by Talbot Mundy
Cleopatra soon discovered that new trend of thought, and with characteristic calm she accepted it, although it meant the reversal of all her own plans. It mattered very little how she kept Rome at bay. Tros, she said, should build the ship canal and have a great fleet manned and ready to control the sea route and to establish communications after Caesar had marched through Parthia and conquered India from the north. She perceived it was not the slightest use to try to change his mind when he had come to a decision; but she was loyal to her Land of Khem. And she was constant in her efforts to resist the Ptolemaic fumes, inherited from drunken tyrants, that she knew were in her veins and ever clouding her brain to dim her consciousness of spirit brooding over her.
CHAPTER XXXI. “There is a gentleness that no amount of force of any kind can penetrate or conquer.”
It is the horizontal view of life, which most men have, that brings them ever face to face with the insuperable, until they weary and lie looking upward with a worm’s-eye view of things, or downward seeing only mud and death and misery. The way over an obstacle is upward. Men forget that birds fly, and that the thought has stronger wings than any eagle.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
THE thalamegos and its escorting fleet lay moored against the granite rocks below the lowest cataract, and in dazzling sunshine on the river-bank great companies of white-robed priests stood waiting to receive their Queen. Musicians made festival music, its melody dimmed by the blare and the boom of the ivory horns and the rhythmical thunder of drums. The tribes had turned out in their thousands; the sun streamed down on temple-columns, gay pavilions, bright awnings, and on crowded ebony-and-gold where leopard-skin cloaked chieftains and their warriors surged and swayed under nodding ostrich-feather plumes.
The priests of Philae had brought the image of the Goddess Isis from their temple, drawn by brightly decorated oxen on an awninged platform. There was no public honor too high to be paid to Cleopatra, nor any compliment too great for Caesar, since she chose to make him the recipient. But Caesar rather bridled at having only the second part to play. He had brought his charger with him up the Nile; be delayed proceedings by reviewing the desert Arabs, Nubians, Ethiopians and the crowds from the far-away oases, letting them see him mounted, in his purple cloak, riding alone among them, elegant and fearless. Nevertheless, although they wondered at him and at the weapons and armor and perfect drill of Roman troops paraded before them, it was to Cleopatra that they made obeisance.
Ptolemies before her day had been received at Philae with semi-divine honors, and more than one ruler of that royal home had left his record on the sacred island in the form of temple buildings, some of them unfinished; but never until Cleopatra’s day had the priests of Philae let it be known, secretly, through the channels that men recognized as utterly authentic, that a Ptolemy, as Pharaoh, had their genuine approval. She was one with the queens whose statues smiled on Luxor. Former Ptolemies had dared to patronize the very hierophant himself (and it was understood to be no part of the traditional method of Philae to resist, or in any way whatever to challenge temporal authority). Cleopatra had accepted, not claimed recognition. And it was also known that never, until her day, had any Ptolemy received initiation: none had been admitted to the impenetrably guarded secrets. Philae — the inner Philae — did not interfere in politics; which was why the real Philae was a power in the land. Even the black men knew that the image — the healer of sickness — was at the most a landmark on the road to mysteries that might not be discoverable without it — mysteries that any man might reach who had the will to purify himself.
But Cleopatra knew what she had not seen fit to explain to Caesar yet, and what it needed no priest to remind her. It was more rare than water in the desert for a woman to receive initiation; but, whether or not she had been initiated and whether or not she wore the double crown of Egypt and the sacred serpent on her brow, a pregnant woman was utterly excluded from the secret rites for the time being, and until many months after her child was born. Direct communion she might not have, within the sacred silence of the midnight watch, where — so men whispered — the initiates, under the guidance of their heirophant, left human limits and became, for a period of renewal and refreshment, conscious comrades of the gods.
But indirectly she had access; she was one of them. He who was a hierophant — a demigod behind the veil — resumed his priesthood when he stepped forth. As a priest he could receive her privately; and though he might not raise the veil, as the expression was, they were, nevertheless, co-members of one mystery and could not help but speak together in terms that had definite and clearly comprehended meaning, but that would have meant something totally different to an outsider, or even to one of a lower degree of initiation than that to which Cleopatra had been admitted.
Unknown to Caesar, Cleopatra had sent couriers to forewarn Philae of the favor she would ask. It was her subtlest move against the iron might of Rome, and like all true subtlety it was not treacherous; it offered Caesar opportunity. If he could tap the sources of her wisdom, she was willing. So while he showed his splendid horsemanship and flourished Rome’s military brilliance before the Nubians, she could afford to wait, and smile, and learn in whispers from the priests that the favor she asked had been granted and that all was prepared. It would not be the fault of Philae if Caesar did not henceforth understand that above politics and war and statecraft there is a plane of thought from which wisdom may be drawn like dew from heaven: wisdom of a kind that halts the march of armies and loosens the reins of civilization. Caesar, she believed, could be a civilizer if the idea should dawn on him.
