Dread and anxiety had taken possession of the merchant’s household
after Constantine had left them. Messengers came hurrying in, one after
another, to request the presence of Olympius. A heathen secretary of
Evagrius the Governor, had revealed what was astir, and the philosopher
had at once prepared to return to the Serapeum. Porphyrius himself
ordered his closed harmamaxa to be brought out, and undertook to fetch
weapons and standards to the temple from a storehouse where they were
laid by. This building stood on a plot of ground belonging to him in
Rhacotis, behind a timber-yard which was accessible from the streets
in front and behind, but sheltered from the public gaze by sheds and
wood-stacks.
The old aqueduct, which supplied the courts of sacrifice and the
Subterranean crypts of the temple where the mysteries of Serapis were
celebrated, passed close by the back-wall of this warehouse. Since
the destruction of the watercourse, under the Emperor Julian, the
underground conduit had been dry and empty, and a man by slightly
stooping could readily pass through it unseen into the Serapeum. This
mysterious passage had lately been secretly cleared out, and it was now
to be used for the transport of the arms to the temple precincts.
Damia had been present at the brief but vehement interview between
her son and Olympius, and had thrown in a word now and again: “It is
serious, very serious!” or, “Fight it out--no quarter!”
The parting was evidently a very painful one to Olympius; when the
merchant held out both his hands the older man clasped them in his and
held them to his breast, saying: “Thanks, my friend; thanks for all
you have done. We have lived--and if now we perish it is for the future
happiness of our grandchildren. What would life be to you and me if it
were marred by scourgings and questionings?--The omens read ill, and if
I am not completely deceived we are at the beginning of the end. What
lies beyond!... we as philosophers must meet it calmly. The supreme Mind
that governs us has planned the universe so well, that it is not likely
that those things of which we now have no knowledge should not also be
ordered for the best. The pinions of my soul beat indeed more freely
and lightly as I foresee the moment when it shall be released from the
burden of this flesh!”
The High-Priest raised his arms as though indeed he were prepared to
soar and uttered a fervent and inspired prayer in which he rehearsed to
the gods all that he and his had done in their honor and vowed to offer
them fresh sacrifices. His expressions were so lofty, and his flow
of language so beautiful and free, that Porphyrius did not dare to
interrupt him, though this long delay on the part of the leader of
the cause made him intolerably anxious. When the old man--who was as
emotional as a boy--ceased speaking, his white beard was wet with
tears, and seeing that even Damia’s and Gorgo’s eyes were moist, he was
preparing to address them again; but Porphyrius interposed. He gave him
time only to press his lips to Datnia’s hand and to bid Gorgo farewell.
“You were born into stirring times,” he said to her, “but under a good
sign. Two worlds are in collision; which shall survive?--For you, my
darling, I have but one wish: May you be happy!”
He left the room and the merchant paced up and down lost in gloomy
thoughts. Presently, as he caught his mother’s eye fixed uneasily upon
him, he murmured, less to her than to himself: “If he can think thus of
what the end will be, who can still dare to hope?” Damia drew herself up
in her chair.
“I,” she exclaimed passionately, “I--I dare, and I do hope and trust in
the future. Is everything to perish which our forefathers planned and
founded? Is this dismal superstition to overwhelm and bury the world
and all that is bright and beautiful, as the lava stream rolled over the
cities of Vesuvius? No, a thousand times no! Our retrograde and cowardly
generation, which has lost all heart to enjoy life in sheer dread of
future annihilation, may perhaps be doomed by the gods, as was that of
Deucalion’s day. Well--if so, what must be must! But such a world as
they dream of never can, never will last. Let them succeed in their
monstrous scheme! if the Temple of temples, the House of Serapis, were
to be in ashes and the image of the mighty god to be dashed to pieces,
what then.... I say what then? Then indeed everything will be at an
end--we, everybody; but they too, they, too, will perish.”
