wished to leave her whole past behind. She proposed to be a
new woman, to put away her sinister cognomen, and begging Bomaro to
repeat the most beautiful names of the Iberian women, she chose that of
Sonnica as the most pleasing to her ears.

Arrived at Zacynthus, the navigator and the Greek woman were married in
the temple of Diana before all the Senate, of which the young man was
himself a member.

The city felt the effects of the charm which seemed to emanate from the
person of Sonnica. She was like a breath from distant Athens, which
fascinated the Greek merchants in Saguntum, grown slack by their long
stay among uncultured foreigners.

At the banquets, at the hour of sweet wines, when she sang the hymns of
the great masters, the Saguntine youths from the ward of the Greeks were
impelled to fall at her feet and adore her as a goddess. After being
married a year Bomaro realized in the growth of his fortune the
assistance of the woman, who, in changing her environment, began to
interest herself in material things through her desire to prove her
worth before the noble dames who gossipped about her.

She watched the work in the fields, took note of the great flocks, and
the potteries; she went to the port to greet the arrival of the ships;
and Bomaro's enormous fortune increased. Excellent results followed the
business ventures which she counseled, as she lay in the shade of a
clump of laurel in her garden, speaking in a slow harmonious voice,
caressed by a feather fan in the hands of a slave.

Bomaro, the days of more ardent love-making ended, sailed along the
coasts of Iberia, his mind free from business cares, and desirous of
adding to the fortune which Sonnica administered so well. She had
surrounded herself by a court of youths who treated her as a
preceptress. The young Greeks born in Saguntum flocked about her to
learn the manners and customs of Athens, which was their perpetual
dream. The evil tongues in the city called her Sonnica the Cyprian, but
the plebs who were the recipients of her charity, and the small
merchants who never appealed to her without result, entitled her Sonnica
the rich, and they were ready to fight those who spoke ill of her.

One winter, four years after their marriage, Bomaro perished by
shipwreck near the Pillars of Hercules, and Sonnica found herself in
absolute possession of an immense fortune, and mistress of a whole city,
over which she reigned by virtue of her riches and of