Prayer to Eileithyia

A votive epigram: a woman has safely given birth to a daughter, thanks Eileithyia, and places her next order.

Everything turns on the second couplet, and that is exactly the couplet the card does not translate. "Let this be now for a girl, and later, in return for a boy, let the fragrant temple have something else." The offering is explicitly proportioned to the child's sex: for a daughter, this; for a son, "something else", that is, more. The vow is drawn up by tariff, and the tariff says aloud what Greek inscriptions usually leave unsaid.

There is no cruelty in the epigram, only bookkeeping. The goddess is informed that a better outcome will be better paid — the same device as in Roman vows with a deposit and a balance (juno-006).

Καὶ πάλιν — "and again": this is not the first time the woman has called on the goddess. The relation is a continuing one, and in that lies its Mediterranean character generally: one deals with a deity regularly, not only in extremity.

A reservation about this card. The English renders only the first of the two couplets; the Greek is given in full. The Greek has Lykainis; the English calls her Kykainis.