The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Merezhkovsky

  Labda knew better than anybody the family tree and traditions of the race of the Flavii. She remembered the grandfather of Julian, Constantius Chlorus. The murderous mysteries of the Court lingered on, ineffaceable, in her memory; and many a time at night would she tell them to Julian, keeping nothing back, so that he, at the narrative of events which his childish brain could not yet comprehend, felt his heart gripped by fear and indignation. With dull eyes, in a low monotonous listless sing-song, Labda, looking like one of the Fates, would recite these gruesome epic tales of a few years ago, as if they had been so many legends of remotest antiquity.

  Placing the lamp in a stone niche, Labda blessed Julian, with a sign of the cross; ascertained that the amulet of amber was safe on his breast, and, pronouncing some charms to exorcise ill spirits, vanished.

  A heavy half-slumber fell upon Julian. It was warm; great drops of rain, descending in silence as into the bottom of a sonorous vessel, lulled him into languor. He knew not whether he was awake or asleep; whether it was the breathing of the wind or Labda which was murmuring at his ear the terrible secrets of his family. All that he had learnt from her, and all that he had seen in infancy, fused into a single fearful dream.

  ...He sees the dead body of the great Emperor upon a splendid bier. The corpse is painted; and the head adorned by the deftest of barbers with an ingenious dress of false hair. Julian, brought thither to kiss the hand of his uncle for the last time, is afraid. The purple, the diadem, with its stones glittering under the flame of torches, dazzle him. Through the heavy Arabian perfumes, for the first time in his life he comes into contact with the odour of a corpse. But bishops, eunuchs, generals, acclaim the Emperor as if he were alive; and the ambassadors bow down before him and return thanks, observing all the punctilious ceremony of diplomatic etiquette. Scribes read out the edicts, the laws, the decrees of the senate, and implore the approval of the dead man; a flattering murmur surges to and fro among the multitudes; they declare that he, the Emperor, is so great that by a special mercy of Providence he reigns after death.

  The child knows that he whom all glorify has killed his own son, a brave young man, whose only fault lay in the people’s too great love of him. This son had been slandered by his stepmother, who loved him with an unholy love, and had taken her revenge upon him thus as Phædra upon Hippolytus. Afterwards the wife of Constantine had been surprised in adulterous intimacy with a slave of the Imperial stables and had been stifled in a bath heated to a white heat. And so on, corpse, upon corpse, victim after victim. Finally, tormented by conscience, Constantine the Great had implored priests to shrive his soul from guilt. He was refused. Thereupon the Bishop Ozius succeeded in convincing him that one religion only possessed the power of purifying from sins like his. And therefore it had come to pass that now the sumptuous Labarum, the standard bearing wrought in precious stones the monogram of Christ, glittered above the catafalque of the parricide.

  Julian strove to awake, to open his eyes, and could not.

  Ringing drops fell continually, like heavy tears, and the wind blew on: but it seemed to him that it was Labda, the old Fate, babbling near him with her toothless gums the terrible tales of the Flavii.

  Julian dreamed again. He was in the subterranean vaults of Constantius Chlorus, surrounded by porphyry sarcophagi containing the ashes of kings. Labda is hiding him in one of the darkest corners and has wrapped in her cloak the sickly Gallus, who is shivering with fever. Suddenly, above their heads in the palace, groanings resound from room to room.

  Julian recognises the voice of his father; struggles to answer him—to run to his aid—but Labda holds back the child, murmuring, “Quiet! quiet! or they will be upon us!” and hides him under her chlamys. Hasty steps clatter upon the staircase—come nearer and nearer still; the door bursts into shivers and the soldiers of Cæsar, disguised as monks, invade the vault. The Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia directs the search; and coats of mail glitter under the black robes of the searchers.

  “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, answer—who is there?”

  Labda is crouching in a corner, still locking the children to her breast. Again comes the solemn cry—

  “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost—who is there?”

  The legionaries, sword in hand, explore every hole and corner; Labda throws herself at their feet; shows them the sickly Gallus and Julian, defenceless—

  “Fear God! what harm can a six-year-old innocent like this do to the Emperor?”