She clenched her fist with hatred and revenge and went on: “I know what
I know--there are legible and infallible signs, and it is given to me
to interpret them, and I tell you: It is true, unerringly true, as every
Alexandrian child has learnt from its nurse: When Serapis falls the
earth will collapse like a dry puff-ball under a horse’s hoof. A hundred
oracles have announced it, it is written in the prophecies of the
heavenly bodies, and in the scroll of Fate. Let them be! Let it come!
The end is sweet to those who, in the hour of death, can see the enemy
thrust the sword into his own breast.”
The old woman sank back panting and gasping for breath, but Gorgo
hastened to support her in her arms and she soon recovered. Hardly had
she opened her eyes again than, seeing her son still in the room, she
went on angrily:
“You--here still? Do you think there is any time to spare? They will be
waiting, waiting for you! You have the key and they need weapons.”
“I know what I am about,” replied Porphyrius calmly. “All in good time.
I shall be on the spot long before the youngsters have assembled. Cyrus
will bring me the pass-words and signs; I shall send off the messengers,
and then I shall still be in time for action.”
“Messengers! To whom?”
“To Barkas. He is at the head of more than a thousand Libyan peasants
and slaves. I shall send one, too, to Pachomius to bid him win us over
adherents among the Biamite fishermen and the population of the eastern
Delta.”
“Right, right--I know. Twenty talents--Pachomius is poor--twenty talents
shall be his, out of my private coffer, if only they are here in time.”
“I would give ten, thirty times as much if they were only here now!”
cried the merchant, giving way for the first time to the expression
of his real feelings. “When I began life my father taught me the new
superstitions. Its chains still hang about me; but in this fateful hour
I feel more strongly than ever, and I mean to show, that I am faithful
to the old gods. We will not be wanting; but alas! there is no escape
for us now if the Imperial party are staunch. If they fall upon us
before Barkas can join us, all is lost; if, on the contrary, Barkas
comes at once and in time, there is still some hope; all may yet be
well. What can a party of monks do? And as yet only our Constantine’s
heavy cavalry have come to the assistance of the two legions of the
garrison.”
“Our Constantine!” shrieked Damia. “Whose? I ask you, whose? We have
nothing to do with that miserable Christian!”
But Gorgo turned upon her at once:
“Indeed, grandmother,” she exclaimed, quivering with rage, “but we have!
He is a soldier and must do his duty; but he is fondly attached to us.”
“Us, us?” retorted the old woman with a laugh. “Has he sworn love to
you, let me ask? Has he? and you-do you believe him, simple fool? I know
him, I know him! Why, for a scrap of bread and a drop of wine from the
hand of his priest he would see you and all of us plunged into misery!
But see, here are the messengers.”
Porphyrius gave his instructions to the young men who now entered the
hall, hurried them off, clasped Gorgo in a tender embrace and then bent
over his mother to kiss her--a thing he had not done for many a day.
Old Damia laid aside her stick, and taking her son’s face in both her
withered hands, muttered a few words which were half a fond appeal and
half a magical formula, and then the women were alone. For a long while
both were silent. The old woman sat sunk in her arm-chair while Gorgo
stood with her back against the pedestal of a bust of Plato, gazing
meditatively at the ground. At last it was Damia who spoke, asking to be
carried into the women’s rooms.
Gorgo, however, stopped her with a gesture, went close to her and said:
“No, wait a minute, mother; first you must hear what I have to say.”
“What you have to say?” asked her grandmother, shrugging her shoulders.
“Yes. I have never deceived you; but one thing I have hitherto concealed
from you because I was never till this morning sure of it myself--now I
am. Now I know that I love him.”
“The Christian?” said the old woman, pushing aside a shade that screened
her eyes.
“Yes, Constantine; I will not hear you abuse him.” Damia laughed
sharply, and said in a tone of supreme scorn:
“You will not? Then you had better stop your ears, my dear, for as long
as my tongue can wag....”
“Hush, grandmother, say no more,” said the girl resolutely. “Do not
provoke me with more than I can bear. Eros has pierced me later than he
does most girls and has done it but once, but how deeply you can never
know. If you speak ill of him you only aggravate the wound and you would
not be so cruel! Do not--I entreat you; drop the subject or else...”
