A Homely Scene

Aeneid Book VIII and after Cloak and Stola

Someone knocked on the door of their one-room apartment in Capernaum.

Sophie had four month old Pholoe sleeping in the basket, and was working at the loom. The knocking woke her, and she immediately started crying. Sophie, rushing to check at the window to see who was at the door, dropped the shuttle, tangling the part of the cloth she had been working on.

“It’s Tritius! Open up. I got word from Procerus!”

Sophie grabbed the baby and ran to the door, heart pounding. Pholoe, sensing her mother’s fear, squalled louder.

Tritius walked in the open door. “He’s not coming home today. There was a fight, and he’s staying at the garrison. The doc’s watching him.”

Sophie pushed Pholoe into Tritius’ arms, who almost dropped her, and grabbed her stola from the peg on the wall. The little girl was so startled, she actually stopped crying for a moment, and as Tritius watched Sophie pull her stola over her house tunic, he finally realized what Sophie was thinking.

“No, no, mother.” He jiggled the baby, who had started howling again. “He’s okay. Just wanted me to tell you so you wouldn’t worry. He’s spending the night at the garrison.”

The look Sophie gave him then made him glad she wasn’t a Gorgon. He’d have been stone for sure. Sophie stopped trying to tie the belts on her stola, and just pulled it off and draped it over a hearth chair. She stepped over to Tritius and took Pholoe back.

Tritius left. It took awhile, but Sophie calmed the baby and then ate a simple supper, alone.

Then, she sang to herself as Pholoe played on the goatskins on the floor, while she untangled the mess she’d made in the loom when she’d dropped the shuttle. Sophie had to pull out a couple of inches of thread. Finally, she put Pholoe down, banked the fire, and got ready for bed herself.

Still worried about Procerus, she made an offering to the family idol, and also to the household gods. And just to cover all the bases, she even added a few words to Adonai, who she had been informed by Miriam did not appreciate libations or burnt offerings outside of the temple in Jerusalem.

When she woke up for Pholoe’s night-time feeding, however, her worry about Procerus came back full-force. She tried to get back to sleep, but then gave up. She stirred up the embers and brought up the fire, to take off the chill, and to provide enough light to let her work at the loom. She not only made up for the inches she’d had to redo, but added several more before morning.

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Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0 wikimedia commons Replica_Roman_House_-_weaving_on_a_warp-weighted_loom_(cropped)

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From Book VIII of the Aeneid

Vulcan falls asleep in the arms of Venus. He has a good rest, but wakes up in the middle of the night. Then, instead of going back to sleep, he decides to go to work. It is at that hour…

When a poor woman whose hard lot it is
To make a living by her loom and spindle,
Pokes up the embers, wakes the sleeping fire,
And by the firelight keeps her household maids*

Employed at their long task – all to keep chaste
Her marriage bed** and bring her children up –
At that same hour, no more slothful than she,
The Lord of Fire rose from his soft bed
To labor at the smithy.

Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

* She’s not very poor – she can afford help – like Sophie, the wife of Procerus, in Cloak and Stola. The word for “household maid” is “famula,” which in my piece “Andromache” had been translated as “female slave.” Here it is not, and given the context, I would say that was because the woman is described as poor, and as needing to make a living. Slaves are expensive; the poor woman can hire help, as Procerus did when Sophie was recovering from a miscarriage, but she cannot afford to buy and maintain slaves. I would assume it is like the difference between having tenant farmers work your land, vs having slaves work your land.

** The part about working so that she can keep chaste her marriage bed sounds to me like an allusion to married women who prostituted themselves, or at least had sex with other men for favors, to make ends meet. Venus only narrowly avoids this charge, because she is actually married to the man she seduced to get him to provide for the son that was not his. But Venus certainly does not keep her marriage bed chaste.