Written by 1 It was the Anthesteria, the spring “festival of flowers.” Creusa, the younger and by then the only daughter of the old Athenian king Erechtheus, was to descend from the Acropolis to the meadow below on that day to gather flowers to adorn the tomb of her mother, Praxithea. Knowing of this intention, her nurse, […]
1 For a traveler setting out from Anaphlystus through the southern fringe of Mesogaia to Phoricus on the Archipelago, a stop in the wretched little hamlet of Besa, lost amidst the labyrinth of the Lauriotic mountains, was unavoidable. It was a rather cheerless region: limestone crags showed white everywhere beneath a thin layer of black […]
1 In the small peristyle of King Erechtheus’s palace, the women’s quarters grew ever more crowded: one handmaid after another passed along the exciting news that the Thracian guests—those who had sold the king a cargo of timber from Mount Pangaeum—had received permission to display, and, if buyers could be found, to sell the woven […]
1 With tidings, with tidings we come, We bring you a new and blessed song! Receive, O master, the guest we bring, Welcome her into your father’s hall— Iresione, Iresione! Thus sang the household servants in unison. Then a single, clear female voice rose above the chorus, continuing in a different melody: Iresione brings you […]