  And the legionaries force all the kneeling three to kiss the cross which Eusebius holds out to them, and to take the oath of faithfulness to the new Emperor. Julian remembers the great cross of cypress-wood. There was an enamelled picture of Christ on it. On the dark base of the wood stains of fresh blood were still visible, imprinted by the fingers of the cross-bearing assassin.

  Was it the blood of the father of Julian, or of one of his six cousins, Dalmatius, Hannibal, Nepotian, Constantine the Younger, or of the others? The murderer, in order to ascend the throne, had taken six corpses in his stride, doing each deed in the name of the Crucified. And still round the tyrant, day after day, rose the cloud of victims, a multitude which no man could number.

  Julian awoke full of fears. The rain had ceased and the wind fallen. The lamp burned steadily in its niche. Julian sat up on his bed, listening in the silence to the beatings of his own heart. The hush seemed curiously insupportable. Suddenly, voices and steps resounded from room to room, reverberated along the high arcades of Macellum as formerly along the vaults of the Flavii. Julian shivered. It seemed to him that he was dreaming still.

  The steps approached; the voices became distinct.

  The lad cried out, “Gallus, awake! Mardonius, don’t you hear something?”

  Gallus awoke. Barefooted, his grey hair dishevelled, and clothed in a short sleeping-tunic, Mardonius, his face bloated, yellow and wrinkled like an old woman’s, rushed towards the secret door.

  “The soldiers of the Prefect!... Dress!... We must fly.”

  He was too late. The grinding of iron bolts told that the door was being shut from the outside. The stone columns of the public staircase flushed with the light of torches, illumining the purple dragon of a standard-bearer and the cross upon the breastplates of legionaries.

  “In the name of the most orthodox and blessed Augustus, Constantius Imperator! I, Marcus Scuda, Tribune of the Fretensian Legion, take under my safeguard Julian and Gallus, sons of the Patrician, Julius Flavius!”

  Mardonius, with drawn sword, stood in a warlike attitude in front of the closed door of the chamber, barring the way of the soldiers. This glaive was rusty and useless, and served the old tutor only to show, during his lessons in the Iliad, how Hector used to fight Achilles. At this moment Mardonius, although he would have been incapable of killing a hen, was brandishing the sword in the face of Publius, according to the most correct traditions of Homeric warfare. Publius, who was drunk, flew into a passion:

  “Get out of my way, windbag! Clear out, I tell you, if you don’t want me to slit you!”

  He seized Mardonius by the throat and hurled him against the wall.

  Scuda ran to the door of the chamber and opened it. For the first time in his life he beheld the two last descendants of Constantius Chlorus. Gallus seemed tall and strong, but his skin was fine and white as a young girl’s; his eyes, of a wan blue, were indolent and listless; his flaxen hair, the distinguishing trait of the house of Constantine, spread in curls over his powerful neck. But in spite of his masculine appearance, downy beard, and eighteen years, Gallus at that moment looked a child. His lips trembled, he blinked sleep-swollen eyelids, and, crossing himself, continually whispered: “Lord, have mercy upon me!”

  Julian was a thin child, sickly and pale, with irregular features, thick glossy black hair, too long a nose, and a too prominent lower lip. But his eyes were astonishing. Large, strange, and variable, they shone with a brightness rare in a child’s
eyes, and an almost morbid or insane concentration.

  Publius, who in his youth had often seen Constantine the Great, mused—

  “That little rascal will be like his uncle!”

  In the presence of the soldiers fear abandoned Julian. He was only conscious of anger. With closed teeth, the panther-skin of his bed flung over his shoulder, he gazed at Scuda fixedly, his lower lip trembling with bridled rage. In his right hand, hidden by the fur, he gripped the handle of a slim Persian dagger given him by Labda; it was tipped with the keenest of poisons.

  “A true wolf’s cub!” said one of the legionaries, pointing out Julian to his companion.

  Scuda was about to cross the threshold of the chamber, when a wild chance of safety flashed upon Mardonius. Throwing aside his tragic sword, he seized the mantle of the tribune, and began to scream in a shrill feminine voice:

  “Do you know what you’re doing, rascals? How dare you insult an envoy of Constantius? It is I who am charged to conduct these two young princes to Court. The august Emperor has restored them to his favour. Here is the order from Contantinople!”

