The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Merezhkovsky

  Then Marcus Ausonius, who up to that time had been mute, murmured thoughtfully—

  “Well, one can forgive most things, but why does he take away the last remaining joy in life—the circus, and the fights of gladiators? My friends, the sight of blood causes, and will always cause, an inexplicable pleasure to man.... ‘Tis a sacred and mysterious enjoyment. There’s no gaiety without bloodshed, no greatness on the earth. The smell of blood is the smell of Rome!”

  The last scion of the Ausonii glanced naïvely round at his hearers. Sometimes he looked like a boy, sometimes like an old man. The swollen torso of Garguillus heaved on the floor. Raising his head, he glanced at Ausonius.

  “Neatly put. Smell of blood, smell of Rome!... Go on, Marcus, you’re inspired to-day....”

  “I say what I feel, my dear fellows. Blood is so pleasant to man that even the Christians can’t do without it. They want to purify the world through bloodshed. Julian is making a great mistake. In taking away the circus from the people he’s robbing them of their chief enjoyment, which is naturally sanguinary. The populace would have pardoned almost anything; but it won’t pardon that!”

  Marcus pronounced the last words solemnly, and then suddenly slipped a hand behind his back and his face beamed.

  “Are you perspiring!” asked Garguillus.

  “Yes!” answered Ausonius, with a rapturous smile. “Rub, slave, rub!”

  He lay down on the couch. The bath-slave fell to kneading the poor anæmic limbs, which had a deadly bluish tint.

  From their porphyry niches the figures of ancient time looked down with scorn through the milky smoke.

  Meanwhile at the cross-roads, outside the baths, a crowd was collecting.

  At night Antioch glittered with thousands of lights, especially along the Syngon, which ran through the city for a distance of twenty-six stadia, with porticoes and colonnades thronged with shops throughout its length.

  In the crowd, pleasantries about the Emperor ran from mouth to mouth. Street boys rushed about from group to group shouting satirical ditties. An old woman caught one of the little vagabonds, and, lifting his shirt, administered sound correction with the sole of her sandal.

  “Take that! and that! to teach you to sing such disgraceful things!”

  The urchin uttered piercing squeals.

  Another, clambering on the back of a comrade, drew on the white wall with a piece of coal a long-bearded goat, crowned with the Imperial diadem, while a third wrote underneath in big letters, “This is the impious Julian!” and trying to make his voice formidable yelled—

  “The butcher comes

  With a big, big knife!”

  An old man in the long black ecclesiastical habit passing by, halted, listened to the boy, and cast up his eyes to heaven—

  “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings proceedeth wisdom! Were we not better off under Cappa and Khi?”

  “What do you mean by Cappa and Khi?”

  “Don’t you understand? The Greek letter Cappa (Κ) begins the name of Constantius, and Khi (Χ) is the initial of ‘Christ.’ I mean by that, that Constantius and Christ did no harm to the inhabitants of Antioch while the philosophers....”

  “True, true! One was better off under Cappa and Khi!”

  A drunken man, overhearing this colloquy, hawked the saying about the streets, and the pleasantry circulated through Antioch, and being manifestly absurd tickled the popular fancy.

  A scene of still greater animation might have been witnessed in the tavern situated opposite the baths. This tavern belonged to the Armenian Syrax, who had long ago transferred his commercial undertakings from Cæsarea to Antioch. From bulging wine-skins and enormous jars, wine was pouring freely into tin cups. Here, as everywhere, the conversation turned on the Emperor’s doings.

  The little Syrian soldier Strombix, the same who had taken part in Julian’s campaign against the barbarians in Gaul, was distinguishing himself by special eloquence. By his side lolled the faithful giant, his friend, the Sarmatian, Aragaris. Strombix felt as happy as a fish in water; he loved risings and rebellions better than anything in the world.

  He was preparing to make a speech. An old rag-picker had just brought in a sensational piece of news—

  “We’re all doomed!... The Lord’s hand is heavy on us.... Yesterday a neighbour of mine told me something which at first I refused to believe!”

  “Tell us, good woman!”

