Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians

by Elizabeth Miller

  CHAPTER XX

  THE FEAST OF FLORA

  Marsyas had assumed pagan dress, bound a scarlet ribbon for a filletabout his head, and flung a scarlet cloak over his tunic, and so,identified with the revelers, he safely entered the city.

  Of the first he met on the brilliantly lighted wharves, he inquired, asa stranger, where he should find the night's celebration. The citizenshe addressed, intoxicated with revel, smote him with palm-leaves orthyrsi and haled him with them, as their fellow, seeking Flora.

  They skirted the Regio Judaeorum toward the northwest and swept himalong toward the Serapeum. Ever the streets opened up, morebrilliantly lighted, more thickly crowded, more boisterously noisy;ever the nucleus of the crowd that had encompassed him increased andthickened and spread, until he was in the heart of a hurryingmultitude. Ever they shouted their indefinite anticipations, boasts oftheir favor with Flora, hopes that the run would be diverting, threatsthat were half-jocular, half in earnest. And some of them, drunk withanarchy, made hysterical, inarticulate, yelping cries, like dogs on aheated trail. And so, with their silent fellow among them, they went,started into an easy trot, and unhindered, like waters turning over afall.

  The strange, half-mad revelry did not make for reassurance in Marsyas.His unexplained fears swept over him from time to time like a chill,and an unspeakable hatred for the unwieldy host about him, as well asthe protest of his caution against the quick pace they had set, movedhim to separate himself from them as soon as he might.

  Flora was to begin her flight from the Serapeum, but because the grovewas most beautiful and the Temple most rich, the aristocrats of thecity had repaired thither to separate themselves from _hoi polloi_, andhad builded for themselves the City of Love.

  Marsyas knew that superior advantages were always for the rich man, andhe, who had to be in the forefront of Flora's van, had to gather untohimself the most propitious opportunities. So while the riot ofplebeians into which he had been absorbed streamed contentedly on toits own lowly place, Marsyas worked his way out of the crowd andapproached the City of Love.

  The glow of its lights, breaking through low-hanging branches andpillared avenues of tree-trunks, reached Marsyas with its music, itsshouts and its tumult, but its inhabitants were shut away behindfoliage, that their doings might be screened from the unqualified.

  The young man looked here and there for a way to enter, but thecunningly extended grove reached from street to street and blocked hispassage. Drawing closer he saw that a cordon of soldiers from the citygarrison had been thrown around the grove for protection during revels.

  At that moment, some one whispered in his ear.

  "Thou art in time, white brother. Continue and fail not!"

  He looked to catch a glimpse of Vasti, the bayadere, at his side. Shewas wrapped from head to heel in a murky red silk, like afire-illumined tissue of smoke. He exclaimed to himself that this wasno old woman, nor yet one young. There was too much lissome grace inthe sinuous figure, and too much unearthly wisdom in the darkmysterious face.

  An instant and she had disappeared like a spirit.

  A little dazed he turned to follow his approved course, but stopped,seeing that many humbler folk who had preceded him were halted anddriven away. The benefits of the grove were distinctly for those whocame with a following and in chariots. The cars of the rich wereconstantly passing through the line of guards; the numbers were greatlyincreasing, and presently became congested. The shouts of theimpatient waiting ones, the pawing of the horses and the calls of theslaves running hither and thither, added uproar to the lines whichclosed in around him, until finally he could go neither forward norbackward.

  While he turned this way and that for an avenue of escape, he foundthat he stood beside a shell of a chariot, with Junia and JustinClassicus seated within. Classicus was not given readily to seeingpeople afoot, and Marsyas stepped hastily out of view. But the Romanwoman had already discovered him. He saw her speak to Classicus, and,while he waited in resentment to be pointed out, Classicus leapedlightly out of the car, and, forcing his way through a crush of slaves,got up beside another, whom Marsyas saw to be Agrippa.

  Then Junia leaned down to him.

  "Come up; thou art safe," she said. "I will not betray thee. What wasit, reason or repentance that freed thee?" Her eyes sparkled and herbreath came and went quickly between her parted lips.

  "An errand," he answered, "and the soldiers will not let me pass."

  "An errand? Flora's errand? Nay, but thou art an Essene. Come up, Isay. The soldiers must pass thee if I bid them."

  With thanks on his lips he stepped in beside her and was presentlydriven without further interruption through the line of sentries, tothe circle of abandoned chariots within. There, alighting, the youngman found himself deftly thrust into the crowd by Junia to avoidmeeting the proconsul or Justin Classicus. She lost herself with him,and entirely obscured from any he had ever seen before, they proceeded.

