in the marriage-land of roses. Ye will pass calm and stormy-sweet and
bitter hours there. So long as thou wert a child, Sappho, thy life
passed on like a cloudless spring morning, but when thou becam'st a
maiden, and hadst learnt to love, thine heart was opened to admit pain;
and during the long months of separation pain was a frequent guest there.
This guest will seek admission as long as life lasts. Bartja, it will be
your duty to keep this intruder away from Sappho, as far as it lies in
your power. I know the world. I could perceive,--even before Croesus
told me of your generous nature,--that you were worthy of my Sappho.
This justified me in allowing you to eat the quince with her; this
induces me now to entrust to you, without fear, what I have always looked
upon as a sacred pledge committed to my keeping. Look upon her too only
as a loan. Nothing is more dangerous to love, than a comfortable
assurance of exclusive possession--I have been blamed for allowing such
an inexperienced child to go forth into your distant country, where
custom is so unfavorable to women; but I know what love is;--I know that
a girl who loves, knows no home but the heart of her husband;--the woman
whose heart has been touched by Eros no misfortune but that of separation
from him whom she has chosen. And besides, I would ask you, Kallias and
Theopompus, is the position of your own wives so superior to that of the
Persian women? Are not the women of Ionia and Attica forced to pass
their lives in their own apartments, thankful if they are allowed to
cross the street accompanied by suspicious and distrustful slaves? As to
the custom which prevails in Persia of taking many wives, I have no fear
either for Bartja or Sappho. He will be more faithful to his wife than
are many Greeks, for he will find in her what you are obliged to seek, on
the one hand in marriage, on the other in the houses of the cultivated
Hetaere:--in the former, housewives and mothers, in the latter, animated
and enlivening intellectual society. Take her, my son. I give her to
you as an old warrior gives his sword, his best possession, to his