The Gryphon's Skull

“Not for everything,” Menedemos admitted. “But for most things, if you know the Iliad and the Odyssey, you'll come up with some lines to help you figure out how it all goes together.”

“But that's something you should do for yourself,” Sostratos said. “You shouldn't need to find your answers in the words of an old blind poet.”

“Hellenes have been doing it ever since he sang,” Menedemos said.

“Tell me any of your precious philosophers and historians will last as well.” He was much more conventional—he thought of himself as much more practical—than Sostratos, and enjoyed twitting his cousin, “Why go to Athens to study, the way you did, when most of what you need is right there under your nose?”

Sostratos exhaled angrily through that nose. “For one thing, a lot of Homer's answers aren't so good as people think they are. And, for another, who says Herodotos and Platon and Thoukydides won't last? Thoukydides wrote his history to be a possession for all time, and I think he did what he set out to do.”

“Did he?” Menedemos jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “I don't know what all he wrote, and I'm not exactly ignorant. But you can take any Hellene from Massalia, on the coast of the Inner Sea way north and west of Great Hellas, and drop him into one of the poleis Alexander founded in India or one of those other countries out beyond Persia, and if he recites the lines I just did, somebody else will know the ones that come next. Go on—tell me I'm wrong.”

He waited. Sostratos sometimes irked him, but was always painfully honest. And now, with a sigh, Menedemos' cousin said, “Well, I can't do that, and you know it perfectly well. Homer is everywhere, and everybody knows he's everywhere. When you first learn to read, if you do, what do you learn? The Iliad, of course. And even men who don't have their letters know the stories the poet tells.”

“Thank you.” Menedemos made as if to bow without letting go of the steering oar. “You've just proved my case for me.”

“No, by the dog of Egypt.” Sostratos tossed his head. “What people think to be true and what is true aren't always the same. If we thought this ship were sailing south, would we end up at Alexandria? Or would we still go on to Kaunos, regardless of what our opinion was?”

It was Menedemos' turn to wince. After a moment, he pointed to starboard. “There's a fisherman with a false opinion of us. We're a galley, so he thinks we're pirates, and he's sailing away as fast as he can.”

Sostratos wagged a finger in his face. “Oh, no, you don't, best one. You can't slide out of the argument that way.” He was, annoyingly, as tenacious as he was honest. “People may believe things because they're true; things aren't true because people believe them.”

Menedemos pondered that. A dolphin leaped into the air near the Aphrodite, then splashed back into the sea. It was beautiful, but he couldn't point to it and talk about truth. At last, he said, “No wonder they made Sokrates drink hemlock,”

That, at least, started a different argument.

With the wind dead against her, the Aphrodite's crew had to row all the way to Kaunos. The akatos got into the town on the coast of Karia late in the afternoon. Sostratos spoke without thinking as they glided past the moles that closed off the harbor and neared a quay: “We won't have time to do any business today.”

He was angry at himself as soon as the words passed the barrier of his teeth—another phrase from Homer, he thought, and wished he hadn't. He'd stayed away from Menedemos, as well as he could in the cramped confines of the merchant galley, ever since they wrangled about Sokrates. They'd had that quarrel before; Sostratos suspected— no, he was certain—his cousin had trotted it out only to inflame him. The trouble was, it had worked.

Menedemos answered as if he hadn't noticed Sostratos avoiding him: “You're right, worse luck. But I hope the proxenos will have room for us at his house tonight.”

“So do I.” Sostratos accepted the tacit truce.

His cousin pulled in on one steering oar and out on the other, guiding the Aphrodite towards a berth, Diokles' mallet and bronze square got a couple of quick strokes from the rowers. Then the ke-leustes called, “Back oars!” Three or four such strokes killed the ship's momentum and left her motionless beside the quay.

“Very nice, as usual,” Sostratos said.

“Thank you, young sir,” Diokles replied. As toikharkhos, Sostratos outranked him, and was of course the son of one of the Aphrodite's owners. But Sostratos would never be a seaman to match the oar-master, and they both knew it. Differences in status and skill made for politeness on both sides.