Ptolemaios drawing timber from this country,” Sostratos said.

“Better him than the Lykians, that’s for sure,” Menedemos agreed. “And the trees he turns into triremes and fours and fives, they can’t use forhemioliai and pentekonters.”

“Ahoy!” The call from Ptolemaios’ war galley wafted across the water, “What ship are you?”

Menedemos’ chuckle had barbs in it. “Sometimes it’s funny when round ships and fishing boats think we’re a pirate. It’s not so funny when a five does: this bastard can sink us by mistake.”

“Let’s make sure she doesn’t, eh?” Sostratos cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted back: “We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes.”

“A Rhodian, are you?” the officer at the how of the war galley said. “You don’t sound like a Rhodian to me.”

Sostratos cursed under his breath. He’d grown up using the same Doric drawl as anyone else from Rhodes. But he’d cultivated an Attic accent ever since studying at the Lykeion. More often than not, that marked him as an educated sophisticate. Every once in a while, though, it proved a nuisance. “Well, I am a Rhodian, by Athana,” he said, deliberately pronouncing the goddess’ name in the Doric style, “and this is a Rhodian merchant galley.”

“What’s your cargo?” the officer demanded. His ship came up alongside the Aphrodite . He scowled down at Sostratos; the five had twice as much freeboard as the akatos, and its deck had to rise six or seven cubits above the water.

“We’ve got fine olive oil, the best Rhodian perfume, silk from Kos, books, and a lion skin we just picked up in Kaunos,” Sostratos answered.

“Books, is it?” Ptolemaios’ officer said, “Can you read ‘em?”

“I should hope so.” Sostratos drew himself up very straight, the picture of affronted dignity. “Shall I start?”

The man on the war galley laughed and tossed his head. The crimson horsehair plume on his bronze helm nodded above him. “Never mind. Pass on to Patara. No pirate would get so pissy when I asked him a question like that.” The five went back to its patrol, big oars smoothly rising and falling as it glided away.

“Pissy?” Sostratos said indignantly. He turned to Menedemos and spread his hands. “I’m not pissy, am I?” Once the words were out of his mouth, he realized he’d asked the wrong man.

Menedemos smiled his sweetest smile. “Of course not, O marvelous one, not after you stood by the rail just a little while ago.” He could have done worse. Having expected him to do worse, Sostratos took that with hardly a wince.

Patara had two harbors, an outer and an inner. Menedemos took the Aphrodite into the inner harbor, but clucked distressfully when he saw how shallow the water was. He ordered a man up to the bow to cast the lead to make sure the merchant galley didn’t run aground on the way to a quay.

“Here we are,” he said with a sigh of relief as sailors tossed lines to longshoremen standing on the wharf. Some of the longshoremen were Hellenes, others Lykians who wore hats with bright feathers sticking up from them and goatskin capes over their shoulders. Most of the Hellenes were clean-shaven; the Lykians wore beards.

“This is a good harbor-now,” Sostratos said, looking around the lagoon. “I wonder how long before it silts up too much to use, though.”

“Well, it won’t be before we sail out of here,” Menedemos answered. “Nothing else matters right now.”

“You have no curiosity,” Sostratos said reproachfully.

“I wonder why not,” Menedemos said-curiously. Sostratos started to reply, then gave his cousin a sharp look. Menedemos favored him with another of those sweet smiles he would sooner not have had.

One of Ptolemaios’ officers came up the quay to ask questions of the new arrival. Patience fraying, Sostratos said, “I just told an officer aboard one of your fives everything you’re asking now.”

The soldier shrugged, “Maybe you’re lying. Maybe he won’t bother telling what you said in any report he makes. Maybe he won’t come back here for a day or two, or maybe his ship will get called away. You never can tell, eh? And so…” He went right on with the same old questions. Sostratos sighed and gave the same old answers. When the grilling ended, the officer dipped his head. “All right, I’d say you are what you claim to be. That’s what I needed to know. I hope the trading is good for you.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and went back down the quay.

“What can we get here?” Menedemos said as he and Sostratos headed into Patara.

“Lykian hams are supposed to be very good,” Sostratos said.

“Yes, I’ve heard that, too,” his cousin replied. “Maybe we can take a few to Phoenicia,”

“Why not?” Sostratos agreed. A moment later, he snapped his fingers.