Julian, by Gore Vidal

by Unknown

  "Which side of a woman is the most pleasing, front or back."

  Macrina grinned.

  "But he accepted the challenge," said Priscus. "He spoke with such effectiveness that the audience maintained a Pythagorean silence."

  "He also insisted that shorthand reporters from the law court take down every word." In an oblique way, Macrina was proud of her uncle's prowess. "He also insisted there be no applause."

  "It was a memorable speech," Priscus continued. "First, he presented the argument in all its particulars. Then he took one side… the front. After an hour, he said, 'Now observe carefully whether I remember all the arguments that I used earlier.' He then repeated the speech in all its intricate detail, only this time he took the opposite point of view… the back. In spite of the proconsul's order, applause filled the hall. It was the greatest triumph of memory and eloquence heard in our time."

  "And…?" Prohaeresius knew that Priscus would not finish without a sudden twist to the knife.

  "And? Your enemies were completely routed and where before they despised you, now they hate you." Priscus turned to me.

  "They nearly had his life the next year. They still plot against him."

  "Which proves?" Prohaeresius was as curious as I to learn what Priscus was up to.

  "That victories in argument are useless. They are showy. What is spoken always causes more anger than any silence. Debate of this sort convinces no one. Aside from the jealousies such a victory arouses, there is the problem of the vanquished. I speak now of philosophers. The one who is defeated, even if he realizes at last that he is fighting truth, suffers from having been publicly proved wrong. He then becomes savage and is apt to end by hating philosophy. I would prefer not to lose anyone for civilization."

  "Well said," Prohaeresius agreed.

  "Or, perhaps," said the devilish Macrina, "you yourself don't want to lose an argument, knowing that you are apt to turn bitter as a result of public humiliation. Oh, Priscus, you are vain! You won't compete for fear you might not win. As it is, none of us knows how wise you are. Silence is his legend, Prince. And he is all the greater for that. Each time Prohaeresius speaks he limits himself, for words limit everything, being themselves limited. That's why Priscus is wisest of all: silence cannot be judged. Silence masks all things or no thing. Only Priscus can tell us what his silence conceals, but since he won't, we suspect him great."

  Priscus did not answer. Macrina was the only woman I have ever known who could speak with so many odd twistings and turnings. Irony is not usual to woman, but then Macrina was not in any way usual. Before we had an opportunity to see if Priscus could answer her, we were interrupted by the arrival of my bodyguard, as well as an officer of the proconsul's staff. Word had already spread throughout Athens that I was at the house of Prohaeresius. I was again taken into custody.

  Priscus: Macrina was a bitch. We all detested her, but because she was the niece of Prohaeresius we endured her. Julian's description of our first meeting is not accurate. That is to say, what he remembers is not what I remember. For instance, he says that his bodyguard arrived before I answered Macrina. This is not true. I told her then and there that my silence masked compassion for the intellectual shortcomings of others since I did not wish to wound anyone, even her. This caused some laughter. Then the guards arrived.

  For the historic record I should give my first impression of Julian. He was a handsome youth, thick in the chest like all his family, and muscular, a gift of nature since in those days he seldom exercised. He was far too busy talking. Gregory was not entirely inaccurate when he described Julian's breathless and continual conversation. In fact, I used to say to him, "How can you expect to learn anything when you do all the talking?" He would laugh excitedly and say, "But I talk and listen at the same time. That is my art!" Which perhaps was true. I was always surprised at how much he did absorb.

  Not until I read the memoir did I know about the conversation with Prohaeresius. I never suspected the old man of such cunning, or boldness. It was a dangerous thing to admit to a strange prince that he had consulted an oracle. But he always had a weakness for oracles.

  I never liked the old man much. I always felt he had too much of the demagogue in him and too little of the philosopher. He also took his role as a great old man seriously. He made speeches on any subject, anywhere. He cultivated princes the way bishops cultivate relics. He was a formidable orator, but his writings were banal.

