His feet were muddy. He didn’t care. Like any sailor, he went barefoot in all weather and never wore anything but a chiton. An older man with a big, thick wool himation wrapped around himself gave him an odd look as they passed each other on the street, as if to say, Aren’t you freezing? Menedemos did feel the chill, but not enough to do anything about it.

He’d drunk enough wine at his cousin’s wedding feast to want to get rid of it and paused to piss against the blank, whitewashed wall of a housefront. Then he hurried on. Daylight hours were short at this season of the year, while those of the nighttime stretched like tar on a hot day. He wouldn’t have cared to be on the streets after sunset, not without the torch he’d carried in the wedding procession, and not without some friends along, too. Even in a peaceful, orderly polis like Rhodes, footpads prowled under cover of darkness.

He hoped Damonax would make a worthwhile addition to the family. He’d liked Erinna’s first husband well enough, but the man had seemed old to him. That’s because I wasn’t much more than a youth myself when she was wed then, he realized in some surprise. Her first husband would have been about thirty, the same age as Damonax is now. Time did strange things. Half a dozen years had got behind him when he wasn’t looking.

His father’s house and Uncle Lysistratos ’ stood side by side, not far from the temple to Demeter at the north end of town. When he knocked on the door, one of the house slaves inside called, “Who is it?”

“ Me-Menedemos.”

The door opened almost at once. “Did the feast break up so soon, young master?” the slave asked in surprise. “We didn’t expect you back for awhile yet.”

That almost certainly meant the slaves had grabbed the chance to sit around on their backsides and do as little as they could. Nothing was what slaves did whenever they got the chance. Menedemos answered, “I decided to come home a little early, that’s all.”