The terrific storm of the preceding night had thrown the whole city into
dismay. Everyone knew the danger that threatened Serapis, and what must
ensue if he were overthrown; and everyone had thought that the end of
the world had indeed come. But the tempest died away; the sun’s bright
glow dispersed the clouds and mist; sea and sky smiled radiantly blue,
and the trees and herbage glistened in revived freshness.
Not yet had the Romans dared to lay hands on the chief of the gods,
the patron and protector of the city. Serapis had perhaps sent the
lightning, thunder and rain as a message to warn his foes. If only they
might abstain from the last, worst crime of desecrating his image!
Nor was this the hope of the heathen only; on the contrary: Jews and
Christians no less dreaded the fall of the god and of his temple. He was
the pride, the monumental glory of the city of Alexander; the centre of
foundations and schools which benefited thousands. The learning which
was the boast of Alexandria dwelt under his protection; to the Serapeum
was attached a medical Faculty which enjoyed the reputation of being
the first in the world; from its observatory the course of the year
was forecast and the calendar was promulgated. An hour’s slumber in its
halls brought prophetic dreams, and the future must remain undivined if
Serapis were to fall, for the god revealed it to his priests, not merely
by the courses and positions of the stars, but by many other signs;
and it was a delight and a privilege to look forward from the certain,
tangible present to the mysteries of the morrow.
Even Christian seers answered the questionings of their followers in
a way which portended the worst, and it was a grief to many of the
baptized to think of their native city without Serapis and the Serapeum,
just as we cannot bear to cut down a tree planted by the hand of an
ancestor, even though it may darken our home. The temple ought to be
closed, bloody sacrifices to the god should be prohibited--but his
image--the noblest work of Bryaxis--to mutilate, or even to touch that
would be a rash, a fateful deed, treason to the city and an outrage on
the world.
Thus thought the citizens; thus, too, thought the soldiers, who were
required by military discipline to draw the sword against the god in
whom many of them believed.
As the news spread that the troops were to attack the Serapeum early
next morning, thousands of spectators collected, and filled the temple
itself in breathless anxiety to watch the issue of the struggle.
The sky was as clear and blue as on any other fine day; but over the sea
to the north lay a light stratum of clouds--the harbingers perhaps of
the appalling blackness which the god would presently bring up against
his enemies.
The men who had defended the Serapeum were led away; it had been
determined in a council of war that they should be treated with
clemency, and Cynegius had proclaimed free and full pardon to every
prisoner who would swear never, for the future, to sacrifice to the god
or worship in his temple.
Not one of the hundreds who had fallen into the hands of the Romans had
refused to take the oath; they dispersed at once, though with suppressed
fury, many of them joining the crowd who stood waiting and watching
for the next step to be taken by the Romans--for the final crash of the
universe, perhaps.
The doors of the temple were thrown wide open; the temple-servants and
hundreds of soldiers were busied in clearing the steps and approaches
of the stones and fragments of statuary with which the heathen had
encumbered them. As soon as this task was finished the dead and wounded
were removed; among those who still breathed was Orpheus, the son of
Karnis. Those who had been so happy as to escape in the defence of the
sanctuary and had mingled with the crowd were besieged with questions,
and all agreed that the statue of the god was as yet inviolate.
The citizens were relieved, but ere long were startled by a new alarm;
an Ala of heavy cavalry came upon the scene, opening a way for an
immensely long procession whose chanted psalms rang out from afar, loud
above the cries and murmurs of the mob, the clatter of harness, and
stamping of horses. It was clear now where the monks had been. They were
not usually absent when there was a skirmish with the heathen; but,
till this moment, they had been seen only in twos or threes about the
Serapeum. Now they came forward shouting a psalm of triumph, their eyes
glaring, wilder and more ruthless than ever.
The Bishop marched at their head, in his vestments, under a magnificent
canopy; his lofty stature was drawn to its full height and his lips were
firmly closed.
He looked like a stern judge about to mount the tribunal to pronounce
sentence with inexorable severity on some execrable crime.
The crowd quailed.
The Bishop and the monks in the Serapeum, meant the overthrow of the
statue of the sovereign god--death and destruction. The boldest turned
pale; many who had left wife and children at home stole away to await
the end of the world with those they loved; others remained to watch the
menaced sanctuary, cursing or praying; but the greater number, men and
women alike, crowded into the temple, risking their lives to be present
at the stupendous events about to be enacted there and which promised to
be a drama of unequalled interest.
