“Take this crown,” said Maximus, placing a wreath of acanthus-leaves on the head of Julian, with the point of his sword.
But the catechumen flung the coronal upon the ground with a cry—
“The Sun only is my crown, the Sun alone!”
Then he stamped on the acanthus, and lifting his arms skyward repeated a third time—
“Now, until death, my crown is the Sun!”
The mystery was over. Maximus kissed the initiate. On the face of the old man as he did so hovered a gleam of strange significance.
While they were retracing their steps through the beech-forest the Emperor spoke to the enchanter—
“Maximus, I think you are hiding from me some secret deeper yet.” He turned towards the old man his pale face, on which, as was the custom, the traces of the sacred blood were not yet wiped away.
“What do you wish to know, Julian?”
“What lot shall fall to me?”
“You will conquer.”
“And Constantius?”
“Constantius is no more.”
“What mean you?”
“Wait! the Sun shall reveal your glory!”
Julian dared not question further. Both men regained the camp in silence. In Julian’s tent a courier from Asia Minor, the tribune Cintula, stood waiting. He knelt and kissed the edge of the Imperial paludamentum—
“Glory to the divine Augustus Julian!”
“Do you come with a message from Constantius?”
“Constantius is no more!”
“What say you?”
Julian trembled and threw a glance at Maximus, whose face remained inscrutable.
“By the will of God,” continued Cintula, “your enemy departed this life in the town of Mopsucrenam, not far from Macellum.”
That evening the army assembled on a hill. The death of Constantius was already made known to them.
Augustus Claudius Flavius Julian took his station on a hillock so that all the soldiers could see him; crownless, weaponless, unarmoured, and enswathed head to foot in purple. To conceal the traces of the blood, which might not be washed off, he had enveloped his head and veiled his face in the purple silk. In this attire he bore the appearance rather of a sacrificial priest than of an emperor. Behind him rose the ruddy forest wrapping the base of Mount Hæmus. Above his head hung, like a golden banner, the yellow branches of a maple. Far as the eye could see, the plain of Thrace lay below, crossed by the white marble pavement of the Roman road stretching victoriously away to the Propontic Sea. Julian gazed at his army. When the legions moved their stations, red flashes from the sunset were reflected upon burnished helmets, breastplates, and eagles; the lances above the cohorts seemed like lighted tapers. By Julian’s side was Maximus, who spoke in Cæsar’s ear—
“Look forth upon this sight of glory! your hour is come! Act now!”
The magician pointed to the Christian banner, the Labarum, with its crest of the monogram of Christ, the flag made on the pattern of that fiery standard bearing the inscription, “Through this shalt thou conquer,” which Constantine the Great had seen miraculous in the heavens.
The troops made no stir. Julian in a clear and solemn voice addressed them—
“Comrades, our work is finished. Now we will go to Constantinople! Give thanks to the Olympians, who have given us the victory!”
These words were only heard by the first ranks, but there were numerous Christians among them. These were roused by the last startling expression.
“Lord have mercy on us! what is it he says?” cried one.
“Do you see that old man with the white beard?” said another to his comrade.
“Yes.”
“That’s the Devil, who, in the body of Maximus the enchanter, is tempting Cæsar!”
But the more distant ranks, who had not heard Julian’s words, cried—
“Glory to Augustus Julian! Glory! Glory!” and louder and louder yet from outskirts of the hill, as far as they were covered by the legions, arose a cry repeated by thousands of voices—
“Glory!... Glory!...”
Mountains, air, earth, and forest trembled with the voice of the multitude.
“Look, look!” murmured the dismayed Christians; “the Labarum is being lowered!” And in fact the holy banner was being veiled before the Emperor. A military blacksmith came down from the wood with a brazier and red-hot pincers.
Julian, whose face, in spite of the ruddy gleams of the purple and the sun, was dark with strong emotion, wrenched the golden cross, with its monogram of precious stones, from the staff of the Labarum. Pearls, emeralds, and rubies were scattered on the ground, and the glittering cross buried in the earth, stamped under the sandal of the Roman Cæsar.
