Pholoe
Book 5, line 244, of the Aeneid
Olli serva datur haud ignara operum Minervae, Pholoe, Cressa genus, genimique nati sub ubere.1
Aeneas gave captain Sergestus, who came in last in the boat race, a slave woman who was skilled at weaving, Minerva’s craft. Her name was Pholoe, and she was a Cretan by race, who was nursing twin sons.
Pholoe sat next to the couch on which Pyrgo, the royal governess of Priam, reclined in her room in their accommodations on Sicily.
“My dear,” she told her, “I am too old to continue. But you must still go with the fleet. I am sorry that after what the other women have done, it will be harder for you than before.”
“But my sons, lady …”, she begged, prostrating herself. She had seen other mothers separated from their babes, and at least the boys were old enough that there was a chance they would still survive. But it had not yet happened to her.
“You must keep them with you, of course,” she said.2 “Some of the ladies are still going with the fleet3, and we don’t know how long it will take to get to Austonia4. Or what they may meet along the way. You must keep your milk, because it may be needed down the road, as it was before. Do not wean them until Prince Aeneas and the fleet are established.”
Pholoe returned to her chair then. She was still anxious, but Pyrgo had chosen her for her ability to stay calm in danger. She had picked her up in Crete, back when they had thought they were to settle there, and the Cretan weaver had had an uneventful pregnancy and easy birth, even with twins. Not even the storms that had shipwrecked them on the shores of Libya had interrupted her milk. She had saved the babies of the ladies with the littlest ones.5
“Courage, child,” she said. “The danger is no worse than it ever was. And you are still needed.”
Pholoe pressed the amulet of her previous owner, the father of her children, to her heart, on the end of its golden chain. He had been a sailor on the single ship that had been lost in the storm that led them to Carthage.6
“Yes, my lady.”
“You’re going with good people,” Pyrgo said. “And your lord knows not to risk a pregnancy until you are settled. He won’t pair you with anyone before then.”
Pholoe wasn’t completely sure about that. But it was true that like their lord, Prince Aeneas, he was known for self control and preferring marriageable lovers. She, like many of the women, had expected him to stay the year with the Queen of Carthage, but apparently the gods did not permit, and he was not a man to oppose the gods.
She sighed. Danger could not be avoided. But at least she could trust Prince Aeneas.
Book V, line 244, of the Aeneid
I’m not completely happy with this one. I think it is likely that Pholoe might have been forced to leave one of the twins behind. One baby would probably have been enough to keep her from losing her milk.
On the other hand, Romans tended not to separate even slave women from unweaned babies, although I think it was allowed. And I’m guessing that Virgil would have projected the Roman values of his time back on to the Aeneid. I’m pretty sure the legion soldiers reading the Aeneid in the first century AD would have.
I’m assuming that they didn’t leave all the ladies back in Sicily, but I don’t know that. As I’ve said before, I don’t actually know the whole story, so this might not work.
Austonia refers to where they are going in Italy.
It is true that stress can lead to the loss of milk for a nursing mother, which can greatly increase the chance that an infant under the age of two or three would die. And no, not even goat milk is “almost as good.” At best, it is “better than nothing.” A woman who had no trouble with lactation, which a healthy mother of healthy twins, which Pholoe clearly was, would have obviously been a very valuable slave, in my opinion.
Unlike the Roman marriage rules of Virgil’s time, apparently the child of a man’s slave concubine was not automatically a slave, as we saw in the book about Andromache. So it could make sense that the woman actually was bought to be the concubine of one of the lower ranked sailors, or at least the mother of his children. I’m not sure about that.