Homer’s Daughter by Robert Graves Page B

having superior prophetic powers, seized the infant Telemachus and halted the plough at the tenth furrow, thus showing that the
decisive battle
, which is the meaning of ‘Telemachus’, would be fought in the tenth year; as indeed it was.”
    Applause and laughter greeted my father’s discomfiture. He blushed red to the ears, and showed his good sense by cutting Demodocus a large piece of roast pork, with plenty of crackling, which a page carried over in his fingers; and promised him a new gold-headed staff of cornel wood, to guide his steps and add to his distinction. But though he accepted the pork, Demodocus would never again play or sing in our Palace; honour forbade it. Some of the townsfolk even attributed our subsequent misfortunes to his ill will, because Apollo has granted all Sons of Homer the power to curse; yet I cannot think that Demodocus would have cursed us after accepting a gift offered in token of apology. We were left with Phemius, Demodocus’s assistant, who had come from Delos a few years before and was still perfecting his repertory at the old man’s knees; it was he who taught me to read and write in Chalcidian characters. So far Phemius’s eyes remainunclouded; the family affliction overtakes a Son of Homer only when his hair begins to turn grey and when, as they say, the sap has ceased to rise. As for the Hyrian, my father insisted that each of the twelve clans should present him with some object of value—a cauldron, a tripod, a rich robe, or the like; and undertook, when these were collected, to supply a cedarwood chest to stow them in, and a gold goblet to mark his personal gratitude. Being King of the Elymans, he had every right to make these demands from the clan leaders, in payment for the protection he afforded them, and the justice he dispensed; while grudging him his power, they always obeyed, and he encouraged them to recoup their expenses by a general levy on the common people.
    The Hyrian sailed away three days later, well content with his visit (though my father somehow forgot the goblet). He had disposed of his vases and Daedalic jewellery in the market place at a substantial profit, and made all the merchants laugh by his farewell speech: “May the Queen of Heaven shower blessings on you, and may you continue to give satisfaction to your wives and daughters!” We never saw him again. My mother and I, it should be said, were the only two people in Drepanum who disbelieved his story, but we said nothing to discourage Ctimene, who soon recovered her appetite and good spirits and went singing about the house. “I wonder how long my necklace will be,” she said to my brother Clytoneus. “As long, do you think, as the one which Eurymachus’s mother wears?”
    â€œHonoured Sister-in-law,” Clytoneus answered angrily, “though he finds one three ells long, the grief and anxiety caused by your demand for such a necklace will rob it of allbeauty for me! If I were you, I should vow it to Apollo, who consented to guard the hateful necklace of Eriphyle and keep it from making further mischief among vain women.”
    â€œNothing of the kind,” cried Ctimene. “Laodamas would think me ungrateful.”
    Pondering on Aphrodite’s victory, I decided that hers is a blind and mischievous power which makes its victims ridiculous and deprives them of all shame. I composed a story for my own amusement, basing it on a scandalous event in the early married life of Eurymachus’s mother: how one day the Goddess told her husband, the Smith God Hephaestus, that she was off to visit her temple at Cyprian Paphos. “Do so, Wife; and I will take advantage of your absence to visit my temple at Lemnos,” replied Hephaestus. But, knowing that she was an inveterate liar, he hurried back that same night and found her in bed with the Thracian War God Ares. Limping to his smithy, he forged two adamantine nets, thinner than gossamer