by Peter Singer
But I, with my habitual curiosity, as soon as I heard mention of the art of magic, the very thing I had always wanted so much, rather than heeding Byrrhena’s cautionary words, was itching to leap at once into the depths of the abyss; I would pay a very large sum of money to place myself voluntarily under the tutelage of such a master as Pamphile. Impatient and frenzied, I freed myself from my aunt’s chain-like handclasp, quickly said “Bye!” and rapidly flew off to Milo’s house. I spurred myself on, running even faster in my demented state: “Come on, Lucius, wake up and take hold of yourself. Here is the chance you’ve been waiting for, what you’ve been hoping for forever! You can fulfill your heart’s long desire for amazing tales! Away with childish fears! Attack this head-on, full force! … Steer clear, though, of any erotic involvement with your hostess, and respect the marriage bed of your virtuous host, Milo—but on the other hand, the maidservant Fotis—that’s the place to make inroads, vigorously. She’s pretty and flirty and quite a shrewd little thing. Last night when you were going to bed, she not only led you to the bedroom politely, but she put you in bed soothingly and covered you up lovingly and even kissed your head. And she gave away, with her backward glances, how unwilling she was to leave. In fact, she stopped, turned around, looked back—a few times—before leaving. So “may the gods favor …” even if it turns out badly. Forward march on Fotis!”
While I was debating all this to myself, I came to Milo’s door and, as they say, voted with my feet, since I didn’t run into Milo or his wife at home, but only my dear Fotis. She was preparing a fine spread for her masters: a dish of organ meats chopped fine, choice cuts sliced into bits, juicy rump roast in sauce, and what I was just beginning to sense with my nose, very tasty pork sausage in marinade. She herself was neatly dressed in a linen tunic brightened by a red sash cinched highish beneath her pretty breasts. She was stirring that food pot round and round with her pretty little rosy palms, shaking it rhythmically in sinuous circles, all the while her slithery body gliding with the ease of liquid, her thighs slowly vibrating, her spine shimmying and undulating slowly to the culinary rhythm. I stood enchanted, transfixed and astounded by this vision, and that part of me that was lying still before stood up, too. After a moment, I said to her, “My darling Fotis, it’s so beautiful and fine, the way you twist that cooking pot along with your butt. What a sweet dish you’re cooking! The man you let dip his finger in there will be very happy and definitely thrice blessed!” Then she, being a witty girl and pert, volleyed back to me, “Off with you, you poor guy, get as far as you can from my kitchen—go! Because if you are ignited even a little from my fire, you will be burned to your depths, and no one will extinguish that heat except me. I know how to shake the pot and the bed and add my own luscious seasoning.”
Then she looked over her shoulder at me and laughed. Still, I didn’t budge from the spot before carefully looking her up and down—but why bother with anything else when a woman’s head and hair have always been my particular obsession? First, I examine them openly in public, later to enjoy the memory in private. There is a valid and well-established rationale for this judgment of mine: first of all, this particular part of the body is out in the open and in clear view, positioned so it encounters our gaze first. Furthermore, the lively color that a bright garment imparts to the rest of the body, the hair’s natural sheen provides for the head. And final proof: many women, when they want to show off their bodies’ innate grace, strip off all their garments and throw aside their clothes, hot to display their naked beauty—more pleasing and teasing with their skin’s rosy blush than they would be gleaming in their clothes’ golden flush.
But—and this is irreverent to say and god forbid this should happen—if you were to despoil the most exquisitely beautiful woman of her head of hair and denude her face of its natural ornament, I don’t care if she just dropped from the heavens, was born from the sea and raised among the waves on a half-shell, I mean, she could be Venus herself surrounded by a choir of Graces and accompanied by a city’s worth of Cupids, encircled with her girdle of desire, fragrant with cinnamon and perfumed with balsam, but if she stepped out bald, she wouldn’t be attractive even to her husband, Vulcan.
