Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Caesar began to feel irritated. “I will enforce,” he said, “obedience to one central government, and I will permit no priesthood to interfere.”

  “That is wise, my son. The universe obeys one law, and it is safe to be obedient. Neither priesthood nor yet armies can delay the sun on its appointed path or change the alternation of the seasons or the tides of life and death. But whose law will you obey? And whence will you derive the wisdom for this government?”

  “You suggest,” said Caesar with a trace of icy sarcasm, “that I might derive that wisdom from yourself and from a study of your teachings?”

  “No, my son; for as I said, I have no wisdom applicable to your purpose. And as for the study of the teachings that I have spent my life-long learning: as I told you, they have body, soul and spirit; words, that is, in which it is possible to suggest them to an attentive mind — meaning, which may be perverted because opinion can be brought to bear on it — and the substance within the meaning, which is pure and incorruptible but not perceptible to many. I would not presume to try to teach you what I know, because I recognize—”

  He paused.

  “That I am one of the many?” Caesar suggested with a trace in his voice of irony.

  “ — that you base your estimate of value on the judgment of the many, who will tell you, for instance, that fame is greatness. Whereas I would tell you it is more blinding to you and to others than the strongest sunlight and more confusing than the mirage of the desert; it prevents you from discerning that the essence of an idea is included in itself and lies within it, not without it. Whereas you see the rind of ideas, I look for the juice and the heart of the juice. You will build an empire, as men have built temples on Pilak. And you can destroy these temples easily, as men will destroy your empire easily when time has wrought a change in the affairs of men. But when the carcass of your empire shall have been dissolved, its soul shall die not so swiftly, and the dying soul shall enter into many associations, deceiving men less able than yourself to their own undoing. So you shall be identified with evil, and many men will praise you. Others, cursing you, nevertheless will imitate you. Being imitators, they will do worse and will call it better.”

  “Do you see no merit in my course?” asked Caesar.

  “What is merit, my son? Generations will remember your name, who will never hear of mine, and who will think of Philae as a heap of ruins where priests once made sacrifices to forgotten gods.”

  “Then what is immortality?” asked Caesar. “If the soul dies, as you say, and gods pass out of memory, then is not that, whatever it is, that endures the longest, preferable?”

  “Preferred by whom? By you or me? Caesar, time, too, comes to an end. If you could raise the soul of your ideas until the spirit entered into them, you would never ask me, what is immortality?”

  “Nevertheless, I have asked and you have not answered,” Caesar retorted. “Are you one of those who prate about it without knowing what you mean?”

  The old man eyed him thoughtfully a moment.

  “Let me be sure,” he said, “that I know what you mean, Caesar. Tell me what you yourself suppose that immortality might be:”

  “I have sometimes tried to imagine it as the opposite of death,” said Caesar.

  “But with what have you tried to imagine it? With your brain? That dies when you are dead. What you imagine with your brain is less than you are, even as the picture that an artist paints is less than he is, though the picture may suggest ideas that are infinitely greater than himself, and by his own picture that he paints a man may lift himself into the company of gods. You think of life and death as opposites, which they are indeed, but they are not that which we have spoken of as immortality, since immortality includes them both. You can identify yourself with that which you imagine until, like Narcissus, you perish in pursuit of mere phenomena. Are you sure you are not doing that?”

  Caesar smiled conceitedly. “I have never compared myself to Narcissus,” he answered. “Who would you say is my Echo?” He began to think of many women, and particularly of Cleopatra. “Dido,” he continued, “is reputed to have died for love of Aeneas, from whom I trace descent, but no woman hitherto, that I ever heard of, has died for love of me. It has been my experience that women recover from these heart-burnings; so that I find that even love is mortal — more so, in fact, than hatred, which I have noticed frequently replaces love and persists with remarkable tenacity. Who would you suggest is Echo in this instance?”

