What life, what pleasure is there
Without golden Aphrodite?
—MIMNERMUS
FROM THE TIME AESOP declared his love for me, things between us began to get difficult. Say what you like about love and friendship being the same—once it is clear that one person feels passion and the other does not, friendship begins to fade.
“Who have you loved the most in your life?” Aesop asked. The question gave me pause. Was it Cleis, or Alcaeus? How could I choose between them?
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I must know. If you truly believe that the world is love, as you told those poor moth-eaten philosophers, you must have a reason for saying so. You sing of love as if you knew it. Do you?”
Like so many of Aesop’s questions, this one gave me pause. “Do you?” I asked.
“I believe I do,” Aesop said. “Once, long ago, I accepted slavery so that another could go free. That, I believe, is love.”
I was astonished as I often was by Aesop. “Who was that other?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you,” said Aesop. “But I must object when you use love as a banner under which you march. Love is a quieter thing. It lives in deeds, not words.”
“Aesop—you amaze me. First you tell me you do not believe in the gods, then you tell me I know nothing of love. Then you refuse to tell me why.”
“First I will tell you why I do not believe in the gods—then I will tell you the other. Come, sit with me at the edge of the sea.”
We sat on a rock overlooking the sea. Before us were the high chalk cliffs through which we had sailed. Behind us the chalk caves into which our maidens had vanished with their swains. From time to time sweet singing wafted from the openings of the caves. Aesop began:
“The gods never die, so nothing can matter to them. Time is not important. Their lives go on and on. They sit in the marble halls of Olympus and look down on us. Our troubles look petty to them, but we entertain them. Without us they would be utterly bored. We are their amusement, their way of passing the endlessness of eternity. It is our lives that matter—and why? Because of death. When I say I don’t believe in the gods, what I mean really is that our lives matter in a way theirs do not. We invented them, rather than the other way around. That’s why I never tell fables about the gods. All my fables are about human foibles—even if I disguise them in animal skins. People can learn as the gods cannot. People can change as the gods cannot. I would not tell my fables to the gods. They’d be of no use to them whatever.”
ZEUS: Get rid of this man! He’s dangerous!
APHRODITE: And leave Sappho without her only friend?
ZEUS: Why should I care?
APHRODITE: The future will care!
ZEUS: Past, present, and future are all the same to me!
“Whom did you give up freedom for?”
“My mother. She was one of the black amazons who lived on the shores of the River Hermus and panned for gold for the Lydian kings. Thinking they were weak because they were women, the Lydian traders swooped down on their encampments and stole all their gold. Then they captured the amazons and their children. I was ten. Without my mother’s knowledge, I bargained with the chieftain to go into slavery in her place. I was carried away to the island of Samos and sold to a goldsmith named Xanthes. There I met Rhodopis, who was enslaved in that same household. When Xanthes went to Naucratis to sell his wares to the wealthy Greek merchants, we went too. There we earned our freedom. Rhodopis became a courtesan and I became a sage. The fact that we were former slaves gave us a certain fascination both to the Egyptians and the Greeks.”
“Then you never saw your mother again?”
“Never. Not since I was ten.”
“Do you suppose she is alive?”
“I have a feeling that she is. But perhaps I do not want to believe my sacrifice was in vain. I delude myself just like other mortals—though I make fables out of my delusions.”
A powerful voice boomed out behind us. “Delusions!” it echoed. We looked around. There was a tall, beautiful woman wearing a crown of live snakes that hissed alarmingly.
“You must be the two who took my husbands and gave them to the maidens who came from the sea. You had no right to do that. They were mine. They were perfectly happy with their lives before you brought those maidens. Now I will have to kill them—or turn them into snakes. My sister Circe would, of course, turn them into swine.”
“Your sister? Circe? Then who are you?” I asked.
“Who are you? After all, this is my island. I should not have to identify myself on my own island!”
“We were told it was the island of the philosophers,” Aesop said.
“Well, you were certainly told a lot of things that were wrong,” said the snake woman. “I am Herpetia—I can turn even you into snakes and add you to my crown. Medusa was also a sister of mine. But I never saw the point of turning men to stone when there are so many more interesting things you can do with them. Why turn more than one part of a man to stone? If I should ever have a problem, I’ll call on my sister, but so far her intervention has not been needed!”
She draped her arms around Aesop, who shrank back from the hissing snakes. “If you were mine, I’d leave you just as you are. I wouldn’t change you at all. But you are wrong about the gods. They do exist. I myself am the daughter of a god and a serpent. The gods would not be happy to know how you doubt them. They hate disobedience. The only thing they hate more is the defiance of death.”
She gestured with her hand and the ground was alive with multicolored snakes. They crawled everywhere—out of the caves the maidens had retreated into with their swains, all over the ground, all over each other. She gestured again—and they were gone.
