'So it does,' Sostratos agreed. 'I wonder if the Romans, up farther north still, have an alphabet of their own.' Menedemos looked back over his shoulder at his cousin. 'There are times, O marvelous one, when you find the least important things in the world to worry about.' Sostratos chuckled. ' 'O marvelous one,' is it? You sound like Sokrates when he's being sarcastically polite to some poor fool. And I wasn't worried. I was just - ' 'Curious,' Menedemos broke in. 'You always are. But before you start learning to write history in Oscan, remember that we're here to sell things first.' 'I know that.' Sostratos sounded angry. 'Have I ever disrupted anything because I'm interested in history?' 'Well, no.' Menedemos admitted what he couldn't deny. 'Then kindly leave me alone about it.' Sostratos still seemed hot enough to fire a pot. Menedemos might have given him a hot answer, too, but they finally came out into Pompaia's agora, and he started crying his wares instead. Not far from the agora stood the temple Leptines had mentioned, its columns and walls cut from the rather dark local stone and the decorative elements brightly painted, just as they would have been in a Hellenic polis. 'Hardly seems like barbarian work,' one of the sailors said. 'I was thinking the same thing,' Menedemos answered. 'The architect was probably a Hellene.' Then he raised his voice again: 'Perfume from Rhodes! Silk from Kos! Fine Ariousian, the best in the world, from Khios! Peafowl chicks!' He turned to Sostratos. 'I wish you did know some Oscan. Then more of these people would be able to understand.' His cousin pointed. 'I think we'll do all right.' Sure enough, Pompaians were converging on the men from the Aphrodite. One of them, a plump, prosperous-looking fellow in a toga - a garment Menedemos found very strange and not very attractive - surprised him by going over to the cage with the peafowl chicks and addressing Sostratos in good Greek: 'Are these the young of the big, shiny bird with the crest and the incredible tail?' 'Why, yes,' Sostratos replied. 'How do you know of peafowl? I didn't expect anyone here in Pompaia would.' 'As it happens, Herennius Egnatius brought his through the town day before yesterday, on the way up to his home in Caudium,' the man said. 'Everyone who saw the male was amazed. He said he bought it from a couple of Hellenes in Taras. And so, when I saw you . . .' 'At your service, then,' Sostratos said. 'I would be lying, though, if I told you I knew which chicks would become peacocks and which peahens.' Here in Pompaia, Menedemos might have told that lie. He didn't expect to be back any time soon to be called on it. But Sostratos had forestalled him, so now he had
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