The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Merezhkovsky

  With a shaking hand he pointed to Pamva, who was promptly seized by two fair-haired Batavians.

  “Thou liest, atheist!” shouted Pamva triumphantly. “You are punishing us for our faith. Why do you not pardon me, as you did Maris the blind Chalcedonian? Where is now your philosophy? Have the times changed? Have you overshot your mark? Brothers, fear not the Roman Cæsar, but the Almighty God!”

  The crowd gave up all idea of flight. All were infected by the fever of martyrdom. The Batavians and the Celts were startled by the sight of a mob rushing joyfully on death. Even children threw themseves on the swords and lances. Julian wished to stop the massacre. He was too late; the bees were making for the honey. He could only exclaim, in scorn and despair—

  “Unhappy people! If life weighs on you, is it so difficult for you to shorten it for yourselves?”

  And Pamva in bonds, lifted by sinewy arms, retorted with joy—

  “Exterminate us, Roman, we shall multiply the more! The dungeon is our liberty; weakness, our strength: death, our victory!”

  * * *

  XII

  At about five miles from Antioch, up the course of the river Orontes, stood the celebrated wood of Daphne, consecrated to Apollo. Therein a temple had been built, where every year the praises of the Sun-god were celebrated.

  Julian, without saying anything of his intention quitted Antioch at the break of day. He wished to ascertain for himself whether the inhabitants remembered the ancient sacred feast. All along the road he mused of the solemnity, hoping to see lads and virgins going up the steps of the temple, clad in white as a symbol of purity and youth, the crowd of the faithful, the choirs, and the smoke of incense.

  The road was difficult; from the rocky Berean hills a gusty burning wind came down. The atmosphere was laden with the bitter smell of burnt wood, and thick with a bluish fog which spread itself over the deep gorge of Mount Kazia. Harassing dust filled eyes and throat, and crackled between the teeth of the traveller. The very sun through the smoky vapour seemed red and sickly. But hardly had the Emperor penetrated into the wood of Daphne than fragrant coolness surrounded him. It was difficult to believe that such a corner of Paradise could be found at a few paces from the scorching road. The wood was twenty-four stadia in circumference, and perpetual twilight reigned in its almost impenetrable alleys of gigantic laurels, planted centuries before. The Emperor was surprised at the solitariness of the wood—no worshippers, no victims, no incense, nor any preparation for the solemn feast-day. Thinking that the people must be assembled near the temple, he pushed on farther. At every step the wood became more lonely. It was as untroubled by any sound as an abandoned cemetery. Birds were few, the shadow of the laurel-grove being too thick, and no song of theirs was heard. A grasshopper began his shrill cry in the grass, and quickly ceased, as if startled at his own voice. Insects alone were humming faintly in a slender ray of sunlight, but ventured not to quit its beam for the neighbouring gloom. Sometimes Julian pushed his path along wider alleys, bordered with titanic walls of weird cypress, casting shade dark as a moonless night. Here and there subterranean waters made the moss spongy. Streams ran everywhere, chill as melted snow, but silently, with no tinkling ripples, as if muted by the melancholy of that enchanted wood. In one nook, a rift in the rock, clear drops were falling slowly, glittering, one by one. But moss stifled the sound of their fall, and they sank away like the tears of an unspoken love.

  There were broad glens of wild narcissus, many lilies, and even butterflies. But these were dark-winged and not gay-coloured, for the sun-rays filtered through the thick laurel became almost lunar-pale, and pensive as if fallen through the smoke of a funeral torch. It was as though Phœbus had grown faint and inconsolable after the final loss of Daphne. And she, remaining, overcast and shadowy under the most burning kisses of the god, here kept impenetrable coolness and bloom under her branches for ever.

  Everywhere in that wood reigned the abandonment, the tender melancholy of the god who loved in vain.

  Already in sight, and dazzling through the cypresses, shone the columns and pediments of the temple raised in the time of Seleucus Nicator. But not a worshipper yet had Julian encountered. At last he saw a child of twelve years old, on a path overgrown with wild hyacinth. His dark eyes shone strangely brilliant in his finely cut pale face. Golden hair fell in curls on his slender neck, and his blue-veined temples were transparent as the petals of a flower grown in the shade.

