He was halfway up the stairs when Threissa started down them. 'Hail, young master,' the redheaded slave girl said in her oddly accented Greek. 'Welcome home.' 'Hail. Thank you,' he said, and went up another couple of steps. The Thracian slave wasn't so pretty as Maibia had been. But Maibia was back in Taras while Threissa was here - and Sostratos had gone without a long time. 'Come to my room with me,' he told her. She sighed. She couldn't say no, not when she was as much property as the bed on which he intended to have her. But she said, 'All right,' in a way that promised she would give him as little enjoyment as she could. He considered ways and means. 'I'll let you have a couple of oboloi afterwards.' He didn't have to do that, not with a family slave. 'All right,' Threissa said, but this time in a different tone of voice. 'Maybe even three?' Slaves are mercenary creatures, Sostratos thought. But then they have to be. 'Maybe,' he answered. Threissa waited for him at the top of the stairs. They went down the hall together to his room. He closed the door behind them. 'Come on,' Menedemos said as he and Sostratos made their way toward the gymnasion in the southwestern part of Rhodes, not far from the stadium and the temple dedicated to Apollo. 'It'll do you good. We've been away too long.' His cousin accompanied him only reluctantly. 'What you mean is, it'll do you good to show you can still outrun me and throw me when we wrestle. I don't know why you bother. We both know how that will come out.' 'That's not the point,' Menedemos said, which was at least partially true. 'The point is, a proper Hellene doesn't let himself go to seed.' 'I can think of quite a few things you do that a proper Hellene doesn't,' Sostratos said tartly. 'Why shouldn't I get to pick and choose, too?' Since Menedemos knew he had no good comeback for that, he didn't bother trying to find one. Instead, he repeated, 'Come on,' adding, 'No point in going back now. Look, you can already see the theater and the southern wall beyond it.' 'And if I went back home, I could see Demeter's temple,' Sostratos retorted. 'Did you drag me out here to see the sights? I don't mind that so much. Going to the gymnasion is a different story.' 'Quit complaining,' Menedemos said, beginning to lose patience. 'You can let yourself get all hunched-up and flabby, like a shoemaker stuck at his bench all the time or a barbarian who doesn't care what he looks like because he never takes off his clothes, or else you can try to be as much of a kalos k'agathos as you can.' 'I have much more control over whether I'm good than I do over whether I'm good-looking,' Sostratos said. Despite his grumbles, he accompanied Menedemos into the gymnasion. They stripped off their chitons - being seamen, they didn't bother with sandals - and gave an attendant an abolos to keep an eye on the clothes while they went out and exercised.
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