  “Well, it was at Gaza. The Pagans seized a convent. They made the nuns come out. They tied them to gallows in the market-place, beat ‘em to death, and after rolling their warm bodies, all hacked to pieces, in grains of barley, threw ‘em to the swine!”

  “I saw myself,” added a young weaver, “a Pagan at Hieropolis, who was eating the liver of a deacon!”

  “What an abomination!” murmured the auditors crossing themselves.

  With the help of Aragaris, Strombix clambered on to a table, which was still sticky with the spilth of wine, and striking an oratorical attitude, addressed the crowd, while Aragaris proudly contemplated his friend.

  “Citizens,” began Strombix; “how long shall we wait before we rebel? Don’t you know that Julian has sworn, if he returns a conqueror from Persia, to gather together the holy defenders of the Church and throw them to beasts in the amphitheatre? To turn the porticoes of basilicas into granaries, and the churches into stables....”

  A hump-backed old man, livid with fear, tumbled over on the tavern floor. It was the husband of the rag-picker, himself a glass-blower. Rising, he slapped his thigh despairingly, stared at the company, and faltered—

  “Ah, what a situation!... And there are two hundred corpses in the wells and the aqueducts!”

  “Where? What corpses?”

  “Hush!... Hush!” murmured the glass-blower.

  “They say that the renegade has long taken his auguries from the intestines of living men; and all this for his war against the Persians and his victory over the Christians!”

  Overcome with satisfaction he muttered under his breath—

  “Why, in the cellars of the palace at Antioch they’ve discovered chests full of human bones ... and in the city of Karra, near Edessa, the Christians have found, in a subterranean temple, the corpse of a woman hanging by her hair with her body slit open.... Julian wanted to inspect the liver of an infant for his cursed war.”

  “Eh? Gluturius! Is it true that human bones are found in the sewers? You ought to know!” said a shoemaker, a confirmed sceptic.

  Gluturius, the scavenger, who stood near the door, not venturing in because he smelt badly, being thus addressed, began, according to his custom, to smile and to blink his inflamed eyelids:

  “No, worthy friends,” he answered humbly. “Newborn infants are sometimes found there, or skeletons of asses and camels, but I never yet saw a corpse of man or woman.”

  When Strombix resumed his speech, the scavenger listened religiously, rubbing his bare leg against the door post.

  “Brother men,” cried the orator, with fiery indignation, “let us be revenged! Let us die like ancient Romans!”

  “No use bursting your lungs,” grumbled the shoemaker. “When we get to that stage, you’ll be the first to turn tail and let the others die!”

  “You’re a set of cowards,” chimed in a painted woman, dressed in a poor and tawdry dress. She was a street-walker, nicknamed by her admirers the She-wolf. “Do you know,” she went on wrathfully, “what the holy martyrs Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tertian replied to their executioners?”

  “No, She-wolf, tell us.”

  “Well, I’ve heard. At Myrrha, in Phrygia, three young men, Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tertian, had burst into a Greek temple by night, and smashed the idols to the glory of God. The proconsul Amachius had them seized, stretched them on dripping-pans, and ordered fires to be lighted under them. The three martyrs said: ‘If you want to taste cooked flesh, Amachius, turn us over on the other side, that we may not be served up to you half-cooked!’ and all t
hree laughed and spat in the face of the proconsul. And everybody saw an angel come down out of heaven with three crowns!You wouldn’t have spoken so! You’re too fearful for your skins.... It’s heart-breaking, just to look at you!”

  The She-wolf turned away in disgust.

  Cries rose from the street.

  “Perhaps they’re breaking up idols?” suggested the shoemaker pleasantly.

  “Forward, citizens! Follow me!” shouted Strombix, waving his arms; but he slipped on the table, and would have fallen had not Aragaris caught him.

  Everybody rushed to the door. An enormous crowd was advancing down the principal street and, filling the narrow cross-roads, brought up before the baths.

  “Old Pamva! Old Pamva!” the idlers were shouting. “He’s come from the desert to help the people; to pull down the great, and to save the humble and poor!”

