Salamis, p.20
Salamis, page 20
There wasn’t much room on the fighting platform for the officers to stand aside, but they did their best. More than a few of them stared at Sostratos as if sure he’d lost his wits. His very plain tunic might also have inclined them to that view.
Ptolemaios continued, “Go on, tall fellow. Ask away.” A moment later, on a falling note, he added, “Oh, it’s you, son of Lysistratos. Well, what do you want to know?”
“Thank you, sir. I just wondered, are we wise to linger in Paphos?” Sostratos said. “If you can send riders to Menelaos, men who don’t like you so well can send them to Demetrios, too.”
“We won’t catch him by surprise any which way. He’ll know or guess we’re coming, and he’ll have some of his piratical friends scouting for him,” Ptolemaios said. “Fours and fives can’t outrun those cursed pentenkonters, however much I wish they could.”
Trihemioliai can, Sostratos thought. But Egypt’s navy was built for power, not speed. Ptolemaios didn’t worry about pirates nearly so much as Rhodes did.
The lord of Egypt hadn’t finished yet, either. “If any ships do come in, I’ll be glad to have them, too. From what I’ve heard, Demetrios’ fleet is bigger than mine, though he’ll need to leave some of it behind to try to keep my brother’s galleys shut up in Salamis’ harbor.” He set his hands on his hips. “Are you answered?” Every line of his body warned, You’d better be!
“Yes, sir,” Sostratos said, and not another word. He might have replied differently had Ptolemaios asked him whether he was satisfied.
“Did you really think you’d get him to change his mind?” Menedemos asked when they were safely off the flagship and in the rowboat on the way back to the Aphrodite.
“Did I think so? No. But it wasn’t impossible, not quite, so I tried,” Sostratos said.
“And now all his skippers think you’re daft,” his cousin observed.
“As if I care! They’ve forgotten what dealing with free Hellenes is like. High time they got reminded,” Sostratos said. Laughing softly, Menedemos clapped him on the back.
XII
Ptolemaios lingered at Paphos until the moon was a skinny nail-paring of a crescent, rising just before the sun came up. A few ships dribbled in from nearby poleis, but only a few. Menedemos found himself agreeing with Sostratos: the boost Ptolemaios’ forces got wasn’t worth the delay in going off to fight Demetrios.
“Maybe you should hop into the boat again, head over to the flagship, and talk some sense into him,” he told his cousin.
Sostratos looked at him. “I didn’t know you wanted me dead so badly.”
“He wouldn’t kill you. He’d just curse you up one side and down the other for wasting his time,” Menedemos said. “You might hear some things even Diokles doesn’t know.”
The keleustes was gnawing on a chunk of hard-baked bread. He looked up long enough to say, “To the crows with you, skipper,” and then went back to eating.
“When the Ptolemaios really got rolling, he’d probably fall back into Macedonian, so I wouldn’t understand him anyway,” Sostratos said.
“There is that,” Menedemos allowed. “When he and his cronies talked to each other, I couldn’t follow more than maybe one word in five.”
Not long after sunrise, a boat came out to the akatos. It was the first time the Rhodian ship had been so honored since the summons to the captains’ conference. This boat didn’t draw any too near, as if afraid the Aphrodite carried a dangerous contagious disease. We do, too, Menedemos thought. Sostratos named it—freedom.
From a safe distance, the officer in the rowboat called, “Ahoy, the trading galley! Do you hear me?”
“I’m the captain. I hear you,” Menedemos said. “What’s the word?”
“We move east at noon,” the man replied. “Make sure you’re ready to accompany us.”
Menedemos waved to him. “We’ll be along,” he said. Ptolemaios’ officer grudgingly dipped his head, then spoke to the men at the oars. They backed water, turned around, and rowed away.
Quietly, Sostratos said, “What was that Aristophanes you were spouting? Daddle—Let’s ske—Daddle—Let’s ske—”
“Much as I’d love to, we can’t right now,” Menedemos said with real regret. “Sticking with the fleet is best for Rhodes right now. Antigonos and Demetrios already have plenty of reasons to want to grab the polis. I don’t dare give the Ptolemaios a new one to leave us stranded. If you think he doesn’t have an eye on the Aphrodite, you’re daft.”
