“Euge!” Sostratos said. “Maybe you’ll make some of the other scamps think twice.”
“By Zeus, I hope so,” Menedemos said. “Somebody needs to.”
His cousin pointed ahead. “There’s the theater-you can see the seats set into the side of the slope that leads up to the akropolis. We’re getting close to Protomakhos’.”
“Good,” Menedemos said. “When we get there, I’m going to have one of his slaves heat up some water in the kitchen and pour it into a basin. Then I can wash my feet and warm them up, too.”
“That’s a good idea,” Sostratos said. “Protomakhos had better have two basins.”
“If he doesn’t,” Menedemos said, “I go first.” He never noticed the look Sostratos sent him. He was used to going first. He almost always had. And he saw no reason at all why he shouldn’t keep right on doing it.
Sostratos and Menedemos trudged up the long ramp toward the akropolis. The sun shone down out of a bright blue sky-the rain had blown out to sea. The backs of Sostratos’ calves twinged, for the ramp was steep, and he had scant occasion to climb slopes aboard ship, especially carrying a lekythos of truffle-flavored oil. Menedemos grumbled under his breath. He was a far better athlete than Sostratos-he’d almost gone to the Olympic Games a few years before as a sprinter- but this told on him, too.
“Why couldn’t Demetrios’ man have met us someplace where we didn’t have to pretend we were mountain goats?” he muttered.
“It’s all right,” Sostratos said. “I would have brought you up here sooner or later so you could get a good look at the buildings and the paintings and the statues. There’s no other place like this in all the civilized world. Not even Corinth’s akropolis comes close. And besides, we’re almost there by now, and the way down will be easy.”
“Ah. That’s true.” Menedemos brightened.
The Propylaia, the gateway into the akropolis, loomed in front of them. Half a dozen simple Doric columns supported the entranceway. The space between the two middle ones was wider than the other gaps. People coming in and going out passed through that space. To the right of the gateway stood the temple of Athena of Victory; to the left the Pinakotheke, a dining hall with seventeen couches and some of the grandest paintings in Athens. “They have a portrait of Alkibiades in there,” Sostratos said. “Lots of other paintings, too.”
“Didn’t Alkibiades spend most of his time getting Athens into trouble?” Menedemos asked.
“Yes, and the rest getting her out again,” Sostratos replied.
Past the Propylaia stood a stone pillar with a phallos and a bearded face: a Herm like the ones at crossroads or in front of many houses. This one was bigger than most, but otherwise ordinary. Menedemos paid it no special notice. Sostratos hadn’t thought his cousin would.
“Do you know who carved that Herm?” he asked slyly.
Menedemos looked it over. “No. Should I?” he said. “Whoever he was, he wasn’t anything special, for I’ve seen plenty of better work.”
“He wasn’t anything special as a stonecarver, no,” Sostratos admitted, “but he was in other ways: Sokrates made that.”
“Oh.” Menedemos gave it a second look, then shrugged. “Well, I can see why he never got rich.”
“Scoffer! Come on. We’re supposed to meet Demetrios’ man by the Parthenon.”
They hurried along side by side. Sostratos had a horror of being late and offending Demetrios’ servitor. But he stubbed his toe on a stone, stumbled, and almost dropped the lekythos. Menedemos caught him by the elbow. “Steady, my dear. You don’t want to have to bring the fellow back here and say, ‘Lick this patch of ground if you want the true flavor.’ No point to being like Euripides, is there?”
“Euripides? What are you going on about now?” Sostratos knew he sounded cross. He hated being clumsy, especially in front of his graceful cousin.
“Don’t you know Aristophanes’ Frogs?” Menedemos chuckled. “When Dionysos goes down to the house of Hades to bring back a good tragedian, Aiskhylos and Euripides square off. And Aiskhylos sinks Euripides like a round ship full of dear Protomakhos’ marble, for he shows you can fit, ‘He lost his little bottle of oil,’ into the metre of any of Euripides’ prologues.”
“Oh. I’d forgotten that one, yes.” Sostratos knew and liked Euripides better than Aristophanes. He mentally started the prologue to Iphigeneia in Tauris. Sure enough, the phrase fit right in. Meleagros? Yes again. Clever Melanippe? No doubt about it. Aristophanes knew his versifying, all right. Sostratos decided to gibe at his cousin, not the comic poet: “I thought you called Protomakhos’ wife ‘dear,’ not the man himself.”
Menedemos just grinned and stuck out his tongue, as if he were the Gorgon on the bottom of a drinking cup. “Here’s the Parthenon. Where’s this Kleokritos we’re supposed to meet?”
“I can’t pull him out from between my gum and my cheek like an obolos, you know,” Sostratos said. “Now he’ll be the one who’s late, and he’ll have to do the apologizing to us instead of the other way round.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Menedemos said. “The next Athenian- or even slave in Athens-I hear saying he’s sorry about anything will be the first. These people are the rudest I’ve ever run across.” Even as he spoke, his head tipped back so he could get a better look at the frieze above the entrance to the temple. He clicked his tongue between his teeth in reluctant approval. “Rude or not, though, they knew what they were doing when they made this place.”
“Yes.” Sostratos dipped his head. “Pheidias was in charge again, though this was too much work for him to do by himself.”
The reliefs, freshly painted, might have been carved yesterday, not more than a century before. Flesh tones and robes of yellow and red stood out from the deep blue background. Horses seemed about to bound forward. So did centaurs. Pointing to them, Menedemos said, “I used to think they were creatures out of myth.”
“So did I,” Sostratos said. “Now that I’ve seen a gryphon’s skull, I’m not so sure as I used to be.”
A bent-backed, white-bearded man leaning on a stick came out of the Parthenon and made his slow, painful way past the Rhodians. Menedemos said, “Can we go inside? You’ve talked about the statue of Athena ever since we left Rhodes.”
“Why not? We shouldn’t stay long, in case Kleokritos comes, but the image was made to be admired.”
When they went inside and left the sunlight behind, their vision needed a little while to adjust to the dimness. A broad central aisle was separated from a narrow outer one at the sides and back of the sanctuary by columns set on two levels. That interior colonnade led the eye to the great cult statue at the far end of the shrine.
Sostratos had seen it before. Even so, his breath came short. Beside him, Menedemos stopped in his tracks. “Oh,” he said softly. It wasn’t really a word: just an expression of amazement and awe. One small step at a time, he approached the statue of Athena. Every so often, he would say, “Oh,” again. Sostratos didn’t think he knew he was doing it.
The image of the goddess had to be twenty-five cubits tall, or even a bit more: say, seven times as tall as a man. Everything that would have been flesh on a living woman was of ivory, the pieces so cleverly joined that Sostratos couldn’t tell where one left off and the next started. Athena’s robes, her triple-crested helm, and her hair were covered in thin sheets of glittering, shimmering gold.
It shimmered all the more because a shallow pool of clear, clean water in front of the statue reflected light from outside up onto it. The slightest breath of air-perhaps even the Rhodians’ footfalls-stirred the surface of the water, and stirred the reflected light, too.
Athena held a winged Victory in her right hand. Next to her might, the Victory seemed tiny. Sostratos had to remind himself it was several digits taller than he. The goddess’ left hand rested on and supported a great shield. Somewhere on the shield were the portraits of Perikles and Pheidias that had landed the sculptor in so much trouble. Sostratos thought he might find Perikles if he searched. Other images had given him a notion of what the great leader of Athens looked like. Pheidias? He tossed his head. Was a man truly immortal if no one recognized him?