*
Melaina went to the small temple of Artemis beside that of Asklepios, cried long hard tears before the likeness of the goddess, but all her words seemed empty. "Virginity, virginity, where are you? Never again will you come to me, never again."
She went to her mother. Myrrhine was all smiles. "You'd stayed with that virginity business long enough anyway," she said. "I'll have grandchildren after all. Oh, the thrill of it!"
Trying to get her mind off herself, Melaina walked the sanctuary grounds listening to the miracles of other patients. The man with no eye dreamed that the god poured a drug into the empty socket. When he woke, his eye had been renewed. Even his wife couldn't believe it. "I know you have another orb," she said, "but can you see out of it?" The man with the stone in his penis had a dream in which he copulated, and it was ejected.
They spent the rest of the morning sacrificing a cock to Asklepios and awaiting the priest's plans for the Hierophant's unnamed ailment. Melaina sensed a rift coming with her grandfather, and she couldn't stand to be away from him, seeking him out that she might somehow make it right. If he turned against her, he might sell her into prostitution.
"How could this happen?" she asked. "Have I no freewill at all?"
"Those of us called by the gods have no freedom," the Hierophant said. "First wall against it is the body. The soul really is trapped within the flesh."
"The gods have played a trick on me," she said, "giving me this love of liberty but now taking it with a single stroke." She imagined Zeus having a great belly laugh.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 52