At the bottom of the ascent the Comes rode forth to meet the Bishop,
leaped from his saddle and greeted him with reverence. The Imperial
legate had not made his appearance; he had preferred to remain for the
present at the prefect’s house, intending to preside, later in the day,
at the races as the Emperor’s representative, side by side with the
Prefect Evagrius--who also kept aloof during the attack on the Serapeum.
After a brief colloquy, Romanus signed to Constantine, the captain of
the cavalry; the troop dismounted, and, led by their officer, marched up
the slope that led to the great gate of the Serapeum. They were followed
by the Comes with his staff; next to him pale and somewhat tremulous
came some of the city officials and a few Christian members of the
senate; and then the Bishop--who had preferred to come last--with all
the Christian priesthood and a crowd of chanting monks. The train
was closed by a division of heavy-armed infantry; and after them the
populace rushed in, unchecked by the soldiers who stood outside the
temple.
The great halls of the Serapeum had been put in order as well as
possible in so short a time. Of all those who, the day before,
had crowded in to defend the god and his house, none were left but
Porphyrius and those who were nursing him. After a long and agonizing
period of silence heavy fists came thundering at the door. Gorgo started
up to unbolt it, but Apuleius held her back; so it was forced off its
hinges and thing into the temple-aisle on which the room opened. At the
same instant a party of soldiers entered the room and glanced round it
enquiringly.
The physician turned as pale as death, and sank incapable of speech on
a seat by his patient’s couch; but Gorgo turned with calm dignity to the
centurion who led the intruders, and explained to him who she was,
and that she was here under the protection of the leech to tend her
suffering father. She concluded by asking to speak with Constantine
the prefect of cavalry, or with the Comes Romanus, to whom she and her
father were well known.
There was nothing unusual in a sick man being brought into the Serapeum
for treatment, and the calm, undoubting superiority of Gorgo’s tone
as well as the high rank of the men whose protection she appealed to,
commanded the centurion’s respectful consideration; however, his orders
were to send every one out of the temple who was not a Roman soldier, so
he begged her to wait a few minutes, and soon returned with the legate
Volcatius, the captain of his legion. This knightly patrician well
knew--as did every lover of horses--the owner of the finest stable in
Alexandria, and was quite willing to allow Gorgo and Apuleius to
remain with their patient; at the same time he warned them that a great
catastrophe was imminent. Gorgo, however, persisted in her wish to be by
her father’s side, so he left her a guard to protect them.
The soldiers were too busy to linger; instead of replacing the door they
had torn down, they pushed it out of their way; and Gorgo, seeing that
her father remained in precisely the same condition, drew back the
curtain which was all that now divided them from the hypostyle, and
looked out over the heads of a double row of soldiers. They were posted
close round the lower step of the platform that raised the hypostyle
above the nave and the colonnades on each side of it.
In the distance Gorgo could see a vast body of men slowly approaching
in detachments, and with long pauses at intervals. They stopped for
some time in the outer hall, and before they entered the basilica twenty
Christian priests came in with strange gestures and a still stranger
chant; these were exorcists, come to bann the evil spirits and daemons
that must surely haunt this high place of idolatry and abominations.
They carried crosses which they flourished like weapons against an
unseen foe, and touched the columns with them, the pavement and the
few remaining statues; they fell on their knees, making the sign of
the cross with the left hand; and, finally, they ranged themselves like
soldiers in three ranks in front of the niche containing the statue,
pointed their crosses at the god, and recited in loud, angry, and
commanding tones the potent anathemas and mysterious formulas which they
thought calculated to expel the most reprobate and obdurate of all the
heathen devils. A host of acolytes, following at their heels, swung
their censers about the plague-spot--the shrine of the king of idols;
while the exorcists dipped wands into a cauldron carried by their
attendants, and sprinkled the mystical figures on the hanging and on the
mosaic pavement.
All this occupied several minutes. Then--and Gorgo’s heart beat
high--then Constantine came in, armed and equipped, and behind him an
Ala of picked men, the elite of his troop; bearded men with tanned
and scarred faces. Instead of swords they carried axes, and they were
followed by sappers bearing tall ladders which, by Constantine’s
orders, they leaned up against the niche. The infantry ranged under the
colonnades at the sides were evidently startled at the sight of these
ladders, and Gorgo could perceive by the trembling of the curtain near
which she and Apuleius were standing, how deeply the physician was
agitated. It was as though the axe had been displayed with which a king
was about to be decapitated.
