Over the Wine Dark Sea

and peahen out the door and onto the street without too much trouble. Sostratos closed the door after them. When he came back into the courtyard, Menedemos said, 'There's two of the miserable birds gone, anyhow.'   'Many good-byes to them, too,' Sostratos said. 'May we get rid of the rest soon.' The two cousins both dipped their heads.   Gylippos was a fat fellow who'd made a fortune in dried fish. His andron was large and, by Tarentine standards, splendidly decorated, though to Menedemos the wall paintings, the couches, and even the wine cups in the men's chamber were gaudy and busy. Gylippos himself was gaudy, too, with heavy gold rings on several fingers.   He wagged one of those fingers at Menedemos, who reclined on the couch next to his. 'You were a naughty fellow, selling that barbarian the one peacock you had,' he said.   Menedemos answered, 'He paid me well. His silver's as good as anyone else's.' Better than yours would have been, he thought, because you'd have been careful to give me the exact weight of metal we agreed on, and not an obolos more. Had all cities coined to the same standard, life would have been simpler. As things were, the fellow who took pains in his dealings with money had the edge on the man who didn't.   Gylippos wagged that finger again. His slaves had already cleared away the supper plates -  he'd served squid and octopus and oysters and eels with the sitos: no dried fish for his guests -  but the symposion that would follow hadn't started yet. He said, 'And the scene he made in the streets getting the peacock to the house where he's staying! My dear fellow, you couldn't have done more to build demand for the birds if you'd tried for a year. Everybody saw the peacock, and everybody wants it.'   Sostratos shared the couch with Menedemos. As usual, Menedemos had taken the head, though his cousin was older. Sostratos hadn't complained; he never did. He did speak up now, though: 'That parade was the Samnite's idea, not ours. I offered to sell him two peafowl cages. I even suggested that he use ropes to keep the birds from running every which way. He wouldn't listen.'   'And so,' Menedemos added with a grin, 'he had half the people in Taras chasing his precious peacock -  and the peahen, too. You're right, best one'  - he inclined his head to Gylippos -  'we couldn't have made more folk notice the birds with anything we did on purpose.'   'You certain couldn't.' The purveyor of dried fish looked past Menedemos to Sostratos. 'As for trying to tell an Italian anything, well . . .' He tossed his head. 'I don't think it can be done. Samnites are stubborn as mules, and the Romans to the north of them are just as bad. It's no wonder they're bumping heads again.'   'Again?' Sostratos looked interested. Menedemos recognized the eagerness in his cousin's voice -  he hoped he'd find out about some obscure bit of history he hadn't known before. Sure enough, Sostratos went on, 'They've fought before?' It was, Menedemos supposed, a harmless vice.   'Yes, a generation ago,' Gylippos answered. 'The Romans won that fight, and the Samnites went to war with them again ten or twelve years ago. They won a big battle early on, but the Romans were too stubborn to quit, so they've just been hammering away at each other ever since.'   Another guest of Gylippos', a Tarentine with a face like one of the host's dried fish, said, 'The Samnites who overran some of our poleis in Campania are almost civilized these days.'   'Well, so they are, Makrobios -  some of them.' But Gylippos didn't seem much impressed.