  Let me tell you something about Macrina since Julian is not candid and if I don't tell you you will never know. They had a love affair which was the talk of the city. Macrina behaved with her usual clownishness, discussing the affair with everyone in intimate detail. She declared that Julian was a formidable lover, indicating that her own experience had been considerable. Actually, she was probably a virgin when they met. There were not many men of her set who would have made the effort to make her a nonvirgin. After all, Athens is famous for the complaisance of its girls, and not many men like to bed a talking-woman, especially when there are so many quiet ones to choose from. I am positive that Julian was Macrina's first lover.

  There was a funny story going around at about this time, no doubt apocryphal. Julian and Macrina were overheard while making love. Apparently all during the act each one continued to talk. Macrina is supposed to have confuted the Pythagoreans while Julian restated the Platonic powers, all this before and during orgasm. They were well matched.

  Julian seldom mentioned Macrina to me. He was embarrassed, knowing that I knew of the affair. The last time we spoke of her was in Persia when he was writing the memoir. He wanted to know what had become of her, whom she had married, how she looked. I told him that she was somewhat heavy, that she had married an Alexandrian merchant who lived at Piraeus, that she has three children. I didnot tell him that the oldest child was his son.

  Yes. That is the famous scandal. Some seven months after Julian left Athens, Macrina gave birth. During the pregnancy she stayed with her father. Despite her daring ways she was surprisingly conventional in this matter. She was desperate for a husband even though it was widely known that the bastard was Julian's and therefore a mark of honour for the mother. Luckily, the Alexandrian married her and declared the child was his. I saw the boy occasionally while he was growing up. He is now in his twenties and looks somewhat like his father, which makes it hard for me to be with him. Stoic though I am, in certain memories there is pain. Fortunately, the boy lives now in Alexandria, where he runs his stepfather's trading office. He has, Macrina once told me, no interest in philosophy. He is a devout Christian. So that is the end of the house of Constantine. Did Julian know that he had a son? I think not. Macrina swears she never told him, and I almost believe her.

  A few years ago I met Macrina in what we Athenians call the Roman agora. We greeted one another amiably, and sat together on the steps of the water-clock tower. I asked about her son.

  "He is beautiful! He looks exactly like his father, an emperor, a god!" Macrina has lost none of her old fierce flow of language, though the edge to her wit is somewhat blunted. "But I don't regret it."

  "The resemblance? Or being the mother of Julian's son?"

  She did not answer. She looked absently across the agora, crowded as always with lawyers and tax collectors. Her dark eyes were as glittering as ever, though her face has grown jowly and the heavy bosom fallen with maternity and age. She turned to me abruptly. "He wanted to marry me. Did you know that, Priscus? I could have been Empress of Rome. What a thought! Would you have liked that? Do you think I would have been… decorative? Certainly unusual. How many empresses have been philosophers in their own tight? It would have been amusing. I should have worn a lot of jewellery, even though I detest ornaments. Look at me!" She tugged at the simple garment she wore. Despite her husband's wealth, Macrina wore no tings, no brooches, no combs in her hair, no jewels in her ears. "But empresses must look the part. They have no choice. Of course I should have had a bad character. I would have modelled myse
lf on Messalina."

  "You? Insatiable?" I could not help laughing.

  "Absolutely!" The old edge returned briefly; the black eyes were humorous. "I'm a faithful wife now because I am fat and no one wants me. At least no one I would want wants me. But I'm drawn to beauty. I should love to be a whore! Except I'd want to choose the clientele, which is why I should have loved being empress! History would have loved me, too! Macrina the Insatiable!"

  Anyone who saw us on those steps would have thought: what an eminently respectable couple! An old philosopher and a dignified matron, solemnly discussing the price of corn or the bishop's latest sermon. Instead Macrina was intoning a hymn to lust.

  "What would Julian have thought?" I managed to interiect before she gave too many specific details of her appetite. It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.

