by Georg Ebers
CHAPTER XIX.
Balbilla and her companion, Publius Balbinus and other illustriousRomans, Favorinus the sophist, and a numerous suite of chamberlainsand servants, were to accompany the Empress by water, while Hadrianset forth on his land journey with a small escort to which he added asplendid array of huntsmen. Before he reached Memphis, in crossing theLibyan desert, through which his road lay, he had killed a few lions andmany other beasts of prey, and here he had once more found Antinous thebest of sporting companions. Cool headed in danger, indefatigable onfoot, content and serviceable in all circumstances, the young fellowseemed to Hadrian to be a comrade created by the gods themselves forhis special delectation. When Hadrian was in the humor to brood andbe silent the whole day long, he never disturbed him by a word; but inthese moods the Emperor found his favorite's society indispensable, forthe mere consciousness of his presence soothed him.
Antinous too, was happy on these occasions, for he felt that he was ofsome use to his venerated master and could thus alleviate the burdenwhich had never ceased to weigh on his own soul ever since the crimehe had committed. Besides, he preferred dreaming to talking, and theexercise in the open air preserved him from listless lassitude.
In Memphis Hadrian was detained a whole month, for there he was expectedto visit the Egyptian temples with Sabina, who had arrived before him,and to submit to many ceremonials invested with the regalia of thePharaohs. Sabina often felt as if she must faint when, crowned with theponderous vulture-headed fillet of the Queens of Egypt, weighed downwith long robes and golden ornaments, she was conducted with herhusband, in procession, through all the rooms, over the roof andfinally into the holiest place of some vast sanctuary. What senselessceremonials they had to go through in the course of these long circuits,and how many sacrifices had they to attend! When she returned fromthese visitations she was utterly exhausted, and indeed, it was nosmall exertion to undergo so many fumigations with incense and so manyaspersions, to listen to so many litanies and hymns, to parade throughsuch endless halls and while being elevated to the rank of celestialbeings, to be crowned with so many crowns in turn and decorated with allkinds of fillets and symbolic adornments.
Her husband set her a good example, however; through all the ceremonialshe displayed the whole grave majesty of his nature, and among theEgyptians behaved as one of themselves. He even took pleasure inthe mystical lore of the priests, with whom he often held longconversations.
As at Memphis, so in all the principal temples of the great cities tothe southward, the Imperial pair accepted the homage of the hierarchyand the honors due to divinity. Wherever Hadrian granted money for theextension of a temple, he was required to perform the ceremony of layinga stone with his own hand. But he always found time to hunt inthe desert, to manage the affairs of state, and to visit the mostinteresting monuments of past times, and at Memphis especially, the cityof the dead, with the Pyramids, the great Sphinx, the Serapeum and thetombs of the Apis.
Before quitting the city he and his companions consulted the oracle ofthe sacred bull. The fairest future was promised to Balbilla; the bullto whom she had to offer a cake, with her face averted, had approvedof her gift and had touched her hand with his moist muzzle. Hadrian wasleft in ignorance as to the sentence of the priests of Apis, for itwas given to him in a sealed roll with an explanation of the signs itcontained; but he was solemnly adjured not to open them before at leasthalf a year had elapsed.
It was only in the cities that Hadrian met his wife, for he pursuedhis journey by land and she hers by water. The boats almost invariablyreached their destination sooner than the land-travellers, and when theyat last arrived, there was always a grand festival to welcome them, inwhich however Sabina but rarely took part. Balbilla proved herself allthe more eager to make their arrival pleasant by some kindly surprise.She sincerely reverenced Hadrian, and his favorite's beauty had anirresistible charm for her artist's soul. It was a delight to her onlyto look at him; his absence troubled her, and when he returned she wasalways the first to greet him. And yet the bright girl troubled herselfabout him neither more nor less than the other ladies in Sabina's train;only Balbilla asked nothing of him but the pleasure of looking at himand rejoicing in his beauty.
If he had dared to mistake her admiration for love and to have offeredher his, the poetess would have indignantly brought him to his bearings;and yet she gave unqualified expression to her admiration of theBithynian's splendid person, and indeed with rather remarkabledemonstrativeness.
When the travellers made their appearance again after a prolongedabsence Antinous would find in the room in the ship where he was to liveflowers, and choice fruits sent by her, and verses in which she had sunghis praises. He put it all aside with the rest and only esteemed thedonor the less; but the poetess knew nothing of these sentiments inher beautiful idol, and indeed troubled herself very little about hisfeelings. She had hitherto found no difficulty in keeping within thelimits of what was becoming. But lately there had been moments inwhich she had owned to herself that she might be carried away intooverstepping these limits. But what did she care for the opinionof those around her, or about the inner life of the Bithyman, whoseexternal perfection of form was all that pleased her. She did not shrinkfrom the possibility of arousing hopes in him which she never could norintended to fulfil, for the idea did not once enter her mind; stillshe felt dissatisfied with herself, for there was one person whomight disapprove of her proceedings, one who had indeed in plain wordsreprehended her fancy for doing honor to the handsome boy with offeringsof flowers, and the opinion of that one person weighed with her morethan that of all the rest of the men and women she knew, put together.
This one was Pontius the architect; and yet, strangely enough, it wasprecisely her remembrance of him that urged her on from one folly toanother. She had often seen the architect in Alexandria, and when theyparted she had allowed him to promise to follow her and the Empress, andto escort them at any rate for a part of their voyage up the Nile. Buthe came not, nor had he sent any report of himself, though he was aliveand well, and every express that overtook them brought documents forCaesar in his handwriting.
