Idyll 15

15. The Syracusan Women, or the Women at the Adonis Festival Gorgo

Is Praxinoa at home?

Praxinoa

Dear Gorgo, how long it has been. Yes, at home.

A wonder you have come even now. Get her a chair, Eunoa.

Throw a cushion on it too.

Gorgo

It does very well.

Praxinoa

Sit down.

Gorgo

Oh, what a restless creature I am. I have barely got to you alive,

Praxinoa, through such a crowd, such a press of chariots.

Everywhere boots, everywhere men in cloaks;

and the road endless; and you live ever so far away.

Praxinoa

It is that madman of mine; he came and took a hovel

at the world's end, no house at all, so that we should not be neighbors,

out of pure spite, the jealous wretch, always the same.

Gorgo

Do not speak so of your husband, dear, of Dinon, such things,

with the little one by; look, woman, how he stares at you.

Never mind, Zopyrion, sweet child; she is not talking of daddy.

Praxinoa

The baby understands, by our Lady.

Gorgo

Nice daddy.

Praxinoa

That daddy of ours, the other day—and we say the other day

for everything, of course—went to buy soda and rouge from the stall,

and came back with salt, the great thirteen-foot lout.

Gorgo

Mine is just the same, a waster of money, Diocleidas;

yesterday he gave seven drachmas for what were mere dog-hairs,

pluckings of old wallets, five fleeces, all filth, work on work.

But come, get your wrap and your pinned mantle.

Let us go to rich king Ptolemy's palace

to see the Adonis; I hear the queen

is arranging something fine.

Praxinoa

In a rich house all is rich.

Gorgo

What you have seen, you can tell to one who has not seen it.

It must be time to be going.

Praxinoa

For the idle every day is a holiday.

Eunoa, pick up the wool and lay it down again

in the middle, you lazy thing. The cats want to sleep soft.

Get a move on, bring water quickly. Water is wanted first;

and she brings the soap. Give it anyway. Not so much, you greedy girl.

Pour the water. Wretch, why are you wetting my dress?

Stop. I am washed, such as the gods pleased.

Where is the key of the big chest? Bring it here.

Gorgo

Praxinoa, that gathered robe with its pins

suits you wonderfully; tell me, what did it cost you off the loom?

Praxinoa

Do not remind me, Gorgo; more than a mina of pure silver,

or two; and on the work I put my very soul.

Gorgo

Well, it turned out just as you wished.

Praxinoa

That you may well say.

Bring me my wrap, and set the hat on properly

over my head. I will not take you, child. Bogey-man; the horse bites.

Cry as much as you like, but you must not be made a cripple.

Let us go. Phrygia, take the little one and play with him,

call the dog in, and lock the courtyard door.—

O gods, what a crowd. How and ever shall we get through

this misery? Ants without number or measure.

Many fine deeds, Ptolemy, have you done,

since your father went among the immortals; no malefactor

harms the passer-by, slipping up on him Egyptian fashion,

as before, when men shaped by deceit used to play their tricks,

all alike, vile games, all of one rotten stamp.

Sweetest Gorgo, what will become of us? The king's

war-horses. Dear man, do not trample me.

The chestnut has reared up; see how wild he is. Bold as a dog,

Eunoa, will you not flee? He will be the death of the man who leads him.

How glad I am that I left my baby at home.

Gorgo

Take heart, Praxinoa; we have got behind them now,

and they have gone to their place.

Praxinoa

And I am collecting myself again now.

A horse and the cold snake are what I have dreaded most

since I was a child. Let us hurry; a great crowd pours toward us.

Gorgo

Are you from the palace, mother?

Old Woman

I am, my children.

Gorgo

Is it easy

to get in?

Old Woman

By trying the Achaeans got into Troy,

fairest of girls; by trying everything is accomplished.

Gorgo

The old woman has delivered her oracle and gone.

Praxinoa

Women know everything, even how Zeus married Hera.

Gorgo

Look, Praxinoa, what a throng about the doors.

Praxinoa

Prodigious. Gorgo, give me your hand; and you too take hold,

Eunoa, of Eutychis; mind you do not get lost.

Let us all go in together; Eunoa, hold tight to us.

Oh dear, my summer-cloak is torn

clean in two already, Gorgo. For Zeus' sake, if you would be

a happy man, sir, mind my wrap.

