Himilkon said, “The gods keep you safe on your journey. May the winds be good, may the seas be calm, and may the Macedonian marshals not go to war anywhere too close to you and your ship.”

“May it be so,” Sostratos agreed. “By all the signs, Antigonos has a pretty solid grip on Phoenicia and its hinterland. I don’t think Ptolemaios can hope to take it away from him. No matter what they do to each other elsewhere along the shores of the Inner Sea, that seems a good bet,”

“For your sake, my master, I hope you are right,” Himilkon said, falling back into Aramaic. “Whether the elephant tramples the lion or the lion pulls down the elephant, the mouse who gets caught in their battle always loses. Shall we go on with the lesson, or have you had enough?”

“May it please you, my master, I have had enough,” Sostratos answered, also in Aramaic.

Himilkon smiled and clapped his hands. “That is perfect-pronunciation, accent, everything. If I had another half a year to work with you, I could turn you into a veritable man of Byblos, may a pestilence take me if I lie.”

“I thank you,” Sostratos said, knowing he meant it as a compliment. The Hellene tried to imagine himself a member of a folk that knew not philosophy. What would I do? How would I keep from going mad? Or would I see what I was missing? A man blind from birth doesn’t miss the beauty of a sunset.

He got to his feet and left the Phoenician’s ramshackle warehouse. Hyssaldomos, Himilkon’s Karian slave, stood just outside, chewing on some brown bread. “Hail, O best one,” he said in Greek.

“Hail,” Sostratos answered. He switched to Aramaic: “Do you understand this language, Hyssaldomos?”

“Little bit,” the slave said, also in Aramaic. “Himilkon use sometimes. Greek easier.”

That probably meant Greek was more like Hyssaldomos’ native Karian. Sostratos didn’t know for certain, though. Rhodes lay off the coast of Karia, and Rhodians had been dealing with Karians for centuries. Even so, only a handful of Karian words had entered the local Greek dialect. Few Rhodians spoke the tongue of their nearest barbarian neighbors, and he wasn’t one of them. But more and more Karians used Greek these days, either alongside their own language or instead of it.