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rose petal onto her knee and while she gazed at it her eyes filled with tears. It was not only the beauty of the insect which caused her heart to beat wildly. It was its very existence, and the enigma of its existence. She was overcome with adoration, but for what she did not know.
    Behind her the pillared house with its painted frescoes seemed formed of white fire and appeared to float rather than to rest on the ground. Then there was the sound of lutes and singing, and she rose, trembling, and tried to compose herself, for now she must go to the room of the physician, who taught the maidens what they must know of the arts of healing.
    She looked at the sky and whispered impetuously, “O gods, permit me a little wisdom, a little knowledge, a little comprehension, that I may be more than a beast of the field who chews his cud and lays down his offal! Let me be fully human, and preserve in me the divine fever of amazement, the divine questing for an answer!”

CHAPTER 3
    The physician, a lively man of middle age and with an agile expression, was, like Aspasia and Thargelia, an Ionian of Miletus. His name was Echion. He had never been a slave, but had been born free and of a prosperous family who manufactured silver and gold ornaments, and he had attended an Egyptian school of medicine. He was broad and fat and muscular, with a round red face and eyes like glittering blue stones, yet mirthful, and he was bald and had a rosy dome rising above his thick black eyebrows, and several fatty chins which testified to a good digestion and an excellent appetite. He affected short tunics in many hearty colors, none of them subdued, and they revealed legs of an admirable shape for all their bulk. He was one of Thargelia’s lovers, and she paid him well and did not underestimate his talents in bed or in the schoolroom. She loved his full and red and lustful mouth which was almost always smiling, for he had perfect teeth of which he was proud. He was not so proud of his nose, which Thargelia fondly called a turnip, and his nostrils were filled with virile black hairs.
    He was quite content to instruct the maidens of the school for the hetairai, and if he yearned after any of them he was prudent enough to confine himself to an apparently paternal touch on the shoulder or arm or cheek. He was also very lazy in spite of his vigorous appearance, and preferred the luxurious life in this house to any medical practice in the city, for such practice could be arduous and held few rewards in money or esteem. He had his own small marble house on the grounds of the school, from which Thargelia summoned him when she was in the mood to be amused and treated roughly in bed. He was amiable and shrewd and a fine physician, and had much wit and, to the respect of many, his knowledge of medicine was astounding and his potions magical. A cynic, he had little pity for suffering, and illness to him was a challenge to his ego. Disease was an affront to him, and did not arouse any compassion, for he despised all that was sickly and struggled to abolish it. The Egyptians said that a physician could cure only if his heart was moved and his emotions engaged in behalf of a patient, but Echion had proved that to be false and sentimental. It needed but skill, and disease was an enemy which must be understood and defeated, for it was ugly and he hated ugliness. He also had a deep suspicion, with which the Egyptians did not concur, that a man was his own malady and induced much of his own torment. He bullied the sick and reproached them even as he ministered to them, and he felt his triumph over illness was also a triumph over the weak and recalcitrant, who obstinately preferred disease to health. Above all, he detested weakness, for at heart he was a warrior. There was, in him, that cruelty which is the endowment of an expert surgeon, and never did his hand tremble as it wielded the scalpel nor did anxious sweat ever moisten his face.
    He loved all that was healthy and