The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Merezhkovsky

  The guards flung themselves on the bishops.

  The crowd became a wild and indescribable mob illumined by the flashing of swords. Roman soldiers, snatching off the breastplate, stole, and chasuble of Hilarion, dragged the old man away. Many present rushed in mad panic to the doors, fell, and were trampled underfoot by the rest. One of the recording clerks leapt on the sill of a window, but a soldier pinned him there by his long vestments and would not release him. The table and the inkstands were upset, red ink poured over the blue jasper floor, and voices shouted at the sight of the crimson sea—

  “Blood! blood! blood!”

  Others howled—

  “Death to the enemies of the thrice-pious Augustus!”

  Paphnutis in a thunderous monotone persisted in crying while the guards dragged him away—

  “I recognise the council of Nicæa!... Anathema on the Arian heresy!”

  Others screamed—

  “Be silent, enemies of God! Anathema! the council of Nicæa! the assizes of Sardis! the canons of Paphlagonia!”

  Blind Ozius remained seated motionless, forgotten by all, in his episcopal chair, murmuring inaudibly—

  “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have pity upon us! What is the matter, my brethren, what is it?”

  In vain he stretched feeble hands towards his terrified friends. Nobody saw him, nobody heard him; and tears streamed down his aged cheeks.

  Meanwhile Julian watched all, a contemptuous smile upon his lips, full of inward triumph.

  On the same day, late in the evening, in a quiet and solitary defile two Mesopotamian monks were journeying afoot together. They had been sent by Syrian bishops to the council, had escaped the palatine guards with great difficulty, and now, their minds at peace, were proceeding towards Ravenna to embark as quickly as possible upon the ship which was to restore them to the desert. Fatigue and sadness were on their faces. Ephraim, one of the two, was extremely old; the other, Pimenus, a lad.

  Ephraim said to Pimenus—

  “It is time to regain the desert, brother. Better to hear the howling of jackal and lion than the cry that dinned our ears in the Imperial palace. Happy are those who speak not. Happy those who hide themselves in desert places, beyond arguments of masters of the Church, who have understood the uselessness of words; who debate nothing. Happy is he who seeks not to understand God’s mysteries, but who, merging his spirit into Thine, sings to Thy face, O Lord, like a harp; understanding how difficult it is to know, how easy to love Thee!”

  Ephraim was silent, and Pimenus murmured—

  “Amen!”

  The quiet of night enveloped the pair, and courageously, steering by the stars, the two monks took their way eastwards rejoicing in the majesty of their barren road.

  * * *

  XVI

  The city of Milan lay basking in the sun; and by every street the crowd was turning its steps towards the chief public square.

  Tremendous acclamations ran through the throng, and in the triumphant chariot, drawn by twenty horses white as swans, appeared the Emperor. His chariot seat was so lofty that the people were obliged to throw their heads back to behold him. His robes, besown with precious stones, sparkled dazzlingly in the sun. In his right hand he held the sceptre, in the left the Imperial globe crested by a cross.

  Motionless as a statue, outrageously painted, he looked straight before him without turning his head, which was held stiff as in a vice. During the whole journey, and despite the joltings of the car, the Emperor stirred not a finger, nor coughed, nor blinked the steady stare of his eyes.

  Constantius had acquired this immobility by years of effort, and was particularly proud of it, considering it an indispensable part of Imperial etiquette. On such occasions he would have preferred to undergo torture rather than betray his mortal nature by sneezing, coughing, or wiping off the sweat which stood in beads on his forehead.

  Although squat and bow-legged he imagined himself gigantic. When the chariot disappeared under the arch of triumph, not far from the baths of Maximian Hercules, the Emperor bowed his head as if he were afraid of striking his head against the lofty gates which would have freely taken a Cyclops beneath them.

  Each side of the road was lined with palatine guards helmeted and cuirassed in gold, the two ranks of the bodyguard flashing in the sun like streams of lightning.