  “Echo is the Spirit brooding over you,” said the Hierophant. “For I tell you, all those ancient tales are allegories. Forsaken for the image in the pool of alternating life and death, the deathless Spirit becomes, to you, a mere sound in the void and a name that is entirely without meaning.”

  “Do not you priests also set up images,” asked Caesar, “that persuade the common herd to worship them to the neglect of the spirit that you so much advocate to me? As I said, I am myself a high priest. It is I who order images placed or replaced in the temples of Rome. I have often performed the sacrifices, which I consider a good thing for the people, since it keeps their thought for a while from baser matters and makes government easier by persuading them that I, for instance, who perform the sacrifices, am a person having a higher authority. If they are too base to perceive my merit, nevertheless that mummery convinces them.”

  “Of your merit? Then you are not bound, in turn, to seek that merit in yourself, and to cultivate it, and to identify yourself with it? Are the images not sign-posts on the road of life? Are you not their interpreter? And when you come to a sign-post what is there to do?”

  “One can pass to the right or the left,” said Caesar. “It makes small difference. Both roads lead to death.”

  “But the post points upward!”

  “I had never thought of that,” said Caesar. He proceeded there and then to think of it, knitting his brows and musing, while the Hierophant sat still and watched him.

  “It is from above and from behind you that the true light comes,” said the Hierophant at last. “It is through you that the light shines on the images you see. And you will see them true or false according as you identify yourself with gods or devils.”

  “You mean that we ourselves must be as gods?” asked Caesar.

  “We must be gods,” said the Hierophant. “We must admit to ourselves that we are gods. But it is only one by one, and very gradually, with great effort and much humility, that we attain to a perception of the meaning of that. And there are many pitfalls, needing wisdom to avoid.”

  “Does your wisdom indicate to you a policy that you would recommend me to pursue in Egypt?” Caesar asked him. He stared hard. There was a cold light in his eyes.

  “It indicates to me a pitfall,” the old man answered calmly. “It is no affair of mine to govern Egypt.”

  “You are wise in that,” said Caesar. “If your priesthood avoids politics I have no objection to it.”

  “My son,” said the Hierophant, “Pythagoras came nearer than any other, in the world that you know, to establishing a doctrine that would have drawn the world upward toward the sources of wisdom. But his followers proposed to purify effects by dealing with effects. They interfered with government. They went down among the wolves to teach wolves to be gentle. And the wolves devoured them. So the teachings of Pythagoras are now an empty echo, like the voice of which I spoke to you a while ago.”

  “Nevertheless, you have advised Queen Cleopatra frequently,” said Caesar. “You or your agents never cease from giving her advice.”

  “As to what?” the Hierophant retorted. “As to the means of ever keeping in mind her divinity that is above her royalty, lest Wisdom leave her, as it did Narcissus! She is a woman — earthy of the earth in some ways, being born into a heritage that will give her strong soul terrible adventures on its upward path toward the Spirit. But it is the strongest souls that are called upon to face the greatest difficulties, Caesar. See you to it that you set in her path no greater sn
ares than you have done already!”

  “I have set her on the throne,” said Caesar. “Do you recommend that I should leave her to her own devices?”

  “I will give to you the advice that I will give to her also,” said the Hierophant. “And I will change no word of it: that whether we are kings and queens, conquerors or conquered; whether we are priests or goatherds; whether we are poor or wealthy, whether the world acclaims us favorites, or whether it despises us; whether we die by violence, or in the peace of old age — one by one we come into the presence of the gods, whom we will never recognize as anything but empty echoes in the darkness, unless we remember in this life that we came forth from among the gods, and unless we take care to return to them with godliness in nowise dimmed. For like sees like. If you identify yourself with husks and the death that devours from without, how shall you see life and the spirit ever emanating from within?”

  “Then you mean, we are gods? We are all of us gods?” Caesar asked him.

