“What is it?” Menedemos said.

“We can take hams to Phoenicia, yes,” Sostratos answered, “but not inland, to the country of the loudaioi. Their religion doesn’t let them eat pork, Himilkon told me. Good thing I remembered.”

“So it is,” Menedemos said. “Why can’t they eat it?”

“I don’t know-Himilkon didn’t explain it.” Sostratos wagged a ringer at his cousin. “You see, my dear? Why? is always the interesting question.”

“Maybe,” Menedemos said, and then, “Maybe it’s for the same sort of reason that Pythagoreans can’t eat beans.”

“I’ve never heard that ham makes you windy,” Sostratos said.

“You’re already windy, seems to me,” Menedemos said. “You’re ready to quibble about almost anything, too, but that isn’t news.”

“To the crows with you,” Sostratos said, but he and his cousin both laughed. And he knew Menedemos hadn’t been wrong, either. Me, ready to quibble about anything? Now why would he say that?

Lykian houses looked little different from their equivalents back in Hellas. They presented blank fronts to the street. Some were whitewashed, some of unadorned mud brick, some of stone. They all had red tile roofs. Whatever beauty and valuables they held lay on the inside, behind tiny windows and stout doors. They gave robbers no clues about who had money and who didn’t.

Patara’s streets also seemed much like those of an older polis back in Hellas. That is to say, they were narrow and smelly and wandered every which way, more often than not at random. Dogs and pigs chased rooks and jackdaws away from piles of garbage. The stench was overwhelming.

“You forget how bad a city smells till you get out to sea for a while,” Sostratos said.

“You’re right.” Menedemos looked more nearly green than he ever did on the ocean.

Here in town, Sostratos couldn’t always tell whether the people walking along the streets were Hellenes or Lykians. A fair number of Lykians affected Hellenic styles, wearing chiton and himation, shaving their faces, and even speaking Greek. Their tongues betrayed them more readily than their outward seeming, though. They couldn’t shed the accent of their native tongue-and Lykian, to Sostratos’ ear, sounded like a series of sneezes strung together into a language.

Menedemos noticed something else. “Look how many women are out and about-and not just slaves and poor ones who can’t help coming out, either. That lady who just passed us had gold earrings and a gold necklace that had to be worth plenty, but she didn’t even bother wearing a veil. She was pretty, too.”

“Yes, she was.” Sostratos wasn’t blind to a good-looking woman, either. He went on, “I’m not surprised the Lykians give their women more leave to go out and about than we do.”

“Why? Because they’re barbarians who don’t know any better, do you mean?

“ No. Because they reckon their descent through the female line. If you ask a Hellene who he is, he’ll give you his name, his father’s name, his father’s father’s, and so on. But if you ask a Lykian, he’ll tell you his name, his mother’s, her mother’s…”

“Why do they do that?” Menedemos asked.

“I don’t know,” Sostratos answered. He poked his cousin in the ribs with an elbow. “You see? Another why question.”

“All right. Another why question. I’d like to know.”

“So would I,” Sostratos said. “Just as a guess: a man’s always sure who his mother is. There’s room for doubt about his father,”

“Ah, I see. You’re saying the Lykians figure that way because they know their women are sluts.”

“I don’t think that’s what I said,” Sostratos answered. “And I don’t know for a fact whether Lykian women are sluts or not. I’ve never had anything to do with them.”

By the gleam in Menedemos’ eye, he was about to impart much more information on that topic than Sostratos wanted to hear. But he fell silent when a couple of squads of soldiers tramped by on a cross street, holding up traffic on the way to the market square. Some of the men were Hellenes, with pikes in their hands and shortswords on their hips. The rest were Lykians, many of them in their feathered hats and goatskin cloaks. In place of spears, some carried iron ripping-hooks; others were archers, with bows bigger than Hellenes usually used and with long, unfletched arrows in their quivers.

Once the soldiers had turned a corner, Sostratos remarked, “Well, best one, you were probably wise not to talk about their women where they could hear you.” His cousin gave him a reproachful look, but kept quiet.

The street Sostratos had hoped would lead to the agora abruptly ended in a blank wall. He and Menedemos went back to the nearest intersection. As soon as he found someone who spoke Greek, he took an obolos from his cheek and gave the little silver coin in exchange for directions that would work. The Lykian turned out not to speak much Greek, and Sostratos made him repeat himself several times before letting him go.

Even then, he wasn’t sure he was heading the right way till he walked into the market square. By Menedemos’ pleased murmur, he was taken aback, too. “I only understood about one word in three from that barbarian,” he said,

“I had the advantage of you, then,” Sostratos said, doing his best not to show how relieved he was. “I’m sure I understood one word in two. Now let’s see if that obolos was silver well spent.” It wasn’t much silver, but he hated wasting money.

Menedemos pointed. “There’s a fellow with hams for sale. Shall we go over and see what he wants for them?”

“Why not?” Sostratos said again. He and his cousin pushed their way through the crowded market square. He heard both Greek and Lykian, sometimes in the same sentence from the same man. A fellow shoved a tray of plucked songbirds toward him, urging him to buy. “No, thank you,” he said. “I can’t cook them up properly.” The vendor gave back a spate of incomprehensible Lykian. Sostratos tossed his head and went on. The fellow understood that.

One of Ptolemaios’ soldiers was haggling with the man who sold hams.

“Come on,” Menedemos said out of the side of his mouth. “Let’s look at something else for a little while.”

“Right you are,” Sostratos agreed. If they started bidding for a ham, too, the bearded Lykian could use them and the soldier against each other and bump up the price.

“Here.” Menedemos took a Lykian-style hat and set it on his own head. “How do I look?”

“Like an idiot,” Sostratos told him.

His cousin bowed, “Thank you so very much, my dear. The Lykians who wear our clothes don’t look idiotic.”

“That’s because we don’t wear such funny-looking things,” Sostratos said.

“I should hope not.” Menedemos put back the hat. “And all those goatskin cloaks look like they’ve got the mange.”

“They sure do.” But then, instead of going on and mocking the Lykians even more, Sostratos checked himself, feeling foolish. “It’s only custom that makes our clothes seem right to us and theirs seem strange. But custom is king of all.”

“That last bit sounds like poetry,” Menedemos said. “Who said it first?”

“What, you don’t think I could have?” Sostratos said. His cousin impatiently tossed his head. Sostratos laughed. “Well, you’re right. It’s from Pindaros, quoted by Herodotos in his history.”

“I might have known you would have found it in a history-and I did know it was too good for you.” Menedemos peered around the agora. “Do you see anything else you want around here?”

“One of the women who was buying dried figs, but I don’t suppose she’d be for sale,” Sostratos answered.

Menedemos snorted. “That’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to say, and you’re supposed to roll your eyes and look at me as if I were a comic actor who’s just shit himself on stage. My only question is, how do you know she’s not for sale unless you try to find out?”

“I’m not going to worry about it,” Sostratos said. “Unlike some people I could name, I know there are other things in the world.”