  * * *

  XI

  The old man had a coarse face, with high cheek-bones, bearded to the eyes. A patched piece of sacking served him as inner robe, and a hooded sheep’s skin as cloak or chlamys. For twenty years, Pamva had never washed himself, considering cleanliness sinful, and believing that a special fiend presided over any acts of care for the body. He dwelt in a fearful desert, the Berean, round Chalybon, to the east of Antioch, where serpents and scorpions swarmed at the bottom of the arid water-courses. His lodging was the deep sandy hollow of a dried-up well, called coubba in Syriac, where he used to feed himself on five stalks a day of a sweet and flowery kind of reed. He had nearly died of starvation. His disciples descended to feed him by means of ropes. Then, during seven years, he lived on a half-measure of boiled lentils. His sight grew feeble; his skin became leprous and scurvy; he therefore added a little oil to his lentils, and accused himself of worship of the belly.

  Pamva, learning from his disciples that the Emperor Julian, the fierce Anti-Christ, was persecuting the Christians, left his retreat and came to Antioch to strengthen weak-kneed believers—

  “Listen! listen!... he’s going to speak.”

  Pamva climbed the staircase of the baths and halted on a broad landing. His eyes glittered with condensed ire. He stretched out his arms, pointing out to the people palaces, pagan temples, baths, shops, courts of justice, all the monuments of Antioch.

  “Not a stone of these shall remain! All shall crumble and disappear. The holy fire shall burn up the universe. The heavens, like a smouldering palace, shall sink away! That shall be the terrible judgment of Christ, the unimaginable spectacle. Whither shall I turn mine eyes, and what shall I wonder at, if it be not the groaning of kings, cast down into darkness? If it be not the terror of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, shivering in her nakedness before the Crucified? If it be not the flight of Jupiter, and all the Olympians, before the thunders of the Most High?... Triumph, ye martyrs, and rejoice, ye persecuted! See your judges, the Roman proconsuls, seized by more terrible flames than yours. Nor shall the syllogisms of Aristotle, nor the demonstrations of Plato save you, philosophers, hurled into hell! And, on that stage, their actors shall roar, as the heroes of Sophocles and Æschylus never roared before! And their rope-dancers, trust, me, shall dance a quicker step in that fire! And we, the poor and ignorant, shall rejoice and say to the strong, wise, and the haughty: Behold the Crucified, the son of the carpenter and the work-woman, the King of Judæa, crowned in purple and thorns! Behold the Sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan woman possessed of the devil! See Him, whom you led bound with cords into your prætorium, Him whose thirst you quenched with vinegar and hyssop! And we shall hear in answer weepings and gnashings of teeth. We shall laugh, our hearts overflowing with joy! Come, come, come, Lord Jesus!”

  Gluturius, the cleanser of sewers, fell on his knees, and blinking his inflamed eyelids as if he saw Christ descending, stretched out his arms. The metal-founder clenched his fists, collected his forces like a bull ready to charge. And the livid-faced weaver, trembling in all his limbs, with an amazed smile was murmuring, “Lord, let me, too, suffer!”

  The animal faces of beggars and sharpers expressed the mischievous triumph of the weak over the strong; of slaves over their masters. The She-wolf grinned in silence, and an insatiable thirst for vengeance twinkled in her drunken eyes.

  Suddenly, the jingle of weapons and the heavy step of horses. The Roman legionaries of the night-watch wheeled round the corner of the road. At their head strode the prefect, Sallustius Secundus, a man with aquiline nose, open face, and a look of calmness and kindly intelligence. He wore the senatorial laticlave, and gave an impression of self-confidence and patrician nobleness. Above the distant Pantheon, erected by Antiochus Seleucus, slowly arose the great reddish moon, and its rays were glittering on shields and breastplates—

  “Disperse, citizens!” said Sallustius, addressing the crowd. “By order of Augustus crowds are forbidden in the streets of Antioch by night.”

  The populace groaned and murmured. Street-boys whistled, and one audacious voice sang—

  “Good-bye to the white cocks!

  Good-bye to the white ox!

  For Julian knocks them on the head

  To feed his devils and the dead!”