Now the Bishop came in with the municipal dignitaries; priests and
monks, chanting as they walked, filled the broad hall, incessantly
making the sign of the cross; and the crowd that poured into the
hypostyle pressed as far forward as they were allowed by the chain which
the soldiers held outstretched between them and their superiors.
The populace-heathen and Christian of every sect and degree-filled the
aisles, too; but the chain also kept them off the upper end, on to which
the room opened in which Porphyrius lay; so that Gorgo’s view of the
curtain and apse remained unhindered.
The psalm rang loudly through the temple-courts above the murmur and
grumble of the angry, terrified and expectant mob. They were prepared
for the worst; each one knew the crime which was to be perpetrated, and
yet few, perhaps, really believed that any one would dare to commit
it. Whichever way she looked Gorgo saw only white faces, stamped with
passion, dismay, and dread. The very priests and soldiers themselves had
turned pale, and stood with bloodless cheeks and set teeth, staring at
the ground; some, to disguise their alarm, cast wrathful and defiant
glances at the rebellious mob, who tried to drown the psalm-singing in
loud menaces and curses, and the echoes of the great building doubled
their thousand voices.
A strange unrest seethed in this dense mass of humanity. The heathen
were trembling with rage, clutching their amulets and charms, or shaking
angry fists; the Christians thrilled with anxiety and pious zeal, and
used their hands to lift the cross or to ward off the evil one with
outstretched fingers. Every face and every gesture, the muttered curses
and pious hymns--all showed that some terrible and fateful event was
impending over all. Gorgo herself felt as though she were standing on
the brink of a crater, while air and earth heaved around her; she felt
and saw the eruption of the volcano threatening, every instant, to burst
at her feet, and to choke and ruin every living thing.
The uproar among the heathen grew louder and louder; fragments of stone
and wood came flying towards the spot where the Bishop and officials
were standing; but, suddenly, the tumult ceased, and, as if by a
miracle, there was silence--perfect silence--in the temple. It was as
though at a sign from the Omnipotent Ruler the storm-lashed ocean had
turned to the calm of a land-locked lake. At a nod from the Bishop some
acolytes had stepped up to the niche where the statue of the god was
shrouded and the curtain, which till now had hidden it, slowly began to
fall.
There sat Serapis, looking down in majestic indifference, as cold and
unapproachable as if his sublime dignity was far removed above the
petty doings of the crawling humanity at his feet; and the effect was
as impressive now as it had been the evening before. How beautiful--how
marvellously grand and lofty was this work of human hands! Even the
Christians could not repress a low, long-drawn murmur of surprise,
admiration, and astonishment. The heathen were at first silent,
overcome by pious awe and ecstasy; but then they broke out in a loud and
triumphant shout, and their cries of “Hail to Serapis!” “Serapis, reign
forever!” rang from pillar to pillar and echoed from the stony vault of
the apse and ceiling.
Gorgo crossed her hands over her bosom as she saw the god revealed in
his glorious beauty. Spotlessly pure, complete and perfect, the noble
statue stood before her; an idol indeed, and perishable--but still
divine as a matchless work, wrought by the loving hands of a votary of
the god, inspired by the immortals. She gazed spell-bound on the form
which, though human, transcended humanity as eternity transcends time,
as the light of the sun transcended the blazing beacon on Pharos; and
she said to herself that it was impossible that an irreverent hand
should be laid on this supremely lovely statue, crowned with the might
of undying beauty.
She saw that even the Bishop drew back a step when the curtain had
fallen, and his lips parted involuntarily to utter a cry of admiration
like the others; but she saw, too, that he closed them again and pressed
them more firmly together; that his eye sparkled with a fiercer light as
the shout of the heathen rose to heaven, that the knotted veins on his
high forehead swelled with rage as he heard the cry of “Serapis, Hail,
all hail!” Then she noted the Comes, as he whispered soothing words in
the prelate’s ear, praying him perhaps to spare the statue--not as an
idol, but as a work of art; as he turned from Theophilus with a shrug;
and then--her heart stood still, and she had to cling to the curtain--he
pointed to the statue, with a nod of intelligence to Constantine. The
young officer bowed with military formality and gave a word of command
to his men, which was drowned by the wild cries of the heathen as soon
as they apprehended with dismay what its import was.
The veterans were stirred. A subaltern officer, putting the standard he
bore into the hands of the man next to him and taking his axe from him
instead, rushed towards the statue, gazed up at it--and then, letting
the axe sink, withdrew slowly to rejoin the others who still stood
hesitating, looking at each other with doubting and defiant eyes.
