Five hundred years before the Trojan war, and seventeen hundred and
fifteen years before our own era, there was a grand festival at Sardes.
King Candaules was going to marry. The people were affected with that
sort of pleasurable interest and aimless emotion wherewith any royal
event inspires the masses, even though it in no wise concerns them,
and transpires in superior spheres of life which they can never hope to
reach.
As soon as Phoebus-Apollo, standing in his quadriga, had gilded to
saffron the summits of fertile Mount Tmolus with his rays, the
good people of Sardes were all astir, going and coming, mounting or
descending the marble stairways leading from the city to the waters
of the Pactolus, that opulent river whose sands Midas filled with tiny
sparks of gold when he bathed in its stream. One would have supposed
that each one of these good citizens was himself about to marry, so
solemn and important was the demeanour of all.
Men were gathering in groups in the Agora, upon the steps of the
temples and along the porticoes. At every street corner one might have
encountered women leading by the hand little children, whose uneven walk
ill suited the maternal anxiety and impatience. Maidens were hastening
to the fountains, all with urns gracefully balanced upon their heads, or
sustained by their white arms as with natural handles, so as to procure
early the necessary water provision for the household, and thus obtain
leisure at the hour when the nuptial procession should pass. Washerwomen
hastily folded the still damp tunics and chlamidæ, and piled them upon
mule-wagons. Slaves turned the mill without any need of the overseer’s
whip to tickle their naked and scar-seamed shoulders. Sardes was
hurrying itself to finish with those necessary everyday cares which no
festival can wholly disregard.
The road along which the procession was to pass had been strewn with
fine yellow sand. Brazen tripods, disposed along the way at regular
intervals, sent up to heaven the odorous smoke of cinnamon and
spikenard. These vapours, moreover, alone clouded the purity of the
azure above. The clouds of a hymeneal day ought, indeed, to be formed
only by the burning of perfumes. Myrtle and rose-laurel branches were
strewn upon the ground, and from the walls of the palaces were suspended
by little rings of bronze rich tapestries, whereon the needles of
industrious captives--intermingling wool, silver, and gold--had
represented various scenes in the history of the gods and heroes:
Ixion embracing the cloud; Diana surprised in the bath by Actaeon; the
shepherd Paris as judge in the contest of beauty held upon Mount
Ida between Hera, the snowy-armed, Athena of the sea-green eyes, and
Aphrodite, girded with her magic cestus; the old men of Troy rising to
honour Helena as she passed through the Skaian gate, a subject taken
from one of the poems of the blind man of Meles. Others exhibited in
preference scenes taken from the life of Heracles, the Theban, through
flattery to Candaules, himself a Heracleid, being descended from the
hero through Alcaeus. Others contented themselves by decorating the
entrances of their dwellings with garlands and wreaths in token of
rejoicing.
Among the multitudes marshalled along the way from the royal house even
as far as the gates of the city, through which the young queen would
pass on her arrival, conversation naturally turned upon the beauty of
the bride, whereof the renown had spread throughout all Asia; and
upon the character of the bridegroom, who, although not altogether an
eccentric, seemed nevertheless one not readily appreciated from the
common standpoint of observation.
Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap Megabazus, was gifted with marvellous
purity of feature and perfection of form; at least such was the rumour
spread abroad by the female slaves who attended her, and a few female
friends who had accompanied her to the bath; for no man could boast
of knowing aught of Nyssia save the colour of her veil and the elegant
folds that she involuntarily impressed upon the soft materials which
robed her statuesque body.
The barbarians did not share the ideas of the Greeks in regard to
modesty. While the youths of Achaia made no scruples of allowing their
oil-anointed torsos to shine under the sun in the stadium, and while the
Spartan virgins danced ungarmented before the altar of Diana, those of
Persepolis, Ebactana, and Bactria, attaching more importance to chastity
of the body than to chastity of mind, considered those liberties
allowed to the pleasure of the eyes by Greek manner as impure and highly
reprehensible, and held no woman virtuous who permitted men to obtain
a glimpse of more than the tip of her foot in walking, as it slightly
deranged the discreet folds of a long tunic.
