Carrying the bow and quiver, Sostratos made his way back toward the stern. Menedemos greeted him with a line from the Iliad: “Hail, 'best of the Akhaioi in archery.' “ “I'm not, you know,” Sostratos answered with his usual relentless honesty. “You're a better shot than I am, though not by a lot. And hitting anything when you're shooting at a moving target from a moving ship is as much a matter of luck as anything else.” Both those things were true. Neither of them mattered even an obolos' worth, not right now. Menedemos tossed his head. “You won't get out of it that easily, my dear. Like it or not, you're a hero.” He would have basked in the acclaim himself. What was a man worth, unless his fellows praised him? Not much, not as far as Menedemos was concerned. But Sostratos turned as red as a handsome youth importuned for the first time by an older man. Menedemos swallowed a sigh. There were times when his cousin took modesty much too far. The channel between Andros and Euboia had an evil reputation, but its waters were calm enough when the Aphrodite crossed it. Once Euboia lay on the ship's right hand and the coastline of Attica on the left, Sostratos allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief. '“We don't have to worry about that anymore,” he remarked. Menedemos tossed his head. “Of course we do—unless you hadn't planned on going back?” As Sostratos' cheeks heated, his cousin let him down easy: Tm not sorry to get to leeward of Euboia myself, I will say that.” “Nor I,” Sostratos said. The long, narrow island lay like a shield to the northeast of Attica. “Khalkis tomorrow.” “I expect so,” Menedemos answered, and began to quote from the Iliad's Catalogue of Ships; “ 'The Abantes, breathing fury, held Euboia—
Khalkis and Eiretria and Hisitaia rich in grapes,
Coastal Kerinthos and the steep city of Dion;
They also held Karystos and dwelt in Styra.
Their leader was Elephenor, descendant of Ares,
The son of Khalkedon: lord of the great-hearted Abantes.
Him the swift Abantes followed, with their hair long in back:
Spearmen with ash spears ready
To rend the corselets on the chests of their foes.
Forty black ships followed him.' “ “Old cities,” Sostratos murmured. But he looked west, toward Attica: toward the land to which he wished the Aphrodite were going. He pointed. “There's a place that's not so old, but it bears a name that will live as long as Troy: Marathon,” His cousin cared little for history, but even he knew what that meant. “Where the Athenians gave the Persians the first lesson on what it means to tangle with free Hellenes,” he said, Sostratos dipped his head. “That's right.” And so it was, though things weren't quite so simple. Up till the battle at Marathon, the Persians had won their fights against the Hellenes with a monotonous regularity no one cared to remember these days. Sostratos asked, “Do you know the story of Pheidippides?” “Oh, yes,” his cousin said. “He's the fellow who ran from Marathon to Athens with news of the fight, gasped out, 'Rejoice! We conquer!'—and fell over dead.” “That's right,” Sostratos said, “When I was in Athens, I went out to Marathon once, to see with my own eyes what the battlefield looks like. It was most of a day on the back of a mule—a long day's march for a hoplite. I don't wonder that Pheidippides dropped dead if he ran it all at once.”
