The doubtful light of dawn was beginning to break through the
storm-clouds as they exhausted their fury on the Serapeum, but the
terrified heathen did not notice it. No captain, no prophet, no
comforter had come to revive their courage and hopes; for Olympius and
his guests, the leaders of the intellectual life of Alexandria--and
among them the chief priests of the sanctuary--were tardy in making
their appearance.
The lightning-flash which had fallen on the brassplated cupola, and then
discharged its force along a flagstaff, had alarmed even the sages and
philosophers; and the Symposium had come to an abrupt end but little
more dignified than the orgy in the temple-halls. Few, to be sure, of
the high-priest’s friends had allowed themselves to be so far scared as
to betray their terrors frankly; on the contrary, when the crack of
doom really seemed to have sounded, rhetoric and argument grew even
more eager than before round Olympius’ table; and Gorgo’s opinion of her
fellow-heathen might not have been much raised if she could have heard
Helladius, the famous philologist and biographer, reciting verses from
“Prometheus bound,” his knees quaking and lips quivering as he heard
the thunder; or seen Ammonius, another grammarian who had written a
celebrated work on “The Differences of Synonyms,” rending his robe and
presenting his bared breast as a target to the lightning, with a glance
round at the company to challenge their admiration. His heroic display
was, unfortunately, observed by few; for most of them, including
Eunapius, a neo-platonic philosopher distinguished as a historian and an
implacable foe of the Christians, had wrapped their heads in their robes
and were awaiting the end in sullen resignation. Some had dropped
on their knees and were praying with uplifted hands, or murmuring
incantations; and a poet, who had been crowned for a poem entitled:
“Man the Lord and Master of the Gods,” had fainted with fear, and his
laurel-wreath had fallen into a dish of oysters.
Olympius had risen from his place as Symposiarch and was leaning against
a door-post awaiting death with manly composure. Father Karnis, who had
made rather too free with the wine-cup, but had been completely sobered
by the sudden fury of the storm, had sprung up and hastened past the
high-priest to seek his wife and son; he knew they could not be far off,
and desired to perish with them.
Porphyrius and his next neighbor, Apuleius, the great physician, were
among those who had covered their faces. Porphyrius could look forward
more calmly than many to the approaching crisis; for, as a cautious man
and far-seeing merchant, he had made provision for every contingency.
If, in spite of a Christian victory, the world should still roll on,
and if the law which declared invalid the will of an apostate should be
enforced against him, a princely fortune, out of the reach of Church or
State, lay safe in the hands of a wealthy and trustworthy friend for his
daughter’s use; if, on the other hand, heaven and earth met in a
common doom, he had by him an infallible remedy against a lingering and
agonizing death.
The whole party had sat during some long and anxious minutes,
listening to the appalling thunder-claps, when Orpheus rushed into the
banqueting-room, with the same frenzied and terror-stricken haste as
before, among the revellers, crying: “It is the end-all is over! The
world is falling asunder! Fire is come down from heaven! The earth is
in flames already--I saw it with my own eyes! I have come down from the
roof....
“Father! Where is my father?”
At this news the company started up in fresh alarm, Pappus, the
mathematician, cried out: “The conflagration has begun! Flame and fire
are falling from the skies!”
“Lost-lost!” wailed Eunapius; while Porphyrius hastily felt in the folds
of his purple garment, took out a small crystal phial and went, pale but
calm, up to the high-priest. He laid his hand on the arm of the friend
whom he had looked up to all his life with affectionate admiration, and
said with an expression of tender regret:
“Farewell. We have often disputed over the death of Cato--you
disapproving and I approving it. Now I follow his example. Look--there
is enough for us both.”
He hastily put the phial to his mouth, and part of the liquid had passed
his lips before Olympius understood the situation and seized his arm.
The effect of the deadly fluid was instantly manifest; but Porphyrius
had hardly lost consciousness when Apuleius had rushed to his side.
The physician had succumbed to the universal panic and resigned himself
doggedly to Fate; but as soon as an appeal was made to his medical skill
and he heard a cry for help, he had thrown off the wrapper from his head
and hastened to the merchant’s side to combat the effects of the poison,
as clear-headed and decisive as in his best hours by the bed of sickness
or in the lecture-room.
