AN APPRENTICESHIP TO THE TEMPLE.
The action of our characters during the night included in the last two
chapters has now come to a pause. Vetranio is awaiting his guests for
the banquet; Numerian is in the chapel, preparing for the discourse
that he is to deliver to his friends; Ulpius is meditating in his
master's house; Antonina is stretched upon her couch, caressing the
precious fragment that she had saved from the ruins of her lute. All
the immediate agents of our story are, for the present, in repose.
It is our purpose to take advantage of this interval of inaction, and
direct the reader's attention to a different country from that selected
as the scene of our romance, and to such historical events of past
years as connect themselves remarkably with the early life of
Numerian's perfidious convert. This man will be found a person of
great importance in the future conduct of our story. It is necessary
to the comprehension of his character, and the penetration of such of
his purposes as have been already hinted at, and may subsequently
appear, that the long course of his existence should be traced upwards
to its source.
It was in the reign of Julian, when the gods of the Pagan achieved
their last victory over the Gospel of the Christian, that a decently
attired man, leading by the hand a handsome boy of fifteen years of
age, entered the gates of Alexandria, and proceeded hastily towards the
high priest's dwelling in the Temple of Serapis.
After a stay of some hours at his destination, the man left the city
alone as hastily as he entered it, and was never after seen at
Alexandria. The boy remained in the abode of the high priest until the
next day, when he was solemnly devoted to the service of the temple.
The boy was the young Emilius, afterwards called Ulpius. He was nephew
to the high priest, to whom he had been confided by his father, a
merchant of Rome.
Ambition was the ruling passion of the father of Emilius. It had
prompted him to aspire to every distinction granted to the successful
by the state, but it had not gifted him with the powers requisite to
turn his aspirations in any instance into acquisitions. He passed
through existence a disappointed man, planning but never performing,
seeing his more fortunate brother rising to the highest distinction in
the priesthood, and finding himself irretrievably condemned to exist in
the affluent obscurity ensured to him by his mercantile pursuits.
When his brother Macrinus, on Julian's accession to the imperial
throne, arrived at the pinnacle of power and celebrity as high priest
of the Temple of Serapis, the unsuccessful merchant lost all hope of
rivalling his relative in the pursuit of distinction. His insatiable
ambition, discarded from himself, now settled on one of his infant
sons. He determined that his child should be successful where he had
failed. Now that his brother had secured the highest elevation in the
temple, no calling could offer more direct advantages to a member of
his household that the priesthood. His family had been from their
earliest origin rigid Pagans. One of them had already attained to the
most distinguished honours of his gorgeous worship. He determined that
another should rival his kinsman, and that that other should be his
eldest son.
Firm in this resolution, he at once devoted his child to the great
design which he now held continually in view. He knew well that
Paganism, revived though it was, was not the universal worship that it
had been; that it was now secretly resisted, and might soon be openly
opposed, by the persecuted Christians throughout the Empire; and that
if the young generation were to guard it successfully from all future
encroachments, and to rise securely to its highest honours, more must
be exacted from them than the easy attachment to the ancient religion
require from the votaries of former days. Then, the performance of the
most important offices in the priesthood was compatible with the
possession of military or political rank. Now, it was to the temple,
and to the temple only, that the future servant of the gods should be
devoted. Resolving thus, the father took care that all the son's
occupations and rewards should, from his earliest years, be in some way
connected with the career for which he was intended. His childish
pleasures were to be conducted to sacrifices and auguries; his childish
playthings and prizes were images of the deities. No opposition was
offered on the boy's part to this plan of education. Far different
from his younger brother, whose turbulent disposition defied all
authority, he was naturally docile; and his imagination, vivid beyond
his years, was easily led captive by any remarkable object presented to
it. With such encouragement, his father became thoroughly engrossed by
the occupation of forming him for his future existence. His mother's
influence over him was jealously watched; the secret expression of her
love, of her sorrow, at the prospect of parting with him, was
ruthlessly suppressed whenever it was discovered; and his younger
brother was neglected, almost forgotten, in order that the parental
watchfulness might be entirely and invariably devoted to the eldest son.
When Emilius had numbered fifteen years, his father saw with delight
that the time had come when he could witness the commencement of the
realisation of all his projects. The boy was removed from home, taken
to Alexandria, and gladly left, by his proud and triumphant father,
under the especial guardianship of Macrinus, the high priest.
The chief of the temple full sympathised in his brother's designs for
the young Emilius. As soon as the boy had entered on his new
occupations, he was told that he must forget all that he had left
behind him at Rome; that he must look upon the high priest as his
father, and upon the temple, henceforth, as his home; and that the sole
object of his present labours and future ambition must be to rise in
the service of the gods. Nor did Macrinus stop here. So thoroughly
anxious was he to stand to his pupil in the place of a parent, and to
secure his allegiance by withdrawing him in every way from the world in
which he had hitherto lived, that he even changed his name, giving to
him one of his own appellations, and describing it as a privilege to
stimulate him to future exertions. From the boy Emilius, he was now
permanently transformed to the student Ulpius.
With such a natural disposition as we have already described, and under
such guardianship as that of the high priest, there was little danger
that Ulpius would disappoint the unusual expectations which had been
formed of him. His attention to his new duties never relaxed; his
obedience to his new masters never wavered. Whatever Macrinus demanded
of him he was sure to perform. Whatever longings he might feel to
return to home, he never discovered them; he never sought to gratify
the tastes naturally peculiar to his age. The high priest and his
colleagues were astonished at the extraordinary readiness with which
the boy himself forwarded their intentions for him. Had they known how
elaborately he had been prepared for his future employments at his
father's house, they would have been less astonished at their pupil's
unusual docility. Trained as he had been, he must have shown a more
than human perversity had he displayed any opposition to his uncle's
wishes. He had been permitted no childhood either of thought or
action. His natural precocity had been seized as the engine to force
his faculties into a perilous and unwholesome maturity; and when his
new duties demanded his attention, he entered on them with the same
sincerity of enthusiasm which his boyish coevals would have exhibited
towards a new sport. His gradual initiation into the mysteries of his
religion created a strange, voluptuous sensation of fear and interest
in his mind. He heard the oracles, and he trembled; he attended the
sacrifices and the auguries, and he wondered. All the poetry of the
bold and beautiful superstition to which he was devoted flowed
overwhelmingly into his young heart, absorbing the service of his fresh
imagination, and transporting him incessantly from the vital realities
of the outer world to the shadowy regions of aspiration and thought.
