lies in your power.  I know the world.  I could perceive,—­even before Croesus told me of your generous nature,—­that you were worthy of my Sappho.  This justified me in allowing you to eat the quince with her; this induces me now to entrust to you, without fear, what I have always looked upon as a sacred pledge committed to my keeping.  Look upon her too only as a loan.  Nothing is more dangerous to love, than a comfortable assurance of exclusive possession—­I have been blamed for allowing such an inexperienced child to go forth into your distant country, where custom is so unfavorable to women; but I know what love is;—­I know that a girl who loves, knows no home but the heart of her husband;—­the woman whose heart has been touched by Eros no misfortune but that of separation from him whom she has chosen.  And besides, I would ask you, Kallias and Theopompus, is the position of your own wives so superior to that of the Persian women?  Are not the women of Ionia and Attica forced to pass their lives in their own apartments, thankful if they are allowed to cross the street accompanied by suspicious and distrustful slaves?  As to the custom which prevails in Persia of taking many wives, I have no fear either for Bartja or Sappho.  He will be more faithful to his wife than are many Greeks, for he will find in her what you are obliged to seek, on the one hand in marriage, on the other in the houses of the cultivated Hetaere:—­in the former, housewives and mothers, in the latter, animated and enlivening intellectual society.  Take her, my son.  I give her to you as an old warrior gives his sword, his best possession, to his stalwart son:—­he gives it gladly and with confidence.  Whithersoever she may go she will always remain a Greek, and it comforts me to think that in her new home she will bring honor to the Greek name and friends to our nation, Child, I thank thee for those tears.  I can command my own, but fate has made me pay an immeasurable price for the power of doing so.  The gods have heard your oath, my noble Bartja.  Never forget it, but take her as your own, your friend, your wife.  Take her away as soon as your friends return; it is not the will of the gods that the Hymenaeus should be sung at Sappho’s nuptial rites.”

As she said these words she laid Sappho’s hand in Bartja’s, embraced her with passionate tenderness, and breathed a light kiss on the forehead of the young Persian.  Then turning to her Greek friends, who stood by, much affected: 

“That was a quiet nuptial ceremony,” she said; “no songs, no torch-light!  May their union be so much the happier.  Melitta, bring the bride’s marriage-ornaments, the bracelets and necklaces which lie in the bronze casket on my dressing-table, that our darling may give her hand to her lord attired as beseems a future princess.”

“Yes, and do not linger on the way,” cried Kallias, whose old cheerfulness had now returned.  “Neither can we allow the niece of the greatest of Hymen’s poets to be married without the sound of song and music.  The young husband’s house is, to be sure, too far off for our purpose, so we will suppose that the andronitis is his dwelling.