  “When we know it,” said the Hierophant. “But not otherwise. And as I told you: between statement and example there are many pitfalls and many a place where sign-posts seem to indicate more ways than one. Remember that the post points upward.”

  “Why the secrecy?” asked Caesar. “Why do you priests, who think you know so much, not stand out openly and tell men they are gods? I tell men they are Romans, and they behave as such.”

  “And is that not already bad enough?” the old man answered, smiling. “Tell them they are gods and they will be even worse than Romans! A blind man with a weapon in his hands is more dangerous than a blind beast; and a blind god is worse than either.”

  “They have called me a god here in Egypt,” said Caesar. “They have set my image in temples.”

  “And does that deceive you?” asked the Hierophant. “Is that any more than an invitation to you to be god-like?”

  “I am wondering,” said Caesar, “what Rome will think of it.”

  “As to that, my son, I can enlighten you. Egypt has called you a god to get rid of you as a problem that needs to be faced. As a man they would be ashamed not to struggle against you, but as a god you are above them and beyond reach — to be endured but not disputed. But if you call yourself a god in Rome, will the Romans not bid you prove it? And can you?”

  “We will see,” said Caesar, rising. He had made up his mind. Immortality was nonsense. A man was neither more nor less than what he claimed to be and could compel other men to confess him to be. A little propaganda, and a little violence— “I recognize your essential harmlessness,” he said, “and I will take no steps to limit you in the practice of your religion. In fact, on the contrary, I will make a contribution to your temple, for I wish to be remembered as your benefactor. But keep in mind that I can be as stern as I am now forbearing toward you, and that I will brook no interference with affairs of state!” He rose. “I will accept your blessing,” he said, standing with both hands behind him and his head bowed stiffly.

  The old man rose and blessed him hardly audibly. Then: “Farewell, my son,” he said and, standing, watched the man who had missed his opportunity because he could not recognize it go striding proudly from the room.

  CHAPTER XXXII. “Death I have always thought to be the end of joy and sorrow.”

  When the source has dried, or when the stream has turned, no words can fill the river-bed again.

  — Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

  CAESAR’S brain was in a state of fevered excitement when he left that interview. His eyes glittered, foretelling another burst of energy. He had assured himself that there was nothing in the claims of Philae to extraordinary wisdom: that his own was equal to it, if not greater; that he had what Philae never would have — the command of armies. Doubtless, as at Thebes, the priests had some magical secrets that served very well to bewilder the popular mind; but there were tricks in Rome, too, that he had seen played in the temples rather skilfully for the same cynical purpose — tricks of augury, for instance. Those of the Egyptians were more artistically managed, that was all. He was glad for the sake of dignity that the Hierophant had not performed a miracle or two. Personally, he had never seen a miracle, even of healing, that half convinced him; most of them he believed were mere coincidence, and the rest due to credulity and to those peculiar emotions in the presence of religious mystery that somehow seem to revivify the superstitious. The miracle of a military victory was not only more to the point but more enduring in results: also more difficult to perform, he did not doubt, and calling for fifty times the genius.

  “A religion,” he remarked to Cleopatra, “that can cause the populace to deify its rulers is an excellent institution. They have a natural tendency to do that, and it may be based on an instinctive recognition of superiority, like that exhibited by animals, for instance, toward the leader of the herd. There is room in Rome for temples to the Goddess Isis, and to the God Serapis. I will see to it that some are built.”

  He had suddenly made up his mind to return to Rome as soon as possible, and, as usual, not for one but for several reasons, although one predominated. A great part of the truth was that his health was better. Despite the epilepsy, the dread of which made him morbid when he thought of it, he was feeling stronger and more full of vital energy than at any time in the last ten years. He had a secret dread of dying in an epileptic fit, although he did not fear death in battle or in any honorable shape; and his yearning to surpass Alexander the Great, by making himself the master of the whole world before death in some form or other should put an end to his activities, obsessed him It swept like a wave over him now. He wondered why he had wasted so much time.