  “Do you know, child, where are the sacrificers and the people?” Julian asked.

  The child made no answer, as if he had not understood the question.

  “Listen, little one, can you not lead me to the priest of Apollo?”

  He shook his head, smiling.

  “Why will you not answer me?”

  Then the boy put a finger to his lips and then to both his ears, and shook his head gravely this time.

  Julian thought—

  “This must be a deaf-mute.”

  The child looked shyly askance at the Emperor, who grew almost fearful in the silent twilight of the deserted wood in the company of the elf, who stared at him fixedly and haughtily as a little god.

  Suddenly, he pointed out to Julian an old man, clothed in a patched and tattered tunic; Julian immediately recognised a temple priest. The weak and broken old man stumbled along in drunken fashion, laughing and mumbling to himself as he went. He was red-nosed and completely bald except for a fringe of downy grey hair. His watery and short-sighted eyes had an expression of childlike benevolence. He was carrying a large basket.

  “The priest of Apollo?” asked Julian.

  “I am he. I am called Gorgius. What do you want, good man?”

  “Can you direct me to the high-priest of this temple and the people worshipping here?”

  Gorgius made no answer at first, but put his panier on the ground. Then he rubbed his bald pate and, standing with arms akimbo, held his head on one side winking mischievously with his left eye.

  “And why am I not the high-priest of Apollo?” he asked, “and what worshippers do you mean, my son?... May the Olympians protect you.”

  He smelt strongly of wine. Julian thought his behaviour indecent and prepared to administer a rebuke—

  “You seem to be drunk, old man.”

  Gorgius, in no wise perturbed, continued to rub the back of his neck.

  “Drunk? I don’t think so. But I may have tossed off five cups or so, for the sake of the celebrations; and as to that, I drink more through sorrow than merriment. Yes, my son, may the Olympians have you in their keeping!... Who are you? By your dress perhaps a wandering philosopher, or a professor from the schools of Antioch?”

  The Emperor smiled and nodded his head in acquiescence. He wished to make the priest talk freely.

  “You have hit it. I am a teacher.”

  “Christian?”

  “No, Hellenist.”

  “Ah, that’s good. There are many others of your way of thinking who hang about this neighbourhood.”

  “You have not yet answered me as to where the people are: whether many victims have been sent from Antioch; whether the choirs are ready.”

  “Victims? Small thanks for victims,” said the old man, laughing and stumbling so violently that he nearly tumbled down. “Many’s the long year, my brother, since we saw that kind of thing!... Since the time of Constantine....” Gorgius snapped his fingers despairingly and whistled. “It is all over—done for!... Phut!... Men have forgotten the gods. Not only have we no victims, but we don’t even get a handful of wheat to cook a cake; not a grain of incense, not a drop of oil for the lamps.... There’s nothing for it but to go to bed and die!... Yes, my son! may the Olympians protect you!... The monks have taken everything!... and they fight each other; they’re rolling in fat.... Our tale is told.... Ah! bad times these. And you say ‘Don’t drink!’ But it’s hard not to drink when one suffers. If I didn’t drink a bit I should have hanged myself long ago.”

  “And no one has come from Ant
ioch for this great feast day?” asked Julian.

  “None but you, my son. I am the priest, you are the people! We will together offer the victim to the god.”

  “You have just told me that you received no victims!”

  Gorgius rubbed the back of his neck, grinning—

  “We received none from others, but there is my own offering. Weve eaten little for three days, Hepherion and I, to save the necessary money. Look!”

  He raised the lid of the basket. A tethered goose slid out its head, cackling and trying to escape.

  “Ha, ha, ha! is not that a victim?” asked the old man proudly. “Although it isn’t a fat young goose it is nevertheless a sacred bird! Apollo ought to be glad of it just now. The gods consider geese a delicacy.”

  “Have you long dwelt in this temple?” questioned Julian.

  “For forty years and perhaps longer....”

  “Is this your son?” asked Julian, pointing to Hepherion, who was staring at him as if he were trying to follow the conversation.

