Over the Wine Dark Sea

  'Which of us dyes silk?' Xenophanes returned.   'Which of us sells dye all around the Inner Sea?' Sostratos asked. They smiled at each other. Their moves were as formal, as stylized, as those of a dance.   Pixodaros said, 'My master is right.' That was an inevitable response, too. He went on, 'The crimson of Byblos may be brighter, but that of Arados holds its color better.' Sostratos tossed his head to show he disagreed.   Again, Menedemos moved faster than Sostratos would have, saying, 'Each jar of dye holds about a kotyle. That may not be very much wine, but it's a whole great whacking lot of boiled-down murex juice. How much silk might you trade for a jar?'   'And of what quality?' Sostratos added. 'There's dye and then there's dye, and there's silk and then there's silk.'   They haggled till the light in Xenophanes' shop faded. Pixodaros lit lamps that nibbled at the edges of oncoming night without really pushing it back. The familiar smell of burning olive oil filled the air. Xenophanes began to yawn. 'I'm an old man,' he said. 'I need my sleep. Shall we go on come morning? We're pretty close, I reckon.'   'Is there an inn close by?' Sostratos asked. 'My cousin and I slept on the poop deck last night. We'd sooner have something a little softer tonight.'   'That there is, just a couple of blocks over,' Xenophanes answered. 'I'll have a couple of slaves get torches and light your way there. And I'll give you some bread to eat for your suppers -  Skylax will sell you wine till you're too drunk to walk, but you have to bring in your own food. He will cook meat or fish if you pay him.'   The slaves were a couple of fair-haired Thracians. They chattered in their incomprehensible language while guiding Sostratos and Menedemos to the inn. Their torches didn't shed much light; Sostratos stepped in something nasty, and kept trying to scrape it off his foot till he got to Skylax's place. He and Menedemos each gave Xenophanes' slaves a couple of khalkoi. The torchbearers hurried back toward the silk merchant's house.   More torches blazed inside the inn. Not all the smoke escaped through the hole in the roof; a lot of it hung in the main room in a choking cloud. The odor of hot oil fought with it: Skylax kept a vat bubbling over a fire. By the smell, Xenophanes lit his home with better oil than the innkeeper used for cooking.   His wine wasn't bad, though, and he didn't seem put out to see Sostratos and Menedemos eating bread and not giving him anything to throw into that bubbling vat. When Sostratos asked about his rooms, he said, 'Two oboloi for the pair of you.' He wouldn't haggle. When Sostratos tried, he just tossed his head. 'If you don't like it, strangers, go somewhere else.'   The two Rhodians couldn't very well do that, not in a strange city after dark. Sostratos thought he could have found his way back to the Aphrodite, but he didn't want to sleep on planking again. After a glance at his cousin, he paid Skylax the little silver coins. A slave carrying a lamp guided Sostratos and Menedemos to the room. It held only one bed. The slave set down the lamp and dragged in another one from across the hall. Then he departed, taking the lamp with him and plunging the room into Stygian darkness.   With a sigh, Sostratos said, 'We might as well go to sleep. Nothing else we could possibly do in here.'