  “What is he saying?... what order is it?”

  Scuda stared at Mardonius. His faded and wrinkled visage was unmistakably that of a eunuch; and the tribune knew well what special favour eunuchs enjoyed at Court.

  Mardonius hunted in a drawer, lit on a roll of parchment, held it out to the tribune, who unrolled it and immediately grew pale. He only read the first lines, but saw the name of the Emperor, who referred to himself in the edict as Our Eternity,—Nostra æternitas,—but remarked neither the date nor the year.

  When he perceived, swinging from the parchment, the great Imperial seal of dark green wax, attached by golden threads, his eyes clouded; he felt his knees give way—

  “Pardon, there is some mistake ...”

  “Away with you! away with you at once! the Emperor shall know everything!” retorted Mardonius, hastily snatching the decree from the trembling hands of Scuda.

  “Don’t ruin us! We are all brothers, we’re all sinners! I entreat you in the name of Christ!”

  “I know what acts you commit, in the name of Christ! Go! Go at once.”

  The tribune gave the order to retire. A single drunken legionary tried, by fair means or foul, to hustle Mardonius; but they overbore the rioter by main force.

  When the sound of steps died away, and Mardonius was assured that all peril was over, he was seized by a wild fit of laughter which shook the whole of his soft fleshy person. Forgetting all tutorial dignity, the old man in his short night tunic began to dance, crying out gleefully—

  “Children, children! Glory to Hermes! We’ve hoodwinked them cleverly! That edict was annulled three years ago! Ah, the idiots, the idiots!”

  At the breaking of dawn, Julian fell into a deep sleep. He awoke late, refreshed and light-hearted, when the sun was shining brightly into the room through the great iron-clamped window.

  * * *

  III

  Their lesson in doctrinal theology was taught to the lads in the morning by an Arian priest. Long and dry as a lath, he had green eyes, damp and bony hands. This monk, who was named Eutropius, had the disagreeable habit of gently licking the hollow of his palm, smoothing his grey hair, and immediately afterwards making his finger-joints crack. Julian knew that one movement would inevitably follow the other, and used to get madly irritated.

  Eutropius wore an old black cassock, full of stains and patches. He used to say that he wore it out of humility, but, as a matter of fact, he did it from miserliness.

  Such was the instructor chosen by Eusebius of Nicomedia, the religious guardian of Julian.

  This monk suspected in his pupil a certain yeast of moral perversity, which, unless cured, would draw upon Julian eternal damnation.

  And Eutropius used to talk continually of the grateful feelings the boy should show towards his benefactor the Emperor Constantius. Whether he was explaining the text of the Bible, expounding Arian dogmas, or interpreting an apostolic parable, all lessons were conducted to the same conclusion, the “root of holy obedience and filial docility.” And when the Arian monk spoke of the benefits granted to Julian by the Emperor, the child would fix upon him his deep glance; but although each knew the intimate thoughts of the other, never did pupil and professor exchange a word upon the subject. Only if Julian stopped, forgetting some text, or became confused in the chronological list of Old Testament patriarchs, or repeated badly the prayer he had learned by heart, Eutropius would silently gaze at him, take his ear caressingly between two fingers, and two long and sharp finger nails would slowly pierce the flesh.

  Eutropius, despite his morose look, was endowed with a certain ironical gaiety. He gave his pupils the most affectionate of nicknames, while ridiculing their imperial origin. When, after pinching Julian’s ear, he saw him grow pale, not with pain but with rage, he would whisper in humility—

  “Your Majesty does not deign to feel anger against Eutropius, his humble and unlearned slave?” and, licking the palm of his hand, he would smooth the grey locks of his temples, crack his long fingers, and add that it was wholesome sometimes to give naughty, idle little boys a whipping; that form of instruction being often mentioned in Holy Writ as the most effective means of enlightening the souls of the dark and disobedient. He used only to say it to tame the diabolic pride of Julian, who, moreover, was well aware that Eutropius would never dare to put his threat into execution. The monk himself was convinced that the child would rather die than undergo such a humiliation. But the tutor, nevertheless, loved to discourse upon the topic often and long.

