The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

  XII

  It was at Athens that Julian was about to take his vows and finallybecome a monk. One fresh spring morning, before the sun was up,Julian, issuing from the church where he had officiated at matins,followed for a few miles the banks of the Ilissus, in the shadow ofplane-trees and wild vine. Not far from Athens he had lighted upon asolitary place, on the edge of a torrent which poured, like a scarf ofsilver, upon a sandy bottom. Thence he used often to gaze with wonderthrough the mists at the ruddy cliff of the Acropolis and the haughtylines of the Parthenon, half-illumined by the dawn.

  On this particular morning Julian took off his shoes and walked alongthe reaches of the Ilissus barefoot. The air was full of the smell offlowers and of the rich-scented muscat grape--that aroma in whichthere is a foretaste of wine, faint as the promise of first love,stealing into the soul of youth.

  Julian, with feet in the water, sat down upon a platan-root, openedthe _Phaedrus_ and began to read at the passage in the dialogue inwhich Socrates says to Phaedrus: "Let us go this way, and follow thecourse of the Ilissus; we will choose a solitary place and there sitdown.

  "_Phaedrus_: Luckily, I'm unshod this morning, and as for you,Socrates, you always go barefoot. We'll walk in the bed of the river.Look, how smiling and pellucid the water is!

  "_Socrates_: By Pallas! here's a wonderful nook; it must be sacred tothe nymphs and to the god Acheloues--to judge by these little statues.Doesn't it seem to you as if here the breeze were softer and ofsweeter odour? Here, even in the hum of the crickets there's somethingof the sweetness of summer. But what I love best of all is this deepgrass!"

  Julian turned from the book with a smile. All was as it had been eightcenturies before. Even the crickets set up their song.

  "Socrates actually touched this ground with his feet!" he thought, andburying his head among the reeds he kissed the spot with adoration.

  "Good-day, Julian! you've chosen a lovely corner there to read in. MayI sit down near you?"

  "Sit, sit; I shall be delighted. Poets never violate a solitude."

  Julian looked up at a meagre personage, draped in an enormously longcloak (it was the poet Publius Porphyrius), thinking to himself--

  "He's so small and frail that I believe he'll soon turn into agrasshopper, as Plato fancied the poets do."

  Publius, like the grasshoppers, could almost live upon air, but thegods had not granted him complete immunity from appetite; and hisshaven cadaverous face and discoloured lips were stamped withinsatiable hunger.

  "Why are you wearing such a long cloak, Publius?" Julian asked.

  "It isn't mine," answered the other philosophically. "I share a roomwith a young man, Hephaestion, who has come to Athens to learneloquence. He will be a famous lawyer one day. Meanwhile he's as pooras I am, poor as a lyric poet--I need say no more! Why, we've pledgedour clothes, our furniture, even the inkstand; but we still have acloak between us. In the morning I go out, and Hephaestion studiesDemosthenes; in the evening he puts on the chlamys, and I writeverses. Unfortunately we're not the same height--but what does thatmatter? I take my walks along the streets 'long-robed,' like theancient Trojan ladies."

  Publius laughed heartily; the cadaverous face took on the expressionof a mourner who has incautiously cheered up.

  "You see, Julian," continued the poet, "I'm counting on the death ofthe widow of a very rich Roman landowner. The happy heirs will orderan epitaph from me, and are going to pay for it generously.Unfortunately the widow, in spite of everything that doctors and heirscan do, persists in not giving up the ghost. But for that, my boy, Ishould have bought myself a cloak long ago. Listen, Julian, get up andcome with me at once!"

  "Whither?"

  "Trust me--you'll thank me for it."

  "What's the mystery?"

  "Ask no questions; get up and come! The poet brings no harm to thepoet's friend. You'll see a goddess."

  "What goddess?"

  "Artemis, the huntress."

  "A picture? Statue?"

  "Much better than that. If you love beauty, take your cloak and followme."