But his duties did not entirely occupy the attention of Ulpius. The
boy had his peculiar pleasures as well as his peculiar occupations.
When his employments were over for the day, it was a strange,
unearthly, vital enjoyment to him to wander softly in the shade of the
temple porticoes, looking down from his great mysterious eminence upon
the populous and sun-brightened city at his feet; watching the
brilliant expanse of the waters of the Nile glittering joyfully in the
dazzling and pervading light; raising his eyes from the fields and
woods, the palaces and garden, that stretched out before him below, to
the lovely and cloudless sky that watched round him afar and above, and
that awoke all that his new duties had left of the joyfulness, the
affectionate sensibility, which his rare intervals of uninterrupted
intercourse with his mother had implanted in his heart. Then, when the
daylight began to wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful
in their places in the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean
vaults of the edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled
the dull, solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the
voices of those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in
the apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had
departed for their amusements and their homes, he would steal into the
lofty halls and wander round the pedestals of the mighty statues,
breathing fearfully the still atmosphere of the temple, and watching
the passage of the cold, melancholy moonbeams through the openings in
the roof, and over the colossal limbs and features of the images of the
pagan gods. Sometimes, when the services of Serapis and the cares
attendant on his communications with the Emperor were concluded,
Macrinus would lead his pupil into the garden of the priests, and
praise him for his docility till his heart throbbed with gratitude and
pride. Sometimes he would convey him cautiously outside the precincts
of the sacred place, and show him, in the suburbs of the city, silent,
pale, melancholy men, gliding suspiciously through the gay, crowded
streets. Those fugitive figures, he would declare, were the enemies of
the temple and all that it contained; conspirators against the Emperor
and the gods; wretches who were to be driven forth as outcasts from
humanity; whose appellation was 'Christian'; and whose impious worship,
if tolerated, would deprive him of the uncle whom he loved, of the
temple that he reverenced, and of the priestly dignity and renown which
it should be his life's ambition to acquire.
Thus tutored in his duties by his guardian, and in his recreations by
himself, as time wore on, the boy gradually lost every remaining
characteristic of his age. Even the remembrance of his mother and his
mother's love grew faint on his memory. Serious, solitary, thoughtful,
he lived but to succeed in the temple; he laboured but to emulate the
high priest. All his feelings and faculties were now enslaved by an
ambition, at once unnatural at his present age, and ominous of
affliction for his future life. The design that Macrinus had
contemplated as the work of years was perfected in a few months. The
hope that his father had scarce dared to entertain for his manhood was
already accomplished in his youth.
In these preparations for future success passed three years of the life
of Ulpius. At the expiration of that period the death of Julian
darkened the brilliant prospects of the Pagan world. Scarcely had the
priests of Serapis recovered the first shock of astonishment and grief
consequent upon the fatal news of the vacancy in the imperial throne,
when the edict of toleration issued by Jovian, the new Emperor, reached
the city of Alexandria, and was elevated on the walls of the temple.
The first sight of this proclamation (permitting freedom of worship to
the Christians) aroused in the highly wrought disposition of Ulpius the
most violent emotions of anger and contempt. The enthusiasm of his
character and age, guided invariably in the one direction of his
worship, took the character of the wildest fanaticism when he
discovered the Emperor's careless infringement of the supremacy of the
temple. He volunteered in the first moments of his fury to tear down
the edict from the walls, to lead an attack on the meetings of the
triumphant Christians, or to travel to the imperial abode and exhort
Jovian to withdraw his act of perilous leniency ere it was too late.
With difficulty did his more cautious confederates restrain him from
the execution of his impetuous designs. For two days he withdrew
himself from his companions, and brooded in solitude over the injury
offered to his beloved superstition, and the prospective augmentation
of the influence of the Christian sect.
But the despair of the young enthusiast was destined to be further
augmented by a private calamity, at once mysterious in its cause and
overwhelming in its effect. Two days after the publication of the
edict the high priest Macrinus, in the prime of vigour and manhood,
suddenly died.
To narrate the confusion and horror within and without the temple on
the discovery of this fatal even; to describe the execrations and
tumults of the priests and the populace, who at once suspected the
favoured and ambitious Christians of causing, by poison, the death of
their spiritual ruler, might be interesting as a history of the manners
of the times, but is immaterial to the object of this chapter. We
prefer rather to trace the effect on the mind of Ulpius of his personal
and private bereavement; of this loss--irretrievable to him--of the
master whom he loved and the guardian whom it was his privilege to
revere.
An illness of some months, during the latter part of which his
attendants trembled for his life and reason, sufficiently attested the
sincerity of the grief of Ulpius for the loss of his protector. During
his paroxysms of delirium the priests who watched round his bed drew
from his ravings many wise conclusions as to the effects that his
seizure and its causes were likely to produce on his future character;
but, in spite of all their penetration, they were still far from
appreciating to a tithe of its extent the revolution that his
bereavement had wrought in his disposition. The boy himself, until the
moment of the high priest's death, had never been aware of the depth of
his devotion to his second father. Warped as they had been by his
natural parent, the affectionate qualities that were the mainspring of
his nature had never been entirely destroyed; and they seized on every
kind word and gentle action of Macrinus as food which had been grudged
them since their birth. Morally and intellectually, Macrinus had been
to him the beacon that pointed the direction of his course, the judge
that regulated his conduct, the Muse that he looked to for inspiration.
And now, when this link which had connected every ramification of his
most cherished and governing ideas was suddenly snapped asunder, a
desolation sunk down upon his mind which at once paralysed its
elasticity and withered its freshness. He glanced back, and saw
nothing but a home from whose pleasures and affections his father's
ambition had exiled him for ever. He looked forward, and as he thought
of his unfitness, both from character and education, to mix in the
world as others mixed in it, he saw no guiding star of social happiness
for the conduct of his existence to come. There was now no resource
left for him but entirely to deliver himself up to those pursuits which
had made his home as a strange place to him, which were hallowed by
their connection with the lost object of his attachment, and which
would confer the sole happiness and distinction that he could hope for
in the wide world on his future life.
