Meet Tanaquil

     My affair with Julia was followed in rapid succession with new women.  The second was Tanaquil. In my wildest imagination I see them as friends, not only with me but with each other. Julia, whose indomitable spirit captured the hearts of her young contemporaries in the first century AD, would have enthralled Tanaquil, who lived six centuries earlier in Tarquinia, not yet a part of Rome. Likewise Tanaquil would have spurred Julia on in her defiant moves.
      Just who is Tanaquil? An aristocratic teenager, ripe for marriage, horrifies her family with her desire to marry the son of a Greek merchant.  Neither the merchant's enormous wealth nor his marriage to Clestia, a Tarquinian aristocrat could soften the fact that he was an alien. From Tanaquil's story.
     She has just asked her mother if she can see the merchant's son.                         

            "Have you taken leave of your senses, child?  Have you quite forgotten who you are?  Do you not consider whose daughter you are?   Are you intent on making us the laughing stock of the city?  Do you imagine for an instant that your father and I will countenance your keeping company with this -- with this alien?"

            "But  mother,  he is not really an alien.  His mother is Clestia."  Tanaquil had learned all she could about Lucumo's aristocratic mother. "Clestia is ever so aristocratic. Everybody knows that.  Even Tarlia's mother-- and you know what a horrid snob she is-- even she says Clestia is heads above any of us."

            "Was heads above us.  Before.... Did Tarlia's mother say anything about what has happened since Clestia married Demaratus?  She's not now quite aristocratic enough I should think.  What are you thinking, child?"  Urnilla looked up to the ceiling.  Then she closed her eyes, sighed deeply and said, not particularly to her daughter, "What is the world coming to?"

            Tanaquil lowered her head and began to sob.  But Urnilla was not fooled by the faked tears nor was she to be deterred.  "Good gods, child, he's a foreigner-- an alien.  You cannot -- you must not think like this. It cannot be  What will people think? It cannot be." 
            "Oh Mother.  It's not right." She tried to force tears but they would not come.  She scowled and added, "I shall die. I shall surely die."

            Urnilla smiled.  "At fifteen I assure you will not die for lack of a young man."