  Round the Imperial chariot great dragon-shaped standards were floating. The purple stuff, swollen by the wind engulfed in the gullets of the monsters, gave out a shrill sound like the hiss of snakes, and the long purple tails of the dragons wavered to and fro above the people. In the Forum were drawn up all the legions quartered in Milan. Thunders of applause welcomed the Emperor. Constantius was pleased. The noise had neither been too feeble nor too tumultuous. Arranged beforehand according to the strictest etiquette, the soldiers had been instructed to be enthusiastic with moderation and respect.

  Giving each of his motions a kind of stiff and pedantic emphasis, Constantius solemnly descended from the chariot and went up to the tribune raised above the square. It was draped with ragged standards of old victories and studded with metal eagles.

  The trumpets sounded up anew in the call denoting that the leader desired to speak to his army. The Forum was instantly hushed.

  “Optimi reipublicæ defensores!“ began Constantius. (Excellent defenders of the Republic.)

  The discourse was long-winded, tedious, full of scholastic flowers of rhetoric.

  Julian in Court dress now ascended the steps of the tribune, and the fratricide invested the last descendant of Constantius Chlorus with the sacred purple of the Cæsars.

  The sunlight filtered through the thin silk when the Emperor raised the purple to enrobe the kneeling Julian. The rich hue tinged the pale face of the new Cæsar, who murmured inwardly the prophetic verse of the Iliad—

  “Eyes closed by purple death and puissant Destiny....”

  And nevertheless Constantius was welcoming him:

  “Recepisti primævus originis tuæ splendidum florem, amatissime mihi omnium frater.“ (Still young, you have attained already the flower of your royal birth, most beloved of all my brothers!)

  An enthusiastic roar rose from the legions. Constantius became rather gloomy; that shout had slightly exceeded the proper bounds. Julian must have pleased the soldiers.

  “Glory and prosperity to Cæsar Julian!” They cheered louder and louder, till it seemed as if they would never cease.

  The new Cæsar thanked the legionaries with a kindly smile, and every soldier clashed his buckler against his knee as a sign of rejoicing.

  It seemed to Julian that it was not by the will of the Emperor, but by the will of the gods, that he had reached this eminence.

  * * *

  Every evening Constantius was in the habit of consecrating a quarter of an hour to the polishing of his nails. It was one of the few toilet delicacies that he permitted himself, being sober, unimaginative, and rather gross than effeminate in all his habits. Paring his nails with little files, polishing them with minute brushes, he gaily asked his favourite eunuch, the grand chamberlain Eusebius, on the evening of the day of investiture—

  “How soon do you think will Julian conquer the Gauls?”

  “I think,” answered Eusebius, “that the next news we shall receive will be of the defeat and death of that young man!”

  “Really?—that would give me much pain! But I have done, don’t you think, everything that lay in my power.... Henceforth he has only himself to blame....”

  Constantius smiled, and bowing his head admired his nails.

  “You have conquered Magnentius,” murmured the eunuch, “you have conquered Vetranio, Constans, Gallus. You will conquer Julian. Then there will be but one shepherd, one flock, God and you alone.”

  “Yes, yes. But, putting Julian on one side, there is still Athanasius. I shall never be happy until, living or dead, he shall have fallen into my hands.”

  “Julian is more to be feared than Athanasius, and you
have invested him to-day in the purple of death. Oh, wisdom of Providence, destroying by inscrutable means all the enemies of Your Eternity! Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, now and during the night of ages!”

  “Amen,” concluded the Emperor, having finished the toilet of his nails and thrown away the last minute brush. He approached the ancient banner of Constantine, the Labarum, which stood always in the sleeping-chamber, knelt down, and contemplating the monogram of Christ which shone in the flicker of the still-burning lamp, began his prayers. He accomplished exactly the prescribed number of salves and signs of the cross, addressing God with an imperturbable faith, as one who never doubts his own worth and acceptability.

  The three-quarters of an hour of devotions having elapsed, Constantius arose with a light heart. Eunuchs undressed him. He lay down on an Imperial couch propped by cherubim of silver on outspread wings, and fell asleep in placid innocence with a child like smile on his lips.

