Homer’s Daughter (4 page)

“If you had stayed quietly in your room, he would have nursed a hope that our conversation had been drowned by the rattling of doors and shutters under the sirocco; it was your officious sympathy that sent him away. And if you had then roused one of the porters, and told him to shadow your brother, and report his movements to your uncle Mentor, or someone else responsible, I should not now be crying out my eyes in hopeless longing for him.”

Though murmuring gently: “Yes, we were all to blame,” I knew very well that the maids sleeping in the corridor near the bedroom door had not only overheard as much of the dispute that night as I, but been afterwards taken fully into her confidence. However, for Laodamas's sake I bore with Ctimene. She was not altogether a bad woman, I decided; ill-health plagued her, and on the rare occasion when I fell sick myself, did I not behave just as irrationally? Ctimene's perpetual complaints made me even less eager for marriage than before, and I kept out of the house as much as I decently could, carrying my needlework into the garden, where Ctimene seldom followed, because she had a horror of spiders; and surrounded myself with a protective screen of women whenever I was obliged by the weather to stay indoors.

Here let me describe our Palace. For the purposes of my epic poem I have furnished it far more splendidly than is really the case: giving it a bronze threshold, golden doors, silver doorpost, and golden hounds to stand guard on either side; also bronze walls with a frieze of lapis lazuli; and golden statues of boys with hollowed hands into which torches cut from resinous pine heart were thrust, and so forth. But this embellishment costs nothing; neither does it cost anything to portray myself as tall, beautiful and gentle-voiced, nor to enlarge our household staff from twenty to fifty women. Yet, on the whole, I have respected the truth because, not being a born liar, I find wanton invention confusing; though I do exaggerate at times, like everyone else, and must adapt, disguise, shift, diminish and enlarge incidents to square them with the epic tradition. I have, indeed, kept as closely as possible to my own experience and, whenever obliged by
the set theme to describe events and places beyond my experience, have either passed over them lightly, or given a description, instead, of what I know well. For instance, about Ithaca, Zacynthus, Same, and the other islands of that group, which are the main scene of my epic: never having visited these, nor been able to get a precise account of their position or aspect, I make do with the Aegadean Islands, which are a good deal smaller, but thoroughly familiar to me. Ithaca is really Hiera, which though invisible from Drepanum, because Bucinna—I call it Same—blocks the view, looks very noble from the top of Mount Eryx, lying far out on the western horizon. I call Aegusa “Zacynthus”; and as for the rest of the islands mentioned in the
Iliad
—Neritum, Crocylea and Aegilips—I have omitted them because there are only four Aegadeans and I need the fourth one, Motya, low-lying and rich in corn, to represent Dulichium. It cannot matter much. Those who listen to my poem and find that it does not fit their own geographical knowledge will respect the fame of Homer and believe either that an earthquake must have altered the configuration of Ithaca, Same and the other islands since his days, or that their names are changed.

As I was saying, our Palace is more or less as I have described it in my epic, though the front door of the main building is really of oak studded with bronze, and the doorposts are of dressed stone, and the threshold of ash wood. We have only one boy torchholder, of cypress wood, covered with rather badly rubbed gold leaf; and the door dogs are of red Egyptian marble; and the walls are panelled in olive with a vermilion frieze. Our Palace lies north and south, and consists of three parts. The main building has an upper storey
protected by a ridged roof, and gutters made of tiles which carry off the winter rains into a well at one corner of the banqueting court; the water roaring down to fill the deep, stone-lined well makes a glorious noise when the summer drought first breaks. My father's throne chamber and the other living rooms are on the ground floor, our bedrooms lie above, and the front door opens into the banqueting court. At the back of the throne chamber, underneath the kitchen, is a large, cool cellar, which we use as our storeroom. My mother keeps the keys to its massive door on a ring attached to her girdle; but Eurycleia, the housekeeper, has a duplicate.