  “No. I have neither relatives nor friends. Hepherion helps me at the hours for sacrifice.”

  “Who are his father and mother?”

  “I do not know the father and I strongly suspect that no one knows who he is. But his mother was the great sibyl Diotima, who long lived in this temple. She would never speak nor raise her veil before men. She was chaste as a vestal. When she brought this child into the world we were all astonished, and at a loss what to think ... but a learned centenarian, a magian told us....”

  Gorgius, with a mysterious air, put his hand before his mouth and muttered in Julian’s ear as if he feared the child could catch his words—

  “The hierophant told us that he was no son of man, but a god come down by night to the sibyl while she was asleep within the temple! See how beautiful he is!”

  “A deaf-mute son of a god?” murmured the Emperor, surprised.

  “In times like ours if the son of the god and of the sibyl were not a deaf-mute he would die of grief,” answered Gorgius. “See how thin and pale he is already!”

  “Who knows,” said Julian, with a sad smile, “but that you are right, old man. In our days it is well for a prophet to be a deaf-mute.”

  Suddenly the child approached Julian and looking at him fixedly, seized his hand and kissed it. A thrill ran through Julian.

  “My son,” said the old man, gravely, “may the Olympians shield you; you must be a good man. That child never kisses the evil nor the impious, and he flees from the monks as from the plague. I think he sees and understands more than either of us but can utter nothing. I’ve often surprised him sitting before the statue of Apollo for hours, gazing at him with joy as if he were talking with the god.”

  The face of Hepherion grew dark and he went away.

  Gorgius smote his head and said—

  “I am wasting time in gossip. The sun is up; the sacrifice must be performed. Come!”

  “Wait,” said the Emperor. “I wished to ask you something more. Have you ever heard that the Emperor Julian desired to restore to honour the worship of the old gods?”

  “Yes, but ... what can he do, poor man? He will not succeed. I tell you—all’s over!”

  “Have you faith in the gods?” asked Julian. “Can the Olympians quit us so for ever?”

  The old man sighed, and hanging his head—

  “My son, you’re young; although there are white hairs shining in your dark locks, and furrows on your brow already. But in the days when my hair was black and young girls used to look at me with favour, I remember sailing in a ship, near Thessalonica, and seeing Mount Olympus. Its base and its girdle melted into blue, and its snowy summit seemed hanging in the air, dominating sky and sea, golden and inaccessible. I mused ‘Behold the dwelling of the gods!’ and I was full of emotion. But on this same ship there was a scoffing old man who called himself an Epicurean. He pointed out Mount Olympus, and said to me: ‘My friend, travellers have long ago climbed Olympus, and they saw that it was an ordinary mountain, like other mountains, on which there was nothing but snow, ice and stones!’ And those words sank so deep into my heart that I shall remember them all my life.”

  The Emperor smiled—

  “Old man, your faith is childish. Suppose there were no Olympus—why should not the gods exist above, in the kingdom of the eternal Ideas, in the realm of the soul’s light?”

  Gorgius hung his head lower yet—

  “Yes, yes, yes!... but ... nevertheless all is over. Olympus is deserted.”

  Julian gazed at him, surprised.

  “You see,” continued Gorgius, “the earth breeds nowadays only hard men or weak men. The gods can only laugh at them, or grow wrath with them. They are not worth destroying. They will perish of themselves by sickness, debauchery, or decline. The gods are grown weary and they have departed!”

  “And do you think, Gorgius, that the human race must disappear?”

  The priest shook his bald head—

  “Ah, ah, ah! The earth is in pain. The rivers flow more slowly; the flowers in spring have not their old fragrance. An ancient fisherman lately told me that one can see Etna no longer as we used to do. The air has become thicker and darker, the sun is waxing weak; the end of the world is near....”

  “Tell me, Gorgius, can you remember better times?”

  The old man brightened up, and his eyes shone.

  “When I first came here in the first years of the reign of Constantine,” he said joyfully, “grand festivals were celebrated every year in honour of Apollo. What numbers of lads and virgins used to come to this holy wood! How the moon used to shine! How exquisite the smell of the cypresses! How the nightingales used to sing! And when their chant ceased, the air would tremble with nocturnal kisses and sighings of love, as with the beatings of invisible wings.”