In addition to this motive for labour in his vocation, there existed in
the mind of Ulpius a deep and settled feeling that animated him with
unceasing ardour for the prosecution of his cherished occupations.
This governing principle was detestation of the Christian sect. The
suspicion that others had entertained regarding the death of the high
priest was to his mind a certainty. He rejected every idea which
opposed his determined persuasion that the jealousy of the Christians
had prompted them to the murder, by poison, of the most powerful and
zealous of the Pagan priests. To labour incessantly until he attained
the influence and position formerly enjoyed by his relative, and to use
that influence and position, when once acquired, as the means of
avenging Macrinus, by sweeping every vestige of the Christian faith
from the face of the earth, were now the settled purposes of his heart.
Inspired by his determination with the deliberate wisdom which is in
most men the result only of the experience of years, he employed the
first days of his convalescence in cautiously maturing his future
plans, and impartially calculating his chances of success. This
self-examination completed, he devoted himself at once and for ever to
his life's great design. Nothing wearied, nothing discouraged, nothing
impeded him. Outward events passed by him unnoticed; the city's
afflictions and the city's triumphs spoke no longer to his heart. Year
succeeded to year, but Time had no tongue for him. Paganism gradually
sank, and Christianity imperceptibly rose, but change spread no picture
before his eyes. The whole outward world was a void to him, until the
moment arrived that beheld him successful in his designs. His
preparations for the future absorbed every faculty of his nature, and
left him, as to the present, a mere automaton, reflecting no principle,
and animated by no event--a machine that moved, but did not perceive--a
body that acted, without a mind that thought.
Returning for a moment to the outward world, we find that on the death
of Jovian, in 364, Valentinian, the new Emperor, continued the system
of toleration adopted by his predecessor. On his death, in 375,
Gratian, the successor to the imperial throne, so far improved on the
example of the two former potentates as to range himself boldly on the
side of the partisans of the new faith. Not content with merely
encouraging, both by precept and by example, the growth of
Christianity, the Emperor further testified to his zeal for the rising
religion by inflicting incessant persecutions upon the rapidly
decreasing advocates of the ancient worship; serving, by these acts of
his reign, as pioneer to his successor, Theodosius the Great, in the
religious revolution which that illustrious opponent of Paganism was
destined to effect.
The death of Gratian, in 383, saw Ulpius enrolled among the chief
priests of the temple, and pointed out as the next inheritor of the
important office once held by the powerful and active Macrinus.
Beholding himself thus secure of the distinction for which he had
laboured, the aspiring priest found leisure, at length, to look forth
upon the affairs of the passing day. From every side desolation
darkened the prospect that he beheld. Already, throughout many
provinces of the Empire, the temples of the gods had been overthrown by
the destructive zeal of the triumphant Christians. Already hosts of
the terrified people, fearing that the fate of their idols might
ultimately be their own, finding themselves deserted by their disbanded
priests, and surrounded by the implacable enemies of the ancient faith,
had renounced their worship for the sake of saving their lives and
securing their property. On the wide field of Pagan ruin there now
rose but one structure entirely unimpaired. The Temple of Serapis
still reared its head--unshaken, unbending, unpolluted. Here the
sacrifice still prospered and the people still bowed in worship. Before
this monument of the religious glories of ages, even the rising power
of Christian supremacy quailed in dismay. Though the ranks of its once
multitudinous congregations were now perceptibly thinned, though the
new churches swarmed with converts, though the edicts from Rome
denounced it as a blot on the face of the earth, its gloomy and
solitary grandeur was still preserved. No unhallowed foot trod its
secret recesses; no destroying hand was raised as yet against its
ancient and glorious walls.
Indignation, but not despondency, filled the heart of Ulpius as he
surveyed the situation of the Pagan world. A determination nourished
as his had been by the reflections of years, and matured by incessant
industry of deliberation, is above all those shocks which affect a
hasty decision or destroy a wavering intention. Impervious to failure,
disasters urge it into action, but never depress it to repose. Its
existence is the air that preserves the vitality of the mind--the
spring that moves the action of the thoughts. Never for a moment did
Ulpius waver in his devotion to his great design, or despair of its
ultimate execution and success. Though every succeeding day brought
the news of fresh misfortunes for the Pagans and fresh triumphs for the
Christians, still, with a few of his more zealous comrades, he
persisted in expecting the advent of another Julian, and a day of
restoration for the dismantled shrines of the deities that he served.
While the Temple of Serapis stood uninjured, to give encouragement to
his labours and refuge to his persecuted brethren, there existed for
him such an earnest of success as would spur him to any exertion, and
nerve him against any peril.
And now, to the astonishment of priests and congregations, the silent,
thoughtful, solitary Ulpius suddenly started from his long repose, and
stood forth the fiery advocate of the rights of his invaded worship.
In a few days the fame of his addresses to the Pagans who still
attended the rites of Serapis spread throughout the whole city. The
boldest among the Christians, as they passed the temple walls,
involuntarily trembled when they heard the vehemence of the applause
which arose from the audience of the inspired priest. Addressed to all
varieties of age and character, these harangues woke an echo in every
breast they reached. To the young they were clothed in all the poetry
of the worship for which they pleaded. They dwelt on the altars of
Venus that the Christians would lay waste; on the woodlands that the
Christians would disenchant of their Dryads; on the hallowed Arts that
the Christians would arise and destroy. To the aged they called up
remembrances of the glories of the past achieved through the favour of
the gods; of ancestors who had died in their service; of old forgotten
loves, and joys, and successes that had grown and prospered under the
gentle guardianship of the deities of old--while the unvarying burden
of their conclusion to all was the reiterated assertion that the
illustrious Macrinus had died a victim to the toleration of the
Christian sect.
But the efforts of Ulpius were not confined to the delivery of
orations. Every moment of his leisure time was dedicated to secret
pilgrimages into Alexandria. Careless of peril, regardless of threats,
the undaunted enthusiast penetrated into the most private
meeting-places of the Christians; reclaiming on every side apostates to
the Pagan creed, and defying the hostility of half the city from the
stronghold of the temple walls. Day after day fresh recruits arrived
to swell the ranks of the worshippers of Serapis. The few members of
the scattered congregations of the provinces who still remained
faithful to the ancient worship were gathered together in Alexandria by
the private messengers of the unwearied Ulpius. Already tumults began
to take place between the Pagans and the Christians; and even now the
priest of Serapis prepared to address a protest to the new Emperor in
behalf of the ancient religion of the land. At this moment it seemed
probable that the heroic attempts of one man to prop the structure of
superstition, whose foundations were undermined throughout, and whose
walls were attacked by brigands, might actually be crowned with success.
