At Antioch the great, the capital of Syria, not far from Syngon, the principal street, splendid hot baths,Thermæ, stood just at the meeting of four roads.
These baths were fashionable and expensive. Crowds of clients used to go there to learn the last gossip of the town. Between theapodyterium, the room for undressing, and thefrigidarium, or room for cooling and rest, lay a fine hall with mosaic floor and marble walls; this was the hot-air bath, thesudatoriumorlaconicum.
From adjoining halls came laughs of the bathers and the noise of powerful jets of water falling into huge basins. Naked slaves ran hither and thither, jostling one another and opening jars of perfume.
At Antioch bathing was considered neither as an amusement nor as a necessity, but as the principal charm and most varied art of life. The capital of Syria was moreover renowned, the world over, for the abundance, the exquisite taste, and the purity of its waters. A full bath or a full bucket seemed empty, so transparent were the streams from the aqueducts of Antioch.
Through the warm and milky vapours of the sudatorium could be caught glimpses of the red and naked bodies of notable citizens. Some were half-reclining, others seated. Some were being rubbed over with oil; all, with the utmost solemnity, were talking together, while they perspired. The beauty of a pair of ancient statues, an Antinous and an Adonis,placed in niches overhead, threw into still greater prominence the hideousness of the living.
A fat old man came out with a majestic, albeit misshapen, body. He was the merchant Bouzaris, whose finger and thumb controlled the whole of the corn-markets of Antioch. A sprightly young man was respectfully supporting him under the arm. Although both were naked, it was easy to distinguish at a glance which was patron and which client.
"Let the vapour be turned on me," commanded Bouzaris, in his hoarse voice. From the profundity of his tones could be calculated the prodigious number of millions which he commanded on the market.
Two metal taps were turned, and the warm steam, escaping with a hiss from the vent-hole, enveloped the figure of the merchant in thick mist. He stood in the middle of the white cloud, like some squat and monstrous god in process of apotheosis, tunding his red and fleshy belly like a drum.
Sitting hard by in a prominent place was Marcus Ausonius, the former inspector of the guest-house. Huddled up, crouching on his heels by the massive side of the merchant, the meagre little man resembled a featherless and shivering chicken.
Julius Mauricus, the scoffer, was there, trying to make his dry nervous body perspire. He was lean as a stick.
Garguillus, too, was stretched on the mosaic floor, still well-fed, soft as gelatine, enormous in bulk as the carcass of a slain boar. A Paphlagonian slave, panting under the protracted effort, was scrubbing the blubber of his back with a piece of damp cloth; while the now wealthy poet, Publius Porphyrius, was staring in a melancholy manner at his own gouty legs.
"Do you know, my friends?" he asked, "about the letter from the white bulls to the Roman Emperor?"
"No. Tell it."
"One line only: 'Conquer Persia, and we are doomed!'"
"Is that all?"
"What more was there to say?"
Undulations of laughter heaved the body of Garguillus.
"By Pallas, it's telling and to the point! If the Emperor comes back in triumph from Persia, he'll offer in sacrifice to the Olympians such masses of white bulls that these animals will get rarer than the bull Apis!... Slave! Rub the small of my back, the small of my back!... harder, harder!"
And, in turning over, his body made the sound, against the mosaic floor, of a great bundle of wet linen flopped on the ground.
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Julius, "they say from the Isle of Taprobane, in the Indies, they're sending great numbers of very rare white birds and big wild swans from Scythia. All that for the gods! The Roman Emperor is fattening the Olympians. It's true they have had time to get hungry since the days of Constantine!"
"The gods guzzle while we starve!" cried Garguillus. "It's now three days since one has been able to get a decent Colchis pheasant in the market, or even a tolerably eatable fish."
"He's a greenhorn and an innocent!" remarked the corn-merchant.
Everybody turned round respectfully.
"A greenhorn, I tell you!" resumed Bouzaris. "I say that if you pinched the nose of your RomanCæsar you'd find nothing but milk in him like a babe of two weeks!... He wanted to lower the price of bread; forbade us to sell it at the price we set on it! And so he brought four hundred thousand measures of wheat from Egypt...."
"Well, did you lower the price?"
"Listen! I stirred up the wheat-sellers. We closed the shops. Better let our grain rot than give in. So the people ate the Egyptian corn. We won't give him ours. He's made his cake, let him eat it!"
Bouzaris triumphantly clapped his palms on his belly.
"That's enough steam! Now pour!" ordered the merchant.
