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This is a great adventure story. It's not a mystery or crime novel, but it's the kind of novel that perhaps a generation or two ago laid immense claim to the hearts of young persons and young-at-heart adults. It's a story of sailing, pirates, warring kings, squabbling cousins, and mercantile give-and-take. Keeping up with the present time, there's a lot of sex in it, not graphic to my mind, but specific enough so that no one need mistake the meaning. And it's an historical novel, beautifully created. It takes place during a period of history that few of us, even history buffs, have paid much attention to, the Hellenistic period between the death of Alexander the Great and the rising superior power of Rome. With Alexander's death, and his leaving his empire to the "strongest" of his generals, his conquests were divided into various kingdoms, that of General Ptolemaios in Egypt enduring the longest, right down to his direct descendent, Cleopatra, a period of some 300 years immediately before Christian times. Antigonos held Asia Minor, present-day Turkey. Others ruled over Macedonia and Greece, and over the old Persian Empire. They warred among themselves, to the detriment of the neutrals who were caught between. Our protagonists are two cousins who are sea-going traders from the neutral island of Rhodes, near the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Sostratos is the older, a curious and highly intelligent young man who pursues knowledge for the satisfaction it gives, and who keeps the accounting in his head. Menedemos is the captain of their small ship, skillful as both a seaman and negotiating merchant, bold, and, when it comes to seducing married women, reckless. They cruise the Aegean Sea with its manifold islands between Asia Minor and Greece, stopping at the larger ports to buy goods that are locally plentiful at relatively cheap prices and sell or barter them at other ports where they are scarcer. The sea is beautiful and dangerous, full of treacherous shoals, sudden disastrous storms, and vicious pirates. Their ship is small, possessing a sail that can sometimes be used, but relying more on a score or so of paid rowers. They have no compass, but sail by the sun, the stars, and their knowledge of the appearance and locations of various islands. For these reasons, they try, as ancient Greeks were wont to do, to keep land in sight at all times, but find they can't always do it. To add to their problems, Ptolemaios of Egypt and Antigonos of Asia Minor are fighting for control of the very sea that provides them their living. On one large island, they are summoned by Ptolemaios to carry out a mission for him, a well paid but highly dangerous one. They have several interviews with this cultured but death-dealing ruler, never knowing when they might displease him and lose their lives. As they go from island and mainland port after port, they are often looked upon suspiciously by the local authorities, and they carry on their trading in the markets sometimes with swords over their heads. So it's a jolly good adventure tale, but it's more than that. The author's name, H. T. Turteltaub, is a pseudonym for Harry Turtledove. An appropriate name to author this book, it reminds me of the passage in the Bible's Song of Solomon: "Rise up, my love, and come away, for, lo, the winter is past ... and the voice of the turtle[dove] is heard throughout our land." Mr. Turteltaub is a highly knowledgeable scholar of ancient Greece, and how it shows in his writing. Far more than the average historical novelist, he inculcates the times into his readers by writing as if they were there. Sostratos and Menedemos bring with them provisions of bread, cheese, olives, and wine, and supplement them with fresh-caught seafood, red mullet, mackerel, squid, et al. They speak a Doric Greek because Rhodes had been settled by Dorians, but they run into other Greeks who speak with an Ionian, Attic, or Macedonian accent, as well as foreigners for whom Greek is a second language. The position of women in these times is well noted in the novel, and yet we also see that even then sex would not be denied, although positions could vary with retrovaginal entry being common, as was anal sex, and sex between grown men and young boys, just as we see from the numerous examples of Greek pottery available to us today. As today in Greece, men then seldom married under age 30, but women married very young. The two cousins frequently visit and get overnight accommodations from the "proxenos" or consul who represents their city in other places. They are delayed and inconvenienced by port authorities, and they haggle continuously with the merchants and others who want their goods, but at sacrifice prices. The author strives quite successfully to show us as many of the customs and manners of the times as he can manage in his novel while still keeping it interesting and suspenseful. Thus we are treated to an inobtrusive travelogue as we keep up with the adventures of these men. And it's a true travelogue, as I know from my long residence in Greece where much of what Turteltaub writes continues to this day; each summer a few of us would rent a "kaiki" and go island-hopping in the same sea that is featured in THE GRYPHON'S SKULL, even carrying as provisions the descendants of those same breads, cheeses, olives, and wines as were available to Sostratos and Menedemos. The "gryphon's skull" itself is a fossil that Sostratos, to his delight, gets in a transaction, and he wants to bring it to Athens to be studied by the great knowledgeable teachers there. Menedemos sees little commercial value in it, and wants to get rid of it, yet it stays with them for most of their travels. I think Turteltaub uses the skull more symbolically than anything else, and it makes me think of Kontantinos Kavafis's modern poem, "Ithaka": "And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not deceived you, so wise have you become of such experience that already you will have understood what these Ithakas mean." Neither will THE GRYPHON'S SKULL deceive you, and the experience of reading it will add to your wisdom.
Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, March 2003
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