Consider when a pleasing color and resplendent sheen illuminate her hair and it gleams vividly or glows gently, placidly against the sunbeams. Or what about when it varies its effects, and now glittering gold, it depicts the soft shade of honey, and now raven-dark mimics the sky-blue feathers of a dove’s neck? Or when, imbued with Arabian oils and parted with the sharp tooth of a fine comb and tied up at the back, it meets the lover’s eyes and he reflects the lovely image back, like a mirror? Consider when her hair, beautiful in bountiful strands, is piled on her head or flows down her back, long, luxuriant and lustrous. Such, I maintain, is the importance of hair that no matter if a woman goes out clothed in gold and gems and every other sort of ornament, nonetheless, if she has not properly arranged her hair, she cannot be considered well dressed.
But in my Fotis’s case, it was not a belabored but an unstudied style that gave her charm. Her abundant locks, pushed gently back and dangling down her nape, drawn out over her neck, lightly resting on the border of her tunic, were massed together at their end, where a knot fastened them on the crown of her head.
I could not bear the torture of my acute pleasure any longer, so I leaned over and, right at that spot where the hair started climbing to the top of her head, I pressed the most honey-sweet kiss. She twisted her neck around and turned to me with simmering and nibbling eyes and warned, “Hey you, bookish boy, you’re plucking a sweet and bitter morsel; careful you don’t contract the lasting bitterness of bile along with your strong dose of honey!”
“What does it matter, my delight, when I’m ready to be laid out on the grill and roasted alive if I can just be revived with a single little kiss in the meantime?” Saying which, I held her even tighter and started kissing her. But she, now rivaling my desire with a lust equal and akin to mine, had already opened her mouth, which exuded the vapors of cinnamon, and had slipped her tongue against mine, striking it with the sweetness of nectar, roused with headlong desire.
I said to her: “I’m dying; actually, I’m already dead unless you can offer me salvation.” At that, she kissed me again and assured me, “Don’t worry, I am a slave to the very same desire as you and our pleasure won’t be put off much longer. I’ll come to your room tonight when the first torch has been lit, so go off and get yourself good and ready. I’m going to do battle with you, body and soul, the whole night long.”
We volleyed these and other words back and forth and then parted. I devoted the rest of the day to a bath and then dinner, as I had been invited to dine at upstanding Milo’s “elegant” little table. I remembered Byrrhena’s warning and kept myself as safe as I could from his wife’s gaze, but I kept sneaking glances at Fotis as she served us and cheered myself that way.
After dinner, Pamphile predicted rain for the next day, saying that she could forecast the weather with her lamp. I then mentioned that in Corinth a prophet had predicted that my future would be a long story that no one would believe, and yet my reputation would grow. Milo knew this man and told a long story about how he had been exposed as a fraud.
While Milo was droning on and on with these tales, I was groaning inwardly and not a little angry that because of this inopportune string of stories, I was losing a good part of the evening and its luscious fruits. So I finally choked down my manners and asked Milo if he would pardon me if I went to bed early, claiming that I was still suffering from yesterday’s fatigue. Without waiting for an answer, I headed for my bedroom, and there I found an elegant arrangement of foods laid out. And besides, Fotis had arranged for the slaves to be sleeping on the ground as far from the doorway as possible—I guess so that they would be deprived of eavesdropping on our nocturnal noisemaking. She had put by the bed a little table holding all the best leftovers from dinner, as well as good drinking cups already half full of wine only waitin
g to be mixed with water, and a flagon nearby with a wide opening cut out to make it easy to drink from—all to strengthen us for the gladiatorial love-contest ahead.
