I re-sent the PM, and I'll re-post it here:
Name: Danae Andreadys
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Straight
Personality: Danae is curious, intelligent, and perceptive, particularly in the areas of philosophy and mysticism, but innocent and naive when it comes to dealing with people.
Bio:
Danae was born to a bookmaker in Alexandria, Egypt under the reign of
Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Her family made papyri for the new Library at Alexandria. As a child, Danae was very curious about what the little squiggles meant, and asked about them relentlessly. On a lark, her father started to teach her to read, expecting her to get bored quickly and leave him to his work. Instead, she caught on, and her interest only increased. Deciding to put her interest to use, he set her to copying manuscripts. Whenever she had spare time, Danae read. Despite her best efforts, she was never able to learn to read the enigmatic hieroglyphs of old Egypt (it would have been much too difficult and expensive to find a priest willing to teach her), but she was able to learn the more common Demotic script, and started learning the Egyptian language so she could translate and copy bilingual documents.
This golden age of Danae's life came to an end in her early teens with the death of her father. Her eldest brother was given to drink and carousing, and had no care for the family business. He squandered their modest wealth, and his antics caused the family to fall out of favor with the scholars at the Library, costing them their biggest and best client. He sold Danae into slavery to pay some of his gambling debts.
She was purchased by a merchant named Akliabades, a cruel and abusive master. Under his rule, her life descended into a hell of want and brutality. As she grew, she started to attract her master's lustful glances. She was saved from his touch only by the hawkish jealousy of his wife Megara.
As part of his efforts to climb socially, Akliabades joined a group of philosophers, mostly of the Epicurian school, who held regular teaching and discussion sessions in one of the city gardens. Deciding that Danae would serve well as eye-candy, he brought her with him, so he could show off by having her wait on him while he astounded the learned philosophers with his great wisdom. This didn't work out so well for him, as he often had to repeat an order two or even three times to get her attention, after which he would clout her and scold her in hissing tones. What was
wrong with her all of a sudden? This naturally proved to be a distraction, and the others were starting to find their presence irritating. Someone in the group made a snide comment about bringing such a pretty-but-dumb maidservant to a philosophical discussion. Someone else [can be your character if you want] thought her distraction might have a different cause, and asked Danae a question pertaining to the philosophies they had been analyzing.
For a moment, Danae was a deer in the headlights, until one of the men chuckled. Fearing the punishment she'd get for bringing mockery upon her master, Danae gathered her wits and replied. To everyone's surprise, her answer was quite perspicacious, even including ideas from some of the books she'd read and copied in her prior life, which had not been mentioned thus far. It turned out that her inattention to her master's commands sprung from rapt attention to the discussion itself. It was not long before two things happened: 1) Danae was caught up in the heady intellectual back-and-forth of dialogue with the other thinkers, and 2) the pretty slave girl completely upstaged her master.
Akliabades was
furious. He dragged her from the meeting, whacking her every now and then with his cane. He herded her to a wine-seller's shop and bought two amphorae of wine, so she could stagger under their weight while he goaded her homeward like an ox. "YOU THINK YOU'RE A PHILOSOPHER, DO YOU? I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT YOU ARE! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A BEAST OF BURDEN! I'LL MOUNT YOU TONIGHT NO MATTER WHAT MEGARA SAYS! YOU'LL LEARN YOUR PLACE!"
Suddenly, a four-horse chariot, obviously that of a very wealthy and powerful man, came around the corner at a fast clip. Startled by the sound and barely able to see around the amphorae, Danae tripped, dropped them, and fell in front of the chariot. The charioteer had to pull back hard on the reins to stop in time. Seething with rage, but also fearful of the man's wrath, Akliabades started viciously beating Danae. "I am so sorry, my lord! This worthless slave! Her life is yours, my lord! Do with her as you will!" he said, expecting the man to kill her for inconveniencing him (or at least hoping that she, rather than Akliabades himself, would be the recipient of the man's wrath). Instead, the man took her into his service, and punished Akliabades [how is up to you].
The man brought Danae to his villa, and turned her over to his servants to clean her up, tend her wounds, and train her to enter his service. Danae feels tremendous gratitude to her rescuer, but she is also afraid of him, and fearful that she will screw up somehow, and earn his wrath as she did Akliabades'.
OT: I chose Ptolmaic Alexandria for the setting of Danae's bio since this would be after a lot of the great Greek philosophers (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno), and Hellenistic culture was at its height. This also makes it possible for your character (or his father?) to be a bigger wheel than a high official in a city-state. If you prefer some point in the city-state era (e.g. Periclean Athens or SPARTAAAAAA!), or some other period such as the Mycenaean era (the era of the
Iliad and the
Odyssey), let me know and I'll edit.