But Time rolled on; and with him came inexorable change, trampling over
the little barriers set up against it by human opposition, and erecting
its strange and transitory fabrics triumphantly in their stead. In
vain did the devoted priest exert all his powers to augment and combine
his scattered band; in vain did the mighty temple display its ancient
majesty, its gorgeous sacrifices, its mysterious auguries. The spirit
of Christianity was forth for triumph on the earth--the last destinies
of Paganism were fast accomplishing. Yet a few seasons more of
unavailing resistance passed by, and then the Archbishop of Alexandria
issued his decree that the Temple of Serapis should be destroyed.
At the rumour of their Primate's determination, the Christian fanatics
rose by swarms from every corner of Egypt, and hurried into Alexandria
to be present at the work of demolition. From the arid solitudes of the
desert, from their convents on rocks and their caverns in the earth,
hosts of rejoicing monks flew to the city gates, and ranged themselves
with the soldiery and the citizens, impatient for the assault. At the
dawn of morning this assembly of destroyers was convened, and as the
sun rose over Alexandria they arrived before the temple walls.
The gates of the glorious structure were barred; the walls were crowded
with their Pagan defenders. A still, dead, mysterious silence reigned
over the whole edifice; and, of all the men who thronged it, one only
moved from his appointed place--one only wandered incessantly from
point to point, wherever the building was open to assault. Those among
the besiegers who were nearest the temple saw in this presiding genius
of the preparations for defence the object at once of their most
malignant hatred and their most ungovernable dread--Ulpius the priest.
As soon as the Archbishop gave the signal for the assault, a band of
monks--their harsh, discordant voices screaming fragments of psalms,
their tattered garments waving in the air, their cadaverous faces
gleaming with ferocious joy--led the way, placed the first ladders
against the walls, and began the attack. From all sides the temple was
assailed by the infuriated besiegers, and on all sides it was
successfully defended by the resolute besieged. Shock after shock fell
upon the massive gates without forcing them to recede; missile after
missile was hurled at the building, but no breach was made in its solid
surface. Multitudes scaled the walls, gained the outer porticoes, and
slaughtered their Pagan defenders, but were incessantly repulsed in
their turn ere they could make their advantage good. Over and over
again did the assailants seem on the point of storming the temple
successfully, but the figure of Ulpius, invariably appearing at the
critical moment among his disheartened followers, acted like a fatality
in destroying the effect of the most daring exertions and the most
important triumphs. Wherever there was danger, wherever there was
carnage, wherever there was despair, thither strode the undaunted
priest, inspiring the bold, succouring the wounded, reanimating the
feeble. Blinded by no stratagem, wearied by no fatigue, there was
something almost demoniac in his activity for destruction, in his
determination under defeat. The besiegers marked his course round the
temple by the calamities that befell them at his every step. If the
bodies of slaughtered Christians were flung down upon them from the
walls, they felt that Ulpius was there. If the bravest of the soldiery
hesitated at mounting the ladders, it was known that Ulpius was
directing the defeat of their comrades above. If a sally from the
temple drove back the advanced guard upon the reserves in the rear, it
was pleaded as their excuse that Ulpius was fighting at the head of his
Pagan bands. Crowd on crowd of Christian warriors still pressed
forward to the attack; but though the ranks of the unbelievers were
perceptibly thinned, though the gates that defended them at last began
to quiver before the reiterated blows by which they were assailed,
every court of the sacred edifice yet remained in the possession of the
besieged, and was at the disposal of the unconquered captain who
organised the defence.
Depressed by the failure of his efforts, and horrified at the carnage
already perpetrated among his adherents, the Archbishop suddenly
commanded a cessation of hostilities, and proposed to the defenders of
the temple a short and favourable truce. After some delay, and
apparently at the expense of some discord among their ranks, the Pagans
sent to the Primate an assurance of their acceptance of his terms,
which were that both parties should abstain from any further struggle
for the ascendancy until an edict from Theodosius determining the
ultimate fate of the temple should be applied for and obtained.
The truce once agreed on, the wide space before the respited edifice
was gradually cleared of its occupants. Slowly and sadly the
Archbishop and his followers departed from the ancient walls whose
summits they had assaulted in vain; and when the sun went down, of the
great multitude congregated in the morning a few corpses were all that
remained. Within the sacred building, Death and Repose ruled with the
night, where morning had brightly glittered on Life and Action. The
wounded, the wearied, and the cold, all now lay hushed alike, fanned by
the night breezes that wandered through the lofty porticoes, or soothed
by the obscurity that reigned over the silent halls. Among the ranks
of the Pagan devotees but one man still toiled and thought. Round and
round the temple, restless as a wild beast that is threatened in his
lair, watchful as a lonely spirit in a city of strange tombs, wandered
the solitary and brooding Ulpius. For him there was no rest of
body--no tranquility of mind. On the events of the next few days
hovered the fearful chance that was soon, either for misery or
happiness, to influence irretrievably the years of his future life.
Round and round the mighty walls he watched with mechanical and useless
anxiety. Every stone in the building was eloquent to his lonely
heart--beautiful to his wild imagination. On those barren structures
stretched for him the loved and fertile home; there was the shrine for
whose glory his intellect had been enslaved, for whose honour his youth
had been sacrificed! Round and round the secret recesses and sacred
courts he paced with hurried footstep, cleansing with gentle and
industrious hand the stains of blood and the defilements of warfare
from the statues at his side. Sad, solitary, thoughtful, as in the
first days of his apprenticeship to the gods, he now roved in the same
moonlit recesses where Macrinus had taught him in his youth. As the
menacing tumults of the day had aroused his fierceness, so the
stillness of the quiet night awakened his gentleness. He had combated
for the temple in the morning as a son for a parent, and he now watched
over it at night as a miser over his treasure, as a lover over his
mistress, as a mother over her child!