From a casket Maximus immediately drew forth a little silver statue of the Sun-god, Mithra-Helios; and the smith in a few instants soldered it to the staff of the Labarum.
Before the army had recovered from its astonishment and fear, Constantine’s sacred banner rose above the head of the Emperor, crowned with the image of Apollo. An old soldier, who was a devout Christian, turned away and veiled his eyes to avoid seeing the sight of horror.
“Sacrilege! sacrilege!” he muttered, turning pale.
“Woe, woe, upon us!” groaned another; “Satan has entoiled our Emperor!”
Julian knelt before the standard and, stretching out his arms to the little silver image, exclaimed—
“Glory to the invincible Sun, king of all gods!... Augustus worships the eternal Helios; god of light, god of reason, god of the gladness and joy upon Olympus!”
The last rays of sunset lighted the bold beauty of the god of Delphi, and rayed his head. The legionaries stood in silence, save that in the wood the dry leaves could be heard falling. The conflagration of the sunset, the purple of the sacrificial king, the withered woods, all these breathed a magnificence as of sumptuous obsequies. One of the men in the front rank muttered a single word so distinctly that it reached Julian’s ear, and thrilled him—
“Anti-Christ!“
* * *
PART II
~
* * *
I
HARD BY THE STABLES, IN the Hippodrome of Constantinople, there was a room which served as a sort of common den for grooms, women-riders, actors, and charioteers. Even in daytime lamps were kept burning in this stifling resort, where the air smelt strongly of dung-heap and stable. When the curtain at the door was lifted a dazzling flood of light invaded this den; and in the sunny distance could be seen empty tiers of seats, and the magnificent staircase joining the Imperial box to the apartments of Constantine’s palace. Egyptian obelisks also were seen in the arena and in the centre, on the yellow sand, a gigantic sacrificial altar of marvellous workmanship, wrought of three entwined serpents of bronze, bearing on their flat heads a Delphian tripod.
Crackings of whips, shouts of riders, snortings of horses, came from the arena, and the muffled sound of wheels on the soft sand went by like a rushing of wings. No races were going on, but merely the preparatory exercise for the races which were to take place a few days later. In one corner of the stable a naked athlete, rubbed over with oil and covered with dust, a girdle of leather round his hips, was raising and lowering dumb-bells. Throwing back his shaggy head, he arched his back till the joints cracked, and at every effort his face grew crimson and the veins of his neck swelled.
Preceded by slaves, a young Byzantine woman of patrician rank approached the athlete. She was dressed in a morning robe of delicate hues; and a veil thrown over her head covered her aristocratic and slightly-faded features.
She was a zealous Christian, widow of a Roman senator; beloved of monks for her generous donations to monasteries, and abounding charity. At first she concealed her escapades, but soon perceived that to combine the love of the church with the love of the circus was quite the fashion.
Everybody knew that Stratonice detested the coxcombs of Constantinople, curled and painted, nervous and capricious as she
was herself; it was her temperament and fancy to mingle the most costly perfumes of Arabia with the enervating heat of circus and stable. Hot tears of repentance, fervent confessions to tactful confessors, were of no avail; and this little woman, frail and delicate as some ivory trinket, cared for nothing but the coarse caresses of a certain famous circus-rider.
Stratonice was watching the exercises of the gymnast with a practised eye, while he, preserving a stupid expression on his beefy face, paid her not the slightest attention. She muttered something to her slave, with simple wonder admiring the powerful back and the terrible Herculean muscles rolling under the red skin of the shoulders, when, bending with deep inhalations, like the wind of a forge, he raised the iron weights above his handsome tawny head.
The curtain was lifted. The crowd of spectators recoiled, and two Cappadocian mares, a white and a black, pushed into the stables, ridden by a young horsewoman, who, with a guttural cry, adroitly leapt from one beast to another, and thence to the ground.
She was solidly-built, hale and sprightly as her mares, and upon her bare body shone fine drops of sweat.
