The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

  XIII

  "The gods created mortals for one purpose only--polite conversation!"

  "Charmingly said, Mamertinus! Say it again, I beg, before you'veforgotten it! I'll write that down with the other maxims," declaredLampridius, the professor of eloquence, taking tablets from hispocket. His admired friend Mamertinus was a fashionable Athenianadvocate.

  "My dear fellow, I say," repeated Mamertinus with the most delicate ofsmiles, "I merely say that men have been sent by the gods----"

  "No, no, it didn't run so, Mamertinus; you put it better. The godscreated mortals----"

  "Ah, yes; the gods created mortals for one purpose only--politeconversation!"

  And the enthusiastic Lampridius scribbled down the words as if theyhad been the utterance of an oracle.

  The scene was a friendly supper of men of letters given by thevenerable Roman senator Hortensius, in the villa of his rich youngward Arsinoe, not far from the Piraeus.

  Mamertinus on that day had achieved a remarkable speech in defence ofthe banker Barnava. Nobody had the smallest doubt that Barnava was acomplete scoundrel; but, besides measureless eloquence, the advocatepossessed so telling a voice that one of the innumerable ladies whoadored him avowed: "I never listen to what Mamertinus says; I have nowish to know what he's talking about. I become intoxicated with thetones of his voice, and especially with the dying cadence at the endof his periods. It is incredible! It is no longer a human voice, butnectar and ambrosia, the heavenly sighing of an AEolian harp!"

  And so, while the populace labelled the money-lender Barnava "theblood-sucker," the devourer of widows and orphans, the Athenian judgesenthusiastically acquitted the client of Mamertinus.

  From this client the advocate had received 50,000 sesterces, andtherefore felt in no dissatisfied mood at the supper given byHortensius in his honour. But it was his habit to affect the invalid,in order that he might be spoiled and petted the more.

  "I am utterly done up to-day, my friends," he murmured plaintively;"aching in every limb. Where is Arsinoe?"

  "She will soon be here. Arsinoe has just received from the museum ofAlexandria some new apparatus for experiments in physics; and she isentirely absorbed in them. But I will give an order to summon her,"suggested Hortensius.

  "No, don't do that," responded the lawyer carelessly. "But what aridiculous thing--a young girl at physics! What in the world has theone thing to do with the other? Your blue-stockings have been finelybelaboured by Aristophanes and Euripides. Arsinoe is a whimsicalcreature, Hortensius! Really, if she wasn't so attractive, what withher sculpture and her mathematics she would almost become----"

  He did not finish the sentence, and gazed languidly out of the window.

  "What am I to do?" replied Hortensius. "A spoiled child ... anorphan; no father, no mother! As her mere tutor, I can't well deny heranything."

  "I see, I see."

  The lawyer was no longer listening; he was thinking about himself.

  "My dear fellows, I feel----"

  "What--what's the matter?" asked several voices anxiously.

  "I'm feeling--I fancy--a draught...."

  "We'll shut the shutters," proposed the host.

  "No, we should be stifled! But I've so worn out my voice to-day....And I have to make another defence to-morrow. Give me a carpet undermy feet, and my wrapper; I'm afraid of catching cold in the nightchill."

  And Hephaestion, the friend of Publius and pupil of Lampridius, rushedaway to get Mamertinus' wrapper.

  It was a piece of soft woollen stuff, daintily embroidered. The lawyercarried it everywhere to safeguard his precious throat from thefaintest risk of cold.

  Mamertinus nursed his own health like a lover, with so simple a grace,such a passion of self-solicitude, that his friends were instinctivelyconstrained to think of nothing but nursing him too.

  "This wrapper was embroidered for me by the venerable Fabiola," heinformed them with a smile.

  "Wife of the senator?" asked Hortensius.