The days passed on; and at length the memorable morning arrived which
was to determine the fate of the last temple that Christian fanaticism
had spared to the admiration of the world. At an early hour of the
morning the diminished numbers of the Pagan zealots met their
reinforced and determined opponents--both sides being alike unarmed--in
the great square of Alexandria. The imperial prescript was then
publicly read. It began by assuring the Pagans that their priest's plea
for protection for the temple had received the same consideration which
had been bestowed on the petition against the gods presented by the
Christian Archbishop, and ended by proclaiming the commands of the
Emperor that Serapis and all other idols in Alexandria should
immediately be destroyed.
The shout of triumph which followed the conclusion of the imperial
edict still rose from the Christian ranks when the advanced guard of
the soldiers appointed to ensure the execution of the Emperor's designs
appeared in the square. For a few minutes the forsaken Pagans stood
rooted to the spot where they had assembled, gazing at the warlike
preparations around them in a stupor of bewilderment and despair. Then
as they recollected how diminished were their numbers, how arduous had
been their first defence against a few, and how impossible would be a
second defence against many--from the boldest to the feeblest, a panic
seized on them; and, regardless of Ulpius, regardless of honour,
regardless of the gods, they turned with one accord and fled from the
place.
With the flight of the Pagans the work of demolition began. Even women
and children hurried to join in the welcome task of indiscriminate
destruction. No defenders on this occasion barred the gates of the
temple to the Christian hosts. The sublime solitude of the tenantless
building was outraged and invaded in an instant. Statues were broken,
gold was carried off, doors were splintered into fragments; but here
for a while the progress of demolition was delayed. Those to whom the
labour of ruining the outward structure had been confided were less
successful than their neighbours who had pillaged its contents. The
ponderous stones of the pillars, the massive surfaces of the walls,
resisted the most vigorous of their puny efforts, and forced them to
remain contented with mutilating that which they could not
destroy--with tearing off roofs, defacing marbles, and demolishing
capitals. The rest of the buildings remained uninjured, and grander
even now in the wildness of ruin than ever it had been in the
stateliness of perfection and strength.
But the most important achievement still remained, the death-wound of
Paganism was yet to be struck--the idol Serapis, which had ruled the
hearts of millions, and was renowned in the remotest corners of the
Empire, was to be destroyed! A breathless silence pervaded the
Christian ranks as they filled the hall of the god. A superstitious
dread, to which they had hitherto thought themselves superior, overcame
their hearts, as a single soldier, bolder than his fellows, mounted by
a ladder to the head of the colossal statue, and struck at its cheek
with an axe. The blow had scarcely been dealt when a deep groan was
heard from the opposite wall of the apartment, succeeded by a noise of
retreating footsteps, and then all was silent again. For a few minutes
this incident stayed the feet of those who were about to join their
companion in the mutilation of the idol; but after an interval their
hesitation vanished, they dealt blow after blow at the statue, and no
more groans followed--no more sounds were heard, save the wild echoes
of the stroke of hammer, crowbar, and club, resounding through the
lofty hall. In an incredibly short space of time the image of Serapis
lay in great fragments on the marble floor. The multitude seized on
the limbs of the idol and ran forth to drag them in triumph through the
streets. Yet a few minutes more, and the ruins were untenanted, the
temple was silent--Paganism was destroyed!
Throughout the ravaging course of the Christians over the temple, they
had been followed with dogged perseverance, and at the same time with
the most perfect impunity, by the only Pagan of all his brethren who
had not sought safety by flight. This man, being acquainted with every
private passage and staircase in the sacred building, was enabled to be
secretly present at each fresh act of demolition, in whatever part of
the edifice it might be perpetrated. From hall to hall, and from room
to room, he tracked with noiseless step and glaring eye the movements
of the Christian mob--now hiding himself behind a pillar, now passing
into concealed cavities in the walls, now looking down from
imperceptible fissures in the roof; but, whatever his situation,
invariably watching from it, with the same industry of attention and
the same silence of emotion, the minutest acts of spoliation committed
by the most humble follower of the Christian ranks. It was only when
he entered with the victorious ravagers into the vast apartment
occupied by the idol Serapis that the man's countenance began to give
evidence of the agony under which his heart was writhing within him.
He mounted a private staircase cut in the hollow of the massive wall of
the room, and gaining a passage that ran round the extremities of the
ceiling, looked through a sort of lattice concealed in the ornaments of
the cornice. As he gazed down and saw the soldier mounting, axe in
hand, to the idol's head, great drops of perspiration trickled from his
forehead. His hot, thick breath hissed through his closed teeth, and
his hands strained at the strong metal supports of the lattice until
they bent beneath his grasp. When the stroke descended on the image,
he closed his eyes. When the fragment detached by the blow fell on the
floor, a groan burst from his quivering lips. For one moment more he
glared down with a gaze of horror upon the multitude at his feet, and
then with frantic speed he descended the steep stairs by which he had
mounted to the roof, and fled from the temple.
The same night this man was again seen by some shepherds whom curiosity
led to visit the desecrated building, weeping bitterly in its ruined
and deserted porticoes. As they approached to address him, he raised
his head, and with a supplicating action signed to them to leave the
place. For the few moments during which he confronted them, the
moonlight shone full upon his countenance, and the shepherds, who had
in former days attended the ceremonies of the temple, saw with
astonishment that the solitary mourner whose meditations they had
disturbed was no other than Ulpius the priest.
At the dawn of day these shepherds had again occasion to pass the walls
of the pillaged temple. Throughout the hours of the night the
remembrance of the scene of unsolaced, unpartaken grief that they had
beheld--of the awful loneliness of misery in which they had seen the
heart-broken and forsaken man, whose lightest words they had once
delighted to revere--inspired them with a feeling of pity for the
deserted Pagan, widely at variance with the spirit of persecution which
the spurious Christianity of their day would fain have instilled in the
bosoms of its humblest votaries. Bent on consolation, anxious to
afford help, these men, like the Samaritan of old, went up at their own
peril to succour a brother in affliction. They searched every portion
of the empty building, but the object of their sympathy was nowhere to
be seen. They called, but heard no answering sound, save the dirging of
the winds of early morning through the ruined halls, which but a short
time since had resounded with the eloquence of the once illustrious
priest. Except a few night-birds, already sheltered by the deserted
edifice, not a living being moved in what was once the temple of the
Eastern world. Ulpius was gone.
These events took place in the year 389. In 390, Pagan ceremonies were
made treason by the laws throughout the whole Roman Empire.