Zephirinus, the elegant sub-deacon of the Basilica of the Holy Apostles, smilingly hastened towards her. A great lover of the circus, a frequenter of races and racing-stables, this young man would wager heavy sums for the blue (veneta) against the green (prasina). With his red-heeled morocco boots, his painted eyes, and curled hair, Zephirinus had much more the appearance of a young girl than of a servant of the church. Behind him stood a slave, burdened with packets of pretty stuffs and boxes, purchases of every kind from famous shops.
“Krokala, here are the perfumes you asked for the day before yesterday.”
The sub-deacon offered the equestrienne a flask sealed with blue wax.
“I’ve been hunting in shops all the morning, and have only found it in one. It is pure nard, and arrived yesterday from Apamea!”
“And what purchases are these?” demanded Krokala.
“Oh, the silks in fashion!... ornaments—sets of jewels!”
“All of them for your——?”
“Yes, all for my most noble sister, the devout matron Bezilla; one must help one’s near relatives! She trusts nobody’s taste but mine for choosing stuffs. From early morning I am under her orders. My head goes round, but I don’t complain. No!... No!... Bezilla is so good ... such a holy woman!”
“Unfortunately old,” laughed Krokala. “Here, boy, wipe the sweat off the black mare with fresh fig leaves.”
“Old age also has its virtues,” replied the sub-deacon, gently rubbing together his white hands; they were loaded with rings.
Then he whispered in Krokala’s ear: “This evening?”
“I’m not sure ... perhaps. Are you going to bring me something?”
“You needn’t be afraid, Krokala, I won’t come empty-handed! There’s a piece of stuff ... a quite marvellous pattern.”
He kissed two of his fingers, adding: “Something perfectly dazzling!”
“Where did you pick it up?”
“Oh, at Pyrmix’s of course, near the baths. For what do you take me? You might make a long tarantinidion out of it. You can’t imagine what embroidery there is on it! Guess the subject!”
“I don’t know!... Flowers—animals?”
“In gold and silk—the whole story of Diogenes, the Cynic.”
“Ah, that must be pretty!” cried the girl. “Come, by all means, I shall expect you.”
Zephirinus glanced at the clepsydra, a water-clock placed in a niche in the wall.
“I am late—quite late! I must go on to a money-lender, a jeweller, then the patriarch, and then to the church. Till then, good-bye.”
“Don’t forget,” Krokala cried to him, with a mischievous gesture.
The sub-deacon disappeared, followed by his slave.
A crowd of grooms, dancing girls, gymnasts, and tamers of wild beasts invaded the stables. With his face protected by a mask, the gladiator, Mermillion, was heating a bar of iron red-hot; he was taming a lion newly received from Africa, and which could be heard roaring through the stable-wall.
“You’ll be the death of me, granddaughter, and you’ll go to hell yourself! Oh, oh, how my back hurts! I’m done for!”
“Is that you, grandfather Gnyphon? What do you want?” asked Krokala in a vexed voice.
Gnyphon was a little old man with cunning tearful eyes, which shone under eyebrows active as two white mice. He had the violet nose of a drunkard, wore Libyan breeches, patched and botched here and there, and on his head a Phrygian cap.
“You’ve come again for money,” grumbled Krokala, “and you’ve been drinking again.”
“It’s a sin to use such language. You’ll have to answer for my soul to God. Just think what you’ve brought me to. I am living now in the Smokatian quarter; I hire a little cellar from an image-carver, and every day I have to see him making his horrible idols in marble. There’s a nice occupation for a Christian! I scarcely open my eyes in the morning, when tap, tap, tap,—my landlord’s hammering his marble—bringing white devils into the world; damnable gods that stand laughing at me. How am I to keep out of the wine-shop? O Lord, have mercy on us! I’m simply weltering in Pagan horrors, like a pig in a sty, and it’ll be reckoned against us ... and who’ll be responsible, I’d like to know? Why, you! You’re rolling in money, and yet you leave a poor miserable old man——”
“You lie, Gnyphon! You’re not poor; you’re a miser; you’ve got a money-box under the bed!”
Gnyphon made a despairing gesture: “Hush—hush!”
To change the subject he said: “Do you know where I’m going?”
“To the tavern, of course!”