  “Death,” he said to Cleopatra, “I have always thought to be the end of joy and sorrow. But a belief in immortality is an excellent tonic while life lasts, and a great inducement to ignorant men to behave themselves with decorum. My men, for instance, are beginning to make trouble of a sort they would not if I could convince them of what you said just now about our having an eternity in which to improve our lot.”

  Though Caesar in his own way was in love with Cleopatra, most of his men were very far from that. The divine honors paid to her, her reputation for wisdom and her genius for pageantry in mystic settings frightened them. They connected her reputation for wisdom with the tales they had heard, and the sights they had seen, of Egyptian magic. The insolence of Alexandrian officials, who took the utmost advantage of Caesar’s complaisance, irritated them, and they blamed Cleopatra for it, pointing to Caesar’s infatuation for her as the predisposing cause. They had liked him better when he had had a different woman at each place he came to. They did not like to be cooped up on boats and herded up the Nile for use in peaceful spectacles that involved too frequent inspection of their polished armor and interminable standing in it in the hot sun, with no compensation in the shape of loot; Caesar had threatened death to any man caught helping himself to anything. They naturally gave Cleopatra the blame, both for the lack of loot and for the parades.

  But they were also frightened by the mystery of the Egyptian nights, that they could see for themselves had cowed the Egyptian peasantry, and they did not wish to be reduced to that condition. It was a land of birds and beasts and reptiles that made them shudder. Sounds in the dark of hippopotami plunging and snorting filled them with awe, and tales that the Egyptian necromancers told them about souls of men inhabiting such foul brutes as the crocodiles worked on their superstition until they were ready to believe anything; even wilder tales about the far interior, southward and south again beyond the cataract, where it was rumored that Cleopatra had persuaded Caesar to lead them, had brought them almost to a state of mutiny. They were resolved they would not march one pace beyond Philae, whether Caesar ordered it or not. Least of all would they consent to drag that fleet of ships over the cataract, though they had been told by some officious Alexandrian that the feat would be expected of them. And they had already felt the first hot breaths of summer wind, that made the armo
r raise blisters on their skin. They dreaded heat more than the cold of the Parthian mountains.

  Another cause of discontent was the already plainly noticeable change in Caesar. He who had been a comrade-in-arms, stern but well disposed toward them and invariably ready to share hardships with his men, was growing intolerably autocratic and indifferent to the traditional claims of an army on its general’s interest. He no longer reasoned with them or smiled with grim amusement when they sang outrageous songs about his exploits among women. He had even caused men to be punished recently for daring to refer to him as calvus moechus, as if that were not a term of endearment! Liking him far less as a god than as the man who had shared their moldy crusts and carrots on the Adriatic shore when everybody except Caesar half expected Pompey to be victorious, they noticed, and resented, that whereas he had formerly vaguely disliked divine honors, he now expected them and was annoyed when they were not paid.

  An army, and particularly an army composed in the main of veterans, has a consciousness of its own as distinguished from that of its units. Character, as far as any of its own members are concerned, becomes an open book to it and no general can escape the shrewd analysis of thousands of pairs of eyes. It was not exactly whispered through the ranks that Caesar was going mad, but the low-voiced conversation over the meager reed- and camel-dung camp-fires was heavy with hints. Men spoke of Marius, whose eyes in the dark were said to have frightened away the men who came to kill him. Marius had been Caesar’s mentor, friend and teacher of the arts of war. There were strange lights in Caesar’s eyes now and then.

  Nevertheless, he surprised Cleopatra. She began to recognize in him the greatest actor in the world as well as its master-strategist. He said he would not dream of leaving Philae without laying the foundation stone of an addition to the temple that had been begun but never finished by one of Cleopatra’s ancestors. He and she laid it with time-honored ceremonies, and Caesar was magnificently solemn. Afterward he actually made arrangements with the priests of Philae to send emissaries to Rome to commence spreading their religion as soon as possible.