'Do you think you can stand being so generous?' Menedemos said. He loved Aristophanes both for his poetry and for his bawdy wit. Sostratos, he knew, admired some of the verse but wanted nothing to do with the lewdness that went hand in hand with it. To his surprise, his cousin answered seriously: 'Being generous to Aristophanes isn't easy for me, you know. If it weren't for the way he pictured Sokrates in the Clouds, the Athenians might not have decided to make him drink hemlock.' 'He's been dead for a hundred years - ' Menedemos began. 'Not quite ninety,' Sostratos broke in. 'Not quite ninety, then. Fine. Why are you getting so exercised about it?' 'Because he was a great and good man,' Sostratos answered. 'That's reason enough - more than reason enough. They aren't so common that we can afford to lose them.' 'From everything I've heard, he was an interfering old busybody,' Menedemos said. 'Even if Aristophanes hadn't said a word about him, plenty of people still would've wanted to get rid of him.' For a moment, Sostratos looked as shocked as if he'd said Zeus did not exist - more shocked than that, even, for some bright young men these days did dare doubt the gods. But his cousin, as usual, thought before he spoke. At last, he said, 'There may be some truth to that. He never did worry much about what other people thought before he opened his mouth. Platon makes that very plain.' 'There you are, then,' Menedemos said. 'If it was his own fault, why are you blaming Aristophanes?' 'I didn't say it was all his own fault.' 'Ha! Now you're backing oars. You can go one way or the other, O best one, but you can't try to go both ways at once,' Menedemos said. 'I think you're trying to be as difficult as you can,' Sostratos said. 'I'd sooner talk philosophy - or gossip about philosophers, which isn't quite the same thing - than think about pirates,' Menedemos said. 'Since I don't usually care to do that, you'd best believe the pirates worry me.' 'You could have decided to make for Zakynthos instead of taking the short way across the Ionian Sea,' Sostratos said. Menedemos tossed his head. 'I told you, it's too close to craneflying season. Too much chance of a storm's blowing up for me to make the long journey across the open sea. But the pirates will be out. They'll know what honest skippers are thinking, the gods-detested bastards.' For once, though, the usually cautious Sostratos was the bolder of the two of them. 'I still think you're worrying too much,' he said. 'If a pirate sees our hull,
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