Despite all this mystery, or rather, perhaps, by very reason of this
mystery, the fame of Nyssia had not been slow to spread throughout all
Lydia, and become popular there to such a degree that it had reached
even Candaules, although kings are ordinarily the most illy informed
people in their kingdoms, and live like the gods in a kind of cloud
which conceals from them the knowledge of terrestrial things.
The Eupatridæ of Sardes, who hoped that the young king might, perchance,
choose a wife from their family, the hetairæ of Athens, of Samos, of
Miletus and of Cyprus, the beautiful slaves from the banks of the
Indus, the blond girls brought at a vast expense from the depths of
the Cimmerian fogs, were heedful never to utter in the presence of
Candaules, whether within hearing or beyond hearing, a single word
which bore any relation to Nyssia. The bravest, in a question of beauty,
recoil before the prospect of a contest in which they can anticipate
being outrivalled.
And nevertheless no person in Sardes, or even in Lydia, had beheld this
redoubtable adversary, no person save one solitary being, who from
the time of that encounter had kept his lips as firmly closed upon the
subject as though Harpocrates, the god of silence, had sealed them with
his finger, and that was Gyges, chief of the guards of Candaules. One
day Gyges, his mind filled with various projects and vague ambitions,
had been wandering among the Bactrian hills, whither his master had
sent him upon an important and secret mission. He was dreaming of the
intoxication of omnipotence, of treading upon purple with sandals of
gold, of placing the diadem upon the brows of the fairest of women.
These thoughts made his blood boil in his veins, and, as though to
pursue the flight of his dreams, he smote his sinewy heel upon the
foam-whitened flanks of his Numidian horse.
The weather, at first calm, had changed and waxed tempestuous like the
warrior’s soul; and Boreas, his locks bristling with Thracian frosts,
his cheeks puffed out, his arms folded upon his breast, smote the
rain-freighted clouds with the mighty beatings of his wings.
A bevy of young girls who had been gathering flowers in the meadow,
fearing the coming storm, were returning to the city in all haste, each
carrying her perfumed harvest in the lap of her tunic. Seeing a stranger
on horseback approaching in the distance, they had hidden their faces
in their mantles, after the custom of the barbarians; but at the very
moment that Gyges was passing by the one whose proud carriage and richer
habiliments seemed to designate her the mistress of the little band,
an unusually violent gust of wind carried away the veil of the fair
unknown, and, whirling it through the air like a feather, chased it to
such a distance that it could not be recovered. It was Nyssia, daughter
of Megabazus, who found herself thus with face unveiled in the presence
of Gyges, a humble captain of King Candaules’s guard. Was it only the
breath of Boreas which had brought about this accident, or had Eros, who
delights to vex the hearts of men, amused himself by severing the string
which had fastened the protecting tissue? However that may have been,
Gyges was stricken motionless at the sight of that Medusa of beauty, and
not till long after the folds of Nyssia’s robe had disappeared beyond
the gates of the city could he think of proceeding on his way. Although
there was nothing to justify such a conjecture, he cherished the belief
that he had seen the satrap’s daughter; and that meeting, which affected
him almost like an apparition, accorded so fully with the thoughts that
were occupying him at the moment of its occurrence, that he could not
help perceiving therein something fateful and ordained of the gods.
In truth it was upon that brow that he would have wished to place the
diadem. What other could be more worthy of it? But what probability was
there that Gyges would ever have a throne to share? He had not sought
to follow up this adventure, and assure himself that it was indeed the
daughter of Megabazus whose mysterious face had been revealed to him by
Chance, the great filcher. Nyssia had fled so swiftly that it would have
been impossible for him then to overtake her; and, moreover, he had been
dazzled, fascinated, thunder-stricken, as it were, rather than charmed
by that superhuman apparition, by that monster of beauty!
