“I already knew as much, having spent some time here,” Sostratos said. “We do appreciate your care for us.” Menedemos didn’t look as if he appreciated it at all, but Sostratos didn’t remark on that.
Protomakhos said, “If you want to watch the parade into town from the Academy, you’d do well to head for the agora now. It fills up fast, with slaves as well as citizens. If you care to try your luck with women, that’ll be your best chance-unless you feel like going out at night, that is.”
“Shall we?” Menedemos asked.
“Why not?” Sostratos said. “If we’re going to give ourselves to the god, we should do it in fullness.”
“That’s the spirit,” Protomakhos said.
“Will you come, too, best one?” Sostratos asked him.
He tossed his head. “I’ll wait till the procession gets to the temple of Dionysos here to pay my respects to the god. I’m an Athenian, you know, and not a young one. I’ve seen the Dionysia… well, a good many times by now. This part is always the same.”
“All right.” Sostratos nudged Menedemos. “Come on. Hurry up. We don’t want to get there and find out we’re too far away from the Street of the Panathenaia to see anything.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Menedemos turned to Protomakhos. “I’m usually the one who has to hustle him along, you know. But he wants to see this, and so…” He made as if to pour himself another cup of wine. When Sostratos rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh, his cousin laughed and got to his feet.
People were already out in the streets when they left the Rhodian proxenos’ house. A lot of the women looked like respectable wives and matrons: they weren’t all slaves and poor folk by any means. Now Sostratos was the one who laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Menedemos asked.
“You,” Sostratos told him. “You’re so busy turning and looking at them all, you can hardly walk, and you haven’t got any idea which ones to smile at first.”
“I don’t get to see a crowd of them like this very often,” Menedemos answered. “Most honest women who can afford it spend most of their time indoors, so I’m enjoying the… the variety.”
“If you stare any harder, the Athenians will decide you’re a bumpkin from Akharnai who’s never come into the big city before,” Sostratos said. Menedemos made a face at him-Aristophanes had written a comedy about Akharnaians-but kept on looking around at all the pretty, fairly pretty, and even not so pretty women who’d come out to celebrate the festival.
People were already passing cups of wine back and forth. Sostratos drank when somebody thrust one at him. The wine was neat and not very good. He took a small sip, then passed it to Menedemos. After drinking, Menedemos gave a woman the cup. Her smile showed two black front teeth. Menedemos didn’t speak to her after that. He hurried on with Sostratos toward the agora. Phalloi decorated the streets, some of clay, some of wickerwork, some with cloth-covered wicker frames decorated with ribbons.
Athens’ great market square lay on the flat ground northwest of the akropolis. The Street of the Panathenaia, a rutted dirt track, ran through it from northwest to southeast. Athens’ public buildings bounded the southern and western sides: the mint and a couple of fountains on the south, along with a covered colonnade that was not only full of people but had them clambering up to the roof like monkeys. On the west stood the generals’ headquarters, the round Tholos, which housed the rotating executive committee of the Council of Elders; the Bouleuterion, where the whole Council met, and the Royal Stoa, which also had people climbing its columns and up onto the roof.
The agora itself was filling rapidly. Skythian constables, shouting in bad Greek, fought to keep the crowd from packing the Street of the Panathenaia and blocking the procession. Everyone struggled to get as close as he could. Sostratos was an uncommonly large man. Menedemos wasn’t, but he was an uncommonly good wrestler. They got closer than most.
Sostratos pointed northwest, toward the Dipylon Gate and the Academy beyond the wall. “The god’s boat will come from that direction,” he said.
Menedemos dug a finger in his ear. “The god’s what? The noise is dreadful, isn’t it? I thought you said ‘boat.’ “
“I did. You’ll see,” Sostratos said. Someone trod on his toe. “Oimoi!” he exclaimed. Like any sailor, he always went barefoot. That had disadvantages in a crowd.
“Sorry, pal,” said the fellow who’d stepped on him.
“You’re lucky he’s not like some of those harlots,” Menedemos said. “You know the kind I mean: the ones who have FOLLOW ME or something like that written backwards on the bottom of their sandals in metal, so they leave the words in the dust of the street as they walk along. No fun at all if that comes down on your foot.”
“No, it wouldn’t be,” Sostratos agreed. Thoughtfully, he went on, “I imagine the trade they’d bring in would vary from polis to polis, depending on how many men in each place can read. They’d do better here or in Rhodes than up in Macedonia-I’m sure of that.”
“Only you-” Menedemos said, and then had to stop, for he was laughing too hard to go on. He needed some little while before he could continue. “Only you, my dear, could think of a whore and think of how much money she might make and why, and not of how she makes her money.”
“I know how they make their money,” Sostratos said. “The other is something I hadn’t thought about before.” He started to say that made it more interesting, but checked himself. It did, to him, but Menedemos had already showrn he would make him sorry if he said anything like that.
Flutes and drums and other instruments resounded, out beyond the northern edge of the agora. Heads swung in that direction. An Athenian stepped out into the Street of the Panathenaia to get a better look. One of the Skythian slave constables shoved him back into the crowd, shouting, “What you t’ink you does? How selfis’ is you?” Like a lot of barbarians, he couldn’t pronounce some of the sounds of Greek. Having tried to learn how to say the gutturals of Aramaic, Sostratos had more sympathy for him than he would have before.
Unlike the Athenian, Sostratos was not only close to the Street of the Panathenaia but also tall enough to see over the crowd. Beside him, Menedemos twisted to look past the few people in front of him and now and then jumped in the air to get briefly above them. Once he too came down on Sostratos’ toes. “Papai!” Sostratos said in pain and annoyance. “Have you got FOLLOW ME on the bottoms of your polluted feet?”
“Sorry.” His cousin didn’t sound sorry at all. He jumped up again. This time, he missed Sostratos when he landed.
“Here they come!” The words raced through the crowd.
Some of the dancers at the head of the procession were dressed as satyrs, with tight-fitting goatskin costumes, horsetails, erect phalloi as long as a man’s forearm, and snub-nosed masks that put Sostratos in mind of the way Sokrates was said to have looked. They shouted lewd suggestions at the pretty women they saw, sometimes aiming their phalloi at them like spears. Some of the women shouted lewd suggestions of their own; the Dionysia, even in the toned-down version of it celebrated at Athens, was a time when restraint went out the window.
Behind the satyrs came maenads in torn, ragged tunics that suggested they’d been running wild on the mountainsides. Some of them carried thyrsoi, the ivy-tipped wands of Dionysos. Others bore smoky, crackling torches. Still others had tambourines. To the accompaniment of that jingling music, they called, “Euoiii! Euoiii!”-the cry of the god’s followers.
Menedemos nudged Sostratos. “By the god of wine, what’s that?”
“I told you,” Sostratos answered. “That’s the boat of Dionysos.”
The ancient wooden image of the god, slightly above life size, was indeed pulled down the Street of the Panathenaia in a boat by a team of captering satyrs. The planking almost concealed the four large wheels on which the landboat rolled. Except for those wheels, it seemed perfect in every respect, from painted eyes and ram at the bow to goose-headed sternpost. Two more satyrs, these playing flutes, shared the boat with the image of Dionysos. A wreath of leaves crowned the god’s head, as if he were enjoying a symposion. His right hand held more greenery, symbolic of fertility and renewal.