“I understand that,” Sostratos said. “But there’s a big sea-fight coming. If Ptolemaios wins, euge! for him. If he loses, we’re liable to get sunk. We’re liable to get killed. If we live, we’re liable to get enslaved.”
“If you’re going to whine about every little thing …” Menedemos said. His cousin stared at him, then burst out laughing. Menedemos laughed, too. So did Diokles, who stood on the stern platform with them. Something about the oarmaster’s face, though, said he was laughing to keep from giving way to despair. Since Menedemos felt the same way, he didn’t remark on it.
Horns blared across the harbor, ordering the fleet into motion at the appointed hour. “Noon,” Sostratos grumbled. “Why couldn’t he have picked a cooler time of day to set out? What does he think he is, a genuine Egyptian or something?”
“Not likely,” Menedemos replied. “As far as I can tell, he speaks as much Egyptian as we do, and we don’t speak any.”
Ptolemaios’ warships left the harbor before the transports and freighters, and formed up in a protective arc ahead of them: the same formation the fleet had used coming north from Alexandria. Now, though, the ships raised their masts and spread their broad sails slantwise to take advantage of the wind. They couldn’t use it when it was dead against them, but took advantage of it when it blew at the quarter.
“Our rowers will be fresher this way,” Sostratos observed.
“So they will,” Menedemos answered. “Say, did you notice the catapults all the fours and fives carry? Nothing like getting a bolt through the brisket from a couple of stadia away!”
“Back when the catapult was newer—it would have been around the time the Alexander was born, I think—someone took a bolt to Sparta. King Arkhidamos looked at it and said, ‘O Herakles! The valor of man is extinguished!’” Sostratos said.
“Did he? He wasn’t so far wrong,” Menedemos said. “If the river keeps flowing the way it runs now, one of these days we’ll have the automata Homer says Hephaistos made doing our fighting for us, and the only way anybody will ever win a battle is if something goes wrong with one of them.”
“Only half a century since Alexander was born,” his cousin said in musing tones. “He would have been younger than Ptolemaios—much younger than Antigonos. He became king of Macedonia about the time we were born. The Persian Empire was still going strong. A few changes since.”
“Just a few,” Menedemos agreed. “When we were boys, every time a ship came in to Rhodes it would bring news that he’d conquered some other place a daimon of a long way away. I’d never heard of half of them before.”
“Neither had I.” Sostratos sounded angry at his own long-ago ignorance. He hated not knowing things; Menedemos had known that as long as he’d known him. His cousin went on, “Hearing all those strange names may have been what made me want to understand how the pieces of the world fit together, one next to another and through time.”
“It made me want to go out and see some of those places,” Menedemos said. “And I have seen … well, some of them, anyhow. I don’t know that I’ll ever get to Persia or India.”
“I suppose not,” Sostratos said. “There are Hellenes in those parts now, though. Who would have dreamt of that fifty years ago?”
“Nobody. Not a soul,” Menedemos said, and then, loudly, to the sailors tending the lines, “Shorten the sail by a brail’s worth. We’ll ram one of the scows ahead of us if we don’t slow down.” He hoped his voice carried over the water to the skippers commanding Ptolemaios’ transports. They weren’t really scows, but also weren’t as sleek in the water as the Aphrodite.
Nearing Kourion, the fleet swung south to round the islet off Cyprus’ southern coast instead of trying to slide through the channel separating it from the mainland. Menedemos dipped his head in approval as the akatos followed. The channel was shallow and treacherously full of ever-shifting sandbars. Better to stay safe. Someone advising Ptolemaios really did know these waters.
Diokles must have had the same thought, for he remarked, “One of these days, that passage is going to silt up and tie the little island to Cyprus for good.”
“I’m just glad Demetrios didn’t post any scout ships this far west,” Sostratos said.
“Didn’t post any we know about, anyway,” Menedemos said. “Ptolemaios’ fours and fives wouldn’t chase a pentekonter. He said so himself, remember? That would just wear out the rowers, and they wouldn’t catch it.”