Nevertheless that image, although seen only in the glimpse of a moment,
had engraved itself upon his heart in lines deep as those which
the sculptors trace on ivory with tools reddened in the fire. He had
endeavoured, although vainly, to efface it, for the love which he felt
for Nyssia inspired him with a secret terror. Perfection in such a
degree is ever awe-inspiring, and women so like unto goddesses could
only work evil to feeble mortals; they are formed for divine adulteries,
and even the most courageous men never risk themselves in such amours
without trembling. Therefore no hope had blossomed in the soul of
Gyges, overwhelmed and discouraged in advance by the sentiment of the
impossible. Ere opening his lips to Nyssia he would have wished to
despoil the heaven of its robe of stars, to take from Phoebus his crown
of rays, forgetting that women only give themselves to those unworthy
of them, and that to win their love one must act as though he desired to
earn their hate.
From that day the roses of joy no longer bloomed upon his cheeks. By
day he was sad and mournful, and seemed to wander abroad in solitary
dreaming, like a mortal who has beheld a divinity. At night he was
haunted by dreams in which he beheld Nyssia seated by his side upon
cushions of purple between the golden griffins of the royal throne.
Therefore Gyges, the only one who could speak of his own knowledge
concerning Nyssia, having never spoken of her, the Sardians were left to
their own conjectures in her regard; and their conjectures, it must be
confessed, were fantastic and altogether fabulous. The beauty of Nyssia,
thanks to the veils which shrouded her, became a sort of myth, a canvas,
a poem to which each one added ornamentation as the fancy took him.
‘If report be not false,’ lisped a young debauchee from Athens, who
stood with one hand upon the shoulder of an Asiatic boy, ‘neither
Plangon, nor Archianassa, nor Thais can be compared with this marvellous
barbarian; yet I can scarce believe that she equals Theano of Colophon,
from whom I once bought a single night at the price of as much gold as
she could bear away, after having plunged both her white arms up to the
shoulder in my cedar-wood coffer.’
‘Beside her,’ added a Eupatrid, who pretended to be better informed than
any other person upon all manner of subjects, ‘beside her the daughter
of Coelus and the Sea would seem but a mere Ethiopian servant.’
‘Your words are blasphemy, and although Aphrodite be a kind and
indulgent goddess, beware of drawing down her anger upon you.’
‘By Hercules!--and that ought to be an oath of some weight in a city
ruled by one of his descendants--I cannot retract a word of it.’
‘You have seen her, then?’
‘No; but I have a slave in my service who once belonged to Nyssia, and
who has told me a hundred stories about her.’
‘Is it true,’ demanded in infantile tones an equivocal-looking woman
whose pale-rose tunic, painted cheeks, and locks shining with essences
betrayed wretched pretensions to a youth long passed away--’ is it true
that Nyssia has two pupils in each eye? It seems to me that must be very
ugly, and I cannot understand how Candaules could fall in love with such
a monstrosity, while there is no lack, at Sardes and in Lydia, of women
whose eyes are irreproachable.’
And uttering these words with all sorts of affected airs and simperings,
Lamia took a little significant peep in a small mirror of cast metal
which she drew from her bosom, and which enabled her to lead back to
duty certain wandering curls disarranged by the impertinence of the
wind.
‘As to the double pupil, that seems to me nothing more than an old
nurse’s tale,’ observed the well-informed patrician; ‘but it is a fact
that Nyssia’s eyes are so piercing that she can see through walls.
Lynxes are myopic compared with her.’
‘How can a sensible man coolly argue about such an absurdity?’
interrupted a citizen, whose bald skull, and the flood of snowy beard
into which he plunged his fingers while speaking, lent him an air of
preponderance and philosophical sagacity. ‘The truth is that the
daughter of Megabazus cannot naturally see through a wall any better
than you or I, but the Egyptian priest Thoutmosis, who knows so many
wondrous secrets, has given her the mysterious stone which is found in
the heads of dragons, and whose property, as every one knows, renders
all shadows and the most opaque bodies transparent to the eyes of those
who possess it. Nyssia always carries this stone in her girdle, or
else set into her bracelet, and in that may be found the secret of her
clairvoyance.’
