by Daisy Dunn
Another care remains for the sad goddess’ weary pondering: should she herself take her son through the waters in her embrace or use mighty Triton, call on the swift winds to aid or Thaumas’ daughter, wont to feed upon the sea? Then from the deep she summons her team, a pair of dolphins, bridling them with sharp seashells. Great Tethys had reared them for her in the Atlantic ocean, deep in an echoing sea hollow. No denizen of Neptune’s watery kingdom has such beauty of grey-blue form, such power of swimming, or more of human mind. She tells them to halt in the full sea verge, so that contact with bare earth do them no hurt. Then she herself carries Achilles, his bosom all relaxed in the sleep of boyhood, down from the crags of the Haemonian cave to the placid waters and the shore commanded to be silent. Cynthia shows the way, shining out with all her orb. Untroubled by the sea, Chiron follows the goddess on her path and begs speedy return, hiding his moist eyes and gazing out from horse erect as they are suddenly carried away and presently hidden from sight, where for a little while foam the white traces of flight and the track dies upon the liquid flood. Him now sad Pholoë, now cloudy Othrys lament, no more to return to Thessalian Tempe, likewise Sperchios in thinner flow and the learned ancient’s muted cavern. The Fauns miss his boyish songs and the Nymphs bewail long hoped-for nuptials.
Now day presses down the stars and Titan rolls his dripping steeds from out the low and level waters and the sea raised by his chariot falls from the vast sky. But the mother had already crossed the waves and was safe on Scyros’ shore, the weary dolphins had left their mistress’ yoke, when the boy’s sleep was shaken and his wide eyes felt daylight pouring in. At first sight of sky he was stunned: what place is this, what waves, where is Pelion? Everything he sees is changed and strange, and he doubts to recognize his mother. She hastens to caress the frightened lad and lovingly addresses him:
‘Dear boy, if a kindly lot had brought me the marriage it proffered, I should be holding you in my embrace as a grand star in the celestial regions; of the great heaven should I have borne my child nor feared lowly fates and earthly dooms. As it is, my son, your birth is unequal and death’s path blocked only on your mother’s side. Ay, and the time of danger approaches, perils moved close to the final turning point. Let us give way. Lower a little your manly spirit and deign to wear my raiment. If the Tirynthian carried Lydian wool in his hard hand and womanish spears, if Bacchus it beseems to sweep his footsteps with a gold-embroidered robe, if Jupiter donned a virgin’s limbs, and doubtful sexes did not rob great Caeneus of his manhood, pray allow me this way to escape the threat and the baleful cloud. Soon I shall give you back your fields once more, once more the Centaur’s wilds. I beg you by your handsome looks and future joys of youth: if for your sake I made trial of land and a lowly spouse, if I armed you at birth with the stern Stygian river (and would it had been all of you!), for a little while take safe clothing, that will do no harm to your spirit. Why do you withdraw your face, what purpose is in your eyes? Are you ashamed to soften in this dress? I swear to you, dear boy, by my kindred sea, Chiron shall not know of this.’
So she wrought on his rough heart, coaxing in vain. Against her plea stands his father and his huge foster sire and the raw rudiments of a great nature: as though one were to try to subject a horse, haughty with the fire of unbridled youth, to his first harness; long delighting in field and river and proud beauty, he bends not his neck to the yoke nor his fierce mouth to the bit, loudly indignant to pass captive under a master’s command, marvelling to learn new courses.
What deity bestowed artful trickery on the baffled mother? What mood diverted stubborn Achilles? It fell out that Scyros was celebrating a day in honour of Pallas of the Beach. The sisterhood, daughters of mild Lycomedes, had left their native walls on the holy morning (a rare licence) to give spring’s riches to the goddess and bind her austere tresses with foliage and scatter flowers upon her spear. All possessed surpassing beauty, all were dressed alike; they had reached the term of tender modesty, their maidenhood, their burgeoning years, were ripe for the marriage bed. But as Venus overwhelms the green Sea Nymphs when she joins them, as Diana’s shoulders outtop the Naiads, so far does Deidamia, queen of the fair choir, shine out eclipsing her lovely sisters. Purple is fired by her rosy face, her gems have more brilliance, her gold more allure. Her form equals the goddess’ own, would she but lay aside her bosom’s snakes and pacify her countenance, helmet removed. When the truculent boy, whose heart no stirring had ever assailed, saw her leading her attendant column from far ahead, he stiffened and drank novel flame in all his bones. Nor does his draught of love stay hidden; the brand waving in his inmost parts goes to his face and tinges the brightness of his cheeks, wandering over them with a light sweat as they feel the impulse. As when the Massagetae darken their cups of milk with scarlet blood or when ivory is tainted with purple dye, such is the sudden fire manifest by various signs, paling and blushing. He would go forward and wildly disrupt the rituals of his hosts, careless of the crowd and oblivious of his years, did not modesty and reverence for the mother by his side hold him back. As when the future father and leader of the herd, whose horns have not yet finished their full circle, looks upon the snow-white heifer who shares his pasture, his spirit takes fire and first love foams through his mouth, while the merry cowherds watch and oppose him.