  Publius assumed so seductive and mysterious an air that Julian wasbitten by curiosity.

  "There's but one condition. Say nothing, and marvel at nothing we do.Otherwise the spell will break. In the name of Calliope and Erato,just trust me! We're only two yards from the place, and to shorten theroad for you I'll read you the beginning of my epitaph on the widow."

  They issued on the dusty high-road. Under the first rays of the sunthe steel shield of Pallas Athene darted lightnings from the rose-huedAcropolis. Along the stone walls, hiding brooks humming along underthe fig-trees, the grasshoppers were singing shrilly, vieing with thehoarse voice of the poet as he recited the epitaph.

  Publius Porphyrius was a man not destitute of talent. His career hadbeen a curious one. Several years previously he had possessed a prettylittle house, a veritable temple of Hermes, at Constantinople, not farfrom the Chalcedonian suburb. His father, an oil merchant, hadbequeathed him a little fortune which should have permitted him tolive without cares. But Publius was a worshipper of antique Hellenism,and rebelled against what he called the triumph of Christianservitude. He wrote a liberal poem which displeased the EmperorConstantius, who was therein alluded to unfavourably. This allusioncost the author dear. Chastisement fell upon him; his house and goodswere confiscated, and he himself banished to an islet in thearchipelago, inhabited only by rocks, goats, and fevers. This trialwas more than Publius could stand. He cursed liberal opinions, anddetermined to blot out his misdeeds at any price. Shaking with fever,he composed during his sleepless nights, by means of sentences culledfrom Virgil, a poem glorifying the Emperor; the verses of the ancientpoet being grouped in such a fashion that they formed a new work.This ingenious puzzle tickled the palate of the Court. Publius haddivined the taste of the century.

  Straightway he ventured on feats more astonishing still. He wrote adithyrambic, or Bacchic ode in free stanzas, and addressed it toConstantius. It consisted of verses of different lengths, designed sothat they formed complete figures, such as a Pan's flute, awater-organ, or a sacrificial altar on which the smoke was representedby uneven phrases. But by a marvel of skilfulness the poem was socontrived as to make a decorative oblong twenty hexameters wide andforty hexameters long. Certain lines were traced in red ink and, readtogether, became transformed into a monogram of Christ, or into aflower of arabesques, but always, in whatever shape, made new linescomposed of new compliments. Finally the four last hexameters of thebook could be read in eighteen different orders: from the endbackwards, from the beginning, from the side, from the middle, fromabove, from below, etc., and, read in what manner you please, formed aeulogy to the Emperor.

  In executing this work the poor poet nearly lost his wits. But hisvictory was complete, and Constantius more than charmed. He believedthat Publius had surpassed all the poets of antiquity; he wrote theauthor a letter with his own hand, assuring him of protection andending thus: "In our age My bounty, like the calm breath of thezephyrs, is breathed upon all who write verses."

  Nevertheless his confiscated property was not restored to the poet; hewas simply given money and authorised to quit his desert island forAthens.

  There he led a melancholy existence. The ostler in the stables of thecircus, in comparison with Publius, lived in luxury.

  In the company of gravediggers, shady speculators, furnishers ofnuptial feasts, he passed whole days in the antechambers of theilliterate great, in order to obtain orders for a marriage ode, anepitaph, or a love-letter. At this trade he gained little, but neverlost heart, hoping to offer to the Emperor one day a poem which wouldwin him complete pardon.

  Julian felt that in spite of this outward abasement Porphyrius bore atheart a deep love for Hellas. He was a fine critic of Greek poetry andJulian enjoyed his conversation.

  They left the high-road and approached the high wall of an enclosurelike some _palaestra_ or exercise-ground. Round about all was solitary;two black lambs were cropping the
grass; near the closed door, in thechinks of which poppies and white daisies were growing, there stood achariot and two white horses. Their manes were close-cut like those ofthe horses in the bas-reliefs. By them stood an old slave, adeaf-mute, but evidently of an affable disposition, for he immediatelyrecognised Publius and nodded to him in friendly fashion, pointing tothe closed gate of the wrestling ground.

