We live in one of the smaller villas - our dining room is only big enough for four couches at most27 - nearly a mile out beyond the walls of Corinth towards Kenchreae. There is a spring not too far away that supplies water for our pool and the stadium is only about half a mile to the south of our house, so we really are in a convenient location.
Antiochus, our doorman, opened his eyes wide when he saw the girl beside me.
"Is this your girl, little lord?"
"It is," I said, pulling the girl forward. I pointed to the piece of wood fastened to the wall beside the door. "Can you read Greek?"
The girl looked at me and shook her head. For the first time I noticed that her eyes were blue in colour, a novelty that nearly made me forget what I was going to say.
"Ok then, listen. That sign says that if you leave this house, without my permission, you will be beaten: fifty lashes28 . Understand?"
"Yes, lord," she whispered.
"See to it, Antiochus," I ordered. "She is not to leave at any time unless she's with me."
"Yes, little lord."
"Arxes! Is this your girl?"
I let go of the girl's hand and embraced my mother, kissing her dutifully on both cheeks. She wasn't interested in me, though, and quickly put me to one side and examined the girl with interest.
"She's very good looking," she told me at last. "What's her name? Where's she from? Does she speak Greek?"
"She's from Gaul, I think," I said. "She told me her name, but I can't remember it and yes, she does speak a little Greek."
"My name Cartimandua." The girl looked from me to my mother, as though seeking my permission to speak. I nodded at her and she continued, speaking slowly and picking her words. "I coming from Gaul. My father is - was - a Gaul and my mother is a German."
"Car - Car - oh, never mind. Come along, dear, and I'll show you the women's quarters29."
She took Cartimandua's hand and drew her through the door that led to the kitchen and beyond that the rooms where the slave women lived. I turned to my father, who was standing with the slave Kallipides by the front door.
"Ready, Arxes?"
"Coming, Dad."
We went to the new baths30, which were crowded, as they always are in the evening. Naked men strolled about the entrance hall, usually in pairs as businessmen carried on their business while they relaxed. Most of the single men either had one of the heterae by their side or were waiting for their favourite to finish her business with someone else. Slaves rushed to and fro on their master's errands, carrying food or wine in from the shops outside the baths.
We paid our fee to the slave at the counter inside the doorway and then stripped off our clothes and handed them to Kallipides to look after for us. I kept my eyes firmly on the tiled floor to avoid any repetition of the embarrassment of last time. My father led the way into the warm room and plunged into the water.
"Ah, nothing like a good soak," he said as I joined him. "A little while in here and then we'd better go into the hot room. We can't stay too long."
A fat, bald man pushed his way through the other bathers towards us.
"Lycurgus, greetings. This your son?"
My father looked round and smiled as he recognised his old friend, one of the City Magistrates.
"Yes, indeed, Mnesilochus. This is Arxes."
"The one who'll be joining us tonight?"
"That's right." My father looked proud and happy. "Tonight we'll make a man of him."
"Pleased to meet you." The magistrate clasped my hand in a friendly way and then turned back to my father. "A word in your ear, Lycurgus."
He drew my father to one side and the two men spoke together in low voices, glancing at me from time to time and making my face blush again. When they finished their conversation my father came back to me.
"Right, hot pool now. That was just some arrangements for the mystery tonight."
We climbed out of the pool and walked through to the hot room. The temperature of the tiles under my feet increased markedly and I gasped as the steam from the pool caught in my throat. I gasped again as I lowered myself into the water and watched my skin turn lobster red. Almost immediately the sweat broke out on my forehead.
"Hot tonight," my father commented beside me. "Duck under and let's go."
We both ducked our heads under the surface and then dashed for the side of the pool. The stifling atmosphere of the hot room seemed positively cool and refreshing after the heat of the water. We strolled carefully over the wet tiles and into the cold room. Kallipedes was waiting for us with our strigils31.
"Thanks, Kallipedes."
I held out my hand and the slave put my strigil into it. I scraped the oil and sweat off my body, revelling in the feeling of cleanliness it gave me, and then plunged into the pool and let the heat drain away from my body. There were a couple of women in here, but they were fat and old; young women, unless they were heterae, only came down in the mornings when all the men were at work.
"That was your ship that came in this morning, wasn't it?"
I looked round at the tall man with a hooked nose who was addressing my father.
"Yes, it was, Phileros. She had a good trip, thank the gods."
"Anything interesting?"
