Memoirs of Hadrian

by Маргерит Юрсенар

  The religions in Alexandria are as varied as the trades; the quality of the product, however, is more doubtful. The Christians especially distinguish themselves there by a multiplication of sects which is, to say the least, useless; two charlatans among them, Valentinus and Basilides, were intriguing against each other, closely watched over by the Roman police. As for the Egyptian populace, the lowest level took advantage of each of their own ritual festivities to throw themselves, cudgel in hand, upon foreigners; the death of the bull Apis provokes more uprisings in that city than an imperial succession in Rome. Fashionable people change gods there as elsewhere they change doctors, and with about as much success. But gold is their only idol: nowhere have I seen more shameless importuning. Grandiose inscriptions were displayed all about to commemorate my benefactions, but my refusal to exempt the inhabitants from a tax which they were quite able to pay soon alienated that rabble from me. The two young men who accompanied me were insulted more than once: Lucius was reproached for his lavish expenditures, which, it must be admitted, were excessive, and Antinous for his obscure origin, on the subject of which ran absurd rumors; both were blamed for the ascendancy which they were supposed to have over me. This last assumption was ridiculous: Lucius, whose judgment in public affairs was surprisingly acute, nevertheless had no political influence whatsoever; Antinous did not aspire to it. The young patrician, knowing the ways of the world, merely laughed at the jibes, but they were cause for suffering to Antinous. The Alexandrian Jews, egged on by their coreligionists in Judaea, did their best to aggravate a situation already bad. The synagogue of Jerusalem delegated Akiba to me, its most venerable member; almost a nonagenarian, and knowing no Greek, he came with the mission of prevailing upon me to abandon projects already under way at Jerusalem. Aided by my interpreters I held several colloquies with him which, on his part, were mere pretext for monologue. In less than an hour I felt able to define his thought exactly, though not subscribing to it; he made no corresponding effort concerning my own. This fanatic did not even suspect any reasoning possible on premises other than those he set forth. I offered his despised people a place among the others in the Roman community; Jerusalem, however, speaking through Akiba, signified its intention of remaining, to the end, the fortress of a race and of a god isolated from human kind. That savage determination was expressed with tiresome deviousness: I had to listen to a long line of argument, subtly deduced step by step, proving Israel’s superiority. At the end of eight days even this obstinate negotiator became aware that he was pursuing the wrong course, so he announced his departure. I abhor defeat, even for others, and it moves me the more when the vanquished is an old man. The ignorance of Akiba, and his refusal to accept anything outside his sacred books or his own people, endued him with a kind of narrow innocence. But it was difficult to feel sympathy for this bigot. Longevity seemed to have bereft him of all human suppleness: that gaunt body and dried mind had the locust’s hard vigor. It seems that he died a hero later on for the cause of his people, or rather, for his law. Each of us dedicates himself to his own gods.

  The distractions which Alexandria affords began to wane. Phlegon, who knew the local curiosities everywhere, whether procuress or famous hermaphrodite, proposed to take us to a local magician. This go-between for two worlds, the invisible and our own, lived in Canopus. We went there at night by boat along the torpid waters of the canal, a dismal ride. A silent hostility reigned, as always, between the two young men: the intimacy into which I was forcing them augmented their aversion for each other. Lucius hid this feeling under a mocking condescension; my young Greek enclosed himself in one of his dark moods. I happened to be rather tired; a few days before, on coming back from a race in full sun, I had had a brief fainting fit which only Antinous and the black Euphorion had witnessed. They had been unduly alarmed, and I had forbidden them to disclose the matter.

  Canopus is no more than a tawdry stage-setting: the magician’s house was situated in the most sordid part of that pleasure resort. We disembarked at a tumble-down terrace. The sorceress awaited us inside her house, surrounded by the dubious tools of her trade. She seemed competent; there was nothing of the stage witch about her; she was not even old.

