Sostratos sighed."I like drinking wine. I don't like swilling it down neat like abarbarian. I don't like getting drunk and breaking things and getting intofights." He was, or at least tried to be, moderate. All the philosophersmaintained that moderation was a virtue. By the look on Menedemos' face, he reckonedit not only a vice but a nasty vice at that. Sostratos sighed again. His cousinhad all the noteworthy good traits: he was handsome, outgoing, strong, nimble.He could as easily sing a song as guide a ship through a gale without showingfear. And what about you?Sostratos asked himself. He shrugged. Nobody'd ever written Sostratos isbeautiful on the walls when he was a youth. He wasn't a bad haggler, but he gotwhat bargains he got with reason and patience, not by making people like himand go easy or by persuading them black was white. He towered over Menedemos,but his cousin always threw him when they stripped off their clothes andwrestled in the gymnasion. I have a good prosestyle. Theophrastos told me that himself, up in Athens, and he doles out evenless praise than Aristoteles did when he headed the Lykeion. Everyone says so.I remember what I read, too. And I've always been clever -  better than clever,really -  with numbers. It didn't seem enough.Even with moderation and reliability thrown in, it didn't seem enough.Sostratos shrugged again. I can't be Menedemos. I am what the gods made me. Ihave to make the most of what they gave me. His cousin laughed andpointed. "Look, Sostratos. It really is getting on toward spring. There'sa gecko on a wall." Sure enough, agray-brown lizard clung to the gray-brown mud brick of a poor man's house. Itwalked up the wall as easily as a fly might have done, and snapped up a bugbefore the insect knew it was there. Half a block past thehouse with the gecko, they turned right so as to go north. That was the onlyturn they'd have to make till they got to their homes. Sostratos said,"Gods be praised, Rhodes is laid out on a grid, the way Peiraieus is up in Attica. Anyone can find his way around here or in Athens' harbor. Athens itself?" He tossed his head. "You have to be born there to know whereyou're going, and even the Athenians aren't sure half the time. Hippodamos ofMiletos was a man of godlike wit."