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his betters—especially Pinytos of ancient lineage. One could see that Pittakos was flattered to be riding with these lords.
    From then on there was a subtle difference in Sappho. During the day she wanted to be home in her chamber, where, looping the leather thong over her door stick, she could think without interruption. About whom? Pittakos, the unkempt commoner from Thrace.
    Some god, she thought, has seized my mind, as rising in the night she pressed her lyre to her and sang the beauty of his limbs, when she knew he went unwashed, that even his beard was neglected and uncombed. She wondered at herself. This did not prevent her from intoning, “He knows wild things like a lion.”
    It must be that her father had guessed rightly, and there were two Sapphos. Otherwise, how to explain that she could not keep this trickster from her thoughts? For with one part of her mind she derided him; at the same time he seemed to her virile and powerful.
    To rid herself of these conflicting emotions, she called a slave, asking for a ritual bath. They retired to the bathing room, with its slatted marble floor, and ewers of warm water were poured over her as she chanted prayers. She began to feel purified, free of loathsome thoughts. “Rub me with oils of Lemnos,” she ordered.
    A bed was set up on which she stretched herself, and the slave girl kneaded her body. She rubbed the inside of Sappho’s thighs, letting the back of her hand, as though in carelessness, touch more private parts.
    Sappho bit her. She would not allow this now she was grown. In one of the quick movements typical of her she was on her feet. “From this minute you belong to my brother, Kharaxos. I give you to him!”
    The girl set up a noisy weeping and clasped her mistress’s feet, Sappho kicked her and the girl crawled away. Alone, Sappho paced the room unable to find gentle Sappho. Lawlessness and madness, two sisters born of Night, had hold of her. And the cause was Pittakos. Pittakos, on whom ordinarily she would not bestow a word. Pittakos, whom not even a ritual bath had banished from her mind. Pittakos, whom she loathed and detested. Her small fingers pressed the palms of her hands, making fists. She struck herself about the body to dislodge the god who inhabited her, for it was not she who admired coarseness and had wayward thoughts of a great hulking male body. She, a virgin, denied it.
    She wanted to use herself as she had the slave. If only she could say “Out of my sight!”
    *   *   *
    Alkaios brought attention to Sappho’s work by repeating her poems with his. So when he invited her to attend the games at which contenders for the Olympics would be chosen, she agreed.
    Kleis worried about her daughter’s conduct now that the men had returned. “Sappho, to appear in public with a man of Alkaios’s reputation … He is known as a drunkard, and, and—”
    â€œI know his reputation, Mother. But Alkaios has been generous to me.”
    â€œIf you want my opinion, he is furthering his own reputation by increasing yours.”
    â€œWe are friends, Mother.”
    â€œBut my dear, for a woman—”
    â€œDo not speak of women. Or of men. I am Sappho.”
    â€œThe returned warriors already say that you are too clever to make a good wife.”
    Sappho laughed. “They may be right.”
    â€œBut, Daughter…”
    Sappho no longer laughed. A new confidence born of her new poems was strong in her. She looked sternly at her mother. “Small I am. But a name which fills all the world will be mine.”
    Her mother drew back from her. “Has some god told you this?”
    â€œI have told myself this.”
    When she appeared beside Alkaios in the stands erected for the games, there was a general movement in the crowd. They strained for a look at the diminutive figure and pointed her out to one another, for though only a girl, her songs were