The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Merezhkovsky

  The Emperor went along a corridor into which opened two rows of doors. He counted the third to the left and softly opened it. An alabaster lamp faintly lighted the cell. He made his breathing as noiseless as possible.

  A woman, dressed in the dark robe of a nun, lay stretched upon a low bed. She must have fallen asleep during prayer, too weary to undress. Long lashes shadowed the pale cheeks, and the brows wore a slight majestic frown, like the frown of the dead.

  Julian recognised Arsinoë.

  She had greatly changed. Her hair alone had remained unaltered. It was still golden brown at its roots, and at its ends pale yellow, like honey standing in the sun.

  The eyelids trembled. She sighed.

  Before Julian’s remembrance arose that proud body of the young Amazon bathed in light, dazzling as the mellow Parthenon marbles, and, with a gesture of irresistible love, Julian stretched out his arms to the nun sleeping under the shadow of the tall black cross. He murmured—

  “Arsinoë!”

  The girl opened her eyes, and gazed at him without astonishment or fear, as if she had known he would come. But returning to herself, she shivered, and passed her hand over her forehead.

  He came near her—

  “Fear nothing; at a word from you I will go away.”

  “Why have you come?”

  “I wished to know if indeed....”

  “What matters it, Julian? We cannot understand each other.”

  “Do you really believe in ‘Him,’ Arsinoë?”

  She made no answer and lowered her eyes.

  “Do you remember our night at Athens?” continued the Emperor. “Do you remember then how you tempted me, the Galilean monk, as now I am tempting you? The old pride, the old force, are still on your face, Arsinoë, and not humility, O slave of the Galilean! Tell me the truth.”

  “I wish for power,” she said in a low tone.

  “Power! Then you still remember our compact—our alliance?” exclaimed Julian joyfully.

  She shook her head, with a sad smile—

  “Oh no! Power over the people is not worth the labour of obtaining it. You have learned that!”

  “And this is why you go forth into the desert?”

  “Yes ... and for freedom’s sake.”

  “Arsinoë, as of old, you care only for yourself!”

  “I wish to love others as ‘He’ commands, but I cannot. I detest them, and I detest myself!”

  “Then it is better not to live!”

  “One must conquer oneself,” she said slowly. “One must conquer in oneself not only the distaste for death but also distaste for life, which is very difficult, because a life like mine is much more terrible than death. But if one succeeds in self-conquest to the end, Life and Death become as nothing, and a greater liberty is gained!”

  Her fine brows were knit into a frown of indomitable will.

  Julian looked at her in despair.

  “What have they made of you?” he murmured. “You are all, all, executioners and martyrs! Why do you keep torturing yourselves? Do you not see that within your soul there is nothing but hate and despair?”

  She fixed on him eyes full of anger—

  “Why did you come here? I never summoned you. Go!... What matters it to me what you think! My own thoughts and sufferings are enough for me to bear. There is an abyss between us which none living can cross over. You tell me that I do not believe.... That is precisely the cause of my self-hatred. I do not believe, but I wish to believe. Do you understand? I wish and I shall believe. I shall force myself. I shall torture my flesh—dry it up by hunger and thirst, make it more unfeeling than stones. I will tame my intelligence, I will slay it, I will kill it, because it is the Devil, and more seducing than any passion. That shall be my last victory, and the best, because it will set me free. Then I shall see if anything will dare revolt in me and say, ‘I do not believe!’”

  She stretched her joined hands heavenward, with a suppliant gesture—

  “Lord, have mercy upon me! Lord, where art Thou? Hear me, and pardon me!”

  Julian flung himself on his knees before her, drew her to himself, and his triumphant eyes sparkled—

  “O girl, I see now, you are not able to leave us! You willed it, but willed the impossible! Come! Come now with me! To-morrow you shall be the spouse of the Roman Emperor, mistress of the world! I have entered this place like a thief; I shall go out with my prey like a lion! What a victory over the Galileans! Who can hinder us? We will dare everything, and walk as gods!”

  The face of Arsinoë became sad and tranquil. She looked at Julian pityingly, without thrusting him away—

  “Unhappy man!... You are unhappy as I. You yourself know not whither you wish to lead me. On whom do you reckon? In whom put your trust? Your gods are decaying, dead.... I will flee into the desert, far from contaminating fables, far from this terrifying smell of rottenness. Leave me.... I can aid you in nothing.... Go....”

  Wrath and passion shone in Julian’s eyes; but more calmly still, and so pityingly that his very heart shivered and froze as under the blow of deadly insult, she went on—

  “Why do you delude yourself? Are you not wavering, perishable, as we all are? Think: what means this charity of yours? These guest-houses—these sermons of the sacrificial priests? All that is new, unknown to the ancient heroes of Hellas.... Julian! Julian! are your gods the ancient Olympians, luminous and pitiless—terrible sons of the azure—rejoicing in the blood of victims and in the pains of mortals? Human blood and suffering were the very nectar of the old gods! Yours, seduced by the faith of the fishermen of Capernaum, are sick and humble weaklings, full of compassion for men.... But that pity is mortal to your gods!