“Tell me again that you do not believe in the gods,” she said to Aesop tauntingly.
“Trickery and magic do not prove that the gods exist,” said Aesop calmly. “You can turn the men into snakes—turn me into a snake, for all I care—and still it doesn’t prove anything…except that you are adept at magic.”
Herpetia frowned fiercely. Her snakes hissed. “Usually this sort of thing silences everyone,” she said. “Now I meet a man who is not afraid of me. Who are you?”
“Aesop at your service, madam,” said Aesop.
“The fable-maker?” Herpetia asked.
“The very one,” said Aesop.
“Oh, good!” Herpetia said. “It has been so very boring on this island without fables. I have had to turn myself into various things just to keep from dying of boredom. It was I who became those three philosophers in the cave debating the nature of the universe. I have been turning men into snakes just for the fun of it, then turning them back just for the fun of it. It tires them out. Actually, it tires me out too. The truth is that for centuries I have been looking for a husband who is not afraid of me. Maybe I have found him.”
Herpetia linked arms with Aesop and hurried him along to stroll by the sea with her. What was he up to? Was he trying to make me jealous? As Aesop romanced Herpetia, her snakes became docile and hung at her cheeks like limp curls. She kissed him passionately. He appeared to reciprocate. I went to warn the maidens that we were all in danger.
I found them in their caves still making love to their beautiful swains. Clearly, we were still in Aphrodite’s power. I directed the maidens and men to return to our ship while Herpetia was busy courting Aesop.
“She is a mistress of transformations. If you like your present form—then come along with me! She loves to turn beautiful young men into snakes!”
The men knew I was speaking the truth. The besotted maidens hesitated. They doubted me. Honey-skinned Arete, my erstwhile playmate, challenged me.
“What do you mean, my lover will turn into a snake unless I go immediately?”
“Please don’t fight with me about this. Just obey me. We have only a little time to escape the power of this sorceress. Aesop has disarmed her. While she’s docile, we must sail away.”
But Arete was so intoxicated with her lover that she could not hear me. The other maidens also ignored me.
Aesop somehow broke away from Herpetia and met me on the beach.
“Now I understand Medusa, Circe—all the great sorceresses. They’re simply women in search of love. Medusa, furious at being unloved, turned men to stone. Circe turned men to swine. All this could have been avoided if they were properly loved. They turned to black magic for lack of love.”
“You say you don’t believe in the gods, but even you are in Aphrodite’s power!”
“Absurd,” said Aesop. “I am reason itself. If I love Herpetia, she will turn gentle and mild. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. I plan to stay here on this island and be her consort. It’s my duty.”
“I will not let you make this mistake,” I said.
“It’s no mistake,” said Aesop. “It’s my destiny.”
How I knew to do what I did next, I do not know. But I did. I picked up a piece of driftwood from the beach and brought it down upon Aesop’s head, knocking him out. Then I dragged him down the beach and called for help to get him to the boat. The parents and grandparents who had remained on the boat quickly came to my aid and helped me bring Aesop aboard.
Some of the maidens who saw what had happened followed me down the beach, their swains in pursuit. Some stayed on the island lost in love; all I knew was that we had to get away as soon as possible. Whoever Herpetia was—whether a goddess or a projection of Aesop’s need for love—she had the power to end our odyssey. Ever since we left the realm of Hades, we had been in lands of myth and delusion. We needed to get back to the real world.
I will never forget the view from the stern of the ship as we hoisted sail. The entire beach was a writhing mass of snakes entangling the legs of the maidens who had ignored my warnings. They tried to get away, and as they ran, the snakes twined around their legs and brought them down. When they stood up, the snakes bit them until they fell motionless in the sand. A few of the strongest maidens gained the ship. Atthis wrestled her snake to the ground and stabbed his throat with her golden clasp. Gongyla outran hers—but Arete, beautiful Arete, lay in a purple python’s power, gasping with pleasure as he made love to her again and again. Her gasps and sighs brought other rainbow snakes to watch. She was embraced in the coils of the largest python I had ever seen and he was killing her with love. I was sorry I had taught her about pleasure. My lovemaking had prepared her doom.
Herpetia stood atop a mountain of writhing snakes and cursed us as we sailed away between the two white cliffs.
“Cowards!” she shrieked. “I thought I had found the one man who was not afraid of me—but even he turned out to be a coward! I should have transformed him into a snake before he escaped!”
That frightened me. Would I go below to find Aesop turned into a writhing snake?
“I will be here forever!” she screamed. “And you will all be dead!” With that, the skies opened and the rain poured down until we all ran belowdecks for shelter.
I checked on the sleeping Aesop. He was still himself.