And the handsome curly-headed slave, who resembled Antinous, unsealed over his head a slender amphora containing the costliest Arabian cassia. The aromatics flowed over the red sweating body. Bouzaris spread the thick scented drops over himself with satisfaction, and then wiped his gross fingers in the golden hair of the slave standing with bowed head before him.
"Your excellency has quite rightly observed that the Emperor was nothing more than a greenhorn," said the parasite friend, with a profound bow. "He has recently published a pamphlet aimed at the inhabitants of Antioch and entitled,The Beard-hater, in which, in response to the insults of the populace, he says in effect—'You laugh at my beard and my coarseness of manners. Laugh as much as you please! I, too, laugh at myself. But I don't want trials, informers, prisons, or punishments!' Now is that worthy of a Roman Emperor? Is it dignified?"
"The Cæsar Constantius of pious memory,"declared Bouzaris, "can't be spoken of in the same breath with Julian! In his clothes, in his bearing, one could see at once he was a Cæsar. But this one, God forgive me, is only an abortion of the gods, a lame monkey, a bandy-legged bear who hangs about the streets unshaven, uncombed, unwashed, with stains of ink on his fingers. Why it makes me sick to see him!... Books, learning, philosophy.... Ah, we'll make you pay dear for all that! A ruler mustn't laugh with his people! He must keep them in hand. Once let the people slip, and he'll never get a grip on them again...."
Then Marcus Ausonius, who up to that time had been mute, murmured thoughtfully—
"Well, one can forgive most things, but why does he take away the last remaining joy in life—the circus, and the fights of gladiators? My friends, the sight of blood causes, and will always cause, an inexplicable pleasure to man.... 'Tis a sacred and mysterious enjoyment. There's no gaiety without bloodshed, no greatness on the earth. The smell of blood is the smell of Rome!"
The last scion of the Ausonii glanced naïvely round at his hearers. Sometimes he looked like a boy, sometimes like an old man. The swollen torso of Garguillus heaved on the floor. Raising his head, he glanced at Ausonius.
"Neatly put. Smell of blood, smell of Rome!... Go on, Marcus, you're inspired to-day...."
"I say what I feel, my dear fellows. Blood is so pleasant to man that even the Christians can't do without it. They want to purify the world through bloodshed. Julian is making a great mistake. In taking away the circus from the people he's robbing them oftheir chief enjoyment, which is naturally sanguinary. The populace would have pardoned almost anything; but it won't pardon that!"
Marcus pronounced the last words solemnly, and then suddenly slipped a hand behind his back and his face beamed.
"Are you perspiring!" asked Garguillus.
"Yes!" answered Ausonius, with a rapturous smile. "Rub, slave, rub!"
He lay down on the couch. The bath-slave fell to kneading the poor anæmic limbs, which had a deadly bluish tint.
From their porphyry niches the figures of ancient time looked down with scorn through the milky smoke.
Meanwhile at the cross-roads, outside the baths, a crowd was collecting.
At night Antioch glittered with thousands of lights, especially along the Syngon, which ran through the city for a distance of twenty-six stadia, with porticoes and colonnades thronged with shops throughout its length.
In the crowd, pleasantries about the Emperor ran from mouth to mouth. Street boys rushed about from group to group shouting satirical ditties. An old woman caught one of the little vagabonds, and, lifting his shirt, administered sound correction with the sole of her sandal.
"Take that! and that! to teach you to sing such disgraceful things!"
The urchin uttered piercing squeals.
Another, clambering on the back of a comrade, drew on the white wall with a piece of coal a long-bearded goat, crowned with the Imperial diadem, while a thirdwrote underneath in big letters, "This is the impious Julian!" and trying to make his voice formidable yelled—
"The butcher comesWith a big, big knife!"
"The butcher comesWith a big, big knife!"
An old man in the long black ecclesiastical habit passing by, halted, listened to the boy, and cast up his eyes to heaven—
"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings proceedeth wisdom! Were we not better off under Cappa and Khi?"
"What do you mean by Cappa and Khi?"
"Don't you understand? The Greek letter Cappa (Κ) begins the name of Constantius, and Khi (Χ) is the initial of 'Christ.' I mean by that, that Constantius and Christ did no harm to the inhabitants of Antioch while the philosophers...."
"True, true! One was better off under Cappa and Khi!"
A drunken man, overhearing this colloquy, hawked the saying about the streets, and the pleasantry circulated through Antioch, and being manifestly absurd tickled the popular fancy.
A scene of still greater animation might have been witnessed in the tavern situated opposite the baths. This tavern belonged to the Armenian Syrax, who had long ago transferred his commercial undertakings from Cæsarea to Antioch. From bulging wine-skins and enormous jars, wine was pouring freely into tin cups. Here, as everywhere, the conversation turned on the Emperor's doings.