The citizen’s explanation seemed the most natural one to those of the
group whose conversation we are endeavouring to reproduce, and the
opinions of Lamia and the patrician were abandoned as improbable.
‘At all events,’ returned the lover of Theano, ‘we are going to have an
opportunity of judging for ourselves, for it seems to me that I hear the
clarions sounding in the distance, and though Nyssia is still invisible,
I can see the herald yonder approaching with palm branches in his hands,
to announce the arrival of the nuptial _cortége_, and make the crowd
fall back.’
At this news, which spread rapidly through the crowd, the strong men
elbowed their way toward the front ranks; the agile boys, embracing the
shafts of the columns, sought to climb up to the capitals and there seat
themselves; others, not without having skinned their knees against the
bark, succeeded in perching themselves comfortably enough in the Y of
some tree-branch. The women lifted their little children upon their
shoulders, warning them to hold tightly to their necks. Those who had
the good fortune to dwell on the street along which Candaules and Nyssia
were about to pass, leaned over from the summit of their roofs, or,
rising on their elbows, abandoned for a time the cushions upon which
they had been reclining.
A murmur of satisfaction and gratified expectation ran through the
crowd, which had already been waiting many long hours, for the arrows of
the midday sun were commencing to sting.
The heavy-armed warriors, with cuirasses of bull’s-hide covered with
overlapping plates of metal, helmets adorned with plumes of horse-hair
dyed red, _knemides_ or greaves faced with tin, baldrics studded with
nails, emblazoned bucklers, and swords of brass, rode behind a line of
trumpeters who blew with might and main upon their long tubes, which
gleamed under the sunlight. The horses of these warriors were all white
as the feet of Thetis, and might have served, by reason of their noble
paces and purity of breeds, as models for those which Phidias at a later
day sculptured upon the metopes of the Parthenon.
At the head of this troop rode Gyges, the well-named, for his name
in the Lydian tongue signifies beautiful. His features, of the most
exquisite regularity, seemed chiselled in marble, owing to his intense
pallor, for he had just discovered in Nyssia, although she was veiled
with the veil of a young bride, the same woman whose face had been
betrayed to his gaze by the treachery of Boreas under the walls of
Bactria.
‘Handsome Gyges looks very sad,’ said the young maidens. ‘What proud
beauty could have secured his love, or what forsaken one has caused some
Thessalian witch to cast a spell on him? Has that cabalistic ring (which
he is said to have found hidden within the flanks of a brazen horse
in the midst of some forest) lost its virtue, and suddenly ceasing to
render its owner invisible, betrayed him to the astonished eyes of some
innocent husband, who had deemed himself alone in his conjugal chamber?’
‘Perhaps he has been wasting his talents and his drachmas at the game of
Palamedes, or else it may be that he is disappointed at not having
won the prize at the Olympian games. He had great faith in his horse
Hyperion.’
No one of these conjectures was true. A fact is never guessed.
After the battalion commanded by Gyges, there came young boys crowned
with myrtle-wreaths, and singing epithalamic hymns after the Lydian
manner, accompanying themselves upon lyres of ivory, which they played
with bows. All were clad in rose-coloured tunics ornamented with
a silver Greek border, and their long hair flowed down over their
shoulders in thick curls.
They preceded the gift-bearers, strong slaves whose half-nude bodies
exposed to view such interlacements of muscle as the stoutest athletes
might have envied.
