Walking home, I told myself I should never return to his house.

In looking back over the pages of my journal, I am alarmed by the passage of time. When I was young, I thought time was a philanthropist.

I remember so well that day mama took me to the ocean, and the rain fell unexpectedly, lashing and soaking us. We finally discovered a shepherd's hut, but I got colder and colder in its windowless gloom.

Lying on the floor, among stiff hides, with the rain sounding loud and the hides smelling strong, I thought the storm would never end. Toward dusk, a shepherd and his boy came, dripping with wet and shivering, and my mother dried the boy and made him lie down with me under the hides.

Were we seven or eight? Together, our bodies grew warm and we lay still, listening to the wind and the rain thud across the green roof, while the shepherd went about building a fire and preparing supper. I have forgotten the boy's name, but not his face. Forever after, I thought of him as my first lover. I doubt whether we spoke a word all that delicious evening.

Now I find it hard to renew ties with the past. Not only Alcaeus...but Dioscurides...Pylades...Milo...the very names make me unhappy. All destroyed by war. What special stupidity do men possess that they must involve themselves in such a gamble, with loss inevitable, anyhow?

The columns of the temple of Zeus, in Athens,

stand white against the moonlit sky.

A woman walks among columnar cypress,

her sandals scraping sand and gravel.

A hawk wheels above.

T

he masks I have on my bedroom walls seem less clever than they appeared years ago. Our theatre, too, has changed through the years, become more mediocre.

Yesterday, at the play, I sat closer than usual and was delighted by the comic faces, so new and frightful that children screamed and squealed. Good, I thought. Perhaps the play may take on life.

...A man with a tambourine strutted about...an old beggar, pack on back, pulled at his beard and mimicked words sung by the chorus. He seemed to be one of us or a Chian, maybe. It was pleasant enough to soak myself in comedy for a while, for right after the play, Charaxos found me and suggested we stroll in private. Obviously, he had something on his mind!

He began by offering me an exquisite scarab, saying he had purchased it for me, from a sailor who had touched port.

"For me?" I became suspicious! I fingered the beetle-shaped oval, unlike any I had seen. An amethyst was set in the center with characters engraved around it.

"An Etruscan scarab should make a pretty keepsake," he said.

"Then I think you should keep it."

"Why? Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Of what?"

"That it might bring bad luck."

He laughed ironically, as he flipped and caught the scarab, with a flick of his wrist.

"What is it you want?" I asked, coming directly to the point.

"To be treated with respect, Rhodopis and I-not criticized."

"Do I say too much?"

"I don't like your tongue." He was scowling now.

"Nor I your woman's!"

"Leave her out! I warn you-she's no longer a slave!"

"It wasn't that she was a slave that bothered me."

"A courtesan, then!"

"No, you should know better than that. Oh, no...it was your assumption that our family funds could be lifted, without my consent and without my knowledge. Taken to buy Rhodopis. You sold three or four wine ships to pay her price, along with the money taken from me."

"Can't you forget..."

"Not conveniently. Nobody enjoys being robbed."