Menedemos brought the Aphrodite in at the polis of Naxos, on the northwestern coast. The crew moored the merchant galley next to a round ship that was taking on blocks of marble bigger and heavier than a man could carry. A wooden crane was carefully swaying them aboard the ship. Menedemos watched in fascination; if the fellow in charge of the crane made a mistake, or if a rope broke, one of those blocks would tear right through the ship’s bottom. It would end up on the floor of the harbor and the round ship would end up sunk.

“Easy! Easy!” the boss called to the workers-probably slaves- straining at the capstan. “Lower away! A little more… A little more… Hold on! Now once more, a quarter of a turn… There!”

The block went down into the round ship’s hold. Sailors down below there must have freed it from the securing lines, for one of them called up something to a man on deck, who waved to the crane operator. At his command, the crane swung back to another block waiting on the quay. Its crew made the block fast. Before going any further, the boss carefully checked the rope that would lift the chunks of marble. That block could wreck the quay if it fell, too, or smash a man to a red rag.

Only after the last block had swung into the hold did Menedemos call, “Euge!” to the man in charge of the crane.

“Thanks, friend,” the fellow replied. His shoulders sagged for a moment as he allowed himself a sigh of relief. Then, straightening, he went on, “And thanks even more for not bothering me when I was busy there.”

“You’re welcome,” Menedemos said. “I could see you needed to pay attention to what you were doing.”

“Some people don’t care. By the dog, a lot of the whipworthy rascals don’t care.” Anger blazed in the boss’ voice. “They’ve seen you, and that matters to them, so of course the thick-heads think it must matter to you, too. And if something goes wrong and you wreck a ship or crush a man, what do they do? They point and they gape and they laugh, that’s what. To Tartaros with all of them!” He spat on the quay.

More fire to him than I thought. Menedemos asked, “How did you get into your line of work?”

“About how you’d expect: I learned it from my father, same as he learned it from his,” the Naxian answered. “Some of the things Grandpa did, and his father…” He tossed his head. “We know a lot more about pulleys now than we did a long time ago, I’ll tell you that.”

“You’re right.” Menedemos’ gaze went to the top of the Aphrodite s mast, where a pulley block helped sailors raise and lower the yard. Little fishing boats, still made the way they had been from time out of mind, offered no such advantages. Aboard them, raw muscle power was the only thing that counted.

“Good talking to you, friend. Safe trip to wherever you’re going.” With a wave to the Rhodian, the crane boss turned back to his crew. At his shouted directions, they broke the crane down into lengths of lumber and ropes and carried the pieces back into the polis of Naxos. Menedemos hadn’t realized the big, impressive device was so easily portable.

“I wonder how much a crane could lift,” Sostratos said.

“Why didn’t you ask the man in charge of that one?” Menedemos said.

“You seemed more curious than I was,” his cousin answered.

Menedemos thought nothing much of that till he remembered how his complaints about Sostratos’ unending curiosity had helped spark their quarrel. He supposed he could have started another one if he’d risen to the remark. Instead, he answered, “Watching somebody who really knows what he’s doing-no matter what it is-is always a pleasure.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Sostratos agreed. “Are you planning to stay and do business here in Naxos?”

“It would only be luck if we found anything worth hauling back to Rhodes,” Menedemos answered. “I do want to refill our water jars, though. This is the place to do it. What we’ve got is hot and stale and hardly worth drinking, and I’ve never heard of anybody coming down with a bad flux from drinking the water here.”

The sailors he sent into town with the water jars laughed-giggled, in fact-as they went. Some of them patted at their hair or dragged wood or bone combs through it. Carrying water was usually women’s work. That accounted for the sailors’ silliness. Hoping they’d meet pretty women at the wellhead accounted for their primping.

In due course, the sailors came back with fresh water. “Hail, girls!” someone called from the waist of the Aphrodite . Menedemos thought it was Teleutas, but he wasn’t sure. Whoever it was, he infuriated the men with the jars. They didn’t seem sure who’d called out to them, either, which was probably lucky for him.

One of the water-carriers said, “Go ahead and laugh, you polluted catamite. We saw real women, honest women, women who aren’t whores. We didn’t just see ‘em, either. We talked with ‘em, and they answered back.”

The other sailors with jars up on their shoulders dipped their heads in agreement. Menedemos didn’t know how the jeering sailor felt about that. As for him, he was inclined to be jealous. Hellenes didn’t get many chances to meet honest women to whom they weren’t related. By the way the sailors acted, they’d made the most of this one.

“Where will we pass the night tomorrow?” Sostratos asked.

Menedemos shrugged. “I was thinking of spending it at sea. There’s no good stopping place halfway between Naxos and Rhodes. We’ve been this way before. You know the choices as well as I do-some really miserable little islands.”

He waited for his cousin to grumble and complain, but Sostratos only shrugged. “All right with me. I don’t mind a night on the planks, especially when we’ll probably be home for good the next night.”

“Oh.” Menedemos knew he sounded almost disappointed. Am I looking for another quarrel with Sostratos? he wondered, I hope not. “Home for good.” He tasted the words, finding them not altogether to his liking. “I won’t be sorry to sail away when spring comes back.”

“I don’t suppose I will, either.” Sostratos looked west and a little north-back in the direction of Athens. “And yet…” He sighed. “Visiting Athens, seeing it again, after I had to leave, reminds me that Rhodes really is my home. Too late to make a philosopher out of me; I’ve been chasing profit too long.”

“Nothing wrong with profit,” Menedemos said. “Without it, merchants couldn’t operate. And without merchants, where are philosophers? Squatting there straining to take a shit, that’s where.” He wasn’t sure whether Aristophanes had said that about men who loved wisdom, but it was something the comic poet might have said.

“Oh, yes. I had that same thought in Athens, though I didn’t put it so… elegantly,” Sostratos said.

Was that praise, or was he being snide? Menedemos couldn’t tell. He wondered whether his cousin was sure. With a shrug, he clapped Sostratos on the shoulder. “Stuck with being a trader, eh? And stuck with being a Rhodian? Well, I suppose there are worse fates.” He could think of plenty of them. What he didn’t know was if any were better.

Sailors who hadn’t hauled water began clamoring to go into Naxos. Unlike Kythnos and Syros, this was a real city, with plenty of taverns and plenty of brothels to choose from. Like an indulgent father-not a breed with which he was personally familiar-he waved them away from the Aphrodite .

“Some of them will come back to Rhodes without an obolos to put in their mouths,” Sostratos said.

“Shall I tell them not to drink and roister?” Menedemos asked. “Would they listen if I did?”

“I can think of more than one family back home that would thank you if you did.” But Sostratos sighed. That wasn’t what Menedemos had asked, and he knew it. With another sigh, he went on, “No, they wouldn’t heed you. That’s too bad.”