"Alas, our ancestors were barbarians, Medes; and the sluggish blood of
the North flows in my veins. It is true, I am no son of the Hellenes!"
"My friend, Hellas has never existed," murmured Maximus, with his old
bewitching smile.
"What do you mean?" asked Julian.
"The Hellas that you love has never existed."
"Do you mean to say that my faith is futile?"
"We are only to believe," answered Maximus, "in what is not, but shall
be. Your Hellas shall exist, shall be the reign, the kingdom of divine
men, men daring all things, fearing none."
"Fearing none!... Master, powerful enchantments are thine.... Deliver
my soul from fear!"
"Fear of what?"
"I cannot say, but from childhood I have been afraid--afraid of life,
of death, of myself, of the mystery in all things, of the darkness....
I had an old nurse, Labda, like a Parca, a Fate, who used to spin me
terrible tales of my family, the Flavii. These mad old-wives' tales
keep singing in my ears still, at night, when I am alone. They will
ruin me some day ... I wish to be free, as one of the old Hellenes ...
and I have no gladness in me.... Sometimes I think I am a coward,
Master!... Master, save me! Deliver me from that eternal fear, these
consuming darknesses!"
"Ah, I have long known the need of your soul," said Maximus, gravely,
"and from this very day I will cleanse you from this Galilean
corruption--slay the shadow of Golgotha in the radiance of
Mithra--warm afresh your body, frozen at baptism, in the hot blood of
the Sun-god!... My son, rejoice! for I will give you such freedom,
such joy as no man on earth has yet possessed!"
They issued from the wood, and followed a narrow path, hewn through
the rock, above a chasm in which a torrent ran seething. Stones,
loosened by their feet, rolled echoing down and plunged into the
water. High over the forest they saw the distant snow-covered summits
of Mount Rhodope. Julian and Maximus at last reached and entered the
mouth of a cave. It was the temple of the Sun-god Mithra, where
mysteries, forbidden by the Roman laws, were performed. In this cavern
there was no sign of splendour; the bleak walls were engraven with
cabalistic signs of Zoroastrian religion, triangles, enlaced circles,
winged beasts, and constellations. Here and there the vaulted
obscurity was relieved by dull flames of torches or the form of an
initiating priest in strange and sweeping robes.
Julian was arrayed in the Olympian robe, embroidered with Indian
monsters, stars, suns, and hyperborean dragons. He held a flambeau in
his right hand. Maximus had acquainted him with the responses to be
made to his initiator, and Julian had learned them by heart, although
their meaning hitherto was unintelligible to him.
With Maximus he went down rock-hewn steps into a long and deep foss.
Here the air was already humid and stifling; but to make it more so,
overhead a wooden trap-door, riddled with holes like a strainer, was
lowered across, from edge to edge. The trampling of hoofs resounded,
and the sacrificers placed three black bulls, three white bulls, and a
red bull with gilded hoofs and horns on the trap above the two men.
Then the initiators, intoning a hymn which mingled with the bellowing
of the beasts, felled with axes one bull after another. They fell on
their knees and struggled, the wooden framework trembled under their
weight, while the farthest vaults of the cavern resounded to the cries
of the red bull, which was hailed as the god Mithra. Percolating
through the holes in the trap, the blood fell in a hot shower upon the
head of Julian. This slaying of the bull consecrated to the Sun was
the supreme mystery of the Pagans. Throwing off his outer clothes and
standing in his white tunic only, Julian offered head, breast, and all
his limbs to the terrible trickling rain. Then Maximus, shaking the
torch overhead, cried--
"Let thy soul be steeped in the expiating blood of thy god, the Sun,
in the purest blood of the ever radiant heart of thy god, the Sun; let
it be cleansed in his morning and in his evening light! Dost thou, O
mortal, still hold anything in fear?"
"Yes," was the response.
"Let thy soul become a parcel of thy god, the Sun! The quenchless and
inviolable Mithra takes thee to himself! Dost thou still fear
anything, O mortal?"
"I fear nothing more on the earth," answered Julian, who was now
streaming with blood from head to foot. "I am even as He is!"
"Take this crown," said Maximus, placing a wreath of acanthus-leaves
on the head of Julian, with the point of his sword.