“They've got silver,” Menedemos said. “Lots and lots of lovely turtles. And they have a temple to Artemis they're talking about prettying up. Artemis is a huntress. Wouldn't her image look fine in a lion skin?” “Ah.” After some thought, Sostratos said, “You might convince them of that. You might even have a better chance than at Athens, I suppose. More hides come in to Athens than to Aigina, I'm sure.” Menedemos kissed him on the cheek. “Exactly what I was thinking, my dear. And it's only a day's journey from here.” He pointed west. “You can see the island, poking its nose up over the horizon.” “Islands have noses?” Sostratos said. “I don't think any philosopher ever suspected that.” Menedemos made a face at him. But his own whimsy didn't last long. With a sigh, he went on, “I wish we were heading to Peiraieus instead. Without the gryphon's skull, though, what's the point?” “Not much.” No, Menedemos wasn't heartbroken at the loss of the ancient bones. “We'll see how we do somewhere else.” Winds in the Saronic Gulf were fitful the next day; the rowers spent a good deal of time at the oars. But they seemed glad enough to row. Maybe they were eager to escape Sounion, where two of their comrades would lie forever. That wasn't anything Sostratos could ask, but it wouldn't have surprised him. With a circumference of perhaps 180 stadia, Aigina wasn't a big island. These days, it also wasn't an important island, though that hadn't always been true. When the Aphrodite made for the polis, which lay on the western side of the island, Sostratos said, “This place would be a lot better off if it hadn't gone over to Dareios before Marathon.” “It got what it deserved afterwards, eh?” Menedemos said. “If you want to call it that,” Sostratos replied. “The Athenians dispossessed the Aiginetans and planted their own colonists here. Then, after the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans threw those people out and brought back the original Aiginetans and their descendants.” “So who's left nowadays?” Menedemos asked. “Aiginetans,” Sostratos said. “They're a mongrel lot, I suppose, but that's true of a lot of Hellenes these days. If a polis loses a war ...” He clicked his tongue between his teeth; he didn't like to think of such things. But he refused to shy away from them: “Remember, Rhodes had a Macedonian garrison when we were youths.” His cousin looked as if he would have been happier forgetting. “It's our job to make sure that never happens again.” “So it is,” Sostratos said. If we can, he added, but only to himself. He might think words of evil omen, but he would do his best not to speak them aloud. Whatever their ultimate origins, the modern Aiginetans spoke a dialect halfway between Attic and Doric. It sounded odd to Sostratos. Menedemos, though, said, “They talk almost the same way you do.” “They do not!” Sostratos said indignantly. “They do so,” Menedemos said. “They sound like people who started out speaking Doric but went to school in Athens.”
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