The banqueting court is surrounded by paved and covered cloisters, the wide central area being of rammed earth. Here we entertain guests, seating them on stools or settles at trestle tables. A door leads into the outer court, or court of sacrifice, which is likewise cloistered and dominated by the great altar sacred to Zeus and the other Olympians. On the western side of this court, my father has built a round vaulted chamber for his private retreat; while on the eastern side the main gateway, with a guest room above, leads into the street and is commanded by a tall watch tower rising between the two courts. Near the vaulted chamber, a door in the wall opens on a narrow passage running the whole length of the Palace, with a side entrance to the banqueting hall, and another to the servants' hall of the main building; and a couple of doors opening into the orchard. Ours is the most fertile orchard in Sicily, of several acres, rising in slow terraces and protected by a thorn hedge. The fruit are pear, mulberry, cherry, quince, sorb apple, arbutus, pomegranate, and several varieties of grape and fig, ripening at different times. Of course,
there is no all-the-year-round vintage season, as I pretend in my poem, and as my uncle Mentor used to claim when he was in his cups. We also have a melon patch, a hazel grove, and a garden of potherbs and salads: cabbage, turnip, radish, carrot, beet, mallow, charlock, fennel, onion, leek, broccoli, arum, parsnip, celery, rocket, chicory, basil, marjoram, mint, endive, fennel and asparagus. (I see that I have mentioned fennel twice; but it is a very useful vegetable.) Two springs rise at the head of the orchard, one of which serves for irrigation. The other passes under the court of sacrifice and issues close to the main gateway; this is the chief source of drinking water for the townsfolk, who come in crowds all day long with pitchers and buckets. Behind the house stand stables and styes; and behind these an acre or so of olive yard.

The island of Hiera is more or less ours, though nominally ruled by my mother's clan; we raise horses there, and a fine breed of red cattle. We also graze large herds of hogs and oxen on Eryx, with numerous flocks of sheep; and countless bees from our apiaries use the same pastures. We bring the skips down to Drepanum in the winter to keep the bees warm. So what with the produce of earth and sea, our house slaves eat better than does many a king's son in the barren islands of the Aegean Sea. (There the staple food is roast asphodel root and mallows, for lack of wheat or barley, and fish in season; and figs; and a modicum of olive oil; and goat flesh.) No wonder that enemies envy our good fortune; and no wonder that when misfortune visited us because of Ctimene's untimely demand for an amber necklace, my father's rebellious subjects proved to have little loyalty or love for our house, and came swarming like ants to eat us up.

My father has the reputation of being close-fisted, which is unjust. Certainly the Gods cannot complain that he stints them of sacrifice; or his household that they go ill fed or underclad. He is industrious and energetic, condemns waste, regards poverty as the Gods' punishment of improvidence; and scorns the man who presents splendid gifts to strangers for display, rather than in the hope of eventual return. It was he who first introduced the cultivation of flax into Western Sicily, and set up a small linen factory near the main gateway. We pride ourselves on the fineness of the web—if one pulls a piece of our linen sheeting tight and tilts it at an angle, one can roll drops of oil all the way down; they do not penetrate the linen. My father abhors idleness in man or woman, always finds plenty of work for the slaves, even when it rains, and believes that early marriages are an incentive to industry.

This brings me to the subject of my suitors. No sooner was I sixteen years old than my father announced in the Elyman Council—which is organized on the twelve-clan system—that he would now accept offers for my hand, but that the honour of an alliance with the royal house could be bought only at a substantial price. In answer, Aegyptius, one of the Phocaean councillors, remarked that, as a general rule, an Elyman bride carries a dowry to the bridegroom's family, which guarantees her respectful treatment, and that this dowry is of far greater value than any complimentary presents which a suitor might think fit to bestow, without prejudice, on the bride's father. Doubtless, he said, the suggested innovation, reversing the rôles of bride and bridegroom, was justified in this case by the advantages at which my father hinted. But would it not, if popularly followed, tend to place young women of quality
on a level with common concubines, bought at so many head of cattle or the equivalent in stamped copper, and thus deprive them of any rights or privileges except the title of wife?

A Sican councillor named Antiphus then observed that my sister-in-law, Ctimene, had brought a dowry with her, and so had my mother. Might it not be more consistent and generous, he asked, if the King extended this custom to the case under discussion?

My father replied that he found neither inconsistency nor lack of generosity in his proposal. Marriage customs change, he said, and not so very long ago a man was unable to dispose of his daughter at all; this being the prerogative of her maternal uncle—a prerogative still insisted upon by the Sicans of the Aegadean Islands. Dowries were inconvenient relics of this outmoded system, and had no place in our patriarchal economy. No, no, any young man of good family who aspired to marry me, rather than the daughter of a poorer and less influential house, would find it advantageous both to disburse considerable treasure for that purpose and to treat me with the utmost respect when I became his wife.