  There was a threatening clash of arms. The legionaries unsheathed their swords and prepared to charge. Old Pamva struck the marble flags with his staff, and shouted—

  “Hail, gallant army of Satan! Hail, wise Roman dignitary! You’ll probably remember the time when you burned us, when you taught us philosophy, and we prayed God to save your lost souls! Welcome to you!”

  The legionaries gripped their swords, but the prefect with a gesture stopped them. He saw that the crowd was in his power.

  “What are you threatening us with, blockhead?” asked Pamva, addressing himself to Sallustius. “What can you do? All we want for vengeance is a black night and two or three torches. You fear the Alemanni and the Persians. We are more terrible than they. We are everywhere in the midst of you, inviolable, innumerable! We have no boundaries, no father-land; we recognise but one republic, the universal republic! Born but yesterday, already we are filling the world, filling your cities, your fortresses, your islands, city councils, camps, palaces, senates, forums! We leave you your temples!... And but for our humility, our fraternity, choosing rather to die than to slay, we should have blotted you out....

  “We want neither sword nor fire! So many are we, that if we withdrew, you would perish. Your cities would become solitudes, you would be frightened at your own loneliness, at the silence of the universe! All life would stop, at that death-touch! Remember the Roman Empire exists only on sufferance, sustained by the mercy of us Christians!”

  All eyes being fixed on Pamva no one perceived a man clothed in the old chlamys of a wandering philosopher, with a lean yellow face, curling hair, and long black beard, quickly coming through the lines of legionaries, who respectfully made way for him. He was followed by a few companions, and, leaning towards Sallustius, whispered—

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “They will perhaps disperse of themselves,” responded Sallustius. “The Galileans have already too many martyrs for us to make any more of them. They fly towards death as bees to honey!”

  But the man in the philosopher’s robe advanced and cried out with a distinct voice, like a captain accustomed to command—

  “Scatter the crowd. Seize the ringleaders!”

  Everybody wheeled round, and in alarm shouted—

  “Augustus! Augustus Julian!”

  The soldiers charged with drawn swords. The old rag-picker was knocked down, struggling and shrieking under the feet of the legionaries. Many fled, and Strombix was the first to take advantage of the general confusion. Stones hurtled through the air. The metal-founder, defending old Pamva, hurled a large jagged flint at a legionary. It struck the She-wolf, who fell with a slight cry, covered with blood, and convinced that she was dying a martyr.

  A legionary seized Gluturius; but the sewer-cleaner gave himself up so readily (the prospect of becoming an admire
d martyr appearing so enviable in comparison with his present occupation), and his rags gave off such a stink, that the disgusted soldier immediately released his prisoner.

  In the midst of the crowd there was a market-gardener who had chanced by, leading an ass laden with cabbages. Mouth agape, he had listened to old Pamva from beginning to end. Noticing the danger, he now tried to flee, but his ass starkly refused. In vain was the beast belaboured. Buttressed against his forefeet, with ears lowered and tail lifted, it uttered a deafening series of brays, drowning in its triumphant stupidity the death-rattle of the dying, the oaths of the soldiery, and the prayers of Galileans.

  Oribazius, who was among the companions of Julian, came up to the Emperor—

  “Julian, what are you doing? Is it worthy of your wisdom?...”

  The Emperor cast on him a stern look, and Oribazius was silent, not daring to finish his protest.

  In the last few months Julian had not only changed but grown old. His worn face had the sad and terrible expression of those gnawed by some long and incurable malady, or absorbed in some fixed idea akin to madness. His powerful hands were unconsciously tearing to pieces a roll of papyrus. At last he said in a deep voice, with eyes kept steadily on Oribazius—

  “Away! I know what I am doing.... With these scoundrels who have no faith in the gods, one cannot deal as with human beings. They must be destroyed like wild beasts. And for the matter of that, what harm would be done if a dozen Galileans were slain by the hand of the Hellenists?”

  Oribazius mused—

  “How like he is now, in his fury, to his cousin Constantius!”

  Julian spoke to the crowd, and his voice appeared to himself even strange and terrible—

  “By the grace of the gods I am still Emperor! Galileans, obey! You may mock at my beard and clothes, but not at the Roman law.... Remember, I am punishing you for rebellion and not for religion. Chain that rascal!”