His mother is already aware of his secret; seizing her moment, she makes her move: ‘My son, is it so hard to feign to dance among these girls and join hands in play? What is there like this beneath chilly Ossa and the heights of Pelion? Oh if only it were mine to join loving hearts and carry another Achilles in my bosom!’ He is softened and blushes for joy, casting sly, wanton glances, and lightens the hand that pushes the garments away. His mother sees his indecision, sees that he would fain be forced, and throws the folds over him. Then she softens the stiff neck, lowers the weighty shoulders, loosens the strong arms; she subdues the unkempt hair, fixing and arranging, and transfers her necklace to the beloved neck. Constraining his steps with an embroidered hem, she teaches him how to walk and move and how to speak with modesty. As wax that an artist’s thumb will bring to life receives shape and follows fire and hand, such was the semblance of the goddess as she transformed her son. Nor did she struggle long. Charm is his in plenty and to spare, though manhood demur, and doubtful sex cheats the observer, hiding in narrow divide.
They go forward. Gently Thetis cautions and presses, over and over again: ‘So then, my son, will you bear your step, so face and hands, copying your companions in fashions feigned, lest the ruler suspect you nor let you join the soft quarters and the falsehood of our artful enterprise go for nothing.’ So she speaks, nor ceases her trimming and touching. So when Hecate returns weary from virginal Therapne to her father and brother, her mother attends her as she walks, herself covering shoulders and bared arms, herself relieving of bow and quiver, drawing down the girt-up gown and proudly ordering the dishevelled locks.
Forthwith she accosts the king and there calling the altars to witness she speaks: ‘I give this girl, oh king, the sister of my Achilles (see you not how fierce she looks, how like her brother?) into your keeping. High-mettled, she asked for weapons on her shoulders and a bow, asked to shun wedlock Amazon fashion. But I have enough to worry about on my man-child’s account. Let her convey the baskets and the holy things, do you rule and tame the froward wench and keep her in her sex, till it is time for marriage and relaxing of modesty. Don’t let her practice wanton wrestlings or wander in woodland wilds. Raise her indoors, shut her among girls like herself. Especially be sure to keep her away from the beach and the harbour. You saw the Phrygian sails the other day. Ships have now learned to cross the sea and violate mutual laws.’
The father assents to her words and accepts Achilles disguised by parental craft—who should resist divine deceits? He even reverences her with suppliant hand and thanks her for choosing him. The flock of duteous Scyrian girls continue to stare relentlessly at the new maiden’s face, marvelling how she outtops the
m by neck and hair, how broad she spreads her chest and shoulders. Then they urge her to share their dances and join their chaste rituals, yielding her place and rejoicing in the contact. As with Idalian birds when they break soft clouds, long congregated in their home and in the sky: if a stranger bird coming from a distant region join her feathers, at first they all wonder and fear, but presently they fly closer and closer and still in the air little by little they make her one of their own, merrily circling her with auspicious flap of wing, leading her to their lofty roost.
The mother lingers long at the threshold as she leaves, repeating her admonitions, planting secret mutterings in his ears and giving last words with muted countenance. Then the waters receive her and she swims away.
Achilles went on to have a son by Deidamia. When the truth of his gender was revealed, he had no choice but to join the fighting at Troy.
1 Chiron is the half-man, half-horse tutor to the young Achilles.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BREAST MILK
Attic Nights
Aulus Gellius
Translated by the Rev. W. Beloe, 1795
Aulus Gellius (c. AD 125–c. 180), who was brought up in Rome but spent several years of his life in Greece, was sufficiently interested in the debate over breast milk to include it in his commonplace book, Attic Nights. Named for their compiler’s evenings of quiet study in a villa near Athens, the Attic Nights are a repository of the work of writers who would otherwise be forgotten, and a rich source of information about life in the second century AD. Women today, if not then, may well object to many of the views set out below.