“Or else?”
“Or else I must die, mother--and you know you love me.”
Her tone was soft but firm; her words referred to the future, but that
future was as clear to Gorgo’s view as if it were past. Damia gave a
hasty, sidelong glance at her grandchild, and a cold chill ran through
her; the--girl stood and spoke with an air of inspiration--she was full
of the divinity as Damia thought, and the old woman herself felt
as though she were in a temple and in the immediate presence of the
Immortals.
Gorgo waited for a reply, but in vain; and as her grandmother remained
silent she went back to her place by the pedestal. At last Damia raised
her wrinkled face, looked straight in the girl’s eyes and asked:
“And what is to be the end of it?”
“Aye--what?” said Gorgo gloomily and she shook her head. “I ask myself
and can find no answer, for his image is ever present to me and yet
walls and mountains stand between us. That face, that image--I might
perhaps force myself to shatter it; but nothing shall ever induce me to
let it be defiled or disgraced! Nothing!”
The old woman sank into brooding thought once more; mechanically she
repeated Gorgo’s last word, and at intervals that gradually became
longer she murmured, at last scarcely audibly: “Nothing--nothing!”
She had lost all sense of time and of her immediate surroundings, and
long-forgotten sorrows crowded on her memory: The dreadful day when
a young freedman--a gifted astronomer and philosopher who had been
appointed her tutor, and whom she had loved with all the passion of a
vehement nature--had been kicked out of her father’s house by slaves,
for daring to aspire to her hand. She had given him up--she had been
forced to do so; and after she was the wife of another and he had risen
to fame, she had never given him any token that she had not forgotten
him. Two thirds of a century lay between that happy and terrible time,
and the present. He had been dead many a long year, and still she
remembered him, and was thinking of him even now. A singular effort of
fancy showed her herself, as she had then been, and Gorgo--whom she
saw not with her bodily eyes, though the girl was standing in front
of her--two young creatures side by side. The two were but one in her
vision; the same anguish that embittered one life now threatened the
other. But after all she, Damia, had dragged this grief after her
through the weary decades, like the iron ball at the end of a chain
which keeps the galley-slave to his place at the oar, and from which he
can no more escape than from a ponderous and ever-present shadow; and
Gorgo’s sorrow could not at any rate be for long, since the end of all
things was at hand--it was coming slowly but with inevitable certainty,
nearer and nearer every hour.
When had a troop of enthusiastic students and hastily-collected
peasant-soldiers ever been able to snake an effectual stand against the
hosts of Rome? Damia, who only a few minutes since had spoken with
such determined encouragement to her son, had terrible visions of the
Imperial legions putting Olympius to rout, with the Libyans under
Barkas and the Biamite rabble under Pachomius; storming the Serapeum
and reducing it to ruin: Firebrands flying through its sacred halls,
the roof giving way, the vaults falling in; the sublime image of the
god--the magnificent work of Bryaxis--battered by a hail of stones, and
sinking to mingle with the reeking dust. Then a cry rose up from all
nature, as though every star in heaven, every wave of ocean, every leaf
of the forest, every blade in the meadow, every rock on the shore and
every grain of sand in the measureless desert had found a voice; and
this universal wail of “Woe, woe!” was drowned by rolling thunder such
as the ear of man had never heard, and no mortal creature could hear
and live. The heavens opened, and out of the black gulf of death-bearing
clouds poured streams of fire; consuming flames rose to meet it from
the riven womb of earth, rushing up to lick the sky. What had been air
turned to fire and ashes, the silver and gold stars fell crashing from
the firmament, and the heavens themselves bowed and collapsed, burying
the ruined earth. Ashes, ashes, fine grey dusty ashes pervaded space,
till presently a hurricane rose and swept away the chaos of gloom, and
vast nothingness yawned before her: a bottomless abyss--an insatiable
throat, swallowing down with greedy thirst all that was left; till where
the world had been, with gods and men and all their works, there was
only nothingness; hideous, inscrutable and unfathomable. And in it,
above it, around it--for what are the dimensions of nothingness?--there
reigned the incomprehensible Unity of the Primal One, in calm and
pitiless self-concentration, beyond--the Real, nay even beyond the
Conceivable--for conception implies plurality--the Supreme One of the
Neo-Platonists to whose school she belonged.