  "I have delivered thee an evil charge," she said, and there was a noteof regret in her voice. "Yesterday and the day before they would havebeen less objectionable, and seeing them hour by hour thou shouldsthave become gradually accustomed to their aberration. But suddenlyexposed to this night's work, thy soul will be covered with confusion."

  Marsyas smiled awkwardly. The woman could not understand that nothingshort of the motive that had actuated him could have moved him tofollow Flora; neither did he wish her to rest under the self-blame thatshe had urged him.

  "I do not go of mine own will, nor even thine," he answered. "I wassummoned."

  "What! has Flora summoned thee?" she cried, gazing at him in unfeignedastonishment. "Fie on her boldness! Only the Floras of Rome do such athing!"

  "A new evil in Rome?" he responded, smiling. "O lady, I can not gothither unless thou promise me protection!"

  She laughed and waved him a warning hand.

  "Behold how thou acceptest my counsel here in Alexandria! Whatobedience need I expect in Rome?"

  Without waiting for his answer, she turned him out of the open into thegrove.

  No extensive vista greeted him. No lamps, only their lights werevisible. No green-and-gold walled aisle led far in a straight line.The woodland screening of leaf and branch prevailed everywhere. Themusic, the shouts, the tumult seemed to be in another direction thanthe one toward which they were tending. Marsyas went uncertainly; hehad been bidden to be in the forefront of Flora's van, and ahead of himwas falling silence. The splendid creature at his side held her peace,and moved rapidly. Gradually, the people thinned out, and when Juniaturned him into another aisle they were alone. She seemed to beconducting him away from the music and noise.

  Only for a moment, he hesitated at a loss, and then with an apologeticsmile, he said to her:

  "We will go this way,"--and, turning at right angles, led back towardthe tumult.

  "Marsyas," she said, with more impatience than reproach, "and thou artan Essene! How I reproach myself!"

  But he smiled uncomfortably, and kept on.

  The wail of instruments, wild and discordant, the blowing of horns, thepulsation of drums, seemed suddenly to unite as they approached. Abovethe clamor and squeal of cymbals and pipes, voices were lifted, loudand strained as if striving to be heard above the uproar. Some of themmerely shouted, most of them were singing, not one but many songs;shrieks and laughter shrilled through it all, and once in a while themusical tone of a rich throat triumphant above the noise bespoke thepresence of gift with frenzy.

  The tumult was not now distant, and Marsyas did not wish Junia'sfurther aid. His search after Flora was not a thing to be publishedabroad. He glanced at the lights, looked about for a less circuitousroute, and, with a word to her, plunged through the brake toward therevel.

  Before she had thought to protest, the forefront of a processionpenetrated from the side of the aisle and, streaming across, brokethrough the green on the other side.

  The first were flam
ens, Greek, Roman and Egyptian, robed in the palliumand carrying the lituus--first, if the order of procession had beenobserved, but before them, and about them bounded a harlequinade ofbaboons, centaurs, goats, swine--loose, ill-fashioned disguises thatonly robbed their wearers of human form and did not achieve the animalsemblance. Among them were slighter figures of lizards, snails onactive pretty limbs, toads, beetles--glittering, sinuous things thatsurpassed the heavier figures in agility and boldness. After them camea great cornucopia of gold, banded with spiral garlands of roses,studded with jewels and drawn on low ivory wheels by snow-whitemule-colts. Out of the shell-tinted mouth of the great horn, andluxuriously bedded on a gauze of gold cast over the flowers and fruits,was the rosy figure of a little boy, with pearly wings bound to hisshoulders.

  Thus Eros proceeded to Flora.

  Only thus far was any semblance of order distinguishable in theprocession. The wave of uproar suddenly assumed overwhelmingproportions; the aisle was inundated with frenzy.

  Marsyas moved forward, Junia moving with him, and the tumult drawingits bulky length across the aisle swept in now by multitudes. He wascaught; Junia clung to him determinedly for a moment, but was tornaway; he permitted himself to be swallowed up and pitched along by theflood.

  He attracted no consecutive attention. Maenads flung themselves uponhim because his cheeks were crimson and his figure notable, but otheryouths with glowing cheeks drew the maenads away, now and again.Satyrs, fauns and bacchantes saluted him, tumbled him, buffeted him:one snatched off his scarlet fillet and crowned him with a wreath ofgrape-leaves, while a second thrust a thyrsus into his hand. Someclung about his shoulders and bawled into his ear; others reached himflagons of wine and did not notice that others snatched the drink away.These things were single events that stood up out of the daze ofastonishment and shock that confounded him.

