begins to heal.'
`What warnings for this treatment?'
`Er... oh, yes, Master, the suppliant must not lie down on his back to sleep, but on his side or front, in case blood fills his throat and he chokes.'
`Your are a good pupil, little Golden One.'
I trotted faster to keep up with him and said, `I have good masters, Lord.'
`Here we are. Now, Chryse, you will accompany the suppliants all the way to the dormiton and tholos. After that, you may come and see me and we will talk again. Do not interject with questions,' he added, smiling at me, `but save them for me when you have seen all there is to see.'
I nodded, and he patted my shoulder and left me.
There were seven people waiting in the reception temple. They were tired and dusty and priests were serving them with the sleepy broth, composed of chicken's flesh and onions, sage, rue and vervain, comfrey, barley and poppy. It nourished those who had fainted on the road and soothed the over-stretched nerves of the anxious.
When I entered the temple the priest hurried over to order me out. `The master told me to follow the suppliant,' I protested.
He cast me a harried look and muttered, `You cannot be seen here, dressed like that! Put this cloak on, boy. The psychopomp must not be visible until the cavern entrance.'
I wrapped and pinned the himation which covered my purple tunic, and sat down against the wall as unobtrusively as I could. I had noticed that if I concentrated hard on not being seen, people's eyes skated over me. Besides, the patients were concerned with their own ills.
There were four men and three women. Milanion, a soldier, with a spear point lodged in his jaw. Cleones, a woman with dropsy, swelled and uncomfortable, her skin so stretched that it seemed about to split. A pregnant girl who could not be delivered, panting and red faced with the effort of staying upright and conscious, her arms cradling her swollen belly.
Mindful that no one was allowed to die or be born in the sacred precinct, I knew that the attendants would carry her out of the tholos as soon as her labour became productive.
A child of perhaps four in the arms of his mother, whimpering in a strange monotonous voice. He had fallen down a cliff, chasing a goat, and hit his head, and now he was blind. His mother would lie down with the god and dream for him.
There was a man seeking help for impotence, a woman hoping to be cured of barrenness and an Achaean with a bandaged foot, which had been broken and healed without setting properly, so that he could hardly walk. A bony man of perhaps forty clutched his belly, complaining that he could not digest his food any more and that his insides had rebelled against him.
As Eos, the goddess of the dawn, trailed her golden draperies over the horizon, the suppliants began to talk, encouraged by the seven listening priests. I watched, secure as a mouse in a mouse hole, as the suppliants talked and the appropriate priest found the right patient.
Milanion spoke confidently to Telops, who had been a soldier, when he would not have been comfortable with Achis, the slender Kritian. The pregnant girl held out a sweating hand to Achis, however, recognising something essentially female and understanding in him. The barren woman leaned into Thorion's shoulder, comforted by his bulk and strength, while the impotent man spoke quickly to Asius the eunuch, Attis Priest. Lapith the Corinthian spoke to the dropsical woman in her own dialect while the club-footed Itarnes was seized by the wounded Achaean.
The temple was a babble of voices and I could only hear snatches of the conversations.
`I got it at the battle of the deep valley,' the soldier was saying. `Near enough to killed me. There my brothers died and my father and uncle. I am the only one left of my grandfather's kin.'
`I was given to him by my uncle, for my father is dead,' the pregnant girl gasped to Achis. `I hate him. He has said that he will kill me if I bear him a girl. I wish I were dead. I have been so long in labour that my bones are racked. I want to die.'
`Death cannot be what life is, little sister,' said Achis gently. `The cup of death is empty, and in life there is always hope.'
She began to cry. Achis gave her some more broth and his shoulder to rest her head.
`It catches me here,' said the bilious man, `especially after a feast. I must have offended some god - but I've made offerings before them all, and nothing does me any good.'
`We were ambushed and we had to run,' the Achaean said to Itarnes, `across the stream and up the ridge. We were hiding under a brow of stone when a boulder fell and crushed my foot. I couldn't scream. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. The scouts would have heard a fly rubbing its wings together. I did not make a sound, not then, and not when my brothers hauled me across the rough ground. By the time we got home my foot was a mass of broken bones and nothing to be done. I am less than a man, I dare not marry lest my children bear club feet too. I healed, though it would have been better if I died.'
`I am a man with grown sons, all of them clean and handsome' said Itarnes, exhibiting his deformed foot. `And there was a hero with a swollen foot, worse damaged than you. His name was Oedipus.'
`And look what happened to him,' said the patient sourly. `Killed his father. Married his mother. Spent the rest of his life wandering blind until he finally died in Theseus' territory and caused a war.'
`Come now, how many wars have you caused?' Itarnes asked, and the suppliant laughed, almost against his will.
`He will sell me,' mourned the barren woman to Thorion. `My only chance is to have a child, a son. I love him, and am so afraid! He will sell me to the Corinthians who know not the Mother, or to the barbarians from Caria.'
`Or to the pygmies, who will make you a goddess,' murmured Thorion, `or to the Massagetae who will teach you to ride a horse and fire a bow. A terrible fate, little sister, to be given to the Amazons who fight like men, or to the Tauraeans who eat human flesh.'
This did not seem to be a comforting statement and I wondered why Thorion had made it. The woman burst into tears and Thorion continued, `Or to the Trojans who are masters of horse, to live in windy Ilium of the tall towers and scatter grain before the triple goddess. Or to the Hittites, to worship the pillar of the sun and eat porridge. Or to the Phoenicians, to sail on their well-found ships and visit many ports, bargaining for tin as far as the Cloudy Islands, or down the coast of Africa to trade for gold with men as black as night, so far away that the stars are strange. You spirit is in fetters, little sister. The world is wide. Why are you so afraid of it?'
The woman wept loudly. The impotent man was saying to Asius, `I was given her as a present. My wife is old and has borne many sons. This new girl is a slave and so beautiful - black as a serpent and lithe like a willow. I wanted her, I lay down with her, she was willing, and then - nothing. She laughed at me and I beat her and now she is sullen and my wife is angry with me. I am old and my seed is dry within me. I am as impotent as you, Attis Priest. Sex makes a man. Like this, I am a woman, helpless, laughable, useless.'
`There are more things that make a man than his sex,' said Asius.
I listened carefully, trying to sieve meaning out of what sounded like common gossip, to be heard in every agora in any village. Just so had my elders talked when I came with my father to sell goats and cheese in our own village. It was the speech of the women at the market stalls, discussing pregnancy and birth and death and the best lichen brew for dyeing cloth. It was the talk of old men sitting on benches in