The old woman’s blood ran cold and hot as she pictured the scene; but
she believed in it, and chose to believe in it; “Nothing, nothing...”
which she had begun by muttering, insensibly changed to “Nothingness,
nothingness!” and at last she spoke it aloud.
Gorgo stood spellbound as she gazed at her grandmother. What had come
over her? What was the meaning of this glaring eye, this gasping breath,
this awful expression in her face, this convulsive action of her hands?
Was she mad? And what did she mean by “Nothingness, nothingness...”
repeated in a sort of hollow cry?
Terrified beyond bearing she laid her hand on Dalnia’s shoulder, saying:
“Mother, mother! wake up! What do you mean by saying ‘nothingness,
nothingness’ in that dreadful way?”
Dainia collected her scattered wits, shivered with cold and then said,
dully at first, but with a growing cheerfulness that made Gorgo’s blood
run cold: “Did I say ‘nothingness’? Did I speak of the great void, my
child? You are quick of hearing. Nothingness--well, you have learnt to
think; are you capable of defining the meaning of the word--a monster
that has neither head nor tail, neither front nor back--can you, I say,
define the idea of nothingness?”
“What do you mean, mother?” said Gorgo with growing alarm.
“No, she does not know, she does not understand,” muttered the old woman
with a dreary smile. “And yet Melampus told me, only yesterday, that you
understood his lesson on conic sections better than many men. Aye, aye,
child; I, too, learnt mathematics once, and I still go through various
calculations every night in my observatory; but to this day I find it
difficult to conceive of a mathematical point. It is nothing and yet
it is something. But the great final nothingness!--And that even is
nonsense, for it can be neither great nor small, and come neither sooner
nor later. Is it not so, my sweet? Think of nothing--who cannot do that;
but it is very hard to imagine nothingness. We can neither of us achieve
that. Not even the One has a place in it. But what is the use of racking
our brains? Only wait till to-morrow or the day after; something
will happen then which will reduce our own precious persons and this
beautiful world to that nothingness which to-day is inconceivable. It
is coming; I can hear from afar the brazen tramp of the airy
and incorporeal monster. A queer sort of giant--smaller than the
mathematical point of which we were speaking, and yet vast beyond all
measurement. Aye, aye; our intelligence, polyp-like, has long arms and
can apprehend vast size and wide extent; but it can no more conceive of
nothingness than it can of infinite space or time.
“I was dreaming that this monstrous Nought had come to his kingdom and
was opening a yawning mouth and toothless jaws to swallow its all
down into the throat that it has not got--you, and me, and your young
officer, with this splendid, recreant city and the sky and the earth.
Wait, only wait! The glorious image of Serapis still stands radiant, but
the cross casts an ominous shadow that has already darkened the light
over half the earth! Our gods are an abomination to Caesar, and Cynegius
only carries out his wishes...”
Here Damia was interrupted by the steward, who rushed breathless into
the room, exclaiming:
“Lost! All is lost! An edict of Theodosius commands that every temple
of the gods shall be closed, and the heavy cavalry have dispersed our
force.”
“Ah ha!” croaked the old woman in shrill accents. “You see, you see!
There it is: the beginning of the end! Yes--your cavalry are a powerful
force. They are digging a grave--wide and deep, with room in it
for many: for you, for me, and for themselves, too, and for their
Prefect.--Call Argus, man, and carry me into the Gynaeconitis--[The
women’s apartment]--and there tell us what has happened.” In the women’s
room the steward told all he knew, and a sad tale it was; one thing,
however, gave him some comfort: Olympius was at the Serapeunt and had
begun to fortify the temple, and garrison it with a strong force of
adherents.