  "Lend me your purse a moment," said Publius to Julian. "I'll take outone or two pence for this poor old fool."

  He threw the coins, and the mute, with servile grimaces and pleasedgrunts, opened the door.

  They entered under a long and dark covered gallery. Between rows ofcolumns ran other galleries laid out for the exercise of athletes. Thespaces in their midst were now widths of grass instead of sand. Thetwo friends penetrated a large inner portico. Julian's curiositybecame keener at every step, the mysterious Publius leading him on bythe hand without a word. Doors of _exedrae_, or academic halls whereorators used to meet, opened into the second portico, and thegrasshoppers were humming now where eloquent discourses of Atheniansages had in old time resounded. Above the deep grass bees werewhirling: silence and melancholy pervaded all. Suddenly, a woman'svoice was heard, and the noise of a disk striking the marble, followedby a merry burst of laughter.

  Stealing in like robbers, the pair hid themselves in the outer shadowof the columns of the _elaiothesion_, or place where the ancientwrestlers used to rub themselves over with oil.

  From behind these columns could be seen the _ephebeion_, aquadrangular space open to the sky, originally laid out fordisk-throwing, and now newly strown with fresh sand.

  Julian looked in, and started back.

  At twenty paces from him stood a young girl entirely naked. His eyesswept over her wonderful body. She was holding a discus in her hand.

  Julian longed instinctively to beat a retreat; but turning, he saw inthe eyes of Publius and upon the whole of that lean tawny face such alook of admiration, that he understood that the adorer of Hellas, inbringing him to the place, had been moved by no shameful thought; thatenthusiasm was wholly sacred.

  Publius, seizing the hand of Julian, murmured:

  "Look! We are now nine centuries back, in ancient Laconia. Do youremember the verses of Propertius--

  "Multa tuae, Sparte, miramur jura palaestrae, Sed mage virginei, tot bona gymnasii, Quod non infames exercet corpore ludos Inter luctantes nuda puella viros?"

  "Who is she?" asked Julian.

  "I don't know. I never wanted to know."

  "That is well! Hush!"

  Now he gazed eagerly and without shame at the girl hurling the disk.Blushes were unworthy of a philosopher.

  She retreated some steps, inclined her body forward, and advancing theleft leg made a swift bounding movement, and shot the metal circle sohigh that it shone in the rising sun, and in falling struck thefarthest pillar. It was like watching the motions of a statue byPhidias.

  "That shot was the best," said a little twelve-year-old damsel, cladin a rich tunic and standing near the column.

  "Myrrha, give me the disk," replied the player. "I can throw it higherthan that, as you shall see. Meroe, get farther out of the way. Imight hurt you, as Apollo hurt Hyacinthus."

  Meroe, an old Egyptian, to judge by her multi-coloured vestments andtanned visage, was preparing in alabaster jars perfumes for a bath.Julian understood that the mute slave of the gate and the white-horsedchariot outside must belong to these two votaries of the Laconiangames.

  After the disk-throwing the young girl took from Myrrha a bow and aquiver, and drew thence a long arrow. She aimed at a black circle atthe opposite end of the _ephebeion_; the string hummed, the arrow flewwhistling and stuck in the target: then a second, then a third.

  "O huntress Artemis!" sighed Publius.

  Suddenly a sunbeam slipping between two columns shot into the face andyouthful breast of the young girl. Throwing bow and arrows aside insudden bedazzlement, she hid her face in her hands.

  Swallows, uttering their faint fine chirpings, undulated about theexercise-ground, and pursuing each other vanished into the blue of thesky.

  She uncovered her face and raised her arms above her head.

  Its fair hair, golden at its ends as honey in the sun, at its rootswas auburn; her lips half opened in a happy smile, she suffered thesun to bathe her body, gliding lower and lower yet, till she stoodclothed, as in the loveliest raiment, in pure light and beauty.

