by Peter Green
It is a strange thing, but I have always had a far closer affinity with my cousins than with my own brothers—though this, when I consider again, merely means that my dislike for Charaxus goes back a long way. Eurygyus was an ailing child who died when I was nine, during that famous hard winter which old men still recall with awe (the rivers and canals froze, and ice even formed for several yards out to sea, an unheard-of thing), so I cannot have developed any particular regard for him, one way or the other; while my youngest brother Larichus, handsome Larichus whom I love so dearly, was born here in Mytilene, after my father’s death, and I have somehow always regarded him as a cousin-by-adoption.
But the most unexpected event, which took place rather less than a year after our arrival, was the establishment of our private school. Today the idea is a common-place, and many families in the city have adopted it. Then, it was quite unheard-of: perhaps only two such powerful (and powerfully antipathetic) minds as those of my mother and Aunt Helen could—as it were by intellectual friction— have contrived to produce it. One thing they found themselves (rather unwillingly) in agreement over was the education of girls. They differed violently as to what girls should be taught, and how the process should be accomplished; but they both maintained that the existing system, whereby boys were taught in schools but girls brought up at home, was fundamentally wrong.
It is a tribute to our society that I can think of no other place in Greece, then or now, where any woman would have thought as my mother and Aunt Helen did—let alone have had the freedom to carry their beliefs into action. Not in Athens, certainly, though Athenians are fond of telling us how enlightened they are; nor in Lydia, for all its wealth and culture, where girls of good breeding (as I know only too well) are set to earn their dowries as temple prostitutes, and none—least of all their husbands-to-be—think the worse of them for it. Perhaps the freedom of women on Lesbos has been bought at a price we cannot, as yet, fully reckon. But the freedom, the power of choice, is there. Freedom may be abused; that is no argument against it.
My mother, of course, was determined to treat the whole issue as a matter of principle: she saw herself petitioning the Council, perhaps even addressing the Assembly in session, and getting a municipal school for girls established by law. It took Aunt Helen a long time— and enormous self-restraint—to persuade her that what mattered in this case was not so much taking a public stand on one’s convictions, as ensuring that various individual living girls were actually taught something. So at last (with Uncle Eurygyus’s all-too-willing approval: I think he felt this was one way of keeping his turbulent womenfolk from each other’s throats) it was agreed that the two of them should hold classes at home. My cousins and I would form a nucleus of pupils, and the rest would follow.
Various ladies in the town were sounded out: would they entrust their daughters to Aunt Helen and my mother (under the strictest supervision, naturally) in return for the benefits of a liberal education? The response, as might have been expected, was very tepid; though whether this was due simply to engrained conservatism (as Aunt Helen believed), or to Aunt Helen’s reputation (my mother propounded this theory with some relish) is hard to decide in retrospect. Perhaps a little of both.
At any rate, in the end only four more children were added to our family classroom. My mother talked Pittacus into letting Andromeda come (I think he was finding her a problem at home, and needed little persuasion). Pittacus in turn discussed the matter with Phanias, one of his closest friends, who had a five-year-old daughter called Mnasidica. (It was some time before I found out what her full name was; it invariably got shortened to Mica.) Aunt Helen approached her brother Draco, who to begin with pooh-poohed the whole idea; but his daughter Gorgo was Andromeda’s best friend, and she talked to her mother, Aunt Xanthe. Xanthe’s attitude to Gorgo was mixed, I now realize: she may well have had her own reasons for wanting the child out of the house. But in the end she persuaded Draco (as she nearly always did), and so Gorgo, together with her younger sister Irana, also became part of our group.
I say “group” advisedly. If Aunt Helen or my mother had known how inextricably, or in what strange ways, all our lives were to be interwoven in after years, would they, I wonder, have acted differently, perhaps even have abandoned the whole project? Somehow I do not think so: such considerations never touched my mother at all, while to Aunt Helen they represented an important facet of life, to be welcomed rather than avoided.
Andromeda and I are in the carob-tree. It is a warm spring afternoon. Through the branches we can see the harbour glinting below us, the ships at anchor, a solitary one-legged beggar stumping moodily across the quay. We have scrambled up—Andromeda leading, as always—with much scratching of knees and palms, and are now sitting astride a big horizontal bough, invisible from the house. My heart is pounding. I don’t really enjoy climbing trees, I hate heights anyway, and my dress is dirty. I have a raw abrasion on the inside of one knee. But I adore Andromeda.
She sits there, brown legs swinging, the greenish glint in her right eye. With her short, ragged black hair and urchin grin she looks more like a boy than a girl.
“Let’s see you climb to the top of the tree.” There is a mischievous note in her voice: she knows perfectly well how scared I am of heights.
“You’d do it better,” I say, terrified.
“I won’t like you any more.”
“Please, Andromeda—”
“Gorgo would do it for me.”
“I hate Gorgo. She’s silly.” Snub nose and freckles, coarse auburn hair, red hands.
“You’re jealous, you’re jealous.” Andromeda is ten now, nearly eleven: there is something disturbing about her that I don’t understand. But then, I am only just nine, and look less.
“Don’t be silly, Dram.”
