Stealing Athena

by Karen Essex

  She spoke in a low voice, but I have never heard such a tone of viciousness. She hissed her words as she directed them at him like arrows.

  “What brave deeds you have done in Samos, Perikles,” she continued, “where so many a worthy citizen was lost, not in war with the Persians or some other enemy race, such as the monsters my brother, Kimon, fought, but against men of an allied and kindred city!”

  Perikles had stood in opposition to Kimon, and this had certainly encouraged the Athenians to vote for his ostracism. But Perikles had refused to participate in Kimon’s prosecution. At that time, Elpinike had lost a brother, a lover, and a means of support. She had never forgiven Perikles, even though, a few years later, he had argued for Kimon’s return. Why did she not credit him with that and be done with it? But families of the ostracized never forgave. Indeed, it appeared as if they had united today in an effort to confront and embarrass Perikles.

  “You should be ashamed of participating in that war,” Elpinike continued. “And you fawning, mindless women who drape these chaplets about him should be even more ashamed. Let your husbands take you home and beat you, I say!”

  I was still smarting from her comment about me. “Someone should take you home and beat you, old woman,” I said. “How dare you call me a whore when it is a well-known fact that you have always had a crowded bed, while I have only been with one man in my life? Who is the real whore, and by what definition?”

  I dared the old bat to argue with my logic. Instead she chose a different point of attack.

  “Everyone knows that Perikles only went to war with Samos because Aspasia used her witch-powers in bed to convince him to defend her countrymen in Miletus. The war that shed so much Athenian blood and spent so many Athenian coins was ignoble at best.”

  Perikles opened his mouth to speak, but I decided to defend myself, publicly, and once and for all.

  “What am I, Elpinike? Some modern-day Helen? The idea that Perikles would mobilize forty ships and risk hundreds of young Athenian lives to placate some request of mine is ludicrous.”

  “You speak well, Aspasia. You are known for the gift of rhetoric. Pity you do not turn your talents to speaking the truth.”

  “Ah, but it is true!” I smiled at everyone, looking as many people as I could directly in the eye. “Perikles might trade me for another woman anytime he pleases,” I said. “He needn’t go to war to keep me. Everyone knows that he is the source of my bread and wine, and most of all, the source of my beating heart.”

  My words drew applause. The Athenians loved debate of any kind, even if it were between a crone and a despised woman. But Perikles remained unshakable. I could not see any alteration in his demeanor or even his breathing. Finally he spoke. “When you came to me all those years ago, Elpinike, offering your body to try to coax me to interfere with the ostracism of your brother, I told you then that you were much too old to be able to carry out your mission. All these years later, you are still have not learned. Go home and be happy that you still have a few of your teeth.”

  At once her face transformed into that of a creature so mean that I thought she had become one of the avenging Furies. All she needed were snakes coiling on her arms and a lion skin hanging about her sagging breasts. Her nostrils widened and she squinted her eyes. “That never happened!” she retorted. “Everyone knows that I would never stoop to such an act, even to save my beloved brother.”

  A few people—the older ones, who knew her best—snickered. One man said, “Brother? You tried to save his ass to keep it in your bed!”

  “How dare any of you tarnish the name of my brother? He carried the very bones of Theseus from Skyros to Athens! He was a hero the likes of which this city no longer knows!”

  “And a damned good fuck, too, eh?” someone else cried out.

  This brought more laughter, which only made her angrier. I noticed that Perikles, to his credit, did not join in the jokes. Still she directed her rage at him.

  “I may be old, Perikles, but you underestimate me,” she said. “I am not yet too old to listen when men talk. I happen to know—because, like their teacher, some of the students of Polygnotos wish to converse with me—that your harlot, Aspasia, sat for Pheidias on numerous occasions, and it was upon her face that the sculptor fashioned the visage of the statue of Athena that now stands in the Parthenon. You do know the image, correct? The one paid for with public funds?”

