‘The wildest of inventions!’ That’s how they describe me after two and a half millennia. A woman, an architectural column, balancing a small temple on my head. A feat, I’ll grant you. But I did not do it alone. We did it together, my sisters and I. We stood on a low wall near the summit of the craggy hill above Athens. We faced south, overlooking our city, head baskets bearing our crown as lightly as the zephyrs that breathed on our cheeks and mussed the folds of our robes. We maidens stood on our porch as in a trance, watching the korai, our earthly sisters, virgins from the best of families as they led the procession, carried the libation bowls and baskets filled with fruits of the forest. Theirs was the honour of carrying the garlands to decorate the bull. Of bearing the sacrificial knife through the city, up the jagged face of the Acropolis to the altar in the Parthenon. And ours, to raise Athena’s temple at its side. My sisters are still there, though now in shelter. They keep vigil over our city, keep watch on the avatars who bear our crown. I am here. Alone in this huge, stony, windowless hall. Tomb, I’d say, if it were not for strangers who stand before me daily, fawning compliments. They whisper about my dreamlike stance—arms clasped behind my back and left leg slightly bent, as if I were relaxed despite the knobbly stump where my left foot should be. They admire my high small breasts, firm beneath my robes clasped at the shoulders by floral brooches. They know my story. Some pity my damaged nose and chin, the gouged-out elbow, the fretted pleats of my robes. Some ponder my abduction, consider me fortunate, safe from the hands of other grasping men. Others marvel at how I lit men’s minds, compelled them to copy me for their own temples. All drift away, drawn to sculptures and friezes prised from the Parthenon, to sun and the scent of rosemary; to the cries of victory that echo in the air.