Over the Wine Dark Sea

good.' Sostratos and Menedemos spoke together.   'I know it isn't.' The oarmaster sounded angry and chagrined. When he yelled, 'Resume!' this time, he didn't try to hide that annoyance. He went right on at an irate bellow: 'Now listen to me, you worthless lugs -  if we ever need that command, we'll need it bad. If you're late, it's your arms that'll get wrenched out of their shoulder sockets. We're going to keep working on this till we get it right -  right, do you hear me?'   All the portside rowers were, of course, looking straight back toward the keleustes on the poop deck. Like Epimetheus in the myth, rowers had a perfect view of where they'd been and none of where they were going. Sostratos eyed their sweaty faces more openly than he could have most of the time, because they were paying him no attention at all, but were listening to Diokles' tirade. Most of them, especially the ones who'd been slow, looked embarrassed and angry -  not at the oarmaster, but at themselves for failing him.   To Menedemos, Sostratos murmured, 'If I talked to them like that, they'd throw me over the side.'   'They'd do the same to me,' his cousin answered. 'They'll obey me; sure enough, but a skipper shouldn't scream at his sailors. That's what makes mutinies happen: they think you're a gods-detested whoreson. But they respect a tough keleustes -  the fellow in that job's supposed to have a hide thick as leather.'   Sostratos pondered that. Menedemos had the knack for getting men to do what he wanted because they liked him. Diokles was ready to outroar anyone who presumed to stand against him. And what about me? Sostratos wondered. Neither of those ways seemed open to him. When people did what he wanted, it was because he'd persuaded them that that was the right thing to do under the circumstances. Such persuasion had its uses, but not, he feared, in emergencies.   Again and again, Diokles shouted, 'Portside oars -  in!' After a while, Sostratos thought the rowers had the maneuver down cold, but the keleustes kept drilling them. When at last he relented, it was with a growled warning: 'We'll do it again tomorrow, too. We're talking about saving your necks, remember.'   At sunset, the anchors splashed into the sea. The Aphrodite bobbed in light chop, well off the Italian coast. Even if a storm blew up, the ship had plenty of leeway -  and galleys were far less vulnerable to being driven ashore by hostile wind and wave than were ships that relied on sails alone.   The evening meal was about as frugal as breakfast had been. Sostratos ate bread and oil and olives and cheese. Menedemos bit into an onion pungent enough to make Sostratos' eyes water from three cubits away. He washed it down with a sip of wine. Catching Sostratos' eye, he said, 'It's not what we got at Gylippos' supper, but it fills the belly.'   'What you got at Gylippos' supper was trouble,' Sostratos replied. 'How's your ankle today?'   He'd meant that as a gibe, but Menedemos answered seriously: 'Standing at the steering oars all day long doesn't do it any good, but it's healing. It would be worse if I had to run around a lot.'   'You did that back in Taras,' Sostratos pointed out.   'Yes, O most beloved cousin of mine,' Menedemos said, so poisonously that Sostratos decided he'd pushed things about as far as he could go.   On the second evening