It was at Athens that Julian was about to take his vows and finally
become a monk. One fresh spring morning, before the sun was up,
Julian, issuing from the church where he had officiated at matins,
followed for a few miles the banks of the Ilissus, in the shadow of
plane-trees and wild vine. Not far from Athens he had lighted upon a
solitary place, on the edge of a torrent which poured, like a scarf of
silver, upon a sandy bottom. Thence he used often to gaze with wonder
through the mists at the ruddy cliff of the Acropolis and the haughty
lines of the Parthenon, half-illumined by the dawn.
On this particular morning Julian took off his shoes and walked along
the reaches of the Ilissus barefoot. The air was full of the smell of
flowers and of the rich-scented muscat grape--that aroma in which
there is a foretaste of wine, faint as the promise of first love,
stealing into the soul of youth.
Julian, with feet in the water, sat down upon a platan-root, opened
the _Phædrus_ and began to read at the passage in the dialogue in
which Socrates says to Phædrus: "Let us go this way, and follow the
course of the Ilissus; we will choose a solitary place and there sit
down.
"_Phædrus_: Luckily, I'm unshod this morning, and as for you,
Socrates, you always go barefoot. We'll walk in the bed of the river.
Look, how smiling and pellucid the water is!
"_Socrates_: By Pallas! here's a wonderful nook; it must be sacred to
the nymphs and to the god Acheloüs--to judge by these little statues.
Doesn't it seem to you as if here the breeze were softer and of
sweeter odour? Here, even in the hum of the crickets there's something
of the sweetness of summer. But what I love best of all is this deep
grass!"
Julian turned from the book with a smile. All was as it had been eight
centuries before. Even the crickets set up their song.
"Socrates actually touched this ground with his feet!" he thought, and
burying his head among the reeds he kissed the spot with adoration.
"Good-day, Julian! you've chosen a lovely corner there to read in. May
I sit down near you?"
"Sit, sit; I shall be delighted. Poets never violate a solitude."
Julian looked up at a meagre personage, draped in an enormously long
cloak (it was the poet Publius Porphyrius), thinking to himself--
"He's so small and frail that I believe he'll soon turn into a
grasshopper, as Plato fancied the poets do."
Publius, like the grasshoppers, could almost live upon air, but the
gods had not granted him complete immunity from appetite; and his
shaven cadaverous face and discoloured lips were stamped with
insatiable hunger.
"Why are you wearing such a long cloak, Publius?" Julian asked.
"It isn't mine," answered the other philosophically. "I share a room
with a young man, Hephæstion, who has come to Athens to learn
eloquence. He will be a famous lawyer one day. Meanwhile he's as poor
as I am, poor as a lyric poet--I need say no more! Why, we've pledged
our clothes, our furniture, even the inkstand; but we still have a
cloak between us. In the morning I go out, and Hephæstion studies
Demosthenes; in the evening he puts on the chlamys, and I write
verses. Unfortunately we're not the same height--but what does that
matter? I take my walks along the streets 'long-robed,' like the
ancient Trojan ladies."
Publius laughed heartily; the cadaverous face took on the expression
of a mourner who has incautiously cheered up.
"You see, Julian," continued the poet, "I'm counting on the death of
the widow of a very rich Roman landowner. The happy heirs will order
an epitaph from me, and are going to pay for it generously.
Unfortunately the widow, in spite of everything that doctors and heirs
can do, persists in not giving up the ghost. But for that, my boy, I
should have bought myself a cloak long ago. Listen, Julian, get up and
come with me at once!"
"Whither?"
"Trust me--you'll thank me for it."
"What's the mystery?"
"Ask no questions; get up and come! The poet brings no harm to the
poet's friend. You'll see a goddess."
"What goddess?"
"Artemis, the huntress."
"A picture? Statue?"
"Much better than that. If you love beauty, take your cloak and follow
me."
Publius assumed so seductive and mysterious an air that Julian was
bitten by curiosity.
"There's but one condition. Say nothing, and marvel at nothing we do.
Otherwise the spell will break. In the name of Calliope and Erato,
just trust me! We're only two yards from the place, and to shorten the
road for you I'll read you the beginning of my epitaph on the widow."
They issued on the dusty high-road. Under the first rays of the sun
the steel shield of Pallas Athene darted lightnings from the rose-hued
Acropolis. Along the stone walls, hiding brooks humming along under
the fig-trees, the grasshoppers were singing shrilly, vieing with the
hoarse voice of the poet as he recited the epitaph.