“Worse than that. To the Temple of Dionysus! That temple, since the days of holy Constantine, has been buried under rubbish; but to-morrow, by the august order of the Emperor Julian, it will be all shining again. And I’ve hired myself out to do the sweeping, although I shall lose my soul and be packed off to hell for it. But I’ve allowed myself to be tempted because I’m poor and hungry. My granddaughter doesn’t do anything to support me.... That’s what I’ve come to!”
“You let me be, Gnyphon. Here you are! Now go! And don’t come again when you’re drunk!”
Krokala flung some pieces of silver to her grandfather, and then, leaping on an Illyrian stallion, stood erect on his croup, touched him with the whip, and set off at a gallop round the Hippodrome. Gnyphon clacked his tongue, and said with pride—
“To think it was I who brought her up!”
The firm, bare body of the horsewoman shone in the morning sun, and her floating red hair matched the colour of the stallion.
“Eh, Zotick,” cried Gnyphon to an old slave who was raking horse-dung into a basket, “come with me to clean the temple of Dionysus! You’re a master in these things! I’ll pay you three obols for it.”
“Of course I will,” answered Zotick. “Just a moment to trim the lamp for the goddess, and I’m at your service.”
The goddess was Atalanta, patron of grooms, dunghills, and stables. Coarsely carven in wood, and looking little more than a smoky log, Atalanta figured in a damp corner. But Zotick, who had been bred among horses, used to worship her, often praying with tears in his eyes, arraying her coarse blockish feet with sweet violets, in the belief that she healed all his ills, and would preserve him in life and in death.
Gnyphon went out into the open space, the Forum of Constantine, which was circular, and adorned with colonnades and triumphal arches. In the midst a gigantic porphyry column rose from a massive pedestal, and bore on its summit, at a height of a hundred and twenty cubits, a bronze statue of Apollo by Phidias, which had been carried off from a Phrygian city. The head of the Sun-god had been broken, and, with barbaric taste, the head of the Christian Emperor, the apostolic Constantine, had been fitted in its stead to the neck of the image.
His brow was surrounded by gilt rays. In his right hand Apollo Constantine held the sceptre, and in his left th
e globe. At the foot of the colossus was lodged a little Christian chapel, a kind of palladium, in which worship was still offered in the time of Constantine. The Christians defended the practice by the argument that in the bronze body of Apollo, within the Sun-god’s very breast, a talisman was hidden—a piece of the Most Holy Cross brought from Jerusalem. The Emperor Julian closed this chapel.
Gnyphon and Zotick proceeded along a narrow and lengthy street, which led straight to the Chalcedonian stairs, not far from the fortress. Many public edifices were being built, and others were rebuilding, for so hastily had they been erected to please Constantius that they already were crumbling away. Inquisitive gazers were wandering in this street, stopping at merchants’ shops; porters were passing by, slaves following their masters. Overhead, hammers resounded; cranes were creaking, and saws grinding the white stone. Labourers were heaving at the end of ropes huge timbers, and blocks of marble glittered against the blue. A smell of damp plaster came from the new houses, and a fine white dust fell on the heads of passers-by. On this side and that, between the dazzling white walls steeped in sunlight, the smiling blue waves of the Propontic, trimmed with galley-sails like the wings of sea-gulls, shone at the end of narrow alleys.
Gnyphon heard, as he went by, a conversation between two workmen who were weighing mortar into a sack—
“Why did you become a Christian?” asked one of them.
“Just think, the Christians have six times as many feast days as Hellenists! Nobody harms you.... I advise you to follow my example. One is much freer among Christians.”
Where four roads met, the pressure of a crowd pinned Gnyphon and Zotick against the wall. In the middle of the street there was a block in the traffic; the chariots could neither advance nor draw back; shouts, oaths, blows of the whip, were exchanged. Forty oxen were dragging, on an enormous stone-wheeled cart, a jasper column. The earth shook under its weight.
“Whither are you dragging that?” asked Gnyphon.
“From the Basilica to the Temple of Hera. The Christians had carried it off for their church. Now it is going back to its proper position.”
The Death of the Gods Page 19