"Yes, indeed." Father's voice changed, as it always does when he is talking to an important customer. "Hephaeston brought a shipload of stuff from Phoenicia. Most of it is for Rome, of course, but he unloaded some interesting materials. I've got a length of the most amazing purple you've ever seen, plus some splendid linen from Egypt."
The tall man blinked and thrust his head forward.
"Purple?"
"Yes, the very best. Fit for Caesar himself."
"I'll mention it to my wife," the tall man said. "Thanks. Give me first refusal, ok?"
"I thought purple was only for Caesar?" I said when he had waded off.
My father winked. "Only Caesar can wear a toga made of it," he said. "I imagine old Phileros will use it to cover his chairs or blow his nose or something. Anything to make a show and impress the neighbours. Come on, time to go home."
Kallipides had a bottle of scented oil and our clothes ready for us when we emerged into the entrance hall. We oiled our bodies all over32 and dressed, then set out for home, making our way through the crowded streets in the dusk.
Mother was waiting for us in the dining room.
"There you are! I thought you'd never come. Dinner's ready. I'll get the slaves to bring it in at once."
"Where's my slave?" I asked.
"Cartimandua?" Mother answered, "She's around somewhere. Why, do you want her?"
"Yes," I said. "She can keep me company while I eat."
Mother put her hand over her mouth. "Little boys and new toys," she giggled.
I ignored her. Last year I went with my father to a city banquet, put on in honour of a senator from Rome, a man worth millions of sesterces33. At the end of the meal, all unselfconsciously, he made a magnificent gesture that had impressed me with his wealth and power and I wanted to copy him. I felt sure that it was a gesture fitting to my new position as a slave-owner and that it would impress this strange girl with my power and her lowly position.
The fair-haired girl came shyly into the dining room and stood just inside the doorway until I beckoned her over.
"Yes, lord?"
"Kneel down here, beside me." I gestured to a place just in front of my couch and she knelt down and then looked anxiously over her shoulder at me.
"Now what, lord?"
"Just keep quiet," I ordered brusquely. "I'll want you later."
The kitchen slaves brought in the dishes and placed them on the table in front of us, then Demeas, the major-domo, sliced up the meat, ladled out the gravy and passed round the bread. Cartimandua offered to hold the plate for me or to feed me but I gestured to her to sit still and she subsided back onto her knees, a puzzled look on her face.
Several times during the meal I caught my mother looking at me curiously. I hoped she would be watching when I made my grand gesture. I scooped up the greasy gravy with pieces of bread, not caring when some dribbled between my fingers and down my hand. To tell the truth, I was feeling more than a little nervous about the ceremony of initiation34 as all my friends had been telling me stories of the dreadful things that you were made to do in order to enter the Corinth Society of Bacchus.
At last the bowl was clean and I put it down with a satisfied sigh. I glanced round the room to see if anyone was watching and then leaned forward and wiped my fingers in my slave's hair35 . Cartimandua felt the tugging at her hair and her head whipped round. There was a moment's silence and then two astonishing things happened. Cartimandua burst into tears - and my mother, in a loud, shocked voice, said, "Arxes, you brute!"
27 Dining rooms were estimated in terms of the number of couches the room could hold. A large room could accommodate ten couches. In Xenophon's Symposium Socrates declares that he will take up dancing as the ideal form of exercise rather than go to the gymnasium. Everyone laughs and Socrates retorts: "Are you laughing because I shan't have to find myself a training-partner or undress in public at my advanced age, because a seven-couch dining room will be large enough for me work up a sweat in?" (p. 233)
This does not mean that only that number of people could eat at one time, as couches were often shared by two or more persons. In Plato's Symposium we find the comment, "Agathon sent a slave to go and look for Socrates and bring him in, and suggested that Aristodemus share Eryximachus' couch." (p. 6) Later Socrates arrives: "Now Agathon happened to have the end couch to himself, so he said, 'Come here, Socrates, and share my couch.'" (p. 7) Towards the end of the party an uninvited guest appears. "Everyone shouted out for him to come in and find a place on a couch and Agathon called him over. So his friends brought him in. On the way he started to untie the ribbons, with the intention of putting them on Agathon and they fell over his eyes, so he didn't see Socrates, but sat next to Agathon, between him and Socrates, who had moved over when he saw him coming." (p. 57) This made three people on one couch. Return
28 I am making Lycurgus rather less draconian than some slave-owners. In the Satyricon Petronius describes the house of Trimalchio: "On the door-post a notice was fastened which read: 'Any slave leaving the house without his master's permission will receive one hundred lashes.'" (p. 46)
