Akontios had carved.
Idly, she read aloud: “I swear by the temple of Artemis that I will marry Akontios.” She glanced at her maid. “Who’s this Akontios?” The woman shrugged, and Kydippe ate the apple without trying any harder to find out who he was. Akontios’s heart sank.
“Nice try,” the Athenian said sympathetically.
“Move on, boy,” a rough voice said, and Akontios, after one more glance over his shoulder at the beautiful girl, allowed the next group to come and marvel at the temple and its altar. He didn’t manage to see Kydippe again, and when the festival was over, he returned to Keos and tried to forget her.
Kydippe went home, too, and her father soon found an eligible young man for her to marry. Most marriages in those days were arranged by the parents of the bride and groom. Hardly anyone expected to be in love with the person they married, so it didn’t strike Kydippe as unfair that she had no say in the matter. She prepared for the wedding, but the day before the ceremony was to take place, she fell ill. Not wanting a sickly wife, the prospective groom married someone else. This happened not once but twice more, until three weddings had been called off.
Kydippe’s father was worried. His daughter
had
to get married; there were no other options in those days. Girls couldn’t get jobs, and a girl of Kydippe’s background wouldn’t know how to farm or fish or do anything else to earn a living. If she never married, she’d have no one to support her once her parents died.
It was strange, though. When a wedding wasn’t being planned, Kydippe was as healthy as any other girl. Could she be pretending to be sick? Her father told his wife to question their daughter closely, but Kydippe denied that she was faking.
“Then what could it be, my darling?” her mother asked. “Are you afraid of getting married?”
“Oh, no,” Kydippe said. “I’d have been happy with any of those men that Father chose.”
“When you went to the festival on Delos, you didn’t make any silly promises to the goddess, did you? You know, Artemis vowed never to marry, and sometimes girls at her festivals get carried away and make the same oath.” She noticed her daughter staring at her in shock, and she turned pale. “You did, didn’t you?” she exclaimed. “Oh, Kydippe, how could you?”
“No, Mother, no, I didn’t swear never to marry. But—” And she recounted the story of the apple carved with the oath to marry someone named Akontios.
Her mother realized that Kydippe had made a solemn promise at the altar, even if she hadn’t intended to, and she told her husband what their daughter had done. He was furious, but he knew he didn’t have any choice. He had to allow Kydippe to marry this unknown man. He asked far and wide if anyone knew how to find him.
One of his friends had a son who had gone to the festival and remembered meeting a man named Akontios, from an island called Keos. They had chatted by the altar, the young man recalled, and he’d seen Akontios toss an apple to Kydippe. Maybe this was the man she had sworn to marry.
It didn’t sound likely, but Kydippe’s father was desperate. He sent messengers to Keos, where they found that the only young man named Akontios who fit the description was a simple farmer. He seemed pleasant enough, but the thought of marrying his beloved daughter to someone he didn’t know and who wasn’t of the social class she’d been born into, was distasteful to her father. He tried once more to marry her to a young man of Athens, one who came with a noble pedigree and a good treasury.
But the day before the wedding, Kydippe fell ill again. She fainted in her mother’s arms and remained unconscious as physicians bustled in and out of the house, applying every remedy they could think of. Nothing did any good.
Kydippe’s father gave up. He told his daughter’s most recent fiancé that the wedding was off and sent for Akontios.
Akontios couldn’t