Over the Wine Dark Sea

here before,' Philodemos said with a shrug. 'She can put wax in her ears if the noise gets too bad, as Odysseus' men did sailing past the Sirens.' He cocked his head to one side, listening to the music. 'They don't play the flute badly, either.'   'One of them can play my flute in a while,' Menedemos said. 'They're good at that, too.' His father chuckled. Then they both laughed out loud. After a series of cartwheels across the andron, Phylainis had ended up in Sostratos' lap. Instead of feeling her up or starting the lovemaking then and there, Menedemos' cousin dumped her off as if she were on fire.   'She doesn't bite, Sostratos,' Menedemos said. 'Not unless you want her to.' He threw back his head and laughed; he could feel the wine, all right.   Sostratos shrugged. 'She picked me because I'm young, and she hoped I'd fall head over heels for her.' He shrugged again. 'I'm afraid not.'   'All right -  someone else will put his mortise in her tenon before long,' Menedemos answered, as if talking of the shipwright's business rather than Aphrodite's. Sostratos seemed to stay sober even when drunk. Poor fellow, Menedemos thought.   Sure enough, Phylainis soon pressed herself against Xanthos, who started talking a great deal. Are you going to bore her or bore her? Menedemos wondered. With wine in him, that seemed very funny. He ordered the slave to go round and fill the symposiasts' cups again. Telephos let Artemeis drink from his mug. As she gulped wine, the merchant ran his hand up under her tunic. 'What a smooth little piggy you've got,' he said, fondling her.   'It's even smoother inside,' she said, and took hold of the side of the couch and stuck her backside in the air. Telephos got behind her and put her words to the test.   Menedemos waved to Eunoa. He was the host's son. He'd hired her and the other girls. She hurried to him. 'What would you like?' she asked. He sat up on the couch. She squatted in front of him on the floor, her head bobbing up and down, then, at his gesture, got up onto the couch and squatted on him. Her breath was sweet with wine fumes. And she was smooth inside, too. 2   Waving a cloth, Erinna ran at a peahen. 'Get out of my herbs, you nasty thing!' Sostratos' sister shouted. 'Shoo!'   'What's it got in its beak?' Sostratos asked from the edge of the courtyard as the peahen beat a reluctant retreat.   'A wall lizard,' Erinna answered. Sure enough, the tail disappeared down the peahen's gullet. Erinna went on, 'I don't mind when the peafowl eat lizards and mice. But they eat the cumin and the fennel, too. I don't think you feed them enough.'   'I do so.' Sostratos indignantly pointed to the barley set out in a broad bowl, from which two other peahens were eating. 'They get almost as much as a slave does. I just think they like some opson with their sitos, the same as we do.'   Erinna rolled her eyes. 'Well, they can get it somewhere besides my herb garden.'   'It could be worse,' Sostratos said. A horrible, vaguely hornlike noise from next door showed how it could be worse. 'Menedemos has the peacock at his house. It does everything the peahens do, and squawks four times as much besides.'