John Roberts - The Princess and the Pirates

“So you have found time from your duties to pay the goddess honor, Senator?”

“Indeed. But I did not expect to see you here dressed as a devotee.” “At home I am a priestess of Venus of the Mariners. We enjoy reciprocal status with the sisterhood here. Aphrodite of Paphos is primarily a sea goddess, with beauty, love, and fertility as her secondary traits. The connection between our temples goes back for centuries, before the time of the Etruscan kings. Come along, I’ll show you the regalia.”

Nothing loath, we followed. Since the temple was so small, most of its belongings were in outlying buildings, most of them larger than the temple itself. We entered one of these, a low, one-story structure faced with a finely painted portico, its roof supported by severely plain Doric pillars. Inside, a number of visitors stood admiring a wall covered with nets. It was not what I expected.

“Looks like a fisherman’s storehouse,” I remarked.

“Look more closely,” Flavia advised.

So I went closer. The nets were extremely fine, almost like if oversized spiderwebs. They also glistened brightly in the light that streamed through the portico windows and door. Then I saw that they were made not of twine but of fine, golden chain.

“At the climax of the Aphrodisia, ” she explained, “the priestesses will wear these nets when they go down to the sea to bathe and be renewed.”

“In the old story,” Alpheus said, “Hephaestus used a golden net to snare his wife, Aphrodite, in bed with Ares, her lover.”

“On the mainland,” she said, “Aphrodite lost most of her aspect as sea-goddess. You’ll recall that it was Poseidon who offered to marry her himself when he saw her in the golden net. Here in her most ancient shrine, the net was hers, not her husband’s.”

“Will you be participating in the festival rites?” I asked her. “Only as an attendant. A pity, really. I would love to bathe in the sea in full view of thousands of worshipers. Roman religious practice is so stodgy these days.”

“How true,” I commiserated. “Have you considered joining the Cult of Dionysus? It’s forbidden throughout Italy but still greatly esteemed in the Greek parts of the world.”

“I highly recommend the Samian rite,” Alpheus said. “It is very ancient, supremely orgiastic, and considered to be the holiest of all the Dionysian sects. The priestesses of Samos are renowned for their piety.”

“Sergius would never agree,” she said, sadly. “He is a banker, and Samos is not a particularly wealthy island. We’ll probably never go there. Come along and let me show you the image of the goddess. It isn’t what you might expect.”

This proved to be true. The interior of the tiny temple was dim, and wisps of incense smoke made graceful volutes in the air. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I beheld the goddess taking form at the rear of the chamber. She was represented in white stone, probably marble, but she could not have been more different from the polished, lifelike sculptures so familiar to us. The stone was roughhewn and porous, shaped in the vague semblance of a human form, its arms not separated from the body, nor the legs one from the other. An indentation midway up suggested a waist-line, two large but indistinct swellings represented breasts, and an ovoid shape at the top was her head. There were no discernible facial features.

I gazed upon this extraordinary image for a long time, somehow moved by it as I rarely was by the more famous statues of Aphrodite. With those, the observer was always conscious of them primarily as works of art rather than as objects of devotion. This seemed to me the cult object in its purest form. Gradually it came to me what I was seeing.

“This is the goddess still rising from the sea, still composed of sea-foam!” I said. “She has not yet achieved her full, divine form.”

“You are perceptive-for a Roman.”

It was not Flavia who had spoken. The voice reminded me of honey lightly flavored with smoke. I turned to see a woman of regal bearing, perhaps fifty years of age, once of a beauty to compare with Helen, and still wonderfully handsome. Her hair was black, parted simply in the middle, and her features bore the straight-lined perfection of the pure Hellene. Her skin was almost white, with the faintest olive tinge, and her eyes the clearest blue. I could see these things because she stood in the shaft of light admitted by the doorway. Her gown was purest white, and the light shone right through it, revealing a body unmarred by the years.

“I have been accused of many things but never an abundance of perception. Do I address the high priestess of this temple?”

“I am lone,” she said. I took this for affirmation.

I bowed. “I extend the respect and reverence of the Senate and People of Rome, my lady.”

She accepted this gravely as her due. “And I give you welcome to this holy place. I did not mean you any disparagement. It is just that Greeks understand this aspect of the goddess instinctively, while Romans usually just see a crude piece of stone. You are not a Roman of the usual sort.”

“I am told so by many of my fellow countrymen but never as a compliment.”

“I think your country values the wrong sort of man. Please come with me.”

Mystified, I followed her outside. Before her, the visitors parted hastily, some of them bowing almost as deeply as Orientals. Flavia and Alpheus fell in behind us, and we picked up a following of the younger priestesses, some of them visibly pregnant. Unlike Vesta, Aphrodite is not served by virgins. lone led us to a rather small but gnarled tree of a sort I had never seen before.

“This is the oldest tree in the garden,” lone said. “It was ancient when the kings first erected the terrace and planted the other trees. It is said to have sprouted from the stone when Aphrodite came here to found her temple. It is a myrrh tree, and there is no other like it on Cyprus, nor on the surrounding islands, nor on the nearby mainland. Kore, come here.” A beautiful girl of perhaps seventeen attended and drew from her girdle a small pruning knife, its blade shaped like the crescent moon, lone took the knife and with it cleanly severed a twig from a lower branch. This she presented to me solemnly. Somehow I knew that this was an act of deep significance.

“Please accept this and with it the favor and protection of the goddess.”

I took it. “I accept this honor, reverend lady, but I do not understand why you do this.”

“A man like you needs the protection of the gods far more than most.” With that she turned and walked away, trailed by her beautiful, fruitful priestesses. The visitors who had been watching this strange ceremony regarded me with wonder and envy. Flavia’s expression was more one of fear.

As Alpheus and I walked back to the harbor, he rattled on about what an extraordinary honor had been bestowed upon me. I still have that twig. It rests in my family shrine with the household gods; and in the many years since I received it from Ione’s hands its leaves have dried and shrunk, but none have fallen off. Has it protected me? No one I knew in those days is still alive, so perhaps Paphian Aphrodite has watched over me. But, if so, it has been as much a curse as a blessing.

When we reached the harbor, word had just arrived of a pirate attack on a town on the other side of the island, so I took my leave of the poet and sailed off. Of course, we found no pirates, only a town where they had recently been. This time the looting had been of the conventional sort, with only salable goods and persons seized.

When we got back to Paphos, I learned that Governor Silvanus had been murdered.

The messenger thrust the bronze tube into my hands the moment my feet touched dry land. “Extremely urgent business at the gevernor’s mansion,” he said, before I had a chance to open it. “You are to come with me immediately, Senator.”