  * * *

  XVII

  At Athens, in one of the most frequented cross-roads, a statue modelled by Arsinoë—The victorious Octavius holding up the head of Brutus—was exhibited to the people, and the Athenians welcomed in the daughter of the senator Helvidius Priscus a renewer of the art of their golden age. But the special dignitaries whose business was to keep watch on the public temper, officers strangely but rightly nicknamed “Inquisitors,” reported to the proper quarters that the statue might arouse liberal sentiments in the people. A resemblance to Julian was discovered in the face of Brutus, and in the work as a whole a criminal allusion to the recent punishment of Gallus. Attempts were made to discover in Octavius some analogy to the Emperor Constantius. The affair took the proportions of an act of treason, and almost fell into the hands of Paul Catena. Luckily the Imperial chanceries sent direct a severe order to the local magistrate, that not only should the statue disappear from the cross-roads, but that it should be broken to pieces under the eyes of government officials.

  Arsinoë wished to hide the statue, but Hortensius was in such mortal affright that he threatened to give up his ward herself to the informers.

  In deep disgust at the degradation of the public, Arsinoë allowed them to do with her work everything that Hortensius desired, and masons broke up the figure.

  Arsinoë hastily left Athens, her guardian having persuaded her to follow him to Rome, where friends had long promised him the office of Imperial quæstor. They installed themselves in a house not far from the Palatine Hill.

  Days flowed by in inactivity, Arsinoë realising that there was no longer scope for the greatness and freedom of antique art. She bore in mind her conversation with Julian at Athens; and it was the only link which restrained her from suicide. The long suspense of inaction seemed to her intolerable. In moments of discouragement she longed to have done with it all, to leave all, to set out for the Gallic battlefield and at the side of the young Cæsar attain power, or perish.

  But she fell seriously ill. In the long and calm days of convalescence she found a devoted consoler in her most faithful adorer, Anatolius, a centurion of the Imperial cavalry, son of a rich merchant of Rhodes.

  He was a Roman centurion, as he used to say himself, merely as the result of a mistake, having only taken to the military career to satisfy the empty-headed ambition of his father, who desired as the summit of earthly honour to see his son clothed in gilt armour.

  Evading discipline by generous gifts, Anatolius passed his life in luxurious idleness, amidst works of art and books, in feastings and indolent and costly travel. The profound lucidity of soul which had characterised ancient Epicureans was not possessed by this modern. He complained to his friends—

  “I suffer from a mortal malady....”

  They would ask him dubiously—

  “What malady?”

  And he would say—

  “What you call my spirit of irony and what seems to me melancholy madness.”

  His finely cut delicate features expressed extreme fatigue. Sometimes he would awake as from a sleep, undertake a wild excursion with fishermen in a hurricane in the open sea, or set off to hunt wild boar and bear, or contemplate hatching a plot against the life of Cæsar, or seek initiation into the terrible mysteries of Mithra and Adonis. On such occasions he was capable of astonishing by his rashness and audacity even those persons who were ignorant of his ordinary way of living.

  But the excitement once evaporated he would return to listlessness and lassitude, still more sleepy, still more cynical and sad.

  “Nothing can be done with you, Anatolius,” Arsinoë used to say to him; “you are so soft that people might think you had no bones.”

  But she felt a kind of Hellenic grace in this last of the Epicureans; liked to read in his weary eyes their melancholy mockery of himself and everything else. He would say—

  “The sage can extract enjoyment from the blackest melancholy, as bees of Hymettus make their best honey with the juice of bitterest plants!” and his gossip soothed Arsinoë, who smilingly used to call Anatolius her physician.

  In reality she became stronger, but never returned to her studio. The sight of chips of marble filled her with painful memories.

  Meanwhile, at the time of which we are speaking Hortensius was preparing wonderful public games in the Flavian Theatre, in honour of his arrival in Rome. He was continually travelling, and busy receiving horses, lions, bears, Scots wolf-dogs, crocodiles from the tropics, and with these, flocks of intrepid hunters, skilled riders, comedians, and gladiators.