  Gorgius was silent and plunged in thought.

  At that moment the sound of church-singing came from behind the trees.

  “What is that?” asked Julian.

  “The monks,” answered the priest. “Monks praying over a dead Galilean.”

  “What, a Galilean in the wood sacred to Apollo?’”

  “Yes; they call him the martyr Babylas. Ten years ago the brother of the Emperor Julian, Cæsar Gallus, transferred the bones of this Babylas from Antioch into this wood, and had a superb sarcophagus made for him. From that day the oracle ceased. The temple was sullied and the god departed.”

  “What sacrilege!” exclaimed the Emperor indignantly.

  “That year the virgin sibyl Diotima gave birth to a deaf-mute child, a bad omen. Only one sacred spring was left us and did not dry up, the spring called Tears of the Sun ... over there, where the child is now sitting....”

  Julian turned round. The boy was sitting in front of the mossy rock, motionless, and in his open palm receiving the falling drops. Julian almost imagined he saw two transparent wings trembling behind the divinely beautiful child. So sad, so pale, so enchanting his look, that the Emperor mused—

  “He must be Eros, the little god of love, dying in our century of Galilean moroseness, and in his hand receiving the last drops, the last tears of love, tears of the god over Daphne, over the vanished beauty of Daphne!”

  The deaf-mute remained motionless, and a great black velvety butterfly alighted on his head. He neither saw it, nor stirred. Like a malign shadow the butterfly opened and shut its wings, while the Tears of the Sun dropped, one by one, into the hand of Hepherion. Louder and louder in the distance rose funereal psalms.

  Suddenly from behind the cypresses came the sound of voices disputing—

  “Augustus is there.”

  “Why should he go alone to Daphne?”

  “Why not? to-day is the great festival of Apollo. See, there he is ... Julian, we have sought you since the morning!”

  They were Greek sophists, men of science and rhetoricians, habitual companions of the Emperor, and with them the Neo-Platonist Priscus of Epirus, the bilious sceptic Julius Mauri
cus, the wise Sallustius Secundus, and the celebrated orator Libanius.

  Julian vouchsafed them not the least attention.

  “What’s the matter?” murmured Julius to Priscus.

  “He must be displeased that there has been no preparation for the feast! We have not sent a single offering....”

  Julian addressed the former Christian rhetorician, now the high-priest of Astarte, Hekobolis—

  “Go into the neighbouring chapel, and inform the Galileans praying there of my will. Let them come here.”

  Hekobolis went.

  Gorgius, still holding his basket, stood petrified, with eyes and mouth wide open. He rubbed his bald head. Had he not drunk too much? It must all be a dream! But when he remembered all he had said about Julian and the god to the pretended professor, a cold sweat broke out on his forehead, his legs trembled, and he fell on his knees—

  “Pardon, Cæsar! Forget my words!”

  One of the philosophers wished to thrust away the old man; but Julian stopped him—

  “Do not insult the sacrificial priest. Rise, Gorgius, there is my hand; fear nothing. So long as I live, none shall do harm to you or to your little lad. You and I both came for the festival, both love the old gods. We will be friends and rejoice together at this feast of the Sun!”

  The psalms had meantime ceased. Frightened monks appeared coming up the alley of cypresses, deacons and superiors still in the sacerdotal dress and led by Hekobolis. The arch-priest, a fat man with a shining red face, walked swaying from side to side, much out of breath and wiping his brow. He saluted Augustus profoundly, reaching one finger to the ground, and said in a pleasant bass voice—

  “May the humane Augustus pardon his unworthy servants!”

  He bowed lower yet, and two novices skilfully assisted him to rise again. One of them had forgotten to put away the censer, from which the incense was escaping in thin fillets of smoke.

  At the sight of the monks Hepherion fled. Julian said—

  “Galileans, I order you to rid the sacred wood of Apollo of the relics of your co-religionist. We do not desire to use force against you, but if our will is not carried out, I must myself see that Helios is delivered from such sacrilege. I shall send here my soldiers, who will disinter the bones, burn them, and scatter the ashes to the winds.”