  Her predictions were sinister. For some time the oracles everywhere had been foretelling annoyances for me of every sort, political troubles, palace intrigues, and serious illness. I now believe that some decidedly human influences were at work upon those voices from below, sometimes to warn me, more often to frighten me. The true condition of one part of the Orient was more clearly explained therein than in the reports of our proconsuls. I took these so-called revelations with calm, since my respect for the invisible world did not go so far as to give credence to such divine claptrap: ten years before, soon after my accession to power, I had ordered the closing of the oracle of Daphne, near Antioch, which had foretold my rule, for fear that it might do the same for the first pretender who should appear. But it is always annoying to hear talk of trouble.

  After having disturbed us to the best of her ability the prophetess offered her aid: one of those magical sacrifices in which Egyptian sorcerers specialize would suffice to put everything right with destiny. My explorations in Phoenician magic had already shown me that the horror of these forbidden practices lies less in what is revealed to us than in what they hide from our sight; if my abomination of human sacrifice had not been well known this practitioner would probably have advised the immolation of a slave. As it was she contented herself with speaking of some pet animal.

  Had it been at all possible the sacrificial victim should have belonged to me; it could not be a dog, which is an animal considered unclean in Egyptian superstition; a bird would have done, but I do not travel with an aviary. My young master proposed his falcon. The conditions would be fulfilled thereby; I had given him this beautiful bird after I had myself received it from the king of Osroëne. The boy fed it himself; it was one of the rare possessions to which he was attached. At first I refused; he insisted, gravely; I gathered that he attributed some extraordinary significance to the offer, so I accepted, out of affection. Provided with the most detailed instructions, my courier Menecrates went to fetch the bird from our apartments in the Serapeion. Even at a gallop the errand would take, in all, more than two hours. There was no question of passing the interval in the dirty hole of the magician, and Lucius complained of the dampness aboard the boat. Phlegon found an expedient: we installed ourselves as well as we could in the house of a procuress after the inmates of the place had been disposed of. Lucius decided to sleep; I made use of the time to dictate some dispatches, and Antinous stretched out at my feet. Phlegon’s reed pen scratched away under the lamp. The last watch of the night was beginning when Menecrates brought back the bird, the glove, the hood, and the chain.

  We returned to the house of the magician. Antinous removed the falcon’s hood and for some moments caressed its little head, so sleepy and so wild, then handed it to the enchantress, who began a series of magic passes. The bird, fascinated, fell asleep again. It was important that the victim should not struggle, and that the death should appear voluntary. Rubbed over with ritual honey and attar of roses, the animal, now inert, was placed in the bottom of a tub filled with Nile water; in drowning thus it was to be assimilated to Osiris borne along on the river’s current; the bird’s earthly years were added to mine, and the little soul, issue of the sun, was united with the Genius of him for whom the sacrifice was made; the invisible Genius could hereafter appear to me and serve me under this form. The long manipulations which followed were no more interesting than some preparation for cooking. Lucius began to yawn. The ceremonies imitated human funerals in every detail: the fumigations and the psalm singing dragged on until dawn. The bird was finally enclosed in a casket lined with aromatic substances and the magician buried it in our presence at the edge of the canal, in an abandoned cemetery. When she had finished she crouched under a tree to count one by one the gold pieces which Phlegon paid her.

 
; We re-embarked. An unusually cold wind was blowing. Lucius, seated near me, drew closer the embroidered cotton coverlets with the tips of his slender fingers; for politeness’ sake we continued to exchange remarks at broken intervals about business and scandal in Rome. Antinous, lying in the bottom of the boat, had leaned his head on my knees, pretending to sleep in order to keep apart from a conversation which did not include him. My hand passed over his neck, under his heavy hair; thus even in the dullest or most futile moments I kept some feeling of contact with the great objects of nature, the thick growth of the forests, the muscular back of the panther, the regular pulsation of springs; but no caress goes so deep as the soul. The sun was shining when we reached the Serapeion, and the melon merchants were crying their wares in the streets. I slept until time for the session of the local Council, which I attended. I learned later that Antinous took advantage of my absence to persuade Chabrias to go with him to Canopus. He went back to the house of the magician.