Damia had definitively given up all hope, and hardly heeded this part
of his story, while on Gorgo’s mind it had a startling effect. She
loved Constantine with all the fervor of a first, and only, and
long-suppressed passion; she had repented long since of her little fit
of suspicion, and it would have cost her no perceptible effort to
humble her pride, to fly to him and pray for forgiveness. But she could
not--dared not--now, when everything was at stake, renounce her fidelity
to the gods for whose sake she had let him leave her in anger, and to
whom she must cling, cost what it might; that would be a base desertion.
If Olympius were to triumph in the struggle she might go to her lover
and say: “Do you remain a Christian, and leave me the creed of my
childhood, or else open my heart to yours.” But, as matters now stood,
her first duty was to quell her passion and retrain faithful to the end,
even though the cause were lost. She was Greek to the backbone; she knew
it and felt it, and yet her eye had sparkled with pride as she heard
the steward’s tale, and she seemed to see Constantine at the head of his
horsemen, rushing upon the heathen and driving them to the four winds
like a flock of sheep. Her heart beat high for the foe rather than
for her hapless friends--these were but bruised reeds--those were the
incarnation of victorious strength.
These divided feelings worried and vexed her; but her grandmother
had suggested a way of reconciling them. Where he commanded victory
followed, and if the Christians should succeed in destroying the image
of Serapis the joints of the world would crack and the earth would
crumble away. She herself was familiar with the traditions and the
oracles which with one consent foretold this doom; she had learnt them
as an infant from her nurse, from the slave-women at the loom, from
learned men and astute philosophers--and to her the horrible prophecy
meant a solution of every contradiction and the bitter-sweet hope of
perishing with the man she loved.
As it grew dark another person appeared: the Moschosphragist--[The
examiner of sacrificed animals]--from the temple of Serapis, who, every
day, examined the entrails of a slaughtered beast for Damia; to-day the
augury had been so bad that he was almost afraid of revealing it. But
the old woman, sure of it beforehand, took his soothsaying quite calmly,
and only desired to be carried up to her observatory that she might
watch the risings of the stars.
Gorgo remained alone below. From the adjoining workrooms came the
monotonous rattle of the loom at which, as usual, a number of slaves
were working.
Suddenly the clatter ceased. Damia had sent a slave-girl down to say
that they might leave off work and rest till next day if they chose. She
had ordered that wine should be distributed to them in the great hall,
as freely as at the great festival of Dionysus.
All was silent in the Gynaeconitis. The garlands of flowers, which Gorgo
herself had helped some damsels of her acquaintance to twine for
the temple of Isis, lay in a heap-the steward had told her that the
venerable sanctuary was to be closed and surrounded by soldiers. This
then put an end to the festival; and she could have been heartily glad,
for it relieved her of the necessity of defying Constantine; still, it
was with tender melancholy that she thought of the gentle goddess in
whose sanctuary she had so often found comfort and support. She could
remember, as a tiny child, gathering the first flowers in her little
garden, and sticking them in the ground near the tank from which water
was fetched for libations in the temple; with the pocketmoney given
her by her elders, she had bought perfumes to pour on the altars of the
divinity; and often when her heart was heavy she had found relief in
prayer before the marble statue of the goddess. How splendid had the
festivals of Isis been, how gladly and rapturously had she sung in
their honor! Almost everything that had lent poetry and dignity to her
childhood had been bound up with Isis and her sanctuary--and now it was
closed and the image of the divine mother was perhaps lying in fragments
in the dirt!
Gorgo knew all the lofty ideals which lay at the foundation of the
worship of this goddess; but it was not to them that she had turned for
help, but to the image in whose mystical strength she trusted. And
what had already been done to Isis and her temple might soon be done to
Serapis and to his house.