Publius Porphyrius was a man not destitute of talent. His career had
been a curious one. Several years previously he had possessed a pretty
little house, a veritable temple of Hermes, at Constantinople, not far
from the Chalcedonian suburb. His father, an oil merchant, had
bequeathed him a little fortune which should have permitted him to
live without cares. But Publius was a worshipper of antique Hellenism,
and rebelled against what he called the triumph of Christian
servitude. He wrote a liberal poem which displeased the Emperor
Constantius, who was therein alluded to unfavourably. This allusion
cost the author dear. Chastisement fell upon him; his house and goods
were confiscated, and he himself banished to an islet in the
archipelago, inhabited only by rocks, goats, and fevers. This trial
was more than Publius could stand. He cursed liberal opinions, and
determined to blot out his misdeeds at any price. Shaking with fever,
he composed during his sleepless nights, by means of sentences culled
from Virgil, a poem glorifying the Emperor; the verses of the ancient
poet being grouped in such a fashion that they formed a new work.
This ingenious puzzle tickled the palate of the Court. Publius had
divined the taste of the century.
Straightway he ventured on feats more astonishing still. He wrote a
dithyrambic, or Bacchic ode in free stanzas, and addressed it to
Constantius. It consisted of verses of different lengths, designed so
that they formed complete figures, such as a Pan's flute, a
water-organ, or a sacrificial altar on which the smoke was represented
by uneven phrases. But by a marvel of skilfulness the poem was so
contrived as to make a decorative oblong twenty hexameters wide and
forty hexameters long. Certain lines were traced in red ink and, read
together, became transformed into a monogram of Christ, or into a
flower of arabesques, but always, in whatever shape, made new lines
composed of new compliments. Finally the four last hexameters of the
book could be read in eighteen different orders: from the end
backwards, from the beginning, from the side, from the middle, from
above, from below, etc., and, read in what manner you please, formed a
eulogy to the Emperor.
In executing this work the poor poet nearly lost his wits. But his
victory was complete, and Constantius more than charmed. He believed
that Publius had surpassed all the poets of antiquity; he wrote the
author a letter with his own hand, assuring him of protection and
ending thus: "In our age My bounty, like the calm breath of the
zephyrs, is breathed upon all who write verses."
Nevertheless his confiscated property was not restored to the poet; he
was simply given money and authorised to quit his desert island for
Athens.
There he led a melancholy existence. The ostler in the stables of the
circus, in comparison with Publius, lived in luxury.
In the company of gravediggers, shady speculators, furnishers of
nuptial feasts, he passed whole days in the antechambers of the
illiterate great, in order to obtain orders for a marriage ode, an
epitaph, or a love-letter. At this trade he gained little, but never
lost heart, hoping to offer to the Emperor one day a poem which would
win him complete pardon.
Julian felt that in spite of this outward abasement Porphyrius bore at
heart a deep love for Hellas. He was a fine critic of Greek poetry and
Julian enjoyed his conversation.
They left the high-road and approached the high wall of an enclosure
like some _palæstra_ or exercise-ground. Round about all was solitary;
two black lambs were cropping the grass; near the closed door, in the
chinks of which poppies and white daisies were growing, there stood a
chariot and two white horses. Their manes were close-cut like those of
the horses in the bas-reliefs. By them stood an old slave, a
deaf-mute, but evidently of an affable disposition, for he immediately
recognised Publius and nodded to him in friendly fashion, pointing to
the closed gate of the wrestling ground.
"Lend me your purse a moment," said Publius to Julian. "I'll take out
one or two pence for this poor old fool."
He threw the coins, and the mute, with servile grimaces and pleased
grunts, opened the door.
They entered under a long and dark covered gallery. Between rows of
columns ran other galleries laid out for the exercise of athletes. The
spaces in their midst were now widths of grass instead of sand. The
two friends penetrated a large inner portico. Julian's curiosity
became keener at every step, the mysterious Publius leading him on by
the hand without a word. Doors of _exedræ_, or academic halls where
orators used to meet, opened into the second portico, and the
grasshoppers were humming now where eloquent discourses of Athenian
sages had in old time resounded. Above the deep grass bees were
whirling: silence and melancholy pervaded all. Suddenly, a woman's
voice was heard, and the noise of a disk striking the marble, followed
by a merry burst of laughter.