  He looked at me, waiting to see if I would speak, but I could not defend myself. I stood there, letting the whisper spread through the crowd like a swarm of bees on its way to a target. I could not move and I could not speak. We stood there until Elpinike walked right up to Perikles and said, “Did you think I would ever forget the insults to my brother and to myself? I am not through with you. Not in the least. I will never be through with you until one of us is dead.”

  She turned to the crowd. “Not only did Pheidias impiously and mischievously use the face of a courtesan to represent the sacred goddess of our city, he also, as a joke—a joke on you Athenians who have made him a rich and lauded man—painted his face and the face of his friend Perikles into the shield of the goddess.”

  She looked at all the people staring at her, astonished at her words. No one knew what to say. Then someone shouted: “Impiety!”

  “Answer these outrageous charges, Perikles!” shouted another.

  Perikles took my hand and said, “What you say is ridiculous, Elpinike, the rant of an old woman. We do not have to dignify these insults with commentary.”

  He turned, leading me away, but she would not be deterred. She continued speaking to the shocked onlookers: “Just try to get an invitation to the temple to investigate my accusation. You will encounter resistance, I assure you.”

  The sun was now high in the sky, and the heat of the day was increasing, but I trembled as we walked away from Elpinike and her indictment.

  “There is time to rest in the shade before the sacrifices begin,” Perikles said.

  It occurred to me that he found what Elpinike had said so preposterous that he was not even going to ask me if it was true. I wanted to feel relief, to tell myself that that was the last we would hear of it. There was little enough actual resemblance between the statue’s face and mine. It would be easy to deny the charge. But I did not want to withhold information from Perikles. If the topic arose again, I would tell him that I was merely doing Pheidias a favor by providing him with a strong face, and that it was never intended that Athenians would gaze upon the face of the Goddess of the City and see Aspasia staring back at them.

  I agreed to rest in the shade, but what I wanted to do was go home and hide, though on this feast day, I knew that was impossible. Perikles must have sensed my lack of ease. He spoke as if he were reading my mind. “The best thing to do is ignore it and proceed with our duties today. Her words will blow over like so much smoke. That woman has been trying to make trouble for me since the day I refused to lay my hands on her decrepit flesh.”

  If he turned out to be right, and Elpinike’s words dissipated with the heat into the night air, never to be heard again, I would keep my secret with Pheidias. If not, I would confess. “I suppose that no woman, no matter the age, enjoys having her advances rebuffed,” I said, offering up an explanation for her vitriol and indirectly denying her charge.

  “That is why the sport of conquest, like many other things, is better left to men,” he said.

  LIKE ANY WITNESS TO the sacrifices she performed, I was in awe of Diotima’s power. Her regular duties as High Priestess of the City included the interpretation of omens, and in recent months she had divined that a plague was on its way to Athens. She had said that she could hear the disease riding up to the city as if on horses, the drumbeat of its journey growing louder and louder as it crossed the Attic plains toward the city. This prediction caused much panic. People started to close up their homes and retire to the country. A few jumped off cliffs or hanged themselves. Some women elected to terminate their pregnanci
es. Men wondered whether to kill their children now or go through the agony of watching the disease take their lives. To put a stop to the madness, Diotima promised that she would sacrifice a ewe at the Great Panathenaic Festival and that this would send the disease into retreat for a period of ten years, after which she would reevaluate the threat.

  I had not planned to attend the sacrificial ritual with Perikles at sunset. I wanted to go home to make certain that all preparations for our party that evening were under way. However, this was the sacrifice to Pandrosos, the girl who was obedient to Athena, and therefore loved by the goddess. I begged Perikles to let me attend; I did not tell him why this was so important to me. But as the blood spilled, I would offer my own silent prayer that the potential disaster encroaching upon my happiness, like the plague making its way to Athens, would also remain at bay for at least a decade, if not forever.

