VIII
When Iamblicus and Julian, returning from their walk, were crossingPanormos, the crowded harbour-quarter of Ephesus, they noticed anunusual tumult; folk running hither and thither, waving torches andshouting--
"The Christians are destroying the temples! Woe be on us!" and others:"Death to the Olympian gods! Astarte is vanquished by Christ!"
Iamblicus attempted a detour through less frequented streets, but thehowling mob caught and swept them in its course towards the temple ofthe Ephesian Artemis. The superb temple, built by Dynocrates, stoodout sharply, dark and austere, against the starry sky. The gleam ofthe torches flickered up gigantic colonnades, pedestalled on beautifullittle groups of caryatids. Up to this period, not only the Romans,but all tribes in the country had adored this goddess. Someone in thecrowd cried out in a quavering voice--
"Hail to the divine Diana of the Ephesians!"
Hundreds of voices responded--
"Death to the Olympians and to your Diana!"
Above the Arsenal and its towering monument rose a blood-red light.Julian glanced at his divine master, and scarcely recognised him.Iamblicus was transformed back into a sickly and timid old man. Hecomplained of headache, expressed his fear of an attack of rheumatism,and doubted whether his servant had not forgotten to prepare hisfomentations. Julian lent him his own cloak; but he remained chilly,and stopped his ears, with a dolorous grimace, against the shouts andlaughter of the crowd, which he dreaded. Iamblicus used to say therewas nothing more stupid and disgusting than the spirit of the people.He pointed out to his pupil the faces hurrying past--
"Look at the monstrous vice in that expression! What hopelesstriviality! what self-confident assertion!... Does it not make oneashamed of being human, to share human form with mud like that!"
An old Christian woman hobbled along, telling a story--
"And my grandson, he says to me, 'Grandmother, make me somemeat-broth.' Well, I tell him, 'Yes, darling, I'll go to the marketsoon,' and to myself I'm thinking meat is nowadays cheaper than bread.So I buy some meat for five obols and have it cooked. And in comes aneighbour and screams at me, 'What are you cooking there? Don't youknow that the meat of the market is not fit to touch to-day?'
"'Why so?'
"'The priests of the goddess have sprinkled the whole market withwater from the sacrifices! There's not a Christian in the town eatingthe meat so spoiled. And they're going to kill the sacrificers, andpull down the devilish temple!'
"I threw the broth to the dogs; just think! five obols, allwasted!--more than a day's wage thrown away--but all the same Iwouldn't make my own grandson unclean!"
Others were telling how, in the previous year, some miserly Christianhad eaten of the impure meat, which had so rotted his intestines thathis very relatives had had to abandon him, on account of thecontagion.
In the public square rose a beautiful little temple toDiana-Selene-Phoebe-Astarte--the triple goddess Hecate, mother of thegods. Like enormous wasps greedily intent upon a honeycomb, monks hadsurrounded the temple on all sides, crawling along the lovely whitecornice, clambering up ladders, and to the chant of psalms, smashingthe statues and bas-reliefs.
The columns were trembling on their bases, fragments of marble flyingin all directions. The delicate edifice seemed to wince like a livingcreature. Finally an attempt was made to set the temple on fire; butas it was wholly built of marble, all efforts in this direction werefruitless.
Suddenly a strange noise rang out from the interior, a deafening andresonant series of shocks, while triumphant howls of the crowd rose tothe sky.
"Bring ropes, ropes! Hide her immodest limbs!"
In a hubbub of hymns and wild laughter the mob, by means of ropes,dragged out of the temple the superb silver body of the goddess, whichhad been moulded by Scopas. Step by step, it came thundering down.
"Cast her in the fire! in the fire!"
The figure was dragged into the muddy market-place. There a monk wasdeclaiming a passage from the celebrated edict of Constantine II, thebrother of Constantius--
"'Let there be an end of superstition, and let sacrifices beabolished' (_Cesset superstitio sacrificiorum, aboleatur insania!_).
"Fear nothing; break, sack, plunder everything in that temple ofdemons!" Another was reading by torchlight from a parchment scroll thefollowing words from the book _De errore profanarum religionum_, byFirmicus Maternus--
"Divine Emperors! Come! succour the unfortunate heathen. Let us snatchthem by force from hell rather than leave them to perish. Seize thetemple-ornaments and let their riches feed your treasury. Let him whosacrifices to idols be torn from the earth, root and branch(_Sacrificans diis eradicabitur_). Thou shalt deliver him to death;thou shalt stone him with stones, were that offender thy son, thybrother, or the wife that sleeps upon thy heart!"