“Who said you could call me that?”
“Gorgo does.”
“She’s my best friend.”
I feel the tears very dose.
“Is she? Really?”
Andromeda’s wry, grown-up smile suddenly lights her face.
“Keep a secret?”
“Of course.”
“I like you best really.”
“Do you? Really?”
She leans forward awkwardly on the branch. Her lips brush my cheek, her hair is like burning wire. She says: “Darling Sappho. You’re such a little silly. I don’t know why I like you.”
This leaves me quite speechless.
“You can call me Drom if you like. But only when there’s nobody there but us.”
I nod, ecstatic. Suddenly we both feel a little embarrassed.
The one-legged beggar is still standing there among the barrels and drying nets, as though waiting for someone. He leans on his crutch, and his shadow falls black beside him.
I wake suddenly in the middle of the night, to a blinding branch of lightning, the echoes of the last thunderclap still ringing in my ears. The lamp has gone out. Across the room I can see Telesippa, a curled lump under her scarlet blanket, blissfully unconscious. Nothing ever wakes her. Darkness descends, and with it terror. The thunder crashes overhead.
“Meg?”
“M’m”
“Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Are you frightened?”
“Yes.” This in a very small voice.
“Can I come in with you?”
“Of course—”
I scramble quickly across to her bed and snuggle in. She puts her arms round me. Megara at eleven is nearly as tall as a full-grown woman. Her long black hair is unbraided, and I bury my face in it. My feet hardly reach below her knees, though I am only a few months younger than she is.
“Meg—why, you’re trembling. You really are scared.”
She says nothing, only holds me closer. At last she asks: “Sappho, do you like Andromeda a lot?”
The question takes me unawares. “Yes—yes, I do.”
“How much?” There is a painful intensity in her voice.
>
“I don’t know. A lot.”
A pause.
“Has she ever kissed you?”
“What do you want to know for?”
Another flash of lightning. For a moment I see Meg’s face: strained, hurt, yearning.
“That means she has.”
We both wait tensely for the thunder.
“Do you like me?” Meg asks, in that same odd, small voice.
“Of course I do.”
“In the same way?”
“I—what do you mean?”
But I do know, though I cannot, as yet, put the difference into words. I try to speak, but the words refuse to come. Suddenly something hot and wet trickles on to my cheek. Meg is crying silently, her whole body rigid.
“Meg—I’m sorry—”
She shakes her head.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does—”
“I’m being silly. And selfish.”
I feel curiously detached, as though what were happening had nothing to do with me.
“You’re all right, Meg. It’s just the thunder.”
A small sniff.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“I expect so.” She takes her arms from round me, and turns over on her side, facing the other way. “Go to sleep now. Please.”
“All right.”
But I lie awake for another hour, thinking, wondering. Presently the storm dies away, and a faint grey light begins to seep through the shutters. Meg groans and mutters. Only when I slip back to my own bed does sleep at last claim me.
My mother is reading Homer with us. As usual, she has turned to the Iliad. We would all much rather follow the adventures of Odysseus, among the Laestrygonians, in Polyphemus’ cave, shooting the wooers. But this, my mother feels, is a story which lacks moral seriousness.
“‘One omen is best, to fight for your country,’” she declaims. We yawn and wriggle our bottoms. It is not a sentiment to which most small girls respond with any great enthusiasm. Only Andromeda looks remotely interested. My mother makes a little speech about Troy. There is fighting there again. The treacherous Athenians are trying to steal our outposts. But our brave soldiers will—
My attention wanders. Gorgo is picking her nose and looking out of the window at two pigeons in the courtyard. Her small sister Rana—also auburn-haired—sits with a cross little frown on her face: I don’t think I have ever seen her smile. Telesippa looks bright and attentive, but I know that glazed expression: she is, to all intents and purposes, asleep. Megara, her hair braided neatly, is trying not to look at me. A shaft of sunlight lights up Andromeda’s face. My heart contracts: I am lost in a golden dazzle.
Suddenly I realize my mother is asking me a question: how did the Trojan War begin? I want to show off, do something silly, please Drom.
“Aunt Helen,” I say, with an inane giggle.
My impertinence earns me a whipping: one of the worst I have ever had. I suspect my mother’s motives; she would like to agree with me, I fancy, but feels that a united adult front must be preserved. I could have borne the whipping cheerfully: what agonizes me is Andromeda’s angry, contemptuous expression. For several days afterwards she will not speak to me.
IV
Looking back, I can see—all too clearly—just how unfortunate that schoolroom gaffe of mine was. I could not know, then, one central fact which only emerged several years later: I mean, Aunt Helen’s liaison with Pittacus. She had, it seems, been his mistress, on and off, for at least a year before our move to Mytilene. My mother lost no time in discovering this (to her) highly scandalous relationship. Like many strong-minded women (especially those with a hidden streak of sentimentality about them) she was apt to image copulation proceeding behind every closed door; and in one case at least her suspicions turned out to be justified. Her awareness of the situation can hardly have improved anyone’s temper—least of all her own.