Word was brought once to Favorinus the philosopher, when I was with him, that the wife of one of his disciples was brought to-bed, and a son added to the family of his pupil. “Let us go,” says he, “to see the woman, and congratulate the father.” He was a senator, and of a noble family. We, all who were present, followed him to the house, and entered with him. Then, at his first entrance, embracing and congratulating the father, he sat down, and enquired whether the labour had been long and painful. When he was informed that the young woman, overcome with fatigue, was gone to sleep, he began to converse more at large, “I have no doubt,” says he, “but she will suckle her son herself.” But when the mother of the lady said, that she must spare her daughter, and find nurses for the child that to the pains of child-birth might not be added the toilsome and difficult talk of suckling the child; “I entreat you, madam,” said he, “allow her to be the sole and entire mother of her own son. For how unnatural a thing is it, how imperfect and half-sort of motherly office, to bring forth a child, and instantly to send him from her; to nourish in her womb, with her own blood, something which she has never seen, and not with her own milk to support that offspring which she now sees endued with life and human faculties, and imploring the tender care of a mother. And do you suppose,” he continued, “that nature has given bosoms to women only to heighten their beauty, and more for the sake of ornament, than to nourish their children. For on this account (which be it far from you) many unnatural women endeavour to dry up and extinguish that sacred fountain of the body, and nourishment of man, with great hazard turning and corrupting the channel of their milk, lest it should render the distinctions of their beauty less attractive. They do this with the same insensibility as those who endeavour by the use of quack medicines to destroy their conceptions, lest they should injure their persons and their shapes. Since the destruction of a human being in its first formation, while he is in the act of receiving animation, and yet under the hands of his artificer, nature, is deserving of public detestation and abhorrence; how much more so must it be to deprive a child of its proper, its accustomed and congenial nutriment, when now perfect and produced to the world. But it is of no consequence, it is said, provided it be nourished and kept alive, by whose milk it is. Why does not he who affirms this, if he be so ignorant of the processes of nature, suppose like wife that it is of no consequence from what body or from what blood an human being is formed and put together? Is not that blood, which is now in the breasts, and has become white by much spirit and warmth, the same as that which was in the womb? But is not the wisdom of nature evident also in this instance, that as soon as the blood, which is the artificer, has formed the human body within its penetralia, it rises into the upper parts, and is ready to cherish the first particles of life and light, supplying known and familiar food to the new-born infants? Wherefore it is not without reason believed, that as the power and quality of the seed avail to form likenesses of the body and mind, in the same degree also the nature and properties of the milk avail toward effecting the same purpose. Nor is this confined to the human race, but is observed also in beasts. For if kids are brought up by the milk of sheep, or lambs with that of goats, it is plain, by experience, that in the former is produced a harsher sort of wool, in the latter a softer species of hair. So in trees, and in corn, their strength and vigour is great in proportion to the quality of the moisture and soil which nourish them, rather than of the feed which is put into the ground. Thus you often see a strong and flourishing tree, when transplanted, die away, from the inferior quality of the soil. What, I would ask, can be the reason then that you should corrupt the dignity of a new-born human being, formed in body and mind from principles of distinguished excellence, by the foreign and degenerate nourishment of another’s milk? particularly if she whom you hire for the purpose of supplying the milk be a slave, or of a servile condition, or, as it often happens, of a foreign and barbarous nation, or if she be dishonest, or ugly, or unchaste, or drunken; for often, without hesitation, any one is hired who happens to have milk when wanted. And shall we then suffer this our infant to be polluted with pernicious contagion, and to inhale into its body and mind a spirit drawn from a body and mind of the worst nature? This, no doubt, is the cause of what we so often wonder at, that the children of chaste women turn out neither in body or mind like their parents. Wisely and with skill has our poet Virgil spoken in imitation of these lines in Homer,—
Sure Peleus ne’er begat a son like thee,
Nor Thetis gave thee birth: the azure sea
Produc’d thee, or the flinty rocks alone
Were the fierce parents of so fierce a son.
He charges him not only upon the circumstance of his birth, but his subsequent education, which he has called fierce and savage. Virgil, to the Homeric description, has added these words:
And fierce Hyrcanian tygers gave thee suck.