So he, on whose faithful devotion she had built as on a rock, was noless self-seeking and fickle than other men. She thought of him everyday and every hour; and as soon as a vessel from the north cast anchorwithin sight, she watched the voyagers as they disembarked to detect himamong them. She longed for Pontius as a traveller who has lost his waysighs for a sight of the guide who has deserted him; and yet shewas angry with him, for he had betrayed by a thousand tokens that heesteemed and cared for her, that she had a certain power over his strongwill--and now he had broken his word and did not come.
And she? She had not been unmoved by his devotion, and had been gentlerto this grandson of her father's freed slave than to the best-born manof her own rank. And in spite of it all Pontius could spoil all thepleasure of her journey and stay in Alexandria instead of followingin her wake. He could easily have intrusted his building to otherarchitects--the great metropolis was swarming with them! Well, if he didnot trouble himself about her she certainly need care even less abouthim. Perhaps at last, at the end of their travels he might yet come, andthen he should see how much she cared for his admonitions.
But she sighed impatiently for the hour when she might read him all theverses she had addressed to Antinous, and ask him how he liked them. Itgave her a childish pleasure to add to the number of these little poems,to finish them elaborately, and display in them all her knowledge andability. She gave the preference to artificial and massive metres; someof the verses were in Latin, others in the Attic, and others again inthe Aeolian dialects of Greek, for she had now learnt to use this, andall to punish Pontius--to vex Pontius--and at the same time to appear inhis eyes as brilliant as she could. She belauded Antinous, but shewrote for Pontius, and for every flower she gave the lad she had senta thought to the architect, though with a curl on her lips of scornfuldefiance.
But a young girl cannot
be always praising the beauty of a youth in newand varied forms with complete impunity, and thus there were hours whenBalbilla was inclined to believe that she really loved Antinous. Thenshe would call herself his Sappho, and he seemed destined to be herPhaon. During his long absences with the Emperor she would long to seehim--nay, even with tears; but, as soon as he was by her side again, andshe could look at his inanimate beauty and into his weary eyes, when sheheard the torpid "Yes" or "No" with which he replied to her questions,the spell was entirely broken and she honestly confessed to herself thatshe would as soon see him before her hewn in marble as clothed in fleshand blood.
In such moments as these her memory of the architect was particularlyfresh, and once, when their ship was sailing through a mass of lotosleaves, above which one splendid full-blown flower raised its head, herapt imagination, which rapidly seized on everything noteworthy and gaveit poetic form, entwined the incident in a set of verses, in which shedesignated Antinous as the lotos-flower which fulfils its destinysimply by being beautiful, and comparing Pontius to the ship which, wellconstructed and well guided, invited the traveller to new voyages indistant lands.
The Nile voyage came to an end at Thebes of the hundred gates, and herenothing that could attract the Roman travellers remained unvisited. Thetombs of the Pharaohs extending into the very heart of the rocky hills,and the grand temples that stood to the west of the city of the dead,shorn though they were of their ancient glory, filled the Emperor withadmiration. The Imperial travellers and their companions listened tothe famous colossus of Memnon, of which the upper portion had beenoverthrown by an earthquake, and three times in the dawn they heard itsound.
Balbilla described the incident in several long poems which Sabinacaused to be engraved on the stone of the colossus. The poetess imaginedherself as hearing the voice of Memnon singing to his mother Eos whileher tears, the fresh morning dew, fell upon the image of her son, fallenbefore the walls of Troy. These verses she composed in the Aeoliandialect, named herself as their writer and informed the readers--amongwhom she included Pontius--that she was descended from a house no lessnoble than that of King Antiochus.
The gigantic structures on each bank of the Nile fully equalledHadrian's expectations, though they had suffered so much injury fromearthquakes and sieges, and the impoverished priesthood of Thebes wereno longer in a position to provide for their preservation even, muchless for their restoration. Balbilla accompanied Caesar on a visit tothe sanctuary of Ammon, on the eastern shore of the Nile. In thegreat hall, the most vast and lofty pillared hall in the world, herimpressionable soul felt a peculiar exaltation, and as the Emperorobserved how, with a heightened color she now gazed upward, and thenagain, leaning against a towering column, looked at the scene aroundher, he asked her what she felt, standing in this really worthy abode ofthe gods.
"One thing--above all things one thing!" cried the girl. "Thatarchitecture is the sublimest of the arts! This temple is to me likesome grand epode, and the poet who composed it conceived it not infeeble words but formed it out of almost immovable masses. Thousandsof parts are here combined to form a whole, and each is welded withthe rest into beautiful harmony and helps to give expression to thestupendous idea which existed in the brain of the builder of thishall. What other art is gifted with the power of creating a work soimperishable and so far transcending all ordinary standards?"
"A poetess crowning the architect with laurels!" exclaimed the Emperor."But is not the poet's realm the infinite, and can the architect everget beyond the finite and the limited?"
"Then is the nature of the divinity a measurable unit?" asked Balbilla."No, it is not; and yet this hall gives one the impression that the verydivinity might find space in it to dwell in."
"Because it owes it existence to a master-mind, which while it conceivedit stood on the boundary line of eternity. But do you think this templewill outlast the poems of Homer?"
"No; but the memory of it will no more fade away that of the wrath ofAchilles or the wanderings of the experienced Odysseus."
"It is a pity that our friend Pontius cannot hear you," said Hadrian."He has completed the plans for a work which is destined to outlive meand him and all of us.
"I mean my own tomb. Besides that I intend him to erect gates, courtsand halls in the Egyptian style at Tibur, which may remind us of ourtravels in this wonderful country. I expect him to-morrow."
"To-morrow!" exclaimed Balbilla, and her face fired with a scarlet flushto her very brow.