When the very backbone of the soul seems to be broken, a sense of duty
is the one and last thing that holds it together and keeps it upright;
and nature has implanted in us such a strong and instinctive regard for
life--which we are so apt to contemn--that even within a few paces of
the grave we cherish and foster it as carefully as in its prime, when
the end seems still remote.
The merchant’s desperate deed had been done under the very eyes of
Orpheus, and the newer horror so completely overshadowed the older, that
he hastened unbidden to help the physician lay the unconscious man on
the nearest couch; but then he went off again in search of his parents.
Olympius, however, who at the sight of his friend’s weakness had
suddenly comprehended how much depended, in these last hours, on his own
resolute demeanor, detained the youth, and sternly desired him to give
an exact and clear account of what had happened on the roof. The young
musician obeyed; and his report was certainly far from reassuring.
A ball of fire had fallen with a terrific noise on the cupola, mingling
with flames that seemed to rise like streams of fire from the earth.
Then, again the heavens had opened with a blinding flash and Orpheus had
seen--with his own eyes seen--a gigantic monster--an uprooted mountain
perhaps--which had slowly moved towards the back-wall of the Serapeum
with an appalling clatter; and not rain, but rivers, rushing torrents of
water, had poured down on the men on guard.
“It is Poseidon,” cried the lad, “bringing up the ocean against the
temple, and I heard the neighing of his horses. It was not an illusion,
I heard it with my own ears....”
“The horses of Poseidon!” interrupted Olympius. “The horses of the
Imperial cavalry were what you heard!”
He ran to the window with the activity of a younger man and, lifting the
curtain, looked out to the eastward. The storm had vanished as rapidly
as it had come up and it was day. Over the rosy skirts of Eos hung a
full and heavy robe of swelling grey and black clouds, edged with
a fringe of sheeny gold. To the north a sullen flash now and then
zigzagged across the dark sky, and the roll of the thunder was faint
and distant; but the horses whose neighing had affrighted Orpheus were
already near; they were standing close to the southern or back-wall of
the temple, in which there was no gate or entrance of any kind. What
object could the Imperial cavalry have in placing themselves by that
strong and impenetrable spot?
But there was no time for much consideration, for at this instant the
gong, which was sounded to call the defenders of the Serapeum together,
rang through the precincts.
Olympius needed no spur or encouragement. He turned to his guests with
the passion and fire of a fanatical leader, of the champion of a great
but imperilled cause, and bid them be men and stand by him to resist
the foe till death. His voice was husky with excitement as he spoke his
brief but vehement call to arms, and the effect was immense, precisely
because the speaker, carried away by the tide of feeling, had not tried
to impress the learned and eloquent men whom he addressed by any tricks
of elocution or choice of words. They, too, were fired by the spark of
the old man’s enthusiasm; they gathered round him, and followed him at
once to the rooms where the weapons had been deposited for use.
Breastplates girt on to their bodies, and swords wielded in their hands
made soldiers of the sages at once, and inspired them with martial
ardor. Little was spoken among these heroes of “the mighty word.”
They were bent on action. Olympius Had desired Apuleius to go into his
private room adjoining the hypostyle with Porphyrius, on whose senseless
and rigid state no treatment had as yet had any effect. Some of the
temple-servants carried the merchant down a back staircase, while
Olympius hastily and silently led his comrades in arms up the main steps
into the great halls of the temple.
Here the chivalrous host were doomed to surprise and disappointment
greater than the most hopeless of them was prepared to meet. Olympius
himself for a moment despaired; for his ecstatic adherents had during
the night turned to poltroons and tipplers, and the sacred precincts
of the sanctuary looked as if a battle had been fought and lost there.
Broken and bruised furniture, smashed instruments, garments torn and
wet, draggled wreaths, and faded flowers were strewn in every direction.
The red wine lay in pools like blood on the scarred beauties of the
inlaid pavement; here and there, at the foot of a column, lay an
inert body--whether dead or merely senseless who could guess?--and the
sickening reek of hundreds of dying lamps filled the air, for in the
confusion they had been left to burn or die as they might.
And how wretched was the aspect of the sobered, terror-stricken,
worn-out men and women. An obscure consciousness of having insulted the
god and incurred his wrath lurked in every soul. To many a one prompt
death would have seemed most welcome, and one man--a promising pupil
of Helladius, had actually taken the leap from existence into the
non-existence which, as he believed, he should find beyond the grave;
he had run his had violently against a pillar, and lay at the foot of it
with a broken skull.
