Ithaca Quotes

“Three daughters of Sparta became three queens in Greece, and I love them, power in their voices and fire in their eyes, even Penelope, even the one who smiles and says she does it for her husband, I love her, I love her. But no one ever said the gods did not have favourites, and it is Clytemnestra I love best, my queen above all, the one who would be free.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“If you dare tell me he’s Odysseus’s son as if that’s some sacred charm, I will scream,” she answers, clear as the ringing of the hollow drum. “I will wail and rend my hair, the whole thing. So help me, Hera, I will do it.” Sweetheart, I whisper, I’m here for it. Many is the time my husband has returned from his frolics and I’ve turned on the waterworks, rent my garments, flung myself upon the ground and sworn that I shall die, scratched at my eyes, drawn blood from my celestial skin and beaten my fists against his chest. It doesn’t change his behaviour long-term, but at least I get to embarrass him some tiny, tiny fraction of the way he humiliates, demeans, dishonours and diswomans me. So you do the wailing; I’ll bring the olives.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Kenamon takes his time to consider this. Penelope does not mind. The silence of men is a novel experience, and she is prepared to thoroughly enjoy it.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“...for it is the poet’s art to make every ear that hears the ancient songs think they have been sung for them alone, the old made new.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Beware that child who would spill his mother's blood. Though the gods themselves may turn away, the Furies will not.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Athena watches from the shore. Artemis prowls in the forest. And in the belly of the earth, the Furies are stirring.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Cassandra did not resist. After the first year of being pulled by the hair into Agamemnon's bed, hand at her throat, tongue wet, she had learned that screaming changed nothing. By the time Clytemnestra killed her, seven years later, Cassandra had given up on speech altogether, knowing no one would believe her, and no one would care. Thus died the prophetess of Troy, plaything of gods and men.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“There was such hatred in Clytemnestra's eyes, which never left his face - it was an intoxicant unlike any the tyrant had seen before. "I'll have that.' He thought. ''I'll break that.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Any woman who gives merely all she has to give, and then has no more left in her, we condemn to Tartarus's burning fields, and simply say: it is for the children.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Are you conspiring, little duck?"
"When one has neither gold, soldiers, name nor honour, what else is a woman to do?”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“I know very little about killing,” she replies with a shrug. “That is the men’s business. But it is the women who come to dress and wail at the corpses when the killing is done, no?”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“This is the world we live in. We are not heroes. We do not choose to be great; we have no power over our destinies. The scraps of freedom that we have are to pick between two poisons, to make the least bad decision we can, knowing that there is no outcome that will not leave us bruised, bloody on the floor.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Scared is how you see the spear coming for your eye. Scared is how you choose where and when to strike.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“The assembly dissolves at this point into furious squabbling, accusation and insult. I glance quickly into the nearby shadows, into the hot places of the earth beneath their feet, for Eris, lady of discord, wondering if she has stolen into this little assembly – but no, this is entirely, absolutely the stupidity of man without the interference of gods. It is fascinating in its detail and pettiness.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“I catch her as she tumbles, lest her fall be ungraceful, a messy rending of gut and bone. I ease her to the ground lightly, put her head in my lap, stroke her brow, whisper sweet sounds without form to her. My queen, greatest of all queens in Greece, stares up at the sky and does not see her brothers in it...All eyes of gods and men depart, save I.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“...I give you again the bowing of Agamemnon's men as they fell before your might and your wisdom , begged your indulgence, grovelled for their sins. You did not punish them for the joy of punishment; you were not a tyrant, you were not cruel. You took away the illusions that they had wrapped themselves in, showed them that their strength was arrogance, their intellect was foolery. You were the queen of honest revelation and level-headed merit, and the great men of Mycenae loathed for you it, loathed you for striking down their pretensions, and I loved you, I love you, I love you...”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Oh queen of the gods.' She breathes. 'You were mighty once. Before the poems were rewritten at Zeus's command, before the past was all...made up human things...I remember. You rode with Tabiti and Inanna of the east and the world quivered beneath you. The mortals looked up from their caves with hands painted in ochre and blood and called 'Mother, Mother, Mother.' You tore down the sky upon your enemies, and bade the seas part for the ones you loved. But you trusted Zeus. You swore your brother would never betray you. And look at you now, skulking from the eye of heaven lest he see the footprints you leave upon the earth.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Dawn should be bloody after a battle, yet it so rarely is. Too many wars are fought beneath her shimmering gaze for her to turn crimson for any but the most spectacular of affairs.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Penthesilea, for example, fought against Achilles himself…” “And died!” “Against Achilles – everyone died against Achilles, it was his predominant characteristic.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Telemachus has all sorts of funny ideas about parental wisdom. My old man ate me as soon as I was born; our fathers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“No songs are sung of a life lived quietly, of a man and a woman growing old in contentment.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“For… myself?” Penelope’s voice is a slap across the face, a rise of stifled fury. “You think I let a hundred slobbering men dribble over my body and my land every single night for myself? You think I tolerate their endless slander, their relentless talk and insult, demeaning myself every day, for myself? I do it for my people, and I do it for my son!”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Ah,” mutters Penelope. “I see. Medon, forgive me. I find myself overcome with womanly weakness and must retire.” “I have always admired the exquisite timing of your weaknesses, my lady.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“I sit in a corner, and find the whole affair fantastically boring. Where is Eris, goddess of discord, when I need her? Where are the fights, the schemes, the knives in the back? By my name, I miss Medea’s filthy jokes, and that thing Thalia can do with a bendy stick.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“It also occurs to Telemachus that Elektra is, in a strange way, the most sexual woman he has ever seen, and yet oddly, and at the same time, about as attractive as a nosebleed. He is a young man who finds this dichotomy very confusing, though perhaps in time he will learn.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“And where should I be, goddess of war? Up on Olympus wheedling with Zeus to send your Odysseus a favourable wind? Or are you done debasing yourself for a man?”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“You have a soft spot for needy young men, don’t you?”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“But Eos held her hand and Ourania her feet when Penelope screamed and Telemachus was born, and when a woman has spent that much time staring into another woman’s dilated vagina, you can either shut that other woman out for ever and pretend it never happened, or you can get over yourself and admit to a bond that runs deeper than blood.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“Athena loves it when a hunky warrior clad in bronze kneels before her inner sanctum, and when a man violated a woman upon her altar, it was the woman whose hair she turned to snakes in retribution for this sacrilege. So much for the wisdom of Athena.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“She understands, of course, that this is society and how society works. She is smart; she has learnt these lessons. What she doesn’t understand is why, being the way it is, society is so insufferably stupid, run by flaming idiots. On that point again, we are inclined to agree.”
― Claire North, Ithaca