I had just reclined when there was Fotis, finished with putting her mistress to bed. She came to me joyfully, garlanded in roses and with a loose rose tucked between her ample breasts. As she kissed me and pressed me closely, she unbound her garland and scattered flower petals here and there. Then she grabbed a cup of wine, added warm water, and handed it to me to drink. But just before I had swallowed it all down, she gently interrupted me and she drank down the rest in little bird-like nips with her lips, giving me a sideways look as she sipped it sweetly. We shared another and then a third cup, passing it back and forth between us, until I was drenched with wine—and not just in my head, but in my body as well. As a rule, I am restless and impatient for pleasure, but now I was stricken, so I quickly and briefly lifted my tunic as far as my groin and showed Fotis my impatience for sex. “Take pity on me,” I cried, “and help me right now! You can see that I’m on high alert for this imminent battle you’ve initiated without any official declaration of war. When I took Cupid’s first stinging arrow deep in my flesh, I strung my own bow tightly in return, and I’m very worried that my bowstring will snap from so much strain. But if you want to please me even more, unbind your fulsome mane and put your arms around me in sensuous embrace while your hair flows around us in undulating waves.”
She didn’t wait, but in a flash removed all the cups and dishes, stripped off all her clothes, and let down her hair for our delightful dissipation. Then she made herself into a statue of Venus rising out of the ocean waves, even briefly covering her smooth sex with her rosy palm, more shading it from coquettishness than hiding it out of decorousness. “Fight,” she said, “and fight manfully. I won’t be turning my back in surrender. Get set for hand-to-hand and head-on combat. Forward march! If you are a man, thrust with your spear and be ready to die. No one gets a discharge from today’s battle!”
Even as she spoke, she climbed onto the bed and slowly lowered herself onto me and moved dartingly up and down. With wriggling motions and twists of her supple spine, she satiated me fully with the pleasure of “Venus on a swing.” Then we collapsed together with our arms entwined, utterly sapped, energy exhausted, limbs limp, panting out our last breaths.
We spent all night engaged in these and similar wrestling holds until the break of day, sometimes restoring our languid bodies with wine, which sparked our desire and renewed our pleasure. Needless to say, we arranged many other such nights along the lines of this excellent example.
* In Graeco-Roman mythology, Actaeon was a hunter who saw the goddess Diana naked in her bath and was transformed into a stag and hunted down by his own dogs.
EVER SINCE MY AUNT BYRRHENA HAD TOLD ME about my hostess’s magical powers, I had been waiting to ask Fotis about her mistress’s arts. Eventually I sensed that the time may have come when I could persuade her to tell me about them. So one night, when she came to me in bed, I said to her, “My dearest Fotis, you know I have an intense interest in magic, and you have hinted that your mistress is in the habit of enchanting young men. If you truly love me, tell me about her powers and how she casts her spells.” She was, at first, reluctant to reveal the secrets of the house. I drew her closer and said: “You don’t seem so very clumsy and inexperienced in the magical arts yourself! I’ve seen it and felt it intensely, since you hold me in bondage with your glittering eyes and ruby-red lips and shimmering locks, and lingering kisses and redolent breasts! I’m under your spell and your willing slave. With this state you’ve put me in, I don’t miss my home and I’m not getting ready to go. There is nothing I prefer to a night with you!”
“First let me carefully lock the doors of the bedroom,” she said, “so that I don’t commit a great indiscretion through the disrespectful impetuousness of my careless tongue,” and at that she drew the bolt and fastened the clamp securely. Then she turned back to me and entwined her arms around my neck, saying in the quietest whisper, “I am afraid; no, I’m totally terrified to reveal the mysteries of this house and to unveil my mistress’s shrouded secrets. But I am trusting you because you are learned, from a good family, and especially because you have been initiated into many religious cults. You understand the imperative of keeping your silence about sacred secrets and storing them deep within the confines of your heart. It is because of the love that binds me to you that I am revealing what I alone know. Soon you will know everything about our household, all of my mistress’s miraculous powers, how the dead bow to her will, constellations are sent into disarray, gods are forced under her sway, and the elements become her slaves.”
Then she continued: “When she wants to cast a spell, she climbs onto the roof, out in the open air, and sets out her magical apparatus: every sort of aromatic spice, lead tablets inscribed with unintelligible letters, the enduring remnants of unfortunate shipwrecks, numerous limbs of recently lamented and even buried cadavers; here noses and fingers, there flesh-laden nails from crucifixions, and in that corner blood salvaged from murder victims and mutilated skulls torn from the teeth of wild beasts.
