Eodan and Phryne are seen as plebeians. (p. 90)
Hwicca had thought that Eodan was dead. He wants her to see that he is "'...no nightwalker.'" (p. 92) But it turns out that she feels that she is dead.
Phyrne thinks that, when Flavius tires of Hwicca as a concubine, he will sell her to a brothel and she will wind up dead in the Tiber. (p. 96) (We know that Rome is on the Tiber but how much do we know about the Tiber?)
When it seems that Eodan will acquiesce to Hwicca's request to be left with Flavius, Phyrne consigns him, Eodan, to the Erinyes whom we met before as the Furies.
At the end of Chapter VII, we are a third of the way through the novel. Probably no posts tomoz.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I've also wondered if Hwicca's killing of her infant son when the Cimbri were defeated at the Battle of Vercellae contributed to psychological collapse. Even if obsessed with barbarian notions of pride, that must have been traumatic to her!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, but she wouldn't have our attitudes towards infanticide. And a -lot- of very young children died anyway in a context like that -- it was about even odds that they would die in the first five to ten years of life.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Even allowing for high mortality rates for infants, too many still died from sheer callousness. Deliberate infanticide was allowed or tolerated.
But, yes, even good parents waited two or three years after a child was born before investing much affection in him or her.
Not that we have any right to sneer, given the monstrosity of "legal" abortion!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Sean!
It may well have been traumatic to her to kill her infant son, even though she lived in a brutal world with different cultural expectations. I would note, though, that she first held him to her breast, to give him a last gift, and I would suggest that she was not so much obsessed with barbarian notions of pride as saving her child from life as a slave.
And now, I really should get to bed.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
I agree with both how brutal the world was in 101 BC and the different cultural expectations from ours that Hwicca believed in. But I do think a proud refusal to have her infant son become a slave was a strong motivation. Perhaps any disagreement we have is merely one of emphasis.
Ad astra! Sean
The Romans had a saying: "Avoiding slavery is simple -- all you have to know is how to die."
Basically, that anyone who'd submit to slavery rather than die deserved so base a fate.
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