When Ben-Hur sallied from the great warehouse, it was with the thought
that another failure was to be added to the many he had already met in
the quest for his people; and the idea was depressing exactly in
proportion as the objects of his quest were dear to him; it curtained
him round about with a sense of utter loneliness on earth, which, more
than anything else, serves to eke from a soul cast down its remaining
interest in life.
Through the people, and the piles of goods, he made way to the edge of
the landing, and was tempted by the cool shadows darkening the river’s
depth. The lazy current seemed to stop and wait for him. In
counteraction of the spell, the saying of the voyager flashed into
memory—“Better be a worm, and feed upon the mulberries of Daphne, than
a king’s guest.” He turned, and walked rapidly down the landing and
back to the khan.
“The road to Daphne!” the steward said, surprised at the question
Ben-Hur put to him. “You have not been here before? Well, count this
the happiest day of your life. You cannot mistake the road. The next
street to the left, going south, leads straight to Mount Sulpius,
crowned by the altar of Jupiter and the Amphitheater; keep it to the
third cross street, known as Herod’s Colonnade; turn to your right
there, and hold the way through the old city of Seleucus to the bronze
gates of Epiphanes. There the road to Daphne begins—and may the gods
keep you!”
A few directions respecting his baggage, and Ben-Hur set out.
The Colonnade of Herod was easily found; thence to the brazen gates,
under a continuous marble portico, he passed with a multitude mixed of
people from all the trading nations of the earth.
It was about the fourth hour of the day when he passed out the gate,
and found himself one of a procession apparently interminable, moving
to the famous Grove. The road was divided into separate ways for
footmen, for men on horses, and men in chariots; and those again into
separate ways for outgoers and incomers. The lines of division were
guarded by low balustrading, broken by massive pedestals, many of which
were surmounted with statuary. Right and left of the road extended
margins of sward perfectly kept, relieved at intervals by groups of oak
and sycamore trees, and vine-clad summer-houses for the accommodation
of the weary, of whom, on the return side, there were always
multitudes. The ways of the footmen were paved with red stone, and
those of the riders strewn with white sand compactly rolled, but not so
solid as to give back an echo to hoof or wheel. The number and variety
of fountains at play were amazing, all gifts of visiting kings, and
called after them. Out southwest to the gates of the Grove, the
magnificent thoroughfare stretched a little over four miles from the
city.
In his wretchedness of feeling, Ben-Hur barely observed the royal
liberality which marked the construction of the road. Nor more did he
at first notice the crowd going with him. He treated the processional
displays with like indifference. To say truth, besides his
self-absorption, he had not a little of the complacency of a Roman
visiting the provinces fresh from the ceremonies which daily eddied
round and round the golden pillar set up by Augustus as the centre of
the world. It was not possible for the provinces to offer anything new
or superior. He rather availed himself of every opportunity to push
forward through the companies in the way, and too slow-going for his
impatience. By the time he reached Heracleia, a suburban village
intermediate the city and the Grove, he was somewhat spent with
exercise, and began to be susceptible of entertainment. Once a pair of
goats led by a beautiful woman, woman and goats alike brilliant with
ribbons and flowers, attracted his attention. Then he stopped to look
at a bull of mighty girth, and snowy white, covered with vines freshly
cut, and bearing on its broad back a naked child in a basket, the image
of a young Bacchus, squeezing the juice of ripened berries into a
goblet, and drinking with libational formulas. As he resumed his walk,
he wondered whose altars would be enriched by the offerings. A horse
went by with clipped mane, after the fashion of the time, his rider
superbly dressed. He smiled to observe the harmony of pride between the
man and the brute. Often after that he turned his head at hearing the
rumble of wheels and the dull thud of hoofs; unconsciously he was
becoming interested in the styles of chariots and charioteers, as they
rustled past him going and coming. Nor was it long until he began to
make notes of the people around him. He saw they were of all ages,
sexes, and conditions, and all in holiday attire. One company was
uniformed in white, another in black; some bore flags, some smoking
censers; some went slowly, singing hymns; others stepped to the music
of flutes and tabrets. If such were the going to Daphne every day in
the year, what a wondrous sight Daphne must be! At last there was a
clapping of hands, and a burst of joyous cries; following the pointing
of many fingers, he looked and saw upon the brow of a hill the templed
gate of the consecrated Grove. The hymns swelled to louder strains; the
music quickened time; and, borne along by the impulsive current, and
sharing the common eagerness, he passed in, and, Romanized in taste as
he was, fell to worshiping the place.
Rearward of the structure which graced the entrance-way—a purely
Grecian pile—he stood upon a broad esplanade paved with polished stone;
around him a restless exclamatory multitude, in gayest colors, relieved
against the iridescent spray flying crystal-white from fountains;
before him, off to the southwest, dustless paths radiated out into a
garden, and beyond that into a forest, over which rested a veil of
pale-blue vapor. Ben-Hur gazed wistfully, uncertain where to go. A
woman that moment exclaimed,
“Beautiful! But where to now?”
Her companion, wearing a chaplet of bays, laughed and answered, “Go to,
thou pretty barbarian! The question implies an earthly fear; and did we
not agree to leave all such behind in Antioch with the rusty earth? The
winds which blow here are respirations of the gods. Let us give
ourselves to waftage of the winds.”