  "Yes! I'll tell you a little story about her. One day I wrote anote--a graceful trifle, but really a mere trifle--just five lines inGreek to another lady (also one of my admirers), who had sent me abasket of the most charming cherries. I thanked her in a frolicsomeimitation of Pliny. But just imagine, my friends, Fabiola was seizedwith so violent a desire to read that letter and to copy it for hercollection, that she sent two of her slaves to lie in wait for mymessenger. So, brought to a halt in the middle of the night, not asoul in sight, he thought, of course, that brigands were about tostrip him of lock, stock, and barrel. But they did him no harm, gavehim money, and only took from him my letter, so that Fabiola mighthave the first reading of it. She actually learnt it by heart!"

  "You don't mean it? Ah, I know her! She is a most remarkable woman,"continued Lampridius. "I have seen myself that she keeps all yourletters enclosed in a lemon-wood casket like so many jewels. Shelearns them by heart and declares that they are superior to anypoetry. Fabiola argues, and argues rightly: 'Since Alexander the Greatused to keep the poems of Homer in a cedar-wood coffer, why shouldn'tI keep the letters of Mamertinus in a jewel-casket?'"

  "This _foie gras_ with saffron sauce is the height of perfection! Iadvise you to taste it."

  "Who made it, Hortensius?"

  "My head-cook, Daedalus."

  "All honour to him!... he's a poet."

  "Don't let a goose's liver run away with you, my dear Garguillus! Acook, a poet? You will offend the divine muses, our protectresses!"

  "I affirm! and I shall always maintain! that cooking is an art aslofty as any other. It's time to fling prejudices to the winds,Lampridius!"

  Garguillus, the head of the Imperial chancery, was a man of enormousbody, extremely fat, his triple chin scrupulously shaved and perfumed,and his grey hair closely cropped. His face was intelligent and noble;for many years he had been considered the indispensable guest at everysupper of Athenian men of letters. Garguillus loved only two thingsin the world, a good table and a good style. Gastronomy and literatureblended for him into a double bliss.

  "Suppose now I take an oyster," he was declaring while his delicatefingers, loaded with amethysts and rubies, brought the mollusc towardshis mouth; "I take an oyster, and I swallow it"--and in fact heswallowed it, shutting his eyes, with a sucking and clucking noise ofhis upper lip, which was curiously greedy, and even rapacious, in itsappearance. It was prominent, trussed into a point, oddly twisted, andvaguely resembled a small elephant's trunk. When repeating a sonorousverse of Anacreon or Moschus he would move about this upper lip withas much sensuousness as when tasting at supper some sauce ofnightingales' tongues.

  "I swallow it, and I am immediately aware," went on Garguillussolemnly--"I am immediately aware that the oyster comes from the coastof Britain and not from the south or from Tarentum. Would you like meto prove it? Shall I close my eyes and say from what sea the fishcomes?"

  "But what in the world has that to do with poetry?" asked Mamertinusimpatiently. He could not bear that any but himself should receivegeneral attention.

  "Imagine for yourselves, my dear friends," continued the gastronomistimperturbably, "that for years I have not been to the shores of theocean, which I love and am always regretting. I assure you that a goodoyster has such a fresh and salty relish of the sea, that to swallowit is immediately to be a thousand miles hence on the immenseseashore. I close my eyes, I see the waves, I see the rocks, I feelthe breeze of 'foggy ocean,' as Homer calls it!... No! tell mefrankly what verse of the Odyssey can wake in me as clearly the senseof sea poetry as the smell of a fresh oyster? Or when I divide a peachand inhale the odour of its juice, why, tell me, are the perfume ofthe violet and the rose more essentially poetical? Poets describeform, colour, sound. Why can taste be not perfect as these? All isstupid prejudice, my dear fellows! Taste is an immense and hithertounexplored boon from the gods. The assemblage of tastes forms aharmony as fine as any orchestration of sounds. I affirm, therefore,that there is a tenth muse, the muse of Gastronomy!"
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  "Let oysters and peaches be admitted. But what harmony, what beautycan you discover in a goose liver dressed with saffron sauce?"