The little Syrian soldier Strombix, the same who had taken part in Julian's campaign against thebarbarians in Gaul, was distinguishing himself by special eloquence. By his side lolled the faithful giant, his friend, the Sarmatian, Aragaris. Strombix felt as happy as a fish in water; he loved risings and rebellions better than anything in the world.
He was preparing to make a speech. An old rag-picker had just brought in a sensational piece of news—
"We're all doomed!... The Lord's hand is heavy on us.... Yesterday a neighbour of mine told me something which at first I refused to believe!"
"Tell us, good woman!"
"Well, it was at Gaza. The Pagans seized a convent. They made the nuns come out. They tied them to gallows in the market-place, beat 'em to death, and after rolling their warm bodies, all hacked to pieces, in grains of barley, threw 'em to the swine!"
"I saw myself," added a young weaver, "a Pagan at Hieropolis, who was eating the liver of a deacon!"
"What an abomination!" murmured the auditors crossing themselves.
With the help of Aragaris, Strombix clambered on to a table, which was still sticky with the spilth of wine, and striking an oratorical attitude, addressed the crowd, while Aragaris proudly contemplated his friend.
"Citizens," began Strombix; "how long shall we wait before we rebel? Don't you know that Julian has sworn, if he returns a conqueror from Persia, to gather together the holy defenders of the Church and throw them to beasts in the amphitheatre? To turn the porticoes of basilicas into granaries, and the churches into stables...."
A hump-backed old man, livid with fear, tumbled over on the tavern floor. It was the husband of therag-picker, himself a glass-blower. Rising, he slapped his thigh despairingly, stared at the company, and faltered—
"Ah, what a situation!... And there are two hundred corpses in the wells and the aqueducts!"
"Where? What corpses?"
"Hush!... Hush!" murmured the glass-blower.
"They say that the renegade has long taken his auguries from the intestines of living men; and all this for his war against the Persians and his victory over the Christians!"
Overcome with satisfaction he muttered under his breath—
"Why, in the cellars of the palace at Antioch they've discovered chests full of human bones ... and in the city of Karra, near Edessa, the Christians have found, in a subterranean temple, the corpse of a woman hanging by her hair with her body slit open.... Julian wanted to inspect the liver of an infant for his cursed war."
"Eh? Gluturius! Is it true that human bones are found in the sewers?Youought to know!" said a shoemaker, a confirmed sceptic.
Gluturius, the scavenger, who stood near the door, not venturing in because he smelt badly, being thus addressed, began, according to his custom, to smile and to blink his inflamed eyelids:
"No, worthy friends," he answered humbly. "Newborn infants are sometimes found there, or skeletons of asses and camels, but I never yet saw a corpse of man or woman."
When Strombix resumed his speech, the scavenger listened religiously, rubbing his bare leg against the door post.
"Brother men," cried the orator, with fiery indignation, "let us be revenged! Let us die like ancient Romans!"
"No use burstingyourlungs," grumbled the shoemaker. "When we get to that stage, you'll be the first to turn tail and let the others die!"
"You're a set of cowards," chimed in a painted woman, dressed in a poor and tawdry dress. She was a street-walker, nicknamed by her admirers the She-wolf. "Do you know," she went on wrathfully, "what the holy martyrs Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tertian replied to their executioners?"
"No, She-wolf, tell us."
"Well, I've heard. At Myrrha, in Phrygia, three young men, Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tertian, had burst into a Greek temple by night, and smashed the idols to the glory of God. The proconsul Amachius had them seized, stretched them on dripping-pans, and ordered fires to be lighted under them. The three martyrs said: 'If you want to taste cooked flesh, Amachius, turn us over on the other side, that we may not be served up to you half-cooked!' and all three laughed and spat in the face of the proconsul. And everybody saw an angel come down out of heaven with three crowns!Youwouldn't have spoken so! You're too fearful for your skins.... It's heart-breaking, just to look at you!"
The She-wolf turned away in disgust.
Cries rose from the street.
"Perhaps they're breaking up idols?" suggested the shoemaker pleasantly.
"Forward, citizens! Follow me!" shouted Strombix, waving his arms; but he slipped on the table, and would have fallen had not Aragaris caught him.
Everybody rushed to the door. An enormous crowd was advancing down the principal street and, filling the narrow cross-roads, brought up before the baths.
"Old Pamva! Old Pamva!" the idlers were shouting. "He's come from the desert to help the people; to pull down the great, and to save the humble and poor!"