Upon brancards, supported by two or four men or more, according to
the weight of the objects borne, were placed enormous brazen cratera,
chiselled by the most famous artists; vases of gold and silver whose
sides were adorned with bas-reliefs and whose hands were elegantly
worked into chimeras, foliage, and nude women; magnificent ewers to be
used in washing the feet of illustrious guests; flagons encrusted with
precious stones and containing the rarest perfumes; myrrh from Arabia,
cinnamon from the Indies, spikenard from Persia, essence of roses from
Smyrna; kamklins or perfuming pans, with perforated covers; cedar-wood
or ivory coffers of marvellous workmanship, which opened with a secret
spring that none save the inventor could find, and which contained
bracelets wrought from the gold of Ophir, necklaces of the most lustrous
pearls, mantle-brooches constellated with rubies and carbuncles;
toilet-boxes, containing blond sponges, curling-irons, sea-wolves’ teeth
to polish the nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which turns to a most
beautiful pink on touching the skin, powders to darken the eyelashes and
eyebrows, and all the refinements that feminine coquetry could invent.
Other litters were freighted with purple robes of the finest linen and
of all possible shades from the incarnadine hue of the rose to the deep
crimson of the blood of the grape; _calasires_ of the linen of Canopus,
which is thrown all white into the vat of the dyer, and comes forth
again, owing to the various astringents in which it had been steeped,
diapered with the most brilliant colours; tunics brought from the
fabulous land of Seres, made from the spun slime of a worm which feeds
upon leaves, and so fine that they might be drawn through a finger-ring.
Ethiopians, whose bodies shone like jet, and whose temples were tightly
bound with cords, lest they should burst the veins of their foreheads
in the effort to uphold their burden, carried in great pomp a statue of
Hercules, the ancestor of Candaules, of colossal size, wrought of ivory
and gold, with the club, the skin of the Nemean lion, the three apples
from the garden of the Hesperides, and all the traditional attributes of
the hero.
Statues of Venus Urania, and of Venus Genitrix, sculptured by the best
pupils of the Sicyon School. That marble of Paros whose gleaming
transparency seemed expressly created for the representation of the
ever-youthful flesh of the immortals, were borne after the statue of
Hercules, which admirably relieved the harmony and elegance of their
proportions by contrast with its massive outlines and rugged forms.
A painting by Bularchus, which Candaules had purchased for its weight in
gold, executed upon the wood of the female larch-tree, and representing
the defeat of the Magnesians, evoked universal admiration by the beauty
of its design, the truthfulness of the attitude of its figures, and the
harmony of its colouring, although the artist had only employed in
its production the four primitive colours: Attic ochre, white, Pontic
_sinopis_ and _atramentum_. The young king loved painting and sculpture
even more, perhaps, than well became a monarch, and he had not
unfrequently bought a picture at a price equal to the annual revenue of
a whole city.
Camels and dromedaries, splendidly caparisoned, with musicians seated
on their necks performing upon drums and cymbals, carried the gilded
stakes, the cords, and the material of the tent designed for the use of
the queen during voyages and hunting parties.
These spectacles of magnificence would upon any other occasion have
ravished the people of Sardes with delight, but their curiosity had been
enlisted in another direction, and it was not without a certain feeling
of impatience that they watched this portion of the procession file by.
The young maidens and the handsome boys, bearing flaming torches, and
strewing handfuls of crocus flowers along the way, hardly attracted any
attention. The idea of beholding Nyssia had preoccupied all minds.
At last Candaules appeared, riding in a chariot drawn by four horses,
as beautiful and spirited as those of the sun, all rolling their golden
bits in foam, shaking their purple-decked manes, and restrained
with great difficulty by the driver, who stood erect at the side of
Candaules, and was leaning back to gain more power on the reins.
