“Not a bad notion,” Diokles agreed, smiting his bronze square to give the rowers their stroke. “I'd do that myself every now and again when I pulled an oar, and I did enough rowing to make my palms hard as horn.” Menedemos kept the merchant galley close to the coast of Kos. Across the channel, Ptolemaios' ships and soldiers still laid siege to Halikarnassos. Stopping up a harbor tight as a wine jar wasn't easy, though. Every so often, one or two of Antigonos' war galleys would slip out and sink or capture any ships they could catch, Menedemos didn't want to make things easy for them. He glanced over to his cousin. “Oe, Sostratos, there's history going on, just a few stadia away.” “Well, so there is,” Sostratos said. “But it's not going on very fast, is it? I don't think I'll miss much if I look northwest instead of northeast.” Look towards Athens, he meant. Menedemos said. “We're not there yet, and we're not going there yet, either. Why don't you look due north instead? That's where Miletos lies, near enough. We need the money we'll make there, too.” “I know,” Sostratos said, “Every word you say is true. I understand that. But I have a hard time caring.” “You'd better not,” Menedemos warned him. “When we trade there, we'll have to haggle extra hard, squeeze all the silver we can out of the merchants. If you're mooning over that miserable gryphon's skull, you won't do us any good.” “I know,” Sostratos said again. But his gaze went back to the rower's bench under which the skull was stowed. A lover's gaze might have gone to his beloved in the same way. A lover's gaze would have been no more tender, either. “Me, I'll be glad when we get to Athens, just so we're rid of the miserable, ugly thing,” Menedemos said. “Anything you can learn from is beautiful,” his cousin said stiffly. “When I want beauty, I'll find it in a girl's flesh, not a gryphon's bone,” Menedemos said. “There's beauty of the flesh, and then there's beauty of the mind,” Sostratos said. “The gryphon's skull has none of the one, but thinking about it may lead those who love wisdom to the other.” After a few heartbeats, Menedemos tossed his head. “I'm afraid that's beyond me, my dear. Nothing you say can make that bone seem anything but ugly to me.” “Let it go, then,” Sostratos said, somewhat to Menedemos' surprise: when his cousin felt philosophical, he was often inclined to lecture. A moment later, Sostratos explained himself: “I've got Platon and Sokrates on my mind, that's all.” “Why?” Menedemos asked. Before Sostratos could, he answered his own question: “Oh. Hemlock, of course.” “That's right,” Sostratos said. “There's a good deal of talk about the relationship between physical beauty and real love in the Symposion.” “Is there? Well, that's more interesting than philosophy usually gets.”
Вы читаете The Gryphon's Skull
