The Gryphon's Skull

A couple of round ships—ordinary merchantmen—and a shark-shaped hull that looked as if it would make a hemiolia were abuilding in the dockyard not far away. One of the round ships was nearly done; carpenters were affixing stiffening ribs to the already completed outer shell of planking. Other men drove bronze spikes through the planking from the outside to secure it to the ribs. The bang of their hammers filled the whole town.

Up on the hills above seaside Kaunos, the gray stone fortress of Imbros squatted and brooded. The soldiers in the fortress served one-eyed Antigonos, who had overrun all of Karia three years before. Kaunos still proclaimed itself to be free and autonomous. In these days of clashing marshals, though, many towns' claims to freedom and autonomy had a distinctly hollow ring.

While Sostratos eyed the dockyards and the bills and mused on world affairs, Menedemos briskly went ahead with what needed doing. Like a lot of Hellenes, he carried small change in his mouth, between his cheek and his teeth. He spat an obolos into the palm of his hand. “You know who the Rhodian proxenos is, don't you?” he asked a man standing on the pier who wasn't busy securing the Aphrodite.

“Certainly: Kissidas son of Alexias, the olive merchant,” the Kaunian replied.

“That's right.” Menedemos tossed the little silver coin to the local. He gave the fellow the name of the ship, his own name, and Sostratos'. “Ask him if he's able to put my cousin and me up for the night. I'll give you another obolos when you come back with his answer,”

“You've got a bargain, pal.” The man stuck the obolos into his own mouth and trotted away.

He came back a quarter of an hour later with a big-bellied bald man whose bare scalp was as shiny as if he'd rubbed it with olive oil. Menedemos gave the messenger the second obolos, which disappeared as the first one had. The bald man said, “Hail. I'm Kissidas. Which of you is which?”

“I'm Sostratos,” Sostratos answered. Menedemos also named himself.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Kissidas said, though he didn't sound particularly pleased. That worried Sostratos: what was a proxenos for, if not to help citizens of the polis he represented in his own home town? The olive dealer went on, “You'll want lodging, you say?” No, he didn't sound pleased at all.

“If you'd be so kind,” Sostratos replied, wondering if Kissidas bore a grudge against his father or Menedemos’. Neither of the younger men had set eyes on the proxenos before. Menedemos has never tried seducing his wife, Sostratos thought tartly.

“I suppose I can get away with it,” Kissidas said. “But Hipparkhos— he's Antigonos' garrison commander—doesn't much like Rhodians. He's made it hard to keep up the proxeny, he really has.”

“We're glad you have kept it up, best one.” Sostratos meant every word of that. Neither a buggy, noisy, crowded inn nor sleeping on the hard planks of the poop deck much appealed to him. “And what has old One-Eye's officer got against Rhodians?”

“What would you expect?” Kissidas answered. “He thinks your polls leans toward Ptolemaios.”

That held a good deal of truth. Considering how much Egyptian grain went through Rhodes for transshipment all over the Aegean, Sostratos' city had to stay friendly with Ptolemaios. Nonetheless, Sostratos spoke the technical truth when he said, “That's foolish. We're neutral. We have to stay neutral, or somebody would gobble us up for leaning to the other side.”

“My cousin's right,” Menedemos said. He and Sostratos might squabble with each other, but they presented a united front to the world. Menedemos went on, “We even built some ships for Antigonos two or three years ago. How does that make us lean toward Ptolemaios?”

“You don't need to persuade me, friends,” Kissidas said, “and you won't persuade Hipparkhos, for his mind's made up.”

“Will you have trouble with him because you're taking us in?” Sostratos asked.

“I hope not,” the proxenos answered bleakly. “But whether I do or don't, it's my duty to help Rhodians here, the same as it's the duty of the Kaunian proxenos in Rhodes to help men from this city there. Come along with me, best ones, and use my home as your own as long as you're in Kaunos.”

Before leaving the Aphrodite, Menedemos made sure Diokles would keep at least half a dozen sailors aboard her. “Wouldn't do to come back and find half our cargo had grown legs and walked off, now would it?” Menedemos said.

“Not hardly, skipper, especially when we haven't got any peafowl along with us this spring,” Diokles said.

“We haven't got 'em, and we—or I, anyhow—don't miss 'em, either,” Sostratos said. He'd had to care for the birds till they sold the last of them in Syracuse, and hadn't enjoyed the experience. As far as raucous, stupid bipeds go, they're even worse than sailors, he thought—a bit of fluff he wisely didn't pass on to the oarmaster.