Undoubtedly, in forming the manners, the nature of the milk takes, in a great measure, the disposition of the person who supplies it, and then forms from the seed of the father, and the person and spirit of the mother, its infant offspring. And besides all this, who can think it a matter to be treated with negligence and contempt, that while they desert their own offspring, driving it from themselves, and committing it for nourishment to the care of others, they cut off, or at least loosen and relax, that mental obligation, that tie of affection, by which nature binds parents to their children? For when a child is removed from its mother, and given to a stranger, the energy of maternal fondness by little and little is checked, and all the vehemence of impatient solicitude is put to silence. And it becomes much more easy to forget a child which is put out to nurse, than one of which death has deprived us. Moreover, the natural affection of a child, its fondness, its familiarity, is directed to that object only from which it receives its nourishment, and thence (as in infants exposed at their birth) the child has no knowledge of its mother, and no regret for the loss of her. Having thus destroyed the foundations of natural affection, however children thus brought up may seem to love their father or mother, that regard is in a great measure not natural, but the result of civil obligation and opinion.” These sentiments, which I heard Favorinus deliver in Greek, I have, as far as I could, related, for the sake of their common utility. But the elegancies, the copiousness, and the flow of his words, scarcely any power of Roman eloquence could arrive at, least of all any which I posse
ss.
DO IT YOURSELF
Attic Nights
Aulus Gellius
Translated by the Rev. W. Beloe, 1795
Aulus Gellius was one of Aesop’s greatest admirers. In this snippet from his commonplace book, the Attic Nights (see Story 82 above) he retells a fable of Aesop’s whose message is that if you want something done, you should do it yourself.
Aesop the fabulist of Phrygia, has justly been reckoned a wise man. He communicated his salutary admonitions, not, as is the custom of philosophers, with a severity of manners and the imperiousness of command; but by his agreeable and facetious apologues; having a wife and and salutary tendency, he impressed the minds and understandings of his hearers, by captivating their attention. His fable, which follows, of the bird’s nest, teaches with the most agreeable humour that hope and confidence, with respect to those things which a man can accomplish, should be placed not in another but in himself.
“There is a little bird,” says he, “called a lark; it lives and builds its nest amongst the corn, and its young are generally fledged about the time of the approach of harvest. A lark happened to build among some early corn, which therefore was growing ripe when the young ones were yet unable to fly. When the mother went abroad to seek food for her young, she charged them to take notice if any unusual thing should happen or be said, and to inform her when she returned. The master of the corn calls his son, a youth, and says, ‘You see that this corn has grown ripe, and requires our labour; tomorrow therefore, as soon as it shall be light, go to our friends, desire them to come and assist us in getting in our harvest.’ When he had said this, he departed. When the lark returned, the trembling young ones began to make a noise round their mother, and to entreat her to hasten away, and remove them to some other place; ‘for the master,’ say they, ‘has sent to ask his friends to come to-morrow morning and reap.’ The mother desires them to be at ease; ‘for if the master,’ says she, ‘refers the reaping to his friends, it will not take place to-morrow, nor is it necessary for me to remove you to-day.’ The next day, the mother flies away for food: the master waits for his friends; the sun rages, and nothing is done; no friends came. Then he says a second time to his son: ‘These friends,’ says he, ‘are very tardy indeed. Let us rather go and invite our relations and neighbours, and desire them to come early to-morrow and reap.’ The affrighted young tell this to their mother: she again desires them not to be at all anxious or alarmed. ‘There are no relations so obsequious as to comply instantly with such requests, and undertake labour without hesitation. But do you observe if any thing shall be said again.’—The next morning comes, and the bird goes to seek food. The relations and neighbours omit to give the assistance required of them. At length the master says to his son, ‘Farewell to our friends and relations; bring two sickles at the dawn of day; I will take one, and you the other, and to-morrow we will reap the corn with our own hands.’—When the mother heard from her young ones, that the master had said this: The time is now come,’ says she, ‘for us to go away; now what he says will undoubtedly be done; for he rests upon himself, whose business it is, and not on another, who is requested to do it.’ The lark then removed her nest; the corn was cut down by the master.”—This is the fable of Aesop concerning confidence in friends and relations, generally vain and deceitful. But what else do the more sententious books of philosophers recommend, than that we should make exertions for ourselves, nor consider as ours, nor at all belonging to us, what is external with respect to ourselves and our minds? Ennius has given this apologue of Aesop in his Satires, with great skill and beauty, in tetrameters. The two last, I think, it is well worth while to have impressed on the heart and memory.
