In one of the foul and dirty quarters of the Syrian Seleucia, the port for Antioch on the shores of the Inner Sea, narrow and tortuous alleys debouched into a market-place lying along the quays. The sea-horizon was invisible, so thick was the throng of masts and the tangle of rigging. The houses were a mass of miserable little shells, whitewashed within and encumbered with furniture. Their fronts were garnished with tattered carpets, dirty fragments of cloth, and ravelled matting. In every nook and hovel and crowded court, along kennels and gutters of dirty fever-stricken water from laundries and baths of the poor, there lay seething in its penury and hunger a populace strangely cosmopolitan.
The sun, after thoroughly baking the earth, had just descended below the horizon; wide-winged twilight was settling slowly down; a stifling heat of dust and fog still weighed on the spirits of the city. From the market square breathed a suffocating atmosphere of flesh and vegetables, becoming rotten through lying all day in the blaze of the sun. Half-naked slaves were carrying bales of merchandise from the ships. Their heads were close-shaven; through their rags could be seen horrible blotches on the skin; and the greater number bore on their faces, in brandings by red-hot iron, the Latin letters C. F., that is to sayCave Furem('ware thief!).
Braziers were being slowly lighted. But notwithstanding the approach of night, traffic and discussiongave no sign of ceasing in the network of alleys. From a neighbouring forge piercing blows of the hammer resounded on bars of iron, and flames shot up the sooty draught-hole. Hard by, slaves of a bakery, naked, covered from head to foot in flour-dust, and with eyelids inflamed by heat, were putting loaves into an oven. A shoemaker sat in his open-air stall, amid an insupportable smell of cobbler's glue and leather, stitching shoes by the light of a smoky lamp. He was squatting on his heels, and chanting desert songs at the top of his voice. Two old hags like witches, with hair streaming in the wind, were slowly passing across the little square in front of a row of hovels. They were yelling at each other, wrangling and threatening each other with fists and stones. The subject of dispute was the ownership of a cord on which to dry linen. A huckster, from a distant village, was hurrying along to be in time for the morning market. He was mounted on an old mare, flanked with wicker paniers, each heaped with rotting fish; the fetid smell of his load made passers-by edge off to a distance. A loutish urchin, with red hair and skin, was solacing his soul by beating on a great pan, while other children, a sickly multitude coming into the world and leaving it by hundreds daily, marched amidst this scene of poverty, grunting like pigs, round the pools of the quay. The water was full of orange-peel and egg-shells. In yet more villainous passages, inhabited by thieves, the smell of sour wine came from wine-shops, and sailors from every beach of the world marched along arm in arm, shouting drunken songs.
Surrounding all that noise, that filth and spilth of human misery, there murmured, sighed, and grumbled, the infinite, distant, and invisible sea.
Directly over against the subterranean kitchen windows of a Phœnician dealer, ragged gamblers were playing at knuckle-bones, and gossiping. From the kitchen warm gusts of boiling gravy, game, and spices ascended, greedily snuffed-up, with closed eyes, by the hungry gamesters.
A certain Christian, a dyer of purple, dismissed for theft from a rich factory at Tyre, was murmuring, as he hungrily sucked a mallow-leaf thrown away by the cook,—
"And at Antioch, my friends, what's going on there makes one shiver at nights, just to think of it. Why, a few days ago the hungry folk tore in pieces the Prefect Theophilus—and for what reason? Nobody knows! When the thing was done they remembered too late that the poor wretch was a good sort of fellow and a respectable man. I suggested that perhaps the Emperor had pointed him out for punishment."
A consumptive old man, a very skilful cardsharper, replied—
"I have seen the Cæsar, and I like him. Quite young, fair as flax, with a good-natured, fat face. But, as you say, what crimes are committed nowadays! what crimes indeed! Why one can't put one's nose outside the door without danger."
"Ah, that's nothing to do with Cæsar! it's his wife, Constantia, the old witch, that does it!"
But strange personages came near the knot of talkers and thrust themselves forward, as if desiring to take part in the conversation.
If the kitchen firelight had been brighter, it would have been noticed that their faces were begrimed and their clothes fouled and torn like those of stage-beggars; and notwithstanding their raggedness thehands of these persons were fine and white, and their nails pared and crimsoned. One of them whispered in his comrade's ear—
"Listen, Agamemnon; here also they're talking about Cæsar."
He whom they called Agamemnon appeared to be drunk. He wore a beard, which was too thick and long to be natural, and gave him the aspect of a fantastic brigand. His eyes were debonair, almost boyish, and of a bright blue. His friends frequently pulled him back, muttering—
"Now then be careful!"
The consumptive old man went on in a whining tone—
"Now tell me plainly, my friends, is it just? The price of bread is going up every day. People dying like flies. And, suddenly, guess what happens? Lately a great ship came from Egypt; everybody's happy, thinking that it brings bread. The word goes round that Cæsar has made the ship come to feed the people. And what do you think it was, my friends? Powder, Alexandrian powder, if you please! a special pink Libyan powder to rub down the wrestlers!—powder for the Emperor's gladiators—powder instead of bread!... Eh?... Now is that justice?"
Agamemnon nudged his companion's elbow.
"Ask his name, quick—ask!"
"Gently, wait a bit...."
A leather dresser remarked—
"Here in Seleucia the town is quiet, but up at Antioch there are nothing but traitors, spies, and informers."
The dyer, licking the mallow-leaf for the last time, growled and mumbled—
"Yes, unless God comes down to help us, soon flesh and blood will be going a deal cheaper than bread and wine!"
The currier, a philosophic tippler, sighed—
"Ah! ah! ah! we're all poor creatures! The gods of Olympus play at ball with us! Men weep and the gods laugh!"
The companion of Agamemnon meanwhile had succeeded in joining the conversation, and with nonchalant adroitness acertained the names of the talkers. He had intercepted the news, conveyed by the cobbler to the leather-dresser, about a plot hatched against Cæsar's life by the soldiers of the Pretorian guard. Then, strolling on a few paces, he had written down the names of the talkers with a jewelled stilus on tablets of soft wax, where many other names were inscribed already. At this moment hoarse sounds like the roarings of some subterranean monster came from the market square. They were the notes, now plaintive, now lively, of a hydraulic organ.
At the entrance to a showman's travelling booth, a blind slave, for four obols a day, was pumping up the water which produced this extraordinary harmony.
Agamemnon dragged his companion towards the booth, a great tent with blue awnings sprinkled with silver tinsel. A lantern lighted the black-board on which the order of the programme was chalked up, in Syriac and Greek. An oppressive atmosphere of garlic and lamp-oil prevailed inside, where, beside the organ, there struck up the wailing of two harsh flutes, while a negro, rolling the whites of his eyes, thrummed on an Arab drum. A dancer was skipping to and fro on a tight-rope, keeping time to the music with his hands, and singing the latest street song:
Huc, huc, convenite nunc...Spatolocinædi!Pedem tenditeCursum addite...
Huc, huc, convenite nunc...Spatolocinædi!Pedem tenditeCursum addite...
Huc, huc, convenite nunc...Spatolocinædi!Pedem tenditeCursum addite...
Huc, huc, convenite nunc...
Spatolocinædi!
Pedem tendite
Cursum addite...
This starveling mountebank was old, impudent, and repulsively cheery. Drops of sweat, mixed with paint, were trickling from his shaven face. His wrinkles, plastered with white lead, looked like the cracks in a wall when rain has washed off the lime. When he withdrew, the flutes and the organ ceased, and on the platform a fifteen-year-old girl appeared. She was to perform theCordax, a celebrated licentious dance adored by the mob. Fathers of the Church might anathematise, and Roman laws interdict this dance, but both did so in vain. Everywhere the Cordax was danced as before by rich and poor, by street-dancers as well as by wives of senators.
Agamemnon murmured with enthusiasm:
"What a divinely pretty girl!"
Thanks to jostling by his companions he had reached a place in the front rank of spectators. The slender bronze body of the Nubian was only veiled round the hips by a light and transparent rose-coloured scarf. Her hair was wound on the top of her head in close fine curls, like those of Ethiopian women. Her face was of the severest Egyptian type, recalling that of the Sphinx.
She began to dance in careless fashion, as if already out-wearied. Above her head she swung heavy steel bells, castanets or "crotals,"—swung them lazily and loosely. But the movements became more emphatic, and suddenly under long lashes yellow eyes shone out, clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She straightened her body. The steel crotals shook withsuch a challenge in their piercing sound that the crowd shivered and became still. The damsel whirled rapidly, vivid, slender, supple as a serpent; her nostrils dilated, a strange cry came crooning from her throat, and at each sharp movement her brown bosom shook and trembled within its almost invisible meshes of fine green silk.
The crowd howled with enthusiasm. Agamemnon struggled with rage because his companions held him back. Suddenly the girl stopped. A slight shudder ran through her body. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon, but above it the crotals still shivered with an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and tender as the wing-flutterings of a captive butterfly. The flashing of the yellow eyes died away, although the eyeball kept its sparkling lights, and the face remained severe; but upon the dark and sensuous lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile trembled, faint as the dying sound of the crotals.
The public shouted and applauded so loudly that the blue tent with its stars and spangles swayed like a sail in a hurricane. The showman became apprehensive lest his booth should collapse. The companions of Agamemnon at last failed to hold him back; raising the curtain, he rushed through the scenes into the part reserved for the dancers and actors. In vain his friends counselled—
"Wait; to-morrow you shall have everything as you wish! now something might...."
Agamemnon interrupted them—
"Not to-morrow; now, at once!"
He approached the owner of the show, the cunning and grey-bearded Greek, Mirmes, and withoutexplanation flung into the skirt of his robe a handful of gold pieces.
"Is that dancing-girl your slave?"
"Yes. What does your excellency desire?"
Mirmes, evidently astonished, was staring now at Agamemnon and now at the gold.
"What's your name, girl?"
"Phyllis."
He bestowed money on her also, without stopping to reckon it.
The Greek murmured some words in the ear of the smiling Phyllis, who tossed up the pieces and threw sparkling glances at Agamemnon. He said—
"Come with me!"
Phyllis threw over her shoulders a dark cloak and glided with him into the street, asking submissively—
"Whither?"
"I don't know."
"To your house?"
"Impossible. I live at Antioch."
"And as for me, I only arrived in this city this morning. What, then, are we to do?"
"Wait a moment; I saw just now in a lane near this the temple of Priapus open. Let us go there!"
Phyllis led him on hastily, laughing. The companions of Agamemnon desired to follow him, but he said to them—
"It is unnecessary—remain here."
"Be careful! At any rate take a weapon, the quarter is dangerous..." and drawing from under his dress a dagger with a jewelled hilt, one of the friends of Agamemnon respectfully tendered it to him.
Groping at every step into thick darkness, Agamemnonand Phyllis made their way up a narrow passage out of the market-place.
"Here! here it is! Fear nothing—go in!"
They found themselves in the vestibule of a little vacant temple, its ancient and massive columns ill-lighted by the flicker of a lamp.
"Push-to the door!" and Phyllis, softly laughing, threw her warm cloak upon the ground. When Agamemnon took her into his arms, it seemed to him that round his body had coiled some warm lithe snake, with wide and terrifying eyes. At that moment from the interior of the temple came harsh cacklings, and such a gust of beating wings went past that the lamp nearly went out. Agamemnon disengaged his arms from Phyllis' waist and stammered—
"What in the world was that?"
In the dense darkness white forms were slipping by them like so many ghosts. Thoroughly frightened, Agamemnon crossed himself.
"What is it? May the Holy Cross protect us!"
Something stoutly nipped his leg. He yelled with pain and fear, but seizing one of his unknown enemies by the throat, he poignarded another. Deafening cries arose, followed by squeals and repeated battlings of wings. The lamp flickered for the last time, and Phyllis cried, laughing—
"They are the ganders! the holy ganders of Priapus! What a crime you have committed!"
Pale and trembling, the conqueror stood holding in one hand the bloody dagger and in the other two slain ganders. A crowd carrying torches burst with shouts into the temple, led by Scabra, the old priestess of Priapus. This dame had been peacefully supping in a neighbouring tavern when the trumpeting of theganders had raised the alarm. Gathering a train of nocturnal prowlers she had rushed to the rescue. Hook-nosed, with unkempt grey hair, and eyes blazing like two steel points, the old priestess looked nothing less than a fury. She shouted—
"Help! help! The temples are desecrated, and the holy ganders of Priapus slain! And see here, here are the foul Christians!"
Phyllis fled, enveloping her face in the cloak, while the crowd dragged off Agamemnon, so cleanly taken aback that he never thought of relaxing his grip upon the ganders.
Scabra sent for the clerks of the market, the agoranomes. But with every moment the crowd grew larger, and Agamemnon's companions ran to support him. It was too late. From dens, wine-shops, alley stalls, a world of loiterers rushed up, attracted by the noise. All faces wore the expression of gleeful curiosity peculiar to idlers. The blacksmith appeared with hammer over his shoulder; the two old women had forgotten their quarrel; the floury baker jostled the lame cobbler, and behind them came the genial red-headed boy, shouting, and beating on his pan, as if calling to arms.
Meantime Scabra continued screaming, her nails fixed in the clothes of Agamemnon—
"Ah, just wait! wait a minute! let me get at that cursed beard of yours! I wont leave a hair in it! Out, carrion! food for crows! And you aren't worth the rope you will cost, thief!"
Finally the sleepy guardians of the market appeared; persons of curious demeanour, themselves liker common rogues than keepers of the peace.
Such a deafening din of laughs, oaths, and screamsnow ensued that nobody was audible. One shouted, "He's an assassin!" another, "A thief!" a third, "Let's burn him!"
Suddenly above the hubbub rang out the masterful voice of a tawny half-naked giant, the attendant in a public bath, an individual with a demagogue's gift for oratory:
"Citizens, listen to me, and mark what I say! I've long been watching this rascal and his companions! They are writing down our names! They are Cæsar's spies!"
Scabra, at last putting her threat into execution, seized Agamemnon's beard in one hand and his tresses in the other. He strove to repulse her, but she pulled with might and main, and to the general surprise black hair and beard both remained in the hands of the old woman, who stumbled and fell. Instead of Agamemnon, an athletic young man with fair curling hair and short beard stood before the people.
In its astonishment, the crowd was momentarily silenced; but the voice of the bath-slave was soon heard clamouring anew:
"See, citizens, they are disguised informers!"
Somebody cried out—
"Strike him! Knock him down!"
The crowd became tumultuous. Stones were thrown; the sham beggars of Agamemnon's company encircled him with drawn swords. At the first stroke the luckless leather-dresser was killed, and fell in a pool of blood. The red-headed boy was trampled under foot, and all faces were becoming ferocious, when at this juncture ten enormous Paphlagonian slaves bearing on their shoulders a purple litter impatiently thrust their way through the crowd.
"Saved!" cried the fair-haired young man, and vaulted into the litter with one of his fellows.
The Paphlagonians hoisted the pair on their shoulders and set off at sharp run. The infuriated crowd were making as if to dash in pursuit, with intent to stone them, when somebody called out—
"Citizens, don't you see that it is Cæsar himself—Gallus Cæsar!"
The mob halted, paralysed by fear, and the purple litter, swaying on the shoulders of the slaves like a skiff in a heavy sea, vanished into the darkness up the street.
Six years had elapsed since the incarceration of Julian and of Gallus in the Cappadocian fortress of Macellum. Constantius had restored them to favour. Julian, then twenty years old, was sent to Constantinople, and given leave to travel in Asia Minor. Gallus, the Emperor had named to be his co-regent, with the title of Cæsar. Nevertheless this unlooked-for favour was no valid earnest of good-will. Constantius loved to destroy his enemies after having lulled away mistrust by a display of exuberant affection.
"Well, Glycon, Constantia may beg me as much as she likes, in future, to go out in false hair! But it's all over for me! I've done with it!"
"We warned your Majesty that it was dangerous."
But Cæsar, stretched on the soft cushions of the litter, had already forgotten his alarm, and cried, laughing—
"Glycon! Glycon!didyou see the old woman rolling on the ground with my beard?"
When they arrived at the palace Cæsar ordered—
"Quick! Let me have a perfumed bath and supper. The walk has famished me."
A courier came near holding a letter.
"What is it, Norban? No, no, we will have business to-morrow morning."
"Let the magnanimity of Cæsar pardon me! It is an important message sent direct from the camp of the Emperor Constantius."
"From Constantius? Give it me."
Gallus broke the seal of the missive, read, and grew pale. His knees gave way—he would have almost fallen without the support of his courtiers.
Constantius, in exquisite and flattering terms, invited his tenderly-loved cousin to come to Milan. At the same time the Emperor summoned the two legions lodged at Antioch, the only bodyguard left to Gallus. Constantius designed thus to leave him defenceless and draw his rival into the snare. When Gallus had recovered presence of mind he murmured weakly—
"Call my wife!"
"Your Majesty's Imperial consort has just set out for Antioch."
"What! She knows nothing of this?"
"No."
"My God, my God! What is to be done? What can be done without her? Tell the envoy of the Emperor—No, say nothing to him—I scarcely know—How is it possible to arrive at a decision alone? Send a swift post to Constantia.... Say that Cæsar begs her to return! My God, what is to be done?"
He paced up and down distractedly, now hiding his face in his hands, now nervously twisting his fair beard and repeating, "No, no, nothing in the world will induce me to go. I would rather die! Ah! I know Constantius!"
Another messenger came up, a scroll in his hand.
"From the spouse of Cæsar! Her Highness in leaving begged you to sign this as soon as possible."
"What! Another sentence of death?... Clement of Alexandria ... this is really too much. Three a day...."
"Cæsar, it was your consort's desire."
"Well, well, what matters it? Nothing! Where's the pen? Nothing matters now! But why has she gone away? How can I get out of this pretty pass single-handed?"
And having signed the death-warrant he fixed those charming and listless blue eyes upon the servants.
"The bath is ready, sire, and the supper will be served after it."
"The supper? I'm hungry no longer. But what dish is there?"
"Truffles from Africa."
"Fresh gathered?"
"They arrived this morning."
"Would n't it be better to raise an army, eh? What do you say, my friends? I feel so overwhelmed.... Truffles, you say? I was thinking about truffles only this afternoon."
The agitation of his countenance gave way to the airiest of smiles. Before plunging into the water, which was made milky and iridescent by the infusion of perfumes, Gallus waved his hand lightly:
"Pooh! the great thing is not to think! God have mercy on us all!... Perhaps after all Constantia will smooth over the matter...."
And his chubby face suddenly lighted while he plunged with glee into the scented water. He called out gaily—
"Tell the head cook to add a dressing of red pepper to the truffles!"