Homer's Daughter

by Robert Graves

  Some hours later, he emerged, went to his study, and sent for me. “Nausicaa,” he said, “what shall I do? You are, at times, the most sensible member of this family (always excepting your dear mother) and I feel that—ahem—some god may have inspired you to advise me.”

  He then described his meeting with the Pylian merchants, and waited for my comment.

  I sighed deeply before I answered. “Father, the news does not surprise me. Your shameless Hyrian guest was lying—as I could have told you at the time. So could my mother, and perhaps she did. Let us dismiss that whole story as a fantasy designed to improve his trade; and think only of Laodamas’s possible fate. It now seems certain that the Rhodian captain never took him aboard…”

  “I do not agree. As Eurymachus points out, the Rhodian would hardly have risked his reputation by going off with our sails and cordage, unless Laodamas had given him permission in my name.”

  “If he had Laodamas’s permission, would there have been any need to drug the guards?”

  My father brushed off this question as impatiently as if it were a bluebottle settling on his morning slice of bread-and-honey; nevertheless, he shifted his ground.

  “Well, then, what of that Sidonian vessel which the women saw? Laodamas may have rowed out to her.”

  “In that case, why was no dinghy missing from the quay?”

  “He may have swum. He is a strong swimmer.”

  “Father, please use the reason on which you so justly pride yourself! Could he swim with a cloakful of treasure on his back?”

  My father fell silent and I continued: “The first report of that mysterious Sidonian vessel came a month or two after Laodamas had disappeared.”

  “Are you suggesting that Eurymachus’s mother also lied? Why should she lie? Why should Melantho lie? She is Ctimene’s own maid, and devoted to our house.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I wish I knew why, Father. But my heart assures me that they are in collusion.”

  “What can you be trying to tell me?” he asked fiercely.

  I did not blink an eyelid. “That Laodamas never sailed at all,” I replied.

  “Stop joking, child. Everyone knows that he sailed.”

  “Everyone knows that Helen eloped to Troy with Paris: or everyone, except you! To be alone in your knowledge does not prove you wrong; as it did not prove Laocoön wrong when he told the incredulous Trojans that the Wooden Horse was full of armed enemies.”

  That pulled him up short. “Oh, so Laodamas went off overland somewhere? Perhaps to join your rebellious brother Halius among the Sicels? It is possible, but not likely. Why did nobody meet him on the road?”

  Again I shrugged. “Let me tell you, Father, what the Goddess Athene has put into my mind: Laodamas never left Drepanum.”

  He looked searchingly at me, as though he feared for my sanity, and went out, slamming the door. A long piece of plaster fell from behind the doorjamb—shaped like a dagger.

  A ship had just made port in the northern harbour: a Taphian thirty-oarer, with a cargo of Chalybean iron ingots, bound for the Temesan copper mines in south-west Italy. Her captain, a cousin of the Taphian king, called at the Palace, and when he had been entertained in a manner befitting his rank, my father, as usual, asked him whether he brought news of Laodamas.

  He brought none, but proved liberal with advice. “My lord King, it is clear that his absence is eating at your heart like a mouse at one of these splendid Elyman cheeses, and I can see only one course for you to take. First: despatch a responsible member of your household to Sandy Pylus, where, since it is the centre of the amber trade, your son will naturally have gone to buy his necklace. If the Pylians have no news, mourn him as drowned, return, and build him a cenotaph worthy of his fame. Afterwards send your peevish daughter-in-law back to her father’s house with the bride price; there let her marry again. Why keep her here in the Palace, my lord King, weeping and mourning without cease? A half-blind man could see that the Lady Ctimene depresses your spirits and those of your admirable servants.”

  “Yes,” my father agreed, “and she is not even breeding me grandchildren.”

  “Well, then,” the Taphian continued briskly, “who can go to Sandy Pylus? Your son Clytoneus? Though young, he is keen-witted. Or, failing him, what of your capable brother-in-law, my lord Mentor?”

  “I trust nobody but myself,” replied my father, “to make the necessary enquiries. Yet how can I go?”

  “Every king believes that his presence is indispensable; but a short holiday does him good, and his people little harm. Why not accompany us, when we sail home, in twenty days’ time at the most, from Temesa? I prefer, you see, to take the longer route back, avoiding the Strait of Messina, which is both dangerous to navigate and a notorious haunt of pirates. We could land you at Sandy Pylus within the month. How would that be?”