Once more Constantine shouted his order, louder and more positively than
before; but the men did not move. The subaltern flung his axe on the
ground and the rest followed his example, pointing eagerly to the god,
and vehemently adjuring their prefect--refusing apparently to obey his
commands--for he went to the recalcitrant standard-bearer, a grey-haired
veteran, and laying his hand on the man’s shoulder shook him angrily,
evidently threatening him and his comrades.
In these brave souls a struggle was going on, between their sense of
discipline and devotion to their fine young leader, and their awe of
the god; it was visible in their puzzled faces, in their hands raised
in supplication. Constantine, however, relentlessly repeated his order;
and, when they still refused to obey, he turned his back on their ranks
with a gesture of bitter contempt, and shouted his commands to the
infantry posted by the colonnade behind which Gorgo was watching all
these proceedings.
But these also were refractory. The heathen were triumphant, and
encouraged the soldiers with loud cries to persist.
Constantine turned once more to his own men, and finding them obstinate
in their disobedience, he went forward himself to where the ladders were
standing, moved one of them from the wall and leaned it up against the
body of the statue, seized the axe that lay nearest, and mounted from
rung to rung. The murmurs of the heathen were suddenly silenced; the
multitude were so still that the least sound of one plate of armor
against another was audible, that each man could hear his neighbor
breathe, and that Gorgo fancied she could hear her own heart throb.
The man and the god stood face to face, and the man who was about to
lay hands on the god was her lover. She watched his movements with
breathless interest; she longed to call out to him, to follow him as
he mounted the ladder, to fall on his neck and keep him from committing
such sacrilege--not out of fear of the ruin he might bring upon the
world, but only because she felt that the first blow he should deal to
this beautiful and unique work of art might wreck her love for him, as
his axe would wreck the ivory. She was not afraid for him; he seemed
to her inviolable and invulnerable; but her whole soul shuddered at the
deed which he was steeling himself to perpetrate. She remembered their
happy childhood together, his own artistic attempts, the admiration with
which he had gazed at the great works of the ancient sculptors--and
it seemed impossible that he, of all men he, should lay hands on that
masterpiece, that he, of all men, should be the one to insult, mutilate
and ruin it. It was not--could not be true!
But there he was, at the top of the ladder; he passed the axe from his
left hand to his right, and leaning back a little, looked at the head
of the god from one side. She could see his face plainly, and note
every movement and look; she watched him keenly, and saw the loving
and compassionate expression with which he fixed his gaze on the noble
features of Serapis, saw him clutch his left hand to his heart as if in
pain. The crowd below might fancy that he lacked courage, that he was
absorbed in prayer, or that his soul shrank from dealing the fateful
blow to the great divinity; but she could see that he was bidding a
silent farewell, as it were, to the sublime work of an inspired artist,
which it pained and shocked him to destroy. And this comforted her;
it gave her views of the situation a new direction, and suggested the
question whether he, a soldier and a Christian, when commanded by his
superior to do this deed ought to shrink or hesitate, if he were indeed,
heart and soul, what, after all, he was. Her eyes clung to him, as
a frightened child clings to its mother’s neck; and the expectant
thousands, in an agony of suspense, like her, saw nothing but him.
Stillness more profound never reigned in the heart of the desert than
now in this vast and densely-crowded hall. Of all man’s five senses only
one was active: that of sight; and that was concentrated on a single
object a man’s hand holding an axe. The hearts of thousands stood
still, their breath was suspended, there was a singing in their ears,
a dazzling light in their eyes--eyes that longed to see, that must
see--and that could not; thousands stood there like condemned criminals,
whose heads are on the block, who hear the executioner behind them, and
who still, on the very threshold of death, hope for respite and release.
Gorgo found no answer to her own questionings; but she, too, wanted
to see--must see. And she saw Constantine close his eyes, as though he
dared not contemplate the deed that Fate had condemned him to do; she
saw him lay his left hand on the god’s sacred beard, saw him raise his
right for the fatal blow--saw, heard, felt the axe crash again and
again on the cheek of Serapis--saw the polished ivory fall in chips
and shavings, large and small, on the stone floor, and leap up with an
elastic rebound or shiver into splinters. She covered her face with her
hands and hid her head in the curtain, weeping aloud. She could only
moan and sob, and feel nothing, think nothing but that a momentous and
sinister act had been perpetrated. An appalling uproar like the noise of
thunder and the beating of surf rose up on every side, but she heeded it
not; and when at length the physician called her by her name, when she
turned from the curtain and once more looked out, instead of the sublime
image of the god she saw in the niche a shapeless log of wood, a hideous
mass against which several ladders were propped, while the ground was
heaped and strewed with scraps of ivory, fragments of gold-plate, and
chips of marble. Constantine had disappeared; the ladders and the plinth
of the statue were covered with a swarm of soldiers and monks who were
finishing the work of destruction. As soon as the young officer had
struck the first blow, and the god had submitted in abject impotence,
they had rushed upon him and saved their captain the trouble of ending
the task he had begun.