  At the end of the lesson, during the explanation of a text, Julian once mentioned the earth’s antipodes, about which he had heard Mardonius speaking. He had done this with the secret intention of annoying the monk, but Eutropius became jocular.

  “Who’s been talking to you about ‘antipodes,’ my angel? Little sinner, how you do make me laugh! That old fool of a Plato did, I know, write something about it. But are you actually wise enough to believe that men walk about on their heads?”

  Eutropius would launch forth into accusations of heresy against the philosophers. Was it not a scandal to imagine that mankind—created after the image of God—could walk about upside down, and so bring Heaven into contempt? And when Julian, insulted by insults to his favourite philosophers, argued that the earth was shaped like a globe, Eutropius became serious and lost his temper, purple with fury and stamping his feet—

  “It’s that heathen, Mardonius, who teaches you these godless lies!”

  When he got angry he would splutter and shower the hearer with his spittle, which Julian believed must be venomous. Exasperated, the monk would savagely attack all the Greek sages. Wounded to the quick by the suggestions of Julian, forgetting that his pupil was a mere child, he burst into serious harangues, accusing Pythagoras of being mad, impudent, audacious, affirming that the atrocious “Utopias” of Plato were not fit to read, and that the instruction of Socrates was clean against reason.

  “Read what Diogenes Lærtius says of Socrates! You will see that not only was he a money-lender, but that he practised vices which no decent man can name.”

  Epicurus, above all, excited the whole of his rancour; the beastliness with which he plunged into pleasures of all kinds, the brutality with which he used to satisfy his sensual desires, were proof enough that he was less than human.

  Resuming something of his habitual calm, Eutropius on this particular day betook himself to explaining some hair-splitting scholastic distinction of the Arian dogma, and waxed wroth with the same heat against the orthodox œcumenical Church, which he considered heretical.

  From the splendid and desolate garden a warm breeze came in through the open window. Julian feigned to listen to Eutropius. Really he was dreaming of a very different person, his well-loved teacher Mardonius. He recollected his wise lectures; his readings of Homer and Hesiod—how different from these monkish lessons!

  Mardoniu
s did not read Homer; following the custom of the ancient rhapsodists, he used to chant the poems, to the great amusement of Labda, who was wont to say that he bayed like a dog at the moon. And in fact he did appear absurd to folk who heard him for the first time. The eunuch would punctiliously scan each foot of the hexameter, beating time with his hand. And while his yellow and wrinkled visage remained intensely rapt, his shrill feminine voice streamed on from strophe to strophe. Julian never remarked the ugliness of the old man, seeing only the throbbing passion of a soul thrilled by grandeur and beauty.

  His listener trembled, while the divine hexameters rose and shouted like waves. He saw the farewells of Andromache and Hector; the wanderings of Ulysses, weeping for Ithaca on the melancholy and sterile beach of Calypso’s island. Delicious sorrow seized the heart of Julian; pains of yearning for Hellas, the country of the gods, eternally beautiful, land of all beauty-worshippers. Tears shook in the voice of the teacher, and rolled down his withered cheeks.

  Sometimes Mardonius would talk with the boy of goodness, of the austerity of virtue, of the death of heroes for freedom’s sake. Little indeed, oh! how little, did these lessons resemble those given by Eutropius.

  Mardonius used also to narrate the life of Socrates; and when he came to the “Apology,” delivered by the philosopher before his death to the people of Athens, the old master would rise, and triumphantly declaim the speech from memory, a calm irony lighting his face. These were less the phrases of a man accused, than the ringing tones of a judge addressing the people.

  “Socrates does not ask for pardon. All the power, all the laws of a government are absolutely nothing beside the liberty of the soul of man. Yes! the Athenians can kill a man without taking from him the freedom and the happiness of his immortal soul.” And when this barbarian, this ex-slave from the banks of the Borysthenes, pronounced the word “liberty” it seemed to Julian that the word contained such superhuman power that beside it even the Homeric pictures lost lustre. Fixing on his master his great wide, haunting eyes, the lad shook with enthusiasm.