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crush my spirit. It was thought that weaving and raising children would substitute for the gifts of the muses, and that, buried in domesticity, I would have no time for political plots or love affairs. Or singing.
    Marriage and death were not so dissimilar in those days. When I look back on my marriage procession, I think that it might as well have been a funeral march. My mother, my grandparents, my brothers, and I journeying yet again from Eresus to Mytilene, where I was to be given to the ancient Cercylas.
    Strangely, I was less angry with my grandfather than I was with my mother for abandoning me to this ghastly marriage. How could she conspire in exiling her only daughter?
    I had demanded this of her as she bedecked me for my marriage—a necklace of golden grapes and quinces, matching earrings that dangled to my shoulders, a golden diadem that held my lustrous hair.
    â€œI would rather you were married than dead, Sappho.”
    â€œI see little difference between the two states.”
    â€œBecause you are young and think you know everything. But husbands can die and liberate you.”
    â€œThat’s something to look forward to.”
    â€œAnd you have other gifts that can free you. The way you held the audience at that symposium was extraordinary. Underneath my fury I was proud. It reminded me that when I was pregnant with you, a priestess made a prophecy—that you would be known in times to come.”
    â€œNow you tell me!”
    Cercylas the hideous was fifty if he was a day, and he wore a girdle to bind his paunch, which otherwise would have wobbled. His hair was sparse and draped over his baldness, fooling nobody. He smelled strongly of perfume and sweat. And wine. Like a barbarian, he loved to drink his wine unmixed with water.
    He also seemed to be the sort of man who rehearsed his jokes before a symposium and then claimed they came to him at the minute as gifts of the gods. (This turned out to be true!) When, at the wedding ceremony, he gravely said to my grandfather, “I take this woman for the ploughing of legitimate children,” my brothers and I could not help but giggle. By the time the guests pelted us with nuts and fruit, I was still terrified of the fate to which I’d committed myself. I thought of Alcaeus—our passionate lovemaking and equally passionate arguments—and I looked at Cercylas as in a nightmare.
    The feasting went on and on. It began at noon and continued until midnight. The wine from my grandfather’s vineyards flowed like water. The food was rich and abundant—breads, fish, fowl, meats, sweets of every description. There was singing and dancing, the procession to Cercylas’ house, more singing and dancing, more heaps of delicacies.
    At last, at midnight, the horrible time had come. Choruses of maidens singing sweet epithalamia I myself had written accompanied us to the bridal chamber. Cercylas was by then so drunk, he reeled and staggered. I steeled myself to the pain of allowing Cercylas into that sanctuary where only Alcaeus had lovingly trespassed before.
    I ate the wedding quince and Cercylas removed my girdle as ritual dictated. The maidens choired. I begged for another chorus. They choired again. Cercylas’ eyes began to close.
    â€œSing again!” I begged the maidens.
    â€œDamn you, Sappho,” Cercylas raged, “I will have your maidenhead!”
    What maidenhead? I thought.
    At last we were left alone. Cercylas stripped off his clothes and appeared in all his hideousness. Taking a pomegranate from the many fruits arranged in a bowl at the foot of the bed, he pressed six red seeds into the bridal sheet and hung it up in the window for all to see. Then he collapsed in a drunken swoon.
Raise high the roof beams!
    The groom comes like Ares,
    Towering above mortals
    As the poets of Lesbos
    Tower over all the others!
    Lucky bridegroom!
    We drink your health!
    I lay awake in bed and pondered my fate as Cercylas snored.