“For all we know, Demetrios has watchers on the beach, or on the high ground a little ways inland,” Diokles added. “We aren’t out of sight of land on this leg, so the land isn’t out of sight of us. And as soon as somebody spots us, he gets a leg-up onto his horse and gallops off to give Demetrios the news.”
Menedemos’ laugh was sharp as pepper, sour as vinegar. “I wonder how many horsemen, Demetrios’ and Ptolemaios’, are galloping across southern Cyprus from west to east right now. Enough to make the chariot races at the Olympic Games seem like nothing next to them, I’d bet.”
“They don’t have rowing contests at Olympia. They don’t have them at any of the great Games, not that I know of,” Sostratos said. “But we’ll see one of those contests when our fleet finally runs into Demetrios’.”
“The winners won’t get crowns of laurel leaves and fancy amphorai full of olive oil, either,” Menedemos said. “They’ll get something better yet—they’ll get to stay alive.”
Kition, near the eastern end of Cyprus’ south coast, was only a couple of hundred stadia from Salamis … if one went by land. Ptolemaios’ fleet would have to round Cape Pedalion to reach the besieged city, which would make its journey at least twice as long.
The ships paused a day at Kition to take on water and wine and bread. Ptolemaios didn’t call another council, but gossip came out to the galleys along with the supplies. One of the men handing jars of wine up to the Aphrodite told Sostratos, “ ’Tis said the Ptolemaios hath commanded his brother to send Salamis’ sixty warships hither forthwith, but that shall not come to pass, for Demetrios hath blocked the channel with his own galleys.”
Like most Cypriots, the fellow spoke such old-fashioned Greek that Sostratos had to hide a smile. It wasn’t quite like hearing a rhapsode recite Homer for coins at a fair, but it wasn’t far removed from that.
However odd the local sounded, his news was important. “We’d be better off with those sixty ships than without them,” Sostratos said.
“Yea, verily. But the admiral Antisthenes yet stoppeth the harbor’s outlet, as a dose of poppy juice will plug the bowels,” the Cypriot replied.
When Sostratos passed on to Menedemos what he’d heard, his cousin dipped his head. “Forsooth,” he said. “I’ve heard the same.”
Sostratos grinned. “You must have heard it from a Cypriot, too, by the gods.”
“They do talk funny, don’t they?” Menedemos smiled, too. “You can follow them, but it’s as if the rest of the world has moved on while they stayed the way they were.”
“When you do that, the rest of the world will break in whether you like it or not,” Sostratos said. “Or how else would Ptolemaios and Demetrios be fighting a thunderous big war here?”
“Too true, too true. All I ever wanted to do here was buy and sell, but that’s all I want to do most places,” Menedemos said.
“The ones where you don’t run across any women who catch your eye, you mean,” Sostratos said with a different kind of grin.
Menedemos should have grinned back and returned something bawdy, either from his own wit or from Aristophanes’. Instead, just for a moment, his face went so hard and cold, he looked twenty years older than he really was. In that instant, Sostratos would have believed he was looking at stern Uncle Philodemos, not Philodemos’ fun-loving son.
And Menedemos must have realized from Sostratos’ expression that he was alarming him, for he did smile then, if crookedly. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he murmured, “but I have other things besides loose women on my mind right now.”
“Are you well? Let me take your pulse!” Sostratos made as if to grab Menedemos’ forearm.
His cousin jerked it away, but he laughed with something that sounded like real amusement. “I’ll last till we get back to Rhodes. After that …. After that, we’re all too likely to have other things to worry about,” he said.
“Something’s gnawing at you. You haven’t been right since we set out, maybe even since before we did,” Sostratos said. “If I can do anything to help, you know I will.”
“Yes, yes.” But Menedemos seemed like a man with an impatient small boy tugging at his tunic. “Nothing anyone can do, I’m afraid. I’ve told you that before.”
“I thought something might have changed since then,” Sostratos said.
“Something might have. Nothing has.” Menedemos looked old and bleak again. This time, he didn’t seem to care. Sostratos thought he was talking more than half to himself as he went on, “By the gods, though, I’ll be glad when we get back to Rhodes.”