  The noise roared louder at every step: the thousands about himaugmented. The grove opened more; the lights became more scatteringand presently he found that he had been swept through another circle ofchariots and outpost of soldiery into the city again. Hurriedlyglancing at the buildings on each side of the street into which theprocession poured, he saw a sufficient number of familiar marks toinform him that he had been borne out on the Rhacotis side of the city.Then the blood within him chilled. This half-maddened, half-murderousmultitude was upon the trail of Flora, and was driving toward thesettlement of the Nazarenes!

  An unshakable conviction possessed him, that Lydia stood between!

  Meanwhile the army of rabble joined the procession of aristocrats.From every avenue fresh multitudes poured in and added to thethousands. Except for the bounding mimes about them the flamens keptthe front of the horde, following with downcast eyes the trail ofyellow roses which, Marsyas now knew, led the procession.

  In the midst of the gigantic hurly-burly he saw with strained eyes anda laboring heart that the light-footed goddess had made a long,deviating flight: that over and over again she doubled on her tracks,but that the detours led with deadly sureness toward the Nazarenes.Impelled now by desperation, he began to work his way toward the front.

  But he had not reckoned on the immense length of the procession, norhow far he had been absorbed into the heart of it. Only when he wasrushed over a slight rise in the street did he know that ahead of himfor a great distance was a sea of tossing heads and moving shoulders,and on either side a compact wave wholly filled the two hundred feet ofstreet and washed up against the walls of the houses.

  The street opened up into an immense square, the last stadium whichmarked the limit of the Roman influence in the Egyptian settlement.Beyond that, on the water-front, were the streets of the Nazarenes!

  Praying and struggling, Marsyas hardly noticed the increase of noisebeginning at the front and extending back to him and passing until thewild clamor resolved itself into a stunning shout that shook Alexandriaand rippled the face of the bay.

  "Flora! _Dea maxima_! _Solis filia_! Give us joy; give us joy!"

  The trail of roses had been broken off. Flora had been found.

  But another roar went up, here and there from the great body there werecries of protest and disappointment: the voice of looters and brawlersthat had been deprived of sacrificial blood. There were hisses, shoutsof derision and cries to the populace to press on.

  But the flamens stopped; the great concourse halted by rank and rankuntil the slackening and final cessation of movement imprisoned thedissenters that were resolved to go on. The main body continued itsgreetings to the goddess, above the cry of the dissatisfied.

  At the far side of the open was a tiny squat temple, hardly more than ashrine, to Rannu, the Egyptian goddess of the harvests. On the top ofthe cornice with the blush lights of the City of Love upon her, stood agirl. Thus lifted into the night sky, her features could not bedistinguished, and Marsyas believed that she was mummied, face andfigure, in wrappings.

  He continued to press forward. The small figure on the summit of theTemple stirred, turned half about and slowly raised her arms with amotion that seemed half-command, half-salute to the great expectantcrowd below.

  Then wing-like mists, taking into themselves the sunset flush of thefires of the City of Love, rose up and fluttered about her. Long,flaming, melon-colored tongues licked in and out of the illusion:distended convolutions of tissue tinged with rose floated and driftedabove her, beside her, before her; shivering streamers of silverreached up and failed and dissolved; jagged streaks and reduplicationsof fiery jets stood out and up and all about her. When the clouds ofpearly vapor lifted and eddied about her head, girdled her with circlesor framed her with rosy wheels, the center of all this motion wasdistinguishable only as a snow-white spindle that whirled with dizzyrapidity. And presently it was noted that the shape was losing themummy form, that more and more the outlines of a beautiful body wereblossoming out of the impearled mists: that petaline wings opened out,fold on fold, as a rose-bud would blow, and each successive disclosuregave the entranced vision a clearer image of the dancer at the heart.Ever the motion seemed slow and stately as do all great and gracefulthings maintaining splendid speed; ever the crimson light from the Cityof Love lent its illimitable range of shade to the motion of the mists.

  Below the great multitude, with its face lifted to the midnight sky,passed from uproar into silence and from silence into thunders ofapplause. The immense voice was the voice of admiration, for thecooling hand of wonder pressed back the crowd's passion for a let toits reason. They forgot their disappointment, their bloodthirst, theirhate of the Nazarenes, and stood to marvel that the goddess burned butwas not consumed.

