Noreen Doyle, with many thanks for their friendship and for their help with my research.
A NOTE ON WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND MONEY I have, as best I could, used in this novel the weights, measures, and coinages my characters would have used and encountered in their journey. Here are some approximate equivalents (precise values would have varied from city to city, further complicating things): 1 digit = 3/4 inch
4 digits = 1 palm
6 palms = 1 cubit
1 cubit = 1 1/2 feet
1 plethron = 100 feet
1 stadion = 600 feet 12 khalkoi = 1 obolos
6 oboloi = 1 drakhma
100 drakhmai = 1 mina
(about 1 pound of silver)
60 minai = 1 talent As noted, these are all approximate. As a measure of how widely they could vary, the talent in Athens was about 57 pounds, while that of Aigina, less than thirty miles away, was about 83 pounds.
1 Menedemos and his cousin Sostratos walked down toward the Aphrodite in the main harbor of Rhodes. Both young men wore thigh-length wool chitons. Sostratos had a wool chlamys on over his tunic. He didn't really need the cloak, though; it was still late in the month of Anthesterion, before the vernal equinox, but the sun shone warm out of a clear blue sky. Like any men who often went to sea, the two cousins went barefoot even on dry land. A mild breeze blew down from the north. Tasting it, Menedemos dipped his head in anticipation. 'Good sailing weather coming soon,' he said. He was little and lithe and very handsome, his face clean-shaven in the style Alexander the Great had made popular twenty years before. 'Sure enough,' Sostratos agreed. He'd spent enough years studying in Athens to have a sharper accent than the Doric drawl usual in Rhodes. Careless of fashion, he'd let his beard grow out. He towered more than half a head above his cousin. 'Some traders have already put to sea, I hear.' 'I've heard the same, but Father says it's too early,' Menedemos answered. 'He's probably right.' Sostratos, as far as Menedemos was concerned, showed altogether too much self-restraint for someone only a few months older than he was. 'I want to be out there,' Menedemos said. 'I want to be doing things. Whenever we sit idle over the winter, I feel like a hare caught in a net.' 'Plenty to do during the winter,' Sostratos said. 'It's what you do then that lets you succeed when you can sail.'