  “Yes,” she continued implacably; “you are sick, you are all too weak for your wisdom! That is your penalty, Hellenists of too late a day. You have strength neither for good nor for evil. You are neither day nor night, nor life nor death; your heart wavers, here and there. You have left one bank, and cannot reach the other. You believe, and you do not believe. You betray yourselves, you hesitate; you will, and you do not will, because you do not know on what to set your will. They alone are strong who, seeing one truth, are blind to all other. They will conquer us—us who are wise and weak!”

  Julian raised his head with an effort, as if waking from some evil dream, and said—

  “You are unjust, Arsinoë. My soul does not know fear, nor my will weakness. The forces of destiny are leading me. If it is written that I shall die too soon—and I know it is so—my death shall not be unworthy of the sight of the gods. Farewell. I bear you no anger, because now to me you are as one dead!”

  * * *

  IX

  Above the marble portico of the guest-house of Apollo, built for the poor, for pilgrims and the disabled, ran these letters in Homeric Greek along the pediment:

  “Strangers and beggars are all sent by Zeus,

  And dear to them is the little we give.“

  The Emperor went into the inner court. A graceful Ionic colonnade ran round it. The hospice had formerly been a palæstra or wrestling-ground. It was a soft and sunny afternoon, before sunset, but a heavy atmosphere came to the portico from the inner rooms.

  There, massed together, children and old men were crawling about, Christians and Pagans, the sound and the sick; folk disabled, deformed, enfeebled, dropsical, consumptive; folk bearing on their faces the stamp of every vice and every form of suffering.

  A half-naked old woman, with a tanned skin like the colour of dead leaves, was rubbing her sore, pockmarked back against the pure marble of a pillar.

  In the middle of the court stood a statue of the Pythian Apollo, bow in hand, quiver on shoulder. At the foot of the statue was seated a wrinkled monster who seemed neither young nor old. His arms were huddled round his knees, his head rested on one side; and swinging himself from right to left with a stupid air, he kept declaiming in a monotone—

  “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy upon us, the lost
, lost, lost!”

  At last the principal inspector, Marcus Ausonius, appeared, pale and trembling—

  “Most wise and merciful Cæsar, will you not deign to come into my house? The atmosphere is hurtful here ... there are contagious maladies....”

  “No, I am not afraid. Are you the inspector?”

  Ausonius, keeping in his breath in order not to breathe the vitiated air, bowed low.

  “Are bread and wine distributed every day?”

  “Yes, as you have ordered, divine Augustus....”

  “What filth!”

  “They are Galileans. To wash, is for them a sin. It’s impossible to make them take baths.”

  “Bring me the account-books!” ordered Julian.

  The inspector fell on his knees, and for long could not utter a word. Finally he faltered—

  “Sire ... everything is in due order, ... but unfortunately ... the books have been burnt....”

  The Emperor’s brow clouded.

  At that moment, cries arose from the crowd of sick persons—

  “A miracle! A miracle!... Look, the paralytic can walk!”

  Julian turned round, and saw a tall man, wild with joy, stretching out his hands towards him with a look full of simple faith.

  “I believe! I believe!” cried the paralytic; “I believe thou art no man, but a god descended upon earth. Touch me, heal me, Cæsar!”

  All the halt and maimed were shouting—

  “A miracle! Glory to Apollo! Glory to the Healer!”

  “Come to me,” called the sick, “say a word, and I shall be cured!”

  Julian turned, and looked at the god in the light of sunset, and for the first time all going on in the hospice seemed to him a sacrilege. The clear eyes of the Olympian should look down no more on these monstrosities. Julian felt a wild desire to purify the ancient palæstra, to rid it of all Pagan and Galilean vermin, to sweep out the whole human dunghill. Oh, had Apollo lived again, how his eyes would have lightened, his arrows flown and purged the place of the paralytic and infirm!

  Julian left the hospice of Apollo in haste. The Emperor had understood perfectly that his information was correct and that the principal inspector was a peculator. But such fatigue and disgust rose in his heart that he had no courage to push further his investigation of the rascality.

  It was late when he returned to the palace. He gave an order that he would receive no one, and withdrew to the terrace which looked out on the Bosphorus.

  Previous to his visit to the guest-house, the whole day had worn away in wearisome details of business, legal decisions, and the audit of accounts. A great number of instances of peculation had been brought to light, and allowed the Emperor to see that even his best friends were deceiving him. All these philosophers, these rhetoricians, poets, panegyrists, were robbing the treasury, and robbing it just as much as had the eunuchs and Christian bishops in the reign of Constantius. Guest-houses, alms-houses for philosophers, inns of Apollo and Aphrodite, were so many pretexts for gain by the cunning, and the more so that not only to Galileans, but also to Pagans themselves, these institutions seemed a fantastic notion, even a sacrilege, on the part of Cæsar.

  Julian felt his body aching under ceaseless and profitless fatigue. Extinguishing the lamp, he lay down upon his narrow camp-bed.

  “I must reflect in quiet,” he said to himself, gazing at the nocturnal sky. But the power of reflection did not come. A great star was shining in the darkened ether and Julian through half-closed eyelids looked at it. Coldly, coldly, the star’s image sank into his heart.

  * * *

  X

  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 the apodyterium, the room for undressing, and the frigidarium, or room for cooling and rest, lay a fine hall with mosaic floor and marble walls; this was the hot-air bath, the sudatorium or laconicum.

  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 y
our Roman Cæsar 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....”