From that period the scattered few who still adhered to the ancient
faith became divided into three parties; each alike insignificant,
whether considered as openly or secretly inimical to the new religion
of the State at large.
The first party unsuccessfully endeavoured to elude the laws
prohibitory of sacrifices and divinations by concealing their religious
ceremonies under the form of convivial meetings.
The second preserved their ancient respect for the theory of Paganism,
but abandoned all hope and intention of ever again accomplishing its
practice. By such timely concessions many were enabled to
preserve--and some even to attain--high and lucrative employments as
officers of the State.
The third retired to their homes, the voluntary exiles of every
religion; resigning the practice of their old worship as a necessity,
and shunning the communion of Christians as a matter of choice.
Such were the unimportant divisions into which the last remnants of the
once powerful Pagan community now subsided; but to none of them was the
ruined and degraded Ulpius ever attached.
For five weary years--dating from the epoch of the prohibition of
Paganism--he wandered through the Empire, visiting in every country the
ruined shrines of his deserted worship--a friendless, hopeless,
solitary man!
Throughout the whole of Europe, and all of Asia and the East that still
belonged to Rome, he bent his slow and toilsome course. In the fertile
valleys of Gaul, over the burning sands of Africa, through the
sun-bright cities of Spain, he travelled--unfriended as a man under a
curse, lonely as a second Cain. Never for an instant did the
remembrance of his ruined projects desert his memory, or his mad
determination to revive his worship abandon his mind. At every relic
of Paganism, however slight, that he encountered on his way, he found a
nourishment for his fierce anguish, and employment for his vengeful
thoughts. Often, in the little villages, children were frightened from
their sports in a deserted temple by the apparition of his gaunt, rigid
figure among the tottering pillars, or the sound of his hollow voice as
he muttered to himself among the ruins of the Pagan tombs. Often, in
crowded cities, groups of men, congregated to talk over the fall of
Paganism, found him listening at their sides, and comforting them, when
they carelessly regretted their ancient faith, with a smiling and
whispered assurance that a time of restitution would yet come. By all
opinions and in all places he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose
strange delusions and predilections were not to be combated, but to be
indulged. Thus he wandered through the Christian world; regardless
alike of lapse of time and change of climate; living within himself;
mourning, as a luxury, over the fall of his worship; patient of wrongs,
insults, and disappointments; watching for the opportunity that he
still persisted in believing was yet to arrive; holding by his fatal
determination with all the recklessness of ambition and all the
perseverance of revenge.
The five years passed away unheeded, uncalculated, unregretted by
Ulpius. For him, living but in the past, hoping but for the future,
space held no obstacles--time was an oblivion. Years pass as days,
hours as moments, when the varying emotions which mark their existence
on the memory, and distinguish their succession on the dial of the
heart, exist no longer either for happiness or woe. Dead to all
freshness of feeling, the mind of Ulpius, during the whole term of his
wanderings, lay numbed beneath the one idea that possessed it. It was
only at the expiration of those unheeded years, when the chances of
travel turned his footsteps towards Alexandria, that his faculties
burst from the long bondage which had oppressed them. Then--when he
passed through those gates which he had entered in former years a
proud, ambitious boy, when he walked ungreeted through the ruined
temple where he had once lived illustrious and revered--his dull, cold
thoughts arose strong and vital within him. The spectacle of the scene
of his former glories, which might have awakened despair in others,
aroused the dormant passions, emancipated the stifled energies in him.
The projects of vengeance and the visions of restoration which he had
brooded over for five long years, now rose before him as realised
already under the vivid influence of the desecrated scenes around. As
he stood beneath the shattered porticoes of the sacred place, not a
stone crumbling at his feet but rebuked him for his past inaction, and
strengthened him for daring, for conspiracy, for revenge, in the
service of the outraged gods. The ruined temples he had visited in his
gloomy pilgrimages now became revived by his fancy, as one by one they
rose on his toiling memory. Broken pillars soared from the ground;
desecrated idols reoccupied their vacant pedestals; and he, the exile
and the mourner, stood forth once again the ruler, the teacher, and the
priest. The time of restitution was come; though his understanding
supplied him with no distinct projects, his heart urged him to rush
blindly on the execution of his reform. The moment had
arrived--Macrinus should yet be avenged; the temple should at last be
restored.
He descended into the city; he hurried--neither welcomed nor
recognised--through the crowded streets; he entered the house of a man
who had once been his friend and colleague in the days that were past,
and poured forth to him his wild determinations and disjointed plans,
entreating his assistance, and promising him a glorious success. But
his old companion had become, by a timely conversion to Christianity, a
man of property and reputation in Alexandria, and he turned from the
friendless enthusiast with indignation and contempt. Repulsed, but not
disheartened, Ulpius sought others who he had known in his prosperity
and renown. They had all renounced their ancient worship--they all
received him with studied coldness or careless disdain; but he still
persisted in his useless efforts. He blinded his eyes to their
contemptuous looks; he shut his ears to their derisive words.
Persevering in his self-delusion, he appointed them messengers to their
brethren in other countries, captains of the conspiracy that was to
commence in Alexandria, orators before the people when the memorable
revolution had once begun. It was in vain that they refused all
participation in his designs; he left them as the expressions of
refusal rose to their lips, and hurried elsewhere, as industrious in
his efforts, as devoted to his unwelcome mission, as if half the
population of the city had vowed themselves joyfully to aid him in his
frantic attempt.
Thus during the whole day he continued his labour of useless persuasion
among those in the city who had once been his friends. When the
evening came, he repaired, weary but not despondent, to the earthly
paradise that he was determined to regain--to the temple where he had
once taught, and where he still imagined that he was again destined to
preside. Here he proceeded, ignorant of the new laws, careless of
discovery and danger, to ascertain by divination, as in the days of
old, whether failure or success awaited him ultimately in his great
design.
Meanwhile the friends whose assistance Ulpius had determined to extort
were far from remaining inactive on their parts after the departure of
the aspiring priest. They remembered with terror that the laws
affected as severely those concealing their knowledge of a Pagan
intrigue as those actually engaged in directing a Pagan conspiracy; and
their anxiety for their personal safety overcoming every consideration
of the dues of honour or the claims of ancient friendship, they
repaired in a body to the Prefect of the city, and informed him, with
all the eagerness of apprehension, of the presence of Ulpius in
Alexandria, and of the culpability of the schemes that he had proposed.
