Delos Slave Market
The ancient Greek slave market on the island of Delos in the Aegean Sea around 100 B.C.E. was bustling with activity. A favorite among pirates that sailed the Cyclades archipelago, scalawags, and thieves. Law and order came to he who was strongest, ruthless, and survival of the fittest favored the uncomeliest.
Today was one of those special events. Men came from far and wide with as many gold, silver, and copper pieces as they could muster. The warring slavers were auctioning off some of their spoils.
Those attracting the most interest were the young wenches captured during war raids, shackled, and displayed shamelessly. Raped and used they appeared tattered and torn, but their youthful beauty could hardly be hidden. Fetching private parts on display, exposed as their captors teased the audience, lifting off their rag muffin clothes to flash pretty pussies, pert breasts, lean stems, and firm buttocks.
The rare damsel danced and stripped for the jeering onlookers. Accepting this role rendered life sometimes easier and less painful.
Fortunate females might be bought by a benevolent master who could fall in love with them, especially if she bore him children. Others were less lucky.
Pirate Maximus' perspective was different. Feared, and secretive, he seemed out of place. Cleaner than most, he commanded a different sort of vessel from the accounts of those few that knew anything about him. Max was even known to purchase male slaves that he freed to hire on as loyal mates. Most rare, he mastered his pirate ship for many years without mutiny. Stranger still his men didn't complain about him when they hit port and didn't engage in the drunken brawl and whore mongering expected of their ilk.
Captain Max's crew were uncommonly healthy too. Sickness that plagued most boats like scurvy spared his. Perhaps it was due to strange things he insisted on bringing aboard aside from the usual provisions that wouldn't spoil; salted meats, grog, and rum. Odd items; nuts, apple cider, dried figs, dates, & apricots, as well as root vegetables, honey, and always fin whale blubber. This forced Pirate Maximus to make more stops in the ancient Mediterranean ports; Constantinople, Venice, Malta, Sicily, Valencia, and others. Captain's pirates were also encouraged and did far more fishing for sardines, tuna, and even sharks, than other sea vessels.
Maximus carefully observed as the girls were auctioned off. Prettier ones fetched between 15 and 100 gold coins, others more average 10, but rarely did a slave trader get less than 5 for a young prize.
Max was interested in the fat one hiding in the back, ignored. Forgotten, dirty blond ratty hair, thunder thighs, and large stomach, she hardly raised her head.
The auction was breaking up and all the good property accounted for. Some girls were screaming as their new owners dragged them off. Most just whimpering, downtrodden.
Maximus approached the obese girl, lifted her chin. He saw behind her big round cheeks and double chin large blue eyes, perfect white teeth, and symmetrical small nose and facial features. It would be hard to imagine what such a wide woman would look like one hundred stones lighter. She had been the daughter of the infamous tyrannical noblemen, Dionysius, of the Cilician Coast of Asia Minor. None of the locals mourned when a marauding band ambushed the ogre and his family, and captured his daughter to sell into slavery.
"Ah...should have done away with her too when I took her fool dad and his gold," her gap-toothed crusty captor declared as Pirate Maximus looked her over.
"One gold, one silver piece," Max offered.
"I take no less than three gold, she is a woman, even if she's a hog."
"Two and not a copper more."
"O.K., then. Do what you want with the sow, no one's showed a second's worth of interest in the pig anyway."
And that was true. In her obese ugliness, despite all she'd been dragged through, there had been enough other female entertainment for the men along the journey to Delos that she was virtually untouched and not violated in any sexual way. Women were often shared 20 or more times before they arrived to market. It was a curse to be so captured and at all sexually attractive.
As Pirate Maximus collected his purchase, some onlookers laughed. They failed to notice, as he did, that despite her grotesque size, her youthful skin was smooth without stretch marks, and that beneath chunky cheeks and chin was she had a pretty face and special eyes.
"Got some beef for your trip...aye Captain. Hope she doesn't tip the ship," and other jeers pronounced as Maximus his young purchased cheap wench out. "A real heifer there, hope you can get some milk out her...ha...ha...ha.," as he steered her from the marketplace.
Virga
On the road alone, Max asked, "What is your name maiden?"
"Virga," she replied too softly to hear.
"What's that?"
"Virga," not much louder, head down, looked up, "why did you buy me?"
"I didn't buy you; I chose you."
"But why?"
"Because your beauty will serve my ship well."
"Beauty...I have no beauty."
"Oh, but you do young Virga, you just don't know it yet."
Virga was raised with privilege as the daughter of wealthy Cilician landowner, Dionysius, ruler of his feudal estate. Inside the castle walls she was safe, even educated to the level available in those ancient times.
Virga hated her tyrannical father, who ruled with fear and violence. Dionysius had his subjects tortured or snuffed out at the drop of a hat. He tolerated 's Virga's mother, but fornicated with any girl he fancied, at times having their lovers, husbands, and families watch or be killed or sold to slavers if their daughter didn't cooperate to service his whims, or become his concubine.
Powerless Virga sulked in the fortress, eating constantly, anything she could get her hands on to great excess. Dionysius was close to giving up on the idea of marrying her off for a strategic noble alliance, was considering getting rid of her, and ignored her, like her mother. Mom and Virga were close. They avoided father in the massive estate. That fateful summer day he took them on a picnic in the countryside. The lord, in one of his rare good moods, had decided to treat his family well. Marauders ambushed, captured Virga, and slaughtered all those in the party that wouldn't fetch a decent price on the slave market. Unprepared and taken by surprise Dyonosis fought back anyway. The slave traders wanted to ransom him, but he was slain.
The Stargaze
Virga, taken The Stargaze, Max's ship, was escorted up the gangplank and locked in her quarters. A small room, clean with wash basin and a wooden seat with a hole in it. Above a bed, a porthole looked out to the sea. She would spend many nights gazing out at the stars and the sea through that window to the world.
Virga sensed commotion on board. Supplies brought on and stowed. Men talking, giving orders. She fell asleep and awoke in the dark. Stars brilliant through her porthole in the night sky. She squatted over the hole, then sat, peed a dribble, and felt very thirsty and hungry. There was nothing to eat or drink.