Stealing in like robbers, the pair hid themselves in the outer shadow
of the columns of the _elaiothesion_, or place where the ancient
wrestlers used to rub themselves over with oil.
From behind these columns could be seen the _ephebeion_, a
quadrangular space open to the sky, originally laid out for
disk-throwing, and now newly strown with fresh sand.
Julian looked in, and started back.
At twenty paces from him stood a young girl entirely naked. His eyes
swept over her wonderful body. She was holding a discus in her hand.
Julian longed instinctively to beat a retreat; but turning, he saw in
the eyes of Publius and upon the whole of that lean tawny face such a
look of admiration, that he understood that the adorer of Hellas, in
bringing him to the place, had been moved by no shameful thought; that
enthusiasm was wholly sacred.
Publius, seizing the hand of Julian, murmured:
"Look! We are now nine centuries back, in ancient Laconia. Do you
remember the verses of Propertius--
"Multa tuæ, Sparte, miramur jura palæstræ, Sed mage virginei, tot
bona gymnasii, Quod non infames exercet corpore ludos Inter
luctantes nuda puella viros?"
"Who is she?" asked Julian.
"I don't know. I never wanted to know."
"That is well! Hush!"
Now he gazed eagerly and without shame at the girl hurling the disk.
Blushes were unworthy of a philosopher.
She retreated some steps, inclined her body forward, and advancing the
left leg made a swift bounding movement, and shot the metal circle so
high that it shone in the rising sun, and in falling struck the
farthest pillar. It was like watching the motions of a statue by
Phidias.
"That shot was the best," said a little twelve-year-old damsel, clad
in a rich tunic and standing near the column.
"Myrrha, give me the disk," replied the player. "I can throw it higher
than that, as you shall see. Meroë, get farther out of the way. I
might hurt you, as Apollo hurt Hyacinthus."
Meroë, an old Egyptian, to judge by her multi-coloured vestments and
tanned visage, was preparing in alabaster jars perfumes for a bath.
Julian understood that the mute slave of the gate and the white-horsed
chariot outside must belong to these two votaries of the Laconian
games.
After the disk-throwing the young girl took from Myrrha a bow and a
quiver, and drew thence a long arrow. She aimed at a black circle at
the opposite end of the _ephebeion_; the string hummed, the arrow flew
whistling and stuck in the target: then a second, then a third.
"O huntress Artemis!" sighed Publius.
Suddenly a sunbeam slipping between two columns shot into the face and
youthful breast of the young girl. Throwing bow and arrows aside in
sudden bedazzlement, she hid her face in her hands.
Swallows, uttering their faint fine chirpings, undulated about the
exercise-ground, and pursuing each other vanished into the blue of the
sky.
She uncovered her face and raised her arms above her head.
Its fair hair, golden at its ends as honey in the sun, at its roots
was auburn; her lips half opened in a happy smile, she suffered the
sun to bathe her body, gliding lower and lower yet, till she stood
clothed, as in the loveliest raiment, in pure light and beauty.
"Myrrha," the girl murmured slowly and dreamily, "look at the sky! How
beautiful it would be to bathe in it, like those birds! Do you
remember our saying that men could not be happy because they had no
wings? When I look at the birds I am consumed with envy. One should be
light and bare as I am at this moment, and winging high up in the sky,
and knowing that one could fly forever--that there should be nothing
else but sky and sun about one's light and free and naked body!"
Drawing herself up to her full height with outstretched arms she
sighed deeply, as at some remembered joy fled away for ever.
The burning caress of the sun now reached her waist. Suddenly she
shivered and grew ashamed, as if some living and passionate being had
approached her. With one hand she shielded her breast, with the other
the abdomen, the immortal gesture of Aphrodite of Cnidos.
"Meroë, give me my clothes! quick, Meroë!" she exclaimed, with eyes
wide open and startled.
Julian never remembered how he came forth from the wrestling-ground;
his heart was on fire. The poet's face was solemn as that of a man
quitting a temple.
"You are not annoyed?" he asked Julian.
"No; why should I be?"
"Perhaps a Christian might find it a temptation?"
"There was nothing of temptation there for me. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly; that is what I thought."
And again they found themselves on the dusty high road, where the sun
was already hot, and bent their steps towards Athens.