A search after the devoted Pagan was immediately commenced. He was
found the same night before a ruined altar, brooding over the entrails
of an animal that he had just sacrificed. Further proof of his guilt
could not be required. He was taken prisoner; led forth the next
morning to be judged, amid the execrations of the very people who had
almost adored him once; and condemned the following day to suffer the
penalty of death.
At the appointed hour the populace assembled to behold the execution.
To their indignation and disappointment, however, when the officers of
the city appeared before the prison, it was only to inform the
spectators that the performance of the fatal ceremony had been
adjourned. After a mysterious delay of some weeks, they were again
convened, not to witness the execution, but to receive the
extraordinary announcement that the culprit's life had been spared, and
that his amended sentence now condemned him to labour as a slave for
life in the copper-mines of Spain.
What powerful influence induced the Prefect to risk the odium of
reprieving a prisoner whose guilt was so satisfactorily ascertained as
that of Ulpius never was disclosed. Some declared that the city
magistrate was still at heart a Pagan, and that he consequently shrunk
from authorising the death of a man who had once been the most
illustrious among the professors of the ancient creed. Others reported
that Ulpius had secured the leniency of his judges by acquainting them
with the position of one of those secret repositories of enormous
treasure supposed to exist beneath the foundations of the dismantled
Temple of Serapis. But the truth of either of these rumours could
never be satisfactorily proved. Nothing more was accurately discovered
than that Ulpius was removed from Alexandria to the place of earthly
torment set apart for him by the zealous authorities, at the dead of
night; and that the sentry at the gate through which he departed heard
him mutter to himself, as he was hurried onward, that his divinations
had prepared him for defeat, but that the great day of Pagan
restoration would yet arrive.
In the year 407, twelve years after the events above narrated, Ulpius
entered the city of Rome.
He had not advanced far, before the gaiety and confusion in the streets
appeared completely to bewilder him. He hastened to the nearest public
garden that he could perceive, and avoiding the frequented paths, flung
himself down, apparently fainting with exhaustion, at the foot of a
tree.
For some time he lay on the shady resting-place which he had chosen,
gasping painfully for breath, his frame ever and anon shaken to its
centre by sudden spasms, and his lips quivering with an agitation which
he vainly endeavoured to suppress. So changed was his aspect, that the
guards who had removed him from Alexandria, wretched as was his
appearance even then, would have found it impossible to recognise him
now as the same man whom they had formerly abandoned to slavery in the
mines of Spain. The effluvia exhaled from the copper ore in which he
had been buried for twelve years had not only withered the flesh upon
his bones, but had imparted to its surface a livid hue, almost
death-like in its dulness. His limbs, wasted by age and distorted by
suffering, bent and trembled beneath him; and his form, once so
majestic in its noble proportions, was now so crooked and misshapen,
that whoever beheld him could only have imagined that he must have been
deformed from his birth. Of the former man no characteristic remained
but the expression of the stern, mournful eyes; and these, the truthful
interpreters of the indomitable mind whose emotions they seemed created
to express, preserved, unaltered by suffering and unimpaired by time,
the same look, partly of reflection, partly of defiance, and partly of
despair, which had marked them in those past days when the temple was
destroyed and the congregations of the Pagans dispersed.
But the repose at this moment demanded by his worn-out body was even
yet denied to it by his untamed, unwearied mind, and, as the voice of
his old delusion spoke within him again, the devoted priest rose from
his solitary resting-place, and looked forth upon the great city, whose
new worship he was vowed to overthrow.
'By years of patient watchfulness,' he whispered to himself, 'have I
succeeded in escaping successfully from my dungeon among the mines.
Yet a little more cunning, a little more endurance, a little more
vigilance, and I shall still live to people, by my own exertions, the
deserted temples of Rome.'
As he spoke he emerged from the grove into the street. The joyous
sunlight--a stranger to him for years--shone warmly down upon his face,
as if to welcome him to liberty and the world. The sounds of gay
laughter rang in his ears, as if to woo him back to the blest
enjoyments and amenities of life; but Nature's influence and man's
example were now silent alike to his lonely heart. Over its dreary
wastes still reigned the ruthless ambition which had exiled love from
his youth, and friendship from his manhood, and which was destined to
end its mission of destruction by banishing tranquility from his age.
Scowling fiercely at all around and above him, he sought the loneliest
and shadiest streets. Solitude had now become a necessity to his
heart. The 'great gulph' of his unshared aspirations had long since
socially separated him for ever from his fellow-men. He thought,
laboured, and suffered for himself alone.
To describe the years of unrewarded labour and unalleviated hardship
endured by Ulpius in the place of his punishment; to dwell on the day
that brought with it--whatever the season in the world above--the same
unwearying inheritance of exertion and fatigue; to chronicle the
history of night after night of broken slumber one hour, of wearying
thought the next, would be to produce a picture from the mournful
monotony of which the attention of the reader would recoil with
disgust. It will be here sufficient to observe, that the influence of
the same infatuation which had nerved him to the defence of the
assaulted temple, and encouraged him to attempt his ill-planned
restoration of Paganism, had preserved him through sufferings under
which stronger and younger men would have sunk for ever; had prompted
his determination to escape from his slavery, and had now brought him
to Rome--old, forsaken, and feeble as he was--to risk new perils and
suffer new afflictions for the cause to which, body and soul, he had
ruthlessly devoted himself for ever.
Urged, therefore, by his miserable delusion, he had now entered a city
where even his name was unknown, faithful to his frantic project of
opposing himself, as a helpless, solitary man, against the people and
government of an Empire. During his term of slavery, regardless of his
advanced years, he had arranged a series of projects, the gradual
execution of which would have demanded the advantages of a long and
vigorous life. He no more desired, as in his former attempt at
Alexandria, to precipitate at all hazards the success of his designs.
He was now prepared to watch, wait, plot, and contrive for years on
years; he was resigned to be contented with the poorest and slowest
advancement--to be encouraged by the smallest prospect of ultimate
triumph. Acting under this determination, he started his project by
devoting all that remained of his enfeebled energies to cautiously
informing himself, by every means in his power, of the private,
political, and religious sentiments of all men of influence in Rome.