Stranger

It is not in my power, but I will mind it all the same.

Praxinoa

The crowd is packed close.

They shove like pigs.

Stranger

Take heart, woman; we are well placed.

Praxinoa

And for years to come may you be well placed, dear man,

for sheltering us. A kind and pitiful man.

Eunoa is being crushed by us; come, you faintheart, push.

Splendid. All inside, as the man said who shut his bride in.

Gorgo

Praxinoa, come here. Look first at the embroideries,

how fine and graceful; you would call them robes for the gods.

Praxinoa

Lady Athena, what workwomen wrought them,

what artists drew those exact designs.

How truly they stand, and how truly they move about,

living, not woven. A clever thing is man.

And he himself, how marvelous, lies on the silver

couch, the first down just dropping from his temples,

the thrice-loved Adonis, loved even in Acheron.

Second Stranger

Stop, you wretched women, chattering without end,

you turtle-doves. They will wear one out with their broad drawling.

Gorgo

Goodness, where is the man from? And what is it to you if we are chatterers?

Buy your own slaves and order them about. You give orders to Syracusans?

And, that you may know this too: we are Corinthians by descent,

like Bellerophon; we speak the Peloponnesian way.

I suppose Dorians may speak Doric.

Praxinoa

May Persephone never have a master over us,

save one. I do not care a rap. Do not scrape an empty measure at me.

Gorgo

Hush, Praxinoa; the daughter of the Argive woman is about to sing

the Adonis, that skilled singer,

who last year too won the prize for the dirge.

She will give us something fine, I am sure; she is clearing her throat already.

Woman Singer

Mistress, who loved Golgi and Idalium

and steep Eryx, Aphrodite at play with gold;

see how the soft-footed Hours have brought you Adonis

from ever-flowing Acheron in the twelfth month.

The Hours, slowest of the blessed, dear Hours, yet longed for

they come to all mortals, ever bringing some gift.

Cyprian, daughter of Dione, you, as men's story goes,

made Berenice immortal from a mortal woman,

dropping ambrosia into the woman's breast;

and in thanks to you, goddess of many names and many shrines,

Berenice's daughter, Arsinoe, like Helen,

cherishes Adonis with all fair things.

Beside him lie all the fruits in season that the trees bear at their tops,

and beside him soft gardens kept in little baskets

of silver, and golden flasks of Syrian myrrh.

And all the cakes that women make on the kneading-board,

mingling every kind of flower with white meal,

all that they make of sweet honey or in liquid oil,

all winged and creeping things are here beside him.

Green bowers are built, weighed down with soft dill;

and the boy Loves flit above,

like young nightingales on the growing trees

that flutter, trying their wings, from branch to branch.

Oh, the ebony, oh, the gold, oh, the eagles of white

ivory that bear to Zeus, son of Cronos, the boy his cupbearer.

And purple coverlets above, softer than sleep;

Miletus will say it, and the man who pastures flocks in Samos;

other couches are spread for the fair Adonis.

One Cypris holds, the other the rosy-armed Adonis,

a bridegroom of eighteen or nineteen years.

His kiss does not prick, for the down is still red about his lips.

Now let Cypris rejoice, having her own husband;

but at dawn, with the dew, we will carry him out together

down to the waves that plash upon the shore,

and loosing our hair and letting our robes fall to our ankles,

with breasts bare, we will begin the clear-voiced song:

You come, dear Adonis, here and to Acheron,

alone, men say, of the demigods. Neither Agamemnon

had this lot, nor great Ajax, the hero of heavy wrath,

nor Hector, eldest of Hecuba's twenty sons,

nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus returning from Troy,

nor those still earlier, the Lapiths and the sons of Deucalion,

nor the Pelopids, nor the Argive chiefs, the flower of the Pelasgians.

Be gracious now, dear Adonis, and bless us in the coming year.

Welcome you have come, Adonis, and when you come again, you will come as a friend.

Gorgo

Praxinoa, the woman is a clever creature.

Lucky she, to know so much; thrice lucky, how sweetly she sings.

But it is time, all the same, to go home. Diocleidas has had no dinner.

And the man is all vinegar; when he is hungry, do not even go near him.

Farewell, beloved Adonis; and may you come to us in joy.