to his country with the help of
charity, content with his poverty when he saw the envy and respect which
he inspired among his companions.

Thus she met Bomaro, a young Iberian merchant from Zacynthus, who had
come to Athens with three ships laden with hides. The courtesan was
attracted by his sweetness, which contrasted with the rudeness of the
other merchants brutalized by their contact with the great ports. He
spoke little and blushed, as if the silence of his long stays at sea had
given him the timidity of a virgin. If she forced him to relate his
adventures as a navigator he did so with simplicity, without mentioning
the dangers he encountered. He displayed particularly a childish
admiration for Grecian culture.

Myrrhina, during the supper at which she saw him for the first time,
surprised his eyes fixed on her with the expression of tenderness and
respect of one gazing at a goddess impossible of possession. The
navigator, reared among barbarians, in a remote colony scarcely
retaining traces of its mother Greece, began to interest the courtesan
more than the young Athenians and opulent merchants who surrounded her.
Tremulous and hesitant he craved the grace of a single night, and spent
it near her with more admiration than enjoyment, adoring her regal
beauty, thrilled by her voice, put to sleep by it like a warm maternal
lullaby, accompanied by the lyre.

When he awoke he begged to turn over to her the entire product of his
cargo; but Myrrhina, hardly knowing why, refused to accept it, in spite
of his urging. He was rich; he had no parents; far away in that land of
barbarians he possessed immense flocks, hundreds of slaves who
cultivated his fields or worked in his mines; great potteries, and many
ships like the three which awaited him in the Piraeus; and seeing that
the courtesan, with kindly smile, treated him like a generous boy,
declining to accept his money, he bought in the Street of the Goldsmiths
a prodigious collar of pearls, the despair of the hetaerae, and sent it to
Myrrhina before he left the city.

Afterwards he came back many times. He could not decide to return to his
country. He set sail with his flotilla, but in the next port he took on
a cargo for Athens, paying no regard to the price, and scarcely came to
anchor in the Piraeus before he rushed to the courtesan's house, nor
could resolve to leave until he suspected Myrrhina's weariness of his
presence.

The courtesan finally became accusto