Next morning all Panopolis was in an uproar. It was generally known
that the pretensions of the candidates for the episcopate would be
decided by public competition, and it was rumoured that this would
partake of the nature of an ordeal by fire and water. Nothing further
had transpired except that the arrangements had been settled by the
Governor and Archbishop in concert with two strangers, a dingy Libyan
and a handsome young Greek, neither of whom was known in the city, but
in both of whom the authorities seemed to repose entire confidence. At
the appointed time the people flocked into the theatre, and found the
stage already occupied by the parties chiefly concerned. The Governor
and the Archbishop sat in the centre on their tribunals: the
competitors stood on each side, Pachymius backed by the demon, Nonnus
by Apollo; both these supporters, of course, appearing to the assembly
in the light of ordinary mortals. Nonnus recognised Apollo perfectly,
but Pachymius’s limited powers of intelligence seemed entirely
engrossed by the discomfort visibly occasioned him by the proximity of
an enormous brass vessel of water, close to which burned a bright fire.
Nonnus was also ill at ease, and continually directed his attention to
a large package, of the contents of which he seemed instinctively
cognisant.
All being ready, the Governor rose from his seat, and announced that,
with the sanction of his Grace the Archbishop, the invidious task of
determining between the claims of two such highly qualified competitors
had been delegated to two gentlemen in the enjoyment of his full
confidence, who would proceed to apply fitting tests to the respective
candidates. Should one fail and the other succeed, the victor would of
course be instituted; should both undergo the probation successfully,
new criterions of merit would be devised; should both fall short, both
would be set aside, and the disputed mitre would be conferred
elsewhere. He would first summon Nonnus, long their fellow-citizen, and
now their fellow-Christian, to submit himself to the test proposed.
Apollo now rose, and proclaimed in an audible voice, “By virtue of the
authority committed to me I call upon Nonnus of Panopolis, candidate
for the bishopric of his native city, to demonstrate his fitness for
the same by consigning to the flames with his own hands the forty-eight
execrable books of heathen poetry composed by him in the days of his
darkness and blindness, but now without doubt as detestable to him as
to the universal body of the faithful.” So saying, he made a sign to an
attendant, the wrapping of the package fell away, and the forty-eight
scrolls of the Dionysiaca, silver knobs, purple cords, and all, came to
view.
“Burn my poem!” exclaimed Nonnus. “Destroy the labours of twenty-four
years! Bereave Egypt of its Homer! Erase the name of Nonnus from the
tablet of Time!”
“How so, while thou hast the Paraphrase of St. John?” demanded Apollo
maliciously.
“Indeed, good youth,” said the Governor, who wished to favour Nonnus,
“methinks the condition is somewhat exorbitant. A single book might
suffice, surely!”
“I am quite content,” replied Apollo. “If he consents to burn any of
his books he is no poet, and I wash my hands of him.”
“Come, Nonnus,” cried the Governor, “make haste; one book will do as
well as another. Hand them up here.”
“It must be with his own hands, please your Excellency,” said Apollo.
“Then,” cried the Governor, pitching to the poet the first scroll
brought to him, “the thirteenth book. Who cares about the thirteenth
book? Pop it in!”
“The thirteenth book!” exclaimed Nonnus, “containing the contest
between wine and honey, without which my epic becomes totally and
entirely unintelligible!”
“This, then,” said the Governor, picking out another, which chanced to
be the seventeenth,
“In my seventeenth book,” objected Nonnus, “Bacchus plants vines in
India, and the superiority of wine to milk is convincingly
demonstrated.”
“Well,” rejoined the Governor, “what say you to the twenty-second?”
“With my Hamadryad! I can never give up my Hamadryad!”
“Then,” said the Governor, contemptuously hurling the whole set in the
direction of Nonnus, “burn which you will, only burn!”
The wretched poet sat among his scrolls looking for a victim. All his
forty-eight children were equally dear to his parental heart. The cries
of applause and derision from the spectators, and the formidable
bellowings of the exasperated monks who surrounded Pachymius, did not
tend to steady his nerves, or render the task of critical
discrimination the easier,
“I won’t! I won’t!” he exclaimed at last, starting up defiantly. “Let
the bishopric go to the devil! Any one of my similes is worth all the
bishoprics in Egypt!”
