I am not one of those with a spiteful temperament.
I have a gentle heart.
—SAPPHO
AFTER PHAON LEFT FOR Mytilene, my brother arrived. Charaxus had not aged well. He looked as puffy as his wife Rhodopis. And he was getting old. Was it possible I looked as old as he? I was the elder, and yet I felt much younger! Song keeps you young, I suppose. Or perhaps it was love. Aphrodite had breathed her hot breath on my life and kept it warm!
APHRODITE: That’s for sure!
ZEUS: Oh, you credulous girl!
APHRODITE: Why credulous? No one escapes my power for long. Even you succumb to desire, Father.
ZEUS: Had I ravished you, you’d be more compliant and less arrogant!
APHRODITE: You revolt me.
“Rhodopis bade me come, my sister. She said I must help you in any way I can!”
“Well, there’s a change!”
“You underestimate Rhodopis, Sappho. She has grown. She is no longer the Rhodopis of Naucratis. She’s a good woman now. My influence, I think.”
“She certainly has grown,” I said. “Sideways.”
“It must have been our baby. Her pregnancy quite distended her. She will get back her shape in time. I know it.”
I looked at my brother. Was it possible the gods had given all the brains to women and had none left over for the men? Or was it simply that the phallus drained the brain of wisdom? No. Alcaeus was clever. Aesop was clever. Even Chiron was clever. Only my brother had forfeited his intellect.
“Let us not discuss your lawful wife, nor the baby she bought off some slave and pretended had come from her sullied womb.”
“Sappho, that is my own dear son.”
“I would not lie to you, Charaxus. Honesty is kind. It is the only kindness we know. I will honor my nephew however Rhodopis got him. He is my kin as you are. Do you know why I have called you here?”
“No.”
“Let me take you back to your slavery in Naucratis many years ago. You promised to be forever in my debt and to repay in time. Will you keep your word or die and go straight to a traitor’s grave?”
Charaxus looked perplexed. Then, slowly, recollection dawned. Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, found him.
“I remember, sister. What do you require of me?”
“Take my student Dica to Artemisia in Mytilene and do it privily. Tell no one—not even your wife Rhodopis. Can you manage that?”
“What if she presses me?”
“Be strong. Be silent. Keep this one secret in your life. Are you a man or not?”
“Of course I am a man!”
“Then do something for once without consulting her! I was your sister before she was your wife! Do you remember how we played in Eresus when we were small? Do you remember how we played that the Athenians would come to enslave us?”
Charaxus looked down. He could not look me in the eye. “I do, sister.”
“Then for the sake of loyalty, of kinship, of all the gods, take this girl to Artemisia without telling Rhodopis!”
“I will, Sappho.”
“Do you swear on our sacred father’s honor?”
“I do, Sappho.”
“Do you swear on the ghost of our beloved mother?”
“I do, sister.”
“Do you swear on the blessed lives of the next generation?”
“I do, Sappho.”
“Then here is what you must do.”
Whereupon I carefully instructed him to take Dica to Artemisia in Mytilene and pay for the cleaning of her womb. Charaxus looked at me wide-eyed. Women’s mysteries somewhat embarrassed him. He knew of Artemisia, but naturally he had never been in her inner sanctum, seeking counsel, and like many men, he believed her to be a witch, like Circe.
I read his mind, hardly a difficult task. “She is no witch, my brother, but just a greedy woman who has grown rich off other women’s desperation. She will not bite you.”
“I am not afraid of her!” my brother snapped.
“Just as you are not afraid of your wife,” I smiled.
“Sappho—do not mock me.”
“Did I mock you when you enslaved yourself willingly? Hardly. But I see it has taught you nothing. You will always be a slave to someone—if not to the enemy, then to some woman. Come, Charaxus, your good sister Sappho will save you.”
I put my arms around him and kissed him tenderly. Charaxus shed a tear, then quickly wiped the corner of his eye.
“Oh, Sappho—how can I repay you?”
“You know perfectly well how! Pay me the lawful share of the wine crop! Send me the oboloi you owe. Give me a fair accounting. Did I quibble about payment when I liberated you in Egypt?”
“But Rhodopis claims she has saved our wine trade and therefore deserves the lion’s share! She spends and spends! I can never make enough to keep her!”
“The lion’s share! Would that Aesop were here to make a fable of it! And you? Are you a lion or a mouse? Would you cheat your sister for your whore? Many men have done this, but I thought you were more honorable. Now I see I was wrong!”
Charaxus looked sheepish. He wavered between family honor and his fear of Rhodopis. I knew him so well. I could see the conflict on his face.
“Go, Charaxus, never darken my door again! I see you are neither the son of Scamandronymus nor the daughter of Cleis the elder. You must have been a changeling! My true brother would not cheat his kin for a trollop!”
I sternly turned my back and walked away.
