Kitap 7
1
If we find another lover like Chaereas, Musarium, we’ll have to sacrifice a white goat to earthly Aphrodite, and a heifer to the statue of heavenly Aphrodite in the Gardens, A statue by Alcamenes. Cf. Essays in Portraiture 4, Pausanias 1.19.2, and Pliny, N.H. XXXVI, 16. and offer a wreath to Demeter, Giver of Wealth! We shall be prosperous and more than doubly blessed! You can see how much we’re getting from the young fellow at present! He has never given you so much as a penny, or a dress, or a pair of shoes, or a bottle of scent. Always there are excuses and promises and hopes for the distant future, and he keeps saying, “If only my father—” Sc. “dies”, which is omitted out of delicacy and piety. or “If I get my inheritance,” or “It will all be yours.” And you say he’s promised on oath to make you his lawful wedded wife.
1
Yes, mother, he swore by the two goddesses Demeter and Persephone. and by the Protectress of Athens.
1
And you believe him, of course. That’s why, the other day when he couldn’t pay his share of the party, you gave him your ring without telling me, and he sold it and spent the money on drink—yes, and the two Ionian necklaces, weighing two Darics apiece, which Praxias, the Chian shipowner had made in Ephesus and brought for you? Chaereas needed to pay his contribution for a dinner with his fellows. Need I mention your gowns and fine linen? He has indeed been a godsend and blessing to us!
2
But he’s handsome and smooth-chinned, says he loves me, and cries; he’s the son of Dinomache and Laches, the Areopagite, and says he’ll marry me, and we’ve great hopes of him, if only the old man will fall asleep.