“Here she chants over still-quivering entrails and sprinkles them with an offering of sundry liquids: a bit of fountain spray, some cow’s milk, a little mountain honey, and a libation of sweet wine. She can perform any feat through the unconquerable power of her magical art and the invisible force of the deities she commands.”
I was listening transfixed with eagerness and I said, “I vow to keep silent about what you have told me. But please grant me my most ardent wish: show me your mistress when she is practicing some of the magic you just described; let me see her when she is calling on her gods, or, best of all, when she is being transformed into another creature. You know I feel the most passionate desire to experience magic right in front of my eyes.”
“Oh, Lucius,” she responded, “how I wish I could give you what you want, but apart from the matter of her malevolent disposition, she always practices her art in seclusion, hidden away from any observers … But—I will put your request before concerns for my own safety and I’ll look for a good opportunity and find a way. Only, as I said before, keep your promise and respect the secrecy of such a momentous event.”
Amid this sort of chatter, we were brought closer and our bodies roused, and we began to want each other. So we tore off our clothes and in a raw and naked state we reveled in the rites of Venus. Then, when I was already exhausted, Fotis generously and unsolicited offered me sex in the boy’s position. Finally, after a wakeful night, sleep infused our drooping eyelids and held us deep into the next day.
We had spent a few nights engaged in pleasures like these when Fotis rushed to me in a state of trembling excitement and announced that her mistress was planning to grow feathers and become a bird the next night, to fly off to one of her lovers, and that I should cautiously prepare myself for viewing this phenomenal event. So around the first watch of the night, she led me noiselessly on tiptoe to that upper chamber she had described, and urged me to witness the events through a crack in the door.
First of all, Pamphile took off all her clothes, then opened the lid of a chest and chose several little boxes. She removed the lid of one of them, scooped out some ointment, and rubbed it between her palms for a long time. Then she smeared it all over her body from the tips of her toenails to the very ends of the hair on her head. After that, she spoke secretly with her lamp at some length and shook her arms with a quivering agitation. When she started waving them up and down, she sprouted feathers soft and light, then wings strong in flight; her nose bent into a beak and her toenails tapered into talons. Pamphile became an owl. She gave a querulous screech, and jumped a little off the ground to test herself. Then, lifting herself into the sky, she soared away in full flight.
She, then, was transformed intentionally by her magic arts, but I stood there enchanted by no spells, transfixed simply by the wonder of what I had seen. I seem
ed to be anything other than Lucius. Blasted beyond the limits of my brain, crazed, dreaming in full wakefulness, I kept rubbing my eyes to see if I was awake. When I had finally recovered my sense of the world around me, I grabbed Fotis’s hand and brought it up to my eyes, saying, “Please, while the time is ripe, let me enjoy a magnificent and unique proof of your affection; share with me a little dab of that ointment, I beg you, by those nipples of yours, my little honey, and bind me, your slave, to you forever by this favor that can never be returned. Let me be your winged Cupid standing beside his Venus.”
“What?!” she cried. “You’re playing the fox, you Don Juan, and asking me to take an ax to my own shins! Even now, with you wingless, I can hardly keep you from the she-wolves of Thessaly! Where will I find you when you become a bird? When will I see you?”
“May the gods keep me from such a crime!” I said. “Even if I travel the whole sky on the lofty wings of the eagle, delighting in playing the messenger and arms-bearer of supreme Jove, I would not fail to fly back down to my humble nest after the honor of that wingedness. I swear by that sweet knot of hair on your head that has bound my soul to you, I prefer no other woman to my Fotis. Come on—what a handsome and entertaining lover an owl would be for a woman! … But, what I almost forgot to ask—what word or action do I use to return to being Lucius after I shed these wings?”
“Don’t worry on that score,” she answered. “My mistress has shown me with especial thoroughness what it takes to transform all these shapes back into human bodies. But don’t imagine she does this out of any sort of kindness; it’s only so that I can provide the effective antidote when she returns home.”