Candaules was a young man full of vigour, and well worthy of his
Herculean origin. His head was joined to his shoulders by a neck massive
as a bull’s, and almost without a curve; his hair, black and lustrous,
twisted itself into rebellious little curls, here and there concealing
the circlet of his diadem; his ears, small and upright, were of a ruddy
hue; his forehead was broad and full, though a little low, like all
antique foreheads; his eyes full of gentle melancholy, his oval cheeks,
his chin with its gentle and regular curves, his mouth with its slightly
parted lips--all bespoke the nature of the poet rather than that of
the warrior. In fact, although he was brave, skilled in all bodily
exercises, could subdue a wild horse as well as any of the Lapithæ,
or swim across the current of rivers when they descended, swollen with
melted snow, from the mountains, although he might have bent the bow of
Odysseus or borne the shield of Achilles, he seemed little occupied with
dreams of conquest; and war usually so fascinating to young kings,
had little attraction for him. He contented himself with repelling the
attacks of his ambitious neighbours, and sought not to extend his own
dominions. He preferred building palaces, after plans suggested by
himself to the architects, who always found the king’s hints of no small
value, or to form collections of statues and paintings by artists of
the elder and later schools. He had the works of Telephanes of Sicyon,
Cleanthes, Ardices of Corinth, Hygiemon, Deinias, Charmides, Eumarus,
and Cimon, some being simple drawings, and others paintings in various
colours or monochromes. It was even said that Candaules had not
disdained to wield with his own royal hands--a thing hardly becoming
a prince--the chisel of the sculptor and the sponge of the encaustic
painter.
But why should we dwell upon Candaules? The reader undoubtedly feels
like the people of Sardes: and it is of Nyssia that he desires to hear.
The daughter of Megabazus was mounted upon an elephant, with wrinkled
skin and immense ears which seemed like flags, who advanced with a heavy
but rapid gait, like a vessel in the midst of the waves. His tusks and
his trunk were encircled with silver rings, and around the pillars of
his limbs were entwined necklaces of enormous pearls. Upon his back,
which was covered with a magnificent Persian carpet of striped
pattern, stood a sort of estrade overlaid with gold finely chased, and
constellated with onyx stones, carnelians, chrysolites, lapis-lazuli,
and girasols; upon this estrade sat the young queen, so covered with
precious stones as to dazzle the eyes of the beholders. A mitre, shaped
like a helmet, on which pearls formed flower designs and letters after
the Oriental manner, was placed upon her head; her ears, both the lobes
and rims of which had been pierced, were adorned with ornaments in the
form of little cups, crescents, and balls; necklaces of gold and silver
beads, which had been hollowed out and carved, thrice encircled her neck
and descended with a metallic tinkling upon her bosom; emerald serpents
with topaz or ruby eyes coiled themselves in many folds about her arms,
and clasped themselves by biting their own tails. These bracelets were
connected by chains of precious stones, and so great was their weight
that two attendants were required to kneel beside Nyssia and support
her elbows. She was clad in a robe embroidered by Syrian workmen with
shining designs of golden foliage and diamond fruits, and over this she
wore the short tunic of Persepolis, which hardly descended to the knee,
and of which the sleeves were slit and fastened by sapphire clasps.
Her waist was encircled from hip to loins by a girdle wrought of narrow
material, variegated with stripes and flowered designs, which formed
themselves into symmetrical patterns as they were brought together by
a certain arrangement of the folds which Indian girls alone know how to
make. Her trousers of byssus, which the Phoenicians called _syndon_ were
confined at the ankles by anklets adorned with gold and silver bells,
and completed this toilet so fantastically rich and wholly opposed to
Greek taste. But, alas! a saffron-coloured _flammeum_ pitilessly masked
the face of Nyssia, who seemed embarrassed, veiled though she was, at
finding so many eyes fixed upon her, and frequently signed to a slave
behind her to lower the parasol of ostrich plumes, and thus conceal her
yet more from the curious gaze of the crowd.
Candaules had vainly begged of her to lay aside her veil, even for that
solemn occasion. The young barbarian had refused to pay the welcome of
her beauty to his people. Great was the disappointment. Lamia declared
that Nyssia dared not uncover her face for fear of showing her double
pupil. The young libertine remained convinced that Theano of Colophon
was more beautiful than the queen of Sardes; and Gyges sighed when he
beheld Nyssia, after having made her elephant kneel down, descend upon
the inclined heads of Damascus slaves as upon a living ladder, to
the threshold of the royal dwelling, where the elegance of Greek
architecture was blended with the fantasies and enormities of Asiatic
taste.