  My father was goaded into taking a sudden resolution: he would leave the kingdom under the regency of my uncle Mentor and sail to Sandy Pylus. Despite my warnings, he still obstinately believed the first part of the Hyrian merchant’s story—which was, I admit, circumstantial enough—and concluded that Laodamas must have reached Thesprotia by way of Corcyra. But what happened then? Had he met with unexpected trouble? Had he been robbed of his wealth by King Pheidon? Perhaps even sold into slavery?

  “If all other sources of information fail,” my father told the Taphian, “I shall visit Delphi and consult the Oracle of Apollo. Or, maybe, Zeus’s at Dodona would be the more reliable of the two.”

  Though reposing small faith in the prophetic gifts of the divine priestesses, he knew well that Delphi and Dodona were centres of information and gossip for all Greece, and that he would learn from the sacrificial butchers, or the intelligent corps of messengers, whatever was to be known of Laodamas’s whereabouts. He summoned my mother, my brother Clytoneus, my uncle Mentor, my grandfather Phytalus, and myself to a family council; but not Ctimene.

  “Let me tell the truth,” he confided to us. “The fact is that I cannot face the prospect of Ctimene’s prolonged anxiety and grief. She makes the very walls of the Palace weep and shudder in sympathy. Often I despair of her life; more often I grow enraged and am tempted to send her back to Bucinna, with the bride price which she brought—or its equivalent in sacerdotal and commercial privileges. But this I will not do, for fear of antagonizing Laodamas when he returns—you must notice that I refuse to take your pessimistic view and say ‘if he returns’.”

  Fifteen days later, the Taphian put in again with his cargo of copper, to which my father now added a valuable consignment of linen, honey, and folding bedsteads, and stepped cheerfully aboard. Almost the whole town sped him on his way, offering generous sacrifices to all the deities who rule the sea or protect travellers. Clytoneus and I climbed halfway up Mount Eryx to watch his sail, bellied out by a stiff westerly breeze, disappear behind the island of Motya, some eight miles to the south. When we regained the Palace, my mother drew me aside, and said: “Child, your father has told me what Athene put into your mouth: namely that we must mourn Laodamas as dead. Nor was it a lying oracle. I myself saw him in a dream three nights ago: he came, dripping blood and sea water, a dagger between his shoulders, and stood piteously before me. Then he pointed to the banqueting court, and cried: ‘Let them avenge me, Mother! Let them avenge me with the bow of Philoctetes!’ ‘How shall I know that you are truly my son Laodamas?’ I asked him. He answered: ‘Dear Mother, when you wake tomorrow, I shall fly in by one window and out by the other, taking the shape of a white dove.’ And so he did. Tell nobody of this, even my brother Mentor, even my son Clytoneus. But be resolute to find his murderers, and let us take exemplary vengeance. You alone of my children have a better head than heart.”

  “If you really believed in your vision, Mother,” I said, not altogether pleased by this reflection on my capacity for tender feelings, “why did you let my father sail for Sandy Pylus on a useless errand?”

  She grew grave. “He is a self-willed man, a
nd though, since I first married him, he has come to learn that I always tell the truth, he hates to admit that I can possibly be better informed than himself. Besides, he has never visited the mainland of Greece and this may be his last chance: for he is already past his prime. I told him of my vision, but because you had come to much the same conclusion independently, and because he had not seen the dove with his own eyes, he accused me of plotting to keep him at home. ‘Go, then,’ I said, ‘and the sooner you return, my lord, the longer we shall all live.’ Daughter, this is the threshold of danger. I can trust you to do nothing foolish; meanwhile, let Ctimene warm herself at what embers of hope she still can rake together.”

  Three days passed, and I became aware of a subtle but pervasive change in the local atmosphere. Not among the common people, nor among my few real friends, such as Captain Dymas’s daughter Procne and my cousins from Hiera; nor among our faithful maids headed by Eurycleia, who was once my dry nurse and now acts as housekeeper. I can best describe it as a disdainful reserve noticeable in the greetings that certain daughters of the nobility gave me, and an overheartiness in the manner of their brothers and fathers, as if they knew something that was being kept from me. Every summer, Elyman children play a hide-and-seek game on the hills called the Bull’s Treasure, which consists in their all going out to search for a boy, called the Bull, who has hidden himself in some cleft or cave. Whoever finds him, stays behind to collect the secret treasure, not proclaiming the discovery to his companions; but presently first one, then another, also stumbles on the Bull’s hiding place, until at last all are in the secret, except for one unfortunate, who goes wandering disconsolately over the deserted hillside, lonely and perplexed. That was how I felt now.