And over the crowd swept the exultant shout--
"Death! Death to the gods of Olympus!"
An Arian monk of gigantic stature, his lank black hair plastered tohis sweaty face, heaved an axe above the goddess, seeking where tostrike.
A voice advised--
"In the belly! In her abominable belly!"
The great silver body rolled over mutilated; the blows rang pitiless,leaving gaps bitten in the metal.
An old pagan stood by and veiled his face from the sacrilege. He wassecretly weeping at the thought that now the end of the world, the endof everything, was come, for the earth would no longer bring forth ablade of corn.
A hermit from the deserts of Mesopotamia, clothed in sheepskin,wearing coarse sandals and an empty gourd slung from his shoulder,stood over the statue, sheep-crook in hand--
"This forty years I have never washed, that I might not see mynakedness, nor fall into temptation. And yet coming into cities,straight one perceives these accursed gods without a rag upon them.How long must we endure these devilish temptations! At the hearth, inthe street, on the roof, in the baths, these idols everywhere aboveone's head?... Faugh! Faugh! Faugh! How can I spit enough disgust onthings like these?"
The old man spurned the prostrate woman's form with his sandal inenergetic horror; stamped on the bare breast as if it were alive, andkept scoring it with the sharp nails of his sandals, stuttering withrage--
"Take that, and that--and that, O foul immodesty!"
The lips of the goddess lay with their calm smile under the soles ofhis feet.
The crowd began to haul the statue upright in order to tilt it intothe bonfire. Drunken garlic-smelling apprentices spat in the metalface. An enormous blaze, built of the massed wreckage ofmarket-booths, quickly arose. The statue was dropped into the flamesto be melted into silver bullion.
"There are five talents' worth! think--thirty thousand pieces ofsilver! We'll send half to the Emperor to pay the army, and take theother half for famished folk here. Cybele will bring solace to mankindat last, anyhow! Thirty thousand pieces of silver for the soldiers andthe poor!"
"Bring fuel, more wood!" The flame mounted still more fiercely; themob burst into laughter.
"We'll see whether the devil flies out of her! There's a demon inevery idol, you know, and two or three inside goddesses!"
"When she begins to melt it'll get too hot for the devil, and he'llcome wriggling out of her mouth like a red serpent!"
"No! you must make the sign of the cross beforehand. If you don't, hecan glide into the earth. Last year, when we pulled down the temple ofAphrodite, someone sprinkled her with holy water and--can you believeit?--a whole flight of devilets scampered away from underneath thestatue--I saw them myself--green and black and hairy all over! Andwhen the head was broken open the big devil came out of her neck, withgreat horns and a tail as bald as a mangy dog!"
At this moment Iamblicus, half dead with terror, seized Julian by thehand and dragged him away--
"Look! Do you see those two men? They are spies sent by Constantius.Your brother Gallus has been taken under escort to Constantinople. Becareful; this very day there will be a report sent in as to how youbea
r yourself."
"But what is there to be done, Master? I am well accustomed to it; foryears they have kept spies about me."
"For years! Why have you said nothing of it to me?"
The hand of Iamblicus shook within that of Julian.
"Why are those two whispering together? Look at them--they must bepagans.... Now then old man, hurry up, bring wood!" cried out a raggedrascal in a triumphant tone.
Iamblicus whispered into Julian's ear--
"Let us despise it all, and in contempt resign ourselves. Humanstupidity can never hurt the gods!"
So saying the "Divine" Iamblicus took an enormous faggot from thehands of the Christian and cast it into the fire. At first Juliancould scarcely believe his eyes. The now-smiling spies stared at him,with a curious fixity.
Then weakness, and his own habitual hypocrisy for his own sake and forthe sake of others, won the day. He went to the heap of wood, chosethe largest log, and, after Iamblicus, threw it into the blaze inwhich the mutilated body of the goddess was already melting. Heclearly saw drops of silver rolling on her face as in a death-sweat,and the lips still keeping their invincible smile.
The Death of the Gods Page 9