"Mary Renault - Greece 4 - The Last Of The Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

in cities with laws, some barbarians under tyrants, and others slaves. He said, You might as well ask, my
dear boy, why he made some beasts lions, some horses, and other swine. Zeus the All-Knowing has
placed all sorts of men in a state comformable with their natures; we cannot suppose anything else. Don't
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




forget, however, that a bad horse is worse than a good ass. And wait till you are older before you
question the purposes of the gods.

He met me in the courtyard when I got home, with a myrtle wreath on his head. He had got together
what was needed for the purification of the house, water from the Nine Springs, frankincense and the
rest, and was waiting for me to serve at the rites with him. It was a long time since we had needed to
perform them, and then it was only because a slave had died. I bound the myrtle round my head and
helped him with the lustrations, and when the incense was burning on the household altar, made the
responses to the prayers. I was glad to finish, for I was hungry, and the smell from inside told me that my
mother had cooked something good.

I ought to write my stepmother for clearness' sake; but I not only called her Mother, but so thought of
her, having known no other. Her coming had, as I have explained, saved me from much misery; so it
seemed that such and not otherwise a mother ought to be. It made no difference in my mind that she was
only about eight years older than I was, my father having married her when she was not quite sixteen. I
daresay it might have seemed to other people, when she came, that she behaved to me more like an elder
sister who has been given the keys; I remember that often at first, being uncertain about the ways of the
house and not wanting to lose authority with the slaves, she would ask me. Yet because when unhappy I
had dreamed of a kind mother, and she was kind, she seemed to me the pattern of all mothers. Perhaps
this was why at my initiation into the Mysteries, having been shown certain things of which it is unlawful to
speak, I could not be as much moved by them as the candidates I saw around me. The Goddesses
pardon me, if I have said amiss.

Even in looks she might have been my sister; for my father had chosen a second wife not unlike the first,
being, it appears, fond of dark women. Her father had fallen at Amphipolis with a good deal of glory; she
kept his armour, in an olive-wood chest, for he had no sons. I think for this reason he must have been in
the habit of talking to her with rather improper freedom; for when she first came to us, she used often to
ask my father questions about the war, and events in the Assembly. About the first he would sometimes
speak; but if she became persistent about business or politics, as a kindly reproof he would walk over to
the loom, and praise her work. So now, when I smelt the good food cooking, I smiled to myself,
thinking, Dear Mother, you have no need to coax me, who for a bowl of bean soup would tell you all
they are saying in the City.

After the meal, then, I went up to the women's rooms. She had been weaving for some time a big
hanging for the supper-room; scarlet, with a white ship in the centre on a blue sea, and a border of
Persian work. She had just finished the centrepiece. At a smaller loom one of the maids whom she had
taught was weaving plain cloth; the sound went smoothly on, while the noise of the big loom would
change its pace with the pattern.

She asked me first how I had done at school. To tease her I said, Not very well. Mikkos beat me, for
forgetting my lines. I thought she would at least ask what made me forget them, but she only said, For
shame. Seeing her look round, however, I laughed, and she laughed too. The tilt of her head made one