lalumena

[Archeologist Heinrich] Schliemann needed an assistant who was knowledgeable in matters pertaining to Greek culture…he advertised for a wife in a newspaper in Athens.

A friend, the Archbishop of Athens, suggested a relative of his, seventeen-year-old Sophia Engastromenos (1852–1932). Schliemann, age 47, married her in October 1869, despite the 30 year difference in age.

They later had two children, Andromache and Agamemnon Schliemann; he reluctantly allowed them to be baptized, but solemnized the ceremony in his own way by placing a copy of the Iliad on the children’s heads and reciting one hundred hexameters.

Pictured: Heinrich and Sophia Schliemann; the latter decked out in “the jewels of Helen”, discovered at a site supposed to be the Troy of Homer’s Iliad.