The father assents to her words and accepts Achilles disguised by parental craft—who should resist divine deceits? He even reverences her with suppliant hand and thanks her for choosing him. The flock of duteous Scyrian girls continue to stare relentlessly at the new maiden’s face, marvelling how she outtops them by neck and hair, how broad she spreads her chest and shoulders. Then they urge her to share their dances and join their chaste rituals, yielding her place and rejoicing in the contact. As with Idalian birds when they break soft clouds, long congregated in their home and in the sky: if a stranger bird coming from a distant region join her feathers, at first they all wonder and fear, but presently they fly closer and closer and still in the air little by little they make her one of their own, merrily circling her with auspicious flap of wing, leading her to their lofty roost.

The mother lingers long at the threshold as she leaves, repeating her admonitions, planting secret mutterings in his ears and giving last words with muted countenance. Then the waters receive her and she swims away.

Achilles went on to have a son by Deidamia. When the truth of his gender was revealed, he had no choice but to join the fighting at Troy.

1 Chiron is the half-man, half-horse tutor to the young Achilles.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BREAST MILK

Attic Nights

Aulus Gellius

Translated by the Rev. W. Beloe, 1795

Aulus Gellius (c. AD 125–c. 180), who was brought up in Rome but spent several years of his life in Greece, was sufficiently interested in the debate over breast milk to include it in his commonplace book, Attic Nights. Named for their compiler’s evenings of quiet study in a villa near Athens, the Attic Nights are a repository of the work of writers who would otherwise be forgotten, and a rich source of information about life in the second century AD. Women today, if not then, may well object to many of the views set out below.