  During the five days of the festival, hundreds of cows would be sacrificed to Athena upon her altars on the Akropolis, but the one ewe sacrificed to Pandrosos was considered special. The story of Pandrosos was told in many versions, and the most common was this: Hephaestus, the metal-forging lame god, wished to copulate with Athena, the beautiful virgin goddess. He had done so much for her, fashioning her breastplate and her shield, that he thought she should repay him with sexual favors. But all men’s sexual advances disgusted Athena. Hephaestus rubbed himself against her, but she repelled him just as his semen spurted onto her bare leg. Appalled, she quickly flicked it to the ground. In an instant, Erechtheus, half boy, half snake, the first earthborn Athenian, sprang from the earth. Athena placed him in a beautiful box and gave him to the three daughters of King Kekrops for safekeeping but told the girls not to look inside. Pandrosos obeyed, but Herse and Aglauros could not resist. They opened the box, and the sight of the snake-boy so terrified them that they threw themselves off the side of the Akropolis.

  Thus the fate of disobedient women. The more compliant Pandrosos was given a sanctuary on the hill beside Athena, where men throughout the ages have honored her. The sacrifice to Pandrosos has always recalled the days when young girls were offered up as sacrifices, and so it was more solemn than most. Whereas the meat of the sacrificed cows was roasted next to Athena’s altar and shared with the public, only the clergy and a select few could partake of the meat of the ewe slaughtered for Pandrosos.

  The Sanctuary of Pandrosos was located in the precinct of the Akropolis dedicated to that unquestioning sister. It was very near the shrine that held the ancient olive-wood statue of Athena Polias, and it contained the original olive tree that Athena presented to the city in her contest with Poseidon. This tree was sacred to the people of Athens. It had proven its magical qualities by regenerating itself overnight after being burned down by the Persians when they sacked the Akropolis. Old men who remembered that horrific event swore that on the very next day, they saw the miracle: after being burned to the ground, the tree had already grown a shoot more than a cubit in length.

  Perhaps two hundred people were packed into the temple courtyard, but I stood at the front of the crowd with Perikles and other city officials. Musicians beat goatskin drums and played haunting, hollow-toned melodies on pipes. The marble altar had been cleaned and purified of the blood and stains of previous sacrifices, but it was worn at the center. Two boys wearing snakeskin vests, representatives of Erechtheus, tended the ewe, which had been garlanded for the occasion. Women and men in attendance had draped themselves in animal skins, and some of the women had put crowns of flowers on their heads.

  I was surprised to see Sokrates standing very close to the altar. I wondered how a young craftsman with no illustrious familial connections was allowed this sort of proximity. Perhaps he was the lover of someone very important. If so, he had not disclosed it to me. I was further astonished when Diotima appeared in her white robes and nodded to him as if the two of them were old friends.

  I have seen priestesses rely upon young boys to straddle the sacrificial ewe to hold down its legs, but not Diotima. She was perhaps fifty-five years old, but she was tall for a female, and taut. The labor of her life was on behalf of the goddess, since Athena’s attendants must, of course, not engage in sexual relations with men while in service. She was long widowed, with one adult son, yet she had none of the sag and droop that haunted the bodies of mothers her age.

  I was very tired, having been awake since long before dawn, and I knew that a long evening stretched out before me. The smoke from the roasting flesh of the relentless sacrifices at the great altar to Athena filled the air, making me slightly queasy, whether from hunger or from the thick smell of it. I wanted to lean against Perikles but dared not, as it would undoubtedly be taken as a sexual overture by one of the many people who scrutinized our behavior no matter where we were. The noise too started to irritate me, and I yearned for solitude. The drumbeats quickened, and the women in the courtyard began to sway and scream in anticipation of the sacrifice. Animals awaiting their fate at the other altars were bellowing loudly. It seemed as if all parties were in competition to triumph in noise.

  Finally, Diotima raised her arms, and the ritual began. The two boys pulled the ewe, rope around its neck, to the altar. There Diotima took control, placing the ewe’s head on the altar and virtually mounting the animal to hold it in place. One of the boys picked up a knife and handed it to her. The priestess held the ewe’s muzzle in her left hand, pulling the animal’s neck back. With her right hand, she raised the sacrificial knife, long and sharp, and, bringing it down, pierced the ewe’s throat. Slowly and cleanly, she slid the blade across the neck, making a straight cut. She had placed the animal on the altar in such a way that the blood ran in all directions. If the blood did not cover the entire altar, the sacrifice would not be received. Everyone watched as the thick liquid spread across the altar, slowly making its way to the four corners.