  But Marsyas, patiently working his way forward, pressed by a tall blackman who was saying over and over to himself in Hindu:

  "It is the bayadere dance, for the glory of Brahma! A sacrilege!"

  The rest of Flora's program meanwhile was proceeding. Slowly andmightily, magnificent young athletes, for only such could drive theirway through so solid a pack of humanity, were working toward theportico of the Temple. These were candidates for Flora's favor. Amongthem were black-eyed Roman youths with laurel around their heads;golden-haired Greeks, crowned with stephanes; lithe, bronze Egyptianswith ribboned locks at the temple which were the badge of princehood.And after them came one, crowned with grape-leaves, with a thyrsus inhis hand, but he had shining black curls, the silken beard and thecrimson cheeks of a Jew. The eyes of this one glittered, not fromexcitement of fancy, but from desperate resolution and astoundedrecognition. The pagans were far in advance of him.

  Now the crowd understood where they were bound and shouted to them; nowthe youths forced themselves past the cornucopia, the mimes, theflamens, and ran into the open space before the Temple. In posescharacteristic of their captivation and intent, they looked up at thedancing fires and cried aloud to the goddess.

  Meanwhile the morning-tinted mists whirled in a circular plane aboutthe girl; suddenly they began to tremble and rise,--up, up until theripple and
shiver of the shaken silk took on the action and appearanceof an illuminated cataract. Through it, the beautiful outlines of thedancer were distinguished, veiled as a Nereid beneath waters, leaping,running. Thousands below instinctively raised their arms to catch thefigure which inevitably must leap through the inspirited cataract andover the parapet of the Temple unless the rosy element pent her withinits bosom.

  The flight gradually changed from a simple step into the entanglementand intricacy of a dance. No gossamer adrift on the wind was more acreature of the air, no tranced ephemera more the genius of motion.The roar of the multitude failed in a vast suspiration of surprise andbewildered delight. Flora had invented, not a new wantonness, but anew grace.

  But the young men shouted: each sprang to a column which upheld theportico upon which Flora danced, and began to climb, helping themselvesby the incrusted garlands of stone which ran up the pillars from baseto capital. It was a contest in climbing, and the best of thecontestants was not long in proving himself. He was one of thegolden-haired Greeks and the multitude, for ever partizan to thestrongest man, roared and thundered its encouragement to him.

  He went up with an ease and swiftness almost superhuman; now, he drewhimself across the outstanding corner of the architrave, and stood withdelicate foothold on its molding while he reached up past the friezeand caught the cornice with his hands.

  The dancer caught the flash of light on his golden stephane and wavered.

  "_Habet_! _Habet_!" roared the multitude. "Evoe, Ionides!"

  And Ionides, lazily lifting himself to the top of the portico, lingereda moment on one hand and knee to contemplate his prize.

  The cataract sank; the flying feet halted, the glory of fire and motionwas lost in lengths of silk which the dancer began hastily to windabout her head and body. Sufficiently covered to hide her face, shepaused and looked to see his further move.

  The Greek, with shining eyes and smiling lips, began slowly to raisehimself.

  Then the one with the black curls and silken beard tore himself fromthe foremost of the crowd and rushed toward the portico.

  The dancer saw him come. She moved toward the edge of the cornice.The Greek leaped: the other below flung up his arms, but the roar ofthe multitude swept away the cry that came from his lips.

  The dancer, eluding the triumphant Greek, rushed over the brink of theportico and dropped like a plummet entangled in gossamer into theupreached arms of Marsyas below.

  Both fell like stones. But Marsyas sprang up with his prize in hisarms, and fled up the steps through the black porch and the stonevalves into the Temple of Rannu.

  Marsyas sprang up with his prize in his arms (missingfrom book)]

  Outside, the multitude, having seen Flora flout her rightful possessor,fell for a moment silent. Then, a part having but one desire to choosefor itself, fell to its own choosing; but the rest, already cheated ofblood and spoil, howled their disapproval, fought their way throughdisinterested masses in order to reach the refuge of the capriciousFlora, met resistance and precipitated warfare, and in an incrediblyshort time, bedlam reigned in the square before the Temple of Rannu.

  The public celebration of the Feast of Flora was at an end. Meanwhilethere was a trail of yellow roses, beginning abruptly in the Nazarenecommunity and leading around every household and out and on toward thewest. The roses lay untouched and wilting through the night and wereshoveled up and carted away by the street-cleaners the next morning.And on the summit of the Gate of the Necropolis, a painted beauty satin jewels and flowers and little raiment, and wondered why she was notsought and found and why her followers stayed and roared before theTemple of Rannu.