  The date of the performance was approaching, and the lions had not arrived from Tarentum, where they had disembarked. The bears had grown thin, famished, timid as lambs.

  Hortensius became sleepless with anxiety.

  Two days before the festival, the gladiators, Saxon prisoners, proud and fearless men for whom he had paid a colossal sum, considering it a disgrace to serve as a sport for the Roman populace, committed suicide by cutting their own throats at night in their prison.

  Hortensius, at that unexpected news, nearly went out of his mind. Now all hope concentrated itself on the crocodiles, which excited the special curiosity of the mob.

  “Have you tried giving them newly-killed hogs’ flesh?” demanded the senator of the slave entrusted with the supervision of these precious beasts.

  “Yes; but they won’t eat it.”

  “Have you tried veal?”

  “They won’t touch that, either.”

  “And wheaten bread soaked in cream?”

  “They turn away from it and go to sleep.”

  “They must be ill or too fatigued.”

  “We’ve even opened their jaws and shoved the food down their throats. They cough it up again.”

  “Ah! by Jupiter, those foul beasts will be the death of me! We must release them after the first day in the arena or else they will die of hunger,” groaned Hortensius falling into a chair.

  Arsinoë contemplated him with envy. He at least was not tired of life.

  She passed into an isolated chamber whence the windows looked down on the garden. There in the calm moonlight her young sister Myrrha, who was now about sixteen years old, was softly touching the strings of a harp, and the notes were falling like tears. Arsinoë kissed Myrrha, who answered her by a smile without ceasing to play. A loud whistle sounded behind the garden wall:

  “It is he,” said Myrrha, rising. “Come quickly!”

  She grasped Arsinoë’s hand tightly. The two young girls threw black cloaks over their shoulders and went out. The wind was chasing the clouds along, and the moon, sometimes hidden, sometimes shone out brightly. Arsinoë opened a door in the outer wall of the house. A young man wrapped in a monk’s hooded mantle was awaiting them.

  “We are not late, Juventinus?” asked Myrrha.

  “I was afraid that you were not coming!”

  They walked long and rapidly down narrow lanes, then out among the vineyards, issuing at length into the Roman plain. In the distance the brick
-built aqueduct of Servius Tullius was outlined against the sky. Juventinus turned round and said—

  “Somebody is following us!”

  The two young girls turned round also. A flood of moonlight fell upon them, and the individual following them exclaimed cheerfully—

  “Arsinoë! Myrrha!... And so I have found you again! Where are you going?”

  “We’re going among the Christians,” answered Arsinoë. “Come with us, Anatolius; you will see some curious things.”

  “What do I hear? Among the Christians?—You have always been their enemy!” wondered the centurion.

  “With age, my friend, one grows better and more tolerant, or indifferent, if you like to call it so. This is a superstition neither better nor worse than other superstitions. And then one is capable of a good deal when bored. I am going among them for Myrrha’s sake; it pleases her....”

  “Where is the church? We’re out in the plain,” murmured Anatolius.

  “The churches are destroyed or profaned by their fellow-Christians, the Arians, who believe in Christ otherwise than they do. You must have heard the debates about it at Court. So now the adversaries of the Arians are wont to pray in secret in subterranean vaults, as in the time of the first persecutions.”

  Myrrha and Juventinus had lingered a little behind the others; Arsinoë and Anatolius could talk freely.

  “Who is he?” asked the centurion with a nod towards Juventinus.

  “The last scion of the ancient patrician family of the Furii,” answered Arsinoë. “The mother wishes to make a consul of him. His only dream is to flee into some Thebaïd, or monkish community in the desert, to spend his days in prayer. He loves his mother and hides himself from her as from an enemy.”

  “The descendants of the Furii, monks?... ‘T is a queer age,” sighed the Epicurean.

  They approached the arenarium, old excavations in crumbling tufa, and went down narrow steps to the bottom of the quarry. The volcanic blocks of red earth looked strange-hued in the moonlight. Juventinus took a little clay lamp from a dark niche, and lighted it; the long flame flickered feebly in its narrow gullet.