Aunt Helen, in turn, would have been less than her usual acute self if she had failed to diagnose my mother’s own silent passion for Pittacus. Andromeda, too, obviously had some idea of what was going on, and took my joke as a pointed allusion to her father’s extra-marital pursuits: she worshipped him with uncritical violence and resented the smallest real or imagined slight on his character. One of Alcaeus’ early tongue-in-cheek patriotic poems, written on the outbreak of war in the Troad, contained several double-edged references to Helen and Thetis which suggested that he knew all this and a good deal more besides.
If the matter had remained a private feud merely, no great harm would have been done. But my mother was not the sort of person to let a situation rest; nor, when her own pride was involved, did she make any very clear distinction between personal and public morality. What she now did was unscrupulous to a degree, and I have never understood how she squared her actions with her declared principles—though here she could display, on occasion, the kind of casuistry that would shame a seasoned statesman.
To put it bluntly, if she could not have Pittacus, she was determined that Aunt Helen should not either; and since Uncle Eurygyus was blandly indifferent to her confidences, she decided—apparently without the least qualm—to get her way by what I suppose must be called political means. Her main point of attack was through Draco, Helen’s brother and—more important for my mother’s purposes—a member of the Council. She so worked on him about the trouble with Athens in the Troad that what had begun as a mild diplomatic quarrel over trading concessions was soon blown up, with much patriotic tub-thumping, into a full-scale war.
Could we, cried Draco, well-primed with my mother’s fiery platitudes, let Athenians desecrate the tomb of Achilles? Could we—this was slipped in almost as an afterthought—allow them to steal trade from under our very noses? The Council decided that they could not; and so voted. After that, there merely remained the business of electing a commander-in-chief. When Draco proposed Pittacus, the result was a foregone conclusion: he was, indeed, by far the most able man for the job. My mother took much simple pleasure in telling Aunt Helen (with what I now see was a well-calculated air of innocence) that her lover—though she did not put it quite like that— had been ordered abroad on active service.
Where (as both of them knew) there was a sizable chance of his being killed.
My mother’s ruthlessness—to herself no less than others—was, and remains, something quite exceptional in my experience.
The curious thing was Aunt Helen’s reaction. If my mother hoped to provoke some sort of scene—tearful reproaches, blazing anger, perhaps even hysteria—she was disappointed. Aunt Helen smiled rather vaguely and said yes, well, the occasional campaign abroad was a good thing for energetic, ambitious men: city politics did tend to become cramping after a while. From then on she treated my mother with a sweet, considerate politeness that would have scared anyone else half out of their wits; but my mother took it all quite placidly and was heard to remark that Helen might, in time, become quite a reasonable person. You just had to be firm with her.
But Pittacus did not, in the event, get himself killed: he had a natural and instinctive talent for survival. What safeguarded him, I now see, was his indifference to aristocratic principles. He was not quite a gentleman (as his enemies never tired of reminding him) and thoroughly enjoyed exploiting noble scruples. His morals were as pliable as his wits, and his political career, examined in detail, looks downright shady.
Yet he was, I cannot help believing, a fundamentally good man. The changes he brought about, his personal conduct once he had attained supreme power, the wisdom and tolerance he displayed in dealing, with opponents of any sort—all tell the same story. He believed he knew what was best for his country; and he may well have been right If he had personal ambitions, they were not of the crude sort that most tyrants display. He wanted power simply as an effective instrument for achieving reforms; when the reforms had become established tradition, his interest in holding office evap
orated.
I am sad now that I spent so much of my life as his political enemy. Not only because I was twice exiled in consequence, but also because my allegiance deprived me, for long periods, of a wise, generous, forbearing friend: one whom I could ill afford to lose. But at this time Pittacus was still on the threshold of his career. My mother, by securing his appointment as commander-in-chief, had set him firmly on the lower rungs of the political ladder—which was not, I suspect, her prime intention.
Pittacus embarked his troops on a bright, windy morning in late March, and everyone flocked down to the quayside to see them sail. He stood on the poop of his flagship and made a short speech, with no bombast or heroics, promising to conduct the campaign to the best of his ability. I think most people were a little disappointed: they wanted a rousing send-off. But he certainly looked a magnificent figure, with his glittering greaves and helmet (the great horsehair plume nodded like Hector’s) and his heavy scarlet cloak snapping in the wind. Perhaps, even to a hero-worshipping eleven-year-old, he was not quite so tall and godlike as he had seemed on that now-distant summer afternoon in Eresus: the waistline under his corselet was thickening, and the first brindled flecks of grey could be seen in his beard. Yet he was still only thirty-five.
The libations were poured, and the priest offered prayers for fair sailing; then Pittacus stripped his great broad-bladed sword from its scabbard and held it aloft, and the trumpets sounded, and the hawsers were cast off. A silence fell on the crowd, broken only by barked commands from vessel to vessel as the new white sails, each with its black dolphin device, were hoisted and spread, and the fleet, in line ahead, moved slowly out of harbour. Then, as though at a signal, the cheering began, and we waved them out of sight up the blue, gull-haunted channel that would bear their ships northwards to Adramyttium and the Troad. My mother cheered as loudly as anyone. All patriotic occasions moved her to the point of tears.