  "I wonder." She paused. "I'm not sure he would have minded, No. No. No, he would have minded. Oh, not out of jealousy. I don't think he was capable of that. He simply disliked excess. So do I, for that matter, but then I have never had the chance to be excessive, except in food, of course." She patted herself. "You see the result? Of course I could still be a beauty in Persia. They revel in fat women." Then: "Did he ever mention me to you? Later? When you were with him in Persia?"

  I shook my head. I'm not certain why I lied to her, unless dislike is sufficient motive.

  "No. I suppose he wouldn't." She did not seem distressed. One must admire the strength of her egotism. "Before he went back to Milan, he told me that if he lived he would marry me. Contrary to gossip, he did not know that I was pregnant then. I never told him. But I did tell him that I wanted to be his wife, although if Constantius had other plans for him (which of course he did) I would not grieve. Oh, I was a formidable girl!"

  "Did you ever hear from him again?"

  She shook her head. "Not even a letter. But shortly after he became Emperor he told the new proconsul of Greece to come see me and ask if there was anything I wanted. I shall never forget the look of surprise on the proconsul's face when he saw me. One look assured him that Julian could not have had any amatory interest in this fat lady. He was puzzled, poor man… Do you think Julian knew about our son? It was not the best-kept secret."

  I said I did not think so. And I do not think so. I certainly never told him, and who else would have dared?

  "Did you know Julian's wife?"

  I nodded. "In Gaul. She was much older than he. And very plain."

  "So I've heard. I was never jealous. After all, he was forced to marry her. Was he really celibate after she died?"

  "As far as I know."

  "He was strange! I'm sure the Christians would have made a saint out of him if he had been one of theirs, and his poor bones would be curing liver complaints at this very moment. Well, that is all over, isn't it?" She glanced at the water clock behind us. "I'm late. How much do you bribe the tax assessor?"

  "Hippia looks after those matters."

  "Women are better at such things. It has to do with details. We delight in them. We are children of the magpie." She rose heavily, with some difficulty. She steadied herself against the white marble wall of the tower. "Yes, I should have liked to have been Empress of Rome."

  "I doubt it. If you had been empress, you would be dead by now. The Christians would have killed you."

  "Do you think I would have minded that?" She turned full on me and the large black eyes blazed like obsidian in the sun. "Don't you realize—can't you tell just by looking at me, my dear wise old Priscus—that not a day has passed in twenty years I haven't wished I were dead!"

  Macrina left me on the steps. As I watched the blunt figure waddle through the crowd towards the magistrate's office, I recalled her as she had been years before and I must say for a moment I was touched by the urgency of that cry from the heart. But it does not alter the fact that she was and is a sublimely disagreeable woman. I've not talked to her since that day, though we always nod when we see one another in the street.

  VIII

  Julian Augustus

  A week after I arrived in Athens I met the Hierophant of Greece. Since I did not want the proconsul to know of this meeting, it was arranged to take place in the Library of Hadrian, a not much frequented building midway between the Roman and the Athenian agoras.

  At noon I arrived at the library and went straight to the north reading room, enjoying as I always do the musty dry odour of papyrus and ink which comes from the tall niches where the scrolls and codices are kept. The high room with its coffered ceiling (for which we must thank Antinofis's protector) was empty. Here I waited for the Hierophant. I was extremely nervous, for he is the holiest of all men. I am forbidden by law to write his name but I can say that he belongs to the family of the Eumolpidae, one of the two families from which Hierophants are traditionally drawn.

  He is not only High Priest of Greece, he is custodian and interpreter of the mysteries of Eleusis which go back at least two thousand years, if not to the beginning of our race. Those of us who have been admitted to the mysteries may not tell what we have seen or what we know. Even so, as Pindar wrote: "Happy is he who, having seen these rites, goes below the hollow earth; for he knows the end of life and he knows its god-sent beginning." Sophocles described initiates as "Thrice-happy mortals, who having seen those rites depart for Hades; for them alone is it granted to have true life there; to the rest, evil." I quote from memory. (Note to secretary: Correct quotations, if they are wrong.)