Sostratos almost asked, Why? He would have, had he thought he would get an answer that meant anything. Since he didn’t, he kept quiet.
By the way his cousin eyed him, Menedemos was looking for him to ask, and had readied some sort of comeback that would pierce him the way a catapult bolt could pin a rider to his horse. Sostratos smiled his most innocent smile. All he did ask was, “What do you think of Ptolemaios’ chances against Demetrios?”
Menedemos visibly relaxed, as if the oversized bow that propelled a catapult’s bolt were uncocked. For a couple of heartbeats, he looked grateful—not an expression Sostratos often saw on his face. With a shrug, he answered, “You never can tell ahead of time. That’s why you roll the knucklebones: to see who takes home the drakhmai.”
“But knucklebones are all luck. There’s skill involved in this,” Sostratos said.
“Yes, but I don’t know who has the better admirals or the better sailors,” Menedemos said. “We’ve come all this way across the Inner Sea, but I don’t think our rowers are too worn to give a good account of themselves.”
“No, neither do I,” Sostratos said. Menedemos could talk coolly about a sea-fight in which he was liable to get killed. It didn’t bother him nearly so much as the thing he wouldn’t talk about at all, whatever that might be. Again, Sostratos was tempted to ask. Again, he thought better of it. He went on, “Whatever happens, it will happen soon now.”
“Be a relief to get it over with,” Menedemos said. “I feel as if Ptolemaios tied a fat bag of silver to each of my good sense’s ankles and then threw it into the sea to drown.”
“What else could you have done but what you did? He would have stolen the Aphrodite out from under you if you hadn’t come along, stolen her, and left us stuck in Alexandria,” Sostratos said.
“I understand that, my dear. Believe me, I do,” Menedemos replied. “And do you know what else? We might have been better off stuck down there than we are up here.” Sostratos found no answer at all for that.
Suitably refreshed, Ptolemaios’ fleet left Kition the next morning. Sostratos’ belly tightened as the harbor shrank behind the Aphrodite’s sternpost and then disappeared. Not much save fire happened quickly on the sea, but the meeting with Demetrios’ naval forces couldn’t lie far away.
But for Cape Pedalion projecting out to the southeast, the meeting would have been closer yet. As soon as the ships rounded the cape and swung north toward besieged Salamis, they lowered their masts and went to oar power. That was partly because the wind lay against them once more, partly because galleys never trusted the world’s fickle breezes in battle.
“We’re the last juggler in this parade,” Menedemos said as the akatos finally passed the cape. “All kinds of things may be going on up ahead of us without our knowing.”
“Sooner or later, we’ll find out.” Sostratos remembered thinking how useful a way of directly communicating between Alexandria and Cyprus would have been. A way for the front part of a fleet to communicate directly with the back part would have been just as useful, since the one and the other were separated by a good many stadia.
“Sooner or later. Sooner, I think.” Menedemos sounded as if he looked forward to it. Maybe he did. If he was in the middle, or even at the back, of desperate action, he wouldn’t have time to brood about … whatever he was brooding about. This wasn’t the time to ask. Sostratos suspected there was no time to ask.
Somebody at the stern of the nearest transport shouted something back toward the Aphrodite. Whatever it was, distance turned it meaningless, at least to Sostratos’ ear.
To Menedemos’, too, for he called to the rowers, “Did anyone make out what he was saying?” When no one admitted it, Menedemos said, “Up the stroke, Diokles, so we can get closer and hear him. Sostratos, go forward and shout for him to give us whatever that was again.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Sostratos said.
As he hurried up toward the little bow platform, Diokles clanged harder than usual and started calling “Rhyppapai!” to draw the rowers’ notice to the quickened tempo. Sostratos could feel the akatos moving faster over the sea.
The man at the stern of the galley ahead also noticed the Aphrodite coming closer. He stayed where he was instead of going back to whatever he’d been doing before. As the gap narrowed, Sostratos cupped his hands in front of his mouth and bawled, “Tell us your news over again!”