Wherever there was a popular assemblage, he attended it to gather the
scandalous gossip of the day; wherever there was a chance of
overhearing a private conversation, he contrived to listen to it
unobserved. About the doors of taverns and the haunts of discharged
servants he lurked noiseless as a shadow, attentive alike to the
careless revelations of intoxication or the scurrility of malignant
slaves. Day after day passed on, and still saw him devoted to his
occupation (which, servile as it was in itself, was to his eyes
ennobled by its lofty end), until at the expiration of some months he
found himself in possession of a vague and inaccurate fund of
information, which he stored up as a priceless treasure in his mind.
He next discovered the name and abode of every nobleman in Rome
suspected even of the most careless attachment to the ancient form of
worship. He attended Christian churches, mastered the intricacies of
different sects, and estimated the importance of contending schisms;
gaining this collection of heterogeneous facts under the combined
disadvantages of poverty, solitude, and age; dependent for support on
the poorest public charities, and for shelter on the meanest public
asylums. Every conclusion that he drew from all he learned partook of
the sanguine character of the fatal self-deception which had embittered
his whole life. He believed that the dissensions which he saw raging
in the Church would speedily effect the destruction of Christianity
itself; that, when such a period should arrive, the public mind would
require but the guidance of some superior intellect to return to its
old religious predilections; and that to lay the foundation for
effecting in such a manner the desired revolution, it was necessary for
him--impossible though it might seem in his present degraded
condition--to gain access to the disaffected nobles of Rome, and
discover the secret of acquiring such an influence over them as would
enable him to infect them with his enthusiasm, and fire them with his
determination. Greater difficulties even than these had been overcome
by other men. Solitary individuals had, ere this, originated
revolutions. The gods would favour him; his own cunning would protect
him. Yet a little more patience, a little more determination, and he
might still, after all his misfortunes, be assured of success.
It was about this period that he first heard, while pursuing his
investigations, of an obscure man who had suddenly arisen to undertake
a reformation in the Christian Church, whose declared aim was to rescue
the new worship from that very degeneracy on the fatal progress of
which rested all his hopes of triumph. It was reported that this man
had been for some time devoted to his reforming labours, but that the
difficulties attendant on the task that he had appointed for himself
had hitherto prevented him from attaining all the notoriety essential
to the satisfactory prosecution of his plans. On hearing this rumour,
Ulpius immediately joined the few who attended the new orator's
discourses, and there heard enough to convince him that he listened to
the most determined zealot for Christianity in the city of Rome. To
gain this man's confidence, to frustrate every effort that he might
make in his new vocation, to ruin his credit with his hearers, and to
threaten his personal safety by betraying his inmost secrets to his
powerful enemies in the Church, were determinations instantly adopted
by the Pagan as duties demanded by the exigencies of his creed. From
that moment he seized every opportunity of favourably attracting the
new reformer's attention to himself, and, as the reader already knows,
he was at length rewarded for his cunning and perseverance by being
received into the household of the charitable and unsuspicious Numerian
as a pious convert to the Christianity of the early Church.
Once installed under Numerian's roof, the treacherous Pagan saw in the
Christian's daughter an instrument admirably adapted, in his
unscrupulous hands, for forwarding his wild project of obtaining the
ear of a Roman of power and station who was disaffected to the
established worship. Among the patricians of whose anti-Christian
predilections report had informed him, was Numerian's neighbour,
Vetranio the senator. To such a man, renowned for his life of luxury, a
girl so beautiful as Antonina would be a bribe rich enough to enable
him to extort any promise required as a reward for betraying her while
under the protection of her father's house. In addition to this
advantage to be drawn from her ruin, was the certainty that her loss
would so affect Numerian as to render him, for a time at least,
incapable of pursuing his labours in the cause of Christianity. Fixed
then in his detestable purpose, the ruthless priest patiently awaited
the opportunity of commencing his machinations. Nor did he watch in
vain. The victim innocently fell into the very trap that he had
prepared for her when she first listened to the music of Vetranio's
lute, and permitted her treacherous guardian to become the friend who
concealed her disobedience from her father's ear. After that first
fatal step every day brought the projects of Ulpius nearer to success.
The long-sought interview with the senator was at length obtained; the
engagement imperatively demanded on the one side was, as we have
already related, carelessly accepted on the other; the day that was to
bring success to the schemes of the betrayer, and degradation to the
honour of the betrayed, was appointed; and once more the cold heart of
the fanatic warmed to the touch of joy. No doubts upon the validity of
his engagement with Vetranio ever entered his mind. He never imagined
that powerful senator could with perfect impunity deny him the
impracticable assistance he had demanded as his reward, and thrust him
as an ignorant madman from his palace gates. Firmly and sincerely he
believed that Vetranio was so satisfied with his readiness in pandering
to his profligate designs, and so dazzled by the prospect of the glory
which would attend success in the great enterprise, that he would
gladly hold to the performance of his promise whenever it should be
required of him. In the meantime the work was begun. Numerian was
already, through his agency, watched by the spies of a jealous and
unscrupulous Church. Feuds, schisms, treacheries, and dissensions
marched bravely onward through the Christian ranks. All things
combined to make it certain that the time was near at hand when,
through his exertions and the friendly senator's help, the restoration
of Paganism might be assured.
With the widest diversity of pursuit and difference of design, there
was still a strange and mysterious analogy between the temporary
positions of Ulpius and Numerian. One was prepared to be a martyr for
the temple; the other to be a martyr for the Church. Both were
enthusiasts in an unwelcome cause; both had suffered more than a life's
wonted share of affliction; and both were old, passing irretrievably
from their fading present on earth to the eternal future awaiting them
in the unknown spheres beyond.
But here--with their position--the comparison between them ends. The
Christian's principle of action, drawn from the Divinity he served, was
love; the Pagan's, born of the superstition that was destroying him,
was hate. The one laboured for mankind; the other for himself. And
thus the aspirations of Numerian, founded on the general good,
nourished by offices of kindness, and nobly directed to a generous end,
might lead him into indiscretion, but could never degrade him into
crime--might trouble the serenity of his life, but could never deprive
him of the consolation of hope. While, on the contrary, the ambition
of Ulpius, originating in revenge and directed to destruction, exacted
cruelty from his heart and duplicity from his mind; and, as the reward
for his service, mocked him alternately throughout his whole life with
delusion and despair.