The great idol was desecrated. Serapis was no more--the heaven of the
heathen had lost its king. The worshippers of the deposed god, sullen,
furious, and bitterly disabused, made their way out of the temple and
looked up at the serene blue sky, the unclouded sunshine, for some
symptoms of an avenging tempest; but in vain.
Theophilus had also quitted the scene with the Comes, leaving the
work of devastation in the competent hands of the monks. He knew his
skin-clad adherents well; and he knew that within a very few days not
an idol, not a picture, not a token would remain intact to preserve the
memory of the old gods; a thousand slaves charged to sweep the Serapeum
from the face of the earth would have given his impatience twenty times
as long to wait. The Comes went off at once to the Hippodrome, preceded
by hundreds who had hurried off to tell the assembled multitude that
Alexandria had lost her god.
Constantine, however, had not left the temple; he had withdrawn into one
of the aisles and seated himself on the steps, where he remained, sunk
in thought and gazing at the ground. He was a soldier and took service
and discipline in earnest. What he had done he had been forced to
do; but no one could guess how hard it had been to him to fulfil this
terrible duty. His own act was abominable in his eyes, and yet he would
have done it again to-morrow, if it had again been required of him
under similar circumstances. He bewailed the beautiful statue as a lost
treasure of art; but he felt that it was indispensable that it should
perish out of the world. And at the same time he thought of Gorgo,
wondering how she--who had only the day before pledged herself to him,
whom he loved with fervent passion, to whom, as he well knew, his faith
was something monstrous in its contempt for beauty--would bear to learn
that he, her lover, was the man who, like some coarse barbarian, had
defaced this noble work and ruined this vision of beauty, no less dear
to him than it was to her. Still, as he sat brooding and searching the
very depths of his soul, he could not help feeling that he had certainly
acted rightly and would do the same again, even at the risk of losing
her. To him Gorgo, was the noblest of God’s creatures, and how could he
have borne to go through life at her side with a stain on his honor? But
he did not conceal from himself the fact that his deed had opened a
wide gulf between them; and it was with deep pathos that his thoughts
recurred to the antique conception of tragedy--of fate which pursues
its innocent victims as though they were guilty. This day perhaps would
witness the sunset of his life’s joy, would drive him forth once more to
war--to fight, and do nothing but fight, till death should meet him on
the battle-field. And as he sat there his eyes grew dim and heavy and
his head fell on his heaving breast.
Suddenly he felt a light touch on his shoulder, and turning round, he
saw Gorgo standing with her hand outstretched; he started to his feet,
seized it with eager passion and looking sadly into the young girl’s
eyes said, with deep emotion:
“I would I might hold this hand forever--but you will leave me, you will
turn from me when I tell you of the deed that mine has done.”
“I know it,” she said firmly. “And it was a hard task even for you--a
painful duty--was it not?”
“Terrible! horrible!” he exclaimed with a shudder, as he recalled the
feelings of that momentous instant. She looked sympathetically into his
eyes.
“And you did it,” she cried, “because you felt that you must and will
be wholly what you profess to be? It is right--the only right; I feel it
so. I will try to imitate you, and rise above the half-heartedness
which is the bane of existence, and which makes the firm path of life a
trembling, swaying bridge. I am yours, wholly yours; I have none other
gods but yours, and for love of you I will learn to love your God--for
you have often and often called him a God of Love.”
“And He is a God of Love!” cried Constantine, “and you will know him and
confess him even without teaching; for our Saviour lives in every heart
that is filled with love. Oh! Gorgo, I have destroyed that beautiful
idol, but I will let you see that even a Christian can duly value and
cherish beauty in his home and in his heart.”
“I am sure of it,” she exclaimed joyfully. “The world goes on its way
and does not quake, in spite of the fall of Serapis; but I feel as
though in my inmost soul a world had perished and a new one was created,
nobler and purer, and perhaps even more lovely than the old one!”
He pressed her hand to his lips; she signed to him to follow her and led
the way to her father’s couch. Porphyrius was sitting up, supported in
the physician’s arms; his eyes were open, and as they entered he greeted
them with a faint smile.