  "Myrrha," the girl murmured slowly and dreamily, "look at the sky! Howbeautiful it would be to bathe in it, like those birds! Do youremember our saying that men could not be happy because they had nowings? When I look at the birds I am consumed with envy. One should belight and bare as I am at this moment, and winging high up in the sky,and knowing that one could fly forever--that there should be nothingelse but sky and sun about one's light and free and naked body!"

  Drawing herself up to her full height with outstretched arms shesighed deeply, as at some remembered joy fled away for ever.

  The burning caress of the sun now reached her waist. Suddenly sheshivered and grew ashamed, as if some living and passionate being hadapproached her. With one hand she shielded her breast, with the otherthe abdomen, the immortal gesture of Aphrodite of Cnidos.

  "Meroe, give me my clothes! quick, Meroe!" she exclaimed, with eyeswide open and startled.

  Julian never remembered how he came forth from the wrestling-ground;his heart was on fire. The poet's face was solemn as that of a manquitting a temple.

  "You are not annoyed?" he asked Julian.

  "No; why should I be?"

  "Perhaps a Christian might find it a temptation?"

  "There was nothing of temptation there for me. Do you understand?"

  "Perfectly; that is what I thought."

  And again they found themselves on the dusty high road, where the sunwas already hot, and bent their steps towards Athens.

  Publius continued in an undertone, as it were talking to himself--

  "Oh, how shameful, how deformed we are nowadays! Ashamed of our ownmorose and pitiful nakedness, we hide it because we feel ugly andimpure. Whereas of old time.... Ah! there was a time when all was verydifferent. Julian, the young girls of Sparta used to go out upon thewrestling-ground naked and haughty before all the people. Nobodyfeared temptation in those days. Folk were simple as children--asgods! And to think that nevermore shall that happen again; that thefreedom, the cleanness, of that happy state shall be seen on earth nomore!"

  The poet's chin fell on his breast, and he sighed drearily.

  They came at last to the Street of Tripods, and hard by the Acropolisthe friends separated and went their ways in silence.

  Julian went into the shadow of the propylaea, through vast porchesleading into temple-enclosures; but avoided the Decorated Porch, onwhich Parrhasius had chiselled the battles of Marathon and Salamis,and passing the little temple of the Wingless Victory ascended to theParthenon.

  He had but to shut his eyes to remember the superb body of Artemis thehuntress. When he opened them the sun-bathed Parthenon marbles seemedgolden and living as that divine body; and, despising Imperial spiesand chances of death, he desired openly to worship and kiss the warmstones of that holy place.

  Two black-robed young men of pale and severe countenance were standingnear. They were Gregory of Nazianzen and Basil of Caesarea. TheHellenists feared these two men as their most formidable foes. It wasthe hope of the Christians that the two friends would one day becomefathers of the Church. They were now watching Julian.

  "What's the matter with him to-day?" said Gregory. "Is that theattitude of a monk? Are those the gestures of a monk? Do you see thoseclosed eyes--that smile? Do you believe that his piety is genuine,Basil?"

  "I have often watched him weeping and praying in church."

  "Mere hypocrisy!"

  "If so, why does he come to us, seek our friendship, and argue overthe Scriptures?"

  "He's deceiving himself; or perhaps he wishes to sed
uce the faithful.Never trust him! He is the tempter! Remember what I say, brother, theRoman Empire in fostering this young man is nursing an adder!"

  The two friends went off, their eyes on the ground. The severecaryatids of the Erechtheum, the laughing blue of the sky, the whitetemple of the Wingless One, the Porches and the Parthenon, that wonderof the world, on them cast no spell. One thing alone did they desire:to lay all these haunts of demons in the dust. The long shadows of themonks fell on the Parthenon steps as they walked away.

  "I must see her again," Julian was thinking; "I must find out who sheis."