  "You are ready to allow, Lampridius, that there is beauty not only inthe idylls of Theocritus, but even in the coarsest comedies ofPlautus?"

  "I admit that."

  "Well, my friend, for me there is a gastronomic poesy in _foie gras_;in fact I am prepared to crown Daedalus with laurels for this dish,just as I would crown an Olympic ode of Pindar!"

  Two new guests appeared on the threshold; they were Julian and thepoet Publius. Hortensius yielded the place of honour to Julian, whilePublius devoured the innumerable dishes with his eyes. To judge by hisnew chlamys the rich widow must have departed this life, and the happyheirs paid for the epitaph in no niggardly fashion.

  The general conversation went on. Lampridius told a story of how oneday, moved by curiosity, he had been to hear a Christian preacherthundering against pagan grammarians. "The grammarians," asseveredthe preacher, "do not rank men for their worth, but for their literarystyle, thinking it less criminal to kill a man than to pronounce theword _homo_ with a wrong aspiration!" Lampridius suspected that ifthese Christian preachers hated the style of the rhetoricians to sucha degree, it was because, conscious that they themselves could writeand speak only like barbarians, they made ignorance the badge of moralworth, so that for them a good speaker became a suspicious character.

  "The day on which eloquence perishes will see the end of Hellas, theend of Rome! People will turn into dumb animals, and it is to makethem so that Christian preachers use their barbarous jargon."

  "Who knows," murmured Mamertinus pensively, "perhaps style _is_ moreimportant than virtue, since slaves, barbarians, and nincompoops canall be virtuous!"

  Hephaestion meanwhile was explaining to his neighbour the exact meaningof Cicero's advice--"_Causam mendaciunculis adspergere_."

  "_Mendaciunculis_, that's to say, little lies. Cicero, in fact,advises you to sow little inventions all over your speech; he admitsfalsehood if decorative."

  Then followed a general discussion on the methods of beginning aspeech: should the beginning be anapaestic or dactylic?

  Julian became bored.

  He confessed heartily that he had never considered the matter, andthat in his opinion the speaker ought rather to preoccupy himself withthe fundamental idea of his speech than with the making style out of amosaic of peccadilloes.

  Mamertinus--then Lampridius and Hephaestion--waxed wroth. According tothem the subject of a speech was a matter of no moment. To an oratorit should be absolutely indifferent whether he undertook to attack orto defend a case. Even meaning had no interest for him. The principalthing was the orchestration of verbal sounds--the melody, the musicalassonance of letters--permitting even a barbarian, witless of Greek,to feel the sheer beauty of language.

  "I'll just give you an example, two Latin verses of Propertius," saidGarguillus. "Notice the power of the sounds and the emptiness of themeaning. Listen--

  "'_Et Veneris dominae volucres, mea turba columbae, Tingunt Gorgonio punica rostra lacu._'"

  What pure delight! Every letter sings! What does the meaning matter?All the beauty consists in the sound, in the assemblage of vowels andconsonants. For that utterance I would give all the civic virtue ofJuvenal and the philosophy of Lucretius! No! Just hear again! Whatsweetness there is in that murmur--

  "'_Et Veneris dominae volucres, mea turba columbae!_'"

  and he wagged that upper lip with a smack of delight.

  Everybody repeated the lines of Propertius, unwearying of their charm,and embarking on a veritable orgy of quotation.

  "Just listen," murmured Mamertinus in his AEolian voice--

  "'_Tingunt Gorgonio..._'"

  "_Tingunt Gorgonio_," repeated the master of chancery. "ByPallas!--why, it delights one's very palate. It's like swallowing awarm mouthful of wine mingled with Attic honey--

  "'_Tingunt Gorgonio..._'"

  Note how the 'g's' follow each other, and then farther on--

  "'_ ...punica rostra lacu._'"

  "Astounding! inimitable!" murmured Lampridius, shutting his eyes.