“Out on the vanity of these poets!” exclaimed the disappointed
Governor.
“It is not vanity,” said Apollo, “it is paternal affection; and being
myself a sufferer from the same infirmity, I rejoice to find him my
true son after all.”
“Well,” said the Governor, turning to the demon: “it is thy man’s turn
now. Trot him out!”
“Brethren,” said the demon to the assembly, “it is meet that he who
aspires to the office of bishop should be prepared to give evidence of
extraordinary self-denial. Ye have seen even our weak brother Nonnus
adoring what he hath burned, albeit as yet unwilling to burn what he
hath adored. How much more may be reasonably expected of our brother
Pachymius, so eminent for sanctity! I therefore call upon him to
demonstrate his humility and self-renunciation, and effectually mortify
the natural man, by washing himself in this ample vessel provided for
the purpose”
“Wash myself!” exclaimed Pacyhmius, with a vivacity of which he had
previously shown no token. “Destroy at one splash the sanctity of
fifty-seven years! Avaunt! thou subtle enemy of my salvation! I know
thee who thou art, the demon who brought me hither on his back
yesterday.”
“I thought it had been an angel,” said the Governor.
“A demon in the disguise of an angel of light,” said Pachymius.
A tumultuous discussion arose among Pachymius’s supporters, some
extolling his fortitude, others blaming his wrongheadedness.
“What!” said he to the latter, “would ye rob me of my reputation? Shall
it be written of me, The holy Pachymius abode in the precepts of the
eremites so long as he dwelt in the desert where no water was, but as
soon as he came within sight of a bath, he stumbled and fell?”
“Oh, father,” urged they, “savoureth not this of vaingloriousness? The
demon in the guise of an angel of light, as thou so well saidest even
now. Be strong. Quit thyself valiantly. Think of the sufferings of the
primitive confessors.”
“St. John was cast into a caldron of boiling oil,” said one.
“St. Apocryphus was actually drowned,” said another.
“I have reason to believe,” said a third, “that the loathsomeness of
ablution hath been greatly exaggerated by the heretics.”
“I know it has,” said another. “I _have_ washed myself once, though ye
might not think it, and can assert that it is by no means as
disagreeable as one supposes.”
“That is just what I dread,” said Pachymius. “Little by little, one
might positively come to like it! We should resist the beginnings of
evil.”
All this time the crowd of his supporters had been pressing upon the
anchorite, and had imperceptibly forced him nearer the edge of the
vessel, purposing at a convenient season to throw him in. He was now
near enough to catch a glimpse of the limpid element. Recoiling in
horror, he collected all his energies, and with head depressed towards
his chest, and hands thrust forth as if to ward off pollution—butting,
kicking, biting the air—he rushed forwards, and with a preternatural
force deserving to be enumerated among his miracles, fairly overthrew
the enormous vase, the contents streaming on the crowd in front of the
stage.
“Take me to my hermitage!” he screamed. “I renounce the bishopric. Take
me to my hermitage!”
“Amen,” responded the demon, and, assuming his proper shape, he took
Pachymius upon his back and flew away with him amid the cheers of the
multitude.
Pachymius was speedily deposited at the mouth of his cavern, where he
received the visits of the neighbouring anchorites, who came to
congratulate him on the constancy with which he had sustained his
fiery, or rather watery trial. He spent most of his remaining days in
the society of the devil, on which account he was canonised at his
death.
“O Phœbus,” said Nonnus, when they were alone, “impose upon me any
penance thou wilt, so I may but regain thy favour and that of the
Muses. But before all things let me destroy my paraphrase.”
“Thou shalt not destroy it,” said Phœbus, “Thou shalt publish it. That
shall be thy penance.”
And so it is that the epic on the exploits of Bacchus and the
paraphrase of St. John’s Gospel have alike come down to us as the work
of Nonnus, whose authorship of both learned men have never been able to
deny, having regard to the similarity of style, but never could explain
until the facts above narrated came to light in one of the Fayoum
papyri recently acquired by the Archduke Rainer.