There were painted litters, borne on the shoulders of temple servants, to convey them to the wharf beyond the cataract. But Caesar preferred to ride. There was a gilded boat, shaped in the form of a sacred crocodile and rowed by temple priests, to take them to the island, slowly following the boat-borne image of the goddess, that had to be guarded, as they transferred it from land to water, from the clamoring lepers and cripples who sought to touch it and be healed, and from the healed who brought gifts, and from the women who wanted children. (For that image bore a world-wide reputation.)
On the island, steps descended to the water’s edge. Scores of priests were ready there to lift the image from its boat; choristers led them in procession to the Court of the Birth of Horus, Isis’ offspring, where there was incense burning at the threshold and they passed between granite columns, beneath a flower-hung archway, to a high throne in the cool gloom of a cloister, where a sacrifice was offered at an altar and the priests entoned the Isis ritual.
Within those precincts Caesar felt himself uncomfortably unimportant. Seated, in his purple cloak, on the double throne with Cleopatra beneath a canopy of painted and gilded palm-leaves, surrounded by a galaxy of priests who showed him every honor, nevertheless, he was acutely conscious of being only tolerated, not the center of attraction. He was careful to appear a trifle bored, it might be by the ceremony, and a little doubtful of the wisdom of conceding so much patience to a company of shaveling priests. It was for Cleopatra’s sake that he endured the ceremony; he made that obvious to her and to everybody else.
But it presently appeared that it was he, not Cleopatra, for whom the utmost honor was reserved, and although he still retained his air of stern aloofness he had hard work to hide his satisfaction when two elderly and very richly robed priests, bowing before him, invited him to an interview, alone, with the Father-Hierophant.
“The Father-Hierophant should come to me,” said Caesar; but Cleopatra whispered to him and he let it appear that he was willing to accept some trivial excuse, now that he had asserted his own precedence.
“Our Father-Hierophant is very old,” said a priest in a suave, restrained voice. Proud they might be; but they were discreet, those priests of Philae.
“What language have we in common that we can converse in?” Caesar demanded. He did not want an interpreter — particularly not Cleopatra, who, he felt confi
dent, would color such a conversation to suit her own views. He was relieved to learn that the Father-Hierophant knew Greek. He turned to Cleopatra and remarked, with an apparently confiding courtesy that hid his secret satisfaction:
“I will give these priests clearly to understand that there shall be no two governments in Egypt.”
She let him think she believed he could overawe the Father-Hierophant. He followed the two priests, striding alone majestically, a splendid figure, looking younger than his years, one hand holding a roll of papyrus behind him, and his head bowed slightly forward in deep thought. Two anchorites preceded them, each swinging a jeweled censer that sent up clouds of incense smoke — delicious, soothing, fragrant stuff from Yemen, that encouraged the thought to wander in realms of opulence and dignity and peace.
He expected a repetition of the devious passages through which he and Cleopatra had gone hand in hand that night in Alexandria when they visited the shrine of Isis. But though they passed a few priests standing like statues in niches between graven columns there was no challenge and reply, no mummery of secrecy. When they came to the end of a long corridor the censer-bearers turned aside, the priests drew back curtains of golden leather, there was a sound as of a voice that whispered very far away, one of the priests swung wide a single door, a foot thick, and Caesar passed alone into a room, aware that the door had closed, with an almost inaudible thud, behind him.
For a moment he stood accustoming his eyes to dimness. There was only one window, near the roof, that let swimming sunlight stream against a corner of one wall; it produced an effect of being under water, and the silence enhanced that effect. Caesar stared about him. His eyes gradually grew used to the solemn dimness. He became aware of a very old man seated motionless on an ivory chair by a table made of rare wood, carved, and partly covered by a cloth that was woven with symbols in various colors. He stared at him Neither spoke.
The old man’s clothing was of some rare eastern stuff, so snow-white that it was puzzling how it blended with the darker hue of marble, and so ample that its folds were like carvings in stone. He had a white beard, long, and beautifully cared for, gray hair, very heavy iron-gray eyebrows, an aquiline nose and dark eyes. He looked as if he had been an athlete in his day, but his splendid old shoulders stooped considerably now and he supported his chin on one hand that rested on the chair-arm, as if that great head with its mane of gray were over-heavy for the wasted neck. He had a great gold ring on his right thumb and some sort of necklace underneath his beard, but no other jewelry, which made a marked contrast to Caesar’s martial splendor. Caesar had emeralds on his belt and on his scabbard that were easily worth a whole year’s temple revenues.
The two studied each other in silence for a long time. Not a sound came through the window or the thick walls, and the old man’s breathing was inaudible; but Caesar could hear his own breath and the pulses singing in his ears, until the silence grew intolerable.
“I have heard,” he said at last, “that you priests of Philae are the proudest prelates in the world. I wish to assure you that it is no concession to your pride, but to your old age that brings me here to visit you instead of requiring you to visit me.”
“You are welcome, my son. Be seated.”
The answering voice was clear and strong, although it sounded even older than the man looked. It was a voice that had fathomed the depths of experience. There was no fear in it, no haste, no curiosity.