  When I am in a bad temper, it amuses me to visit our linen factory, where the sight of women quietly plying the shuttle on the tall looms has a soothing effect on my mind; yet here, too, I found an unfamiliar spirit abroad. Several of the women had left their work and were gathered in a knot near the door, talking in excited whispers, but scurried off to their looms as soon as they saw me rounding the corner, and pretended to be weaving busily. Their shuttles flew backwards and forwards like the fluttering of aspen leaves in the wind.

  “Good day, industrious linen workers,” I sang out ironically. “I suppose that you have been discussing the man-headed fish drawn up in the mullet nets this morning? I saw the prodigy myself: it had arms instead of fins, and talked Phoenician—at any rate, everyone thought it must be Phoenician because none of us, not even I, could understand a word. There it lay: jabbering and gesturing, gesturing and jabbering until at last it turned blue in the face; so I threatened it with the strap, shouting that I expect both Phoenician fish and Elyman linen workers to keep their mouths shut when I come on the scene. The monster had the sense to obey.”

  A dead silence followed. All our women are afraid of me, believing that I am often under the influence of some deity or other; a fear, perhaps well grounded, which I exploit by talking this sort of nonsense at them. They are a good-natured set of girls, but the least thing will disturb them, and then their work suffers alike in quality and in quantity; as with the milk supply, when a fox runs through a flock of milch ewes, or a dog breaks loose and chases them.

  “Where is Eurymedusa?” I asked. Eurymedusa, the handsome young manageress, dealt out the flax, saw to the comfort of the weavers, was responsible for the condition of the looms, and kept a close eye on the pattern of the web. We always set the looms working together on a single stock pattern—one or other of those in constant demand among the Libyans and Italians—so that Eurymedusa may find it easier to notice mistakes and encourage the laggards. On this occasion she had set up a simple check, with five purple and two scarlet threads occurring after every hundredth white one. My mother nicknames her Eurymedusa of Apeira, meaning the “Incompetent”, but though she has been slow to learn her duties she is popular in the factory.

  No, there was nothing strange in Eurymedusa’s absence: she had merely gone to draw a pitcherful of drinking water, the day being sultry. “Mix it with a little wine, Eurymedusa,” I said when she returned, “and dole out a gill to each of these tongue-tied women. Then get Gorgo the gooseherd to tell them one of her old-fashioned Sican stories, and keep their minds off the man-headed Phoenician fish which caused such a fright this morning.”

  Eurymedusa fetched a wineskin, and did as I ordered. They all drank my health politely, and smiled, but I could see that their eyes were still troubled.

  When white-haired Gorgo hobbled in, I sat on a stool and listened. Her tale was about our ancestor Aegestus and his arrival in Sicily from Troy. Having landed near Mount Etna to water his fleet, he ventured into a dark cave, where he was seized by Polyphemus the Cyclops, one of the immortal smiths who live thereabouts, and carried down to the bowels of the burning mountain. It seems that Polyphemus and his clan needed human blood to temper a thunderbolt which they were forging for Zeus. Cunning Aegestus, however, intoxicated them with Pramnian wine, and having removed their shoes (every Cyclops has notoriously tender feet) hammered them full of nails. Then he escaped, and when the smiths pulled on their shoes and tried to give chase, pain forced them to desist. So Aegestus regained his ships in safety, and continued westward until he reached Rheithrum. The howling of the Cyclops was music in his ears.