And then I heard it. Charaxus was sobbing. He was sobbing great choked sobs. Then he was raging, and he attacked: “You insult me, sister! You have always torn me down! You have always made fun of my passions! At least Rhodopis loves me truly!”
“If you cannot tell the difference between a sister’s loyalty and a whore’s greed, then I pity you! Go!”
“Damn you!” I muttered under my breath. “A fool from birth will always be a fool.” My mind instantly ran ahead to other plans. I would take Dica to Artemisia myself. I had no doubt that Artemisia would find a use for Dica’s pregnancy. Either she would end it for gold or sell the child to the highest bidder. She knew how to do all these things. She fattened on the fears of women—as Rhodopis fattened on the fears of men. Who needed Charaxus or Rhodopis! I would manage all this myself. Then I would disband my school and go to find Alcaeus, Aesop, Praxinoa—my real kin. I was already making plans to do so when Charaxus returned. He fell to his knees and kissed the hem of my chiton.
“Sappho—you are right. I will do as you ask.”
“Be kind to the girl—she is shaken. Is that a promise?”
“I swear on my son’s life.”
So he returned to Mytilene with Dica in tow while I prayed to Aphrodite that he would not weaken when he saw his awful wedded wife.
Why are men so weak? I wondered as I went about my chores. Why have the gods put all their power in their phalli? Why are they so unable to think clearly when a woman commands them? What can be the meaning of this madness of lust? Why do we need it? Why does it so distort our world?
Because of lust, Helen sparked the Trojan War. Because of lust, Odysseus lost his men. Because of lust, Demeter lost her daughter half the year. Wild lust has convulsed the earth too often and killed too many mothers’ sons. Why?
APHRODITE: Because of my father’s fury! Know that when I ruled the world with Demeter and Hestia and Hera and even great Gaia and the other goddesses, the world was a gentler place. Then Zeus came with his overwhelming lust and chaos was here again!
ZEUS: So I suppose women are never cruel!
APHRODITE: Less cruel than you!
ZEUS: And what of the way they flirt with and frighten their young sons? And what of the way they taunt and torture us?
APHRODITE: Our only remaining power. Love is a weapon because we have no other. Beauty is a dagger only when you disarm us. Sex becomes a spear when you vanquish our mothers. When Isis ruled supreme, the world was just. But when the consort overpowers his mother, war comes to the world. And burns it in fierce flame.
ZEUS: So have your blessed matriarchy. Rule the world. You will see how hard it is to rule, and how thankless.
APHRODITE: When women retake the world, we will prove you wrong!
ZEUS: I doubt it.
I sent the girls home to their families one by one. I closed up my grandparents’ house, leaving the caretakers in charge. Then I went to bid farewell to my daughter in Mytilene.
Cleis was glad to see me this time, as if she knew she might never see me again. Hector threw his little arms around my neck and would not let go.
“Tell me the song of Alcaeus again, Grandmama!” And I sang it, slowly, sonorously. He clapped his hands in delight.
“Never forget that you are the grandson of singers, Hector. Perhaps song can’t cure the world, but it is the only consolation the gods have given us.”
Cleis looked different. She had a sort of gleam in her eye, a golden radiance of serenity. Had Phaon come to call? Had he taught her the secrets of love’s sweet madness? I hoped so. Phaon had his uses. Every girl should have a lover like that before she becomes a contented matron. Every maiden should be aroused by Aphrodite’s chosen swain. Then good riddance to him!
“Mother,” Cleis asked, “did you ever find pleasure with a man who was not your lawful husband? Or with a woman?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
“Pleasure is good—wherever you find it, Cleis, just as long as no one is hurt by knowledge they would rather not have.”
“That’s what I thought myself, Mother,” Cleis said, almost singing. Oh, Phaon had been here all right.
As I was bidding farewell to Cleis and Hector, dreaming of Alcaeus and determined to set out to find him, I once again remembered the legend of the rock at Leucas. The wise ones said that if you were possessed by an impossible love, you must go to the isle of Leucas, climb to the shrine of Apollo, and jump off the high white cliff above the sea. If you survived, you would be cured of yearning. And if you did not, you would also be cured!
On my last night in Eresus before departure, I sat alone in my grand-mother’s bedchamber and thought about this legend. Then I wrote a song about it.
O Aphrodite, is it true
That hopeless love
Drowns in Leucas?
I must climb to the top
Of that white cliff
And throw myself into
The roiling sea
Because I have lost my one true love!
If you cannot bring me love,
Then bring me death.
I have served you long enough.
I sang that mournful song on the boat that was to take me from Mytilene to Delphi. And the people who heard it cried, “I must learn that song before I die!” How could I know that my fellow passengers would learn it and sing it to Alcaeus and Praxinoa and Aesop in Delphi and that my old friends would come in search of me?