  Diotima signaled for the pipes players to recommence. Accompanied by their music, she sang: “Give us a well-ordered city with women fair, where their sons revel in youthful merriment and their daughters play in dances flower-strewn, with happy hearts, and skip through fields in bloom. This is what you give us, Holy Rich Divinities.”

  By the time she finished singing, the blood had covered the altar, spilling over the sides into ceremonial bowls held by the two boys and two young maidens. Diotima gestured with her hands, and the children poured the collected blood back on the altar to soak it so that Pandrosos would get her due and intercede with Athena.

  My eyes were riveted to the cascading blood. The acrid smell of the pots of cow fat burning on the other side of the Akropolis in offering to Athena conspired with the heavy perfume of the garlands around Perikles’ neck. I started to feel light in the head, and then bitter and sick in the stomach. A dark screen seemed to rise from the bottom of my eyelids, blotting out the world in front of me. Suddenly, all turned to black and I felt myself fall against Perikles, who could not catch me before my body hit the ground.

  A SHIMMERING FIGURE APPEARED , as if breaking through the darkness. Sparkling lights fluttered behind her tall body, gradually taking the shape of wings. She was beautiful but stern as she stood on her griffin-drawn chariot. Those two ferocious guardians of the divine, their immense eagle-wings spread like great hawking shields, aimed their wicked beaks in my direction. I tried to scream, but no sound would come. My heart pounded in my chest as the enormous lion-paws moved toward me. I imagined how it would feel once those black, hornlike nails were ripping at my flesh. The strange female creature stared at me without pity as if I had done something terribly wrong. I appealed to her with my eyes but my plea met with no empathy. She did not move to stop the griffins, which were picking up speed and charging at me. I tried to scramble away on my knees, but my body was like an infant’s and I could not even manage to crawl. I was clawing at the dirt, trying to get traction and creep out of the way, when I heard the wheels of the chariot churning behind me, closer and closer. I looked over my shoulder one last time, but
suddenly nothing was there.

  I FELT WATER HIT my face. I opened my eyes to see Perikles kneeling beside me, a ladle in his hand. My eyes darted about, looking for the strange creatures of my vision, but all had returned to the scene of the sacrifice. Sokrates was bending over me, his big eyes full of concern. Perikles took one of my arms and Sokrates the other and they lifted me to my feet. I felt many eyes upon me. I was light-headed, scared from the vision I had just had, and wishing I could disappear.

  I could barely feel my own body. “I must go home immediately. I must see to the preparations for the evening.”

  It must have sounded nonsensical, coming from the mouth of a woman who had just passed out.

  “Of course,” Perikles said. “But I must stay to partake of the sacrifice.”

  “I have a small cart just down the hill,” Sokrates offered. “I can drive her there.”

  Perikles released me to him, and I took his arm. The last thing I noticed as he and I walked out of the temple was Diotima, her sleeves drenched in blood, staring at me with her wise, impenetrable eyes.

  As Sokrates and I walked down the hill to the cart he used to carry his sculpting supplies, I described to him the details of the vision, hoping that he could help me decipher its meaning.

  “I have no idea what it means, Aspasia,” he said. “But I shall ask Diotima about it, and perhaps arrange for the two of you to meet.”

  THOUGH PERIKLES COULD HAVE built himself a more opulent home, he thought he was deflecting criticism by living in modest quarters. I do not know how many hundreds of people attended our party, but the crowd filled every interior room on both floors, and spilled out into a packed courtyard. I had arranged for the acrobats and musicians to entertain in the courtyard, but it was too crowded, so I slipped them extra money and asked them to go from room to room like the itinerant players they were.