There was only one chair, of ivory, like the other, close to the table. Caesar sat down, crossing his legs and tapping his knee with the roll of papyrus. Having reached the holder of the reins of Philae’s far-reaching influence, he proposed to begin by establishing his own supremacy. But he found it difficult to be firm where there was no resistance.
“You have no need to fear me, my son,” said the ancient of days, “nor any need to try to make me fear you. For, as I have told you, you are welcome, and what I can do for you I will.”
“It was at your request that I came here,” Caesar answered.
The old man paused before he commented on that:
“If you had come otherwise, you would not have found me,” he said at last, “though I am glad to be of service to you if I can. There is a gentleness that no amount of force of any kind can penetrate or conquer. Conquerors, my son, have thrown down the temples of Philae; other kings and conquerors have builded them again; time and the overflow of Nile — sun and wind, and human passions, and the sloth of priests have ruined Philae many times. And yet — you come to Philae seeking.”
“Seeking what?” asked Caesar tartly, but his truculence was not so noticeable as it had been.
“That which you will not learn — not though I should do my best to teach it to you,” the old man answered, smiling at him. Mockery was not there, but there was humor brooding in the depths of his eyes.
“Why then did you ask to see me?” Caesar retorted. He was increasingly less irritable — growing curious.
“Because, my son, though I can teach you very little, having no wisdom at all of my own that is applicable to your purposes, it may be that nevertheless I can remove from your mind some misconceptions, and thus save not yourself alone but hosts of others from unnecessary evil. For you are a man on whom the destiny of nations may depend for many a generation.”
“Speak. I will listen to you,” said Caesar.
The Father-Hierophant took no apparent notice of the condescension. He looked straight at Caesar and for a long time there was silence. Then at last:
“These temples are old, but the foundations on which they stand are immemorially old. They have seen Egypt rise, descend again in the depths of ignorance, and reascend to heights of civilization, times out of number. But the sacred sciences for which men built are older. Before Egypt was, they were. When Egypt shall have ceased to be, they will be. Men have forgotten what was before Egypt was. They will forget Egypt in the time to come. But Nature, two of whose aspects are life and death, eternally alternating, will continue even though the earth should perish; and as there never has been, so there never will be time when truth is false or falsity is true, though all men should unite in one opinion to the contrary.”
“Do you know the truth?” asked Caesar. “I am a high priest myself, and I am familiar with many theories, but the truth, it seems to me, is still a subject of opinion.”
“Then it is not truth,” said the Hierophant. “My son, all men and women are high priests, in that they hide the truth about themselves behind a veil of what they seem to be. Behind that veil they meditate in secret. You yourself, however frankly you may seem to speak or to write about your inmost thought, have deeper thoughts, that you know are inexpressible, behind those that you spread before the world. For that which becomes expressed is no more than the outer rind of a fruit that has already fallen from the tree. Has thought not body and soul and spirit, even as a man has, or a tree has, or a rock has? Is the body of a thought the truth about it any more than your body is the truth about you? Still less true are the clothes in which the thought is dressed, though they may be beautiful, or they may be coarse and ragged. They are a veil, behind which is the truth, that is a truth about the shadow of the Truth.”
“I have heard much talk at various times about withdrawing or lifting that veil of which you speak,” said Caesar, “but though I have questioned, for instance, the Druids of Gaul, who make great claims to profundity, and though I have studied Plato and Pythagoras and such translations of the Hermetic writings as I could find, it has appeared to me that all the explanations they offer are merely words — organized sound without any inner meaning that a man may grasp. But a sword remains a sword. And if I wish to build a bridge, I build it. If I wish to conquer people I defeat their armies; they are conquered; there is nothing further they can do about it.”
“And if you slay ten thousand men, what then?” asked the Hierophant.
“Then they are dead,” said Caesar.
“And you have conquered the
m?”
“I have conquered their country. Those who remain must obey me, including their priests, who must cease to teach insubordination if I so order it.”
“Truly, my son, it is possible to burn a forest and to turn the goats in lest the young shoots grow again. But finally even the goats will starve. And what then? Will you make a desert and say, ‘This is Caesar’s kingdom?’—”
“I impose peace,” Caesar answered. “Under my rule all reasonable men have liberty.”
“That is a bold boast, my son. But you limit reason? You yourself define the liberty?”
“Somebody must do that,” Caesar answered. “I have observed that men struggle among themselves until the ablest few prevail; and they again until the ablest of them all asserts himself Then it is his opinion that governs all the others. There is otherwise anarchy. The history of the world, as I have read it, and the perpetual conditions of such lands as I have seen, appear to me always to have been a struggle for supremacy.”
“And you propose to put an end to that?”
“I intend to establish a government that will make such practices impossible, at least in my lifetime.”
“Did you ever hear of the man, my son, who proposed to abolish danger by preventing motion? His difficulty was that he did not begin by standing still. Men fled from him as he moved about to oblige them to obey. Does it occur to you that wisdom possibly may flee from you if you attempt to define its limits and to enforce their observance?”