Because Menedemos intended to spend the day in the city, Sostratos went into the agora to let people know the merchant galley had come and to tell them what his cousin and he had for sale. Several men headed for the piers to buy chicks or wine or silk or perfume or some of the other goods the akatos had brought from the east. And, being who he was, Sostratos also indulged his own curiosity. 'Tell me,' he said to a potter who looked reasonably bright, 'why does this city have the name it does?' 'Well, stranger, I've heard a couple of stories about that, and I have to tell you I don't know which one's true myself.' 'Go on,' Sostratos said eagerly. 'I'm always glad to meet someone who'll admit he doesn't know everything.' 'Heh,' the potter said. 'I bet you it doesn't happen any too often, either.' That made Sostratos laugh out loud. The local went on, 'Anyway, one tale is that the name comes from the word that means to break, because we have a lot of earthquakes in these parts, and because it looks like Sicily broke off from Italy.' 'That makes sense,' Sostratos said; Rhegion could easily be derived from rhegnumi. 'Aiskhylos says something similar, doesn't he?' he remarked. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, 'What's the other story?' 'Some people say the name comes from one Italian language or another, because regium or some such word means royal in those tongues,' the potter replied. 'Which do you think is true?' Sostratos asked. 'I'd sooner believe we Hellenes named the place ourselves than that we borrowed a word from the barbarians,' the potter said. 'I'd sooner believe that, mind you, but I can't prove it.' 'Fair enough,' Sostratos said. 'Better than fair enough, in fact.' He went off, hoping he would remember that when the day finally came for him to write his history. That day wouldn't come if he didn't get back to letting the people of Rhegion know the Aphrodite had peafowl chicks for sale. Of course it won't, Sostratos thought: Menedemos will kill me if I don't do my job. He went back to the merchant galley late in the afternoon. If the folk of Rhegion didn't know about the peafowl by then, it wasn't because he hadn't told them. 'Any luck?' he called to Menedemos as he walked up the pier. 'I sold two,' Menedemos answered. 'Sold 'em to two different men, too, and it was almost like they were bidding against each other to see who could show what a rich fellow he was by paying more. I got close to five minai: you might have thought they each had to have the very last bird.' 'That's splendid.' Sostratos clapped his hands. 'We sold two birds for the price of three, more or less, or earned a couple of extra days' wages for the whole crew.'
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