The Nurse and the Grown Daughter
The tie between nurse and child might continue strong in later years. She often remained in the family as the attendant and sometimes as the confidante of the young maiden. Thus Nausicaa’s old nurse lights her fire and prepares her evening meal:
ἥ οἱ πῦρ ἀνέκαιε καὶ εἴσω δόρπον ἐκόσμει.[[159]]
The same nurse who had tended Phaedra as an infant remained in her service until the death of her mistress. Her devotion, introduced mainly as a dramatic expedient, is nevertheless lifelike. Indeed it is the blindness, even to precipitancy, of her love of Phaedra which must be held accountable for the method employed by her to cure the distemper of her mistress. This she herself acknowledges in her answer to Phaedra:
ἔθρεψά σ’ εὔνους τ’ εἰμί· τῆς νόσου δέ σοι
ζητοῦσα φάρμαχ’ ηὗρον οὐχ ἁβουλόμην.
εἰ δ’ εὔ γ’ ἔπραξα, κάρτ’ ἂν ἐν σοφοῖσιν ἦ·
πρὸς τὰς τύχας γὰρ τὰς φρένας κεκτήμεθα.[[160]]
We read that the nurse accompanied the young maiden out of doors, guarded her well, looking askance at admirers who were attracted by the girl’s beauty: “Thou old nurse of a loved one, why do you bark at me while approaching you, and harshly throw me into twice as many pains? For you are leading a very beautiful virgin in whose steps I am treading. See, how I am going along my own path. It is sweet merely to look upon her form. What grudging of eyes is there, thou wretched one! We look upon the forms of even the immortals....”[[161]]
Still, she is sometimes the go-between in the maiden’s love affairs, as in the tale of Acontius and Cydippe.[[162]] So, too, the old nurse of Hero dries the tears of her love-sick charge and receives her confidence.[[163]] The power and influence of Polyxo, the aged nurse of Hypsiple, are evidenced by the fact of her being consulted in an affair of state.[[164]] That these old nurses were wont to comfort and console their charges when grown up, we learn from the following: