“We usually do.” Again, Sostratos sounded altogether acquiescent. Again, Menedemos was not deceived. But then his cousin grew serious. “Do you think we can round Cape Sounion today, perhaps go all the way to Anaphlystos harbor?”

After studying the sun, Menedemos tossed his head. “What I think is, we’ll be lucky to get to Sounion. More likely, we’ll lie up in one of the little bays on Helen’s island.” Sostratos looked as if Menedemos had just kicked a puppy. Relenting a little, Menedemos added, “Even so, we should have no trouble reaching Peiraieus tomorrow.”

Sostratos brightened. Menedemos had known his cousin would. He could have said the ship would spend the night in Persia-or, for that matter, in Tartaros-as long as he also said it would get to the harbor of Athens the next day. Sostratos said, “I wonder why Helen is tied to so many islands. There’s another one, to the west, that’s supposed to be where she first slept with Paris on the way to Troy.”

“That I don’t know,” Menedemos said. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t worried about it much, either. When I think about Helen, I’d rather think about why Paris wanted her than why they remember her on islands.”

“But everyone knows why Paris wanted her,” Sostratos said. “The other question’s much more interesting, because it doesn’t have an obvious answer.”

“That makes it more interesting?” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. They stared at each other in perfect mutual incomprehension.

The Aphrodite reached an inlet at the north end of Helen’s island as the sun slid behind the highland of Cape Sounion. The island ran from north to south, and was much longer than it was wide. No polis stood anywhere on it, nor even a village. Sheep and goats wandered the low, rolling ground, cropping grass and bushes. As darkness spread over sea and land, herdsmen’s campfires glowed like golden stars off in the distance.

No one came up to the ship to ask for news or give any of his own. That saddened Menedemos. “The shepherds think we’ll grab ‘em and sell ‘em into slavery,” he said.

“We wouldn’t,” Sostratos said.

“No, of course not. Couldn’t very well sell ‘em in Athens even if we did grab ‘em,” Menedemos said. “I wouldn’t care to enslave free Hellenes anyway-if the herders are free Hellenes and not already enslaved like Eumaios the swineherd in the Odyssey.”

“They don’t know where we’re from or where we’re bound,” Sostratos said. “For all they can tell, we might be Tyrrhenians who’d sell them in the slave markets at Carthage.”

“I know. That’s what bothers me,” Menedemos said. “Even so close to Athens, people worry about pirates and raiders.”

“These are sorry times, when men think of themselves first and everything else only afterwards,” Sostratos said, but after a moment he ruefully tossed his head. “When didn’t men think of themselves first?

After the Peloponnesian War, the Thirty Tyrants made themselves hateful. And before that, Themistokles had to trick most of the Hellenes into fighting Xerxes by Salamis.”

“Athenians both times,” Menedemos remarked.

“Oh, yes,” his cousin said. “Athens has shown the world more of man at his best and worst than any other polis in Athens. But thinking of yourself first goes back to long before Athens was such a great city. Look at Akhilleus in the Iliad. How many strong-greaved Akhaioi died because he stayed in his tent after his quarrel with Agamemnon?”

“Well, but Agamemnon was in the wrong, too, for taking Brisei’s away from Akhilleus.” Menedemos held up a hand before his cousin could speak. “I know what you’re going to say next. You’ll say that was Agamemnon putting what he wanted ahead of what the Akhaioi needed. And he did.”

Sostratos looked disappointed at not having an argument on his hands. He glanced up at the moon. So did Menedemos. It seemed brighter and more golden now that the sun had left the sky. Sostratos said, “In the city, they’re getting ready for the festival. And tomorrow we’ll be there! I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight.”

He managed. Menedemos had to wake him in the morning. But Sostratos didn’t complain, not when Menedemos said, “Rise and shine, my dear. Today we’re going to Athens.”

“Athenaze,” Sostratos echoed dreamily. Then he said it once more, as if for good measure: “To Athens.”

“0цP!” DIOKLES CALLED, and the Aphrodite’s rowers rested at their oars. Sailors tossed lines to longshoremen in loincloths, who made the akatos fast to the quay. Just hearing the harbor workers brought Sostratos a thrill. What educated man didn’t want to sound as if he came from Athens? And here were these probably illiterate laborers, using the dialect of Plato and Euripides. They were speaking commonplaces, but they sounded good doing it.

Or so Sostratos thought, anyway. In the broad Doric of Rhodes, one of the sailors said, “Who do those fellows think they are, anyhow? Slaves could do their jobs, but they talk like a bunch of toffs.”

Menedemos pointed up one of the long, straight streets of Peiraieus. “At least this town is laid out sensibly,” he said.

“This is one of the first places Hippodamos of Miletos designed,”

Sostratos answered. “Perikles had him do it. That would have been thirty years or so before he laid out the polis of Rhodes.”

“Did he do anything with Athens proper?” Menedemos asked, peering toward the great buildings of the Athenian akropolis thirty-five or forty stadia inland.

“I’m afraid not,” Sostratos said. “I wish he would have. The streets there are the wildest tangle anybody’s ever seen. The Athenians take pride in being able to find their way around-except when they get lost, too.”

His cousin pointed to the base of the pier. “Here comes an officer to question us.” Indeed, the fellow looked splendid in crested helm and crimson cloak thrown back over his shoulders-as splendid as Antigonos’ man, almost identically dressed, had at Mytilene. Menedemos went on, “Now, for half a drakhma, is he a Macedonian or an Athenian?”

Sostratos looked the man over. He was of average height, on the lean side, with dark hair, an olive complexion, a thin face, and ironic eyebrows. More than anything else, those eyebrows decided Sostratos. “Athenian.”

“We’ll know in a moment,” Menedemos said. “Wait till he opens his mouth. If we don’t have any trouble understanding him, you win. If he starts spewing Macedonian at us, I do.”

“What ship are you, and where are you from?” The officer asked the usual questions in perfectly intelligible Attic Greek. Menedemos grimaced. Sostratos hid a smile.

“We’re the Aphrodite, out of Rhodes,” he answered, as he seemed to do whenever the akatos pulled into a new port.

“Ah. Rhodians.” The officer brightened. “You’ll be friendly to Ptolemaios, then.”

Kassandros, who’d ruled Athens for the past decade through Demetrios of Phaleron, was friendly to Ptolemaios. Sostratos dipped his head, not wanting to disagree openly. “We try to be,” he answered. “But then, we’re neutral, so we try to be friendly to everybody.”

“I see.” The Athenian looked less happy. “Where did you stop on your way here?”

“Kos,” Sostratos said, which pleased the fellow-Kos belonged to Ptolemaios-and then, “and Samos and Khios, both briefly, and then Lesbos. We have Lesbian wine for sale, and Lesbian truffles, too.”

“I… see.” The officer’s pinched face was made for frowning. The last three islands belonged to Antigonos, with whom Kassandros was anything but friendly. After a moment’s sour thought, the man decided to make the best of it, asking, “What’s the old Cyclops up to? Did you see anything interesting along the way? “

“I didn’t.” Sostratos turned to his cousin. “Did you, Menedemos?”

“Can’t say that I did,” Menedemos answered. “He has war galleys in the harbors and on patrol, but then he would, especially after Ptolemaios took so much of the southern coast of Anatolia away from him a couple of years ago. Ptolemaios laid siege to Halikarnassos, too, remember, but it didn’t fall.” He sounded disappointed.