Wreathe the golden bowl with crimson wool, that I may bind a spell upon my love! Let me learn fire spells to summon him! Let me make a lead manikin complete with his beautiful phallus so that it may be stiff only with me! Let it wilt with disuse whenever he approaches a boy or another woman! Hail, grim Hecate, attend me always! Make my love drugs as potent as Circeâs or Medeaâs! Let him smell the juice of my delta even in that far land where he dwells!
This was the love incantation devised by Cretaea to assuage the fears of her clients. Elusive Hecate was her goddessâcreature of mists and magic, who delighted in the sacrifice of puppies. As she chanted, Cretaeaâs fingers raked the air like claws. She was unimaginably old and ugly and demanded to be paid in golden oboloi . She sold me a lead manikin with an enormous erect phallus on which she had inscribed the name Alcaeus .
I wrapped the manikin carefully in clean linen and secreted it in my chiton. Having learned her incantation by heart, I went home and repeated the spell over and over myself. I bound red cord around a golden bowl. I burned a fire in it and sprinkled in minerals to make it burn green and purple. I put the lead manikin in the fire so that Alcaeusâ phallus would burn hot only for me. And then I waited.
Within the week I had another letter from Alcaeus! It began with this poem:
Scheming Cyprian goddessâ
Bring me the one with the violet hair.
Her I love better than all the boys of Lydia.
But my legs are tangled in ropes of fear
And I ride out the storm of Eros
Without the one I love!
Sappho, my love,
When I think of beautiful green Lesbos, it merges in my mind with a vision of violet-haired Sapphoâor Psappho, as you call yourself in our beautiful Aeolic dialect. My thoughts go back to that other exile in Pyrrha when you were with me, hanging on my every word, adoring me, adored by me. I miss youâor do I miss your adoration? I feel responsible for you. I remember the beauty contests of Lesbosâthe kallisteia âwhere the young girls swayed like mobile caryatids in their columns of white linen.
Lesbian maidens in trailing robes
Walk up and down, being judged for their beauty.
Around them, women choir to Aphroditeâ¦.
O Lesbos, you sprout beautiful women
Even as you grow the vine and the olive tree.
Soft syllables shake the silvery olive leaves
As the wind whispers
Sappho, Sappho, Sapphoâ¦.
You have something more beautiful than beauty. You are wholly alive. I think of your smile, your quick retorts, your ability to match me line for line. And I think of our lovemaking, of your sex, which becomes a living thing, when I enter it, of your pulsing wetness, of the song between your thighs.
Damn Aphrodite! I refuse to be bound in the snares of a womanâs hair. Boys are simpler. You take your pleasure and walk away. Where is my Sappho? Why do you not answer me? Alcaeus is dying of love for you. Must he come to get you?
Oh, yes! I thought, come to get me. Rescue me from this horrible exile. Take me with you wherever you go! My feelings for Alcaeus burned hotter than that god with the fire in its belly. I loved him. I longed for him, but his teasing me about his beautiful boys even in the midst of his ardent love letters piqued me. I had always lived in tidal waves of changing emotions, but pregnancy had made these feelings even more pronounced. As the baby rocked in the sea of my womb, I rocked in a sea of tempestuous emotions. I cried easily. I laughed easily. I scoured the city for soothsayers and witches who could tell me the fate of my baby. I saw them all. Then I went back to Cretaea a second time to ask her why I was so diffident about writing to Alcaeus. I could make no sense of my reluctance. What held me back?
âShall I tell the father about his babe?â I asked the hideous old witch on my next visit.
âThe answer to that question will cost you three more golden oboloi
This was the love incantation devised by Cretaea to assuage the fears of her clients. Elusive Hecate was her goddessâcreature of mists and magic, who delighted in the sacrifice of puppies. As she chanted, Cretaeaâs fingers raked the air like claws. She was unimaginably old and ugly and demanded to be paid in golden oboloi . She sold me a lead manikin with an enormous erect phallus on which she had inscribed the name Alcaeus .
I wrapped the manikin carefully in clean linen and secreted it in my chiton. Having learned her incantation by heart, I went home and repeated the spell over and over myself. I bound red cord around a golden bowl. I burned a fire in it and sprinkled in minerals to make it burn green and purple. I put the lead manikin in the fire so that Alcaeusâ phallus would burn hot only for me. And then I waited.
Within the week I had another letter from Alcaeus! It began with this poem:
Scheming Cyprian goddessâ
Bring me the one with the violet hair.
Her I love better than all the boys of Lydia.
But my legs are tangled in ropes of fear
And I ride out the storm of Eros
Without the one I love!
Sappho, my love,
When I think of beautiful green Lesbos, it merges in my mind with a vision of violet-haired Sapphoâor Psappho, as you call yourself in our beautiful Aeolic dialect. My thoughts go back to that other exile in Pyrrha when you were with me, hanging on my every word, adoring me, adored by me. I miss youâor do I miss your adoration? I feel responsible for you. I remember the beauty contests of Lesbosâthe kallisteia âwhere the young girls swayed like mobile caryatids in their columns of white linen.
Lesbian maidens in trailing robes
Walk up and down, being judged for their beauty.
Around them, women choir to Aphroditeâ¦.
O Lesbos, you sprout beautiful women
Even as you grow the vine and the olive tree.
Soft syllables shake the silvery olive leaves
As the wind whispers
Sappho, Sappho, Sapphoâ¦.
You have something more beautiful than beauty. You are wholly alive. I think of your smile, your quick retorts, your ability to match me line for line. And I think of our lovemaking, of your sex, which becomes a living thing, when I enter it, of your pulsing wetness, of the song between your thighs.
Damn Aphrodite! I refuse to be bound in the snares of a womanâs hair. Boys are simpler. You take your pleasure and walk away. Where is my Sappho? Why do you not answer me? Alcaeus is dying of love for you. Must he come to get you?
Oh, yes! I thought, come to get me. Rescue me from this horrible exile. Take me with you wherever you go! My feelings for Alcaeus burned hotter than that god with the fire in its belly. I loved him. I longed for him, but his teasing me about his beautiful boys even in the midst of his ardent love letters piqued me. I had always lived in tidal waves of changing emotions, but pregnancy had made these feelings even more pronounced. As the baby rocked in the sea of my womb, I rocked in a sea of tempestuous emotions. I cried easily. I laughed easily. I scoured the city for soothsayers and witches who could tell me the fate of my baby. I saw them all. Then I went back to Cretaea a second time to ask her why I was so diffident about writing to Alcaeus. I could make no sense of my reluctance. What held me back?
âShall I tell the father about his babe?â I asked the hideous old witch on my next visit.
âThe answer to that question will cost you three more golden oboloi
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