Divine Retribution
Iskra, Aphrodite’s freed handmaiden, set the Agora ablaze whenever she passed through. She left us all scalded, young and old alike.
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Until one ill-fated day the Archons gathered. “This far and no further,” they said. Their words dripped poison, as though they meant to fill, drop by drop, the cup of their own misanthropy — to drown in it their unfulfilled longing for the callipygian courtesan. Without delay the Assembly of the People decreed her ostracism.
Cowards, all of them! Of those who fought one another for her favour, I alone dared follow her — a suppliant of Eros, a slave to her beauty. Together we tasted the bitter fruit of exile.
When Hermes brought the goddess word of it all, her wrath was terrible. She sent the hundred-headed Typhoeus, and he drowned the City with every living soul.