  Julian was ashamed and amused at this verbal intoxication.

  "Words should be, to a certain extent, devoid of meaning," continuedLampridius gravely; "they should flow, roar, chant, without everbringing up short either the ear or the emotion. Then only realenjoyment of their beauty is possible."

  On the threshold of the door, from which the gaze of Julian had seldomdeparted, there now appeared, quietly as a shadow, a white and haughtyfigure.

  The open shutters allowed the moonlight to fall in, mingling with theruddy shine of torches on the mosaic of the mirror-smooth floor, andon the wall frescoes, portraying Endymion asleep under the caresses ofSelene. The apparition kept still as a statue. The antique Greekpeplum of soft white wool fell in long folds, cinctured high under thebreast. Moonlight illumined the robe, but the face remained in shadow.The new-comer looked at Julian and Julian looked at her. They smiledat each other, knowing that nobody observed them, and finger on lipshe listened to the anecdotes of the guests.

  Suddenly Mamertinus, who was discussing with Lampridius grammaticalpeculiarities of the first and second aorist, exclaimed--

  "Arsinoe! At last! So you've made up your mind to abandon physics andmodelling for our company?"

  She came in and deigned a smile to everyone.

  She was the same disk-thrower whom a month before Julian had seen inthe abandoned wrestling-ground. The poet Publius, knowing everybodyand everything in Athens, had sought the acquaintance of Hortensiusand Arsinoe, and had introduced Julian to the house.

  Arsinoe's father, an old Roman senator, Helvidius Priscus, had diedduring the last years of Constantine the Great, bequeathing Arsinoeand Myrrha, his two daughters by a Goth woman-prisoner, to Hortensius,whom he respected on account of his love for antique Rome and hatredfor Christianity. A distant relative of Arsinoe, owner of factories ofpurple at Sidon, had left his incalculable wealth to the young girl.

  To Arsinoe, Christian virtues and the patriarchal customs of Romeseemed equally contemptible. The figures of independent women,Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Sappho, alone captivated her girlishimagination. Had she not declared naively one day, to the horror ofHortensius, that she would rather become a beautiful and freecourtesan, than be transformed into the mother of a family, slave of ahusband, "like everybody else"? Those three words, "like everybodyelse," filled her with melancholy disgust. At one time Arsinoe wasattracted by natural science, and had worked with illustrious men ofscience at the museum in Alexandria. Then the atomic theories ofEpicurus, Democrates, and Lucretius had enthralled her. She loved astudy which should deliver her soul from the "terror of the gods."

  With the same almost morbid intensity, she had afterwards appliedherself to sculpture, and had come to Athens in order to study thebest works, the masterpieces of Phidias, Scopas, and Praxiteles.

  "You are still discussing grammar?" asked the daughter of HelvidiusPriscus of the guests, as she came into the dining-hall. She continuedironically: "Don't trouble yourselves; go on. I won't argue orcomplain, because I'm too hungry after my day's work. Slave, somewine!..."

  "My friends," continued Arsinoe when seated, "you'll ruin your mindswith quotations from Demosthenes and your rules from Quintilian!...Take care! Rhetoric will ruin you.... I want to see a man who doesn'tcare a fig for Homer or for Cicero, who speaks without thinking of theaspirates, of syntax, or of the conjunction of letters. Julian, let usgo down to the beach after supper; I am disinclined for discussions ondactyls and anapaests."

  "Precisely my own mood, Arsinoe," stammered Garguillus, who had eatentoo much _foie gras_ and who almost always, at the end of dinner, feltan aversion for literature proportionate to the weight upon hisstomach.

  "_Litterarum intemperantia laboramus_," as Seneca used to say. "We aresuffering from literary indigestion. We are simply poisoningourselves!" and he thoughtfu
lly took a tooth-pick from a pocket. Hislarge face expressed weariness and disgust.