“Would my lord the King enlarge on these advantages?” asked tall, sneering Prince Antinous. “Nausicaa is not an heiress in her own right; besides, she has four brothers, among at least three of whom you will, I daresay, divide your property?”

“I refuse to commit myself on that head,” cried my father, stamping his foot. “The advantages of marrying Princess Nausicaa, though indirect, are likely to be solid.”

Eupeithes, Antinous's father, brought the debate to a close by suggesting that when I was a year older, a span taller, and
of a more rounded figure, the beauty which I already promised would doubtless bring me suitors by the score, each competing with the others in the bestowal of rich gifts. Until then, discussion of my future seemed to him somewhat premature.

My father was angered by the mixed reception of his announcement, and I felt like a skinny fish, brought to market, for which nobody cares to bid. The cry goes up: “Throw it back into the sea and let it grow fatter!” Some of my girl friends teased me cruelly the next day. One asked me to name my marriage price; if it was a reasonable one, she said, her parents might well be persuaded to buy me as a wife for their cowman. I could see that my mother regretted that the question had ever been aired in public, though she was too loyal to admit this. At all events, she undertook that I should be consulted before a husband was finally chosen for me and have the right to refuse any candidate if I could justify my dislike of the match. Meanwhile she would weave me a bridal robe of sea purple, which I might embroider with needlework pictures in gold and crimson as a proof that I was my father's obedient daughter. She duly provided the robe, and I busied myself very unbusily on the pictures; and for every three that I completed, I would secretly unpick at least one when nobody was looking.

Drepanum presently learned what my father had meant by “indirect advantages”. When Eurymachus came forward at the end of the year and asked permission to court me, he was awarded the vacant junior priesthood of Poseidon, which carried rich perquisites, and promised, at our marriage, the monopoly of a sea ferry between the islands. Antinous,
Mulius, and Ctesippus, three other suitors who then entered the field, were given or promised similar favours. None of them professed to be in love with me, and all seemed a little afraid of my tart tongue, which I did not spare them when out of my father's hearing. I certainly had no liking, or even respect, for any of the four.

“It is, however, better not to feel too passionately attached to your husband,” my mother told me. “A husband should never know exactly where he stands with his wife, though hopefully relying on her faithfulness to the marriage bed; I realized, for instance, when your father bought Eurymedusa of Apeira, that he must be under a strong temptation to make her his concubine, because the slavers asked an excessively high price—twenty cow shekels instead of four—and he paid it almost without bargaining; yet not daring to risk my annoyance, he restricted himself to an occasional fatherly pat on the girl's cheek or shoulders. No, child, whoever falls in love with her own husband is ruined. That was what went wrong between Ctimene and Laodamas, as you may have guessed: she lost her heart to him and grew jealous of the wild goats and boars which he hunted all day. He has never loved her—the marriage was arranged by your father—but is far too well mannered to confess this. So she grew exasperated; first with herself and then with him. If only it could be the other way about: if only his passion were stronger than hers!”

The winter passed, olives were harvested and pressed, ewes lambed, she-goats kidded, the cheese-making season began, swallows, quails and cuckoos flew across from Libya, the Love Goddess ascended her mountain, bees thronged our fruit trees, young men put out in boats to harpoon tunny and swordfish, blankets were no longer needed on our beds, and the first merchant ships called. We confidently expected Laodamas, or a reassuring message from him, or at least some sort of news; but for a month or more not a word came, though every port in Sicily had heard of our anxiety. Then a merchant of Italian Hyria arrived, hoping to sell us carved stone vases and Daedalic jewellery, the art of making which still flourished in his city, a former
colony of Crete. He was a great haggis of a man, but wore clothes embroidered with flowers in the Cnossan style, and a little kiss curl on his forehead, which set my maids giggling. Immediately upon coming ashore he asked to be taken to the Palace, where he greeted my father with suppressed excitement, and after dinner—since it is considered bad manners for host and guest to exchange anything but compliments until that is over—spoke as follows: