Not far from Succi, a mountainous defile in the Hæmus range8between Mœsia and Thrace, two men were making their way along a narrow path, at night, through a forest of beeches. They were the Emperor Julian and Maximus the enchanter. The full moon was shining in a clear sky, and strangely illuminating the gold and purple of autumn foliage. From time to time a wan yellow leaf would fall swirling with a slight rustle. The air was full of moisture and the musty smell of a tardy autumn—that soft, chill melancholy odour which puts men in mind of death. The soft masses of leaves made a brushing sound under the feet of the travellers, and round them in the silent woods burned the magnificent obsequies of the departing year.
"Master," asked Julian, "why is not that divine lightness mine, that gaiety which used to make so splendid the men of Hellas?"
"You are not a man of Hellas."
Julian sighed—
"Alas, our ancestors were barbarians, Medes; and the sluggish blood of the North flows in my veins. It is true, I am no son of the Hellenes!"
"My friend, Hellas has never existed," murmured Maximus, with his old bewitching smile.
"What do you mean?" asked Julian.
"The Hellas that you love has never existed."
"Do you mean to say that my faith is futile?"
"We are only to believe," answered Maximus, "in what is not, but shall be. Your Hellas shall exist, shall be the reign, the kingdom of divine men, men daring all things, fearing none."
"Fearing none!... Master, powerful enchantments are thine.... Deliver my soul from fear!"
"Fear of what?"
"I cannot say, but from childhood I have been afraid—afraid of life, of death, of myself, of the mystery in all things, of the darkness.... I had an old nurse, Labda, like a Parca, a Fate, who used to spin me terrible tales of my family, the Flavii. These mad old-wives' tales keep singing in my ears still, at night, when I am alone. They will ruin me some day ... I wish to be free, as one of the old Hellenes ... and I have no gladness in me.... Sometimes I think I am a coward, Master!... Master, save me! Deliver me from that eternal fear, these consuming darknesses!"
"Ah, I have long known the need of your soul," said Maximus, gravely, "and from this very day I will cleanse you from this Galilean corruption—slay the shadow of Golgotha in the radiance of Mithra—warm afresh your body, frozen at baptism, in the hot blood of the Sun-god!... My son, rejoice! for I will give you such freedom, such joy as no man on earth has yet possessed!"
They issued from the wood, and followed a narrow path, hewn through the rock, above a chasm in which a torrent ran seething. Stones, loosened by their feet, rolled echoing down and plunged into the water. High over the forest they saw the distant snow-covered summits of Mount Rhodope. Julian and Maximus at lastreached and entered the mouth of a cave. It was the temple of the Sun-god Mithra, where mysteries, forbidden by the Roman laws, were performed. In this cavern there was no sign of splendour; the bleak walls were engraven with cabalistic signs of Zoroastrian religion, triangles, enlaced circles, winged beasts, and constellations. Here and there the vaulted obscurity was relieved by dull flames of torches or the form of an initiating priest in strange and sweeping robes.
Julian was arrayed in the Olympian robe, embroidered with Indian monsters, stars, suns, and hyperborean dragons. He held a flambeau in his right hand. Maximus had acquainted him with the responses to be made to his initiator, and Julian had learned them by heart, although their meaning hitherto was unintelligible to him.
With Maximus he went down rock-hewn steps into a long and deep foss. Here the air was already humid and stifling; but to make it more so, overhead a wooden trap-door, riddled with holes like a strainer, was lowered across, from edge to edge. The trampling of hoofs resounded, and the sacrificers placed three black bulls, three white bulls, and a red bull with gilded hoofs and horns on the trap above the two men. Then the initiators, intoning a hymn which mingled with the bellowing of the beasts, felled with axes one bull after another. They fell on their knees and struggled, the wooden framework trembled under their weight, while the farthest vaults of the cavern resounded to the cries of the red bull, which was hailed as the god Mithra. Percolating through the holes in the trap, the blood fell in a hot shower upon the head of Julian. This slaying of the bull consecrated to the Sun was the supreme mystery of the Pagans. Throwingoff his outer clothes and standing in his white tunic only, Julian offered head, breast, and all his limbs to the terrible trickling rain. Then Maximus, shaking the torch overhead, cried—
"Let thy soul be steeped in the expiating blood of thy god, the Sun, in the purest blood of the ever radiant heart of thy god, the Sun; let it be cleansed in his morning and in his evening light! Dost thou, O mortal, still hold anything in fear?"
"Yes," was the response.
"Let thy soul become a parcel of thy god, the Sun! The quenchless and inviolable Mithra takes thee to himself! Dost thou still fear anything, O mortal?"
"I fear nothing more on the earth," answered Julian, who was now streaming with blood from head to foot. "I am even as He is!"
"Take this crown," said Maximus, placing a wreath of acanthus-leaves on the head of Julian, with the point of his sword.
But the catechumen flung the coronal upon the ground with a cry—
"The Sun only is my crown, the Sun alone!"
Then he stamped on the acanthus, and lifting his arms skyward repeated a third time—
"Now, until death, my crown is the Sun!"
The mystery was over. Maximus kissed the initiate. On the face of the old man as he did so hovered a gleam of strange significance.
While they were retracing their steps through the beech-forest the Emperor spoke to the enchanter—
"Maximus, I think you are hiding from me some secret deeper yet." He turned towards the old man his pale face, on which, as was the custom, the traces of the sacred blood were not yet wiped away.
"What do you wish to know, Julian?"
"What lot shall fall to me?"
"You will conquer."
"And Constantius?"
"Constantius is no more."
"What mean you?"
"Wait! the Sun shall reveal your glory!"
Julian dared not question further. Both men regained the camp in silence. In Julian's tent a courier from Asia Minor, the tribune Cintula, stood waiting. He knelt and kissed the edge of the Imperial paludamentum—
"Glory to the divine Augustus Julian!"
"Do you come with a message from Constantius?"
"Constantius is no more!"
"What say you?"
Julian trembled and threw a glance at Maximus, whose face remained inscrutable.
"By the will of God," continued Cintula, "your enemy departed this life in the town of Mopsucrenam, not far from Macellum."
That evening the army assembled on a hill. The death of Constantius was already made known to them.
Augustus Claudius Flavius Julian took his station on a hillock so that all the soldiers could see him; crownless, weaponless, unarmoured, and enswathed head to foot in purple. To conceal the traces of the blood, which might not be washed off, he had enveloped his head and veiled his face in the purple silk. In this attire he bore the appearance rather of a sacrificial priest than of an emperor. Behind him rose the ruddy forest wrapping the base of Mount Hæmus. Above his head hung, like a golden banner, the yellow branches of a maple. Far as the eye could see, the plain ofThrace lay below, crossed by the white marble pavement of the Roman road stretching victoriously away to the Propontic Sea. Julian gazed at his army. When the legions moved their stations, red flashes from the sunset were reflected upon burnished helmets, breastplates, and eagles; the lances above the cohorts seemed like lighted tapers. By Julian's side was Maximus, who spoke in Cæsar's ear—
"Look forth upon this sight of glory! your hour is come! Act now!"
The magician pointed to the Christian banner, the Labarum, with its crest of the monogram of Christ, the flag made on the pattern of that fiery standard bearing the inscription, "Through this shalt thou conquer," which Constantine the Great had seen miraculous in the heavens.
The troops made no stir. Julian in a clear and solemn voice addressed them—
"Comrades, our work is finished. Now we will go to Constantinople! Give thanks to the Olympians, who have given us the victory!"
These words were only heard by the first ranks, but there were numerous Christians among them. These were roused by the last startling expression.
"Lord have mercy on us! what is it he says?" cried one.
"Do you see that old man with the white beard?" said another to his comrade.
"Yes."
"That's the Devil, who, in the body of Maximus the enchanter, is tempting Cæsar!"
But the more distant ranks, who had not heard Julian's words, cried—
"Glory to Augustus Julian! Glory! Glory!"and louder and louder yet from outskirts of the hill, as far as they were covered by the legions, arose a cry repeated by thousands of voices—
"Glory!... Glory!..."
Mountains, air, earth, and forest trembled with the voice of the multitude.
"Look, look!" murmured the dismayed Christians; "the Labarum is being lowered!" And in fact the holy banner was being veiled before the Emperor. A military blacksmith came down from the wood with a brazier and red-hot pincers.
Julian, whose face, in spite of the ruddy gleams of the purple and the sun, was dark with strong emotion, wrenched the golden cross, with its monogram of precious stones, from the staff of the Labarum. Pearls, emeralds, and rubies were scattered on the ground, and the glittering cross buried in the earth, stamped under the sandal of the Roman Cæsar.
From a casket Maximus immediately drew forth a little silver statue of the Sun-god, Mithra-Helios; and the smith in a few instants soldered it to the staff of the Labarum.
Before the army had recovered from its astonishment and fear, Constantine's sacred banner rose above the head of the Emperor, crowned with the image of Apollo. An old soldier, who was a devout Christian, turned away and veiled his eyes to avoid seeing the sight of horror.
"Sacrilege! sacrilege!" he muttered, turning pale.
"Woe, woe, upon us!" groaned another; "Satan has entoiled our Emperor!"
Julian knelt before the standard and, stretching out his arms to the little silver image, exclaimed—
"Glory to the invincible Sun, king of all gods!...Augustus worships the eternal Helios; god of light, god of reason, god of the gladness and joy upon Olympus!"
The last rays of sunset lighted the bold beauty of the god of Delphi, and rayed his head. The legionaries stood in silence, save that in the wood the dry leaves could be heard falling. The conflagration of the sunset, the purple of the sacrificial king, the withered woods, all these breathed a magnificence as of sumptuous obsequies. One of the men in the front rank muttered a single word so distinctly that it reached Julian's ear, and thrilled him—
"Anti-Christ!"