  The first of the month of Athyr, the second year of the two hundred and twenty-sixth Olympiad… . That is the anniversary of the death of Osiris, the god of the dying; along the river piercing cries of lamentation had resounded from all the villages for three days’ time. My Roman guests, less accustomed than I to the mysteries of the East, showed a certain curiosity for those ceremonies of another race. For me, on the contrary, they were tiring and irritating to the extreme. I had ordered my boat anchored at some distance from the others, far from any habitation; but a half-abandoned temple of the time of the Pharaohs stood near the river bank and had still its school of priests, so I did not entirely escape the sound of wailing.

  On the preceding evening Lucius invited me to supper on his boat. I went there at sunset. Antinous refused to go with me, so I left him alone in my stern deck cabin lying on his lion skin, playing at knucklebones with Chabrias. Half an hour later, just as night fell, he changed his mind and called for a boat. Aided by a single oarsman, and pulling against the current, he rowed the considerable distance which separated us from the other boats. His entry into the deck tent where the supper was given interrupted the applause for the contortions of a dancing girl. He had arrayed himself in a long Syrian robe, sheer as the skin of a fruit and strewn over with flowers and chimeras. In order to row more easily he had freed his right arm from its sleeve; sweat was trembling on the smooth chest. Lucius tossed him a garland which he caught in mid-air; his gaiety, almost strident, did not abate for one moment, though hardly sustained by a single cup of Greek wine. We returned together in my boat with six oarsmen, followed by the cutting “good night” of Lucius from above. The wild gay mood persisted. But in the morning I happened by chance to touch a face wet with tears. I asked him impatiently the cause for such crying; he replied humbly, excusing himself on the ground of fatigue. I accepted the lie and fell back to sleep. His true agony took place in that bed, there beside me.

  The mail from Rome had just come, and the day went by in reading and answering it. As usual Antinous went silently about the room; I know not at what moment that fair creature passed out of my life. Toward the twelfth hour Chabrias entered, in great agitation. Contrary to all regulations the youth had left the boat without stating his purpose or the length of his intended absence; two hours at least had gone by since his departure. Chabrias recalled some strange things said the evening before, and a recommendation made that very morning, concerning me. He voiced his fears. We descended in haste to the river bank. As if by instinct the old tutor made for a chapel on the water’s edge, a small structure apart which was one of the outbuildings of the temple, and which he and Antinous had visited together. On an offering table lay ashes still warm from a sacrifice; turning them with his fingers, Chabrias drew forth a lock of hair, almost intact.

  There was no longer anything for us to do but to search the shore. A series of reservoirs which must once have served for sacred ceremonies extended to a bend of the river; on the edge of the last basin Chabrias perceived in the rapidly lowering dusk a folded garment and sandals. I descended the slippery steps; he was lying at the bottom, already sunk in the river’s mud. With Chabrias’ aid I managed to lift the body, which had suddenly taken on the weight of stone. Chabrias hailed some boatmen who improvised a stretcher from sail cloth. Hermogenes, called in haste, could only pronounce him dead. That body, once so responsive, refused to be warmed again or revived. We took him aboard. Everything gave way; everything seemed extinguished. The Olympian Zeus, Master of All, Saviour of the World—all toppled together, and there was only a man with greying hair sobbing on the deck of a boat.