  Eleusis is a city fourteen miles from Athens. For two thousand years the mysteries have been celebrated in that place, for it was at Eleusis that Persephone returned from the underworld to which she had been stolen by the death-god Hades and made his queen.

  When Persephone first vanished, her mother Demeter, the harvest goddess, sought her for nine days, neither eating nor drinking. (As I tell this story initiates will see the mystery unfold. But no one else may know what is meant.) On the tenth day Demeter came to Eleusis. She was received by the king and queen, who gave her a pitcher of barley water flavoured with mint which she drank all at once. When the king's eldest son said, "How greedily you drink!" Demeter turned him into a lizard. But then, remorseful over what she had done, she conferred great powers upon the king's youngest son, Triptolemus. She gave him seed corn, a wooden plough and a chariot drawn by serpents; he then travelled the earth teaching men agriculture. She did this for him not only to make up for what in her anger she had done to his brother, but also because Triptolemus was able to tell her what had happened to her daughter. He had been in the fields when the earth suddenly opened before him. Then a chariot drawn by black horses appeared, coming from the sea. The driver was Hades; in his arms he held Persephone. As the chariot careered at full speed into the cavern, the earth closed over them. Now Hades is brother to Zeus, king of the gods, and he had stolen the girl with Zeus's connivance. When Demeter learned this, she took her revenge.

  She bade the trees not to bear fruit and the earth not to flower. Suddenly, the world was barren. Men starved. Zeus capitulated: if Persephone had not yet eaten the food of the dead, she might return to her mother. As it turned out, Persephone had eaten seven pomegranate seeds and this was enough to keep her for ever in the underworld. But Zeus arranged a compromise. Six months of the year she would remain with Hades, as queen of Tartarus. The remaining six months she would join her mother in the world above. That is why the cold barren time of the year is six months and the warm fruitful time six months. Demeter also gave the fig tree to Attica, and forbade the cultivation of beans. This holy story is acted out in the course of the mysteries. I cannot say more about it. The origin of the ceremony goes back to Crete and, some say, to Libya. It is possible that those places knew similar mysteries, but it is a fact that Eleusis is the actual place where Persephone returned from the underworld. I have myself seen the cavern from which she emerged.

  Now: for those who have been initiated, I have in the lines above give
n in the form of a narrative a clear view of what happens after death. Through number and symbol, I have in a page revealed everything. But the profane may not unravel the mystery. They will merely note that I have told an old story of the old gods.

  The Hierophant entered the reading room. He is a short plump man, not in the least impressive to look at. He saluted me gravely. His voice is powerful and he speaks old Greek exactly the way it was spoken two thousand years ago, for in the long descent of his family the same words have been repeated in exactly the same way from generation to generation. It is awesome to think that Homer heard what we still hear.

  "I have been busy. I am sorry. But this is the sacred month. The mysteries begin in a week." So he began, prosaically.

  I told him that I wished to be initiated into all the mysteries: the lesser, the greater, and the highest. I realized that this would be difficult to arrange on such short notice, but I had not much time.

  "It can be done, of course. But you will need to study hard. Have you a good memory?"

  I said that I still retained most of Homer. He reminded me that the mysteries last for nine days and that there are many passwords, hymns and prayers which must be learned before the highest mystery can be revealed. "You must not falter." The Hierophant was stern. I said that I thought I could learn what I needed to know in a week, for I do indeed have a good memory; at least it is good when properly inspired.

  I was candid. I told him that if I lived, it was my hope to support Hellenism in its war with the Galileans.

  He was abrupt. "It is too late," he said, echoing Prohaeresius. "Nothing you can do will change what is about to happen."

  I had not expected such a response. "Do you know the future?"

  "I am Hierophant," he said simply. "The last Hierophant of Greece. I know many things, all tragic."