With reeling brains, aching brows, and dejected hearts, the unhappy
creatures had got so far as to curse the present; and those who dared to
contemplate the future thought of it only as a bottomless abyss, towards
which the flying hours were dragging them with unfelt but irresistible
force. Time was passing--each could feel and see that; night was gone,
it would soon be day; the storm had passed over, but instead of the
inexorable powers of nature a new terror now hung over them: the no
less inexorable power of Caesar. To the struggle of man against the gods
there was but one possible end: Annihilation. In the conflict of man
against man there might yet be, if not victory, at least escape. The
veteran Memnon, with his one arm, had kept watch on the temple-roof
during that night’s orgy, planning measures for repulsing the enemy’s
attack, till the storm had burst on him and his adherents with the
“artillery of heaven.” Then the greater portion of the garrison had
taken refuge in the lower galleries of the Serapeum, and the old general
was left alone at his post, in the blinding and deafening tempest. He
threw his remaining arm round a statue that graced the parapet of the
roof to save himself from being swept or washed away; and he would still
have shouted his orders, but that the hurricane drowned his voice, and
none of his few remaining adherents could have heard him speak. He, too,
had heard the champing of horses and had seen the moving mountain
which Orpheus had described. It was in fact a Roman engine of war; and,
faithful though he was to the cause he had undertaken, something like a
feeling of joy stirred his warrior’s soul, as he looked down on the fine
and well-drilled men who followed the Imperial standards under which
he had, ere now, shed his best blood. His old comrades in arms had not
forgotten how to defy the tempest, and their captains had been well
advised in preparing to attack first what seemed the securest side of
the temple. The struggle, he foresaw, would be against tried soldiers,
and it was with a deep curse and a smile of bitter scorn that he thought
of the inexperienced novices under his command. It was only yesterday
that he had tried to moderate Olympius’ sanguine dreams, and had said to
him: “It is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe!”
The skill and experience he had to contend with were in no respect
inferior to his own; and he would know, only too soon, what the
practical worth might be of the daring and enthusiastic youths whom he
had undertaken to command, and of whom he still had secret hopes for the
best.
The one thing to do was to prevent the Christians from effecting the
breach which they evidently intended to make in the back-wall, before
the Libyan army of relief should arrive; and, at the same time, to
defend the front of the temple from the roof. There was a use for every
one who could heave a stone or flourish a sword; and when he thought
over the number of his troops he believed he might succeed in holding
the building for some considerable time. But he was counting on false
premises, for he did not know how attractive the races had proved to his
“enthusiastic youth” and how great a change had come over most of them.
As soon as the wind had so far subsided that he could stand alone, he
went to collect those that still remained, and to have the brass gong
sounded which was to summon the combatants to their posts. Its metallic
clang rang loud and far through the dim dawn; a deaf man might have
heard it in the deepest recess of the sanctuary--and yet the minutes
slipped by--a quarter of an hour--and no one had come at its call. The
old captain’s impatience turned to surprise, his surprise became wrath.
The messengers he sent down did not return and the great moving shed
of the Romans was brought nearer and nearer to the southern side of the
temple, screening the miners from the rare missiles which the few men
remaining with him cast clown by his orders.
The enemy were evidently making a suitable foundation on which to place
the storming engine--a beam with a ram’s head of iron-to make a breach
in the temple-wall. Every minute’s delay on the part of the besieged was
an advantage to the enemy. A hundred-two hundred more hands on the roof,
and their tactics might yet be defeated.
Tears of rage, of the bitter sense of impotence, started to the old
soldier’s eyes; and when, at length, one of his messengers came back and
told him that the men and women alike seemed quite demented, and all
and each refused to come up on the roof, he uttered a wrathful curse and
rushed down-stairs himself.
He stormed in on the trembling wretches; and when he beheld with his
own eyes all that his volunteers had done dining that fateful night, he
raved and thundered; asked them, rather confusedly perhaps, if they knew
what it was to be expected to command and find no obedience; scolded the
refractory, driving some on in front of him; and then, as he perceived
that some of them were making off with the girls through the door
leading to the secret passage, he placed himself on guard with his sword
drawn, and threatened to cut down any who attempted to escape.