  Two days went by before Hermogenes could get me to think of the funeral. The sacrificial rites with which Antinous had chosen to surround his death showed us a course to follow: it would not be for nothing that the day and hour of that end had coincided with the moment when Osiris descends into the tomb. I crossed the river to Hermopolis, to its quarter of embalmers. I had seen their work in Alexandria and knew to what outrages I was submitting this body; but fire is horrible too, searing and charring the beloved flesh; and in the earth it rots. The crossing was brief; squatting in a corner of the stern cabin Euphorion chanted in a low voice I know not what African dirge; this hoarse, half-muffled song seemed to me almost my own cry. We transferred the beloved dead into a room cleanly flushed with water which reminded me of the clinic of Satyrus; I aided the castmaker to oil the face before the wax was applied. All the metaphors took on meaning: I held that heart in my hands. When I left the empty body it was no more than an embalmer’s preparation, the first stage of a frightful masterpiece, a precious substance treated with salt and gum of myrrh, and never again to be touched by sun or air.

  On the return I visited the temple near which the sacrifice had been consummated; I spoke with the priests. Their sanctuary would be renovated to become a place of pilgrimage for all Egypt; their college, enriched and augmented, would be consecrated hereafter to the service of my god. Even in my most obtuse moments I had never doubted that that young presence was divine. Greece and Asia would worship him in our manner, with games and dances, and with ritual offerings placed at the feet of a nude, white statue. Egypt, who had witnessed the death agony, would have also her part in the apotheosis: it would be the most secret and somber part, and the harshest, for this country would play the eternal role of embalmer to his body. For centuries to come priests with shaven heads would recite litanies repeating that name which for them had no value, but for me held all. Each year the sacred barge would bear that effigy along the river; the first of the month of Athyr mourners would walk on that shore where I had walked.

  Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others: the problem of the moment was to defend from death the little that was left to me. Phlegon had assembled on the shore the architects and engineers of my suite, as I had ordered; sustained by a kind of clearsighted frenzy I made them follow me along the stony hills; I explained my plan, the development of forty-five stadia of encircling wall, and I marked in the sand the position of the triumphal arch and that of the tomb. Antinoöpolis was to be born; it would already be some check to death to impose upon that sinister land a city wholly Greek, a bastion which would hold off the nomads of Erythrea, a new market on the route to India. Alexander had celebrated the funeral of Hephaestion with devastation and mass slaughter of prisoners. I preferred to offer to the chosen one a city where his cult would be forever mingled with the coming and going on the public square, where his name would be repeated in the casual talk of evening, where youths would toss crowns to each other at the banqueting hour. But on one point my thought fluctuated: it seemed impossible to abandon this body to foreign soil. Like a man uncertain of his next stop who reserves lodgings in several hostelries at a time, I ordered a monument for him at Rome, on the banks of the Tiber near my own tomb, but thought also of the Egyptian chapels which I had had built at the Villa by caprice, and which were suddenly proving tragically useful. A date was set for the funeral at t
he end of the two months demanded by the embalmers. I entrusted Mesomedes with the composition of funeral choruses. Late into the night I went back aboard; Hermogenes prepared me a sleeping potion.

  The journey up the river continued, but my course lay on the Styx. In prisoners’ camps on the banks of the Danube I had once seen wretches continually beating their heads against a wall with a wild motion, both mad and tender, endlessly repeating the same name. In the underground chambers of the Colosseum I had been shown lions pining away because the dog with which their keepers had accustomed them to live had been taken away. I tried to collect my thoughts: Antinous was dead. As a child I had wept and wailed over the corpse of Marullinus torn to shreds by crows, but had cried as does a mere animal, in the night. My father had died, but a boy orphaned at the age of twelve noticed no more than disorder in the house, his mother’s tears, and his own terror; he knew nothing of the anguish which the dying man had experienced. My mother had died much later, about the time of my mission in Pannonia; I do not recall the exact date. Trajan had been only a sick man who must be made to make a will. I had not seen Plotina die. Attianus had died; he was old. During the Dacian wars I had lost comrades whom I had believed that I loved ardently; but we were young, and life and death were equally intoxicating and easy. Antinous was dead. I remembered platitudes frequently heard: “One can die at any age,” or “They who die young are beloved by the gods.” I myself had shared in that execrable abuse of words; I had talked of dying of sleep, and dying of boredom. I had used the word agony, the word mourning, the word loss. Antinous was dead.