“But if we should get lost?”
“O thou timid! No one was ever lost in Daphne, except those on whom her
gates close forever.”
“And who are they?” she asked, still fearful.
“Such as have yielded to the charms of the place and chosen it for life
and death. Hark! Stand we here, and I will show you of whom I speak.”
Upon the marble pavement there was a scurry of sandalled feet; the
crowd opened, and a party of girls rushed about the speaker and his
fair friend, and began singing and dancing to the tabrets they
themselves touched. The woman, scared, clung to the man, who put an arm
about her, and, with kindled face, kept time to the music with the
other hand overhead. The hair of the dancers floated free, and their
limbs blushed through the robes of gauze which scarcely draped them.
Words may not be used to tell of the voluptuousness of the dance. One
brief round, and they darted off through the yielding crowd lightly as
they had come.
“Now what think you?” cried the man to the woman.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“Devadasi—priestesses devoted to the Temple of Apollo. There is an army
of them. They make the chorus in celebrations. This is their home.
Sometimes they wander off to other cities, but all they make is brought
here to enrich the house of the divine musician. Shall we go now?”
Next minute the two were gone.
Ben-Hur took comfort in the assurance that no one was ever lost in
Daphne, and he, too, set out—where, he knew not.
A sculpture reared upon a beautiful pedestal in the garden attracted
him first. It proved to be the statue of a centaur. An inscription
informed the unlearned visitor that it exactly represented Chiron, the
beloved of Apollo and Diana, instructed by them in the mysteries of
hunting, medicine, music, and prophecy. The inscription also bade the
stranger look out at a certain part of the heavens, at a certain hour
of the clear night, and he would behold the dead alive among the stars,
whither Jupiter had transferred the good genius.
The wisest of the centaurs continued, nevertheless, in the service of
mankind. In his hand he held a scroll, on which, graven in Greek, were
paragraphs of a notice:
“O Traveller!
“Art thou a stranger?
“I. Hearken to the singing of the brooks, and fear not the rain of the
fountains; so will the Naiades learn to love thee.
“II. The invited breezes of Daphne are Zephyrus and Auster; gentle
ministers of life, they will gather sweets for thee; when Eurus blows,
Diana is elsewhere hunting; when Boreas blusters, go hide, for Apollo
is angry.
“III. The shades of the Grove are thine in the day; at night they
belong to Pan and his Dryades. Disturb them not.
“IV. Eat of the Lotus by the brooksides sparingly, unless thou wouldst
have surcease of memory, which is to become a child of Daphne.
“V. Walk thou round the weaving spider—’tis Arachne at work for
Minerva.
“VI. Wouldst thou behold the tears of Daphne, break but a bud from a
laurel bough—and die.
“Heed thou!
“And stay and be happy.”
Ben-Hur left the interpretation of the mystic notice to others fast
enclosing him, and turned away as the white bull was led by. The boy
sat in the basket, followed by a procession; after them again, the
woman with the goats; and behind her the flute and tabret players, and
another procession of gift-bringers.
“Whither go they?” asked a bystander.
Another made answer, “The bull to Father Jove; the goat—”
“Did not Apollo once keep the flocks of Admetus?”
“Ay, the goat to Apollo!”
The goodness of the reader is again besought in favor of an
explanation. A certain facility of accommodation in the matter of
religion comes to us after much intercourse with people of a different
faith; gradually we attain the truth that every creed is illustrated by
good men who are entitled to our respect, but whom we cannot respect
without courtesy to their creed. To this point Ben-Hur had arrived.
Neither the years in Rome nor those in the galley had made any
impression upon his religious faith; he was yet a Jew. In his view,
nevertheless, it was not an impiety to look for the beautiful in the
Grove of Daphne.
The remark does not interdict the further saying, if his scruples had
been ever so extreme, not improbably he would at this time have
smothered them. He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a
trifle; nor was his anger like the fool’s, pumped from the wells of
nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath
peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation
of a hope—dream, if you will—in which the choicest happinesses were
thought to be certainly in reach. In such case nothing intermediate
will carry off the passion—the quarrel is with Fate.
Let us follow the philosophy a little further, and say to ourselves, it
were well in such quarrels if Fate were something tangible, to be
despatched with a look or a blow, or a speaking personage with whom
high words were possible; then the unhappy mortal would not always end
the affair by punishing himself.
In ordinary mood, Ben-Hur would not have come to the Grove alone, or,
coming alone, he would have availed himself of his position in the
consul’s family, and made provision against wandering idly about,
unknowing and unknown; he would have had all the points of interest in
mind, and gone to them under guidance, as in the despatch of business;
or, wishing to squander days of leisure in the beautiful place, he
would have had in hand a letter to the master of it all, whoever he
might be. This would have made him a sightseer, like the shouting herd
he was accompanying; whereas he had no reverence for the deities of the
Grove, nor curiosity; a man in the blindness of bitter disappointment,
he was adrift, not waiting for Fate, but seeking it as a desperate
challenger.
Every one has known this condition of mind, though perhaps not all in
the same degree; every one will recognize it as the condition in which
he has done brave things with apparent serenity; and every one reading
will say, Fortunate for Ben-Hur if the folly which now catches him is
but a friendly harlequin with whistle and painted cap, and not some
Violence with a pointed sword pitiless.