For never could rain fall from a clear and cloudless sky.

In keeping with the spirit of the last post, I’d like to share the story of a woman I honor as a heroine, and one of the most important of the Magna Graecian pantheon – Aithra of Tarentum, who I tend to represent with images of Our Lady of Sorrows. (Hey, we Italians are even more syncretic than the Cretans!)

The story is found in Pausanias’ Description of Greece 10.10.6-8:

The bronze horses and captive women dedicated by the Tarentines were made from spoils taken from the Messapians, a non-Greek people bordering on the territory of Tarentum, and are works of Ageladas the Argive. Tarentum is a colony of the Lacedaemonians, and its founder was Phalanthos, a Spartan. On setting out to found a colony Phalanthos received an oracle from Delphi, declaring that when he should feel rain under a cloudless sky (aithra), he would then win both a territory and a city.

At first he neither examined the oracle himself nor informed one of his interpreters, but came to Italy with his ships. But when, although he won victories over the barbarians, he succeeded neither in taking a city nor in making himself master of a territory, he called to mind the oracle, and thought that the god had foretold an impossibility. For never could rain fall from a clear and cloudless sky. When he was in despair, his wife, who had accompanied him from home, among other endearments placed her husband’s head between her knees and began to pick out the lice. And it chanced that the wife, such was her affection, wept as she saw her husband’s fortunes coming to nothing.

As her tears fell in showers, and she wetted the head of Phalanthos, he realized the meaning of the oracle, for his wife’s name was Aithra. And so on that night he took from the barbarians Tarentum, the largest and most prosperous city on the coast.

O radiant Aithra, mistress of Tarentum, teach us to bear our afflictions with vigor and always to trust in the wise counsel of the gods, no matter how dark things may appear.