In the midst of all this Olympius and his party had come into the
ball and seeing the commander struggling, sword in hand, with the
recalcitrant fugitives, where the noise was loudest, he and his guests
hastened to the rescue and defended the door against the hundreds who
were crowding to fly. The old man was grieved to turn the weapons they
had seized in their sacred ardor, against the seceders from their own
cause; but it had to be. While the loyal party--among them Karnis and
Orpheus--guarded the passage to the underground rooms with shield and
lance, Olympius took council of the veteran captain, and they rapidly
decided to allow all the women to depart at once and to divide the men
into two parties-one to be sent to fight on the roof, and the other to
defend the wall where the Roman battering-ram was by this time almost
ready to attack.
The high-priest took his stand boldly between his adherents and the
would-be runaways and appealed to them in loud and emphatic tones to do
their duty. They listened to him silently and respectfully; but when he
ended by stating that the women were commanded to withdraw, a terrific
outcry was raised, some of the girls clung to their lovers, while others
urged the men to fight their way out.
Several, however, and among them the fair Glycera who a few hours since
had smiled down triumphantly on her worshippers as Aphrodite, availed
themselves at once of the permission to quit this scene of horrors,
and made their way without delay to the subterranean passages. They had
adorers in plenty in the city. But they did not get far; they were met
by a temple-servant flying towards the great hall, who warned them
to return thither at once: the Imperial soldiers had discovered the
entrance to the aqueduct and posted sentries in the timber-yard. They
turned and followed him with loud lamentations, and hardly had they
got back into the temple when a new terror came upon them: the iron
battering-ram came with a first heavy shock, thundering against the
southern wall.
The Imperial troops were in fact masters of the secret passage; and they
had begun the attack on the Serapeum in earnest. It was serious--but all
was not yet lost; and in this fateful hour Olympius and Memnon proved
their mettle. The high-priest commanded that the great stone trap-doors
should be dropped into their places, and that the bridges across the
gulfs, in the underground rooms reserved for the initiated, should be
destroyed; and this there was yet time to do, for the soldiers had not
yet ventured into those mysterious corridors, where there could not fail
to be traps and men in ambush. Memnon meanwhile had hurried to the spot
where the battering-ram had by this time dealt a second blow, shouting
as he went to every man who was not a coward to follow him.
Karnis, Orpheus and the rest of the high-priest’s guests obeyed his call
and gathered round him; he commanded that everything portable should be
brought out of the temple to be built into a barricade behind the point
of attack, and that neither the most precious and beautiful statues, nor
the brass and marble stelae and altar-slabs should be spared. Screened
by this barricade, and armed with lances and bows--of which there were
plenty at hand--he proposed, when the breach was made, to check the
further advance of the foe.
He was not ill-pleased that the only way of escape was cut off; and
as soon as he had seen the statues dragged from their pedestals, the
altar-stones removed from the sacred places they had filled for half
a century, benches and jars piled together and a stone barricade thus
fairly advanced towards completion, he drafted off a small force for the
defences on the roof. There was no escape now; and many a one who,
to the very last, had hoped to find himself free, mounted the stairs
reluctantly, because he would there be more immediately in the face of
the foe than when defending the breach.
Olympius distributed weapons, and went from one to another, speaking
words of encouragement; presently he found Gorgo who, with the bereaved
widow, was still sitting at the foot of the statue of justice. He told
her that her father was ill, and desired a servant to show her the way
to his private room, that she might help the leech in attending on him.
Berenice could not be induced to stir; she longed only for the end and
was persuaded that it could not be far off. She listened eagerly to the
blows of the battering-engine; each one sounded to her like a shock to
the very structure of the universe. Another--and another--and at last
the ancient masonry must give way and the grave that had already opened
for her husband and her son would yawn to swallow her up with her
sorrows. She shuddered and drew her hood over her face to screen it from
the sun which now began to shine in. Its light was a grievance to her;
she had hoped never to see another day.
The women, and with them a few helpless weaklings, had withdrawn to the
rotunda, and before long they were laughing as saucily as ever.
From the roof blocks of stone and broken statues were hailing down on
the besiegers, and in the halls below, the toiler who paused to wipe
the sweat from his brow would brook no idleness in his comrade; the most
recalcitrant were forced to bestir themselves, and the barricade inside
the southern wall soon rose to a goodly height. No rampart was ever
built of nobler materials; each stone was a work of art and had been
reverenced for centuries as something sacred, or bore in an elegant
inscription the memorial of noble deeds. This wall was to protect the
highest of the gods, and among the detachment told off to defend it,
were Karnis, his son, and his wife.