Slaves, having no rights, were commonly beaten if they aroused their owner's anger and Plutarch, in his essay On the Avoidance of Anger, remarked: "It is proper for someone who is hungry to engage in eating, but it is proper for someone who is neither hungry nor thirsty for it to engage in retribution. He should not need anger in order to punish, as he might need a savoury, but it is essential that he waits until he has greatly distanced himself from the appetite for punishment and introduced rationality instead. Aristotle records that in his time servants were flogged in Tyrrhenia to the accompaniment of pipes, but we should not follow suit and, for the sake of personal pleasure, be driven by a desire for satisfaction." (p. 192)
Indeed, Plutarch recommends delaying punishment for several days. As he says, "I mean, which of us is horrible enough to flog and punish a slave for having five or ten days ago burned a savoury or knocked over a table or been rather slow to obey an order? But these are the things which make us upset and harsh and pitiless when they have just occurred." This is a recommendation which could well be applied in child-rearing. Return
29 In Xenophon's The Estate Manager, Ischomachus describes to Socrates how he introduced his wife to her duties. "I also showed her the female servants' quarters, which are divided from the men's quarters by a bolted door, to prevent items being unnecessarily removed from the house and to stop the servants breeding without our permission." (p. 322) Return
30 Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece II.v, tells us: "Corinth has plenty of baths, some publicly constructed and one put up by the emperor Hadrian. The best known of them is near Poseidon. It was built by a Spartan, Eurykles, and among his ornamental stonework he used the stone they quarry at Krokeai in Sparta. Poseidon with a hunting Artemis beside him stands on the left of the entrance." In his note to this passage Peter Levi tells us that the quarry for beautiful green stone at Krokeai has recently been re-discovered. He also remarks: "Eurykles was a rich Spartan of the time of Augustus who made a lot of money at the court of King Herod in Jerusalem." (p. 138) Return
31 Soap, as far as I know, had not been invented. People smeared oil on their bodies and then, when they bathed, scraped it off with a curved, bronze spatula called a strigil before applying another coat of oil. Ischomachus, in Xenophon's The Estate Manager, describes his daily regime of exercise, which concluded with a brisk walk. "I walk some of the way home and run the rest, then scrape myself clean with a strigil." (p. 329) This fairly brutal procedure did nothing for one's skin condition: in The Twelve Caesars Suetonius mentions that the emperor Augustus "had a number of hard, dry patches suggesting ringworm, caused by an itching of his skin and a too frequent and vigorous use of the scraper at the baths." (p. 98) Return
32 Oiling the body was an acceptable substitute for bathing. In Xenophon's Symposium a number of people, including Socrates, are invited to the symposium or dinner party. "In due course they presented themselves, some rubbed down with oil after their exercise, others freshly bathed as well." (p. 228) Even though the oil was usually scented, the olfactory result was as you would expect. Later on in the symposium Callias, the host, offers to have perfume brought in. Socrates objects. "The smell of oil in the gymnasia gives more pleasure by its presence than perfume gives to women and excites more longing by its absence. A daub of scent automatically makes everyone, slave or free, smell alike; but the smells that come from the efforts of free men in sport call above all for strict training over a long period if they are to be pleasing and worthy of a free man." (p. 231) Quite. Return
33 In Roman currency four copper asses equalled one brass sestertius. Four sestertii equalled a silver denarius, the Biblical "penny", equivalent to one day's wages for a common labourer. Twenty-five denarii equalled one golden aureus. Return
34 All sorts of rumours circulated among non-initiates, rather like the scurrilous tales about billy-goats and Masons. Plutarch, describing a series of executions in The Fall of the Roman Republic, alludes to the nervousness that this induced. "People shuddered at what was being done and passed along in silence, especially the young, who looked as though they were being initiated with fear and trembling into the sacred rites and mysteries of some time-honoured process of aristocratic power." (p. 332) Return
35 In the Satyricon Petronius tells how Trimalchio "demanded water for his hands, splashed a few drops on his fingers and wiped them on a boy's head." (p. 45) A little later in the course of the dinner a freedman remarks, "'I bought my old woman's freedom so nobody could wipe his dirty hands on her hair.'" (p. 69) If slaves were commonly used as hand-towels, it gives a new meaning to Mary Magdalene's gesture when she wiped Jesus' feet with her hair. She was performing an act that no free woman would deign to do and thereby confessed herself Jesus' slave. Return