  Gorgo, small, thin, and active as a bird, told the story with such skill—lowering her voice at moments of suspense, raising it to a shout when the crisis came, and mimicking the characters—that the delighted weaving women called for another like it. She looked doubtful, but when I nodded my assent, began a tale about her ancestor Sicanus and his experiences in the cave of one-eyed Conturanus—a giant tall enough to knock a hole in the sky with his staff. With his belly resting on the summit of Eryx and his immense legs thrust behind him on our plain, he used to plunge his great hands into the Aegestan Sea and scoop up tunnies by the hundred. Sicanus had entered the cave in expectation of hospitality, followed by twelve companions, but Conturanus brained and ate them one by one, and their egress was barred by the doorstopper, which only he could budge. This excessively large boulder he rolled back twice a day: to drive his flocks to pasture at dawn and lead them home at twilight. On the third night Sicanus blinded Conturanus with his own staff, charred to a point in the fire, and escaped by clinging to the wool beneath the belly of a prize ram, when Conturanus let it out to feed early the next morning. Conturanus raged madly against Sicanus, and threw two enormous but ineffectual rocks at him as he swam away towards Hiera.

  These rocks are still shown, protruding from the sea about three miles to the south-west of Drepanum; and a huge cave, now occupied by our Sican shepherds, where we go sometimes for picnics, is called the Cave of Conturanus. When one of the women asked how so tall a giant managed to live in a cave no larger than our Palace, Gorgo explained that he had the magical power of diminishing his size at will by eating a certain mushroom.

  Eurymedusa said afterwards: “Gorgo, how you enthral us! Alas, that Homer has no daughters as well as sons! If he had, and if they turned your stories into poems, and sang them sweetly to the lyre, what a ravishing entertainment that would be!”

  “Alas, indeed!” I thought. The Sons of Homer are so jealous of their privileges that they allow none but their clansmen to declaim before princes. Nor does anyone dare compete with them. Yet if men sing to men, why should women not sing to women? Athene, who invented every intellectual art, is a woman. So are the Muses, who inspire all song. And the Pythoness, who prophesies in unforgettable verse, is a woman.

  “Oh, Muses,” I prayed silently, “enter into the heart of your servant Nausicaa, and teach her to compose skilful hexameter verses!”

  Believe it, or believe it not, my unusual prayer was at once answered! For I heard myself saying:

  “Eurymedusa, the day must dawn when the songs of a woman

  Sound to the well-strung lyre, and are praised by the Delian judges.”

  This was an impor
tant crisis in my life, perhaps the most important, though nobody present realized that I was speaking in verse, and prophesying, too. The common people lack discernment. If the Goddess Athene were to pass through our court of sacrifice today, helmet on head and Aegis displayed, do you think that they would rush to propitiate her? They would do nothing of the kind. I can imagine them saying: “Who in the world is this hard-faced young woman in the fringed goatskin apron? And why does she wear that round shield with the ugly face on it strapped over her shoulder? The effrontery of wearing a plumed helmet as though she were a man! She must be one of those wild, lecherous Nasamonians from Libya—what ship has brought her? Does anyone know? Let us trust that her promiscuity will not create a scandal in the market place.”

  Sighing for disgust, I turned on my heel and went to find Clytoneus. He was nowhere in the house, nor in the orchard; so I wandered towards the town deep in thought, and met him striding along, with Argus and Laelaps at his heels.

  “I took the Eryx road,” he said. “Argus started a hare and had her twisting and doubling between the cornfields. Laelaps kept only a few yards behind. Presently they reached a patch of brambles and butcher’s-broom, where they lost her. Then a vixen bolted from the same thicket and led them a fine chase up the hill, but went to earth in the stone quarry. So we were out of luck. Still, the hounds enjoyed their run; they seldom get enough exercise these days.”

  “Tell me, Clytoneus,” I said, lowering my voice because a group of peasants was approaching, “have you noticed any alteration in people’s behaviour since our father sailed?”

  He stopped suddenly. “Since you mention it, yes,” he answered. “A certain ungraciousness, amounting almost to sullenness. It is natural enough that some people should be tempted to take things easy in the King’s absence and neglect their duties. Uncle Mentor is well disposed to our house but, being of lower rank than several members of the Council, cannot sit with proper assurance in the chair of state. Besides, he is a little too softhearted, and his tours of inspection are not nearly so thorough as our father’s. I happened to hear Melantheus answering him back most rudely yesterday when he suggested that the goats should be restrained by some means or other from barking the young poplar trees. Uncle Mentor went off with a civil good day, to which Melantheus returned hardly a grunt; but I came up, applied my spear shaft to the insolent fellow’s shoulders and advised him to mend his ways.”