She could not bear the thought, for she had been accustomed to regard
the Serapeum as the very heart of the universe--the centre and fulcrum
on which the balance of the earth depended; to her, Serapis himself was
inseparable from his temple and its atmosphere of magical and mystical
power. Every prophecy, every Sibylline text, every oracle must be
false if the overthrow of that image could remain unpunished--if the
destruction of the universe failed to follow, as surely as a flood
ensues from a breach in a dyke. How indeed could it be otherwise,
according to the explanation which her teacher had given her of the
Neo-Platonic conception of the nature of the god?
It was not Serapis but the great and unapproachable One--supreme above
comprehension and sublime beyond conception, for whose majesty every
name was too mean, the fount and crown of Good and Beauty, in whole
all that exists ever has been and ever shall be. He it was who, like a
brimful vessel, overflowed with the quintessence of what we call divine;
and from this effluence emanated the divine Mind, the pure intelligence
which is to the One what light is to the sun. This Mind with its
vitality--a life not of time but of eternity--could stir or remain
passive as it listed; it included a Plurality, while the One was Unity,
and forever indivisible. The concept of each living creature proceeded
from the second: The eternal Mind; and this vivifying and energizing
intelligence comprehended the prototypes of every living being, hence,
also, of the immortal gods--not themselves but their idea or image. And
just as the eternal Mind proceeded from the One, so, in the third place,
did the Soul of the universe proceed from the second; that Soul whose
twofold nature on one side touched the supreme Mind, and, on the other,
the baser world of matter. This was the immortal Aphrodite, cradled in
bliss in the pure radiance of the ideal world and yet unable to free
herself from the gross clay of matter fouled by sensuality and the
vehicle of sin.
The head of Serapis was the eternal Mind; in his broad breast slept
the Soul of the Universe, and the prototypes of all created things; the
world of matter was the footstool under his feet. All the subordinate
forces obeyed him, the mighty first Cause, whose head towered up to
the realm of the incomprehensible and inconceivable One. He was the sum
total of the universe, the epitome of things created; and at the
same time he was the power which gave them life and intelligence and
preserved them from perishing by perpetual procreation. It was his might
that kept the multiform structure of the material and psychical world
in perennial harmony. All that lived--Nature and its Soul as much as Man
and his Soul--were inseparably dependent on him. If he--if Serapis were
to fall, the order of the universe must be destroyed; and with him: The
Synthesis of the Universe--the Universe itself must cease to exist.
But what would survive would not be the nothingness--the void of which
her grandmother had spoken; it would be the One--the cold, ineffable,
incomprehensible One! This world would perish with Serapis; but perhaps
it might please that One to call another world into being out of his
overflowing essence, peopled by other and different beings.
Gorgo was startled out of these meditations by a wild tumult which came
up from the slaves’ hall some distance off and reached her ears in the
women’s sitting-room. Could her grandmother have opened the wine stores
all too freely; were the miserable wretches already drunk?
No, the noise was not that of a troop of slaves who have forgotten
themselves, and given the rein to their wild revelry under the influence
of Dionysus! She listened and could distinctly hear lamentable howls and
wild cries of grief. Something frightful must have happened! Had some
evil befallen her father? Greatly alarmed she flew across the courtyard
to the slaves’ quarters and found the whole establishment, black and
white alike, in a state of frenzy. The women were rushing about with
their hair unbound over their faces, beating their breasts and wailing,
the men squatted in silence with their wine-cups before them untouched,
softly sobbing and whining.
What had come upon them--what blow had fallen on the house?
Gorgo called her old nurse and learnt from her that the Moschosphragist
had just told them that the troops had been placed all round the
Serapeum and that the Emperor had commanded the Prefect of the East to
lay violent hands on the temple of the King of gods. Today or to-morrow
the crime was to be perpetrated. They had been warned to pray and repent
of their sins, for at the moment when the holiest sanctuary on earth
should fall the whole world would crumble into nothingness. The entrails
of the beast sacrificed by Damia had been black as though scorched,
and a terrific groan had been heard from the god himself in the great
shrine; the pillars of the great hypostyle had trembled and the three
heads of Cerberus, lying at the feet of Serapis; had opened their jaws.
Gorgo listened in silence to the old woman’s story; and all she said in
reply was: “Let them wail.”