HAS A FINE EXCHANGE.

orn on her parents' olive farm outside Eresos, the town where also Sappho was born, Andromeda and Sappho grew up peripherally aware of each other, although they belonged to different classes (Sappho was an aristocrat while Andromeda was of a middle class - trader - family). After Sappho moved to Mytilene, Andromeda's family began making a fortune in the olive oil production and trade, becoming famous for their very pure, fine oil. They rose to great means and soon, Andromeda's family, too, minus her younger brother - who stayed behind to oversee the farm - moved to Mytilene where she and Sappho were reunited once more. Although Sappho looked down on Andromeda and her New Money ways, they still initiated a brief affair sometime before Sappho started her school and once she began taking in students, Andromeda always found excuses to visit, although she neither played the lyre or composed songs. That was how she met Atthis, one of Sappho's students, a gawky, young girl of eighteen (Andromeda was in her late twenties), and despite severe protests from Sappho, the two became lovers. This would, for a long time, ruin the relation between Atthis and Sappho - a time in which Andromeda cared for the other girl in her rich household. Now, after Sappho has gone into exile in Sicily after the rise of Myrsilus and Pittacus as his second-in-command, Andromeda is trying to start a life for herself with Atthis, taking over the olive oil trade from her father and hoping to inherit his property when he dies, so that she may live independently, without marrying. Currently in her early thirties, she continues to meet with the women who used to gather around Sappho, inviting them over for socializing in her father's house, functioning as a patroness for many of them in Sappho's absence. Gorgo, for example - having become the teacher of Gongyla - has taken on the role of new leading poetess in their midst. How long can Andromeda keep up her lucious lifestyle, and how long will she remain interested in Atthis when she understands, the girl is holding her back? And how will her accidental acquaintance with Pittacus, an upright and strictly moral man who, however, wields immense power and is still only a man, above all, change the course of her ambition?