The Gryphon's Skull

“Next to this, it is,” Menedemos said. “You'll get to Kos soon enough, but you're out of your mind if you think I won't do business along the way.” “And you're out of your mind if you think we didn't need fresh water,” Sostratos added. “We're not going to have our rowers fall over dead from working the oars too hard in this heat.” Dionysios looked back toward Cape Sounion, whose headland was still plainly visible in the west. “I could have swum this far,” he grumbled. “If you keep complaining, you will swim from here on out,” Menedemos said, no trace of smile on his face. That got through to the passenger, who fell silent. The following day dawned as hot and bright as the one before. The breeze that came up from the south might have blown from a smithy's furnace. But it was a breeze; Menedemos ordered the akatos' sail lowered from the yard. By the time the sun came up over the eastern horizon, the Aphrodite had left Keos behind. “Are you going to make Syros tonight?” Sostratos asked. “I'm going to try,” Menedemos answered. “If the wind holds, we shouldn't have any trouble.” “And if we don't run into pirates,” his cousin added. Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic. After a moment, Sostratos did the same. He went on, “Shall I pass out the weapons again, just in case?” “Maybe you'd better,” Menedemos said with a sigh. They saw no pirate galleys on the Aegean, only fishing boats and one round ship that took the Aphrodite for a pirate and sped away, running before the wind. Syros rose from the sea ahead of them: a sun-baked island much longer from north to south than from east to west. The only polis on the island, also called Syros, lay by a bay on the eastern coast; Menedemos brought the Aphrodite down from the north into the harbor. He quoted from the Odyssey as the akatos' anchors splashed into the Aegean: “ 'There is an island called Syrie, if perhaps you have heard of it,

Above Ortygie, where the turning points of the sun are.

It is not very populous, but it is good—

With fine cattle, fine sheep, full of wine, rich in wheat.

Famine never enters that folk, nor does any other

Dire plague come upon wretched mortals.

But when the race of men grows old in the city,

Apollo of the silver bow comes with Artemis.

He assails them with his painless shafts and kills them.

There are two cities there, and everything is divided in two between them. My father was king over both:

Ktesios son of Ormenos, a man like the immortals.' “ “That's Eumaios the swineherd talking to Odysseus, isn't it?” Sostratos asked. “Yes, that's right,” Menedemos said. Sostratos took a long look at Syros, then clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Well, if Eumaios was telling as much truth about his ancestors as he was about the island, he must have been a pig-keeper from a long line of pigkeepers.”